No one came out of hiding. The staircase was empty.

Sometimes, she wished she had accepted her granddaughter’s offer to find a dog for her. Not only would a dog have been pleasant company, it would have been a welcome protector at a time such as this, would have barked and sounded an alarm to ward away intruders. But Lily was in and out of the house so often each day, involved in so many church and volunteer activities, that she’d worried a dog would get lonely staying home alone.

Wind swirled around the house, sifting through the eaves.

Tap . . . tap . . . tap . . . tap . . . tap . . .

“Hey, anybody up there?” she asked.

Only the soft raps answered.

She gathered her dress in her hand, and, keeping her grip on the revolver, headed upstairs, carefully navigating the creaky wooden steps. Once, as a much younger woman, she had fallen down those stairs while carrying a basket of laundry, and the mishap had landed her in the emergency room with a broken ankle. At her advanced age, ascending or descending such a steep staircase could result in far worse than a stay in the hospital—one more critical reason why she avoided it.

Careful, Lily . . .

She reached the second floor without incident, a light layer of perspiration coating her brow.

As she had suspected, the sound came from the bedroom opposite the head of the staircase. The door was ajar. Inside, the ceiling lamp burned, and the long window on the other side of the room was wide open, the exterior screen lifted, too. The tapping sound she’d heard came from the plastic tips of the cords that controlled the window blinds: the cool night breeze batted them against the wall.

Chuckling at herself, Lily lowered the gun. She was behaving like the jumpy old spinster she despised, spooked in her own house by innocent noises.

She realized why the window was open, too. Claudia, her housekeeper, had visited earlier that day, and she tended to throw open all of the windows while she cleaned, to air out the house. The girl had forgotten to shut this one and douse the light. She was good at her job, but a tad forgetful at times.

Lily tucked the gun away in the front pocket of her wool jacket. She stuck her head out the window. It overlooked the spacious back yard, and was a good fifteen feet above the ground. A lacebark elm tree towered back there, but the tree needed to be trimmed back a bit. Its wingspan came too close to the house, and besides causing possible damage during a storm, could have made it easy for a raccoon or some other agile creature to leap from a branch and right inside through the open window.

She lowered the screen back into place. Then, she placed both of her hands on the wooden edge of the sash, and pushed down.