The garage of Number 4 Bittersweet Court was a graveyard of good intentions. It held the abandoned Peloton, the kayak that had never touched water, and the stack of color-coded bins that contained the Lin-Baker family history.
Maya stood on a step stool, the humid afternoon heat pressing against the metal garage door. The air smelled of gasoline and potting soil. Sweat trickled down her spine, soaking into her silk blouse, but she didn’t stop digging.
Through the Bluetooth speaker sitting on the workbench, the narrator of The Gables Ghost continued his dissection of their lives.
“The police looked for a stranger,” the voice rasped, filling the concrete space. “They looked for a man with no face. But Juniper didn’t open her door for a stranger. She opened it for a neighbor. A prominent man. A man who walked these streets, waved at the security guards, and then washed her blood off his hands before sliding into bed next to his wife.”
Maya shoved a box labeled LEO - 2T CLOTHES aside.
“He wasn’t a drifter,” the narrator whispered. “He was a fixture.”
Maya’s hands trembled as she reached for the plastic bin marked DAN - ARCHIVES. Dan had always been vague about his twenties. He claimed he lived in a studio apartment in Chicago’s Lincoln Park neighborhood in 1994, grinding out eighty-hour weeks as a junior analyst. He said he didn’t move to the suburbs until they bought this house.
But the dress in the gazebo smelled like Maya’s perfume. And the killer knew the layout of her home.
She popped the lid of the bin. The smell of old paper and dust wafted up. Inside were tax returns, college textbooks, and a stack of mail bundled with rubber bands that had long since snapped, leaving sticky residue on the envelopes.
Maya grabbed a handful of letters. Most were credit card offers or student loan statements. She checked the dates. 1993. 1995.
She dug deeper, her fingernails scraping against the bottom of the bin. She found a W-2 form from 1994.
She held it up to the dusty light filtering through the small garage window.
EMPLOYEE: DANIEL BAKER ADDRESS: 12 OAK HOLLOW LANE, THE GABLES, IL
Maya stopped breathing.
Oak Hollow Lane was two streets over. It was a three-minute walk from Bittersweet Court.
He hadn’t been in the city. He had been here. In The Gables. Living in his parents’ old house? Renting? It didn’t matter. What mattered was that he had lied.
She dropped the paper as if it were burning. The image of Dan—steady, boring, reliable Dan—flickered in her mind, replaced by a stranger who knew how to navigate the winding streets of this development in the dark.
Her phone buzzed in her pocket, startling her so badly she nearly fell off the stool.
It was a text from Chloe.
Chloe: Get over here. Now. Rick is in the shower. I found something.
Maya found Chloe in the driveway of Number 3, half-buried in the backseat of her husband’s massive Escalade. The SUV was black, polished to a mirror shine, and looked like it belonged in a presidential motorcade.
Chloe’s head popped up as Maya crunched across the gravel. Her eyes were wild, her mascara smudged.
“Watch the front door,” Chloe hissed, waving Maya over. “If Rick comes out, tell him… tell him we’re looking for Leo’s pacifier.”
“Rick’s name is Rick?” Maya asked, realizing she had never actually learned what Chloe’s husband did or who he was, other than a source of financing for Chloe’s staging.
“Rick. Richard. The Bank. Whatever,” Chloe snapped, diving back under the driver’s seat. “He’s been acting weird. Taking calls in the garage. Changing his passcode.”
“Chloe, everyone is acting weird. There’s a red dress hanging in the gazebo,” Maya whispered, keeping one eye on the front door of Number 3.
“I found it,” Chloe said, her voice strangled.
She backed out of the car, sitting on the running board. In her hand, resting on her shaking palm, was a phone.
It wasn’t an iPhone. It was a cheap, plastic burner phone—a prepaid Nokia brick that looked like it belonged in 2005.
“It was taped under the seat,” Chloe whispered. “Who tapes a phone under a seat, Maya?”
“Drug dealers,” Maya said automatically. “And cheating husbands.”
“And murderers,” Chloe added, staring at the device. “The podcast said the killer had a ‘network.’ That he wasn’t working alone.”
“Turn it on,” Maya said.
Chloe pressed the power button. The screen illuminated with a pixelated blue glow. It asked for a PIN.
“Damn it,” Chloe cursed.
“Does Rick have a temper?” Maya asked, watching the house.
Chloe laughed, a brittle, sharp sound. “He punched a hole in the drywall last month because the WiFi went down during a Zoom call. He says it’s ‘market stress.’ But Maya… he was here in ‘94 too. His family owned the land before the development expanded.”
The front door of Number 3 opened.
“Chloe?” A deep voice boomed across the lawn.
Rick Vance stood in the doorway. He was a large man, thick-necked and red-faced, wearing a towel around his waist. He looked like a thumb that had been taught to shout.
Chloe shoved the burner phone into her bra with a speed that spoke of practice. She pasted a bright, terrifying smile onto her face.
“Just cleaning out the car, babe!” she called out. “Maya lost an earring!”
Rick stared at them. His gaze was heavy, unblinking. He didn’t look like a neighbor. He looked like a guard dog assessing a threat.
“Dinner in ten,” Rick grunted, and closed the door.
Chloe slumped against the car, exhaling a shaky breath. “He knows. He always knows.”
“We need to check the logs,” Maya said, her mind racing back to the W-2 in her garage. “We need to know exactly where they were on the night of the murder. I found something too. Dan lied about where he lived.”
Chloe looked at Maya, her eyes wide. “Dan? But Dan is… Dan.”
“Is he?” Maya asked. She looked across the street at her own house. It looked perfect. The hydrangeas were blooming. The windows were clean. But inside, she knew there was a stain on the basement floor and a lie in the garage. “I’m going to find out tonight.”
Dinner was lasagna. Maya made it from scratch, chopping the onions with a little too much force. The smell of garlic and oregano filled the kitchen, masking the scent of the wetlands, but it couldn’t mask the tension radiating off Maya.
Dan sat at the head of the table, scrolling through his phone. He wore a crisp blue button-down, the sleeves rolled up to reveal forearms that Maya used to find comforting. Now, she just wondered if they were strong enough to strangle someone.
“How was work?” Maya asked, pouring herself a glass of red wine. She didn’t pour one for him.
“Fine,” Dan said without looking up. “Market is volatile. Everyone’s panicking about interest rates.”
“Panic seems to be going around,” Maya said. She took a sip, the wine tasting metallic on her tongue. “I was cleaning the garage today.”
Dan’s thumb paused on his screen. Just for a fraction of a second. “Oh? Find anything good?”
“Just old papers. College stuff.” Maya watched him carefully. “I found a tax form from 1994.”
Dan set the phone down. He picked up his fork and stabbed the lasagna. “Thrilling.”
“It listed your address as Oak Hollow Lane,” Maya said. Her voice was calm, conversational. The voice of a reporter asking a clarifying question before dropping the guillotine. “I thought you said you lived in the city back then. In that studio on Clark Street.”
Dan chewed slowly. He swallowed. He took a sip of water. Every movement was deliberate.
“I did,” he said. “Oak Hollow was my parents’ house. I used it as my permanent address for tax purposes. You know that. City taxes were a nightmare.”
“So you didn’t live there?”
“I slept on the couch occasionally when I came out to do laundry,” Dan said. He looked at her, his eyes flat. “Why? Does it matter?”
“It matters because you said you didn’t know this neighborhood,” Maya said, her grip on the wine glass tightening. “You said The Gables was ‘new territory’ for us. But you grew up two streets away from where a woman was butchered.”
Dan put his fork down. The clatter against the china was loud in the silent kitchen.
“Is this about the podcast again?” he asked. His voice was low, dangerous. “Maya, drop it.”
“The podcast says the killer was a neighbor,” Maya pushed. “It says he had a key.”
“And you think I’m the killer?” Dan laughed, but it wasn’t a happy sound. It was incredulous, mocking. “Because I used my parents’ address on a W-2? Jesus, Maya. You really are bored.”
“I’m not bored, Dan. I’m scared. Someone hung a dress in the gazebo today. A dress that smelled like my perfume.”
Dan froze. His face changed. The mockery vanished, replaced by something sharper. Alertness? Fear?
“Your perfume?” he repeated.
“Santal 33. The bottle you bought me for our anniversary. Is it missing, Dan?”
Dan stood up abruptly. The chair screeched against the hardwood. “This is insane. I’m not doing this. I’m going to watch the game.”
He turned to walk away, but Maya saw his hand twitch. He reached for his pocket, checking for something. His keys? His phone?
“Where were you?” Maya asked, standing up to face him. “Tuesday, August 21st, 1994. Where were you, Dan?”
Dan stopped in the doorway. He didn’t turn around. His back was stiff, the muscles visible through his shirt.
“I was at a party,” he said softly. “A block party. Here. On Bittersweet Court.”
Maya felt the floor drop out from under her. “You were here? The night she died?”
Dan turned his head. His profile was shadowed. “Everyone was here, Maya. That’s the point. That’s why no one saw anything. We were all watching the fireworks.”
“You never told me that,” she whispered.
“I didn’t tell you,” Dan said, “because I knew you’d look at me exactly the way you’re looking at me right now.”
He walked out of the room, leaving Maya alone with the cooling lasagna.
She stood there, listening to his heavy footsteps on the stairs. He wasn’t going to the living room to watch the game. He was going upstairs. To the bedroom. To the closet.
Maya looked at her phone. The recording app had been running the whole time. She stopped it and saved the file.
File Name: Dan_Confession_01.
He admitted he was there. He admitted he lied.
Maya walked to the sliding glass door and looked out at the dark wetlands. The reflection in the glass showed a woman standing in a beautiful kitchen, trapped in a beautiful house, married to a beautiful liar.
And out in the dark, beyond the white fence, the crickets stopped chirping. Someone was walking through the reeds.