“So who actually owns your home?” Kiersten asked.
“It’s not a person,” Miles said. “It’s an LLC.”
Piper leaned forward. “What’s it called?”
“Dynamo Development Group. Something like that.”
Piper pulled out her phone and began typing furiously. Then she held up her screen, showing Miles the logo for Dynamo Moscow, a Russian Premier League soccer team.
“Does this look familiar?” she asked.
He squinted across the table. “It does actually. There’s a similar logo on my rental agreement.”
Kiersten’s head swiveled back and forth between Piper and Miles. “I don’t understand.”
“Bruno Orlov.” Piper gestured with her phone. “He’s that shady parent at school, Alex Orlov’s dad. When I met with him, he was wearing a Dynamo Moscow soccer jersey. He named his real estate development company after his favorite Russian soccer team, in addition to running some kind of illegal sports-betting operation.”
Reggie drummed his fingers on the table thoughtfully. “I’ve seen that name somewhere before.”
He and Kiersten exchanged a look. “Me too.”
Piper smiled. “You see it every morning when you run. Dynamo Development Corporation is doing that massive project a couple streets over on Haskel Avenue.”
Kiersten’s face lit up. “Where they tore down that one old house and they’re building six new ones on the same lot.”
Piper nodded. “It’s right there on the sign. Chip and Trey Davis are listed as his business partners.”
Valentina frowned. “I like you all very much, but if they made me a good offer, I would sell. No cockroaches or bloody papers are needed for this. So why go to thistrouble?”
“Because they don’t want to make a good offer,” Piper explained, leaning forward. “It eats into their profit margin. And cockroaches and scary notes are cheap. They want to scare us into selling our houses way below market value. Then they turn this whole cul-de-sac into a new housing development with river views.”
“If you chop down all the trees,” Reggie added.
“That’s exactly right.” Piper snorted. “If you chop down all the trees.”
“And if they price these new homes like the ones going up a few streets over on Haskel ...” Rosamund began.
“And put multiple houses on each lot ...” Garrett added.
“They’d make tens of millions of dollars,” Brendan concluded with a low whistle.
“And they’d advertise this new development to the Influencer’s hundreds of thousands of Instagram followers. And document the whole teardown and rebuild process on her new HGTV show,” Piper said.
“Dottie is the wild card,” Kiersten said softly. “And now she’s come back from the dead to derail the whole project with her diaries.”
Piper nodded. “Richard would be arrested. Probably Margaret too. So much for the sweet little old lady who bakes pies in a frilly apron.”
“It would destroy Aspen’s wholesome trad wife brand if sweet old Grammy on the ’Gram is the pregnant mistress who murdered her husband’s first wife,” Kiersten said.
“Which would scuttle her HGTV deal,” Rosamund added.
There was a moment of silence as they processed this.
“So what do we do?” Garrett asked. “Go to the police?”
Piper exchanged a glance with her husband.
“We need more,” Brendan said.
