"For paper," Officer Kowalczyk repeated.
"I make paper. By hand. That's what's in the pot." I pointed at the steaming stockpot on the bench. "That's kenaf bark, boiled in soda ash. I'm a paper conservator at the state archives. I can show you my garage. I can show you the paper. I have a letter from county code enforcement from last month saying the plants aren't a controlled substance."
"She would have a letter," Darlene said from the walkway.
Officer Kowalczyk finally turned her head, just slightly, so Darlene was in the corner of her eye. "Ma'am, I'm going to ask you to wait by my vehicle, please."
"I'm the one who reported it."
"I understand that. And I'm asking you to wait by my vehicle."
Darlene went, with Duchess trotting at her heel, but only as far as the end of my driveway, where she stood with her arms crossed over her quilted vest. By then I could see other neighbors. A man two doors up was standing in his garage with a leaf blower he wasn't using. A woman across the street, whose name I didn't know, was walking a dog that didn't seem to need walking, very slowly, back and forth across the same twenty feet of sidewalk. Lucía's face appeared at an upstairs window of the Delgado house and then vanished, and I knew she was waking her mother.
"Ms. Pruitt," the officer said, in a different voice, lower, "I'd like you to step out onto the porch and have a seat for me. You're not under arrest. I'm detaining you briefly while I figure out what's going on here. Do you have anything on you I should know about? Anything sharp?"
"There's a bone folder in my apron pocket," I said. "It's for creasing paper. It's made of a cow."
She actually smiled, very briefly. "Go ahead and leave that inside."
I put the bone folder next to the stockpot and sat on my own front step in my rubber apron while the sun came up over the subdivision. I'm told there is a photograph of this moment somewhere on the Larkspur Commons Facebook group, although it was later removed. I've never looked for it.
Officer Kowalczyk was good at her job. I'll say that for her now, and I'll say it at every opportunity. She didn't take Darlene's word for anything. She also didn't take mine. She asked if she could look at the plants, and I said yes, and she walked through the house with me trailing behind her and out onto the patio. She stood in the kenaf bed and looked up at a twelve-foot stalk with an expression I can only describe as professional bewilderment.