The tiny laundry room boasted a stackable washer and dryer and held nothing but a load of towels waiting to be folded. He had the crazy urge to fold them, but he ignored the urge. The overhead cabinet contained two bottles of detergent, some dryer sheets, and a gallon of Clorox, along with six one-hundred-watt lightbulbs, the old kind.

Jack looked up to see Harry standing in the doorway. “This was a bust. I didn’t find a thing. How about you?”

“Just these phones. They were on the dresser. It’s just one big room up there, like a loft. Twin beds, twin dressers. Not a lot of clothes, just enough. Same with the shoes. Some boots, and yes, I checked inside them all. Nothing. No excess of anything. One change of bedding. Six towels in the linen closet. Tissue, bathroom stuff. Nothing out of the ordinary. Nothing under the sink. No tub, just a shower. I’d say the two women are very frugal. No sign of jewelry or anything fancy. I can almost guarantee, Jack, that no one but us has been here. If there was someone before us, then it was a woman who knew how to put everything back exactly like she found it. That’s my opinion, for whatever it’s worth.”

“Same here,” Jack groused. “At least you found the phones. The car keys are here on the counter. I guess we should check the cars before we leave and take the keys with us.”

“This is a nice kitchen. Yoko would like it. She likes the color red. Do you think we should water the fern hanging in the window?”

“Why?” Jack asked. “I already watered the plant on the table.”

“So it doesn’t die. Pearl is going to be moving someone else in here in short order. Don’t disturb yourself, Jack, I’ll do it.”

“Harry! You know what we didn’t find? Their purses. Every woman has a purse or a fanny pack. I didn’t find any down here. How about upstairs?”

“No. I looked, too.”

“Makes sense, I guess. A woman never leaves the house without her purse. Take Maggie. She carries her whole life in that backpack of hers. It isn’t exactly a purse but close to it. Nikki would never leave the house without her purse.”

“You’re right,” Harry said. “Yoko wears a fanny pack because she likes to have her hands free.”

“I guess we should check out the backyard. And that little porch. They might have buried something, but I’m not about to start digging up the yard. Jeez, there must be a thousand flowers out here. Those women must have loved gardening.”

“Jack, you know what else we didn’t find in the house? Trash. There was none upstairs. How about in the kitchen?”

“No. There is a garbage disposal. No other trash anywhere. Maybe outside in the can. We’ll check it when we leave. I saw it when we got here. There’s a little fence around it. To hide it, I guess. The girls are going to be really disappointed that we came up dry,” Jack said.