Chapter 34 #2
Vero reached inside and grabbed the phone away from her.
She tossed it over her shoulder to me. I had to use both hands to catch it against my chest. “Check her Ring footage,” Vero said, bracing an arm in front of Sophia as she lunged for her phone.
“I bet we’ll find videos of her leaving her house with those notes in her hand.
That’s probably why Wendell saw her on the street that night.
This conniving bitch wasn’t out for a jog.
She was running from the scene of her own crime! ”
I hurriedly thumbed through Sophia’s apps until I found the one that connected to her camera. I clicked the button to open her event history.
“Give me a date,” I called out to Vero.
She called out a date. It was the night the rock came through the window.
Wendell had said he’d seen Sophia going out for a jog.
I scrolled to an event that coincided with the timing of our dinner, expecting to catch a few seconds of footage of Sophia leaving her house, but all I saw was her mother coming home from work. “See her?”
“No. Give me another.”
Vero called out another date. It would have been Vero’s first week on house arrest, the same week Norma said she got the threatening note on her windshield.
There were only a handful of motion events that night, and I thumbed through them. One was a raccoon that had found his way into Sophia’s trash can. The other two were cars driving past her house. No videos capturing Sophia sneaking out of her house.
“Anything?” Vero asked, fighting to hold Sophia back.
“Not yet. Give me another.”
Vero called out another date, grunting as Sophia reached through the door and jabbed her in the side.
I tapped on the date in question. That was the night Vero’s house had been spray-painted. Only four motion events had been recorded between midnight and six. One was a dog who paused to pee on Sophia’s lawn. All the rest were passing cars. “I don’t see her.”
Vero shrieked as Sophia slammed her foot down on her toes. They wrestled, swatting and clawing at each other. Vero shouted out one more date, and I quickly typed it into the phone.
It was the night before I’d arrived, when the house had been egged. No sign of Sophia leaving her property after dark. Only a few motion events had been recorded. All of them cars …
“Wait,” I said, scrolling back through the last two dates and pausing the frames.
“Did you find something?”
“I think so.” I snapped two quick screenshots and texted them to myself.
Then I deleted all the camera footage from the last fifteen minutes before attempting to give Sophia back her phone.
Her hands were knotted in Vero’s hair. Vero’s fingers were locked around Sophia’s wrists.
Neither one of them was willing to give up their position to take it.
They both yelped as I physically pried them apart.
I shoved the phone into Sophia’s hands and pulled Vero away from the door.
“We got what we came for. Let’s go,” I said in a low voice, turning our faces away from her camera.
Vero swatted a nest of tangles from her eyes and smoothed down her torn sweater. She pointed two fingers at Sophia and then pointed them at her own eyes before following me down the sidewalk back to Norma’s house.
“What did you get?” she asked me, wiping a dot of blood from her nose.
“She definitely paid that guy for the dog shit, but I think she was telling the truth about the rest. I don’t think she was the one who sent you those notes or did any of those other things either.” I held my phone out to her once we were out of sight of Sophia’s house. Vero squinted at the screen.
“The same Volkswagen appeared in both pictures,” I said as she thumbed through the photos I’d taken.
“I couldn’t make out the color in the dark, but we might be able to zoom in and pick out a few of the letters or numbers on the license plate.
” The screen-capped images were dark and pixelated.
The taillights of the vehicle made it hard to make out the details, but there was a telltale window sticker on the back—the University of Maryland terrapin mascot with an M on his chest. “Our vandal is probably a student.”
“Or was,” she said, looking deflated as she handed me back my phone. “That sticker could belong to almost anyone in this town. We’re no closer to knowing who’s been vandalizing my mother’s house, and now Sophia has your phone number.”
“I deleted it before I gave her back her phone. Javi’s number, too,” I said with a wink. “I also deleted the recording of our visit to her house just now.”
Vero laughed. “Have I told you how much I love you?”
“Does that mean you’re coming home?” I didn’t realize I was holding my breath until she answered.
“Yeah,” she said, “I’m coming home.”
We walked arm in arm the rest of the way to Norma’s house. My phone buzzed in my pocket, and I paused to read the text message from Cam. I held it out for Vero to read, too.
“Before we go home, there’s one last thing I need to do,” she said.