I looked toward Lydia.
“You brought that here.”
She shook her head.
“You're confused.”
“No.”
I pointed toward the garage.
“That tool hasn't left my property.”
Lydia smiled.
“Then maybe you should explain why it was beside the statue.”
Before I could answer, sirens appeared at the end of the street.
Two police cars stopped outside my house.
Lydia stepped away from the broken statue.
She looked completely calm.
That's when I understood.
She hadn't called the police after the statue was destroyed.
She had called them before I even reached the garden.
She had planned the scene.
And she had planned for me to be standing beside it when the police arrived.
The officers entered the garden.
One of them immediately looked at me.
“Sir, step away from the statue.”
“I didn't destroy it.”
“Then tell us why your tool is lying beside it.”
I looked at Lydia.
She lowered her eyes.
She was pretending to be frightened.
But I could see the satisfaction on her face.
Then one of the officers noticed something near the statue's base.
A second piece of evidence.
A glove.
My glove.
The same type I used when working in the garden.
The situation looked terrible.
Too terrible.
Almost perfect.
And that was exactly why I knew it had been manufactured.
I had spent fifty-one years learning one thing about old houses.
Nothing stays perfect.
The garden was full of imperfections.
But this scene was too clean.
Too convenient.
The hammer.
The glove.
The broken statue.
The witness.
The police arriving almost immediately.
Someone had built a story.
And they expected me to play the villain.
I refused.
The first thing I did was call Dr. Julia Ames.
She arrived with Dr. Elaine Foster, the sculpture specialist who had examined the statue before.
Elaine looked at the broken pieces without touching them.
Then she crouched near the base.
“This wasn't done with a hammer.”
I stared at her.
“What?”
She pointed toward the fracture.
“The damage is inconsistent with the tool placed beside it.”
The officer looked at her.
“You're certain?”
“Yes.”
She examined another fragment.