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“Down that hallway.” Art pointed beyond the kitchen. “Two bedrooms. Two bathrooms. You’ve got three bedrooms up top. Another bathroom. Those steps going down off the foyer take you to the game room. The basement steps are through the game room. One more bedroom and bathroom down there.”

I tried to envision the layout in my head. I couldn’t. Art was true to his word and backed out of the foyer leaving Dad and me to our own devices.

The kitchen looked ancient. It had been renovated in the 1970s with orange Formica countertops and brick backsplash. It even had an olive-colored refrigerator and hood microwave over the stove to match. The kitchen opened up to a living room with shag carpet and a conversation “pit.”

“With the right marketing,” I said, “Art could still make a fortune renting this place out. People love real mid-century modern.”

“She was on the main floor?” Dad asked. “Geneva?”

We walked down the first-floor hallway together.

“This room, I think.” Geneva said she took the first bedroom on the right.

I stepped inside. That chill hadn’t left me. I gasped as I saw a piece of faded crime scene tape wedged in one corner.

“Never rented it out again,” Dad said. “I guess Art wasn’t lying.”

The bed was made. Art had put in homemade bookshelves. A complete set of vintage Nancy Drew novels filled them.

Dad walked across the hall to the other bedroom. Annabelle Oleson had slept there. From where I stood in Geneva’s room, I could see directly into the other bedroom. She said her door was open. If Annabelle’s had also remained open, Geneva could have seen everything. She most definitely could have heard exactly what Sidney said.

As we left those first-floor bedrooms, the floor plan stopped making sense.

We went up to the second-floor loft. Two bedrooms were side by side. The third was actually an addition to the second bedroom. There was no way to get to it without walking through the second bedroom. Even the stairs came in at an odd angle. You had to turn around a pony wall probably built for privacy. There was another step-up to get to the other single bedroom.

Further down the hall was another set of stairs. Those led to a small landing and a sitting room overlooking the lake.

“The flow of this place is bonkers,” Dad said. “You pretty much have to make a ninety-degree turn to get to every room. Geneva said Sidney did his work up here first? Dispatching Maisy, then Sarah? Then went down to the basement. Is that where Emily was?”

“I think so,” I said.

We went down the small flight of stairs to the sitting room. Another doorway led to a third set of stairs. We walked down those and ended up in the basement.

“Wait a second,” Dad said. “Where is the other access to the basement? Is this the only one?”

We opened every door down there. Emily’s bedroom was off the game room. That room had a kitchenette. But Dad was right. We couldn’t find access to another staircase that would lead to the main floor.

“I don’t get it,” I said. “So you have to go upstairs to the second floor to go downstairs to the basement?”

We backtracked, going up two flights of stairs and emerging on the second-floor sitting room again. Dad trotted down the open staircase from the loft to the main floor. I followed him. He ran his hand along the wall. “Stairs should be here,” he said. “It’s hollow.”

He found a small door and opened it. Sure enough, the stairs leading down were there. They were just closed off to make another storage closet.

“Was Art or his father high when they did all this?” Dad mused. Then he went to the front door and swung it open.

“Hey, Art!” he hollered. “Were you or your old man high when you did this reno?”

Art sat on the porch step. He unleashed an obscenity, but followed Dad into the house.

“I had nothing to do with the reno,” he said. “At one time, my mother wanted to split the house into a triplex. Second floor, first floor, basement. They were supposed to be three separate living spaces. I know it looks weird, but I was able to double-book for a lot of years this way.”

“So there’s separate egress to each floor to the outside?” I asked.

“Used to be,” he said. “I was in the process of opening everything back up. Never got to finish before that awful weekend.”

I went back up the foyer steps into the living room. Closing my eyes, I tried to envision the path Derrek Sidney would have taken to commit the murders in the order Geneva and law enforcement said he did. What Dan Holland did manage to tell me rang in my ears.

No forced entry. The killer must have known the layout or gotten extremely lucky. He would have had to pass through one room to get to some of the others. I had yet to hear anyone say any of the girls had tried to fight back.