“One day,” I said slowly, waving my hand in the air like it wasn’t that big a deal, “when I was over at the Valley Forest Estates offices, I saw Spender and Don Greenway get into quite an argument.”

“Greenway.”

“He’s the head of the company, I think. We bought this house from him. Our street’s even named after him.”

“What was this argument about?”

I told him. Flint made some notes in his book, flipped the cover over, and slipped it into his jacket.

“Do you think,” I said, hesitantly, “that you could not mention that I told you this, if you’re talking to Mr. Greenway? He’s, uh, supposed to fix some things around the house here, and he might not be so inclined to do it if he knew I was, you know, ratting him out.”

Flint’s eyebrows went up a fraction of an inch. “Ratting him out,” he repeated.

“Yeah. Isn’t that what you call it? Or squealed? Is it squealed?”

“Ratting him out is good,” said Flint, who showed himself out.

i might not have my police terminology down pat, but I knew the words to describe how I felt: freaked out.

My friend Jeff might have found a dead guy, but I’d found a dead guy who’d been murdered. Surely this beat a guy who just got his head stuck in a storm drain and drowned. And yet I didn’t feel even the slightest bit full of myself. What I felt was scared.

By how long had I missed encountering Samuel Spender’s killer? Just because I’d seen him have an argument with Greenway didn’t mean that had anything to do with his death. What if Spender had been the victim of some nutbar who would have been just as happy to kill me if I’d come along a little earlier? And what if that nutbar was still roaming around the neighborhood, which, up to now, had always been a crime-free paradise?

I needed someone to talk to about this. I tried Sarah at work.

“Dan. City.”

I hung up. I was not talking to that asshole again. I walked to the front window, where Detective Flint was still sitting in the front seat of his cruiser, making some more notes before pulling away from the curb. Across the street, Earl’s truck caught my eye. He was home.

He’d want to know about this.

The pickup was backed up to the garage, which was open, and the door from the garage to the laundry room was propped open. Earl was either loading up the truck or taking things into the house. It made no sense to ring the front doorbell, so I entered the garage, mounted the two steps to the laundry room door, and called in, “Earl?”