She stepped into the room and studied the contents more carefully. “Nothing’s disturbed.”

“You’re sure?”

“I…yeah, I think so.” Her gaze scraped the mantel, bookcases, tables, and bed, before landing in the kitchen, which, dishes in the sink, was also exactly as she’d left it.

“But someone was in here?” he asked.

“Yes!…I think so.” She thought back. “Of course they were. I saw him in the stove light. When I got here, I heard him on the third landing of the staircase, then he descended a flight to the second floor where the porch runs across the face of the building to the stairs on the far end. I don’t know if he saw me or what, but he got scared and didn’t come down the only staircase leading from my door. Instead he took off on the second-level porch.” She walked to the sink, grabbed a cup from the counter, and drew some water from the tap. “Whoever it was had to be up here.” She took a long swallow of the tepid water.

“But not necessarily inside.”

“No, no, I’m sure I saw…” She was going to say she was certain that she’d seen someone inside her apartment, but was she? She looked through the window over the kitchen sink and stared into the night, but it was too dark to see the outline of Wagner House over the wall and through the trees. As there were no lights turned on in the upper floors of the manor house turned museum, she couldn’t decipher the building’s silhouette, let alone that third-story window where she had been standing when she’d seen someone in her unit.

Wagner House was so far away.

And it had been dark.

For the first time since spying someone in the window, she doubted what she’d seen.

“Well?”

“I…I don’t know. I think someone was in here.”

He glanced down at the tarp covering the floor and all of the items placed so carefully on the plastic surface. “What’s this?”

“A long story,” she said, not certain she wanted to share it. Nervously, she grabbed a long-handled lighter and lit a few candles in the apartment. Then, deciding candle glow might be too intimate, she turned on all the table lamps.

Jay whistled to the dog and made Bruno lie on the floor. Then he closed the door and sat, straddling one padded arm of the single chair in the room. “Well, Kris, you’re in luck. I just happen to have all night.”