“What?God, no, or at least I don’t think so. As far as I know, once seven o’clock rolls around you can’t tear him away fromLine of DutyorLeague of Legends.”
“Video games?”
“Right, and he takes gaming very seriously.... How oddyourcode was used, though. Does Dario have it?”
“Not that I’m aware, but he could have seen it over my shoulder as I punched in. I’ve changed it, of course.”
Eric stiffens a little. “You know that it wasn’t me in here last night, right?”
“Oh, Eric, I’d never think that. Not for a second.”
She’s glad to see his body relax again. She’d hate for him to feel she was accusing him.
“Here’s a thought,” he says, looking off. “One of the days the freelancers were here last month, we all left at the same time. Remember? What if one of them saw you use your code—and they came back to steal something, or snoop around, or who knows what?”
Emmadoesremember. There was a night in May when they were all bunched together by the door at the end of the day, and though the three women they’ve hired to help them tabulate the surveys each month have been thoroughly vetted, one of them could be a bad egg.
“But there’s a hitch with that theory,” she tells Eric. “None of them has a key.”
“True,” he says, “but you sometimes leave your key lying on the table by the front door all day. If someone wanted to get in badly enough, they could have found a way to make a copy at lunchtime.”
Eric and Emma hatch a strategy in which she’ll take a closer look around the studio to see if anything is missing, and he’ll find an excuse to call each of the freelancers and try to take their pulse over the phone.
Please, she thinks, as they return to the main room.Let us figure this out.
Toward the end of the day, Emma and Eric reconvene. Nothing is off in the studio, and Dario seems his normal, easygoing self. She’s feeling terrible for having even suspected him for a moment.
“I talked to all three of the freelancers,” Eric reports. “I said I was confirming that with the arrival of summer, they were going to be available at the end of the month. It was clear I caught each of them a little off guard, so it was hard to tell if there was something going on. Maybe we’ll know more when we see them.”
Emma shakes her head in frustration. “Which of course won’t be for two weeks.”
“How should we proceed from here?”
“Like, I said, I have a new code now and why don’t I give you one, too. And we still should keep our eyes peeled for anything that seems the least bit irregular.”
“Right, will do.”
The situation will continue to weigh on her, she knows, but there’s nothing more to do about it now.
After wishing Eric good night, Emma walks back to the house, eager to see Tom, and doesn’t remember that he’s hosting a client dinner tonight until she’s halfway up the path. She figures she’ll cobble together something simple for herself again, and Brittany can nuke one of the prepared meals from the freezer whenever she wants.
When she enters the kitchen, though, she finds Brittanyfully occupying the room: there are bowls and utensils on the island along with a carton of eggs, heavy cream, and a log of goat cheese. She’s changed from work clothes into a pair of red capris and one of her Peter Pan–collared shirts, and she’s briskly whisking eggs in one of the bowls.
“Hi, there,” Emma says, deciding it’s probably best to let Brittany do her own thing and come back later to fix dinner for herself.
“Oh, I was about to text you,” Brittany says, glancing up at her with a smile. “I’m making dinner for myself and wondered if you might want to join me since Tom is out for the night.”
“That would be lovely,” Emma says, trying to mask her surprise. “What’s on the menu?”
“Omelets with goat cheese and chives. Is that okay?”
Though Emma knows from her research that the breakfast-for-dinner trend has exploded in a big way, she’s not much of a fan of it herself, but she’s so pleased by Brittany’s thoughtfulness that an omelet sounds suddenly divine to her, and she offers to make a green salad to accompany it.
As Brittany turns her attention back to her task, Emma dumps Bibb lettuce into a ceramic bowl, whisks together a simple vinaigrette, dresses the salad, and sets the table. Within a few minutes, Brittany’s cooked two omelets in two different pans and slides them each onto a plate.
“How delicious,” Emma says after tasting her first bite. And it is.
“Well, this and penne with tomato sauce are the only things I can really make so far, but I’m determined to learn more.”