“And if you rewind ...” He moved his finger across his phone. “If you rewind, you find this taking place around 2:00 a.m. this morning.”
They crowded around Miles’s phone. Kiersten squinted at the image of a tall person in black, entering the partially constructed home, carrying a can of spray paint, his features obscured by the hood on his dark sweatshirt, and a baseball cap.
“Excuse me, officer,” Matthew said, his voice authoritative but respectful.
The officer looked over at him. “Yes, young man?”
“If you look at the very beginning of that video, you can see our neighbor, Lillian Landry, in the corner of the frame, sitting out on her front porch. She would have overheard the entire conversation. I’m sure she can vouch for the fact that he invited us to come over here.”
“I’ll go get her,” Rosamund said.
The officer ran a hand through his hair and exhaled loudly. “You guys need to know something.”
Kiersten’s eyebrows rose in alarm. “What?”
“This isn’t the first call we’ve gotten about the kids on Beaverbrook Lane.”
Piper looked stunned. “It’s not?”
He shook his head. “We’ve been getting anonymous calls for the last couple months from someone in this neighborhood, claiming kids are roaming around unsupervised, terrorizing the neighbors. But every time we’ve come over to check things out, we find them jumping on the trampoline, or playing tag in the backyard, or shooting basketball in the driveway, or doing PE out front with Reggie here, or sitting on the front porch, talking to the old lady across the street. We realized these reports were unfounded, and we asked the person to stop. And then today they called us again and accused the kids of vandalizing this construction site.”
“Do you have the name of the person making these calls?” Piper asked.
“Not until today, when Chip called, and gave us his name and met us here. But it’s a pretty good bet Chip is behind the other calls too. If Iwere you all, I’d keep a close watch on your kids. Someone is unhappy with what you’re doing here.”
“So you’re not going to call social services?” Kiersten asked, holding her breath.
“I think we’d all be lucky to have this many good people looking out for our kids. Just watch your backs, okay?”
“Thanks for the heads-up,” Brendan said. “We will.”
Kiersten raised her face to the open beams in the ceiling and said a prayer of gratitude. Then a scream from outside pulled her back to the present.
“Ambulance! We need an ambulance!Now.”
The officers reacted first, running outside the half-finished house and across the street. Kiersten followed behind them and looked across the cul-de-sac where Rosamund knelt beside Lillian’s crumpled body.
Chapter Eighty-Nine
Piper
Piper slumped beside Kiersten in the hard plastic chairs in the waiting room at Alexandria Hospital. The air around her held a faintly antiseptic smell, heavy and oppressive with the anticipation of bad news.
When the paramedics had loaded Lillian into the back of the ambulance, she and Kiersten jumped into Reggie’s car to follow Lillian to the hospital. Through the passenger window, she’d watched Brendan scoop Bella into his arms. The little girl sobbed into her father’s shoulder as the ambulance pulled away. Then she opened and closed her little fist, waving goodbye to the old lady who’d taught her how to make elegant ladies in ballgowns out of hollyhock blooms and toothpicks.
Blinking back tears, Piper had watched Garrett and Brendan load all the kids into her SUV and Kiersten’s minivan.
We’re taking everyone to Chuck E. Cheese for dinnerBrendan had texted.
She’d grimaced but hadn’t argued. This choice of dining establishment guaranteed they’d all have norovirus and strep throat within a week. But it might help distract the kids from the hospitalization of the woman who’d become their beloved living history lesson.
Kiersten had called Lillian’s son on the way to the hospital, and now Lillian’s local children and grandchildren filled the critical care waiting room upstairs, waiting to see if the eighty-seven-year-old woman would emerge from her stroke diminished, or if she would somehow remain the funny, independent person her family adored and her neighbors had come to love.
She and Kiersten had moved downstairs to the main waiting room to give Lillian’s family privacy as they waited for news from the doctor. Reggie would be back any minute to give them a ride home.
Piper sat in her chair, shoulders slumped in defeat.
She had done everything in her power to keep her daughters safe and happy. She’d pulled them out of school. Out of all their activities. She’d become an actualteacher, spending her entire day with her kids.
