"Why is she doing this?" Sarah whispered, staring out the window at Sylvia's dark, perfectly manicured house. "People don't just act like this over property lines. It's like she's trying to drive us out."
Mason looked at his laptop screen. He had been staring at a Google search for "Traceline Environmental Systems." The company had gone bankrupt in 1998. They specialized in industrial waste disposal, but their license was revoked after a massive scandal involving illegal dumping of chemical byproducts in residential development zones.
A cold sense of dread washed over him. The anonymous city complaints Sylvia filed against him included "improper chemical storage" and "unsafe standing water." Why would she specifically use those terms? Mason grabbed a flashlight, walked out into the cool night air, and moved toward the boundary line where the surveyor's orange flags had once stood. The ground there was slightly sunken. The hydrangeas were dying, not from lack of water, but from the roots up.