“Where will you park?”

“That little strip mall on Nashua Street.”

“Good idea. I’m glad I wore layers. It’s at least a three-block walk and it’s freezing out.”

Angelica parked the car under one of the strip mall’s tall lampposts. She groped under the driver’s seat and came up with a big flashlight. “Will you take charge of this?”

“Sure thing,” Tricia said, taking it from her.

They pulled on their gloves, got out of the car, locked it, and started off on foot.

After they’d gone a block, Angelica spoke. “Remind me again why we decided to move to such a cold place?”

“I wanted to open a bookstore. You arrived on my doorstep and never left. And you got here when the weather was perfect, and had no clue how nasty winter could be.”

“I guess you’re right. And I guess I love it too much to leave just because it’s cold and miserable for five or six months of the year.”

“Good.”

Angelica stopped abruptly. “What did you say?”

Tricia stopped, too. “I said ‘good.’ Stay here with me forever.”

Angelica smiled, her eyes filling with tears. When she spoke again, her voice cracked. “Okay, I will.”

Tricia patted her back and then gave her a nudge, and they started off once more.

“I hope the wind has blown the snow off Betsy’s driveway,” Tricia said. “Otherwise we’ll leave footprints.”

“Good point,” Angelica agreed. “Maybe we should have brought a shovel.”

They walked the next block in silence. Would it look equally suspicious to Betsy’s neighbors to see two strangers walking down their dead-end street on a cold winter’s night?

“Have you got those keys handy?” Tricia whispered.

“Right in my pocket.”

They turned up number 77’s driveway. Betsy’s house looked dark and forbidding with all its drapes drawn. The shaggy bushes that flanked the front steps helped reinforce an aura of neglect, but then most houses looked rather that way at night with no illumination to highlight their best attributes. Tricia and Angelica had already agreed to try the back door first in hopes of staying out of the neighbors’ sight, and headed straight there.

Angelica fumbled with the keys while Tricia held the flashlight beam fixed on the door’s lock. But something wasn’t right. She moved the light to take in the doorframe. “Ange, I think this door has been kicked in—just like at your apartment.”

“You mean someone’s already been here and robbed Betsy? That’s disgusting.”

“Maybe we should just call the police,” Tricia suggested.

“And tell them what? That we were about to enter a dead woman’s house to snoop around and found that another crime had been committed before we even got here?”

“It doesn’t sound good, but it’s the right thing to do.”

“We can do the right thing after we take a look.” And with that, Angelica pushed open the back door and stepped inside. She fumbled for a switch, found it, and a light near the ceiling flashed on in what Tricia assumed would be the kitchen. “Oh, my God,” Angelica murmured.

“What is it?” Tricia asked, trying to see beyond her sister, but Angelica’s bulky parka made an effective barrier. “Move,” she ordered.

“I can’t. Wait a minute.”

Angelica seemed to shuffle a foot or so forward, giving Tricia just enough room to enter. It was then Tricia’s turn to mutter, “Oh, my God. Betsy was—”

“A hoarder,” Angelica said in disgust. The entire kitchen was filled with mounds of big black trash bags, stacks of cartons, heaps of newspapers, dirty dishes with caked-on dried food, clothes, and heaven only knew what else.

“Well,” Angelica said, sounding overwhelmed, “I never expected this.”

“I don’t suppose anyone does. Is there a trail you can follow?” Tricia asked and wrinkled her nose. The place didn’t smell all that good, either.

Angelica shuffled forward, shoving stuff aside as she went. “I’m going to try to get into the next room. Are you game to follow?”

The truth was, no! But Tricia answered yes, anyway. She stepped farther into the kitchen and then shut the door as best she could and followed Angelica.

It took a good couple of minutes to navigate through the four-foot-high piles of garbage and junk before they made it into what must have been a living room, although if there was furniture, it was buried under more trash, clothes, unopened Priority Mail boxes, sagging cartons, and bulging plastic storage containers. Angelica hit a light switch and the dusty light fixture in the middle of the ceiling flashed on.

“Good grief,” Tricia cried in awe as she took in the decorations lined up on the wall. “I was only kidding when I said Betsy collected clown plates.” There must have been twenty or more of them hanging about a foot above the trash heaps, each of them encrusted with greasy dust and cobwebs. “If someone broke in to rob Betsy, how would the police know if anything was missing?”

“That’s a good question.” Angelica shuffled forward again, then halted and let out a strangled squeak.

“What’s wrong?” Tricia asked, concerned.

“Eew. There’s a dead mouse on this pile of crap,” Angelica wailed.

“Better it’s dead than alive,” Tricia said.

“How could Betsy live like this? I always thought she had a screw loose, but I never anticipated this,” Angelica said in exasperation.

“It beats me how someone so organized at work could be so disorganized at home,” Tricia said. She thought of something she’d heard some months before. “Last fall, after Joelle and Stan Berry broke up, Frannie told me that Joelle used to come here to stay with Betsy so as not to sully her reputation. But I can’t imagine anyone in her right mind wanting to stay in this hovel.”

“Unless Joelle is a hoarder, too. Then she probably wouldn’t blink an eye at a mess like this.”

“Maybe.”

Angelica gazed around the room. “What should we be looking for—and more important—are we ever likely to find what we’re looking for?”

“You got me.” Tricia thought about her sister’s question. “Keep an eye out for bank statements, insurance forms, and stock certificates—you know, financial papers.”

“A lot of that stuff is now delivered via e-mail. Do you see any sign of a computer?”

Tricia looked around the room. “Maybe we should try to find her bedroom. She might have stored all her important stuff in one place.”

“I think the trail veers to the left,” Angelica said and started shuffling forward again.

Tricia kept her eye out for anything that looked important—but it all appeared to be trash littered with mouse droppings and spiderwebs, and around the floors and on every picture or knickknack hanging on the walls was a thick layer of greasy dust. And worse, she suspected under all the rubbish was likely to be black mold. After all, packed in tightly as it was, the junk curtailed the circulation of air. Tricia shuddered at the thought, and couldn’t wait to get home to throw her clothes—jacket and all—into the washer, and then jump in the shower with water as hot as she could stand.

Angelica had stopped moving and stood before the opening to a hall, grimacing. “Oooh, it’s the bathroom, and it’s even nastier than a gas station restroom.”

It took a few moments for Tricia to reach the open door to the bathroom. The hall before her was stacked with cartons and draped with yet more piles of clothes. She looked into the bathroom and felt distinctly queasy. The toilet had no seat, and the bowl was caked with . . . she didn’t want to speculate. The tub was piled so high with clothes and towels that there was no way Betsy could bathe in it. “No wonder Betsy spent so much time in the Cookery’s washroom. Her own was unusable.”

Angelica made no comment and continued picking her way through the accumulated trash once again. She opened a door. “It’s a bedroom . . . I think. This could have been a child’s room. It’s painted lilac—favorite little-girl color.”