Mentally, she reviews her performance at the door. Nonchalant? Yes. Looking like she belongs? Ditto. Digging for a key … She hasn’t got a key. Rose clenches her jaw. Mel forgot to give her a key to 87 Applegarth, and Rose forgot to ask. What an idiot! Me, not Mel, Rose thinks loyally. A problem for later, she tells herself. Evil sufficient unto the day and all that.

Five minutes, maybe ten, tick by on clocks all over the world while hours plod by in Rose’s mind. The heat of a southern morning, against a sun-drenched wall, sucks moisture from her body. Rivulets of sweat tickle like insects on her back. Or maybe there are insects on her back.

Finally, a car door slams. A police car passes her hideout. A second car door whumps shut, no engine sound, no car passing. Like a snake made of concrete segments, Rose uncoils and squirms from under the bushes. Lifting just her head and shoulders, she peers over the flat expanse of steps. Nancy is in her white Toyota. Through the open car window, the manager of Longwood’s Memory Care Unit is speaking to her earnestly. About what, Rose can’t hear. Her, she guesses.

Nancy drives away, turning left where the cop car turned right. Wanda gets into a silver Corvette convertible and sedately follows the white sedan. Probably an automatic, Rose thinks with disdain.

No people are out mowing, or walking dogs or baby carriages. No curtains flutter. Hoping the street is as deserted as it looks, and no good citizen will dial 911 to report a disreputable individual, speckled with twigs and dirt, hanging around the fancy houses, Rose finds her feet and slinks up the drive of 87 Applegarth.

Within minutes she is behind the white-painted brick house, safe from prying eyes. The backyard is overgrown, a path worn through the grass to a single-car garage of the same brick as the house. Lacking the picturesque appeal of the front, the rear of the residence is flat with two glass sliding doors opening onto a bare wooden platform, a “patio” in Realtor-speak. Behind the glass is a great room. To the left are the dining area, a granite lunch counter, and a large kitchen. To the right is the living area, complete with a standard-issue fireplace with fake logs and a knob to turn on the gas. A couch and a big-screen TV are the only things unpacked.

Crates and boxes fill the dining area and encroach into the kitchen. No pictures grace the walls; no plants soften the line of the mantel. Rose and Harley haven’t lived here long enough to settle in. They haven’t lived here long enough to attend to such niceties as a hidden key for when one locks oneself out.

The upside is, they have not lived here long enough to get an alarm system installed.