Page 76 of Midnight Secrets

My heart leapt into my throat. The lid in the picture was closed, but there was something on top.

Gaze darting to the hamper, then back to the image on my phone, I zoomed in.

It looked like a sweatshirt.

Gray in color, it sat in a heap atop the hamper lid.

I zoomed in further. There was something on it; a logo of some sort. It looked a bit like the state flag, but I couldn’t tell for sure. There wasn’t enough of it visible.

Something niggled in the back of my mind.

It looked familiar. Not just because it looked like the state flag. I’d seen it before, but I couldn’t remember where.

Lowering the phone, I looked at the hamper again.

It definitely wasn’t there.

Maybe it was inside? Claire could have moved it. Or the forensics team, though I doubted that. They’d have made a note of it and I didn’t recall seeing anything about them moving clothing.

But I still walked over to the hamper and lifted the lid to look inside.

It was empty.

I let the lid fall back into place.

So, where was the sweatshirt? Whose was it? And what was the logo on the front?

Excitement built in my veins. Did the shirt belong to Marie Hammond’s killer? Or maybe he or she used it to wipe their hands or hide the murder weapon and took it with them.

Another possibility struck me. It could belong to one of the Hammonds and Marie or Warren moved it before the murder.

I spun on my heel and retraced my steps to the bedroom and went straight into the closet. Meticulously, I went through every item of clothing again. When the closet yielded nothing, I checked the dresser.

Nothing.

That hope I lost floated back into the room.

Lashing onto it with a stronger rope, I left the master suite and rechecked all the rooms upstairs.

Not finding the shirt, I descended the steps, heading for the laundry room.

Both the washer and dryer were empty.

That hope got a little stronger.

I went through the rest of the downstairs, even checking the garage again, but there was no sign of the shirt.

Was it Warren’s? Did he take it with him when he fled the house?

Had he even been here after Marie’s murder? I didn’t have any evidence he was at the house after he said he left for Boston.

But if it wasn’t his, whose was it?

CHAPTER 27

Claire

Bleary-eyed and with Pebbles tucked under my arm, I entered the kitchen, rubbing at my eyes as I turned on the lights.

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