Chapter Thirty-Five: The Message on Monday
On Monday morning, Marcus found a handwritten note tucked beneath the windshield wiper of his truck.
The note contained no threat, but its first sentence made him uneasy.
It claimed that someone at the association meeting had been keeping a separate list of residents who objected to Margaret’s proposal.
The writer asked Marcus to come to the community center before the list was destroyed.
Marcus read the note beside the truck, then placed it inside an envelope without showing it to Nia.
His daughter was already late for school and was arguing with her backpack zipper.
He drove her to the entrance, watched her join her classmates, and called Evelyn from the parking lot.
Evelyn sounded surprised when he described the note.
“There is no authorized list like that,
” she said.
“Our attendance sheet is public to members, but nobody was asked to record which side people took.”
Marcus asked her not to discard any meeting materials until they understood what had happened.
Evelyn agreed and offered to meet him at the center after lunch.
When Marcus arrived, he found Evelyn and a volunteer named Beatrice Lane sorting papers in the storage room.
Beatrice had served as the meeting secretary for nearly a decade.
She showed Marcus the attendance sheet, the agenda, and a folder of written comments residents had submitted.
“There was one thing that bothered me,” she admitted.
“A man I didn’t recognize sat near the back and collected names from people who signed a petition.”
Marcus asked what the petition concerned.
“He said it was a request for better street lighting,
” Beatrice replied.
“I never saw the finished document.”
Evelyn frowned.
“We didn’t authorize a lighting petition at that meeting.”
Beatrice opened a drawer and removed a small square of paper.
“He left this when he borrowed my pen.”
The paper bore a printing-shop logo and a telephone number.
Marcus recognized the logo from a flyer that had appeared on several neighborhood doors the previous week.
The flyer had advertised a private security service offering patrols for neighborhoods that felt unsafe.
Evelyn searched the association inbox and found a message from the same business.
The company had offered a discounted introductory contract shortly after Margaret’s original 911 call.
Marcus read the dates carefully.
“That doesn’t prove the company started the rumors,” he said.
“It does mean we should ask why somebody was collecting signatures without explaining who would receive them.”
Evelyn called the printing shop while Beatrice made copies of the papers.
The employee confirmed that the flyers had been ordered by a local sales representative named Graham Pike.
The shop would not release private billing information, but it confirmed that Pike had collected the order himself.
Marcus remembered the unfamiliar message that had asked him to visit the storage building after dark.
He took out his phone and compared the number with the one on Beatrice’s paper.
The numbers were different, but the message used the same peculiar phrase as the flyer.
Both referred to the neighborhood as a place where ordinary residents had lost control of their own streets.
Marcus set the phone on the table.
“We need to know whether these people are selling fear or responding to it,” he said.
Evelyn looked toward the meeting room.
“Either way, I won’t let our association become their advertisement.”
