Not a single strand of her reddish brown hair out of place.

In the six months she lived on Calhoun Avenue, she struck her neighbors as "friendly," but kind of "on the quiet side." Not the sort of young woman who liked to be the center of attention.

Yet in the wee hours of the morning Sunday around 3 a.m. her mattress burst into flames.

Wanda's next door neighbor, Adel Fuentes, who lives less than 20 feet away in another multi-family house, smelled the smoke even before he was fully awake, and knew something bad was happening.

"I could see into her bedroom from my place and when I looked I saw all of this smoke and fire," Fuentes said. "I called 911" at 3:02 a.m. Nineteen Bridgeport firefighters, two rescue trucks and a ladder crew arrived within five minutes.

The firefighters smashed the glass to the windows outside Wanda's first-floor bedroom. Her mattress was engulfed in flames. Nothing they could do could save Wanda. They found her body sprawled on her mattress. "She definitely was dead before the fire," Fuentes said, an authoritative air in his voice. "One of the police said someone hit her right here on the side of her head and her skull was cracked," Fuentes said, pointing to the side of his own head. "The police said she got hit hard."

Bridgeport Police Lt. James Viadero declined to discuss any specifics of the case or to release the victim's name, despite acknowledging that her next of kin already had been notified. "We are treating this as an active investigation," Viadero said. "Her body is in Farmington now and the medical examiner is going to conduct an autopsy" to determine the cause and manner of her death. Meanwhile, the Bridgeport Fire Department is treating the fire as a possible arson case.

Bridgeport police spent six hours combing through the debris, the burned mattress and the contents of Wanda's apartment, collecting papers and other material as part of their investigation.

Consuelo Guerrera, who lived in a multi-family house next door, knew Wanda as a shy "muchacha," she said as her friend Angel Rivera translated her Spanish. "Everybody liked her. She was a nice and quiet girl. A little chubby. Very pretty. Elegant."

Guerrera and Wanda had one thing in common: they shared the same landlord, Rafael Gonzalez.

Guerrera didn't recall ever seeing Wanda light a cigarette, and through Rivera, she said their landlord was "always very safety conscious." All of his apartments had smoke detectors in them.

Every now and then, Wanda talked to Gonzalez about her love life. She was a lesbian. And she had a lover. Three weeks ago, they broke up.

It was a bitter end, Wanda's neighbors say. Real nasty.

Maribel Rozon, who lives up the street from where Wanda lived, said the break-up was common knowledge on the block. "They had a fight or something," Rozon said. "Then she was living alone."

Sunday afternoon folks on the block were sitting on their front stoops watching Wanda's place, with the yellow crime-scene tape crisscrossed by her front door, and the blackened medical gloves — four of them discarded near the charred mattress remains and the green tomato plants in the front yard. The police went in and out of the house collecting papers and some of Wanda's things. In the midst of this, Rozen said, a teen-aged relative of Wanda's showed up.

"She told us that she was worried all night because" Wanda "was supposed to be at somebody's house for a party." And Wanda never called to say she wouldn't be there. For someone with a reputation for being thoughtful and considerate, it was out of character.