“Check the attic,” Daniel said.

“People put things in trunks when they think they might not come back down the stairs.”

I drove back to Cedar Lane as the dark clouds of a late fall storm gathered over the Elizabeth River.

Knox met me at the kitchen door, resting his gray chin against my knee as I unbuttoned my jacket.

I took a flashlight from the kitchen drawer and climbed the narrow wooden staircase to the attic landing.

The attic floorboards creaked under my boots, cold and stiff from decades of trapped winter air.