“You found a footprint inside the door.”
“I know what I found.”
“Then please stop trying to sound calm for my benefit.”
That was her mother’s voice coming out of her mouth.
I sat at the kitchen table and told Hannah everything, including the unsigned easement and the message about Friday.
She listened without interrupting.
“You don’t have to solve this alone,” she said.
“I know.”
“Knowing and acting on it are different.”
I promised to ask a locksmith to inspect the door and to let her know when Mara’s technician arrived.
At nine seventeen, a white lab vehicle pulled into my driveway.
The technician introduced herself as Nina Alvarez, a quiet woman with a weathered field bag and a habit of writing every detail before touching anything.
She collected the samples while I stayed behind the patio table.
She photographed the sealed containers, noted their locations, and asked whether anybody had treated the pool within the past week.
I showed her my maintenance log.
The pool service company had visited nine days earlier and recorded normal readings.
“Did you keep the invoice?” Nina asked.
“Every one.”
“Good.”
She inspected the stain with a light that made the bluish particles glimmer faintly.
“Interesting,” she said.
“Interesting good or interesting bad?”
“Interesting enough that I don’t want to speculate.”
She collected the gritty material from the bottom of the shallow end using a sterile tool.
Before leaving, she pointed at a narrow line beneath the pool coping.
“Do you see that?”
A second deposit had accumulated beneath a hairline crack where water could run from the deck toward the basin.
The particles were larger there, like fine grains of colored glass.
“That suggests material arrived from the deck,” Nina said.
“It doesn’t tell us who brought it.”
Her honesty had the odd effect of making me feel safer.
We stood by the front driveway completing the paperwork when a black SUV pulled up across the street.
A man in a tan jacket stepped out, looked at the laboratory markings on Nina’s vehicle, and took a photograph of my house.
Nina saw him too.
“Do you know that person?” she asked.
“No.”
The man climbed back in and drove away before I could read the full license plate.
Twenty minutes later, Meredith called.
“You invited people here without consulting the neighborhood committee,” she said.
“I invited someone to test my own water.”
“You’re making a terrible mistake.”
“Then explain what I’m mistaken about.”
