Page 56 of The Man Next 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 HAVEcalled 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 DELAYof 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?
Chapter14
ZONA TURNED AND LOOKED QUESTIONINGLY ATLouise, who looked back, baffled and concerned.
“Get. In. Here,” snarled Alec James over on his side of the fence.
“I won’t! And see how you like it when something you need gets taken away.”
“Don’t even think about it. Get inside. Now!”
