Her father had called her at 4:07 every afternoon for eleven years. The day the phone rang at 2:15, he asked about a dog they’d never owned.
The phone rings at 2:15 and Roz Achebe knows before she picks it up.
Roz: Dad?
Emmett: Hello, love. Just checking in.
His voice is fine. That’s the wrong part. His voice is completely fine.
Roz: You’re early.
Emmett: Am I? Losing track.
Roz: Is somebody there?
Emmett: Just sorting out the roof.
Roz sets down her coffee.
Roz: What roof?
Emmett: The gentleman says it’s the flashing. Says it’s urgent.
Roz: Dad, is he in the house right now?
Emmett: How’s Biscuit doing?
Roz stops breathing for a second.
They have never had a dog.
Roz: Biscuit’s good, Dad. I’m coming over.
Emmett: No need, love. Won’t be long.
Roz: Twenty minutes.
Emmett Achebe is eighty-one. He has called his daughter at 4:07 every weekday since he retired, because 4:07 was when his shift used to end and he never saw a reason to change it.
He is not confused. He does the crossword in pen.
Roz drives with the radio off.
There is a white pickup in the driveway with no signage on it.
Inside, a man in his forties sits at her father’s kitchen table with a clipboard and a pen he is holding out.
Barry: You must be the daughter.
Roz: What’s this.
Barry: Roofing assessment. Your dad’s got a real problem up there. Water’s getting in.
Roz: How much.
Barry: Eleven-four. But if we start today I can hold it at nine.
Roz looks at the paperwork. There’s a line for a deposit. It says four thousand. There’s no company address. There’s no licence number.
Roz: Dad, did you go up and look?
Emmett: He showed me a photograph.
Roz: Of our roof?
Emmett looks at the photograph on the table for a long moment.
Emmett: It’s a roof.
Roz doesn’t shout at Barry Neel. She asks him for his contractor licence number and writes down what he says. Then she writes down his plate.
He is out of the driveway in under two minutes, which tells her everything the licence number would have.
Roz: Dad. Biscuit.
Emmett: I couldn’t think of another way to say it.
Roz: You did fine.
Emmett: I felt like a fool.
Roz: You called me two hours early and you made up a dog. That’s not a fool.
What happened after
The plate matched three other complaints in two counties. The state’s elder-fraud unit had a file open and no name attached to it. Ana Sotelo, the investigator, told Roz the plate was the first hard identifier anyone had produced.
Barry Neel had never held a contractor’s licence in that state. He was charged with theft by deception across four counts. Two of the other complainants got money back. One didn’t, because it had been eight months and the account was empty.
The county now includes a one-page insert with the senior property-tax mailing: no legitimate contractor asks for a deposit at the door.
Emmett still calls at 4:07.
Roz answers on the first ring now, every time, and neither of them has ever mentioned why.
Read the rest of the series in The Mosaic Stories.
More from the series: She Checked The Car Seat Straps — Somebody Else Had Been Buckling Her Daughter In · She Was Laid Off Three Weeks Ago — Her Badge Still Opened The Door
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