“Well, I bumped into my neighbor as she was leaving for dinner,” she said.

“The Lexus or the Jeep?”

“The Lexus.” She looked surprised. “How did you know that?”

“I pay attention. What did she say?”

“Just what I told you. That she saw someone near my gate around lunchtime. She had come home from her office to pick something up and she noticed him as she pulled in. She said she figured he was a repairman or something.”

“She say how he was dressed?”

“Jeans. She only saw him from the back, but she described him as tall with dark hair. That’s why I thought maybe it was you.”

Brandon scanned her living room. It looked even messier than the last time he’d been here. The sofa was covered with stacks of laundry, and paperwork blanketed the coffee table.

“Nothing’s missing or anything like that,” Leigh said. “When I got home, the alarm was set and everything was locked up, tight as a drum.”

“Mind if I look around?”

“No. Of course not.”

Brandon went straight to the bedroom. Her king-size bed had a fluffy white comforter and a mountain of pillows and made him think of a luxury hotel. He walked to the window that faced the patio and pulled a mini flashlight from his pocket. Shining it on the plantation shutters covering the window, he noted the thin layer of dust on the sill. The lock was intact, no sign of damage.

“I always keep the shutters closed,” she said. “Everything looks normal.”

“You check your jewelry?”

“I don’t have a lot, but yeah. It’s in my dresser.”

“What about underwear?”

She arched her eyebrows.

“Check it,” he said.

She stepped over to the dresser, and he went into the adjacent bathroom. He was hit with the unmistakable scent of Leigh—something light and floral, probably her shampoo. Cosmetics were spread out across a white marble vanity. He pulled back the shower curtain and checked out the rectangular window about six feet off the ground.

“I already checked all the window locks,” she said. “Everything seems fine. And no underwear missing, as far as I can tell.”

Brandon systematically made his way through the rest of the house, checking windows and door locks and ending up on the patio.

“I keep the gate locked,” she said. “And that’s the weird part.”

Brandon stepped over to the gate and saw what she meant by weird. The gate was closed but not locked. It had a sturdy metal slide bolt that operated from the inside, and the locking pin had been removed.

“The thing is, it’s a seven-foot fence,” she said, and he caught the anxiousness in her voice. “It’s not like someone could reach over and open it.”