The easement behind the community tennis courts was a slice of land that The Gables had forgotten. While the front lawns were manicured to within an inch of their lives, this narrow strip of gravel and scrub oak felt wild, untamed, and distinctly private.
Maya walked down the path, the heat radiating off the chain-link fence. The rhythmic thwack-grunt-thwack of a morning tennis match drifted from the courts, a soundtrack of wealthy leisure that felt miles away from her current mission.
She clutched a Ziploc bag in her hand. Inside was a scoop of blue-tinged soil she had dug up from the Gables’ front lawn—evidence, or at least, a conversation starter.
At the end of the path sat the shed. It wasn’t the neat, cedar-shingled dollhouse of the HOA office. This was a working building, constructed of corrugated metal that had rusted to the color of dried blood. It looked like a tetanus shot waiting to happen.
Arthur Henderson was kneeling in a patch of dirt near the door, his back to her. He wore grey coveralls that seemed fused to his body, stained with decades of chlorophyll and oil. He was pruning a rose bush with a violence that made Maya flinch. Snip. Snap. Twist.
“Mr. Henderson?” Maya called out, stopping ten feet away.
He didn’t turn. “Private property. Service entrance is on the main road.”
His voice was dry, like dead leaves scraping together.
“I’m not a delivery driver,” Maya said, stepping closer. “I’m a resident. Maya Lin-Baker. Number 4 Bittersweet Court.”
The pruning shears paused mid-cut.
Arthur stood up slowly. His joints popped audibly. He turned to face her, and Maya felt a jolt of instinctive revulsion. He was skeletal, his skin leathered by fifty years of sun exposure, his eyes hidden deep within craggy sockets. He looked like something that had grown out of the earth rather than walked upon it.
“Number 4,” Arthur repeated. He looked at her, then past her, toward the direction of her house. “The glass house. You have aphids on your azaleas.”
“I do?”
“I saw them last week,” Arthur said. “You over-water. Roots rot when they’re wet. Just like people.”
Maya tightened her grip on the plastic bag. “I didn’t come to talk about azaleas, Arthur. I came to talk about hydrangeas. And poison.”
She held up the bag. The blue granules mixed with the dirt caught the sunlight.
“A dog almost died yesterday,” Maya said, her voice hard. “He ate meat laced with Thallium Sulfate. ‘Blue Death.’ My friend says you’re the only one in the neighborhood who still has a stash of the old chemicals.”
Arthur squinted at the bag. He didn’t look surprised. He didn’t look guilty. He looked bored.
“Thallium,” he grunted. “Good for rats. Bad for everything else. Haven’t used it since ‘98.”
“Then why is it in my neighbor’s yard?”
Arthur wiped his shears on his leg. “Because people are sloppy. They buy things they don’t understand. They bury things shallow.”
“I want to see your shed,” Maya said. It was a demand, not a request. She channeled the energy of every detective show she had ever watched, hoping it covered the fact that she was terrified of this man and his rusted shears.
Arthur stared at her. His eyes were a watery, pale grey. “You got a warrant, Mrs. Lin-Baker?”
“No,” Maya said. “But I have a direct line to the EPA. And if I call them about illegal pesticide storage in a protected wetland zone, they’ll bring bulldozers, not warrants.”
It was a bluff. She had no idea if the EPA moved that fast. But Arthur didn’t know that.
He stared at her for a long, uncomfortable moment. Then, he shrugged.
“Suit yourself,” he said. “Don’t touch the orchids. They bite.”
He turned and limped toward the shed door, pulling a heavy ring of keys from his pocket. He unlocked the padlock with a heavy clunk and slid the metal door open.
Maya followed him into the gloom.
The inside of the shed smelled of gasoline, bone meal, and something sweet and rotting—like overripe fruit. It was hot, the metal roof trapping the sun.
Shelves lined the walls, floor to ceiling. They were packed with tins, jars, and bottles. Some were rusted shut. Some were labeled in handwriting that had faded to nothing.
Maya scanned the shelves. DDT. Arsenic. Strychnine. It was a museum of toxicity.
“You kept it all,” Maya whispered.
“Chemicals don’t go bad,” Arthur said, moving to a workbench in the back. He started mixing soil in a pot, ignoring her. “They just get stronger.”
Maya walked deeper into the shed. Her eyes adjusted to the dim light. In the corner, hidden behind a stack of fertilizer bags, was a wooden cabinet. It looked out of place amidst the industrial grime—a piece of fine furniture, varnished and clean.
She moved toward it.
“That’s private,” Arthur said without turning around.
“Is that where the Thallium is?” Maya asked, reaching for the handle.
“No,” Arthur said. “That’s where the flowers are.”
Maya opened the cabinet.
It wasn’t flowers.
It was a shrine.
Pinned to the cork-lined back of the cabinet were dozens of photographs. Black and white. Color. Polaroids. They were all of the same subject.
Juniper Black.
Maya’s breath hitched. She stared at the images. Juniper gardening in a sun hat. Juniper drinking tea on the patio. Juniper reading in the sunroom, visible through the glass. Juniper walking a golden retriever.
They were telephoto shots. Voyeuristic. Taken from the tree line. Taken from the bushes.
In the center of the collage was a dried, pressed flower—a red hibiscus—and a piece of fabric.
A scrap of red silk.
Maya backed away, her heart hammering. She spun around to face Arthur.
“You,” she gasped. “It was you. You watched her.”
Arthur didn’t stop mixing his soil. “I watched all of them. That’s my job. I watch things grow. I watch things die.”
“You took photos of her inside her house,” Maya accused, her voice rising. “You have a piece of her dress.”
Arthur finally turned. He set the trowel down. He looked at the open cabinet, then at Maya. His expression wasn’t predatory. It was sad. Infinite, crushing sadness.
“She was the only thing in this neighborhood that was real,” Arthur said quietly. “Everyone else… plastic. Fake grass. Fake smiles. But her? She was a wildflower. She didn’t belong here. I knew the soil would kill her.”
“You killed her,” Maya said, stepping back toward the door. “You poisoned her dog so he wouldn’t bark while you took photos. And then you killed her because… what? She rejected you?”
Arthur laughed. It was a dry, hacking sound. “Rejected me? I’m the help, Mrs. Lin-Baker. I’m the furniture. She didn’t even know my name. She called me ‘Gardener.’”
He walked toward the cabinet. Maya tensed, ready to run, but he walked past her. He reached out and touched the scrap of red silk with a finger that was missing a nail.
“I found this in the bushes,” he said. “The morning after. The police missed it. They miss everything.”
“You were there,” Maya said. “You were there that morning.”
“I’m always here,” Arthur said. “I arrive at 5:00 AM. I saw the police cars. I saw them carry her out in a bag.”
He turned to look at Maya.
“I didn’t kill her,” he said. “I loved her. In the way you love a rare orchid. You don’t cut it. You protect it.”
“You did a terrible job protecting her,” Maya spat.
“I tried,” Arthur said. “I warned her.”
Maya froze. “You warned her?”
“I told her they were watching,” Arthur said. “I told her to close the blinds. I told her to stop answering the door.”
“Who?” Maya asked. “Who was watching her?”
Arthur walked back to his workbench. He picked up a rag and wiped his hands.
“The Blue Suits,” he said.
Maya frowned. “The Blue Suit. You mean the man? The one Sarah saw?”
“Not a man,” Arthur corrected. “Men. Plural. The Blue Suits.”
He gestured vaguely toward the neighborhood.
“They used to come around,” Arthur said. “Once a month. Walking the property lines. Clipboards. Rulers. Always in those blue suits. Even in August. Sweat dripping down their necks, but they never took off the jackets.”
“The HOA board,” Maya realized. “The board members wore blue suits in 1994.”
“They weren’t just the board,” Arthur said, his voice dropping to a conspiratorial whisper. “They were the Enforcers. They checked for weeds. They checked for unapproved paint. But with her… they checked for other things.”
“What things?”
“Morality,” Arthur said. “They didn’t like her. She was single. She was pregnant. She had men over. They said she was bringing down the tone. They said she was a liability.”
He looked at Maya with intense, sudden focus.
“She was afraid of them,” Arthur said. “I saw her face when they knocked. She would hide in the kitchen. She would pretend she wasn’t home. But they had keys.”
“They had keys?” Maya repeated.
“Emergency access keys,” Arthur said. “For ‘safety checks.’ They let themselves in whenever they wanted. To check the pipes. To check the wiring. To check her.”
Maya felt a chill that had nothing to do with the chemicals. The podcast had said the killer had a key. Everyone assumed it was a lover’s key. But if it was an HOA master key…
“Who were they?” Maya asked. “Who were the Blue Suits?”
Arthur shrugged. “Rich men. Important men. Mr. Thorne. Mr. Vance. The Doctor.”
“Mr. Thorne,” Maya said. “Elias’s father?”
“The old man,” Arthur nodded. “Mean as a snake. Elias is a puppy compared to him.”
“And Mr. Vance,” Maya said. “Rick’s father?”
“Big man. Loud.”
“And the Doctor?”
“Dr. Russo,” Arthur said. “Before your friend moved in. His father. The dentist.”
Maya’s mind reeled. The fathers. It wasn’t the sons. It was the fathers. The original patriarchs of the cul-de-sac.
“They were a club,” Arthur said. “They met in the gazebo on Tuesdays. Smoked cigars. Talked about ‘standards.’ They decided who stayed and who went.”
He looked back at the photo of Juniper.
“They decided she had to go,” Arthur whispered. “I heard them. By the hydrangeas. A week before she died. Mr. Thorne said, ‘We handle it. We handle it in-house.’”
Maya stared at the old man. He wasn’t the killer. He was the witness. The invisible witness who had been pruning the roses while a conspiracy formed five feet away.
“Why didn’t you tell the police?” Maya asked.
Arthur laughed again. “The police? Who do you think drove the car for them? Officer Garrett was their boy. He wanted to be a Blue Suit so bad he would have polished their shoes with his tongue.”
He picked up a tin from the shelf. It was rusted, the label illegible.
“I didn’t poison the dog,” Arthur said. “But I know who did.”
“Who?”
“I saw the Doctor take a can of Blue Death from this shed,” Arthur said. “Two days before the dog died. He said he had a rat problem. But the Doctor didn’t have rats. He had a poodle.”
Maya looked at the tin in his hand.
“Can I have that?” she asked. “The photo. And the fabric.”
Arthur hesitated. He looked at the shrine. His life’s work. His secret love.
“Take it,” he said, turning away. “It’s haunted anyway. I hear her sometimes. In the glass house. Crying.”
He went back to his potting soil. The interview was over.
Maya grabbed the photo and the scrap of silk. She shoved them into her pocket, next to the bag of poisoned soil.
She backed out of the shed, into the blinding sunshine. The tennis match was still going on. Thwack. Grunt.
She walked fast, her head spinning.
It wasn’t a crime of passion. It wasn’t a drifter. It was an eviction. An execution sanctioned by the HOA board of 1994.
The Blue Suits.
And if the fathers were the architects… the sons were the heirs. Elias. Rick. They had inherited the houses. Had they inherited the guilt? Or were they finishing the job?
Maya looked at the scrap of red silk in her hand. It smelled of mothballs and old perfume.
Arthur had kept a piece. But the killer had kept the rest.
She pulled out her phone.
Maya: Meeting. Now. It wasn’t a lover. It was a committee.