EYEWITNESS

a lot of work.” She looked from one to the other. “Would you girls mind helping me carry over some more dog food from Jessica’s house?”
Johanna couldn’t believe the luck. Not only was she learning the background of the dead woman, but now they would go into Jessica’s house. Perhaps even discuss the key.
Marnie winked at her friend. “Of course, we’d be happy to help.” She stood up and said, “No time like the present.”
They walked back to the home next door, and Lilly opened the door with a key.
“Did they drop off a key for you? That was pretty nice,” Marnie said.
“I’ve had this for a while. Jessica rarely left town, but she had gone somewhere a couple of months ago. She gave me a key then to keep an eye on the place. I just watered the plants and brought in the mail.”
“And she had you keep it afterward?” Marnie asked.
“Yes, she said it was the only spare she had. Apparently, it was the key that had belonged to her husband before he passed. Jessica said I could keep it in case anything came up—and then it did.”
They went in the front door and stopped abruptly at the other end of the entryway. Another door stood there. Penny barked at the door, and Lilly used the key again to let them in.
Johanna turned and looked at the door as they went into the main hallway. Sure enough, the door had a deadbolt lock on the interior side of the door and only a flat plate on the outside. There was no way to turn the lock from outside the door, only the inside, which would mean that an occupant would be required to be inside the house to lock the door. She scrutinized the door as Lilly talked about the locks and why Jessica had felt a need for them, even though the area was not crime ridden.
“She just wanted to be safe when she was here alone after her husband died,” Lilly said, as Johanna began to pay attention again. “So she had these special locks put in. She could be secure, and she never had to worry about putting all those extra keys on her chain.”
“But what about the windows? Wouldn’t thieves get in that way?” Marnie was looking at the glass window that showed the backyard where they’d stood earlier.
Lilly shook her head again. “She had some sort of security glass put into the windows, so people couldn’t break in. I mean, it’s strong stuff. She hit a chair against it one night by accident, and nothing happened to it. At my house, all the glass in the window would have shattered.”
Johanna looked directly at the window but couldn’t see any difference. “Why this need for security? I thought Covedale was a safe neighborhood. Instead, it feels like a panic room, except it’s the whole house.”
Lilly drew a deep sigh. “You’d have to ask her. I have no idea. I guess we’ll never know now.”
Johanna doubted that. She was sure that the first step in understanding how she’d been killed in this fortress was to know why she’d felt a need for such security. Was there something precious here—papers, diamonds, jewels, that required such protection? Or was there another reason?
Marnie looked around the kitchen, but it was evident from her expression that she had no idea what required such caution.
Lilly pointed to a cabinet. “If you could get those two bags, I would appreciate it.”
Johanna opened the cabinet and saw about ten bags of dog food, all the same. Each of the two younger women grabbed a bag and hefted it over their shoulders. Penny should have been able to last for weeks on the amount of food they were carrying, but it had only been a few days that she’d been with Lilly. Had the older woman not been able to carry something that heavy?
She doubted that the older woman would have been able to reach the taller deadbolts on the doors. Like many her age, she had started to shrink with age. If Johanna measured her height correctly, Lilly would not be able to reach the lock.
Maybe if she couldn’t determine how to escape this safe room, she could decide which suspects were physically able to manipulate the locks. She also needed to look into why Jessica had felt a need for such locks. Those two questions might keep her busy for some time, Johanna admitted to herself.
Lilly locked the doors again as they left and carried the dog food back to her house. Penny danced around them as she saw bags of food heading her way.
After they’d put the food away for Lilly, they made their way to the car and home.

Chapter 6
The following day, Johanna decided to look at Jessica’s car again. One of the things that had bothered her from the start was the fact that the woman she’d seen strangled had been killed in Jessica’s car. Jessica was seemingly obsessed with security and safety. Yet she’d left her car in a parking lot unattended, and then went home in some curious way that hadn’t yet been identified.
Presumably, Jessica had locked the car before she’d left the forest. A set of keys seemed to be floating around. Perhaps Jessica had loaned the keys to another person—like she’d loaned the house keys to Lilly.
Yet Lilly seemed like an unlikely murderer, who had no reason to kill the victim and no means by which to do it.
If nothing else, Johanna thought that the forest would provide a background to reach nature and offer her relaxation and peace. She could perhaps think about the murders and develop a theory there.
So Johanna pulled into the parking lot. The first thing that she noticed was that the car was still there. She was surprised, but