Few on Allston Street knew much about Mary Cerruti when she quietly vanished. But she left behind her own self-portrait in dozens of annotated photographs, developed at Walgreens.

Whether Cerruti intended for others to see them is anyone's guess. A realtor bought her Houston Heights home at a foreclosure auction in late 2015. Then he offered everything inside - trash, he called it - for sale.

Shocked that a missing person's belongings could be sold, neighbor Elizabeth Stein went to see what she might save. She found the photos, which the realtor said she could take. Stein figured she could give them to Cerruti when she returned.

"Little did I know," Stein said.

On March 4, 2017, tenants moving into Cerruti's renovated, cleaned-out house found bones in the wall. She had been missing for two years. A pair of eyeglasses, like the ones she wore, were found nearby.

RELATED: Bones found in wall of Heights home of woman who disappeared in 2015

Officials have sent at least one of the discovered teeth to the University of North Texas for DNA analysis, but it could be months before they have results. The process is time consuming, and the lab has a backlog. Cause of death also remains pending.

The collection of photos, which Stein gave to another concerned neighbor, don't crack the case. Instead, they offer a glimpse at the 61-year-old woman's life in the years before she became a neighborhood activist, taking on the developer building apartments all around her, and then disappeared.

Printed in 2013 and 2014, the images focus on two topics: her cats, who brought her joy at home, and the gentrification of her neighborhood, which infuriated her.

"This is what's left of her, how she felt about the development being built around her," said Roxanne Davis, who held on to the photos. "I wonder what didn't get found, what got thrown away?"

***

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A photograph of a yellow house, surrounded by a chain-link fence and hidden behind much greenery, sets the stage. "My little castle at 610," reads a note on the back.

This is Cerruti's home, located at 610 Allston St. When she moved there around 2001, the block felt sketchy. Today, it's coveted and pristine; her house is painted blue and for sale, listed at $439,900.

Cerruti lived alone with little commotion. Then the gentrification began, and the character of the neighborhood changed, as it has in much of the Heights.

Across the street, new townhouses appeared. A developer razed the houses near her to construct apartments, which Cerruti wrote that she was "completely against."

RELATED: Mysterious bones, a missing woman and the ordinary life she lived

She wasn't alone in noting the changes. Richard Copelyn Jr., who grew up in the neighborhood and still lives a block from Cerruti's old house, observed the expensive homes going up in a place once infested by guns and drugs. The same developer that surrounded Cerruti's home also built new apartments around Copelyn's.

Prior residents would likely be surprised to see Allston Street today. "It's like that type of lifestyle never happened, like those people were never here," he said.

***

Cerruti documented the changes step by step. On the lots facing her, a pair of $500,000-plus townhouses took the place of the two-story "whore house apartments," she wrote. An empty lot adjacent to them was all that became of the "Mexican crash pad." A new blue home on the other side of the lot sold for $680,00, according to her notes.

"(A)m I nuts to think this is nuts?" she asks. "Plus driving up my proberty [sic] taxes like crazy." One neighbor who moved in several years ago said he expects the desirability only to increase. "It was just a matter of time," he said. "It was just prime property."

Transition occurred up and down the block. Bradley Smith, owner of Smith Family Homes, built a row of townhouses on what used to be a wooded area at the opposite end of Cerruti. It became part of the street's transformation from highly neglected to desirable and upscale.

The hike and bike trail now runs past the end of the block, and trendy, new restaurants are a short distance away.

"It was more of a revitalization, instead of a gentrification," Smith said.

***

Long-time Heights resident Sally Romano too noticed the neighborhood "really beginning to change," she wrote in an email. But the bulldozing saddened her, erasing the area's diversity and character and replacing it with what she called homogeneous, soulless buildings.

Romano also started to worry about Cerruti - so much so that she asked police to check on her in 2013. She passed the house at 610 Allston daily when she walked her dog, and had noticed mail and newspapers going uncollected, according to a 911 call slip. And her cats weren't being fed.

The house, as shown in the photos, remained like a personal, funky oasis. A Houston Post newspaper rack sat near a red Adirondack chair on the porch. A large bronzed Texas star hung next to the front door of the wood paneled house.

The interior decor was a mish-mash: Frida Kahlo and Susan Sarandon portraits. "Reservoir Dogs" and "Pulp Fiction" posters. Dozens of tin Mexican ornaments, many shaped like hearts.

All indicated Cerruti was creative and artistic, said Stein, who went to the estate sale after the house sold in November 2015. She bought a mid-century coffee table and a door knocker in the shape of a gecko. And she took the photos.

***

When Trammell Crow Residential began work in 2013 on the adjacent property, the construction noise began daily at 6:30 a.m., according to Cerruti's notes.

Down went the white warehouse next door, which she noted was reassembled elsewhere rather than trashed. Down went two new houses "because they are in the way of the 450 apartments." Down went tree after tree. (Much of the land had been owned by Pappas Restaurants, but a company spokesperson declined to comment.)

RELATED: Mystery in the Heights: What happened to Mary?

Cerruti had refused to sell. But she wrote that the bulldozers and backhoes made her wish she had moved, even if the developer made what she considered "very poor offers."

She saw her situation mirrored in the white bungalow down the street. Townhouses, including those built by Smith and another set by Carnegie Homes, went up on either side of the home. "Now she's strangled," Cerruti wrote.

Mary Young, 78, still lives in that home. Her father was raised there, she said, and so was she, and her son after that. People often ask to buy it, but she's not selling. she said.

***

Sometimes, amid the construction chaos, her cats hid from her, Cerruti wrote.

In the photos, felines blend in everywhere. A tabby sprawls on a wicker table. A kitten snuggles in a shoe box. Five curl between the items on her desk. Little Spot, Sweetie, Slim.

Mr. Buddy, a big gray cat, was "everybody's pal," she wrote - especially when it came to the rescued kittens. "Nothing is cuter than a Siamese kitten," she scrawled.

But they also got into trouble, biting the phone line ("the dead phone problem"), destroying panties and shoes ("all are fair game") and pouncing on each other after eating wet cat food ("like a shot of adrenaline").

"Eight cats is way too many cats," Cerruti wrote.

Later, when Cerruti went missing, six were reported dead.

***

Neighbors tried to keep an eye on Cerruti as time progressed. Davis emailed Trammell Crow on her behalf at least once in early 2015 when construction equipment had blocked her driveway and her water had been cut off.

"Our construction personnel do follow up with Ms. Cerruti regularly to see if she is OK," Trammell Crow's Scot Davis wrote in reply. (When reached by phone, Davis declined to be interviewed.)

Residents began moving into the apartments that year around May. The townhomes sold quickly. Rachel Conkling, of Martha Turner Sotheby's, sold one that summer within two weeks of listing the property.

The Heights now is "the place to be," said Conkling, who added that she lives there herself.

***

In June, police received calls with requests to check on Cerruti on two consecutive days.

Diane Hallman, who lived a few houses down, placed one after noticing a broken window at the home. She saw the police come over but never knew if the situation was resolved. "We just assumed that, well, everything turned out to be OK," Hallman said.

The police didn't find Cerruti. They had no reason then to suspect she was in the attic, and they don't enter homes on welfare checks if nothing seems amiss, HPD spokesperson Jodi Silva said.

"It wasn't out of her nature to disappear," she added.It took another six weeks for a missing person's report to be opened, more than a year for the bones to be found in the home. And still no one knows what happened to her.

Only one image in the collection depicts Cerruti herself.

It shows only her shadow, stretching over the torn-up sidewalk in front of her home, the little castle at 610.

***

BONES: It was the summer of 2015 and Mary Cerruti had vanished. Her Heights neighbors were worried. Mail piled up in front of her bungalow and a window broke. Six dead cats were reported inside. A new apartment complex she opposed had just been built around her home, but no one could figure out where Mary had gone. The house sold late that year at a foreclosure auction. The mystery remained. Then new residents moving in on March 4, 2017, encountered a startling surprise: they found bones, and a pair of eyeglasses, in the wall. Follow the story below:

Part 1: Bones found in wall of Heights home of woman who disappeared in 2015

Part 2: Mysterious bones, a missing woman and the ordinary life she lived

Part 3: Before she went missing, Mary Cerruti left a self-portrait at her home in the Houston Heights

Read more on our subscriber site at HoustonChronicle.com/Bones.