When Larkin returned, his expression was careful.
“She says she entered to check on a possible chemical spill,” he reported.
“She says she thought you had asked the neighborhood committee to inspect the pool.”
“I did not.”
“She also claims she saw a discolored patch yesterday.”
“Yesterday the water was clear.”
“I wrote down both statements.”
I asked if she had shown him the silver container.
“She denied carrying one.”
There was little more he could do that afternoon, but he offered to request any available street camera footage and explained how to preserve a record of the messages.
After he left, I called my former colleague, Dr. Mara Bell, who ran an independent environmental laboratory in Maryville.
Mara and I had worked together during a county groundwater survey years before.
She could tell a genuine sample from a conveniently contaminated one, but she was also blunt about the limits of any test.
“What color did you say?” she asked.
“Pale blue, almost silver when the light hits it.”
“Don’t guess what it is. Don’t let anybody swim.”
“I wasn’t planning to.”
“I’ll send a field technician to collect separate samples from the pool, filter and deck.”
“How soon?”
“Tomorrow morning.”
She paused before asking a question that seemed unrelated.
“Have there been any excavation crews near your drainage ditch?”
I looked toward the trees beyond the wall.
“Why?”
“Because last month somebody asked us about a tracer used in a closed industrial cleanup survey.”
“What does that have to do with my pool?”
“I don’t know yet,” she said.
“And I would rather tell you nothing than invent an explanation.”
That night I slept in the guest room with the bedroom door open.
At two fourteen in the morning, my outdoor motion light came on.
I reached the window in time to see a figure on the far side of the stone wall.
The person carried a long black case and moved toward the old drainage channel.
I could not see a face.
But when the figure stepped into the streetlight, I saw a bright green strip around one wrist.
Meredith’s contractor wore the same green tape on his work gloves.
By seven the following morning, my daughter had called three times.
She had seen the photograph of the pool that I sent her and immediately wanted me to stay at her house.
“Dad, somebody entered your home,” Hannah said.
“We don’t know that yet.”
