Later that night, as she drove home from work, Harper was still elated about her conversation with Blazer.
Maybe things really could get back to normal now. Or something like it.
On autopilot, she made her way through the dark city streets, her thoughts a tangle of Naomi Scott, Larry Blazer, and Luke. She parked in her usual spot under the long, shading branches of an oak tree, locked the car, and walked up the steps.
When she opened her front door, she did it thoughtlessly—punching the code in for the alarm system without thinking. Flipping on the lights.
Her mind was so focused on the story and her own decisions, it took her a moment to notice something was wrong.
She froze in the entrance hall, trying to place it.
There was a faint smell of cigarette smoke in the air—that shouldn’t be there. And why was the hall light off?
Turning on that light and setting the alarm were as much a part of her daily routine as getting dressed. She was as likely to walk out the front door naked as she was to forget to do one of those things.
So, who turned it off?
The hairs on the back of her neck rose.
Slowly, she stepped backward, and rechecked the alarm. It was on standby, just as it should be. If someone had broken in, it would have triggered. Right?
Still, she reached back and felt for the baseball bat she kept next to the front door. Her fingers knocked against the cool, smooth wood of the handle, and she hefted it, feeling the reassuring weight in her hands.
Moving soundlessly, she walked into the dark living room.
Never letting go of the bat, she flipped on the lights with her elbow and jumped into the room, crouching low, ready to swing.
It was empty. Everything was where she’d left it: Two sofas, facing each other across an empty coffee table. Books on the shelves. Her mother’s paintings reassuringly bright on the walls.
No sign of a break-in. No threats scrawled in dripping paint.
And yet, something wasn’t right.
If her life depended on it she couldn’t have explained what it was. But she could feel it.
Still clutching the bat, Harper half ran to the kitchen. In the bright, overhead light, it was clean and empty. The sturdy back door was closed and triple-locked. Her coffee cup from this morning sat upside down in the dish drainer where she’d left it.
Some of the tension left her body. Nonetheless, she carefully searched the rest of the apartment before finally propping the bat in a corner and leaning against the kitchen counter, her eyes searching the room for an explanation.
There was no sign of Zuzu. That wasn’t unusual—there was a cat door in the kitchen, and she often went prowling at night.
But Harper would have felt better if she were here.
She went through the motions of getting the cat’s food out of the cupboard, filling her dish, and leaving it on the floor in the usual place, her mind going through everything she’d done before leaving that morning. Trying to reason it through.
Perhaps she really had forgotten to leave the light on. There was a first time for everything. Maybe the smoke had come through from next door.
She’d been paranoid ever since the break-in. Jumping at shadows. This wasn’t the first time she’d had the odd sense that someone had been in her apartment when logic dictated that no one could have been.
Telling herself the apartment was fine—that she was safe—she switched on her scanner, and poured herself a drink. Settling on the sofa with the baseball bat at her elbow, she sat in the glow of the lamplight, listening to the crackle and hum of the city’s bad news.
Thefts, robberies, traffic stops …
The reassuring litany of routine police work swirled through her apartment until finally she drifted off to sleep.
An hour later, she woke as a heavy weight settled on her hip.
Groggy, she reached out and touched soft, warm fur.
“There you are,” Harper whispered, sinking back into the sofa cushions.
Zuzu’s purr drowned out the scanner.
Harper allowed herself to rest.
Everything was fine.
She was awoken early the next morning by a car honking outside her house. In her half-conscious state she thought it was her phone, and scrambled to grab it, knocking into the baseball bat, which fell over and hit the coffee table with a thud.
After that, she couldn’t get back to sleep. She kept thinking about her suspicion the night before. And wondering if she was losing her mind.
It was Friday. Two days had passed since Naomi Scott was murdered, and she’d been working nonstop. Maybe she was just worn out.
Still. She wanted to be certain.
She was pouring her first cup of coffee when she heard her upstairs neighbor’s heels clicking on the side stairs.
Harper ran to her front door, flinging it open as the woman was passing.
About thirty years old, Mia Flores was small, with shoulder-length, dark hair and tawny skin. She glanced up in surprise as Harper hurled herself out onto the small front porch, shoeless, a coffee mug with FBI on the side clutched forgotten in one hand.
“Hello?” Looking her up and down, Mia let the word hang there, as a question and a comment.
How could a common, two-syllable word be turned into cutting criticism?
Lawyers.
“Look, I’m sorry to bother you,” Harper said. “A weird thing happened last night and I wonder if you’ve seen anyone suspicious hanging around my place in the last day or so?”
“Suspicious?” Mia’s brow creased.
Her makeup was perfect—her dark eyes outlined with the right eye pencil. Her navy-blue jacket and short skirt suited her curvy figure.
Harper tugged at the hem of the faded Savannah Music Festival T-shirt she’d thrown on when she got out of the shower.
“Yes,” she said. “It could be someone hanging around outside the house, or walking by too often. Anything at all.”
Mia looked concerned.
“Did someone try to break into your place again?” she asked. “Because you should call the police.”
“I don’t think so,” Harper said. “Not yet, anyway. I’m just trying to keep an eye on things.”
Mia’s expression made it clear that this hadn’t made her feel any better.
“I haven’t seen anyone,” she said, after a brief pause. “But I’ve been busy at work lately. I’m not sure I would have noticed.” She glanced at her watch. “Look, I’ve got to go. But I’ve got your number. If I see anyone hanging around—you want me to call you?”
“Yes,” Harper said, gratefully. “I’d really appreciate it.”
Mia began walking toward the sidewalk again. But, at the last second, she turned back, almost reluctantly.
“Look … Is everything really all right?” she asked.
“It’s fine.” By then, though, Harper had thought of something else. “One more thing—do you smoke?”
Mia looked bewildered. “No. I have asthma. Cigarettes are not my friends. Why?”
“I thought I smelled smoke last night. Must have been my imagination.” Fully aware that she must seem odd right now, if not actually unhinged, Harper forced a smile and said lightly, “Anyway, you need to get to work. And I need to get some actual clothes on.”
“Sure…” With one last baffled glance, Mia headed down the sidewalk to her blue Mazda.
It occurred to Harper that normally she and Mia had a good system. Mia was gone all day, while Harper was home. Harper was out most of the night, while Mia was home.
Only lately, while working on the Naomi Scott case, she’d been out during the day more. The building was empty more of the time.
Back inside, Harper grabbed her phone up from the coffee table, dialing as she walked across the polished oak floor to the kitchen.
Her landlord’s voice, with its thick Louisiana accent, answered. “Billy Dupre, here.”
“Hi Billy. It’s Harper.”
“What are you doing up so early?” he asked, cheerfully. “You sick? Somethin’ wrong?”
“I’m not sick.” Putting the phone on speaker, Harper set it on the counter and poured more coffee into her mug. “I’m working on a story.”
“Is it that River Street woman?” He grew more serious. “Saw your piece in the paper this morning. Looks like the police are thinkin’ that boyfriend did it.”
“Well,” she said, “the jury is still out on that. But that isn’t why I called. I need to ask you a favor.”
“Sure,” Billy said. “What do you need?”
“Could you keep an eye on the apartment for me when I’m at work for the next couple of weeks? Maybe swing by now and then. Make sure it all looks all right.”
“What happened?” A new alertness entered his voice. “You had a problem?”
Billy was shorter than Harper, and bandy-legged, perpetually in faded jeans and an old LSU baseball cap. He’d grown up dirt poor, and his upbringing had left him with a deep and abiding loyalty to those he cared about. Ever since the break-in last year, he’d been concerned about her safety. Harper knew that he took that intrusion personally.
“Something strange happened yesterday,” she told him. “I have this weird feeling someone might have gotten in.”
“How’d they do that?” he asked. “Window broken?”
“No,” she said. “Nothing was damaged.”
“Anything missing?”
“Not as far as I can tell,” she admitted.
There was a pause. She could almost see him scratching his head.
“That’s a strange break-in. Nothing broken? Nothing taken? What about the alarm?”
“The alarm was on.” She searched for a way to explain it that would make sense. “Look, I know it sounds crazy. But something isn’t right, Billy. I got the feeling someone had been in here. Things had been moved. It’s probably all in my head but I want to be really careful for a while, just in case.”
“You give that code to anyone?” he asked. “Some boyfriend?”
“No,” she said. “No one has that code except me and Bonnie.”
“Then how’d they get in?” He sounded as confused as she felt. “That don’t make no sense.”
“I know it doesn’t,” she admitted. “Maybe someone guessed it.”
Harper’s code was her mother’s birthday, and the idea that anyone could have guessed that was so unlikely she didn’t believe it.
In fact, explaining it to her landlord made the whole thing seem ridiculous. Why would someone break in and not take anything? Who breaks into a house and just turns off a light?
“Actually—never mind. I’m sure it’s nothing,” she said. “But I got an uncomfortable feeling when I came home last night. I’ve been working too hard. It’s probably all in my head.”
There was a brief silence as her landlord absorbed this change of heart.
“Tell you what,” Billy said. “I’ll swing by when you’re at work—make sure nobody’s hanging around, looking for trouble. I see anybody, I’ll let you know.”
“Thanks, Billy,” she said gratefully. “I’d appreciate that.”
In the background, his lawn mower started up with a roar. He shouted above it.
“But you change that alarm code, you hear? Just in case.”