Chapter Four: An Invitation to Disappear
Carol waited until the afternoon heat drove everybody indoors.
Then she knocked on Ethan’s door with a foil-covered casserole dish.
He opened it far enough to speak but not far enough to accept the dish.
“I brought you supper,” she said.
“I have supper.”
“You always were stubborn.”
“You destroyed my plumbing this morning.”
Her gaze dropped to the dish.
“I know.”
The admission sounded too exhausted to be a strategy.
Ethan stepped onto the porch and closed the door behind him.
“Why?”
Carol looked toward the street.
“Did the inspector find all of it?”
“All of what?”
“The tubing.”
“He found enough.”
She exhaled shakily.
“Then Adrian is going to blame me.”
Ethan remained silent.
Carol had spent years complaining about his truck and hedge trimmings.
He had never seen her hesitate over the consequences of being disliked.
“You should tell the inspector what you know,” he said.
“That inspector isn’t the one who owns my house.”
“What does your house have to do with this?”
Carol shifted the dish to her other arm.
“Two years ago, I refinanced after my husband died.”
She stopped, struggling to say the next words.
“Adrian helped when nobody else would.”
Ethan resisted the urge to supply a comforting answer.
“Did he make you do something in return?”
“He asked me to introduce him to people.”
“People on this block.”
She nodded.
“He said he was building a heritage project based on the old waterworks.”
“And the tubing?”
“Derek told me it was for demonstrations.”
“What kind of demonstrations?”
“I thought it measured flow,
” she said.
“Then I saw what they were doing at night.”
A pickup passed slowly on the street.
Carol pulled back from the porch as though the driver might recognize her.
“What were they doing?” Ethan asked.
“They were filling bottles behind the theater.”
“From the houses?”
“From a supply they called the corridor.”
She looked miserable.
“They wanted pictures of people tasting water from each house.”
“Why hide the supply inside our plumbing?”
“Adrian said the source needed a continuous path to preserve its characteristics.”
Ethan stared at her.
“That doesn’t mean anything.”
“It sounded important when he said it.”
Carol swallowed.
“Last month Derek told me the city was asking about pressure changes.”
“So you broke my pipe.”
“Adrian said they would arrest every homeowner who let the project happen.”
“You could have warned us.”
“I thought if the tubing was gone, the whole thing would stop.”
Ethan thought of Nina’s laundry room and Raymond’s photograph.
“There are more connections,” he said.
Carol covered her mouth.
“He told me yours was the last one.”
“You believed him?”
“I needed to believe him.”
Ethan shook his head.
“You don’t get to damage somebody else’s property because you’re afraid of the man you helped.”
“I know that now.”
“You knew it when you picked up the hammer.”
Carol held out the casserole.
Ethan looked at it for several seconds.
“I don’t want your dinner,” he said.
“I want you to tell Moreno everything.”
He went inside and shut the door.
Through the glass, he watched her carry the dish home without looking up.
He was angry enough to hope the inspector would arrive before she could invent another story.
Then he noticed the same painted water-droplet van parking behind Carol’s house.
Its driver carried a black case toward her rear gate.
