Part 5: The Thing She Mailed Herself
Detective Mark Cobb came to our house an hour later.
He was the kind of man who looked like he had been born tired. Thick neck. Gray buzz cut. Wedding ring. Coffee breath. He stood in my kitchen while Lily sat at the table with a juice box and explained the whole thing like she was reporting a lost mitten.
Jessica had asked for my password.
Then she and Ethan had waited until I left.
Then they tried to get into my bank from my laptop.
When the bank sent a code to my phone, they panicked because my phone was with me in Chicago. Ethan said there had to be another way. Jessica remembered my old iPad was still logged in for email. They found it in the desk drawer.
Lily heard them.
She turned on her tablet and left it under the guest room bed while she pretended to look for Peanut’s squeaky hamburger.
“Why didn’t you call me?” I asked her.
She shrugged.
“You were in your meeting.”
I hated that answer.
Not because it was wrong.
Because she knew me.
She knew I would say I was busy and then call back after a client asked another question about invoice software.
“So what did you do?” Detective Cobb asked.
Lily sat up straighter.
“I made copies.”
The detective blinked.
“What kind of copies?”
“My tablet uploads videos to my school drive when it gets Wi-Fi. Mr. Han taught us because someone deleted the class hamster video.”
I stared at her.
“Class hamster video?”
“It was a whole thing,” Lily said.
Detective Cobb rubbed his forehead with two fingers. “Okay.”
Lily had recorded Jessica and Ethan talking.
Then, before they left, she saw Jessica take the unicorn backpack from the mudroom. Lily had already put the tablet inside the padded sleeve because she thought Jessica might steal it too.
“And I put Mom’s luggage tag on it,” Lily said. “The one with the little card.”
Detective Cobb looked at me.
I looked back, useless.
“My name and phone number were in the backpack,” I said.
Lily nodded.
“And the tile thing.”
“The what?”
“The blue square,” she said, annoyed now. “The thing you put on my backpack because I lost it at art camp.”
The tracker.
I had forgotten about it.
It was cheap. Bought in a two-pack from Amazon after Lily left her backpack at the community center for the third time that summer. One went on my keys. One went in her backpack.
Jessica had stolen the one thing that could lead police right to her.
“That wasn’t all,” Lily said.
Of course it wasn’t.
Detective Cobb gave me a look.
I gave him one back that said: I am learning this with you, sir.
Lily reached into the pocket of her pajama pants and pulled out a folded receipt.
It was from the post office.
Two dollars and thirty-six cents.
“I mailed myself the note,” she said.
“What note?” I asked.
“The one Aunt Jessica wrote and threw away first.”
May you like
My sister made a sound on the phone.
I had forgotten she was still there.
