Free Boar Island by Nevada Barr

Terry saw the projection. Heath didn’t know. All she knew was that a look of abject, pants-wetting terror deformed the other woman’s face.
    Heath bared her teeth and braced her hands on the arms of her chair. Murder could be done in a state such as this. Had her legs been viable, she would have probably left the Edlesons in a squad car, never to see the outside of a prison cell again. As it was, blind rage could not be sustained more than a moment. Anna swept up behind her. Heath leaned back into the loving embrace of Robo-butt to be rolled unceremoniously over the sill and onto the brick walk. “You assaulted Sam,” Terry shouted. “I helped you! So you can’t call the police. They won’t believe you. You promised!” She glared at Heath.
    “I did,” Heath said.
    “You are a witness,” she yelled at Anna.
    “I am,” Anna said.
    The door slammed. The dead bolt thudded into place.
    For a moment Heath and Anna stared at the door.
    “Now we call the police?” Anna asked.
    “Now we call the police,” Heath agreed.
    Empty and exhausted, she slumped back in the seat and said nothing more, letting Anna push her down the walk. The long summer dusk had settled into true night. A streetlight made shadows stark and colorless on the concrete sidewalk beside the asphalt. Black and white, Heath thought, and missed a time when she saw right and wrong that clearly delineated.
    “Ms. Jarrod?” came a whisper.
    Anna stopped pushing. Heath came out of her slump into full alert.
    “Ms. Jarrod, it’s me, Tiffany.” The girl, her blond hair gray in the cold light, separated herself from the side of her dad’s truck and crouched down by Robo-butt. At first, Heath thought it a sign of unusual sensitivity in a teenager, but realized it wasn’t. Tiffany didn’t want her parents to see her consorting with the enemy.
    “I gotta get back,” Tiff said. “Tell Elizabeth it’s not me; my folks won’t let me call. They took my phone and my laptop and I’m like in a black hole. I can’t call anybody or get on Facebook or anything! I hope she’s okay. Tell her I’ll write her and put the note under the hedge where we used to crawl through when we were little kids. Nobody’d ever think of that.”
    “Elizabeth’s being cyberstalked,” Anna said curtly. “Do you know who’s behind it?”
    “I know about the stalking—everybody at school does. I don’t know—”
    “Tiffany!”
    “Gotta go. I know what Dad … I … gotta go.” She stood and ran, probably hoping to get back inside the house before Mom and Dad figured out she’d defected.
    Anna pushed. Robo-butt rolled. Heath rode. Only the crunch of the chair’s rubber tires on bits of escaped gravel accompanied them back to the kitchen door. Gwen, Elizabeth, and Wily were waiting for them on the couch, tense and wide-eyed.
    Anna parked the chair, then sank down in her former place. Heath set the brakes.
    “Well, open the envelope, for heaven’s sake!” Gwen exclaimed.
    “No winner,” Heath said wearily. “It probably isn’t Tiff, which is good news. She couldn’t, her folks confiscated her cell phone and her laptop.”
    “Gosh,” Elizabeth breathed, evidently shocked at the draconian nature of the punishment. “What did she do?”
    “She saw,” Anna said.
    “Tiff said she would write you about it and leave the note under the hedge where you kids used to crawl back and forth to each other’s yards,” Heath said.
    “On paper?” Elizabeth asked.
    “No. She’s going to scratch it on a piece of slate with a stylus,” Heath retorted.
    “That Tiffany wasn’t doing it, that’s good, isn’t it?” Gwen asked.
    “Not really,” Heath said.
    “We haven’t a clue as to who is behind it,” Anna said. “So we have no way to make it stop. Nobody to come down on. We don’t have a motive. We don’t, do we, Elizabeth?” The adults again stared at the teenager in her pj’s like hawks at a baby duckling.
    “No,” Elizabeth said sadly. “At