Chapter 21: Nine Fourteen

The note on the Ferris Road house fell due at five on Friday, and nobody paid it.

By nine that night it was snowing hard again, in thick flat flakes, across the same drive.

Tobias parked the truck at the foot of the front steps with the engine running.

A sheriff's cruiser sat behind us with its lights off.

A locksmith's van sat behind that.

Joy was in the back seat in her red puffer, with her inhaler zipped into the pocket.

I had asked her whether she wanted to come, and I had meant the question.

"I want to see it," she said. "I want to see them come out."

"They might be cross, baby."

"I know. I'll stay by Uncle Tobias."

The deputy walked up the steps beside me with an envelope in his glove.

He was the same one who had come at dawn on Christmas Day, and he had not forgotten it.

Every window in the big house was lit.

Through the glass panel beside the door I could see the hall table and the stairs.

The deputy rang the bell.

The housekeeper opened it, with her cardigan buttoned wrong.

"Ma'am," she said to me, very low. "She's in the dining room. She hasn't moved since five."

"Would you ask her to come to the door?"

She did.

Margaret appeared in the hall, in her silk blouse and pearls, with a glass in her hand.

She stopped when she saw the cruiser behind me.

"What is this?" she said.

"A notice of default and a writ of possession on the first mortgage," the deputy said.

He held out the envelope.

"Pinegate Fund is the holder. The balance was due at five o'clock."

"I know when it was due."

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