“It’s been on my ring since 2019.” She worked it off and laid it on the hall table.

“I don’t want to be the one who lets anybody in.”

She carried the second box out to the trunk.

The lid slammed, the engine started, and the car went up the lane past the mailbox without slowing down.

I put the brass key in my coat pocket next to my own.

Two keys to the same door, and only one of them had been held by the woman who owned it.

Helen Vance called me at four and asked to meet at the Birch Street Diner instead of at the house.