Mimsy Moffat didn’t have much to keep tidy. The bed, a narrow single, was made, and there were clothes in the laundry hamper. Annie had been expecting the usual teenage posters on the walls—One Direction, Justin Bieber—but the only one was a poster advertising Swan Lake showing a beautiful ballerina appearing to float in midair above the water. The small chest of drawers was filled with underwear, makeup, socks, tights and a few pieces of cheap jewelry—earrings, a heart pendant with no photos inside, a charm bracelet with only a tiny pair of shoes on it. There were also a few T-shirts, clean and neatly folded. In her bedside drawer were a hairbrush, a box of Kleenex, a packet of acetaminophen and a box of tampons. Nothing out of the ordinary.

A small desk stood under the window, which looked out on the backyard and the other backyards across the alley. On it lay a flat oblong tin of Lakeland coloring pencils and an 8 x 11 WHSmith sketchbook. Lenny Thornton had said that Mimsy liked to draw. Annie riffled through the pages, stopping here and there to admire a composition. Some were sketches of the uninspiring view from the window, others clearly more subjects from the imagination: magical creatures, half-deer, half-woman, flitting through forests at night, a stormy sea with tall-masted wooden ships tossing in the waves, a far-off mountain peak beyond a barren, red and orange landscape under a gray and purple sky, very Lord of the Rings, with a halo of fire at the summit. There were also some copies of the John Tenniel illustrations to the Alice books. The one thing they all had in common was that they were very good. Perhaps a bit primitive in technique, but lacking nothing that couldn’t be learned by someone with the basic talent in a few months. If Mimsy Moffat were the artist, she had been talented indeed. Annie put down the sketchbook and wandered over to the small bookcase.