Uh…" I've gotta stop that. "Not at all. Would you like to come up?"

"Thank you." She started up, hesitated for a moment, then continued.

I let her go ahead of me, mainly because I didn't want her to see the gun in my belt.

As we made our way up the stairs I said, "You don't look anything like your sister."

"Half-sister, actually," she replied, looking back at me. Her eyes had clouded over slightly, almost a little fearful. "Same mother, different father."

We walked into my apartment and I motioned her to the couch. I retreated to the kitchen, asking her if she'd like a bottle of water.

"Yes, please."

I opened the refrigerator, took out two bottles of water and put my gun in the cheese drawer. I carried the water into the living room and sat down on my recliner opposite her.

"Nice apartment," she said.

Actually, it was. The building was old, but the apartments had been re-done. Mine had two bedrooms, a living room, kitchen, and bathroom, all fairly new. I had a lot of "stuff," but I tried to keep it clean. It was a bright apartment, mostly due to an extra-large kitchen window.

"Thank you. I'm so sorry about your sister. I have to admit that I didn't really know her, though."

"That's okay, she knew enough about you."

"Yeah, I kind of got that feeling."

"Izzy and I weren't close … at all. We really hadn't seen each other in a lot of years."

"That's what she told me," I said.

"Well, at least she was truthful there. A rare occurrence for her."

"I sort of picked up on that too."

"But we had been in touch lately. We talked on the phone a few times over the last couple of months. She was excited about something. It had to do with you, with my grandfather, and an old art heist. I really wasn't very interested, and in fact, wasn't quite sure why she had contacted me. Then I realized that she was pumping me for information about our grandfather—information I didn't really have. She stopped calling when she realized I couldn't help her. I would have let it go, but when I got the call about her death, I started to wonder. Since I'm her only relative, I had to come up to claim her body."

"Did the police give you my address?"

"No, Izzy mentioned your name. It was an … uh … unusual name, so I remembered it. I thought I'd come and meet you to see what this was all about, so I looked you up online."

Was she being honest with me? Was she actually in league with her late sister? My gut feeling was no. But that could have been an area a bit lower than my gut talking. I took a chance.

"I've got to be honest with you, and please don't take offense, but how do I know that you two weren't working together on this? You have to understand that in the past two days, someone I met was murdered and my father's house, my car, and this apartment have all been broken into. When I came down to meet you, I had a gun behind my back. That's how much this has shaken me."