SPRING LAKE - When investigators found the remains of Harmony Jade Creech's body this weekend, she was hidden inside a diaper box in the attic of the family's house, Harnett County Sheriff Larry Rollins said.

The statewide Amber Alert for the 11-month-old baby girl is now canceled, and Harmony's mother, Johni Michelle Heuser, 25, is being held without bail in the Harnett County jail on a charge of first-degree murder. Heuser's other three children are in the custody of the state.

The baby's father, Ronald Earl Creech II, just returned from a 15-month deployment in Iraq. Now, he must bury his daughter, whom he had seen only once during a leave shortly after her birth in January.

Investigators believe Harmony had been dead for three or four weeks, Rollins said.

Those who know Heuser and Creech grieve the loss of the couple's daughter. They wonder what happened in that house that led to Harmony's death.

"Even a crib death, you don't have to be afraid of getting in trouble," said Ron Creech's grandmother, Mary Creech, from her home in Coffee Springs, Ala. "Something don't add up," she added.

Heuser's mother, Brenda Irizarry, picked up Creech at Pope Air Force Base on Friday and drove him to the Spring Lake home he shared with Heuser, Harmony and Heuser's three children from a previous marriage.

But Harmony was gone -- the window near her crib open, and clothes and blankets missing as well. Irizarry called 911 to report her missing granddaughter around 11 a.m., Rollins said.

The Spring Lake home that should have been a place of homecoming celebration for the soldier has turned into a crime scene.

When Harnett County deputies showed up to investigate the missing-child report, the situation looked staged from the outset, the sheriff said Sunday.

An investigator searched the house, including its attic, but they didn't find the baby girl. Instead, deputies issued a statewide Amber Alert. They searched the house again a couple of hours later, Maj. Gary McNeill said.

"At that time, we were thinking we were maybe looking for a child that was alive hopefully," said Rollins, the sheriff. "And if not, we were looking for a child weighing 15 or 16 pounds."

Investigators tried one more time Saturday afternoon.

They discovered, stuffed in a back corner and reachable only with a golf club from an old set stored up in the attic, a Pampers diaper box so light that it could have been empty, Rollins said.

Inside they found Harmony's decomposing body wrapped in a plastic bag, he said. Investigators are waiting for a medical examiner's report to provide a more exact time and cause of death.

Confronted with the discovery of the body, Heuser told investigators she found the baby dead in the crib several weeks ago but didn't notify authorities out of fear.

Irizarry helped her daughter care for her four children, and investigators are trying to figure out when Irizarry last saw the baby. Though Irizarry is cooperating with law enforcement, the time line was still fuzzy as of Sunday afternoon, McNeill said.

Neighbor Bonnie West said Heuser had made excuses in recent weeks when Harmony's grandparents wanted to see her, saying she was asleep. And, West said, Heuser had been more reclusive in recent weeks. Previously, neighbors had complained of the noise from late-night music and parties.

"All of a sudden you couldn't get [Heuser] to open the door," West said. "You could knock and knock and beat and beat."

When Heuser finally did come to the door, West said she would hurry up and close it behind the visitor. Even last week when a water line broke, Heuser was reluctant to let someone in the house to help her fix it, West said.

Around the same time, West said she noticed a disagreeable smell permeating the air outside the house.

"It wasn't no diapers," she said. "When it got cold, you couldn't smell it. Then I noticed it the other day; I said, 'That stench is back.' "

On Sunday afternoon, investigators continued combing through the family's small, brick house. Clothes, baby shoes and diapers had been strewn about the home. A Spiderman sheet covered a dining room window next to a child's highchair.

Photographs of children were hung on one wall. A black-and-white poster of a woman with vampirish teeth in an off-the-shoulder wedding-style dress was prominent on another wall facing the home's front door.

The attic under the dark roof looked tiny, barely tall enough for a grown person to stand erect in.

"It's just a storage area," McNeill said. "It's vacant."