The elevator door opened, and they stepped into a vestibule; only two apartments opened onto it, 10-J and 10-K. Harkness opened the door to 10-J and led the way in. There was an entrance hall, then a large living room. Furniture had been dumped here and there, as if the moving men had no instructions, and the boxes Stone had seen at Sasha’s old apartment were piled in the middle of the floor. Every one of them had been opened, and the woman’s belongings were strewn across the floor.

“Now that’s interesting,” Dino said.

Stone picked up a yellow movers’ receipt from the floor and handed it to Dino. “See if there’s a working phone; if not, go down and use the doorman’s. Get hold of the movers’ supervisor and ask him what the hell went on here.”

Dino took the receipt and went in search of a phone. “The one in the kitchen is working,” he called out.

“Do you have any idea who might have opened these boxes?” Stone asked Harkness.

“Not a clue,” Harkness replied. “As I said earlier, she didn’t even own the apartment yet. It would have been like Sasha, though, to have her stuff moved at the moment she would have been closing the sale. She wasn’t a woman who liked to be kept waiting.”

“I want to go through her belongings,” Stone said, “and I may want to remove some things for evidence. Have I your permission to do that?”

Harkness hesitated. “I think maybe I should talk to a lawyer, first. I want to do the right thing, here.”

“Look, Barron,” Stone said, “Sasha trusted you enough to put you in charge of her estate. There may be something here that will help us find out what happened to her, and we’re going to need your cooperation.”

Dino returned from the kitchen. “The supervisor at the movers’ says his guys didn’t open any boxes. I called the doorman on the house phone, and he confirms that they were sealed when he signed the receipt and let the movers out.”

“So,” said Stone, turning to Harkness, “somebody has been in here since the movers left.”

“Don’t look at me,” Harkness said.

“You’ve got a passkey, right?”

“I’m chairman of the cooperative board. Look, I thought the apartment was empty. Why would I want to come in here?”

“Who else besides the doorman has a key to this apartment?”

“The owners would, the people who were selling to Sasha. They live in Connecticut; I’ll get the phone number for you.”

“Who lives in the other apartment across the vestibule, number 10-K?”

“My assistant, Cary Hilliard. You met her the other night.”

Stone nodded. “And would she have a key?”

“No.”

“Did she know that Sasha was moving in here?”

“No. Sasha wanted her change of address kept quiet until she had moved. She liked to control what people knew about her.”