I sat straight up in bed, my heart instantly hammering against my ribs. “Why on earth would I go back there after what happened yesterday afternoon?”
“Because your boss just found out what has been lurking underneath his pool deck, and things are getting rather loud,” Walter said, his voice quiet and steady over the static.
“What did you do, Dad?” I gasped, throwing the bedsheets aside and scrambling across the hardwood floor for my shoes.
“I simply brought our neighbor Mabel over to meet the homeowner,” he explained, “and two Mesa police officers are currently parked in the drive because Gregory decided that shouting vulgar threats was a brilliant way to handle a utility dispute.”
That sentence had me out of my apartment and onto the freeway in less than ten minutes flat. When I pulled onto the winding suburban lane, two white-and-blue patrol cruisers were blocking the curb, their amber lights flashing slowly against the tall stucco pillars of Gregory’s front courtyard.
That was the exact moment Mabel grabbed my wrists by my car, revealing herself as the elderly widow whose property bordered the rear boundary of Gregory’s expansive yard. She had spent the last two years watching her modest fixed income get completely devoured by staggering, inexplicable water statements from the municipal utility.
“My husband passed away three winters ago, and ever since then, my utility bills have looked like I was running a public water park,” Mabel told me, her eyes shining with unshed tears. “I hired three private plumbers, the city utility swapped out my digital meter twice, and nobody could explain where thousands of gallons were disappearing every single month.”
I led her toward the tailgate of my dad’s truck, where Walter was tapping through high-resolution files on his rugged tablet screen. “Dad, please explain how Mabel’s missing water has anything to do with Gregory’s swimming pool.”
Walter swiped to a photograph showing a deep trench cut beneath the reinforced concrete equipment pad behind the cabana. “While I was digging out the fractured return line on the third day of the job, I ran across a secondary copper line buried deep below the gravel that had no business being connected to the pool’s autofill regulator.”
“Autofill regulator?” I asked, leaning closer to inspect the detailed digital snapshot.
“Luxury pools have float valves that automatically pull fresh water into the basin whenever the water level drops from evaporation or leaks,” Walter explained, swiping to another picture showing an ancient shutoff valve hidden beneath loose dirt. “When I traced this line backward, it did not originate from Gregory’s main house supply, it ran straight under the back fence toward the alleyway.”
Across the lawn, Gregory spotted the tablet and lunged forward, only to have a tall patrol officer immediately plant a hand against his broad chest. “He had no legal authority to dig around my property lines or photograph my underground utilities!”
