When she looked up, Teresa was watching her with a smug smile, her arms crossed over her chest. “I told you.” She seemed like the kind of woman who found pleasure in that phrase.

“Can I look around?” Izzy asked. This was a gray area ethically, legally, but she kept her face neutral.

“Don’t see why not,” Teresa said. “Not going to find anything. Rest of the house is like the downstairs.”

“Okay,” Izzy said easily and then paused on her way out of the room. “You said no family visits?”

“No. Poor man,” Teresa said.

“Who pays his bills?”

Teresa’s eyes narrowed on Izzy’s face, but her cautiousness seemed reserved just for her own privacy, not Charles’s. “It’s a trust. His lawyer oversees it.”

The mention of the attorney sent Izzy out into the hallway without any more questions.

She wandered through the rest of the rooms, her fingers dragging along the molding on the walls. Teresa had been right. The upstairs was almost bare. An eeriness had settled into the nooks and empty spaces, like there’d been a death in the house.

There had been.

She soon realized that while the house was Spartan, it wasn’t completely devoid of personal items. Izzy scoured each of the three bedrooms, digging through trouser- and sweatshirt-filled drawers, pausing over a small jewelry box tucked away in one. It played a haunting lullaby she somehow distantly recognized, but in a way that felt like from another lifetime. Under the beds were cartons of books, thick Russian volumes and tattered romance novels with dog-eared pages; comics, too, carefully preserved in plastic wrap, their bright colors garish. In the closets were dresses, silk and velvet, an era old but in pristine condition like they were just awaiting the return of their owner. Those were the creepiest finds. Izzy grimaced as she went to close the door of one in the last rooms.

A chill had settled in along her spine, and despite an urgency to find something, she also just wanted to get the hell out of there. But then her eyes caught on something. In the corner on the shelf was a dark box, pushed mostly out of sight.

Thankful that she kept a spare pair of latex gloves stashed in her jacket pocket at all times, Izzy shoved her fingers into them, then bent to pick up the box before dropping it lightly on the bed.

Carefully, so that she didn’t accidentally damage anything, she opened the lid.

Inside was a thick maroon journal, simple but clearly of good quality, and next to it lay a gold ring with an inset pearl. Izzy didn’t know jewelry that well, but it didn’t look cheap.

She grabbed the journal and opened it to the inscription page.

Brenna Connolly. Bix Bell’s maiden name.