Page 13 of The Expat Affair

I stare at Ingrid, half expecting her to open the plain brown door and shove me back outside. The journalists are still out there, shouting their awful questions through the wood, though there are fewer of them and a lot less venom in their voices now that I’m gone. Their last little bombshell rings in my ears, snuffing out all the street noise.

, how do you respond to police naming you the lead suspect?

“You’re the lead suspect?”

Ingrid says, her pretty face crumpled into a frown. Light filters through the frosted glass window at the top of the door, glowing like highlighter along the tops of her cheekbones.

I shrug. Shake my head. “No idea. That’s the first I’ve heard of it.”

Ingrid waves a dismissive hand, swiping a pile of mail from the stairs and flipping through it. “Don’t believe it, then. If you were the lead suspect, you would have heard it from the police, not a bunch of pesky journalists.”

I blow out a sigh of relief, though the worry isn’t gone, just . . . delayed somehow. Or maybe insignificant compared to those reporters out there. They pointed a camera at my head. They put a target on my building, my front door, my back. All those people tearing up the comment threads on Reddit and X and wherever else about me and the missing diamonds—they now know where I live.

“Thanks for saving me out there. Dutch reporters are hard-core.”

“Eh, they’re just doing their jobs. Here—this one’s for you.”

She shoves an envelope at my chest and grins. “I was thinking of staying in tonight anyway. How do we feel about sushi and Netflix?”

A wave of gratitude washes over me. After the ambush on the stoop, the last thing I’d want to do is spend the evening alone. “We love them.”

The two of us start the long, steep climb up the stairs, Ingrid chattering away about her day. She tells me about the new technique she’s learning from the antique restorer she works for, how to make a bolus of animal glue and soft clay and shape it with her fingers to recreate the ornaments on the wood. I have no idea what a bolus is or if that’s even an English word, but I feign interest whenever she pauses for my response, which is often.

I interrupt her midstream: “Ingrid, what’s a Cullinan?”

Xander’s comment—like a Cullinan, all sparkle and fire—was the first time I heard the term, and now from those reporters down on the street.

“Xander didn’t tell you?”

She pauses just long enough for me to shake my head—at least I don’t think he told me. Or maybe I was already too far gone. “Ten of the most spectacular natural diamonds that have ever been found. Flawless, colorless, irreplaceable. They’re also gone. Disappeared from the House of Prins vault early last year.”

“The reporters out there asked me if I knew where they were. Why would they think that?”

“Because they know you were in bed with Xander, literally. He worked for the House when the Cullinans disappeared, and the police can’t figure out how the thief got in the vault or how they got the diamonds out, so it’s not all that much of a leap to think it might have been an inside job. And since Xander was Xander and he worked there at the time . . .”

She doesn’t finish, but she also doesn’t have to. A giant, invisible ellipsis that I can fill in myself. Since he worked there, since he was known in the diamond world as a villain, since he seemed to be coveted by plenty of people but not all that well liked. All those things make him an easy and logical scapegoat, especially now that he’s not here to defend himself.

“Do you really think—”

I stop short at the top of the last staircase, the envelope crinkling in my fist. My skin prickles in alarm.

“Do I think what?”

Ingrid keeps clunking up the stairs.

I shush her, and she stops, too.

“What? Why are we stopping?”

I fist a railing spoke with one hand, pointing with my other at the door. Our door. Light filters through the bottom, lighting up dust bunnies on the hallway floor, a thin slice of scuffed buttercream wall.

The door is cracked open by a good two inches.

Ingrid lurches forward, taking the last steps in one giant leap for the door.

“Wait. What if he’s still in there?”

It’s too late. Ingrid has already disappeared inside the apartment.

I step onto the top landing, unsure of my next move. If the intruder is still inside, if we’ve surprised him, then he would have heard us by now. We weren’t the least bit subtle as we clomped up the stairs, and Ingrid is even louder now, by the sounds of things, tossing her room. I picture someone else in there, lurking behind a door or under a bed as Ingrid lets out a shriek loud enough to shake the walls.

I exchange the envelope for my phone, tucked in the inside pocket of my bag, and tap the number for the detective’s cell.

“Arie Boomsma.”

“Detective Boomsma, it’s Dumont.”

“I know,”

he says dryly. “Your name came up on my screen.”

“There’s been a break-in at my apartment. My roommate and I just got home to an open door.”

Had I locked it when I left? This building is literally ancient, and it hasn’t been renovated since sometime in the last century. The doorknobs are old-school, the kind you have to secure with a key from the outside. It’s a system that makes it impossible to lock yourself in the house, and why I never forget my keys. But did I actually lock the door, or did I just pull it closed?

“Is anything missing?”

There’s a loud thump from inside the apartment, followed by a stream of the most colorful Dutch cuss words. “Kut. Godverdomme. Fuck.”

The last one is apparently universal.

I nod into the phone. “Sounds like it, yeah.”

“I’m nearby. Wait outside.”

The line goes dead before I can tell him it’s too late. Ingrid is already inside.

I pocket my phone and peek into the apartment. The hallway is empty and still, and so is what I can see of the living room, a flat-screen hanging above a console shoved against the wall, a fiddle leaf fig in a pot in the corner, its leaves brown edged and dusty.

“Everything okay in here?”

Ingrid’s voice comes from the opposite direction, her bedroom down a tiny hallway. “No. It’s gone. It’s all gone!”

“What’s gone?”

“Kuuuuuuuuut.”

I creep into the hallway and hang my head around her open door, taking in the mess. Her mattress, hanging off the bed. The chest of drawers, open and emptied out. The clothes and the bedding and her teddy bear coat, now lying inside-out where she dumped it on the floor. She steps to the wardrobe and heaves the double doors wide, shoving the hangers and clothing aside.

“Did you make this mess, or did he?”

“I did.”

She reaches an arm into the back right corner of the wardrobe, behind a jumble of fabric and a messy pile of shoes, grubby sneakers, and floppy boots, what looks like the entire collection of Havaiana sandals, well-worn and in need of a bath. When she doesn’t find what she’s looking for, she falls backward onto the floor, tilting her head back to shout at the ceiling, “Neeeeeeeee.”

A long, defeated no.

“What did they take?”

She drops her head in her hands, her hair falling across her face. “Cash.”

I wince. “How much?”

“Lots.”

She looks up from between her fingers, and her eyes are wet. She’s trying very hard not to cry. “So much.”

“How much?”

I ask again, guilt pushing up in a sour surge. I think of the door I may or may not have locked, the tracker I shoved under the seat on the tram, the detective’s warning that whoever might be looking for the diamonds would be coming to me first. Is that what this is? Did I leave the door open for a thief and a killer? Is this my fault?

She shoves her fingers into her hair and makes two tight fists, yanking big chunks at the temples. “All of it. Verdomme.”

Dammit. She says more, a stream of fiery, feverish Dutch.

“Shit, Ingrid. I’m . . . I’m so, so sorry. Is it . . . Are you insured?”

Her head whips up, her eyes squinting. “It’s cash. Of course I’m not insured.”

She makes a sound deep in her throat and pushes herself off the floor.

I watch her shove everything back in the wardrobe, telling myself this is just her anger talking. And I don’t blame her for being pissed. Someone was here, in her things, taking her cash, all of it. I’d be furious and heartbroken, too.

I think of the twenty-euro bill I left on my nightstand, the jar of coins on my dresser. Neither of them are worth crying over, but my laptop is. My passport, too. A fully loaded Kindle my sister shoved in my carry-on as I was leaving for the airport. I’m not insured for any of those things, either.

I look over my shoulder, peering down the hallway toward my bedroom, wondering if there’s someone in there with a knife or a zip tie, just waiting for me to get close enough to ambush me. Late afternoon sunlight filters through the window high on the slanted wall, casting a yellow glow on the hallway floor. Did I leave that door open, too? Honestly, I can’t remember.

“What if they’re still here?”

I whisper, turning back to Ingrid. “Detective Boomsma said to wait outside.”

“You have a detective on speed dial?”

She uses her normal voice, at normal volume, and I cringe, casting another panicked glance down the hallway—still empty. “Jesus, . I can’t believe this.”

“He said he was nearby.”

I say it loudly, too, just in case someone’s down there, listening.

A buzzer rips the air just then, startling me hard enough that I catch air. I step to the intercom system, hitting the button to speak to whoever’s downstairs. “Hello?”

“I thought I told you to wait outside.”

The detective, thank God. If the intruder is still here, he’s about to wish he wasn’t.

I press the button to let him in. A minute later, the place is crawling with cops.

Two of them go room to room, hands draped loosely over their guns but trigger fingers poised and ready, while the others wait outside on the landing, nodding at whatever Detective Boomsma is saying—orders, by the sound of things. He points to the front door, to the stairwell behind them, to the hallway and beyond, to Ingrid and me watching from her bedroom doorway.

“I thought I told you to wait outside,”

he repeats, not willing to let it go.

“We were already here,”

I say, hooking a thumb at Ingrid. “She was already in her room. They took her cash.”

“How much?”

“I’m not sure,”

she says, and either she’s in shock or intimidated by an apartment full of uniformed cops. She eyes them as they clomp inside, dropping their big bags of supplies. Her voice is a lot less adamant than it was just a minute ago, with me. She says something to him in Dutch, and he nods.

The detective turns back to me. “What else did they take?”

“I don’t know. I haven’t checked the other rooms yet.”

By now, the cops have declared the apartment empty of anyone but us, and I make a beeline to my room, my eyes darting left and right as if half expecting someone to leap out of an open doorway.

At my bedroom, I pause just inside the door, cringing at the unmade bed, the strip of black lace peeking out from a pile of dirty laundry in the corner, the bra hanging from a doorknob on the chest of drawers. My bedroom feels too hot, too beige, far too small for two people, especially someone as large as Detective Boomsma. He steps inside and gives me an expectant look.

I open the top drawer on the dresser and slide the bra in, feeling under a stack of folded T-shirts. “My passport is still here, and so is my Kindle.”

I point to it, charging on the nightstand, then fish my laptop from where it’s tangled in the duvet. “Everything is here, except . . .”

I drop the laptop to the bed like it’s sizzling.

From the other side of the apartment, Ingrid says something in emphatic Dutch.

“My laptop was open when I left. I was on FaceTime with my sister. I put on my coat and shoes while we talked. I remember waving to her from the doorway, and then she’s the one who hung up, not me. I didn’t close the laptop when we were done. I just . . . left.”

“So you’re saying whoever was here shut your laptop and moved it to under the duvet.”

I nod. “That’s exactly what I’m saying.”

The detective leans his head into the hallway, calling out something in Dutch. “Don’t touch anything, not until we dust the room for prints. What else?”

I point to the drawer containing my passport, still sitting open. “See that stack of T-shirts? It’s messier than it was when I left, and my Kindle was wedged in the drawer on my nightstand, not on top with that pile of books. Someone was definitely here. They went through my stuff.”

“They went through it, but they didn’t take anything.”

I look around the room, doing a quick inventory of my meager belongings, but it doesn’t take me long. There’s not much here to steal, and the MacBook is by far the most valuable thing that I own, a holdover from when I was married. For some reason they left it, along with the TV on the living room wall. Along with the crumpled twenty on the nightstand.

“Why would they steal Ingrid’s cash but not mine?”

The detective shakes his head, and he’s nice enough not to mention that a twenty is hardly worth taking. “What about any other valuables? Medicine, electronics, jewelry?”

“I already told you. The last time I saw the necklace was when Xander tossed it in the drawer.”

“I meant other jewelry.”

A fresh surge of something unpleasant rises in my chest, though a wiser part of me knows the detective can’t possibly realize the landmine he’s stepped on. That all those pieces I used to place so much importance on—the six-carat engagement ring, the tennis bracelet, and the Cartier Love bangles, the gold chains and diamond-encrusted pendants—are decorating somebody else’s body now. That even thinking that enrages me—not because I want them back, but because of who I lost them to.

“No, there’s nothing else. Everything I own is here.”

Downstairs on the street, a horn honks, and I think of the reporters. “Did you ask the reporters? They must have seen something.”

“They didn’t. Not anyone out of the ordinary, at least. We’ll talk to the neighbors, though. Maybe they let somebody in, a delivery person or a cleaner.”

“That’s it. You’ll talk to the reporters and neighbors. What about protection? What about someone guarding my door?”

“We don’t have the funds or the manpower, unfortunately, but the reporters are doing a decent job of watching your door. All those stores out there—they have security guards and multiple cameras. I’ll talk to them, too, and arrange some extra patrols of your street. Speaking of cameras, I don’t suppose you have any of your own?”

I give him a look. “For what, my thrift-store clothing and IKEA furniture? Other than Ingrid’s cash, there’s nothing else. He couldn’t even be bothered with my laptop. There’s nothing here worth stealing.”

“Maybe because the thief was looking for something else.”

I don’t have to think about it, not even for a split second. “Like diamonds.”

The detective puffs a breath through his nose, sharp and loud. “Like diamonds.”