The first officer asked us to separate and lower our voices.
Patricia immediately called the camera a neighborhood safety device.
I held it up without allowing either of us to touch the lens.
“Before anyone decides where this belongs,” I said, “I’d like her to explain how she knew I found it.”
For the first time in eleven years of living next door to Patricia Bell, I watched her search for an answer.
Chapter 2: An Offer Too Helpful
Six weeks earlier, I would have trusted Patricia with my spare keys.
That admission still bothered me long after the police left my porch.
When I damaged my knee while carrying lumber down the basement stairs, she was the first neighbor to appear with an ice pack and an offer to drive me to urgent care.
I had thanked her sincerely.
She had lived next door for seven years and seemed to know every resident within three blocks.
She organized holiday cookie exchanges, collected donations for the animal shelter, and kept a handwritten list of elderly residents who needed help after snowstorms.
She was fifty-five, with cropped brown hair, careful makeup, and an ability to make ordinary advice sound like an instruction.
My surgery kept me off work for two weeks.
The physical therapist warned me against lifting furniture, bending deeply, or climbing the basement steps unnecessarily.
Patricia arrived with a brochure for BrightDay Home Services.
“I used them when my mother was recovering,” she told me.
“They’re discreet, and they can clean while you’re resting.”
I was desperate enough for help that I called the number before she finished her coffee.
A woman named Jasmine Ortiz scheduled two afternoon visits.
The first cleaner, a quiet young man called Leo, arrived in a navy shirt and covered his shoes before stepping inside.
He cleaned the kitchen and downstairs bathroom while I slept upstairs.
The second visit happened three days later with a different employee named Fallon.
Patricia brought over soup that afternoon and offered to answer the door if I was tired.
I remember hearing two women speaking softly in the living room.
I assumed Patricia was explaining where I kept the vacuum cleaner.
That assumption would eventually cost me more than a little embarrassment.
There was no alarm when I woke, no broken lock, and no missing jewelry.
My television was in its usual place.
The mantel clock stood exactly where my father had put it after my mother died.
