Page 6 of Devil in the Details

Except….

He’d said he was going to turn off the security system using the app on his phone. The back door hadn’t caught all the way, which meant it should have given him an error message when he engaged the thing as he was leaving the house.

Probably. But maybe it had an override or something. Although she’d worked with plenty of alarm systems during the seven years she’d been a real estate agent, she wouldn’t pretend that she knew the inner workings of all of them.

As she was mulling that conundrum, her phone buzzed from inside her purse, which she’d left sitting on the kitchen island. She hurried over to dig out the iPhone, then looked down at the screen.

Caleb.

“Hey,” she said as she lifted the phone to her ear. “I’m just finishing up over here.”

“Great,” he replied, sounding cheerful as usual. She still hadn’t quite figured out whether that was his real disposition or whether he was so relieved to be out of Hell and creating a new life for himself that he wouldn’t allow too many things to get him down. Either way, it was a nice change from some of the decidedly cranky clients she’d had to deal with over the years.

Not that she really viewed Caleb as a client anymore. Business partner, she supposed.

Or, she thought with a mental grin, partner-in-crime, the way he’d described their relationship to Calach the demon.

“I was so preoccupied with the house stuff that I totally forgot to ask if you wanted to grab lunch,” he went on. “I mean, if you haven’t already eaten.”

Delia wondered when he thought she would have had the time to grab something, considering she’d come straight over here from the Pueblo Street house and gotten to work. Her phone told her it was not quite one, certainly still a good time to eat.

“No, I was probably going to make something when I got home,” she said, which wasn’t too much of a lie. Yes, she’d planned to eat, although her meal would have been nuked leftovers or maybe a frozen dinner if nothing in the containers in the fridge looked appealing, neither of which was exactly something you had to “make.”

“Then I’ll come pick you up at the house.”

It seemed to her that it would have been more time effective for them to decide on a restaurant somewhere in between the two properties and meet there, but Delia decided to roll with it. Besides, when he got to the house, she could ask him about the unlocked French door off the family room and whether it had been simply an oversight…or something a little less innocent.

“Okay,” she said. “See you in a few.”

More like fifteen minutes if the traffic cooperated, but in the meantime, she could go back and look at all the photos she’d taken and delete any obvious duds. That way, when she got home and started working on editing everything and putting the listing together, she wouldn’t have to wade through so much chaff.

They ended the call there, and Delia picked up her camera. Everything here seemed utterly quiet — the soundproofing on the house must have been excellent, because a bunch of kids had been hanging out in the yard of the property next door, lounging on their bikes and talking loudly about where they wanted to go after this, but she couldn’t hear a thing inside — and she wondered if she was being extra hinky about the situation with the back door. After all, everything had been mellow the past couple of months, with not a single hint of any demon activity.

Well, she’d wait and see what Caleb had to say about it.

He stared at the back door and frowned. Delia had already closed and locked it, so there wasn’t any real evidence that it had been almost ajar when she got here, but Caleb had no reason to believe she was misrepresenting the situation.

“I’ll see if I can lift those prints off the door,” he told her, and she raised an amused eyebrow.

“What, you’re a forensics expert now?”

He found himself smiling a little.

A very little.

“No,” he replied. “But I read about how you can lift prints with just some talcum powder and a piece of tape. Let me go get the powder from the bathroom upstairs. I think there’s some Scotch tape in my office, too.”

If she thought it odd that a grown man had baby powder on hand, she didn’t say anything about it. To be fair, he hadn’t even cracked open the container; it had been among a bunch of things he’d picked up at Target right after he bought this house, figuring he should have some basic supplies like hydrogen peroxide and rubbing alcohol and a first aid kit. All that stuff still sat untouched in the vanity of the second bathroom upstairs, but at least it seemed as though he finally had a reason to use some of it.

While Delia waited in the kitchen, he headed upstairs and got the necessary supplies, then returned to the ground floor so he could take a closer look at the fingerprints she’d spotted. Although he knew better than to touch them, he still lifted a hand and spread his fingers apart so he could hold them up against the smudges on the glass and see if they matched his hands at all.

They sort of did — well, at least they looked as if they’d been made by someone of the same approximate size — but his fingers were a little longer.

“I know I didn’t leave these here,” he said, and Delia’s mouth compressed.

“But why break in if they weren’t going to take anything?” She paused, then added, looking even more worried, “I mean…have you noticed anything missing?”

“No,” he said at once. When he’d first moved in, he’d kept his valuables in a safe in the main bedroom, but all the cash had been moved to various accounts around town. And although he’d spent an indulgent chunk of change on his watch, he wore it all the time and didn’t leave it lying around for anyone to simply take. “Or at least,” he added, “nothing obvious. It’s not like there’s anything super-valuable here except the TV.”

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