“I thought the police might need evidence against you.”
“They might need it for something else now.”
She glanced toward Arthur’s driveway.
“Why was my house in that folder?”
Before I could answer, a rusted Ford truck turned onto Oak Creek Drive.
Arthur slowed when he saw the cruisers.
For one second, his truck almost stopped in the middle of the street.
Then he pulled into his driveway as though nothing unusual were happening.
He stepped out wearing a pale work shirt and dark trousers.
His gaze moved from the police tape to the broken shed door, then settled on me.
He did not look surprised to see an ambulance.
He looked angry that the door was open.
“What did you do?” he shouted.
Officer Ramirez intercepted him near the driveway.
“Are you Arthur Vale?”
“This is my property.
That man broke into my shed.
Arrest him.”
“Who is Rachel Hayes?”
Arthur’s jaw tightened.
“Never heard of her.”
The rear doors of the ambulance closed behind him.
Rachel had already told the officers that Arthur arranged her appointment.
He had asked her to notarize a property transfer at his home.
When she arrived, the person whose signature appeared on the deed was not present.
The identification Arthur presented belonged to an elderly woman who had died almost a year earlier.
Rachel refused to stamp the document.
She began taking photographs of the papers because she suspected fraud.
Arthur grabbed her phone, blocked the front door and told her she had misunderstood.
When she tried to leave through the kitchen, he forced her into the backyard and locked her inside the shed.
He had kept her there for six days.
Each evening, he brought a little water and demanded the passcode to her phone.
He also wanted access to her electronic notary account.
Rachel refused both.
Arthur told her no one would hear her because the air conditioners and cicadas covered every sound.
Until my sprinkler broke.
Ramirez did not reveal any of that while questioning him in the driveway.
He simply asked Arthur where he had been that afternoon.
“Running errands.”
“What kind of errands?”
“None of your business.”
“Is that your security camera over the shed?”
Arthur looked up at it.
“It protects my tools.”
“Then it should show us how Rachel Hayes entered your shed.”
Arthur’s eyes flicked toward the ambulance.
It was the first visible crack in his composure.
“That woman broke in,” he said.
“She must have been trying to steal something.”
Ramirez remained calm.
“You just said you had never heard of her.”
Arthur opened his mouth, then looked toward the neighbors as though expecting someone to defend him.
No one did.
Mrs.
Higgins was still recording.
Arthur pointed at me.
