T Is for Trespass

weakening in the same way I weaken at the notion of a QP with Cheese. Not that he was good for me, but who cared?
    “Did you talk to her?” Henry asked.
    Cheney said, “That’s why I’m here. We’re wondering if the two of you would step next door with us.”
    Henry said, “Certainly. Is something wrong?”
    “You tell us. When we pulled up, we found the front door standing open. All the lights are on, but there doesn’t seem to be anyone there.”
    Henry left with Cheney and Officer Anderson, without bothering to put a coat over his short-sleeved shirt. I paused long enough to retrieve my jacket from the back of the kitchen chair. I grabbed Henry’s as well and scooted after him. The night was chilly and the wind was picking up. There was an empty expanse of curb where Solana’s car had been. I trotted along the walk, reassured by the notion that Cheney had the situation under control. He was right about Gus’s house. Every room was ablaze with light. By the time I crossed his front yard, I could see Anderson on his way around the side of the house with his flashlight, the wand of white zigzagging across windows, the walkway, and surrounding shrubbery.
    Cheney had Solana Rojas’s arrest warrant in hand and I gathered that gave him a certain leeway to check the premises in search of her. He’d also uncovered two outstanding warrants for the arrest of Tomasso Tasinato, one on charges of aggravated battery, and the other for battery with great bodily harm. He told us Tiny had twice been caught on tape shoplifting items from a Colgate minimart. The owner had identified him but then decided not to file charges, saying he didn’t want the hassle over some beef jerky and two packages of M&M’s.
    Cheney asked us to wait outside while he went in. Henry shrugged himself into his jacket and tucked his hands in the pockets. Neither of us said a word, but he must have worried, as I did, that something awful was in store. Once Cheney assured himself the place was empty, he asked us to walk through with him to see if we noticed anything out of the ordinary.
    The premises had been picked clean of personal items. In my earlier unauthorized home invasion, I hadn’t noticed how barren the house was. The living room was intact, furniture still in place: lamps, the desk, a footstool, fake roses on the coffee table. The kitchen was untouched as well, nothing out of place. If there’d been dirty dishes in the sink, they’d been washed, dried, and put away. A damp-looking linen dish towel had been folded and hung neatly across the rack. The spray bottle of cleanser was gone, but the smell was still strong. I thought Solana was taking her compulsive tidiness a bit too far.
    Gus’s room was just as we’d left it. The covers were flung back, sheets and spread rumpled and looking not quite clean. Drawers still stood half-open where Peggy’d hunted up a sweater for him. The humidifier had run dry and no longer hissed with steam. I continued down the hall to the first of the two spare bedrooms.
    Compared with the last view I’d had, Solana’s room was empty. The carved mahogany bed frame remained, but the other antique pieces were gone: no burled walnut rocking chair, no armoire, no plump-shouldered fruitwood chest of drawers with ornate bronze drawer pulls. She couldn’t have loaded furniture in her car in the scant hour she had available after she returned home. For one thing, the items were too cumbersome, and for another, she was in too great a hurry to bother. This meant she’d disposed of the furniture earlier, but who knew what she’d done with it? In the closet, the hangers had been shoved apart and most of her clothes were gone. Some garments had tumbled to the floor and she’d left them in a heap, indicating the haste with which she’d packed.
    I moved to Tiny’s room. Henry and Cheney stood in the doorway. I kept expecting to find a body—his or hers—shot, stabbed, or hanged. Uneasily, I eased in behind Cheney, hoping he would shield me from anything gross. The air in Tiny’s room was dense with “guy” smell: testosterone, hair, sweat glands, and dirty clothes. Overlying the ripe odor was the same smell of bleach I’d noticed throughout. Had she been using the spray cleanser to wipe the surfaces free of prints?
    The two heavy blankets that served as blackout curtains were still nailed to the window frames, and the overhead light was tawny and ineffectual. The television set was gone, but all of