Luck was on my side. The back door had an old lock, remarkably similar to the ones I’d learned on during that long-ago summer when Dad’s fascination for Lawrence Block’s Bernie Rhodenbarr series led him to try learning a few burglar skills. And while Dad had been a hopelessly inept lock-picker, I’d actually gotten fairly good at it. The lock yielded to my fiddling after only a few minutes.

I opened the door and took a deep breath before stepping in.

The deep breath was a big mistake. I gagged, and stepped back several feet, breathing shallowly and trying to calm my stomach.

When I was sure I wasn’t going to lose breakfast, I inched closer to the door, still breathing shallowly, and then stepped inside.

The air was frigid—no wonder the poor air conditioner was laboring so hard. And even shallow breaths couldn’t keep out the stench of decay. I pulled the bottom of my t-shirt up so I could breathe through that.

Maybe it wasn’t anything sinister. Maybe Jasper had run off leaving the remains of dinner on the table. Yeah, right.

I tiptoed through the kitchen and peered into the hall.

A body lay face down on the hall floor. It was male, and tall, with a long, unkempt brown ponytail. I’d remembered Jasper as skinnier, but then maybe the dead guy wasn’t plump. It was August, and I suspected he’d been lying there a day or so. Maybe a few days. I heard flies buzzing somewhere, and I realized that there was dried blood pooled beneath one side of the head.

Was that the only body? What if Karen—?

Don’t go there, I told myself. If there were other bodies in the house, let the police find them.

I started backing out of the kitchen, reaching for my cell phone as I went.

I noticed, out of the corner of my eye, that about half of the floor looked a lot cleaner than the rest, as if someone had washed it. But they hadn’t washed it all that well. I saw a few faint swirling red stains, as if someone had mopped up a lot of blood and hadn’t done a perfect job.

But a good enough job to keep anyone who came peering through the windows from noticing the blood. At least I hadn’t noticed it when I’d peered in before picking the lock. So maybe Jasper had been killed in the kitchen and dragged into the hall, where he couldn’t be seen from the outside. It wouldn’t keep him from being found eventually, but it would slow down discovery. Maybe enough to confuse the time of death.

Or enough for someone to unload her toddler on a friend and skip town?

Behind me, I heard a whining noise.

I stepped out into the yard, and suddenly the heavy August heat felt good. Scout, the hound dog, was whimpering slightly, and creeping toward the door.

“No, boy,” I said. I grabbed his collar before he could bolt inside, and pulled the door closed.