“Where is it now?”

No doubt about it, the man’s voice was sullen. “I hung it up in the basement. In the laundry room, for it to dry.”

Wyatt glanced at Nicole. “Mind showing us to the laundry room? Then we could be all done here.”

Nicole paled. For a moment, Wyatt thought she might refuse. But then she squared her shoulders, shot her husband a look that was hard to interpret and headed once more down the hall.

Turned out, door to the basement was behind the entryway staircase, off the family room. Nicole yanked open the door with more force than was strictly necessary, snapping on a light. Wyatt made out a downward flight of rough wooden stairs, leading to a bare cement floor below.

In front of him, Nicky took a deep breath in, blew it out, then grabbed the railing and began her descent.

The stairs scared her. Wyatt noted her white-knuckle grip on the railing, the way she took each step one by one. Post-traumatic stress? he wondered. An instinctive response to the site of her first accident? He didn’t ask. Just watched her slow but determined progress.

The risers felt sturdy enough, he thought, making his own descent behind her. A little narrow and steep. Coming down them with a laundry basket wouldn’t be the easiest task. Day after day . . . Perhaps some kind of fall had been inevitable.

“These days, I slide the basket down,” Nicky murmured, as if reading his mind. “It’s probably what I should’ve done from the beginning. Just toss the clothes down, then make my way after them.”

“What about coming back up when the clothes are clean and neatly folded?”

“That’s Thomas’s job now. I wash the clothes; he moves them.”

“Why not have him just take over the laundry duty?”

“He ruins my delicates,” she said, and it took Wyatt a second to realize she wasn’t joking.

Arriving in the middle of the basement, Wyatt discovered a surprisingly large and open space. Probably meant to be turned into a rec room, man cave, in-law suite, whatever might suit a couple best. One corner had been framed off and finished into a combination laundry room, lower-level bath.

“You guys do this?” he asked Nicky. Kevin and Thomas were still descending behind them.

“One of Thomas’s first projects,” she volunteered. “I told him I didn’t want to do laundry all covered in spiders. So he made me a real room. Said it was his contribution to clean clothes everywhere.”

“Nice setup,” Wyatt observed, taking in the state-of-the-art front-loading washer and dryer, topped with a long laminate countertop to serve as a folding table. Then, of course, upper cabinets to hold laundry detergents, fabric sheets, cleaning basics.

As a carpenter himself, Wyatt appreciated Thomas’s attention to detail. The room was professional grade, no doubt about it. Which made Wyatt wonder, after going through this much work to create a separate laundry facility, why the hell hadn’t Thomas taken the time and effort to build a better, safer flight of stairs?

Kevin and Thomas had arrived in the basement.

“Nice work,” Wyatt told the husband, indicating the space.

He merely shrugged, but Nicky volunteered: “Thomas is good with his hands.”

“Obviously. Must have a good tool collection as well. Miter saw, pneumatic nail gun, cordless drills . . .”

Thomas met his eye. “In my workshop. I craft custom props, remember? A lot of that starts with wooden models, if not finished products.”

“Except now you’re moving to plastic,” Nicky spoke up again. No doubt about it, her tone was disapproving.

Wyatt and Kevin returned their attention to Thomas. “I have a three-D printer,” the man said. “Now my clients can send me digital files of their own creations, which I can turn into three-D molds with a push of a button. I call that progress. My wife considers it risky.”

He glared at his wife. She glared back at him.

“My coat,” Thomas said now, turning away from Nicky to wave at a drying rack just off to the side of the dryer. Sure enough, a single silver-and-black raincoat hung from the wooden dowels. Kevin fingered the coat first, lifting the front folds this way and that.

“Dry now,” he murmured to Wyatt.

“Dirty,” Wyatt observed, pointing to a pale smudge marring the front, streaks of sand lining both arms.

“Of course it’s dirty,” Thomas said impatiently. “I wore it to my workshop. And given that I’d already turned off the heat for the day, I left on my jacket while I worked.”

“Not afraid of snagging a sleeve in a power tool?” Wyatt asked.

Kevin was inspecting the left cuff of the jacket, which showed definite signs of wear. What were the chances they’d find a thread from the frayed edge of this coat snagged in the bumper of Nicole’s car? Heaven forbid anything about this case would be that easy.

“We should take this for a match,” Kevin said, voice deliberately loud.

“Definitely. Mind if we borrow your jacket?” Wyatt asked Thomas, who was looking defensive.

“Of course I mind. It’s my only rain jacket. And I already told you. It’s dirty and covered in stuff from my workshop; that’s all.”

“Is this more sand?” Kevin spoke up. “Like the sand on your shoes. Like the sand we found on the side of the road . . .”

“There’s sand everywhere! It’s New England, for God’s sake, and we’ve already had several mornings below freezing.”

“Where are Nicky’s clothes?” Wyatt asked abruptly.

“What?” Thomas blinked.

“I understand from the hospital staff you took her clothes from the night of the accident.”

“Nothing wrong with that—”

“Where are they? Muddy, bloody, soaked in scotch, sure as hell didn’t put them away. So they should be here, right? The laundry room. Waiting to be washed.”

Thomas didn’t answer right away. “My wife did nothing wrong,” he said abruptly.

Nicky’s turn to stare at him.

“Dr. Celik showed me the tox-screen results: .06. Below the legal limit. Meaning neither of us owes you answers or explanations. It was an accident. Plain and simple. Dark, rainy night. She drove off the road. End of the story.”

“Like falling down the basement stairs?”

“You saw the stairs.”

“And stumbling off the front steps? Come on, Thomas. Just how clumsy can one woman be? Stairs, steps, driving a car. To hear you talk, your wife can’t get anything right.”

“Go away. We’re done with you now.”

“Fine. Then give us your rain jacket. And while you’re at it, Nicky’s clothes from that night and the tennis shoes she shouldn’t have been wearing in the rain, and, oh yeah, the coat she didn’t even bother to grab. Provide it all. Give us what we need to prove your accident. And maybe, just maybe, we’ll leave you alone.”

“I want to see it,” Nicky spoke up suddenly.

The men stopped, stared at her. She was standing in the middle of the basement, arms crossed defensively over her chest. She wasn’t looking at the jacket or at any of them. She was looking at a spot at the base of the stairs.

The spot where she’d landed, Wyatt knew without asking. The site of her first accident, when her headaches and memory loss all began.

Thomas frowned. “What do you want to see?”

“The scene of the crash. I want to visit it. Maybe it will help me.”

“Nicky, you have a concussion; you’re under doctor’s orders to take it easy—”

“I’m going.”

“You’ll get another headache—”

“I don’t care.”

“I do! This is exactly what they’re trying to do, Nicky. Can’t you see that? This whole visit, this farce . . . The police are trying to come between us. It’s the only way they think they’ll get answers.”

“Maybe I want those answers, too.”

“Nicky . . .” Thomas reached out a hand toward his wife.

“What are you afraid of? Tell me, Thomas. If our life is so damn perfect, why can’t the police have your rain jacket?”

Thomas didn’t answer. Nicky shot him one last look, then turned and stalked up the stairs.