Chapter 3 - The Front Lawn Confrontation
By the time my sedan turned onto Elmwood Avenue, dusk was casting long, cold shadows across the neighborhood. The scene outside my duplex looked like a suburban war zone.
A patrol car remained parked near the curb, its amber lights pulsing rhythmically. The massive yellow moving truck was parked along the curb, its cargo bay locked tight. Sitting on the front retaining wall was David Miller, his head buried in his hands, while his pregnant wife, Sarah, paced the sidewalk, bouncing an exhausted toddler against her hip.
And standing near the porch stairs, pacing like a caged animal in three-inch heels and a wool trench coat, was Dileia.
The moment my car door clicked shut, she charged toward me across the lawn.
"Are you insane?!" she hissed, her voice loud enough to carry across three neighboring yards. "Do you have any idea what you've done? The police took my driver’s license! That officer was treating me like a common street thief in front of half your street! All you had to do was tell him on the phone that you approved the listing!"
I didn't break stride. I walked right past her, heading straight toward the porch, completely ignoring her outstretched hands.
"Mara! Talk to me!" she yelled, stumbling slightly on the soft turf. "I was doing you a favor! You’re twenty-eight years old, working some boring mid-level corporate desk job, and you think you know how to build an investment portfolio? You bought a multi-family property and didn't even have the sense to list the vacant side immediately! You were leaving money on the table!"
I stopped at the bottom step of my porch, turned around, and looked at my sister. Really looked at her.
Under the heavy layer of makeup, dark circles ringed her eyes. Her hands were shaking, not from righteous indignation, but from raw, unadulterated fear. She smelled of nervous sweat and expensive perfume she couldn't afford.
"Doing me a favor?" I asked, my voice terrifyingly calm. "By stealing my spare key out of Mom's house? By signing my name to a forged document? By pocketing forty-eight hundred dollars in cash without an escrow account?"
"The money is safe!" she shrieked, clutching her designer leather tote bag against her ribs like a mother shielding a newborn. "It's an earnest deposit! Standard industry practice!"
"An earnest deposit belongs in a registered brokerage trust account, Dileia," Officer Miller interjected, stepping out from the shadow of the porch with a clipboard tucked under his arm. "Not inside a personal handbag without a registered receipt book. And certainly not executed without a broker of record's authorization."
Dileia rounded on the officer, her voice rising into an ear-splitting wail. "This is a family matter! My sister is just being petty because she’s jealous of my business success! She always tries to sabotage me whenever I get ahead!"
"Where is the cash, Dileia?" I asked, cutting right through her screeching.
She froze, her eyes darting toward the moving truck where David and Sarah Miller stood watching in horrified disbelief.
"Open the bag," I said.
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"You have no right—"
"Open the bag, or Officer Miller files a formal complaint for grand larceny before we leave this grass," I told her, stepping closer until I could see the reflection of the police cruiser's lights flashing in her eyes. "You have five seconds to hand over that family’s life savings, or you leave this street in the back of that cruiser."
