“Yeah, he was a bit early.”

“I was trying to think whether I knew him from anywhere,” I said. “Or whether he knew me.”

“Oh yeah?”

“Because he looked at me and winked.”

Trixie blew on her coffee, grabbed a cookie. “Really.”

“It just struck me as odd.”

Trixie seemed not to care. She chewed on her cookie. “So what were you coming over for? Unless it was to invite me over for coffee, which is a good enough reason.”

“First of all, I was going to ask you, officially, if you’d do my tax stuff. Figure out my deductions, file my return, you know.”

“Sure. No problem.”

“But not for free. I don’t want to take advantage. Just charge me whatever your going rate is.” I paused. “What is the going rate?”

And there was that twinkle in Trixie’s eye again. “Don’t worry about that,” she said. “I can probably do it in no time, I’ve got the program on my computer.”

“If you’re not going to charge me, I’ll find someone else.”

She took a sip of her coffee. “Fine. I’ll bill you. Will that make you happy?”

I sat down across from her and grabbed a cookie. “The neighborhood’s been kind of funny lately, don’t you think?” I said.

Trixie cocked her head slightly. “What do you mean?”

“Odd things going on. Like what happened down at the creek. That guy, who wanted to preserve Willow Creek, who got killed?”

“I heard about that. A real shame.”

I told her my role.

“God,” she said. “I never found a dead person.”

“I saw him a few days earlier, at the sales office. He got in this big argument with Greenway, you know, the hot shit who’s in charge of the development.”

Trixie nodded knowingly, like maybe she knew this Greenway character. I didn’t ask.

“I had been over there, asking about getting someone to fix that hole.” I pointed up by the pot lights. “And fix the shower, where the water was leaking from, and this Spender comes in and they start yelling at each other.” I gave Trixie a few more details, how Spender said he couldn’t be bought, about Greenway ordering him out.

“And then there’s Earl,” I said. I waited to see whether Trixie would pick up on my opening.

“What about Earl?” she asked.

“Have you noticed anything, I don’t know, out of the ordinary at Earl’s place?”

Trixie studied me, bit softly into her lower lip. She seemed to be sizing me up, deciding what I might or might not know, and what she might be willing to let on that she knew. Finally, she said, “You mean the fact that Earl has a huge pot business in his basement? Is that what you’re referring to?”

“Yeah,” I said. “That would be it.”

“Look,” Trixie said. “You know me. I don’t judge. Live and let live. Take what I do.” She paused. “People tell me their secrets, their financial secrets, and it takes a lot for people to open up enough, to trust you enough, to tell you what’s going on with their lives. So you learn to be accepting. Earl’s never caused me any trouble. Take you, for example. When you moved in here, and I found out you were a writer, I thought, I’m okay with that.”

I was taken aback. “Why wouldn’t you be?”

“Well, writers can be kind of weird, but like I said, I try not to judge.”

Trixie finished her coffee. “You said you wanted my phone number.”

I handed her my list, said she could write it on there. But first she read what I had written.

“If you get around to sticking that dynamite up Greenway’s ass, give me a call before you light the fuse. That would be something to see.”

I blushed. “I guess I better throw that out. Write your number at the bottom and I’ll tear it off.”

When Trixie left, I slipped the sheet of paper with the phone number on it into the front cover of my address book. Then I heard Rick coming down the stairs.

“All fixed?” I said cheerily.

“I dug out the grouting,” he said, buttoning up his jacket.

“And regrouted?”

“Nope. I’ll have to come back to do that.”

“You don’t have that stuff with you?”

“Like I said, I’ll be back.”

“Like, later today?”

“No. Sometime.”

“Tomorrow? Because, you know, we can’t take a shower there the way it is now.”

“You got other bathrooms, right? Use a bathtub.”

And he left without saying anything else.

I went up to the bathroom to see what he’d accomplished. Crumbs of grouting were littered across the floor of the shower and the bathroom, mixed in with small chunks of mud that had come off Rick’s boots. I shook my head, was about to go look for the vacuum, and something caught my eye.

Actually, it was the absence of something that caught my eye. The brass candlestick that should have been on the vanity was gone.

THE THEFT LEFT ME RATTLED. At first I thought maybe I’d been mistaken, that I hadn’t seen the candlestick only moments before in the bathroom. But I knew it had been there. It wasn’t as though someone had broken in and made off with all our appliances. The candlestick was a small thing, something Sarah had picked up at a flea market for under twenty bucks, but that didn’t make me feel any less angry. It was the gall, the nerve, that shook me. That Rick the Grout Flinger, that useless son of a bitch, would think he could just pick up something of ours and walk out of the house with it, it seemed unthinkable.

I wanted to get on the phone, get Don Greenway on the line, and tell him he better send Rick right back here, not just to fix our fucking shower, but to return our fucking candlestick. But I knew how that would go. The last part, anyway. Assuming Greenway even bothered to ask Rick about it, Rick would deny it. And then where would I be? Would Detective Flint put aside his murder investigation to find the notorious Walker residence candlestick thief?

So this was life in the middle of the boring burbs. Our developer was sending thieves to deal with our leaky shower, there was a basement marijuana farm across the street, and I’d found a murdered environmentalist in the creek.

Maybe that lovely house on Driftwood Drive with the fountain out front was the new headquarters for the Mob? Were the Hells Angels opening their latest chapter on Lilac Lane? Were Al Qaeda terrorists planning their next attack from that new house on Coventry Garden Circle where sod was being laid yesterday?

When Paul came home from school, and later Angie, I told them I wanted to talk to them, with their mother, that evening. When Sarah arrived, I told her there was something I’d been waiting to discuss with the entire family. I gathered everyone in the kitchen. Sarah took a seat, Paul leaned up against the fridge, Angie stood in the doorway so she could make a fast getaway. I took up a position by the dishwasher.

“Okay,” I said. “I’ve tried to ease up a bit lately on the safety stuff. Not hound people about keys and locking doors and all that kind of thing, but I’m just a bit worried that people are going to become complacent without some friendly reminders.”

No one said anything.

“There are bad things going on in this neighborhood. Just because this isn’t the city doesn’t mean people out here can’t be up to no good. I mean, it was good, moving out here, and while there’ve been the odd rough spots, that you”-I spoke to Angie-“don’t care much for your school, and I know there’s a bit of a commute for your mom”-Sarah just stared at me-“and if anyone seems to be adjusting out here, it’s Paul, but the point I’m trying to make is, we have to be on guard, we have to be watching over our shoulder, we have to keep our eyes peeled for anything unusual.”

Still no one said anything, although I noticed the three of them exchanging glances.

“So we’re agreed? We remain on alert, we watch ourselves, we don’t do anything foolish? No purses left on the front seat of the car, no keys in the front door, no leaving the door unlocked when we go to bed at night. Just general commonsense rules is all I’m asking for here.”