She took the camera down and checked the pictures, unflattering shots of herself looking as if she’d lost her best friend. “There,” she said, putting the camera carefully in the box and setting the box back on the shelf. “At least now we’ll know if someone’s coming and going when we’re not here.”

36

BECCA DROVE OFF, leaving Emily to close and lock the unit. Emily lingered, looking at the pictures of Mr. Murphy’s boxes that she’d taken when she was first there. More than a single box of padlocks had gone missing. She reactivated her friend-finder app long enough to see Frank’s location come up UNAVAILABLE. She hoped that meant he was in court or in a meeting. She didn’t want him to come home and find her again in his basement, which was where she was headed now.

Friday afternoon, it took a few traffic-light cycles to make her way through the Square. Finally she turned onto her street. Both her mother’s and Frank’s cars were gone, but a black sedan was parked in front of her house. As Emily drove past, she tried to casually inspect it. Any doubt that it was an unmarked police car was banished by the light bars, barely visible through the rear window, and a searchlight mounted beside the driver’s side-view mirror.

She continued down the block. As she was about to turn the corner, she looked back and saw a pair of police officers emerge from behind her house and head in the direction of the black sedan. She drove a few blocks away, pulled over, and waited.

Five minutes. Ten. When she circled back, the sedan was gone. She parked in front of the house and grabbed her gear bag. She hurried inside, heading straight for the door to the basement. She dropped her bag, turned on the light, and picked her way down the stairs.

In the musty space, she gave the piano frame, which was now on its side and leaning against one of the Lally columns, a wide berth as she looked around for more stray boxes labeled with Mr. Murphy’s characteristic labeling tape. She zigzagged her way between piles, checked above and below the Ping-Pong table, and made her way to the metal shelves that lined one wall and which were stuffed with old games and puzzles and boxes of magazines.

She was about to give up when she found them—two cardboard boxes with green plastic labels. They were hidden under a dusty crocheted afghan in the lap of the seated plastic skeleton. She picked up one box. It was heavy and its label read DRAWER PULLS. The other box was lighter. It was labeled SWITCH PLATES.