Page 28 of Wrong Mail

"Ask."

"Those clippings." He's looking at the gatepost. "I've been staring at them for so long I've stopped seeing what's there. I know what I think they mean, but that's the problem. Maybe I'm seeing connections that aren't there."

Now he looks up.

"You'd know. I'd like a fresh set of eyes. Would you be interested?”

The heat is coming up off the drive. Down the lawn, my birds are going insane over the new arrival.

"I'll think about it," I say.

"That's more than I expected. See you around.” He opens the gate, and he's gone, up the hot road, hands in his pockets, not looking back.

I stand there for a while.

It's only when I'm back inside, running the tap, watching water fill a glass, that the thing Julia said finally settles.

Peggy Erickson has never missed anything in her life.

So where is she?

Chapter Ten

Blue and red lights come through the cedars. Followed by sirens. Then, one by one, they cut out.

They're coming from Peggy's.

I'm at the sink when it starts, standing in my kitchen with a plate in my hand. Color swings across the ceiling. My body knows before I do.

The plate goes down.

My hands have gone cold in the warm water.

I'm out the door before I've decided to go.

The heat hits me. It's after nine, and the air is still like a held breath. The road is filling up.

That's the thing nobody tells you about a street like this. Everybody hides behind a hedge, a gate, and a long clean driveway, until something happens. Then they come out.

They stand at the ends of their drives in whatever they were wearing, but they don't cross the road. They've paid too much for their privacy to give it up now, even for this.

Frank Werner is outside his gate in a white T-shirt and no shoes.

"The cops have been in there ten minutes," he says as I pass. "The ambulance just got here. Nobody's come out yet.”

Two Medina cruisers are angled across the mouth of the Ericksons' drive. They’re black SUVs with push bumpers and Medina markings on the doors. One still has its roof lights going, red and blue washing over the hedges, the mailbox, and the pale stone pillars at the entrance.

The nearest cruiser is parked hard across the asphalt, as if whatever happened inside is not allowed to spill out.

Behind the cruisers, an ambulance sits with its back doors open. I remember the last time I was inside one.

The gate is open. Beyond it, up the drive, the house is lit like a party.

An officer is at the tape, keeping curious neighbors away.

I don't know his name. Right now he's just a young man in a black uniform with his hat off, standing where the drive meets the road. He keeps his hands loose at his sides, his voice low, and says the same short sentence to everybody who comes up to him.

"I can't tell you that."