Prologue 5

The apartment was completely bare. There was no furniture, no signs of occupation at all. I would have laid a pretty sizable bet that it had been 6 months or more since there had been furniture in the place. The bland off-white walls didn't even have holes from picture hooks and there were no indentations from furniture in the bland beige carpet. Despite that, from the smell of the place, it had been recently cleaned.
We walked through the place, looking for something, anything. There weren't even dust bunnies.
The apartment was an inefficient one bedroom plus den. It seemed large, but when I tried to imagine it furnished, I realized that the usable space was pretty limited.
The view was great though. The apartment was on the 20th floor in a generally mid to low rise neighborhood, so I could see all the way across town to the ballpark. I bet the fireworks show on the 4th of July looked great from here.
The kitchen was clean and empty. No trash can under the sink. The refrigerator was spotless and warm. It wasn’t even plugged in.
The bathroom was also spotless. Nothing of use, not even a stray hair or water spots on the shiny chrome fixtures.
"Let's go see what the neighbors have to say," I suggested to Ariadne, my voice seeming loud in the quiet space.
She nodded and we went out, leaving the door unlocked, as we had found it.

There was no answer at #203, the door immediately across the hall from #204, but our knocking brought out a neighbor further down the hall, #201.
He was a little old man in sweatpants and a t-shirt that read "Tired of Being Retired." His white hair stuck out in tufts around his head, and his glasses, which he was just putting on, were round and rimmed with gold wire. He squinted at us with watery blue eyes and asked, "Can I help you folks? David and Annie aren't at home right now. They're visiting their daughter in Florida. I offered to take care of Whiskers for them, but they said they were taking him along."
Ariadne is more prone to indulging people. She asked the rhetorical question, "Is Whiskers their cat?"
"No, their dog. A Westie. He's the nicest little pooch you'd ever like to meet."
Ariadne looked at me and raised her brows.
I turned to the old guy and introduced myself and Ariadne. "A friend of ours lives on this floor, but he's been out of touch for a long time. We wanted to find out if he was still around."
"You mean David?"
"No, Roy in #204? We knocked on the door, but there was no answer. We thought we'd just see if any of his neighbors have seen him recently."
"Huh. 204? They were pretty noisy. Didn't see much of them, but heard 'em a lot."
Ariadne took over. She was good at drawing people out. "Really? Did they argue a lot?"
The old man shook his head. "Not unless that was an awful lot of making up they were doing. They would pound the walls if you know what I mean." He winked at me.
Disconcerted by the image of a geezer in what appeared to be his pajamas winking at me, I slid my eyes aside and noticed something.
In the hallway behind the old man stood a dark wood bookshelf stuffed like a used bookstore with old paperbacks. On top of it, right about my eye level, were some framed photographs. The one that had caught my eye was a snapshot at the front. At first glance, it was about as ordinary as you can get, a couple mugging for the camera. But the gal in the picture was our client, Josephine, or else a dead-ringer for her.