The gates of The Gables were wide open.
Usually, the wrought-iron barrier was the first line of defense against the chaotic, un-manicured world. It required a code, a clicker, or a wave from the guard who knew your car’s make and model. But today, the guard booth was empty. The barrier arm pointed straight up at the sky like a surrender flag.
Maya drove her Volvo through the entrance, passing a convoy of vehicles that had no business on private roads. News vans with satellite dishes aimed at the clouds. Black SUVs with federal plates. A drone buzzed overhead, a mechanical hornet angry with curiosity.
The silence of the suburbs had been replaced by the roar of a scandal breaking in real-time.
Maya didn’t speed. She didn’t need to. The race was over. Elias was in custody, singing his opera of guilt into a tape recorder. The script was finished. Now, she was just here for the credits.
She turned onto Bittersweet Court.
It looked like a film set for a disaster movie where the disaster was white-collar crime.
FBI agents in windbreakers stamped with yellow letters swarmed the lawn of Number 3. They were carrying boxes—not the neat, color-coded moving boxes Chloe used, but banker’s boxes filled with hard drives and financial records.
Maya pulled into her driveway and killed the engine. The silence inside the cabin lasted only a second before she opened the door and the cacophony hit her. Shouting. Shutters clicking. The static crackle of police radios.
She walked to the edge of her lawn, crossing the invisible property line that had once meant everything.
Chloe stood on her front porch. She wasn’t crying. She was holding her youngest son on her hip, her face set in a mask of stony resilience. She looked at the agents ransacking her dream home with the detachment of someone who had already mourned the loss.
Two agents marched Rick Vance out the front door.
Rick wasn’t wearing a blue suit. He was wearing gym shorts and a polo shirt that strained against his chest. He looked smaller than Maya remembered. Without the armor of his Escalade and his arrogance, he was just a man who had inherited a crime he wasn’t smart enough to hide.
“This is a mistake!” Rick shouted, thrashing slightly as they guided him toward a waiting sedan. “Call my lawyer! Do you know who I am?”
“We know exactly who you are, Mr. Vance,” an agent said calmly, guiding his head down to protect it from the door frame. “You’re the signatory on the shell accounts for the Cypress Creek Reserve Fund.”
Rick looked up. He saw Chloe on the porch.
“Chloe!” he yelled. “Tell them! Tell them about the podcast! It’s a setup!”
Chloe didn’t move. She didn’t speak. She just shifted the baby to her other hip and turned her back on him, walking into the house and closing the door.
It was the coldest, most beautiful thing Maya had ever seen.
“He’s gone,” a voice said beside her.
Maya turned. Sarah Vance was standing there, holding a mug of tea that trembled slightly in her hands. She looked exhausted, her hair pulled back in a severe bun, but her eyes were clear.
“The State Police picked up Garrett ten minutes ago,” Sarah said quietly. “At the station. They have the transcript of Elias’s confession. And they have the file box from 1994. Elias kept it in the attic of the empty house. He never destroyed it.”
“He wanted to be caught,” Maya said. “Deep down, he wanted the story to be told.”
“Garrett didn’t,” Sarah said. “I heard he tried to run. Made it to the parking lot before they blocked him in.”
Maya looked at Sarah. “Are you okay?”
“No,” Sarah said bluntly. “I’m going to be subpoenaed. My name is going to be in the papers. The club will revoke my membership. My friends will stop calling.”
She took a sip of tea.
“But I slept last night,” Sarah said. “For the first time in thirty years, I slept without dreaming of rain.”
Elena joined them, walking over from Number 2. She had removed her scrubs and was wearing jeans and a t-shirt. She looked younger, lighter.
“Property values are going to freefall,” Elena observed, gesturing to the spectacle. “A murder house, a money laundering ring, and a corrupt police chief, all on one cul-de-sac? We’ll be lucky if we can sell for land value.”
“The Zestimate is already down twelve percent,” Maya said, checking her phone. “ironic. We killed the neighborhood to save ourselves.”
“It deserves to die,” Elena said, looking at the pristine white fences that were now trampled by cameramen and federal agents. “It was built on a graveyard. We were just the caretakers.”
A news van from Channel 5 pulled up to the curb, skirting the police barricade. A reporter with perfect hair jumped out, microphone in hand. She scanned the scene, her eyes locking onto the three women standing together.
“Excuse me!” the reporter called out, rushing toward them. “Are you residents? Did you know Elias Thorne? Can you tell us about the ‘Gables Ghost’?”
Sarah flinched, instinctively raising her hand to block her face.
Maya stepped forward. She intercepted the reporter, blocking her path to her friends.
“I’m Maya Lin-Baker,” she said, her voice projecting with the authority of the newsroom she had once commanded. “I’m a journalist. And if you want the story, you’ll wait until I write it.”
The reporter paused, recognizing the tone, if not the face. “Maya Lin-Baker? from the Tribune?”
“That’s right,” Maya said. “This is my beat. Step back.”
The reporter hesitated, then lowered her microphone. She signaled her cameraman to cut the feed. Professional courtesy, or perhaps just intimidation.
Maya turned back to the cul-de-sac.
The Tuesday Toss was usually a quiet affair. Bins at the curb. Polite waves. Silence.
Today, the trash was being taken out in broad daylight.
Across the street, the door to the empty house—Number 5—was open. Agents were carrying out boxes. The history of the Thorne family, the legacy of the Blue Suits, the poison, the red dress—it was all being cataloged and tagged.
The sun was high and bright, burning off the last of the morning mist from the wetlands. The shadows retreated. There were no more blind spots.
“What happens now?” Sarah asked, looking at the wreckage of their social standing.
“Now?” Maya said. She looked at the gazebo, standing empty in the center of the chaos. “Now we rebuild. But not fences.”
She looked at Elena and Sarah. The bond between them, forged in panic and wine, felt stronger than the steel bars of the police cruisers.
“We survived the season finale,” Maya said. “I think we’ve earned a drink.”
“It’s 11:00 AM,” Sarah noted, but a small smile touched her lips.
“It’s five o’clock somewhere,” Elena said. “Specifically, in the Cayman Islands account Rick was using to hide the money.”
They laughed. It was a dark, jagged sound, but it was real.
Behind them, the police siren wailed as Rick’s transport began to move. The sound didn’t make Maya flinch. She watched the car disappear down the street, taking the lie of the perfect husband with it.
She looked at her own house. Number 4. The glass sunroom reflected the flashing blue lights of the police cars. It didn’t look like a fishbowl anymore. It looked like a window.
And for the first time, Maya liked the view.