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thing to cut up carpet into manageable bundles. Pulling the carpet up, however, proved to be a more difficult and far dirtier job than I had anticipated. The thought that I should be wearing rubber gloves crossed my mind—who knew what disgusting things lurked in those wooly loops—but I’d left the only pair I had in the attic and I wasn’t quite ready to go back up there yet. While I didn’t consider myself overly vain, I wasn’t about to head out shopping dressed the way I was. I covered up the sofa and chairs with a set of flannel sheets and push-pulled them down the hallway and into the spare bedroom.
    After the first few hard tugs on the carpet things got a bit easier, although no less messy. The underpadding had all but disintegrated through the years, leaving behind scraps of speckled blue foam, which I balled up and put inside a large green garbage bag.
    I had just about finished stripping carpet off the living room and dining room floor when I came across my first discovery: a small brown envelope, wedged against the dining room wall. Someone must have lifted the heating vent and slid the envelope along the floor as far as they could.
    The envelope had one of those tiny metal clasps to close it up. The lack of a glued seal meant that anyone, before now, could have added to or removed contents. But who would have hidden an envelope under the carpet, and more importantly, why?
    I was just about to open it when the doorbell rang, a chirpy sing-songy sound. I glanced at my watch. Eleven a.m. It was too early for the locksmith.
    Some instinct told me to hide the envelope before answering. I was putting it inside one of the kitchen cupboards, behind a box of bran flakes, when the doorbell chimed again. Someone was impatient. I went to the front door and looked out the peephole. A plump fifty-something woman with a mass of fluffy bleached blonde hair, jet black eyes, and oversized silver hoop earrings stared back. She wore jeans, a long-sleeved navy blue jersey knit shirt, and a polar fleece vest with an abstract pattern of the moon, stars, and assorted astrological symbols.
    Misty Rivers, I presumed.
    I opened the door and gave her my best quizzical smile. “Can I help you?”
    She smiled back and made a sweeping gesture with both hands, the fingernails a titch too long and painted an inky midnight blue, the tips of each garnished in gold glitter—a French manicure transformed to tacky. The scent of patchouli oil drifted in the air.
    “Misty Rivers, at your service.”
    “I’ve been expecting you.” I realized, as soon as I said the words, that it was true. I had been expecting her, had in fact wanted her to come. As the last tenant of Sixteen Snapdragon Circle, Misty was my number one suspect when it came to putting the skeleton and coffin in the attic. “Come on in.”
    Misty swooped in, glanced at the disarray in the living room, and sashayed into the kitchen. “I see you have a tea kettle. I’d love a cup of tea. Milk, one sugar.” She plopped into one of the two chairs at a bistro table that used to furnish my balcony.
    Pushy. “I’m sorry, I don’t have any milk. I don’t drink it, and I wasn’t expecting company.” I felt a perverse flush of pleasure, as if not having milk in the house was some sort of minor victory.
    “Clear then,” Misty said, apparently determined to stay for a visit.
    I grabbed my cocoa butter lip balm from the second drawer—a drawer I suddenly remembered my mother calling the “junk drawer” for obvious reasons. It had been filled with everything from scissors to string. I plugged in the kettle and put out a plate of chocolate chip cookies.
    “I suppose you want to know why I’m here,” Misty said, reaching for a cookie.
    “I can guess. Leith Hampton said you thought this house was haunted. Apparently you convinced my father of the possibility.”
    “That’s one way of summing it up.”
    I poured the boiling water into my old brown and white teapot and placed