Kari lowers the screwdriver and looks at me the way someone looks at a package they didn't order but are too polite to send back. "She told me she was making some calls. I thought she meant the police. Maybe her lawyer. Not — " She gestures at me. At the general concept of me. "This."
"I'm here to conduct a threat assessment and evaluate the physical security of the property. It shouldn't take long."
Optimistic, given what I've seen so far, but I'm still working under Vance's simple job framework. Walk the perimeter, catalogue the vulnerabilities, write the report. In and out.
"Would you like some coffee?" she asks.
"No."
"The coffee maker is the one thing that functions reliably in this entire building, which I think says something about priorities."
"I don't need coffee. I need to walk the exterior and check the access points."
"Sure. Okay." She climbs down from the ladder, and I let go of the frame once she's on solid ground. She leaves the screwdriver on the top step — unsecured tool, elevated surface, I note it and say nothing. "I'll make you a cup anyway. In case you change your mind."
She disappears down the stairs before I can object, and I hear her talking to something in the kitchen moments later. The coffee maker, presumably. Her tone is encouraging, the way you'd speak to a nervous animal.
I stand in the second-floor hallway, recalibrating.
Then I start the perimeter walk.
The exterior is a masterclass in vulnerability. The side door off the kitchen has a lock that could be defeated with a credit card. Three ground-floor windows don't latch. The back porch has a door with a glass panel — one sharp elbow from a clean entry. The garden runs to a tree line with no sight barriers, no motion lights, no cameras. The crawl space access under the porch isn't secured. There's a cellar entrance on the east side with a padlock that’s rusted but functional. I circle to the cellar window on the east wall — small, ground-level, half-hidden behind overgrown boxwood. I push through the branches far enough to check the glass. Intact. The latch is stiff but functional. The boxwood obscures the full frame, and the light is bad at the foundation line. I note it for follow-up — not an immediate concern, but worth a second look with a flashlight.
Back at the front, the garden gnome is still judging me.
Inside, I check each room systematically. Ground floor: kitchen, dining area mid-renovation, sitting room with furnitureunder drop cloths, and a small room being used as storage for paint cans and what appears to be a taxidermied owl. I don't ask. Second floor: three guest rooms in various stages of demolition, Margit's private rooms at the end of the hall, and one livable suite at the front with cheerful yellow flowers on the bedspread and a window overlooking the street.
The window doesn't lock.
The room where the client is sleeping has a window that doesn't lock. Second floor, street-facing — better than ground level, but the porch roof sits directly below it. Anyone with upper-body strength and a reason could make that climb in under ten seconds.
I go back downstairs, pull the deadbolt kit from my truck, and install a proper lock on the front door. The doorframe is old-growth oak under three layers of paint — the only structurally sound thing on this property. I drill, set the plate, test the bolt. It catches clean.
When I turn around, Kari is standing in the foyer holding two mugs.
"You're installing a lock on my door," she says.
"The existing one didn't function."
"I know it didn't function. I've been meaning to fix it."
"Now you don't have to." I hold out my hand. She blinks, then places a mug in it. The coffee is black, which saves us a conversation. Decent.
"Do you just carry deadbolts around in your truck?"
"Yes."
She processes this. I can see the exact moment she decides to find it charming instead of alarming, and I want to tell her that instinct — the one that converts red flags into quirky anecdotes — is going to be a problem. But I'm here for the assessment, not the lecture.
"The second note," I say. "The one that appeared inside. Where exactly did you find it?"
Her amusement fades. For a moment I see something underneath it. Not panic. Something quieter. The particular stillness of a person who lay awake in an unfamiliar house, listening to every sound the walls made.
"Parlor doorway," she says. "I'd been upstairs. Maybe twenty minutes, maybe longer. When I came back down, it was there."
"Doors were open at the time?"
"Some of them. The house had been closed up for three years. It needed air."
