Chapter 33
“I need to speak with you,” I shouted.
Adrian frowned. “About what?”
I crossed the street, taking in the property as I approached. Adrian’s yard was polished and meticulous. There wasn’t a blade of grass out of place and not a single weed in the flowerbeds. It was the kind of yard maintained by someone who either liked order or needed it.
“Your yard is nice,” I said.
“If you say so.”
Tough crowd.
He crossed his arms, staring at me, but he said nothing. He looked exhausted, and there were dark circles beneath his eyes.
“You look tired,” I said.
“You walked over just to tell me that?”
“I’m here to talk to you about Mia.”
A breeze moved through the street, stirring the leaves in the trees overhead.
“Let me guess,” he said. “She told you about Moose.”
“She did.”
“Then I guess you know that he kept getting onto her lawn, which I apologized for, more than once.”
“You may have said sorry, but it continued to happen.”
“I’m not sure what you expect me to say. Dogs aren’t perfect.”
“Yeah, but as his owner, you were responsible for him, and from what I hear, you didn’t take responsibility.”
“You’re wrong. I did, at first.”
“And then?”
“When it happened a second time, or maybe the third, I found a bag of dog crap on my front porch along with a note.”
“What note?”
“Oh, I see, she’s picking and choosing the parts of the story she wants to share and leaving out the rest to make herself look better. The bag of crap came with a note attached.”
Mia had neglected to mention that detail.
I didn’t like that she’d kept it from me. It made me feel like he was one step ahead. For one, it meant Adrain knew more about the situation than I did, and that bothered me. And two, I didn’t like that Mia had left out a rather important detail to her dog-poop revenge story.
“What did the note say?” I asked.
“It said to keep my dog off her lawn, or else.”
I went still. “Or else what?”
“I don’t know.”
“Do you still have the note?”
He shook his head. “I tossed it.”
“Why?”
“Because I’m not in the habit of saving notes attached to bags of dog crap as keepsakes.”
“Mia said after she left the bag on your porch that you confronted her,” I said.
“You bet I did.”
“How did that conversation go?”
“How do you think it went?”
“Not well, but I’d like to hear it from your perspective.”
Adrian went quiet a moment before answering. “She told me if my dog ended up on her lawn again, she’d make sure I regretted it.”
Yet another thing she hadn’t told me, making me wonder what else I didn’t know. The more he spoke, the more his tone of voice began to change, giving way to something new—resentment.
“What do you think about Mia?” I asked.
“She’s a difficult woman who likes to stir up trouble. In every interaction we’ve ever had, she manages to turn it into a problem.”
“She says the same thing about you,” I said. “I’m sure you’ve heard about what happened to her sister.”
“It’s all anyone in town is talking about these days. Nothing like a murder on your block to tank property values.”
“Mia’s sister was murdered, and somehow you’ve managed to make this about real estate.”
He rubbed a hand across the back of his neck. “Moose is still missing, which hasn’t been easy, so I’m sorry if my sole purpose in life isn’t the death of her sister. He’s been gone for several weeks now. I’m trying not to give up hope, but it’s getting harder with each passing day.”
He shifted his attention away from me as if he was trying to hide his emotions, but his voice cracked, giving him away.
“That’s a long time,” I said.
“Tell me about it. Moose is … well, not just my dog. He’s everything to me. He’s all I have.”
It wasn’t the best motive for murder I’d ever heard, but it wasn’t the worst.
“You don’t have any family?” I asked.
“None I keep in contact with anymore.”
“Why not?”
“Sometimes the healthiest thing you can do is to take a step back, even when you’d rather not. You can’t help people who aren’t willing to help themselves.”
The defenses he’d built around himself were beginning to crack, and for the first time, I caught a glimpse of the man beneath the anger, a gentler side of him that I hadn’t expected.
“How would you describe him?” I asked.
“Moose?”
“Yeah.”
“Seems like a strange question, but all right. He’s a good boy. The friendliest dog you’ll ever meet.”
“When was the last time you saw him?”
He tipped his head toward Mia’s house. “In her yard. I saw him over there, and I called him home. He started to come, and then I got a call, so I walked back inside the house. A few minutes later, I realized he wasn’t in the house, and I went up and down the street trying to find him. He was just … gone.”
“Do you think someone took him?”
“I don’t know what happened.”
“But you suspect Mia had something to do with his disappearance.”
“I never accused her of taking him.”
“She believes you did.”
“I may have said something to her about how much she hated him, so yeah, the thought of her getting rid of him crossed my mind more than once.”
“Sounds like an accusation to me.”
He sighed, shaking his head like my comment irritated him.
Good.
People sometimes revealed more when they were uncomfortable.
“It’s an observation,” he said. “I’ve been out all morning putting up flyers. And listen, I don’t think she took him.”
“You don’t?”
“No.”
“Then why suggest it?” I asked.
“I was angry.”
“About the note?”
“About all of it.”
He gestured toward the top of the street. “I moved into town hoping for a quiet life, and instead I end up living across from someone who treats me like my mere existence offends her.”
“She’s going through a lot right now.”
“I get it, but what happened between us started before the death of her sister, not after.”
He had a point.
“Where were you on the night Wren died?” I asked.
“There it is, at last.”
“What?”
“The moment you admit you’re over here talking to me because you consider me a suspect.”
“Will you answer the question?”
“No,” he huffed. “I won’t. I’ve already talked to the police. Ask them.”
“I could, but I’m here, now. Why not just tell me?”
“If I do, will you leave?”
I nodded.
“I was here, at home,” he said.
“Alone?”
“Yes.”
“Can anyone verify that?”
“No.”
“Did you hear anything or see anything?”
“I answered your question. Shouldn’t you be going?”
“I agreed to leave, but I never said when,” I said with a wink.
I expected him to walk away at that point, to go inside the house and slam the door. Instead, he ran a hand across his lips like he was stifling a laugh.
“Are you married?” he asked.
“I am. Why?”
“I’m trying to picture the type of man who would be married to you. No offense.”
“None taken. To answer your question, the smart type.”
This time, he couldn’t suppress his laughter, and neither could I.
“You’re something else,” he said.
“I’ll take that as a compliment.”
He shoved a hand in his pocket, staring past me at Mia’s place. “I had nothing to do with what happened to Wren. I was in bed watching television at the time the police say she died.”
“Wren was house-sitting for Mia that week while she was away at a work conference,” I said. “Did you see Wren or speak to her before she died?”
“See her? Maybe. Speak to her? No. I never knew Mia had a twin, so if I did see her, I doubt I would have been able to tell the difference.”
Somewhere down the street, a lawn mower started.
The familiar sound almost felt like a strange backdrop to this conversation.
“You know,” I said. “Most people would try a little harder to appear sympathetic when discussing a dead woman.”
“What happened to Mia’s sister is awful. But I guess you could say I don’t know her enough to have a lot of feelings on the subject.”
I glanced around his yard.
There were no signs of him even owning a dog anywhere.
No bowls outside.
No toys in the yard.
It was like all traces of him had vanished from existence.
“What do you do for work, Adrian?” I asked.
“Landscape architecture.”
“That explains the yard and your obvious obsession with symmetry.”
“There are worse obsessions.”
Once the words left his mouth, he winced like he wanted to take them back, but it was too late.
“It depends on the obsession,” I said.
As the words lingered between us, I studied him. In the time we’d been talking, I’d come to think of him as a person who was emotionally guarded. Not cruel, perhaps. But closed off in a way that made connection difficult.
Just like Mia.
In his case, the question was whether that hardness extended to cold-blooded murder.
Across the street, Mia stepped onto the porch. She saw I was still engaged in conversation with Adrian, and she disappeared back inside again.
Adrian shifted his gaze to her for a brief second and then back to me.
“How’s she … uhh, how’s she doing, anyway?” he asked.
“It’s been rough.”
“I can’t imagine how hard it would be to lose a sibling.”
There it was—real compassion.
Or what appeared to be.
He pulled his phone out of his pocket, glanced at it, and swore. “I need to get back to work. I’m late for an appointment.”
“Can I share one thing with you before you go? I believe the person responsible for Wren’s death killed the wrong sister.”
He stepped back, eyes wide. “You’re serious?”
“I am.”
“Whoa. How’d you come up with that one?”
“The more I look into this case, the more obvious it is to me.”
“That explains why there’s a patrol car parked here 24/7.”
“Four nights ago, someone broke into Mia’s house. If you ask me, it was the same person who killed Wren, coming back to finish the job. But I was here, so they couldn’t.”
“You were here, but you didn’t catch him?”
“I tried, but no, I didn’t. Next time, he won’t get away. I’ll make sure of it.”