...And Never Let HerGo

more he had started taking back various gifts he had given her.
    On July 26, Connolly and Alpert were poring over copies of Tom’s credit card bills when one in particular caught their attention. On June 29, two days after Anne Marie disappeared, Tom had made a purchase totaling $308.99 at the Wallpaper Warehouse. That struck them as a little odd. Why would a man who was only renting a house buy wallpaper? They asked a few questions and learned that the Wallpaper Warehouse also did business as Air Base Carpets.
    Alpert drove to the warehouse on Route 13 in New Castle County and talked to Michael Longwill, the general manager. When asked to check his records, Longwill found that Tom Capano was a repeat customer. On September 30, 1995, he had used his MasterCard to buy several Oriental rugs and a room-sized remnant. The bill at that time had come to $2,349.92. Longwill could determine the type of carpets by codes noted on the bill, and he told Alpert that the large remnant Tom had purchased was a looped-weave beige Berber carpet. It was all that was left on a roll sold three months earlier. Longwill was even able to give Alpert the name of the man who had purchased most of that roll.
    “Now, on June 29, 1996,” Alpert asked, “did Mr. Capano buy another carpet from your store?”
    “Yes,” Longwill said. “I sold him an Oriental rug and pad. He came in—let’s see—at 1:36 in the afternoon.”
    It was not an expensive rug, more of a knockoff of the real thing, dark green with various colors in the design. Longwill said there had been nothing unusual about Capano’s manner. He had carried the pad, and an employee carried the rug to his car.
    Alpert contained his enthusiasm, although later he and Connolly would agree that this was the first break they had in trying to solve the puzzle of Anne Marie’s disappearance.
    Bob Donovan contacted the man who had purchased the bulk of the roll of carpet that Tom had bought the previous September. That would have been at the time he moved into the North Grant Avenue house. The other buyer, the owner of a bed-and-breakfast, showed Donovan the thick-looped beige carpeting that covered most of the downstairs of his house. Longwill had assured Alpert that this carpet was
exactly
the same as the carpet Tom had purchased. Same lot number. Same color. Same roll.
    “You have any extra?” Donovan asked.
    “Sure,” the innkeeper said. “You can take a hunk of what’s left over.”
    Whether the fibers in that beige carpet would be needed for comparison, no one knew, but it was bagged into evidence, just in case.
    They were getting a little lucky. They were now able to put two pieces of their investigative puzzle side by side. Donovan had also spoken with Ruth Boylan, the woman who cleaned Tom’s house every other Monday.
    “When did you clean his house last?” Donovan asked.
    “July twenty-second,” she said.
    “And before that?”
    “June twenty-fourth,” she replied. “You see, I was supposed to clean it on July eighth next—but Mr. Capano called me on maybe the fifth or sixth, and he said I didn’t need to clean it because they’d all been away for the Fourth of July, so it was still clean.”
    She knew the whole house well, but she told Donovan that she was concerned about something that seemed a little peculiar. She said she’d let herself in as usual on the twenty-second and begun to clean. But when she moved into the great room off the kitchen, she was surprised. The room was changed.
    “How?” Donovan asked.
    “Well, for one thing, the sofa was missing—and the carpet had been taken up and there was an area rug there.”
    This had puzzled her because the carpet was practically brand new and in perfect condition. So was the sofa. It had been sitting right there four weeks ago, kind of crosswise in the room, facing the TV set, and now it was gone.
    “What color was that sofa?”
    “Kind of a deep rose, with a pineapple print or motif, all the same color.”
    Mrs. Boylan said she had stood looking at the room, shaking her head. Neither the couch nor the rug had had a worn spot or a stain on them. Now, she said, the room was rearranged, with the TV flat against one wall and two reclining chairs facing it. The rug didn’t cover nearly what the carpet had. She wondered whose idea it was to change the room, because it had been nicer the way it was before.
    The three-man investigative team had a feeling that something had happened in that room off