“Oh, you must mean that adorable girl he had with her. Honestly, I think she’s the only reason my Stanley picked Evan as our broker. Pretty blondes are his kryptonite—as you can see,” she added with a sly smile. “But Evan didn’t say anything about her working at our house on her own.”

Lindsay fought to maintain an even tone. “She was working at Evan’s direction. They stage the houses, I guess—make it look more generic, like no one even lives there. Don’t take it the—”

“Oh, no. That’s not what I meant.” The woman set the remote control on a console table in the foyer. “I realize how horrible that must have sounded. Please, sit down. Can I get you something? Coffee or a soda?”

She gestured to the living room sofa, and Lindsay took a seat but waved away the offer of anything more.

“Evan mentioned that they’d be packing away some personal belongings during showings. I guess I just assumed he was doing it himself.”

Now that Lindsay was here, she felt even more helpless. What exactly had she expected to find? “That’s what I wanted to ask you—if anything seemed out of place. If there were any signs of, I don’t know, a struggle or something.”

“Nothing specific. Although . . . you know?” Robin tilted her head and paused. “When we came home, I just had this weird feeling, like I knew someone had been here. Then I remembered they were doing an open house, and it all seemed to make sense. But now your friend is missing.”

Lindsay could see a genuine look of worry cross the woman’s face. Maybe she had misread her. But she also saw no reason for this woman to know the real and very complicated reason Hope lived her daily life with a completely manufactured identity, so she used the same biography that Hope had borrowed from her former stepmother, Miriam. “Hope’s background is . . . complicated. She can’t use her real name in case her ex-husband were ever to look for her.”

“I see,” Robin said, a furrow working its way into her brow. “And you think he may have found her? Here, in our house?”

“I don’t know,” Lindsay said. “But this was one of the last places she definitely was. It’s my only lead, so here I am.”

“Well, have you told the police?” Robin asked.

Lindsay had driven to the East Hampton police station after talking to Evan, but then realized how the story would sound: a woman came to town a month before, using a fake name and a fabricated sad story, to fleece a man out of two grand before hitting the road again. Lindsay had come to the house instead.