Page 117 of The Case of the Missing Love Stone

The arrangement remains covered beneath a black plastic sleeve, until he reaches the marigold bed. He unfolds a page under his flashlight, looks from it to the fence, and counts three posts before placing the bundle at the base of a trellis. Two motorcycles start beyond the trees less than a minute later.

I replay the sound. The engines are low and rough, older than most of the polished touring bikes crowding downtown for festival week.

Roman comes downstairs, carrying Scarlet. Her bare legs show beneath one of his shirts, and her hair spills over his arm in a wave.

“I told you I could walk,” she says.

“I have heard the rumor.”

He settles her into a chair and kneels to pull thick socks over her feet. I set coffee in front of her, then make toast and eggs while she watches the paused figure on my screen.

“Did you find him?” she asks.

“Yes. He may be a courier.”

She picks up a piece of toast but doesn’t eat. “What makes you think that?”

I turn the laptop toward them and play the clip.

Scarlet watches him consult the page and count along the fence. “He had notes.” She leans closer. “That trellis is visible from the kitchen sink.”

I look from the footage to the window behind her. “Then whoever wrote the directions had been here, had photographs, or knew the property well enough to mark the placement.”

Her leg bounces under the table. I cover her knee with my palm.

“The man carrying it may not understand the flowers or the note,” I say. “We treat him as part of the delivery chain until the evidence gives us more.”

Scarlet looks toward the evidence wall. “The copied words were bait.”

Roman rests one hip against the table. “For what?”

She sets down the toast. “Whoever selected those lines already connected my grandmother’s writing to release rites. They may be missing the rest of the entry, a definition she used elsewhere, or an attachment that was stored with the page.”

“And they think you can lead them to it,” I say.

Her gaze returns to the footage. “They leave the fragments here, then watch what records I request or where I go afterward.”

The theory fits what we know. If she’s right, it would also explain why the courier risked crossing a property under surveillance. The package only had to reach her. After that, whoever sent it could watch what she did next.

My laptop chimes with the scheduled secure call.

Dr. Imani Cole appears on the screen, with safety glasses pushed into her hair and a BESTF lab coat over a yellow blouse.

Pepper’s voice comes through a speaker before the doctor finishes greeting us. “Your chromatography equipment remains temperamental.”

“It remains calibrated,” Dr. Cole says. “Good morning, Osprey, Roman, Ms. Sage.” She shares a comparison chart. “The bundle recovered from Cypress Kiss Rentals and the arrangement from Ms. Sage’s greenhouse contain the same synthetic carrier found in three GatorX seizures from your regional cases.”

Scarlet reaches for Roman. I keep my hand on her knee.

Dr. Cole continues. “Ms. Vines determined that the local samples also contain a plant-based binding agent. It adheres to porous material, tolerates heavy moisture, and slows the breakdown of the synthetic carrier. We found the same binder in the dock vegetation and Magnolia crate debris.”

“Could the concentration occur naturally?” I ask.

“No. The source material is natural, but the binder was extracted, reduced, and recombined.”

The tested relief bundle contains the same synthetic carrier found in GatorX seizures. The material placed at Scarlet’s home carries that same signature and the same locally processed binder. Someone in or around Sweetheart Haven is combining those materials in a form that stays active through rain and wetland exposure.

Roman asks, “Could delayed absorption explain why Maribel felt better first?”