I hold very still on the ceiling. Any color shift, any ripple, and I become a very conspicuous patch of ceiling.
“That car hasn’t run in thirty years,” Gary says.
“That is exactly my point. Someonetowedit. In the night. And then there’s that coyote you found. Oh, I should write that down too.” She’s quiet again as she furiously adds more to the note.
Gary reads aloud, “’Wounds inconsistent with predation.‘Where in the world did you get that phrasing from?”
“I heard it in a murder documentary, and that’s exactly how you described it!”
“Well, not in those exact words. But sure.” Gary pauses.
“Your poor little Captain. That coyote. My beautiful Bel Air. Something is happening out here, Gary, and I intend to find out what.”
They leave.
Mrs. Pritchett’s golf cart whines to life, and the two are gone.
I track them through the foundation until the vibrations fade past the property line, then I peel myself down the wall in a slow pour and settle onto the hallway floor, letting my color return in stages.
The note is wedged under the front door.
A torn sheet of lined paper, folded once, with Mrs. Pritchett’s handwriting on both sides and a smudge of Gary’s ink in the corner.
I read it through the paper without unfolding it, feeling the pressure grooves of each letter through my surface.
It’s what I already heard, but there’s an additional line after.Town meeting tomorrowat 6pm at Diner—D. Pritchett.
A town meeting.
A neighborhood watch forming around a dead coyote and a vanished car.
Mrs. Pritchett is assembling a case file.
Maisie’s truck pulls into the driveway at 12:47.
I hear the engine from half a mile out, the particular rattle of the exhaust manifold, and I’m already off the floor and compressed into the hallway by the time she kills the ignition.
She sits in the cab for a full minute before getting out.
Her heartbeat is fast and shallow, her breathing tight in her upper chest.
She comes through the front door carrying two paper bags and kicks it shut with her heel.
She pauses when she sees the note on the floor, picks it up, reads it, reads it again.
“Oh, fantastic,” she says.
I make myself apparent then. “Gary and Mrs. Pritchett came by. It seems there’s a mysterydeveloping.”
She looks at me. The circles under her eyes are darker than they were this morning. “There always is in this town. Strange happenings. But now it’s personal because somebody took Mrs. Pritchett’s yard art.” She lets out a groan. “I can’t be dealing with this right now. Oz, my grandmother will be here soon.”
“I know.”
“She can smell a lie from forty yards. I mean, she once made a car salesman cry after he tried to sell her a lemon.”
“Why? Because it was sour?”
Maisie frowns at me for a moment, before letting out a delighted laugh, relaxing for the first time today. “No, I don’t mean the fruit. ‘Lemon’ also means a car that’s going to crap out on you the second you drive it off the lot.”
