I glanced down the street. No weedy yards, no cans at the curb. Lots of birdbaths and minivans.
“Respectable little neighborhood,” Bandoni said.
“Not exactly the place for a young man hoping to hook up,” I said. “Nearest nightlife is miles away.”
“Yale Station and the light-rail is only two blocks over,” Bandoni pointed out. “It’s a good starter home. Especially if you’re thinking family. Or if you travel. Lots of stay-at-home moms to keep an eye on your place.”
There was a certain wistfulness in his voice. After seeing Wingate, I could understand.
I pushed my sunglasses up on my head. “If we’re lucky, one of them will have seen or heard something.”
“Uniforms are canvassing later.”
We got out, and while Clyde watered the bushes, Bandoni and I studied the house.
The place was shabby genteel. The yard—still dormant after winter—was groomed but not fancy. A yard designed to meet the local homeowners’ covenants without any undue effort. A large fir in the front yard blocked half of the house from view. On the walk-up porch, two chairs and a bistro-style table sat near one of the windows. On the north side, a lane led toward the back and an unattached garage.
I looked up and down the neighborhood and inhaled the scent of composting leaves and still-brown grass. No gardeners. No joggers. There was a sign asking drivers to slow for playing children and a pedestrian crossing at the end of the street. The kids would be in school by now, one or both parents at work.
Clyde rejoined us, and we walked around to the back. A single-car garage took up a third of the yard. The DMV had a Saab 9-3 registered in Noah’s name, but a peek through the window showed an empty bay.
“We need to put out a BOLO for Noah’s Saab,” I said.
Bandoni rattled the handle on the garage door. It didn’t budge. “You know what would make me happier than a pig in mud? If we found his car, and his cell phone was in the glove box.”
“If it’s an iPhone, finding it will be as useful as picking up a brick.”
“Way to think positive. You ever leave your phone in your car?”
“There was one time, a couple of years ago.”
“Like all you millennials.” He grunted. “We’ll get the records.”
An alleyway ran behind Noah’s garage and those of his neighbors. A trashcan and a recycling bin were inside his chain-link fence, the gate padlocked shut. I peered into both cans. Empty. I made a mental note to find out when the trash went out.
Back at the front, Clyde and I followed Bandoni up the porch steps. He punched the code to the lockbox, then sliced open the crime scene tape.
“Not like the old days,” he said. “We used to have to break windows.”
Once inside, we both signed the form on the clipboard Bandoni had brought. He left it near the front door for the forensics detectives.
“Let’s see what we got,” he said.
An empty home feels like just that—empty in a way that makes the air echo with loneliness, as if the very molecules had too much weight to bear and had slunk away. Walk into the home of a dead person, and the sense of wrongness threatens to steal your breath.
Bandoni and I slipped on booties and gloves, and I cinched booties onto Clyde’s paws. We did a walk-through to allow Clyde to sniff for weapons or illegal substances while Bandoni and I got a feel for the place, which had that new-house smell of paint and resin. The front of the house consisted of living and dining rooms. A hallway led to the kitchen, half bath, a bedroom and master bath, and a door to the basement. Nothing caught Clyde’s attention. At the very back of the house was an art studio with a large drafting desk and bookshelves filled with bottles of ink, stacks of sketch pads, and mason jars crammed with brushes, pens, and pencils. An impressive array of ink sketches covered the walls all the way to the ceiling.
I stared up at them. The drawings were brilliantly done. Whatever else Noah had done in his life, he’d left behind a kind of legacy.
We returned to the living room, and I downed Clyde near the front door.
The entire home had been renovated. The attic had been displaced by a high-beamed ceiling. Wide-plank wood floors ran throughout the house. The fireplace boasted freshly painted white brick, and the kitchen mixed white cabinetry with granite and stainless steel. Except for the art studio, furnishings consisted of a blend of metal and wood tables and consoles, a sofa and chairs with stilt legs, and brightly colored geometric rugs.
The furniture looked like the same vintage as that in my childhood home. Except it was sparkling and fresh. Not a single cigarette burn or whiskey ring that I could detect.
“This guy have a time machine?” I wondered out loud.
“Mid-century modern,” Bandoni muttered.
“What?”
“It’s the thing now. Copying furniture from the fifties. Like that show. Mad Men. The fifties are back, Parnell. Vintage modern. Welcome to the Cleavers’.”
“The who?”
“Wally and the Beav. Check it out sometime.”
The Beav. Made me glad I’d missed the fifties. “So the furniture is new? It’s just designed to look old?”
“Like I said, it’s a thing.”
“I have a new appreciation for you, Bandoni.”
“Save the sweet nothings for Cohen. Bottom line, our boy was fashionable.”
I nodded, but what did I know about fashion? Before Cohen waltzed into my life and carried me off to his castle, I was living in my grandmother’s home. My bedroom hadn’t changed since I was a teenager.
“Let’s start with the basement,” Bandoni said.
I followed him down a narrow staircase into the unfinished basement—bare concrete floor and walls with a single garden-level window shrouded in cobwebs. Other than a pantry with a second refrigerator, a small storage closet, and an old futon, the place was taken up by folding tables covered
