Page 59 of The Man Next Door
“I need you to go talk to Alec James.”
“I meant from the store.”
Louise frowned. “Nothing. Zona shopped the other day.”
“All right. I’ll be going then. You ladies have a nice afternoon.”
“Wimp,” Louise muttered as he went out the door. “I need to find out more about what’s going on over there,” she said to Gilda.
“How are you going to do that?” Gilda asked. “Martin does have a point. You can’t go over and ask your neighbor what’s going on with his girlfriend.”
“No, but I can at least let him know that I’m watching him. Maybe when he comes home from work I’ll be out checking my mail. I can certainly make it to the mailbox. Let’s watch for his truck. He sometimes beats Zona home, and if he does, I’m going to be ready to have a little talk with him.”
COME FOUR THIRTYin the afternoon the two women were seated at the dining room table, watching out the window. “As soon as we see his truck coming up the street, I’ll go out,” said Louise.
“Don’t you hurry with those crutches,” Gilda cautioned. “I don’t want you falling and breaking a hip on my watch.”
“I’ll be careful. Oh, wait. Here he comes now. He’s early. Hand me my crutches!”
Gilda obliged and hurried to open the front door, then grabbed Darling’s collar so he wouldn’t make a break for it.
Louise swung her way over and out the door, then carefully made her way off the porch. She managed to arrive at her mailbox just as he was getting out of his truck.
“Hello, there,” she called as if she hadn’t heard the commotion of the night before.
He gave her a nod, then walked to the back of his truck and fetched his toolbox.
“How are you settling in?” she called.
“Okay,” he called back. Not warmly.
Louise swung her way a little closer to his yard. “It looks like you’ve got some company staying with you.”
“Just someone who needs a place to stay for a while,” he said, his voice cooling a few more degrees. He had his toolbox and was starting toward the house.
“We heard some commotion over there last night,” Louise called.
That stopped him in his tracks. Had his face gone pale? He was so suntanned it was hard to tell.
“Is your friend all right?” she asked.
“She’s fine. I hope your leg heals soon,” he added, then picked up his pace.
“If you need anything,” she called after him.
He pretended not to hear and went inside.
“Well, he’s on notice now,” she said to Gilda when she got back into her own house.
“You be on your guard. Remember what happened inRear Windowonce the killer knew they were onto him.”
A shiver needled its way up Louise’s spine. Maybe it wasn’t such a good thing that Alec James was now on notice.
Really, though, what could he do to her? She had locks on her doors. She had people coming and going all the time.
But her kitchen door had a glass window, the kind burglars and crazed killers easily broke. She shivered again as a vision of a beefy arm reaching through a jagged hole in the glass to unlock the door swam into her mind.
Now she was being silly. Alec James was an angry brute, but his anger wasn’t directed at her or Zona. Darling was another matter. But the fence problem was solved and the only person he had left to be cruel to was that poor deluded woman who was with him.
