Chapter One

Dorian Quinn knew three things with absolute certainty.

She had locked the back door at the Whitakers' house yesterday afternoon.

She had put the little brass key back underneath the ceramic frog.

And the Whitakers were in Aruba.

Which made the muddy footprint on the kitchen floor somewhat difficult to explain.

Dorian stood just inside the doorway, one hand still wrapped around the doorknob.

"Well."

Marmalade, an eighteen-pound orange tabby with the disposition of a tollbooth attendant, sat three feet away and stared at her.

"Don't look at me like that. I wasn't here."

Marmalade blinked.

Dorian looked at the footprint again.

It wasn't particularly sinister. It wasn't even a very good footprint. Just the front half of a shoe, dried brown dirt against pale tile, pointing toward the kitchen.

There were probably twenty perfectly reasonable explanations for it.

At the moment, Dorian couldn't think of one.

"Karen came home for something," she said.

Marmalade began washing his shoulder.

"Or Mark did."

Marmalade switched shoulders.

"Or somebody's watering the plants."

This time the cat stopped washing and looked directly at her.

"Fine. They don't have plants."

Dorian closed the door behind her and locked it.

She'd spent twenty-seven years in corporate operations before finally reaching the age and financial position where she could stop attending meetings about meetings and do something she actually enjoyed.

Cats, as it turned out, required considerably less management than executives.

Most of the time.

At fifty-four, Dorian had become unexpectedly successful at something she'd never intended to turn into much of a business. She'd started with two clients, then six, then twelve. One neighbor told another, somebody mentioned her in a community Facebook group, and suddenly people she'd never met were calling to ask if she had availability for Thanksgiving.

She usually didn't.

Her husband, Michael, liked to say she had accidentally built herself another career.

Dorian preferred to call it getting paid to visit her friends.

"Speaking of which." She crouched and scratched beneath Marmalade's chin. "How's my handsome man?"

Marmalade immediately forgave her for being seven minutes late.

Dorian smiled.

This was why she'd left corporate America.

No quarterly projections. No conference calls. No mandatory leadership retreats.

Just an orange cat rumbling beneath her fingers in a sunny kitchen while his people sent her ridiculous pictures of themselves holding drinks with tiny umbrellas.

She stood, washed his bowls, measured his food and crushed half a tablet into the little spoonful of chicken pâté he received every afternoon.

Marmalade swallowed it without objection.

That bothered her.

"Who are you, and what have you done with my cat?"

Normally medication involved negotiations, deceit and at least one party leaving offended.

Dorian picked up the prescription bottle.

Then she stopped.

The label was facing forward.

She always left it facing backward.

Not because she was obsessive.

At least that was her official position.

She kept medication bottles turned backward after administering a dose. The next sitter—or Dorian herself on the next visit—turned the bottle around before giving the next one. It was a stupid little system she'd invented years ago.

But it worked.

Yesterday she'd given Marmalade his pill.

Yesterday she'd turned the bottle backward.

Today it was facing forward.

Dorian looked at Marmalade.

The muddy footprint didn't seem quite so harmless anymore.

She took out her phone.

When something didn't make sense, document it.

And document it she did.

Dorian photographed the muddy footprint from three angles, including one with a quarter beside it for scale. She photographed the back door, the ceramic frog, the brass key, and the medication bottle exactly as she'd found them.

Then she opened the Notes app on her phone.

Whitaker — Tuesday, 3:17 p.m.

Arrived for scheduled visit. Back door locked. Key under frog as expected. Muddy partial shoe print on kitchen tile—not present at Monday visit. Marmalade's medication bottle facing forward. I left it facing backward after Monday's dose.

She looked at Marmalade.

"Anything you'd like to add to the official record?"

He sat beside his food bowl.

"I'll put you down as declining to comment."

Dorian walked through the house.

Not searched. Walked through. There was a difference, and after twenty-seven years in corporate America, Dorian appreciated distinctions.

Nothing appeared disturbed in the living room. The television was off. The throw pillows remained in the precise, slightly ridiculous formation Karen preferred. Upstairs, the beds were made. Jewelry boxes sat untouched on the dresser. Two laptops remained on the desk in Mark's office.

If someone had broken in to steal something, they'd apparently suffered an immediate crisis of motivation.

Dorian checked the windows and exterior doors without touching anything unnecessarily. Everything was locked.

Back in the kitchen, Marmalade watched her inspection with mild interest.

"Either I'm losing my mind," Dorian told him, "or somebody has been in your house."

Marmalade sat down.

"And since I spent nearly thirty years in corporate meetings, I have extensive experience determining whether I've lost my mind."

She called Karen.

Aruba answered on the fourth ring.

"Dorian! Is Marmalade okay?"

"He's fine."

The speed of Karen's response reminded Dorian why she always began conversations like this with the animal.

"He's eaten, he's had his medication, and he's currently pretending he hasn't eaten so I'll feed him again."

Karen laughed. "That's my boy."

"But I need to ask you something. Has anyone been in the house since you left?"

A pause.

"What do you mean?"

Dorian told her about the footprint, then the medication bottle.

"Could Mark's brother have stopped by?"

"No. He's in Atlanta."

"Cleaning service?"

"They came Friday."

"Pool service?"

"They don't go inside."

"Neighbor?"

"No one has a key except you and my sister."

"Has your sister been over?"

"She's here with us."

That wasn't the answer Dorian wanted.

She looked through the glass doors toward the backyard.

"Okay."

"Dorian, you're making me nervous."

"I'm not trying to. I don't see anything missing or damaged. All the doors and windows are locked. Marmalade is perfectly fine."

Marmalade chose that moment to leap onto the counter.

"Except he's committing a health-code violation."

"Get down, Marmalade," Karen said automatically from three thousand miles away.

Marmalade did not.

Dorian smiled despite herself.

"I've taken pictures of everything. I'm going to send them to you. I'd also like to call the sheriff's office and ask if a deputy can swing by tonight."

"Do you really think that's necessary?"

There it was.

The question women Dorian's age had been trained for a lifetime to ask themselves.

Am I making too much of this?

Dorian looked at the footprint.

"Probably not."

She paused.

"But I'd rather feel silly tomorrow than sorry tonight."

Another silence.

"Okay," Karen said. "Call them."

So Dorian did.

She didn't call 911. Nobody was bleeding, nothing was on fire, and Marmalade was in no immediate danger except from obesity.

Instead, she called the non-emergency number, explained that she was the pet sitter for homeowners who were out of the country, described what she'd found, and asked whether a deputy could drive by the property that evening.

The dispatcher took the address and her information.

"We can put in an extra-patrol request."

"Thank you."

"Ma'am, if you return to the property and find a door open, a broken window, or anything else that makes you think someone may be inside, don't enter. Call us."

"I won't."

And she meant it.

Dorian Quinn liked cats.

She liked mysteries considerably less.

She finished Marmalade's visit, cleaned the litter box, refreshed his water, and spent ten minutes on the sofa while he sprawled across her lap as though he'd spent the afternoon doing hard physical labor.

Before leaving, she photographed the kitchen one more time.

Then she did something she had never done at a client's house before.

She picked up the ceramic frog.

The brass key was still underneath it.

Dorian stared at it for a moment.

Anyone who knew where that key was could get into the Whitakers' house.

Anyone.

She put the frog back exactly as she'd found it. Then she opened her notes and added one more line.

Key location may be compromised. Recommend changing hiding place immediately.

She locked the door behind her, tugged it twice to make sure, and walked to her car.

Before starting the engine, Dorian sent Karen the photographs. Then she emailed copies to herself.

Corporate America had taught her another useful lesson.

Never keep the only copy of anything important in one place.

Dorian pulled away from the curb and headed toward her next visit.

By the time she reached the stop sign, she had almost convinced herself there was a perfectly ordinary explanation for all of it.

Almost.