Esau Pettiford's house had been on that list. His wife Leatha had died in 2019. He was eighty-four. His grandson Marquis, the man Marcella had seen "living in the garage," had moved in to take care of him after a stroke. The yard got long because the grandson was working two jobs and taking care of an old man. The cars on blocks were Esau's, a 1971 Buick Skylark he'd been restoring for twenty years and a parts car. "People coming and going" were the home health aide and the physical therapist and Esau's brothers from Mount Gilead. Marcella had reported every one of them.
Pa Houa Lor's house was on the list. The garden was "conditions detrimental to neighborhood character." She'd had five calls logged that summer, two of which no officer had ever responded to. She was one call away from designation when I moved in.
And there was one more address on the last version of that spreadsheet, dated in July. It had a note next to it that Maxine read to me, in that borrowed conference room, without expression, because she thought I ought to know, and because by then Marcella already knew.
The address was 101 Plover Lane, the big gray house on the corner, with the flag that hung straight even when there was no wind.
The note said: Widow. 2nd mtg 60+ days delinquent (per T.). Term as Pres. ends Jan. After board turnover, start w/ landscaping, parking. Should be easy, she's done the paperwork for us.
Marcella came to my porch on a Thursday evening near the end of October, after dark, which I suppose was the only time she could stand to be seen walking down Plover Lane by then. The story had broken in the Fernhill Courier two weeks earlier, under the headline NUISANCE PROGRAM UNDER STATE PROBE; DEPUTY CHIEF ON LEAVE, and though her name wasn't in it, everybody in Bittern Ridge knew whose name wasn't in it. Somebody had taken a can of black spray paint to the HOA sign at the entrance and changed BITTERN RIDGE to BITTER RIDGE. Fitzgerald had it cleaned off the next morning, on his own dime. Somebody had left a printed photograph of a woman in a visor in her mailbox with the word KAREN written across it in marker. She hadn't reported it. I know because I asked Captain Yarbrough, and he said nobody had called anything in from 101 Plover in weeks. Not one thing.
I was sitting on the porch with Daddy. Jerome had come by the weekend before and hung a swing from the old hooks in the haint-blue ceiling, a plain slatted oak one from the hardware store, and Daddy had taken to it the way some people take to church. He was in it now, with a blanket on his lap, rocking it gently with one foot, listening to a ballgame on a transistor radio he'd had since 1974.
Marcella stopped at the property line, exactly where she'd stopped the first night. She was wearing a gray cardigan and no visor. Without the visor she looked older, and smaller, and her hair was going white at the part in a way she'd been hiding. She had a manila folder in her hands.
"Chief Quarterman," she said. "I'm sorry to bother you at home."