So yeah. George has a couple of reasons for wanting to take a torch to my best performing restaurant. He would have known how to jig the alarm, too, working it so it didn’t trigger at the first sign of smoke. He would have known exactly where to toss the match.
And like Flavio reminded me, he still has a key.
Traffic loosens, and a few minutes later, I screech to a stop at the curb and eye the corner unit on a block-long stretch of townhomes. Three stories of boring brown brick and creamy siding above a monster garage door. Tall and angular, with concrete steps leading to a covered entrance so shallow, you could press yourself to the door and still get a backside soaked with rain. I take in the windows, dark glass obscured with plain white blinds, the leggy plants in the window boxes and on either side of the front door. This is it, all right. The place looks exactly the same.
On the doorstep, I ignore the Ring and rap the door with my knuckle—the kind of knock a friendly neighbor would use to borrow a cup of sugar, maybe, or a delivery person with a package. This is a moment that demands an element of surprise.
I wait, the seconds thumping in my chest like a drumline.
Then again, the Ring would have alerted him to my arrival, which means he probably knows I’m here. I step back and scan the upstairs windows, half expecting to see him grinning at me through the blinds, but there’s nothing.
I head back down the steps to the sidewalk, jogging past the truck and around the side of the house, where a six-foot wooden fence surrounds a backyard the size of a postage stamp. I follow it around to the back, stopping at the first gate I come to. Behind it, George’s town house looms in a leaden sky.
I push on the gate, but it holds. I’m guessing some kind of latch on the inside where the wood is thin and kind of soggy. I lean on it with a shoulder, and the latch releases with a pop.
Bingo.
I swing the door wide and step inside.
Except for a green trash can, the yard is completely bare, a scraggly patch of dirt and grass with not a stick of furniture. No table, no potted plant, not even a ratty lawn chair. The emptiness of it gives me pause, just a fleeting second where my conviction fades.
I haven’t seen or spoken to this guy in more than four months. It’s possible that George doesn’t live here, that he didn’t just storm out of Lasky but also this house, this city. What if I’m about to go storming through the backyard of some poor, unsuspecting sucker or worse—a homeowner running for their gun? This is Georgia, where most people have one.
The wooden door bangs shut behind me, followed by a dog starting up next door, muffled barks from a big dog. German shepherd big. I wait, trying to decide.
And then I spot a pair of kitchen Crocs, black and male-sized, just inside the sliding glass door.
I take off across the yard, and this time I’m not the least bit subtle about it. I bang on the doors, peer through unshaded windows onto furnishings I recognize, oversize furniture done up in leather, most of it brown. Not so much masculine as uninspired, plucked from the pages of a sales catalog.
The living room is a disaster—rumpled pillows and more discarded shoes, a coffee table piled with magazines and books, their spines cracked and the pages dog-eared. Definitely George, who reads more than a librarian. Sci-fi mostly, with an occasional mystery mixed in for fun.
The next window looks onto a spotless kitchen, further proof that George lives here. Chefs are obsessive about their workspace, and this one is uncluttered and gleaming, with a floor clean enough to lick. A digital clock blinks on the coffee maker, but otherwise no movement, no one home…though the beast next door is still going strong.
Above me, a whoosh of temperature-controlled air followed by a familiar voice: “Yo, asshole.”
George’s cheeks are a little fuller than the last time I saw him, his head a lot shinier on top. Looks like he finally gave up on that receding hairline and shaved the whole thing off.
He leans both forearms on the second-story windowsill, tipping his chin to the grass I just walked through. “You do know this backyard is private property, yeah?”
“Yeah, but so’s my steak house.”
“So?”
“So there’s a detective looking at the security footage right now, and I gave him your picture.”
A double-barreled lie. There’s no detective, no picture, but it gets my point across. An accusation, bright and sparkling.
He tilts his head and frowns. “Why would my face be on your security feed? I haven’t set foot in the place for what—five? Six months?”
Four and a half almost to the day. George knows this as well as I do.