Page 79 of Snow Creek

She doesn’t seem sad. She wants to show me she’s grief-stricken as a way of letting me know she’s a very real person. None of her furnishings are fake. But her feelings might be.

“Very sad,” I say. “Again, I’m sorry for the loss of your friends.”

I add the “s”, so she won’t correct me and remind me how much she misses Ellie and Hudson.

“Thank you, Detective.”

She leads me out to the backyard and points to the bushes.

“Somewhere over there. I’m sure of it.”

“Thank you. I’ll let you know if I find it.”

And off she goes.

The yard is just like Chantelle.Perfect.The low hedge framing the expansive slate patio is so green and so square-trimmed that, at first, I mistake it for a painted wall. Shrubs are perfectly shaped and there isn’t a weed to be had. Not anywhere. She even has a table displaying a collection of bonsai. As I make my way closer to the fence between the Burbanks and the Potters, I hear Chantelle call out to me.

I turn around. “Yes?”

“I dug this out of the garage,” she says. “My son’s. Like just about everything we give Matt, barely used.”

It’s a metal detector.

“Sprinklers come on in fifteen. Sorry. I don’t know how to disable them. Good luck, Detective.”

Wonderful, I think.

“Thanks,” I call back as she waves goodbye.

It takes me only a few minutes and I start scanning the landscaping along the fence, first with my eyes, then with the ungrateful Potter boy’s metal detector. I’m sweeping left to right and hoping that the sprinkler system goes off after I find what I’m here for.

The metal detector is a high-tech magic wand. Iwillit to help me.

And it does as I work under an Alaskan cedar along the fence. It buzzes with such ferocity that I nearly let go of it.

With latex gloves now on, I crouch down, my knees pressing into the moist soil and wicking water to my skin. I’m going to look like a candidate for a detergent commercial, I think. I start crawling under the branches to the spot where the detector alerted. It’s dark under the tree next to the fence. A fortress. I really can’t see. My fingertips find a couple of pinecones before they touch the rectangular edge of what I know before seeing is Ellie’s phone.

I crawl out with my prize and put it in an evidence bag.

My heart is pounding.

And I absolutely look like a candidate for a detergent commercial.

Just as the sprinklers start hissing, I’m back in my car for the ride home. While the phone from under the bushes is undoubtedly locked, I open the evidence bag and see if I can power it up. Just in case.

I catch my image in the rearview mirror.

I have a smile on my face.

I’m alive.

I’m doing what I was meant to do.

My phone pings with a text. I reach for it, knocking Ellie’s between the seat and the console. It’s a message from Dan. I don’t care that he’ll know I’ve read it. I want to see what he has to say.

I’d be a worse liar than I am if I denied he’d been on my mind.

Superstar detective. Saw you on the tube.

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