Cole frowned, flipping the small brass bow in his hand under the gray sky. "Township True Value," he read, his voice dropping. "Transaction 4812. Date: October twenty-first. Time: eleven forty-two AM."
A dead silence fell across the yard.
"Eleven forty-two," I said, fixing my eyes on Evelyn. "Two hours ago. My mother and I were at Saint Luke’s eleven o'clock mass. Father Thomas spoke with us until eleven-thirty, and my cousins arrived at noon. We didn't buy that lock."
Evelyn’s knuckles went bloodless against her iPad. "I told the officer I found it by your mailbox curb," she spat, her smooth veneer slipping into a cold hiss. "Whoever you hired to dump that poison must have dropped it running away."
"Nobody hired anyone, Evelyn," I said. "And nobody drops a fresh key with a store tag still on it two hours after buying it, right before you suddenly hear imaginary screams."
I didn't wait for Miller’s consent. I turned toward the property line where Evelyn’s new stone terrace met our overgrown garden border.
Through the damp black mulch ran a fresh, unmistakable single-wheel rut from a heavy poly wheelbarrow. It led from our cellar doors, through where Evelyn had unclipped our wire fence, straight to her potting shed.
Sitting in the open bed of her utility cart on her side of the wire was an empty sack of quick-set mortar, a cordless impact driver with gray dust on the chuck, and a red-and-black blister package: Master Lock Discus Padlocks — Keyed-Alike Two-Pack.
One plastic shell was torn open and empty. The matching twin padlock sat sealed in the second bubble, resting right beside a crumpled True Value register receipt.
"Don't look over here!" Evelyn shrieked, rushing down her terrace steps. "Officer, he’s trespassing! He’s harassing me on my own property!"
I pulled my phone from my pocket and leaned over the wire, aiming the camera straight at the matching lock and the receipt.
Before I could tap the shutter, Miller slammed his tactical vest into my ribs.
The impact drove my shoulder into the cedar post as Miller twisted my right arm behind my back, forcing me down until my phone dropped into the mud, its glass cracking against a stone.
"I gave you an order to step back!" Miller snarled in my ear, his weight pinning me to the fence. "Interfere with this scene again, and you go into the cruiser in handcuffs for felony obstruction!"
Across the grass, my mother wept into Sarah’s shoulder, begging me to stop.
Through the fence slats, I saw Evelyn Vance watch with a tight, triumphant smirk as she scooped the register receipt from her cart and slid it into her linen pocket.
Miller wasn't going to check her cart. He had drawn his weapon on an elderly woman’s birthday, and he was determined to let Code Enforcement condemn the house to bury his mistake.
If I stayed silent and waited for the township inspector, my mother would be escorted away by dusk, and Evelyn would have her condemnation. Playing by their rules was going to cost us everything.
CHAPTER 2 CONTINUED
Miller hesitated for a fraction of a second, his breath hitching against the back of my neck. Behind us, the high-pitched chirp of a township cruiser’s computer sounded from the street, followed immediately by the low, diesel rumble of the Township Code Compliance utility truck pulling up against our curb.
"Get up," Miller muttered, yanking my collar just hard enough to drag my chest out of the dirt before releasing my right arm. "Stand on the grass and keep your hands out of your pockets."
I rose slowly, wiping black topsoil from the knuckles of my left hand. My phone lay face-down two feet away, its screen webbed with white fracture lines. I didn't reach for it. If I touched the glass, Miller would claim I was reaching for an unidentified object. Instead, I stood upright, squared my chest, and looked past Miller straight at Cole.
Cole was staring at the ground between our cellar bulkhead and the open gap in the boundary wire.
The afternoon sun broke through the low October overcast for three seconds, casting a sharp, raking light across the turf. In that light, the single-wheel rut from the utility cart wasn't just an indentation in the lawn. Along the left edge of the track, pressed into the blades of Kentucky bluegrass, sat a trail of wet, slate-gray spatters. It was hydraulic cement slurry, shaking free from the undercarriage of the wheelbarrow as it had been pushed across the property line toward Evelyn’s terrace.
"Look at the grass, Cole," I said quietly.