“What is happening right now?” Dane asked.
“I was hoping Penny might know who was on the property yesterday,” Noah said, moving some of the mulch around the base of the flowering bushes.
Dane frowned. “What do you mean who was on the property yesterday?”
“Someone was here,” Noah said. “Someone who wasn’t us or Avery.”
“And you know that how?” I asked.
“Because of the footprints on Gerald.”
Dane looked to the sky, like he was praying to a god he probably didn’t believe in for patience. “And Gerald would be…?”
“The patch of grass I cordoned off.” Noah straightened and peeled off his work gloves. “It was his turn to rest, and there was very clearly a footprint.”
I ignored the part about Gerald needing to rest because it wasn’t unusual. Noah routinely pronounced that certain areas of the lawn — areas that looked perfectly normal and healthy to Dane and me — needed to “rest.” Once he’d made the announcement, there was no talking him out of it: the patch of grass in question was marked with stakes and twine, preventing any of us from walking on it, no matter how inconvenient.
Last spring it had been the grass next to the driveway. We’d had to jump over the stakes like hurdles for three solid months just to get to our cars.
“Maybe Avery accidentally stepped on it,” Dane suggested.
Noah shook his head. “It was a dress shoe. A man’s dress shoe.”
“You can tell?” Noah was pretty particular about the garden, knew all kinds of shit I didn’t know, but he wasn’t some kind of bush tracker.
“Obviously. I know every inch of the garden, every blade of grass. Someone was here.”
Dane furrowed his brow as he rubbed at his jaw. “I told you we should have installed cameras.”
“Evelyn didn’t want to,” I pointed out.
“Evelyn’s not here anymore.” Dane sounded as sad about it as I felt.
“Talk to Avery about it,” Noah said. “It’s her house.”
“Maybe I should talk to her,” I suggested.
“Why you?”
I had a feeling from the way Dane looked at me that he knew. Or suspected at least.
“Because he’s fucking her,” Noah said.
I glared at him. What was the point of keeping Dane out of our earlier conversation if Noah was going to drop this bomb five minutes later?
“I’m not fucking her,” I said.
“He’s almost fucking her,” Noah said.
Dane’s jaw twitched. “She’s our boss.”
It was technically true, but “boss” wasn’t the word that came to mind when I thought about Avery.
Especially now.
“I know.”
“It’s a bad idea,” Dane said.