Norma ruffled Javi’s hair and kissed him on his crown. “I’m glad you’re okay,” she said fondly. “We’ll just have to wait for Ramón to get home and see if he can fix the cameras.”
Javi shook his head. “He’d be better off picking up one of those wireless ones you stick on your front door, the kind that text your cell phone when you get packages and stuff. They probably have a better range anyway.”
“Hopefully, you won’t need them anymore,” I said.
“Did that young man say who was responsible for all those horrible messages?” Gloria asked.
“Not exactly,” I said delicately.
Javi shook his head. “I can’t believe you let him go before I had the chance to beat some answers out of him.”
“Actually, I think I may have figured out who it was.” I unfolded the Hooters receipts and set them on the table in front of Vero.
Her fork clattered to her plate. She pushed back her chair and stormed from the table.
“Where are you going?” Javi called after her as she raced out the door.
Norma and Gloria looked concerned as I scooped up the receipts. “Excuse us. We won’t be gone long. There’s just someone we need to talk to.” I jumped out of my seat and ran outside. By the time I reached Sophia’s house, Vero was already banging on her front door.
“Open the door, Sophia! I know you’re in there!” she shouted, holding the bag of dog shit.
“What are you doing?” I said, catching my breath. Vero wasn’t even winded. If anything, she looked like she had a dangerous amount of energy to spare. “For all we know, Sophia’s not even home!”
“This place reeks of her snotty aura. I know she’s in there. I know you’re in there!” Vero leaned back to shout at the windows.
“Stop yelling, you’re going to wake up the whole neighborhood!”
She raised her fist to knock again, but the door flew open.
Sophia held it wide, wearing pink silk pajamas and a pair of fuzzy Crocs. “I would say it’s good to see you, Veronica, but a lie of that magnitude would take too much effort. It’s early, and I haven’t had enough coffee for that. Shouldn’t you be on the other side of the street, or is your alarm not loud enough to be heard over your mouth?”
“I’m going to make you wish the police hadn’t taken that tracking bracelet off my ankle.” There was a dangerous glint in Vero’s eyes. She looked a little unhinged as she dropped the bag of shit between them.
Sophia covered her nose, recoiling from the smell. She paled as her gaze shot to Vero’s ankle. She backed into her house and tried to slam the door, but Vero stuck a foot in it.
“Admit it! You paid that guy to vandalize my mother’s house!”
“Where’s your sense of humor? It washed off!”
“Sense of humor?! He broke my mother’s window! He spray-painted her garage! You think that’s funny?”
“I have no idea what you’re talking about! I paid him for a couple of bags of burning dog shit, and that’s all!” Sophia leaned all of her weight against the door. Vero grunted as she struggled to hold it open.
“And you did the rest of the dirty work yourself! All those letters you sent to me in Virginia! All those notes you put in my mother’s mailbox and in her door!”
“What notes? Have you completely lost your mind?” Sophia cried. “I should call your boyfriend and have him come get you before I call the cops.” Sophia pulled out her cell phone with one hand and thumbed open her contacts while she struggled to hold the door shut with the other.
Vero reached inside and grabbed the phone away from her. Shetossed it over her shoulder to me. I had to use both hands to catch it against my chest. “Check her Ring footage,” Vero said, bracing an arm in front of Sophia as she lunged for her phone. “I bet we’ll find videos of her leaving her house with those notes in her hand. That’s probably why Wendell saw her on the street that night. This conniving bitch wasn’t out for a jog. She was running from the scene of her own crime!”
I hurriedly thumbed through Sophia’s apps until I found the one that connected to her camera. I clicked the button to open her event history.
“Give me a date,” I called out to Vero.
She called out a date. It was the night the rock came through the window. Wendell had said he’d seen Sophia going out for a jog. I scrolled to an event that coincided with the timing of our dinner, expecting to catch a few seconds of footage of Sophia leaving her house, but all I saw was her mother coming home from work. “See her?”
“No. Give me another.”
Vero called out another date. It would have been Vero’s first week on house arrest, the same week Norma said she got the threatening note on her windshield.
