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Cher shook her head nervously, as her eyes followed Odelia’s gaze. She suddenly lowered her voice. “Do you think whoever did this could still be in the house?”

“I doubt it,” said Odelia. Though she didn’t sound very sure of herself. “Nobody would be foolish enough to break in and then linger.”

But she still relayed Cher’s concern to Chase, who’d finished his phone call, and the cop immediately mounted the stairs to take a gander. Five tense minutes later he called down, “Nobody up here!”

Both Odelia and Cher visibly relaxed. And frankly so did I and Dooley!

“Maybe you can check the crime scene photos,” I suggested. “And compare them to how the place looks now. That way you can see at a glance if anything was taken or not.”

“Great idea, Max,” said Dooley.

Chase had returned, and announced that a team was arriving in ten minutes to go over the place again, this time in view of this second breakin. Odelia relayed my idea to him, and he nodded and she took her tablet from her shoulder bag and fired it up.

“Yesterday a specialized team took pictures of every available area of the house,” she told Neda’s secretary. “So if anything was taken, we might be able to see it by making a comparison.”

For a moment, the three of them studied the room, comparing the way it was now with how it had looked twenty-four hours before. Not unlike that much-loved game of‘Spot the Difference.’ And then, all of a sudden, Cher, who clearly boasted a good secretary’s eagle-eyed vision, let out a little cry of excitement. “I found it!” she said as she pointed to Odelia’s tablet.

They moved over to a tall bookcase behind the salon. It took up half the wall space, and was filled with an impressive collection of reading material, interspersed with the odd knickknack and plenty of decorative items: framed pictures and the like. Chase had put on plastic gloves and slipped a volume from a shelf located at eye level and opened it.

“Photo album,” he grunted as he leafed through the tome.

That entire row consisted of photo albums, and according to what I could determine from Cher’s outburst, one of those albums had mysteriously disappeared overnight.

“Can I have a look?” I asked, curious to know what this missing album looked like.

Odelia cast a surreptitious glance at Cher, but she was too busy following along with Chase, as he took down album after album, leafing through them for potential clues.

Odelia placed her tablet on the sofa, and I hopped up to have a look-see. And indeed Cher was right: there had been a dozen of those photo albums the day before, and now there was one less. A smaller one, which had been wedged among its larger brethren.

“Odd,” I commented.

“Could it be that one of the crime scene technicians took it?” Odelia asked Chase.

“No way,” the cop said with a quick shake of the head. “They know better than to remove things from a crime scene.” He glanced up at Cher, but the latter quickly denied having touched even a single thing in the house.

“Maybe it was Neda’s ghost,” Dooley suggested. “And she came back to collect some of her favorite things to take along to the afterlife.”

“Ghosts don’t break windows, Dooley,” I told him. “They float through the walls.”

“Yes, but maybe she doesn’t know that. She’s never been a ghost before, since she’s never been murdered before, and so she’s probably still getting the hang of things.”

“Even if ghosts existed, which they don’t, why would Neda take this particular album?”

“Maybe it’s full of her favorite pictures? Pictures of her dad, maybe?”

“Doubtful,” was my verdict, which caused Dooley’s shoulders to sag a little. I quickly added, “But still an interesting avenue to pursue, buddy.”

“Thanks, Max,” he said, perking up again. “I think we need to look at every possible explanation, and not rule out a single one, however implausible.”

I had the impression he got that from one of his Discovery Channel documentaries, but refrained from comment. The human contingent were still going over the room, picture by picture, but found that nothing else had been taken as far as they could tell.

Soon the crime scene technicians arrived—the people in the white coveralls and the blue booties—and we were all relegated to the backyard while they did their thing.

“Titta told us she and Neda didn’t get along,” Odelia said, steering the conversation back to Neda’s private life, hoping to discover what had made the woman tick. “And that they hadn’t been in touch in years. Doesn’t that strike you as odd?”

“Oh, for sure,” said Cher as she hugged herself. A dark cloud had edged in front of the sun, and it was a little chilly out. “Neda was a formidable woman, no doubt about it, but in my personal dealings with her I never had any complaints. She was possessed with a forceful personality, but notan unkindly one. She always treated me with respect, was meticulous about her paperwork, and was generous to a fault.”

“She wasn’t very well-liked by the members of the choir,” Chase pointed out.