“Maybe so.”

She shook her head. “Murdered…I can’t even imagine…he was just so nice.”

“Yes, he was,” Cyrus said.

“You find out who did it to him, you hear,” the woman said.

“I plan on it, ma’am.”

She nodded, managed a smile. “I need to get lunch started. Is there anything else?”

Cyrus took her name and number in case he had follow-up questions, and thanked the woman profusely for her time. He turned to leave but then thought of a question. He knocked and she answered the door with a real smile this time.

“Forget something?” she asked.

“Just real quick,” Cyrus said, “what did you tell him when he asked what there was around here for kids to do?”

“Oh, the usual.” She lifted her hands. “Swim at the beach. We got a park, too. And the butterfly dome.”

“Butterfly dome?”

“Just a nature park, all butterflies. Schools visit it all the time.”

“Got it. Thank you. Have a nice day, ma’am.”

Cyrus tried a few more houses on the street. If anyone was home, they weren’t answering. He did catch a couple people walking back from the beach, but they were tourists and had nothing to add.

Nothing more he could do on that street. Cyrus got in his car and punched in the address for the house Ike had secretly rented for a two-month stay from Home Away From Home.

Grand Isle might have been grand, but it wasn’t very big. Cyrus arrived at the new address in only ten minutes. The neighborhood was almost identical to the one he’d left. Brightly painted houses on stilts, all in a row. These looked a little nicer, a little newer. And they were closer to the water and would have a good view of the sunset. Romantic as it got.

Cyrus had trouble finding the house Ike had rented. He walked up and down the block twice looking for the number. His phone’s GPS was no use. New development. A lot of places still weren’t precisely mapped, and there was nothing to do but gumshoe it until he found the place.

The street was called Atlantic Way and the house number was 15. He found 10, 12, 14, and 16, but no 15. Odd numbers had to be somewhere.

Cyrus reached the end of the block and kept going. Turned out the street curved like a U. The odd numbers were on a ridge a little higher up.

He found the house he was looking for at the very end of the street.

Number fifteen was just as quaint as the Home Away from Home pictures had painted it, but the photographs hadn’t done justice to how secluded it was. There were three undeveloped lots between it and the next house—three empty lots full of trees, trees that had survived a hundred years of hurricanes. The property was fenced in. A passcode was required to access the staircase leading to the house.

No need to jump the fence or anything. Not yet, at least. Cyrus walked the perimeter of the lot to get a feel for the place.