Chapter 4: What the Paperwork Said
The detective assigned to Daniel Marsh's case was a woman named Reyes.
She was younger than I expected — mid-thirties, dark hair pulled back, a yellow legal pad on the table between us.
She didn't start with the car.
She started with Gary Pelton.
"Tell me everything about the transaction," she said.
"From the beginning."
I laid it all out on the table.
The printed Craigslist listing I had saved because my daughter told me to always print listings before you meet a seller.
The bill of sale.
The signed title.
Two text messages I had screenshotted and never deleted because I am the kind of person who never deletes anything.
Reyes looked at each document without touching them.
"The title," she said.
"Who signed it?"
"Gary Pelton.
His name is printed there, and that's his signature."
"How do you know it's his signature?"
"I watched him sign it.
We met in a parking lot off Route 9.
He drove the SUV there.
I drove my old car.
My neighbor came with me — not Linda, a different neighbor, Karen Stills.
She was my witness."
Reyes wrote down Karen's name.
"And the title itself — did anything seem unusual about it?"
I thought back.
"It looked normal to me.
I'm not an expert.
I ran the VIN through one of those online check services before I agreed to buy it.
It came back clean."
"It would have," Reyes said.
"The VIN plate on the dash was replaced.
The one near the rear bumper was original — that's what your neighbor's paint uncovered."
I sat with that for a moment.
"So the car was stolen before I bought it."
"The car was reported stolen twenty-six months ago, three days after Daniel Marsh was last seen." She looked up from her pad.
"The VIN on the title you were given matches a different vehicle — a 2017 model that was scrapped in Ohio.
Whoever prepared that paperwork knew what they were doing."
"Gary Pelton."
"That's one possibility."
"Ruth Marsh told me he was Daniel's roommate."
Reyes nodded slowly, in a way that suggested this was not new information to her.
"Mr.
Pelton was interviewed twice during the original missing persons investigation.
He stated that Daniel had left voluntarily — that they'd had an argument about rent, and Daniel had packed a bag and gone.
No forwarding address.
No contact."
"And the car?"
"Mr.
Pelton told investigators he didn't know where the car was.
That Daniel must have taken it."
I looked at the bill of sale on the table between us.
Gary Pelton's signature.
Gary Pelton's phone number, which I had called once when I thought the registration might have an issue, and which had been disconnected within six months of the sale.
"He sold me a missing man's car," I said.
"Yes."
"And told the police that man drove away in it."
Reyes didn't answer.
She didn't need to.
"What about Linda?" I asked.
"My neighbor.
Why was she afraid when she saw the VIN?"
Reyes set her pen down.
"What makes you think she was afraid?"
"I saw her face.
When the officer found the letters under the paint — she went white.
She stopped shouting.
She asked for a lawyer before anyone even accused her of anything."
Reyes looked at me steadily.
"Ms.
Denton, what do you know about your neighbor's relationship with Gary Pelton?"
The question landed strangely.
"Nothing," I said.
"I didn't even know she knew him."
"She does." Reyes picked up her pen again.
"They grew up on the same street."
I thought about Linda screaming on her porch.
*You'll regret this.* I thought about the paint.
The 2 a.m.
bucket of red across my white car.
The dissolved coating.
The letters underneath.
"She knew," I said.
"She knew what car was sitting in my driveway."
Reyes didn't confirm it.
But she didn't deny it either.
"We're going to need your neighbor Karen Stills to come in," she said.
"And I'd like your permission to take the vehicle into our impound lot for full forensic processing."
"Take it," I said immediately.
She almost smiled.
"Most people argue about that."
"It's not really my car, is it?"
She looked at me for a moment.
"No," she said.
"It isn't."
I drove home in a borrowed car, past my own driveway, where a flatbed truck was already backing in.
May you like
Linda's curtains moved as I passed.
I didn't look away.
