“Lost something, Claire?” he asked, his dry Midwestern drawl carrying over the low brick wall between our properties.
“My spare house key,” I said, looking through the dried hydrangeas near my front steps. “I thought I might have dropped it here yesterday.”
He stopped raking and pulled a white handkerchief from his trousers to clean his wire-rimmed glasses.
“Your mother was here yesterday,” Arthur said, squinting through the clean glass before putting them back on his nose. “Around three in the afternoon.”
I stopped searching the mulch. “Evelyn was here?”
“Parked right in your driveway,” Arthur said. “She stayed about ten minutes, then left before the mail carrier came.”
I walked down the porch steps to my car.
The sound of the car engine idling filled the quiet driveway as I realized my spare key did not fall between the seats.
