The Good Neighbor (12 page)

When Andy came back, he didn’t come as
quietly as he’d left.

He burst into the living room and shouted, “I
knew it!” His face was nearly as red as his hair. His eyes were
wild. Even from across the room, I could see him trembling.

I stood quickly. “You knew what?” I did my
best to remain calm.

Jenson didn’t stand, but he turned to face
Andy.

“I opened the door to the basement, and I saw
it. I saw it, old man!” he shouted, thrusting his finger toward
Jenson.

“What are you talking about?” I asked,
raising my voice. I didn’t want to add to Andy’s panic in any way,
and I was hoping that a stern tone would snap him back to reality
and maybe calm him down a bit. He was nearing hysterics. I’d never
seen him behave this way.

In a shaky voice, he said, “Down there, in
the basement, is a huge...vat of blood!”

After breakfast, I went outside with the
kids. They wanted to play on the swing in the backyard. I wanted to
catch up on some reading.

It was a nice day. Too nice to stay inside.
The niceness of the day wasn’t entirely dependent on the weather. A
lot of it had to do with Owen. Making love to him had made
everything nicer. It didn’t seem that anything could wipe the smile
from my face. It had been so long since I’d felt this good.

I sat in the rocking chair on the porch with
one leg folded under me. I looked out at the kids before I started
to read. They were swinging and giggling as always.

My eyes fell slowly to the book, and that’s
when I saw it.

There, on the porch near the steps, sat a
beer bottle. Just one bottle. Not on its side as if it had been
thrown. It stood upright as if it had been placed there.

Which I was sure it had been. And there was
only one person who might’ve done it.

Bernie.

Just thinking his name made my skin crawl. My
heart was beating faster. I quickly looked over at his house,
scanning windows for him. I didn’t see him anywhere.

But he had been here. At my house. While my
kids and I had been upstairs asleep. If that bastard harmed my
kids...

I couldn’t seem to still my racing heart. I
was going to have to do something about this. But what? I could
call the police, but what would I say? My neighbor gives me the
creeps, and I think he left a beer bottle on my back porch? They’d
laugh at me for sure.

I had to do something.

I looked back at Ethan and Shelby. They were
having so much fun. I wanted to go inside and do some research on
self-defense, but I didn’t want to make them go inside on such a
nice day. I wasn’t about to leave them out here alone. Not with
Bernie right next door.

I would just have to wait until later.

Unable to concentrate now on my book, I
rocked back and forth slowly, my eyes darting from the kids to
Bernie’s house to the beer bottle and back again.

“Andy, calm down. What are you talking
about?”

“I’m telling you, Owen, he has a vat of blood
in his basement. I saw it!”

We both looked at Jenson, who didn’t appear
to be concerned at all about the accusations being made against
him. He slowly got up from his worn recliner and turned to
Andy.

“Come on,” he said, motioning for us to
follow as he walked out of the living room. When he motioned for us
to follow him, I noticed the red under his fingernails. In fact,
his whole hand had a red tint to it.

And I had eaten two cookies made by those
hands. My stomach rolled.

Andy and I exchanged a quick look. His was
full of fear and panic, mine full of questions. I didn’t want to
doubt my best friend. If he said he saw it, I had to believe
him.

We followed Jenson anyway. He led us down a
hallway. Andy was between Jenson and me, and he was keeping several
feet behind the old man. I could see that his muscles were tense.
He was ready for anything.

The basement door stood open, as Andy had
left it in his frenzy. Jenson stepped through the door and walked
down the steps.

We hesitated, but followed. Is this how the
old man lured all his victims to their deaths? So easily, with a
wave of a red hand?

I was only two steps from the top when I saw
what Andy had seen. Yes, there was a large vat in the basement. And
yes, it was full of blood.

We froze on the steps. Now it was my muscles
that tensed. I fought my instincts, which were telling me to get
the hell out of there. For some reason, I couldn’t leave. I wanted
to know. I wanted to know, and I wanted him to tell me.

“Come on down, boys. Nothing to be afraid of
here.” The old man certainly did have a friendly voice. Add to that
my morbid curiosity and I knew I had to go down there.

I urged Andy forward. He reluctantly took a
step, then two, and finally we made it to the bottom.

The old man stood there amongst a large
machine and several big vats. He looked around, as if trying to see
it for the first time. He laughed.

“I can see why you’d think that was
blood.”

“If it isn’t blood, what is it?” Andy asked
without disguising his anger and distrust.

“It’s red dye.” He motioned to the large
machine behind him. “It’s cheaper to buy white and dye it red.”

Still confused, I asked, “What are you
talking about? White what?”

He motioned for us to come closer. We
did.

“Fabric. White is cheaper. I dye it the
colors I want. In this case, red in this vat, and blue in that one
over there.” He indicated one of the other vats. “I’m making flags
this month.”

I looked around at his equipment, closer now,
trying to make it make sense.

He must’ve seen the confusion on our
faces.

“Quilts, boys. I make quilts.” He turned on
the large machine behind him. It started to hum, a noise I
recognized from the previous evening, and began quilting a gorgeous
quilt. Raisins his voice to be heard over the machine, he said,
“This was my wife’s hobby. When she died, I had so much free time I
took it up as my own hobby. It makes me feel closer to her.” He
held onto the handles and moved the needle over the fabric,
stretched taut on the frame.

Looking at him, this frail old man with his
thin white hair, it was hard to imagine him making quilts. Partly,
because he was a man.

“Quilts?” Andy asked, trying to make it sound
right.

“What do you do with them?” I asked, clearly
a step ahead of Andy.

“I donate them. Sometimes to homeless people,
sometimes to children’s hospitals, and sometimes to veterans.
That’s why I’m making flags this month. They’re going to the Am
Vets.”

That’s when Andy laughed like a fool.
Admittedly, I had to join him. We’d been so far off base about Mr.
Jenson.

We told him about wondering what he had in
those heavy black bags.

He furrowed his brows together and said, “You
boys watched me struggle with all those bags and didn’t offer me
any help?” It wasn’t funny then. It was sad. “Well, I suppose if
you really thought I was killing people, it only makes sense that
you wouldn’t want to be any part of it.”

We had a nice visit with Mr. Jenson after
that mess was straightened out. We apologized many times for
suspecting him and for not offering help with the heavy bags. Once
Andy told him about Carla’s two-year theory, he laughed. He agreed
that it certainly had made him look suspicious. He also agreed that
it was a lot of deaths to have occurred on one street in such a
short amount of time.

The ironic thing was that Jenson had noticed
the uncanny amount of horrible happenings on this street, even
though the rest of us had failed to see it.

Jenson agreed with us that three deaths on
one street in two years was a lot. Of course, his agreeing with us
didn’t change the fact that we still didn’t know the answer to the
mystery.

Maybe there was no answer. As I walked to my
house from Owen’s, I realized that maybe it was just a coincidence.
Maybe there was no mystery to solve, no riddle to keep me awake
nights. No reason to be suspicious of others. After all, we’d
cleared Jenson. That only left me and Jill, Owen, Bernie, Hazel,
and Louis. Carla just moved here, so she was innocent. Hazel was
the sweetest little old lady you could ever meet. There was no way
she’d be capable of anything like that. And Louis was rarely ever
here.

That only left Bernie.

I opened the door to my house, but before
entering, I turned and looked across the street at Bernie’s. Was it
possible? Could that guy be the one responsible for the awful
happenings that had occurred on Hewitt Street?

I’d never liked that guy. I not only thought
it was possible, I was starting to think it was probable.

I went inside. I stopped in my tracks
briefly, as I thought that maybe – just maybe – Jenson was the
killer. It was a perfect cover, his quilt hobby. It would give him
a great cover-up story if he was ever a suspect. But I dismissed
that thought almost as soon as it popped into my head. It wasn’t
Jenson.

But Bernie, now that was possible. Elaine was
his next-door neighbor. He could’ve easily broken into her house at
night, raped and killed her, dumped her body and returned home.
Why? Who knew? But it was possible.

I found a note from Jill saying she’d be back
and that she loved me, which I already knew. I hadn’t had a chance
to spend much time with her the past few days. Running around
trying to figure out the whole Jenson thing had monopolized my
time. Of course, that was over now. I needed to spend some quality
time with my wife.

After I wolfed down a sandwich, I showered
and went to bed. Though I was done with night shift and had the
next couple days off work before beginning day shift, I still
needed sleep. Switching over to sleeping nights again was the
hardest part of swing shift.

I fell asleep thinking of Jill.

I’d spent the afternoon researching online
the different ways to defend myself against Bernie. I’d gone over
techniques and methods. I’d even stood in my living room,
practicing my moves while the kids napped. I’d read and studied
everything I could find on the subject. Though I didn’t have a live
person to practice on, I felt somewhat secure in what I’d
learned.

The next step was to gather up anything that
could be used as a weapon. I didn’t want to scare the children, so
I put that off until later. Once they went to bed, I’d go around
the house and find anything I could use. In the meantime, I made
mental notes of what would work and what wouldn’t.

My studying was interrupted momentarily when
Owen called to say he was going to sleep, but would be by later. I
felt bad for him, having his sleeping schedule thrown off. I
couldn’t wait for him to be back on track. I liked it when he spent
the day with me.

I couldn’t believe I’d found someone so
quickly after moving here. Not just someone I liked so much, but
someone that my kids liked also. It surprised me because I hadn’t
been looking for someone. I’d always heard that love finds you when
you aren’t looking and when you’re not expecting it. I see now
that’s true.

I had gotten really lucky. Even though it was
sad that my aunt died, and was horrible to have lost her, it was a
blessing that she’d left me her house. If not for that, I would
never have moved here, would never have met Owen, and would never
have fallen in...well, it was too soon to say that, but that’s what
it felt like.

Of course, I also wouldn’t be worrying about
defending myself against my neighbor, but if that was the only bad
thing in the midst of so much good, then I’d take it. It was worth
it.

After dinner, I watched TV with the kids for
a while, and then put them to bed. I read them each a story before
kissing them goodnight and tucking them in. The lamp that sat on
the table between their beds cast a faint, cozy glow on the room. I
told them again that I loved them from the doorway.

I was glad they went to bed early. It gave me
a chance to gather up my weapons.

I went through the house looking for anything
I could use. I didn’t have much. I had a baseball bat belonging to
Ethan. I had knives from the kitchen. I had a golf club that had
belonged to my ex-husband. I hoped that would be enough. Actually,
I hoped I wouldn’t have to use them at all. I hoped that Bernie
would forget all about me and hoped even harder that he would move
away. If he didn’t, I would undoubtedly have to. And I didn’t want
to leave. That would mean leaving Owen. We were just getting
started, and I would hate to have things end that way.

I put the golf club beside my bed. It was
lighter and I figured I could swing it more efficiently. Then, I
put the baseball bat in the living room, hidden beside the couch.
If I had to, I could get to it quickly, and it couldn’t be seen by
anyone other than me.

I scattered knives throughout the house,
hiding them where no one would be able to see them. I also had to
make sure there weren’t any that could be accidentally found by the
kids. Each time I hid one, I walked away, and then turned and ran
past it, grabbing the knife from its hiding place as I ran by, just
to make sure I could do it easily. I hid all the knives but one. I
carried it with me from room to room.

I had just finished testing the hiding spot
of the last knife when someone knocked on the door.

I peeked through the curtains on the door to
see who it was before blindly opening the door. The memory of
Bernie trying to force his way in after beating on the door was
still fresh in my mind. Opening the door without first looking to
see who was on the other side was a lesson learned the hard way,
and a mistake I wouldn’t make again.