CHAPTER TWO: THE SIX ENVELOPES

At the curb, Bell showed Carol photographs of six similar envelopes without exposing the recipients’ personal information.
Each carried Carol’s street number and the same green paw logo.
Each was postmarked within four days of the others.
“Those could have been printed by anyone,” Carol said.
“That’s one possibility,” Bell replied.
“Then go investigate somebody else.”
“We are investigating the mailings.”
A passing cyclist slowed to look at the ruined mailbox, and Carol snapped at him to keep moving.
Daniel had seen this tactic for years.
Carol treated witnesses as enemies until the witnesses began to doubt whether the trouble was worth their time.
This time the tactic did not work.
Ortiz asked Carol to confirm whether she had maintained an outgoing-mail station for Meadow Haven.


Carol refused to answer without knowing the exact accusation.
“We’re not accusing you of a crime in your driveway,” Bell said.
“We are asking how your home address appeared on correspondence to six former customers.”
“People borrow addresses all the time.”
“Not usually for letters that claim to settle complaints those customers never agreed to settle.”
Daniel looked up.
He had heard something about a settlement from his neighbor Amy Farrell, whose elderly beagle had returned from Meadow Haven limping and frightened.
Amy had described a formal letter that promised her a refund if she signed an acknowledgment saying the injuries occurred before boarding.
She had refused and called the business herself.
The manager told her no one there had sent such a letter.
Now Daniel understood why Amy had wondered whether somebody was impersonating the company.


“Is Amy one of the six?” he asked.
Bell looked at him without confirming it.
“We can talk privately about anything you know.”
Carol laughed too loudly.
“Everybody complains about something once their dog gets old.”
“Amy’s dog was eight,” Daniel said.
“Old enough.”
“His leg was broken.”
Carol’s smile failed.
Bell invited her to continue the conversation at her house, and she finally agreed.
She retrieved her hammer only after Ortiz said it would need to remain where it was for the local responding officer.
Daniel watched her walk toward the neighboring porch with the small, rigid steps of a person refusing to appear frightened.
His phone vibrated.
Amy had sent a message containing two words.
“Did you see?”
Daniel answered that federal inspectors were outside Carol’s house.
Amy called immediately.
“I knew she was part of it,” she said.
“Part of what?”
“They’ve been telling families their pets were already sick when they arrived.”
“Who has?”
“Meadow Haven.”
She took a moment before explaining.
Her beagle Chester had been boarded for nine days while she cared for her father after surgery.
When she collected him, he could barely put weight on his back leg.
The attendant said Chester must have slipped on her porch before arriving.
Amy knew that was impossible because she had carried him through the reception doors herself.
The next day a letter arrived, carrying Carol’s return address and a prepaid gift-card offer.
It described the injury as a preexisting condition and asked her to sign a waiver before receiving the card.
“I thought Carol was just their neighborhood customer liaison,” Amy said.
“What happened when you asked her?”
“She told me I was upsetting a lot of good people.”
Daniel looked at Carol’s front curtains.
“Why didn’t you tell me?”
“I tried.”
He remembered the afternoon she had stopped him at the driveway and mentioned Chester.
He had been late for work and said he hoped the dog recovered.
At the time he had not understood she was asking for help.
“I’m listening now,” he said.
Amy sounded tired rather than grateful.
“Good, because my letter wasn’t the worst one.”