Page 39 of The Neighbor

My expression probably says far more than I’d like, so I force myself to smile. “It seems logical. They were seeing each other. I don’t think Sara had a lot of enemies. I was surprised to find out she was really a nice person while we were running for those couple days. It was because she was being thoughtful that she sprained her ankle on our run yesterday.”

“Oh? How so?” she asks, and out of the corner of my eye, I see Kimmy staring up at me waiting to hear what I have to say.

“She was running backwards so we could talk face-to-face while we were running. Seemed pretty thoughtful to me.”

While Caroline doesn’t say a word, Kimmy nods and smiles up at me. “It does seem thoughtful. That’s actually very nice. Now I feel even worse that someone did that to her.”

“She made a mistake by sleeping with a married man, but once I got to talk to her, she really wasn’t so bad. Sara wasn’t Jared’s only extracurricular buddy either.”

Both women stare at me in shock with their mouths hanging open. Caroline is the first to regain her composure and says, “Sara wasn’t the only one? Does Suzanne know?”

“I have no idea. I was pretty surprised myself when Sara told me. She expected him to give up the other woman once he moved out of the house here, but he refused. I can tell you Sarawas very angry. She said she wasn’t taking him back no matter what if he didn’t give her up.”

In a small voice, Kimmy mumbles, “Maybe that’s why he killed her.”

A second later, she jumps up and waves to us as she heads down the stairs to the street. “I have to go tell Marilyn. See you later!”

Caroline and I turn to look at each other. “I guess that seemed important to her,” I say, a little shocked at how quickly Kimmy ran off after what I said.

“My guess is she wants to tell Marilyn to put her mind at ease. The older woman probably has visions of some crazed ax murderer running through her head this morning. I bet that’s why she doesn’t want to tell the police about that man she saw running behind the houses last night.”

Her reference to a man seems odd, so I ask, “How do you know it wasn’t a woman?”

Caroline shakes her head as she purses her lips, like she’s thinking about my suggestion and then immediately dismissing it. “Women don’t kill that way. They don’t sneak around and come up behind someone to slit their throat. They’re more emotional than men. If a woman wants you dead, she’ll plan it down to the tiniest detail, but she won’t surprise you from behind. A woman wants her victim to see her coming, especially if it’s a man.”

Curious how she could think she knows so much about killers, I turn in the wicker chair and level my gaze on her. “Why especially if it’s a man?”

She looks over her shoulder at me and grins. “Because if a woman wants to kill a man, she wants him to see it coming. He still won’t believe she could do it, but no matter. She wants him to know and still not expect it.”

“What if the woman is killing another woman? Does your theory still stand?” I ask, intrigued that the innocent looking woman who lives in this green house seems to know that much about killing.

Nodding, she turns her attention back to the street where Kimmy and Marilyn are talking. “Yes, but the woman would know she’s coming to kill her. Women rarely underestimate other women. If anything, we overestimate their abilities.”

“So by your reasoning, it had to be a man who killed Sara because you think he snuck around the back of the houses to get to her street and then surprised her?”

“If that was her killer going on that path back there, then it was definitely a man.”

I disagree with her argument that women aren’t sneaky when it comes to killing, but I don’t press the point. I’m more curious about how sweet Caroline knows all of this.

“You sound like you’ve put a lot of thought into how people kill. Why’s that?”

She doesn’t respond at first and instead takes a long sip of her coffee. I watch as she sets the mug down on the table between us and then looks up at me in a way that makes me feel like she’s staring into my soul.

“I find people interesting. I watch murder mysteries and real crime shows all the time, and if there’s anything I’ve learned from the hundreds of hours I’ve spent viewing them, it’s that women and men are very different when they decide to kill someone.”

She stops for a long moment and then adds, “Assuming it’s planned. Crimes of passion are a completely different story. In those, men and women are very similar.”

Impressed by her opinions, which are quite correct, I smile and say, “You should have gone into law enforcement. You could be a great profiler for the FBI.”

That gets me a frown. “No, that’s not for me. It’s too depressing. I don’t think I could handle being around all that death for a living.”

“But you enjoy watching true crime shows about killers. Don’t they depress you?”

Caroline shakes her head as she stares off in the distance at Kimmy and Marilyn. “No. That’s different. Those shows focus on the why, not the how.”

Interesting. She likes the psychology of killers but not their actual deeds. Yes, Caroline has definitely lost someone, but how? Was it cold-blooded murder, or did it happen by chance, like a thief breaking into a home and being surprised by the person living there or a mugging gone bad? I want to ask about the circumstances, but I don’t get the sense she’d tell me.

Not yet, anyway. Maybe in the future. Today has gone a long way to bringing us closer. Now that she’s provided me with an alibi for the time of Sara’s murder, I don’t think it will be long before we’re friendly enough for her to invite me inside her home.

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