Chapter Two: Four Houses

By nine o’clock, Ethan’s kitchen taps carried official warning tags.
Moreno had arranged for the affected connection to be isolated pending testing.
A city crew brought temporary drinking water and explained which household fixtures should not be used.
Ethan thanked the crew, then looked at the stack of clean dishes he could no longer wash.
His immediate problem was simple and maddening.
A neighbor had broken his water supply because she was frightened of a small piece of plastic.
His larger problem walked up the driveway wearing bright yellow rain boots.
Nina Patel, who lived two doors down, held a gallon jug in one hand and a tablet computer in the other.
“You got the blue tube too?” she asked.
Ethan showed her Moreno’s contact information.


“Apparently you’re not the only one.”
Nina was a pastry instructor at the community college.
She had bought her house three years earlier and usually avoided neighborhood disputes.
This morning she looked ready to argue with a fire engine.
“The city visited my basement on Thursday,” she said.
“They found an extra connection behind my old laundry sink.”
“Did anyone work there recently?”
“A man named Derek installed a garden misting demonstration last spring.”
Ethan frowned.
“Why would a garden misting demonstration need your laundry room?”
Nina gave him a humorless smile.
“That’s precisely what I asked yesterday.”
She showed him a photograph from her own plumbing inspection.
The tiny tubing was transparent and stained pale blue.
“The man said he represented the community beautification committee,” she continued.
“Carol told me it was harmless and that the neighborhood would receive free landscaping.

”
A teenage girl on a bicycle stopped near Ethan’s open gate.
“Are you Ethan Cole?” she asked.
“Yes.”
“I’m Tessa Finch.”
She pointed down the street.
“My grandfather’s home is the third one with the tubes.”
Ethan knew the grandfather, a retired band teacher named Raymond Finch.
Raymond kept his curtains open and played old jazz records loud enough to reach the sidewalk.
“Is he all right?” Ethan asked.
“He’s angry,” Tessa replied.
“Which means he’s probably fine.”
She handed Ethan an unopened brochure.
The front showed a sunlit mountain spring.
The back showed Raymond smiling beside a branded bottle.
“Grandpa never agreed to be in that advertisement,” Tessa said.
Ethan read the headline.
Alder Spring: The Water Our Elders Remember.
“Where did this come from?”
“It’s being handed out for Saturday’s launch at the old theater.”
Nina examined the brochure.
“Why is the address for the supposed spring a mailbox store?”
Tessa shrugged.
“That’s one of the questions Grandpa asked before somebody called him a troublemaker.”
A police cruiser pulled in beside the utility truck.
Officer Jana Brooks emerged, followed by Carol, who had walked over from her own house.
Carol appeared composed again.
Her hair was tied back, and the hammer had disappeared.
“I want to file a nuisance complaint,” she announced.
“His leaking pipe ruined my garden.”
Ethan pointed to the pieces of copper on his porch.
“Your hammer ruined the pipe.”
Brooks asked everyone to speak one at a time.
Moreno joined them and carefully distinguished the damaged plumbing from the mystery connection.
“I cannot yet say what the tube carried,” he told the officer.
“I can say it was placed where no approved household device belongs.”
Carol crossed her arms.
“Derek said the city approved it.”
Silence followed.
Moreno took out his notebook.
“Which Derek?”
Carol’s expression shifted.
She had named someone she had meant to keep hidden.
“I don’t remember his last name.”
“Then give me the business that employed him,” Moreno said.
“I don’t have to answer questions on my lawn,” Carol snapped.
Brooks looked at the wet ground beneath their feet.
“You’re standing on Mr. Cole’s lawn.”
Tessa made a small choking sound as she suppressed a laugh.
Carol turned away.
“You’ll all regret making this public,” she said.
Ethan watched her cross the sidewalk.
The threat bothered him less than the frightened way she glanced toward the theater district.
Whatever Alder Spring was selling, Carol believed a tiny tube could ruin it.