Page 59 of High Frequency

“Did you piss anyone off recently?” I hear JD ask.

“Probably, but I can’t imagine anyone who’d do something like this. I mean, why?”

“Vandals? Bored teenagers blowing off steam?” James suggests.

“I’m a bit off the beaten track here though. At the end of a dirt road. Not like I get traffic.”

“You had trucks coming in here with the lumber though. Big-ass trucks with those logs would’ve drawn attention.”

I guess that’s true, but this doesn’t feel like teenagers tagging a place and snickering about it later. For one, there’s nothing recognizable in the angry red slashes, other than perhaps rage. This is someone conveying a message.

My mind keeps wanting to go to the one person I know has strong negative feelings toward me, but I simply can’t see Shelby sneaking out here in the dark of night, wielding a spray can. That said, she threw me for a loop before, and I’d be a fool not to at least consider the possibility she had something to do with this.

“Did you guys happen to check with Sully, see if he noticed anything?”

When James shakes his head, I grab my phone out of my pocket and dial.

“Yeah.” Sully sounds preoccupied.

“You busy?”

“Why? What’s up?”

“Someone spray-painted my house last night or overnight.”

“You’re shitting me.”

“Nope. You wouldn’t have seen or heard anything would you?”

“Last night? I don’t think so. I’m in the barn right now, but when I get back to the office, I can pull up the feed from the security camera I have on the front of the house. Maybe it picked up something.”

“I appreciate it.”

“Who’d do something like that?” Sully wants to know.

“That’s what I’m trying to find out.”

“Well, until you do, I have a couple of GoPro cameras here we can put up for the time being. I can pop over on my way home.”

“That’d be great.”

Tomorrow the windows and doors arrive. They probably won’t be able to get them installed in one day, but the downstairs should be possible. At least I’ll be able to lock it.

In the meantime, I guess I’ll be setting up camp here tonight.

As shock wears off and anger takes its place, I take another look around.Fuck, they really did a number on the place. So much for finishing the framing today. That’s not going to happen.

“Do you have an extra brush?” I ask James.

“Back of JD’s truck. He picked up a bunch of cleaning stuff in town.”

The next few hours I take my frustrations out on the red paint inside while JD and his dad are scrubbing outside. By the time I hear someone drive up outside, I have blisters from scrubbing so damn hard. Tossing my brush in the bucket, I head out to see who it is.

I walk over to Sully, who is standing by his truck, chatting with James. When he sees me approach, he lifts his chin in greeting.

“I got something on the camera, but it’s not much. At two forty-seven in the morning there’s a glimpse of what looks like a pickup passing our house. No headlights, nothing that stands out.”

Since two-thirds of this county drives a damn pickup, unfortunately, that doesn’t help me narrow down who it might have been.

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