This has always been a quiet suburb. The kind of place people flee to if they aspire to a Brady Bunch existence. Cul de sacs are laid out in an incomprehensible pattern designed to deter anyone without a deed or a specific invitation from entering the area.

It’s big news here if the garbage doesn’t get picked up on time, or if someone’s cat gets out. Last month one of our neighbors decided their Amazon package had been stolen off their porch. She was sure of it because these kinds of things are all over the news! Given the drama that followed you might have thought someone had boosted the Mona Lisa from the Louvre. The crime of the century was quickly solved when it turned out another neighbor had taken the package inside for safe keeping.

Given this, it did not go unnoticed when people started disappearing. When Mrs. Sutton’s papers stacked up on her front porch, we initially assumed she forgot to tell us she went on vacation. But no, she was just gone. Then the lights didn’t come on at night at the Delgado’s, and their poor cat seemed to be wasting away in the window. Finally, Mr. Proust didn’t exit his garage at 7 am for the office; a pattern that had gone unbroken for years. In fact, it didn’t appear anyone had come or gone from the Proust house in some time.

Those of us left on the cul de sac compared notes and wondered, but there was not a lot we could do beyond call the police. The police had come and taken our reports, but there was no visible evidence of foul play and Sgt. Mertz said there was not much more they could do.

Until, that is, the day Mr. Langdon, from up the block, staked seven very life-like human skeletons in his front lawn for Halloween. They were so life-like and somehow familiar…I realized what I was looking at and dug Sgt. Mertz’s card out of the kitchen drawer.