Here She Lies

stopping at the courthouse to drop off this warrant application.” He used his key chain remote to unlock his car and in the lot behind the station a silver sedan beeped and its rear lights blinked.
    We had parked Julie’s Audi out front. It had already stopped raining and then, as we reached the car, the clouds dissipated and sun poured lavishly onto the road. Bobby drove and I sat beside him, watching the bright greens and pinks and yellows and reds and oranges of springtime stream past, hoping with all my heart and soul that I would find Lexy back at the house. My feelings about Julie were too inchoate to classify, but I supposed I hoped to find her, too. Was it possible she had an explanation for all this? Could it be possible she was not the one wreaking havoc in my life?
    We were halfway there when my cell phone rang inmy purse. I fished it out, hoping it would be Julie, aggravated that it would probably be Clark Hazmat again.
    “It’s Liz,” I told Bobby when I saw her law firm’s name on the caller ID.
    “Hey, honey,” Liz said. “How are you hanging in there?”
    “Not so great.” I told her about the appraisal. She listened quietly before plunging in to her reason for calling.
    “Better hold on to your hat,” she said, “because it gets worse.”
    “Tell me.”
    “The embezzlement charge?”
    “Fake embezzlement charge.”
    “Yes, that’s the one.” I almost laughed, then I almost cried, and then she told me, “Almost twenty-five grand, in two parts, siphoned out of two different bank accounts belonging to your Kentucky prison.”
    My prison! “What do you mean, ‘siphoned’?”
    “Transferred into accounts owned by you,” she said.
    “You mean not owned by me, Liz—”
    “Yes, Annie, I do mean that. But I have to convey what I’ve been told.”
    I was stunned. Speechless.
    “Here’s what we’re going to do,” Liz said. “I’m about to call this organization affiliated with the FBI called IC 3 — the Internet Crime Complaint Center — and start by lodging a formal complaint on your behalf. That’s step one. Step two is contacting the Cyber Division of the FBI and requesting hands-on help with this now.”
    “The local detective here just did that.”
    “Great. I’ll call anyway; it never hurts to reinforce a call for help. Where are you now?”
    “On our way to Julie’s house. The GPS system in the car she’s driving thinks she’s home.”
    “Good luck, Annie. Let me know what happens. And don’t worry. I’ll keep in touch, too.”
    My blue rental car was nowhere in sight when we pulled up in front of Julie’s house. Mica’s truck was gone, so we parked in the driveway and were standing on the lawn when Detective Lazare arrived. A heavy humidity hung in the air and for the first time this spring I felt claustrophobic inside my clothes. I had on the same outfit I’d worn to Manhattan two nights ago, jeans and a tight-fitting top that revealed my milky cleavage in a way that no longer felt daring, just sad. It was the outfit I’d changed into after my prison stay (the beige suit now hung in my father’s city closet — I would never wear that bad-memory rag again). I was aware of a film of sweat clinging to every inch of my skin as the three of us — Detective Lazare, Bobby and I — searched the grounds of Julie’s house, front and back, for the car.
    It wasn’t there.
    “What now?” Bobby asked Lazare.
    Lazare looked around, thinking. Then he faced me and said, “I have a hunch about something.” He walked toward the house and we followed. At the kitchen door he stopped. “If I go in there before the search warrant’s issued, and we find she’s removed the GPS unit, and if this turns into something, we won’t be able to use it.”
    I understood him perfectly: he meant in court. Itwould be disqualified as evidence. Hearing it put that way sounded unreal. I just couldn’t believe it would go that far.
    “It’s possible that, with Annie’s permission, I could legitimately poke around inside the house,” Detective Lazare said. “Possible, but not certain. Why take chances?”
    “So you want me to do it,” I said.
    “That’s right.”
    “Can Bobby come with me?”
    “He’s your husband. There’s nothing unusual about him going into the house.” Meaning yes.
    So I unlocked the kitchen door and Bobby followed me in. Dust sparkled in a block of sunlight that fell from the window. The teal enamel wall clock read 11:45 and I knew, in the