“Too loud. Who gave you permission to have this gathering?”
“We’re just having a family barbecue, ma’am.”
“A barbecue?” Margaret Prescott laughed. She looked at the yard full of Black faces, then at Andre Fletcher. “Your house?”
“We moved in this morning.”
“This city has laws. I don’t know who let you in, but I’m fixing this right now.”
Margaret grabbed the garden hose and blasted the grill. Charcoal hissed. Ribs slid into the dirt. Water sprayed across the table, soaking plates and bread. “This neighborhood has no room for suspicious people.”
Andre’s wife stepped forward. “What are you doing?”
“Cleaning the trash out of my neighborhood.”
Margaret turned and made a phone call. Andre set the tongs down and said nothing. But what Margaret did not know was that one call was about to turn the entire neighborhood upside down.
Three hours before that phone call, Andre Fletcher stood in an empty living room surrounded by cardboard boxes. The house smelled like fresh paint and new hardwood. Forty-four years old. Twenty-two years on the force. And today he was moving into the kind of neighborhood he used to drive past on patrol.