CHAPTER 7: AN ENVELOPE THAT NEVER ARRIVED

The postal carrier for Alder Street was a woman named Denise Palmer.
She had known my father for fourteen years.
When I approached her the next morning, she said she could discuss delivery procedures but not another person’s mail.
I explained what had happened and gave her the police case number.
Denise’s face changed when I mentioned Patricia.
“Your neighbor has been asking whether you receive forwarded mail,” she said.
“What did you tell her?”
“I told her that’s private.”
Denise said my father had arranged a forwarding service shortly before his death.


She could not disclose the details without the appropriate authorization.
She advised me to visit the post office with proof that I represented his estate.
I spent two hours searching legal papers for the appointment naming me executor.
At the counter, a supervisor explained that a piece of mail sent to an old address might have been redirected automatically.
There was no guarantee that the envelope Martin described had been delivered.
They could investigate if I supplied the information and relevant documentation.
I left with a form, not an answer.
Back home, I noticed a second set of tire tracks on the soft ground beside the mailbox.


Someone had parked close to the curb before Patricia arrived with her hammer.
I photographed the tracks and called Ortiz.
She asked whether I had seen a vehicle there.
I hadn’t.
But my neighbor across the street, Mrs. Bell, had a doorbell camera pointed toward the roadway.
When I knocked, she invited me into a living room filled with porcelain birds.
She found the recording quickly.
At 5:52 that morning, a gray sedan stopped beside my mailbox.
A man stepped out, opened the door, and slipped something through the slot.
He drove away without approaching the house.
Twenty-two minutes later,

Patricia arrived with her hammer.
The video was too distant to show the man’s face.
His car, however, had a cracked right taillight and an unusually bright orange bumper sticker.
Martin had arrived at my house in a gray sedan with exactly those details.