Annie's Neighborhood. Roz Fox Denny

made you sound like a saint.”

      Annie laughed self-consciously. “Stop already.”

      “I don’t mean to embarrass you. I think it was sweet. What you’re doing now, restoring the house, is exactly what she said you’d come here and do one day. Only she had grander plans. I’m sure you’ve seen the photo album that’s filled with pictures of how every street in town used to look.”

      “I found it a few weeks ago,” Annie murmured.

      “Well, I’m sure you remember the park. It was beautiful, with rose gardens, benches and walkways. Looking at it now, you’d never know it’s the same place. Peggy and I got together with Gran Ida most afternoons for tea and cookies and she’d bring out her album. She’d tell us that when you came home to stay, you’d get people to make the town look like it used to.” Missy giggled delightedly. “See why I expected you to be a saint? Maybe Gran Ida wasn’t quite herself toward the end, as Peggy pointed out, but I loved listening to her dreams. I had similar ones when we bought this house. Mike and I settled on a fixer-upper, which was all we could afford. I wish we’d known about the crime. I suppose it goes with the territory of low-income housing,” she said, ending on a sigh.

      Annie listened while she washed out paintbrushes. “Now you sound like our illustrious police chief. Missy, low income doesn’t have to be synonymous with high crime. A family shouldn’t have to sell and move away to feel safe.”

      “You can say that after all our homes were burgled in the same afternoon?”

      Setting her clean brushes out to dry, Annie prepared to haul the ladder back to her garage. “Do you think that if people see what we’ve done, they’ll want to do the same thing? That’s my hope, anyway—that one set of highly visible improvements will encourage others in our community to follow our lead.”

      “Peggy said you plan to call a meeting. But if Mike’s out of town I won’t be there. We’ve decided it’s not safe for us both to be gone at the same time. And I can’t say whether what we’ve done will induce anyone else. Mike said yesterday that if you hadn’t arranged for us to get such a deep discount at the paint store, we wouldn’t have been able to afford this makeover. Same goes for Peggy and George.”

      Annie shrugged. She’d let them all think they were getting paint at a discount when, in fact, she’d made up the difference. She hoped they wouldn’t discover what she’d done. They had no idea how much money Gran had left her. With those funds, she was in a position to underwrite other projects and fulfill at least part of her grandmother’s dream. She’d told Gran’s lawyer that she didn’t want word of her inheritance to leak out. And she was more than willing to help families who pitched in by doing part of the work themselves. Mr. Manchester had said keeping the funding under wraps might be tricky. Annie guessed she’d deal with it if that became necessary.

      Missy returned to her house and Annie stored her tools.

      She walked to the end of her driveway to study the trio of newly painted homes, and thought they looked fantastic. It gave her personal satisfaction to see them so fresh and attractive—more satisfaction than she’d felt in a while. She’d thought she loved her job in L.A. But maybe the work had begun to weigh on her more than she’d realized. Her challenges here were more physical than mental. Here she used her creativity. Until now she hadn’t noticed how long it had been since she’d done any cooking, sewing or gardening. Her main regret, though, was that she hadn’t budgeted her time well enough to visit Gran Ida sooner.

      Because her recent loss was still too raw, she distracted herself by installing the window boxes she’d bought. Soon she’d fill them with trailing roses. She wanted to tear out the old wisteria that covered a rock retaining wall. With Louisville gearing up for the Kentucky Derby, nurseries were selling gorgeous rosebushes. Annie pictured roses in a riot of color all across the front of this house, down the road and through the park again.

      The next day, the weather turned from sunny and warm to muggy rain. Bad weather drove Annie inside. She alternately worked on kitchen curtains and a flyer to inform residents about her restoration planning meeting. The place, date and time were set. Darn it, though, she’d hoped to do some landscaping before she took pictures to put on her flyer. But the rain hung around for two more days, putting the kibosh on all her outdoor plans. She dug through Gran’s boxes of fabric and found just what she needed for drapes.

      * * *

      KOOT TALMAGE BLEW into police headquarters on a gust of rain and wind. Shutting the door with some difficulty, he stamped water from his wet boots, then shook off his official yellow slicker and hung it on a peg near the door.

      Sky saw him and stepped into the hallway, his coffee cup in hand. “Are we going to have a real gully washer today?”

      “Already is,” the other man grumbled as he met Sky at the coffeemaker and helped himself to a clean mug hanging on a wall rack.

      “Is it causing flooding around Grandiflora or Hybrid Tea?” Sky named two streets that paralleled the river.

      “Nothing like it used to before our city manager ordered storm drains installed. I remember how the people on those streets griped about the inconvenience when they tore up the intersection. Aaron Loomis won’t be hearing any complaints now.”

      “That’s good. Listen, I want all of us out on patrol about the time the high school lets out. Hopefully seeing our cruisers will slow the kids down. First big rain after a dry spell, young drivers tend to forget cars can hydroplane if they drive too fast. We don’t need any of our kids ending up rearranging anyone’s front landscaping.”

      “Speaking of landscapes, have you driven down Rose Arbor recently?”

      Sky choked on a swig of his coffee. “Not really. Why?” he mumbled after Koot had pounded his back. Sky had made checking the street that suffered the three robberies part of his nightly routine. Because his checks weren’t entirely of an official nature, but partly a personal interest he’d taken in Annie Emerson, Sky wasn’t about to admit that he already knew about the improvements on Rose Arbor. He didn’t want to feel any interest in Annie, but he did—and he wasn’t about to admit that, either.

      “Well, there’ve been big changes at the three homes where we investigated those break-ins.”

      “Changes?” Sky played along, even though he’d witnessed stages of the restoration via his car lights and one streetlamp. He knew Annie, the California cyclone, would get the credit or blame, depending on whether or not her plans to spearhead urban renewal caused upheaval among the rank and file.

      “As soon as the rain lets up, you need to go take a gander. Those same three homes have been painted from top to bottom. The one in the middle is obviously being prepared for new landscaping. All those renos are pricy, Sky. I wonder if we’ve got ourselves a case of insurance fraud.”

      This time Sky did spew his coffee. “Sorry.” He grabbed a paper towel, wiped the counter and bent to scrub part of the linoleum. “Tell me what brought on that conclusion.”

      “At least two of those couples claimed losses in the robberies. Ida Vance’s granddaughter never provided us with a list of her stolen goods. After I saw what’s going on over there, I started thinking the gal from California might be some kind of scam artist. The TV news is full of those tales. A lot of ’em are in Florida, but some are in and around L.A. She could’ve set it up so they all collected big on phony insurance claims.”

      Sky returned to his office. “Annie Emerson is no scam artist, Koot. And don’t be saying anything like that around town. I told you I got back some of their stolen property that had been hocked. I even found silverware Ms. Emerson didn’t know had gone missing. They’re honest folks.”

      Koot followed his boss into his cramped office. “You sound pretty certain of that for somebody who claims not to have seen the work that’s gone on there.”

      “Well, the day I returned the stolen goods I was able to track down, Ms. Emerson was sanding old paint off her house.” He winced, remembering