Chapter 13
ZONA CAME HOME FROM WORK THE same time as Alec James. Neighborly people called a friendly hello to each other from their driveways when that happened, but she didn’t want to be neighborly.
He did though. “Did you find a fence barrier?” he called.
“I did,” she replied, her voice frosty.
“Good.” It wasn’t said in the warmest of voices, but she could have cut him some slack and decided he wasn’t as bad as she and her mother were making him out to be if he hadn’t added, “Now I won’t have to kick him off my lawn.”
Seriously? This is how he chose to respond? “Anyone ever tell you that you have a sick way of expressing yourself?”
“No, but thanks for pointing that out,” he responded.
Did she see a glimmer of a smile? She must have because there came that tingle she’d felt when she first talked with him. It was completely misplaced. Stop it! she scolded herself. No tingles.
He told her to have a nice night, then disappeared into his house, and that left her scowling as she walked into hers.
Louise and Gilda were sitting at the dining room table, playing cards. “Hi, dear. How was your day?” Louise greeted her.
“Fine, until I talked to our neighbor,” Zona replied.
“That is a bad man,” Gilda said as Zona came over to give Louise a kiss.
“Anyone who doesn’t like dogs is not to be trusted,” added Louise. “You shouldn’t be talking to him.”
“We’re watching him,” Gilda added.
“Watching him?” What on earth did that mean? “Like spying on him?”
“No, just . . . keeping an eye out. There could be big trouble over there at some point,” Louise explained.
“There already is, but it’s none of our business,” Zona said firmly.
“Gin,” said Gilda, laying down her cards.
Louise groaned. “There’s no point in even writing down the score. You smoked me.”
“I just got good cards,” Gilda said, gathering them up. That done, she stood and said, “I’ll be going now. I hope you two have a good night.”
It looked like they would. Louise was in a good mood, and so was Zona when she checked the items she had for sale on eBay and saw how well they were doing.
“We should hit some more garage sales,” Louise said.
“For sure,” Zona agreed. “The faster I can bring in money the better I’ll feel.”
“Honey, you’re not in a race.”
“In a way I am. I only have so many earning years left.”
“I know. You’re so old,” Louise scoffed. “Like I said, you need to budget in some fun.”
“Okay, how about this for fun? Let’s eat out on the patio,” Zona suggested. Her mother was spending too much time holed up inside.
They dined al fresco on the back patio, eating a chicken curry salad Zona had thrown together and drinking chai iced tea. It was hot but not uncomfortably so. Darling was happily sitting at Louise’s feet, gnawing on his chew toy. All was calm and quiet.
Until the angry voices started. “Get in here,” commanded Alec James.
Darling stopped his gnawing and looked up.
“No!” shouted the now familiar female voice, and Darling growled.
“I’m done screwing around with you,” he snarled. “Get in here. Now!”
The fierceness of his words made the hairs on Zona’s neck rise.
It put Darling on his feet. He raced over to the fence and began to bark.
“This isn’t good,” said Louise, her voice low.
There was an understatement. Zona could feel her pulse rate going up.
“I don’t want to talk to you,” the woman wailed.
And Darling howled in sympathy.
“You’d better.”
“We need to call the police,” whispered Louise.
Should they? Zona wanted to. But, “All we’re hearing is raised voices. We don’t know what’s going on over there.”
“I know what goes on in that type of situation. One minute people are yelling, the next someone is getting hurt,” Louise said and reached for her phone, which was sitting on the table.
As if on cue, the neighbors went silent.
“I don’t hear anything over there now,” said Zona.
“We can’t just call the police because we heard people arguing.
My gosh, Mom, if my neighbors had called the police every time they’d heard Gary and me arguing, we’d have had a squad car pulling up at our house every night. And I’d have been mortified.”
Louise hesitated. Frowned. “But we can’t simply turn a deaf ear.”
Her mother was right. What could they do?
“Maybe I could just go over and ask if everything is all right,” said Zona.
“I don’t want you approaching that man,” Louise said firmly.
“I could stop by with some . . .” What? She hadn’t baked anything since her chocolate chip cookie therapy.
They heard a car starting.
“Go see who’s leaving,” Louise urged.
Zona went around the side of the house and peered over the fence. There went the PT Cruiser. Her pulse settled back down.
She returned to the patio. “It’s okay. She’s gone.”
“Good. At least we know she’s all right.”
Maybe Zona should still go over there. “I think I’ll make some snickerdoodles,” she decided. “Then I’ll stop by and casually ask if everything is okay.”
And Alec James would certainly buy her concern after their latest encounters. This was a stupid idea.
“But don’t take them over if that man’s by himself,” Louise cautioned. “It’s not safe.”
“I don’t think he’s going to pull me in off the front porch,” Zona said.
She got to work baking cookies, but by the time she had the first cookie sheet out of the oven she was feeling hesitant. What possible excuse could she have for showing up at the neighbor’s door now that all was calm?
Olive branch, she decided, and put them on a paper plate.
Her heart was pounding when she walked across her lawn to his. The PT Cruiser was still gone. For all she knew, the pretty redhead had left for good. The only way she’d find out would be to ask. A scene from Rear Window flashed through her mind, Grace Kelly snooping in the killer’s apartment.
“Ridiculous,” she muttered. Her mother’s overactive imagination was turning viral and grabbing ahold of her, too.
She rang the doorbell. Nobody answered. She waited for what felt like an excruciatingly long time, but was probably only a few seconds, before telling herself to go home.
She had turned to leave when the door opened. Alec James stood in the doorway in dark jeans and a snug-fitting T-shirt, five-o’clock shadow shading his chin. And there was the power line buzz.
She gulped and held out the plate. “I think we’ve gotten off on the wrong foot.”
He took it and raised an eyebrow. “Yeah?”
“Time to bury the hatchet?” Why on earth had she said that? Her face flamed.
He sighed heavily, then gave her a half smile and the buzz got stronger. “It should probably be me bringing you something. Sorry I was a jerk the other day. I’ve been under a lot of pressure.”
Like a volcano about to erupt? Her nerves began to start tap-dancing as she geared up to ask about the screaming she’d heard earlier.
“Did that fence barrier come?”
“Not yet.”
“I’ll help you with it if you want,” he offered. “It’s the least I can do after the way I acted.”
It threw her and she had to remind herself that she hadn’t come over for a neighborly chat. She was supposed to be finding out what was going on in the troubled house of Alec James.
“That’s okay. I can handle it,” she said.
Now what? She couldn’t exactly say, By the way, what’s going on over here?
Inspiration hit. “Feel free to share those,” she said, pointing to the plate.
The half smile went away. “With who?”
“With . . . anyone. I thought I’d seen another car out front, but maybe I was wrong.
” She was on the verge of babbling, and she knew she was blushing.
She could feel the heat of it on her cheeks.
She finished with a lame, “Good night,” then bolted off, running back across his lawn and half tripping over a sprinkler head from his in-ground sprinkler system.
“You okay?” he called.
“I’m fine,” she called back and raced for her front door.
Louise was seated at the kitchen table, finishing up the two sample cookies Zona had given her. “Well? What happened?”
“He apologized for being a jerk and offered to help me with the fence barrier. And I almost tripped and he called and asked if I was okay. He seemed . . . normal.” And that was unnerving.
But not half as unnerving as what she’d overheard.
“Putting up a false front,” Louise said, shaking her head. “What did he say about the woman?”
“Nothing.” Zona returned to the bowl of cookie dough and began dropping the last spoonfuls of it onto a cookie sheet.
“You should have asked him if everything was all right over there,” Louise said.
Zona sighed. “I guess I should have, but . . .” Her sentence trailed off as she tried to figure out what the but was. “I felt stupid,” she concluded. “Two people had a fight and we overheard and that’s probably all there is to it.”
She put the cookies in the oven and joined her mother at the kitchen table. “I feel like a snoop.”
“Better to be a snoop than do nothing and have someone end up getting hurt,” Louise said.
Zona sighed. There was that.
“I WOULD HAVE called the cops,” Gilda said the next day as she helped Louise into her pants.
Zona did have a point. “If people called the police every time they heard a couple yelling at each other, there’d be no one left to control traffic or arrest criminals. Still, what’s going on next door makes me nervous.”
“It pays to be watchful,” said Gilda. “Who knows how much hurt this man is capable of?”
The red PT Cruiser was gone for most of the day, which gave Louise hope that the woman had fled, but she eventually returned, laden with bulging department store bags.
“He’s bought her loyalty,” said Gilda as the two women watched out the window in the dining room where they sat playing cards.
“The poor little fool,” said Louise.
AFTER A DELAY of several days, the fence barrier finally arrived and Zona was in the backyard, sweating as she struggled to install it. Darling was doing his best to get in the way and Louise was watching the whole procedure from a patio chair when they heard the raised voices from next door again.
Darling perked up his ears and ran along the fence, barking.
He wasn’t the only one with ears on the alert. Zona stopped her digging and moved along the fence to get closer to the source of the commotion.
“Get in the house,” Alec James commanded.
“No!” shouted the redhead’s voice, and Darling barked encouragement.
“Darling, stop,” Zona hissed. How could she hear what was going on next door with Darling making a racket right next to her?
Darling let out another bark and she tapped his nose and whispered, “Shhh.” He sat down with a whine.
“The whole world needs to know what you are,” cried the woman on the other side of the fence. “Come any closer and I’ll drop this in the pool.”
Drop what? Evidence of something? What was going on over there?