Normally I would offer to take him to one of the side rooms, but right now everything was filthy, so we might as well stand. “No problem, sir. Sorry about the accommodations. We had some trouble the last magic wave. How is your family doing?”

“They’re doing well,” he said. “We’ve hired movers and put the house on the market. We don’t want to take any chances.”

“That’s understandable.” Keep him talking . . .

“Pamela mentioned that you asked if anybody had a problem with us or our cats.”

Please tell me that someone had a problem with you and that you know his name and address. Please, Universe, do me this one favor.

“A couple of weeks ago I was doing some yard work after that storm we had. I was in the front yard and this man came up to me and started ranting about how our cats get on his car.”

“Have you ever seen him before?”

Mr. Oswald shook his head. Of course not. That would be too easy.

“I told him that he must have me confused with someone else, because Sherlock and Watson are inside cats. It makes no sense, if you ask me. A cat is a predator. He must go out and hunt to be fulfilled, but the kids are scared that something will eat them, so we keep them inside.”

“What did the man say?”

“He became very agitated.” Mr. Oswald frowned. “He raised his voice, waved his arms around, and proceeded to what I can only describe as ranting. I thought he might be intoxicated. Eventually he got to the part where he told me that everything was fine until ‘you people’ moved into the neighborhood with ‘your spoiled brats.’ At that point I told him to get off my property.”

“Did he?”

“He told me that now his hands were tied and walked off.”

I pulled my small notebook out. “What did he look like?”

“Late fifties, dark hair, balding, average build.”

“White, Hispanic . . . ?”

“White. He wore a suit and tie. Glasses.”

Too generic. “Anything else? Anything you can remember?” I asked. “Tattoos, scars, anything out of the ordinary?”

“He wore an earring.” Mr. Oswald thought about it and nodded. “Yes, I remember. He wore an earring in his left ear, one of those dangling earrings with a very large glass gem in it. I thought it was strange because it didn’t fit him at all.”

“How do you know it was glass?”

“It was bright red and the size of an almond in a shell, almost an inch long. I thought it looked ridiculous.”

Alarms went off in my head.

“Can you draw the earring?” I passed the notebook to him.

He sketched a quick shape and passed it back to me. It looked like a cluster of large grape berries fused together and covered by a metal cork with the gem in its center.