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kind of guest quarters. The garage was connected to her house by a covered breezeway, beyond which a wooden play-set, so large I thought it might be a commercial model, was nestled in the shade of four sprawling oaks near a lacrosse goal. Further back, an empty dog kennel reminded me of her love of animals.
    The hide-a-key was where she’d described and I rehearsed the alarm code in my mind twice before pushing open the back door and keying in the numbers. I stepped into her kitchen, past a heap of muddy sneakers that clearly belonged to boys, and was momentarily awestruck. My entire apartment would have fit in her kitchen and dining hall. I shut the door and got to work.
    At yesterday’s meeting, Claire had said she’d left her anonymous note on a counter. But, she’d also mentioned a cleaning lady and I knew the police had been through there too. If there ever was a note, it was gone now. The only item that caught my eye was a stainless steel plaque left discreetly in a corner nook that said, “Pets leave paw prints on our hearts.” Draped over its corner was a worn leather collar with a tag that said, “I rescued a human.”
    I crossed to her two-sided stainless refrigerator and studied the photographs and notes stuck there. A series of wallet-sized school pictures showed two boys evolving over what I assumed to be the last three years. Both had darker coloring than Claire, caramel skin and brown eyes, not green, but the bone structure and expressions were all hers.
    A pocket calendar, held in place by a magnet from a local private school, was open to July and its date boxes were crossed off through last Friday—when Claire had been served with her search and arrest warrants and taken away. The little squares were too small to write down anything descriptive, but Claire apparently used initials and abbreviations to remind herself about upcoming plans. July had various entries for
P
,
J
and
KT
with times beside them. I flipped back to June and saw more entries for
J
, a few for
P
, and a smattering for
K
. May had two
J
s, no
KT
s, and three
M
s. May was also thick with
K
s.
    I gave up on the alphabet soup but suspected it might be useful so I took the calendar and dropped it into my bag. Around the corner, her neutral beige living room displayed artsy, wall-mounted shadow boxes that contained some kind of dried flowers. Drapes made from the same burgundy and gold chenille that covered the throw pillows were open, unlike her neighbors’, letting morning sun fill the first floor. I ran a finger over a soft, fancy sofa pillow and marveled over the effort that Claire—or more likely, her decorator—had put into the room.
    A set of French doors, open on the other side of the foyer, led to a home office and I walked inside. Her computer was conspicuously absent from its spot on the desk, but the keyboard and mouse had been left behind. The desk faced the door, and I walked behind it and took a seat, staring across the foyer into the bright, super-coordinated living room, imagining for a moment that the house were mine. My attraction, I realized, was directed toward the home’s tidiness, not its pricey artifacts.
    I started pulling open drawers. Bills and receipts, some dating back ten years, were tucked in hanging folders. She seemed a compulsive keeper of owner’s manuals—vacuum cleaner, dish washer, electric toothbrush, DVD player, cellular phone. Three models of cell phones, actually. From her files, I learned Claire’s kitchen cabinets and countertops were replaced in May and that Daniel’s Z4 was due for an oil change, though I doubted she cared. There were investment portfolios and 529 plans, copies of her parents’ living wills and power-of-attorney forms, and tax returns dating back through her last two marriages. I spent twenty minutes browsing paperwork but found nothing to tie Claire to Platt, or to anyone other than her family.
    Her bookshelf had a collection of romance paperbacks, the sort of books