“You weren’t expecting a repairman?” Nancy’s pulse quickened.
“No. He said some kids had been tampering with the cable junction box out on the street, and he was checking to make sure they hadn’t interfered with the pay-channel service—the movies and such.”
“That was yesterday morning?”
“No, I’m wrong. It was afternoon.”
“How long was he here?”
“No time at all. Maybe fifteen minutes.”
“And you were with him the whole time?”
“Goodness, no. I was fixing the judge’s lunch, so I showed the man where the sets were and left him to it.” She stopped when she saw one of the detectives standing in the doorway.
“Are you up to talking to me now?” he asked kindly.
He was just the excuse Nancy needed to leave. “I’ll wait outside, Mrs. O’Hara.” She had some searching to do.
The library was empty. The black dust of the fingerprint experts and the tiny hole in the window were the only signs that anything unusual had happened there. A television was set into the wall behind sliding doors. Nancy opened them and gazed thoughtfully at the big blank screen.
The channel-selector box was on a shelf beneath the set. It was small and rectangular, about the size of an answering machine. Nancy slid the shelf out until she could see the phone numbers of the cable company printed on a label stuck to the side of the selector. Unwilling to touch anything on the judge’s desk, she went out into the hall to use the phone.
After two minutes of conversation with the dispatcher of the cable TV’s service department, her suspicions were confirmed—they had not sent a repairman.
Nancy went back to stare at the set. She ran her fingers along the outer edges of the television, reaching as far into the recess as she could. There was nothing there, and the set was too heavy for her to pull out alone.
The shelf below was still extended. She slid it back into position, then remembered she hadn’t examined the channel selector. She picked it up and looked at all sides. Nothing. She checked the bottom. Nothing. She had set it down before she realized she had seen something after all.
Nancy turned the selector over again. It sat on four rubber rings that protected the furniture from being scratched. About the size of dimes, the thick rings had screws in their centers attaching them to the base of the box. In three of the rings, the screws were visible. But in the fourth was a tiny, metallic cylinder.
She found what she had been looking for. The room was bugged.
Nancy went back to Mrs. O’Hara’s room. Mrs. O’Hara’s television sat there, the selector on top, a silent witness to the conversation between the housekeeper and the detective. Finger to her lips, Nancy beckoned them out to the kitchen and into the pantry.
“What’s up?” the detective asked impatiently.
Nancy told him what she had found. “That’s how they knew he was about to admit everything! They must have had someone nearby, just in case.”
The detective’s face told her he wasn’t ready to take her word for it. “I’ll go check,” he said.
“And I let him in!” Mrs. O’Hara said tearfully after he had left. “It’s all my fault!”
“You couldn’t have known,” Nancy said to assure her. “When a man shows up in a cable company truck, you expect him to be what he says he is.”
“But he didn’t—show up in the usual truck, I mean.” She pulled a handkerchief from her apron and dabbed at her eyes. “It was a white van like the one the cable company uses, but I didn’t notice until he was leaving that it didn’t have the purple letters on the sides.”
“It didn’t?”
“There was tape on the sides, long strips of it. Maybe there was a sign under it. I was busy. I just didn’t think— And it had a bent front fender that ripped into some of the rosebushes as it came through the back gate.”
“Ms. Drew?” the detective said softly, pausing on his way past the pantry door. “My apologies. You were right.” He smiled. “Thanks.” Then he was gone again.