A Body in the Borrowing Cupboard

How it begins

The borrowing cupboard had never contained anything worth murdering.

Cora was fairly certain of that.

There was a drill that sparked, a tile cutter that required encouragement and a ladder whose second rung had been repaired by three different men who refused to speak to one another.

Behind the ladder was a dead man.

She shut the door.

Then she opened it again, because she had spent twenty years telling volunteers not to assume a problem would improve in the dark.

It had not.

Dev arrived carrying a pressure washer.

"I've brought it back."

"Don't."

He looked at the machine.

"It's clean."

"That's what worries me."

Every object returned that morning had been clean. The hedge trimmer shone. The hammer had lost its comfortable gray patina. Someone had polished the dented watering can until it reflected a distorted version of the fire-exit sign.

Cora had been delighted at first.

The dead man wore a community-center visitor badge.

He had signed the borrowing ledger at eight fifteen.

It was eight ten.

Dev followed her gaze to the clock.

"That thing's slow."

"Not since I changed the battery."

Outside, a volunteer choir began testing the hall's microphone. One prolonged note came through the wall, followed by a dispute about whether it was the right note.

Cora called the police from the kitchen.

When she returned, Dev was looking at the ladder without touching it.

"Who painted this?"

"Nobody."

"Somebody has."

A narrow stripe of blue ran beneath the lowest rung. Fresh enough to smell if you bent close.

Cora checked the ledger.

The ladder had not been borrowed for six weeks.

The last listed address was a house she had been told was empty.

Dev put down the pressure washer very gently.

"Should I stay?"

Cora looked at the shining tools, the immaculate floor and the one dark space behind the ladder.

"Yes," she said. "I think somebody's been tidying a story."