The People Next Door (22 page)

Mick set the alarm and locked the door. The stencil on the Straw’s front window said Monday–Saturday 11–1, Sundays noon–11,
but by 8:45 the dining room and bar were empty and there was no point to any of it. He ordered Carlos to turn off the grill
and forget about racking the dishes, told Reggie and Jamie to leave the chairs down. The cleaning crew would be in at eight
and he would handle the deposit tomorrow. He tipped them out and packed the remaining (thin) leafery of cash into a rubber
bank bag and stowed it in the safe. He shooed them out through the kitchen, breaking down cardboard boxes and watching over
the back bay until they had all gotten into their vehicles safely. Reggie’s Lac bass-thumped off across the lot, revealing
someone’s topless blue Jeep parked in the corner. Mick didn’t recognize it, but it could have belonged to one of the drunks
who’d decided not to drive home tonight.

‘Night, Mick.’ His star waved as she stamped over to her Civic.

‘Good night, Jamie.’

One final pass through the restaurant, and then it was
lights out. Confirming that the alarm’s ‘activated’ light was blinking, Mick was stabbed by the realization that – barring
a windfall of some two hundred thousand dollars – he would perform this ritual only another nineteen or twenty times. Thirty
days, Sapphire had said. And unless Mick struck back at the accountant soon (
Maybe tonight, how about it, champ? Do you feel up for a short drive out to Longmont? What are you waiting for? Let’s go put
the fear of God into that silver-haired bastard
…), he would find himself on the other side of Fourth of July weekend without a lifeline, and then he would never again
lock up
his own restaurant
.

Someone else’s, perhaps, but not the restaurant his parents had built and seen prosper for some thirty years before handing
the keys over to their only son. Not the place Mick had played race cars under the tables, falling asleep in booths while
Mom ran a pencil in her ledger. Not the place he’d washed enough dishes to buy his first car, the ’78 blue Trans Am he never
should have sold. Not the place Dad had hosted after-prom parties for Mick and his friends, and helped cater the Buffaloes
under Coach McCartney’s national championship reign.

Not the very restaurant where, one fateful April lunch hour fifteen years ago, a knock-out grad student had come in to borrow
a quarter for the pay phone, broke, in tears, looking to call a wrecker to get her mom’s Datsun wagon into the shop before
her mom got back from spending the weekend with her jerk boyfriend in Estes Park. Hockey-stick legs growing out her stacked
cork wedges, gumball blue eyes under long blonde hair that
fell to the middle of her back – it was something closely related to love at first sight. Mick had done his best to get her
laughing again while she nursed a hard-luck Michelob on the house, then drove her to the auto-parts store and charged the
parts to his dad’s account. The bearded heart-attack-on-wheels with greased mitts behind the auto-parts counter giving Mick
a raised eyebrow and the pervert grin, Mick nodding back, I know, I know, don’t fuck this one up for me, just find that goddamn
part. Back at the restaurant, he’d handed her a huge dish of coffee ice cream and changed out the Datsun’s solenoid in the
Straw’s parking lot while she hovered around and spilled her tales of woe and all he asked in return was her phone number.
She had a boyfriend, a serious one, but ‘the dufus’ didn’t ask her to move to Arizona with him, so what did Mick think that
meant, right? She was supposed to marry Dufus in Tucson that September, but did that deter our hero? Two months later she
called Dufus and said she was sending the ring back UPS. Seven months later, after a lot of pulling but not enough praying,
Amy was pregnant with Kyle. The wedding had followed quickly, but it was real. He never doubted that their love had been real.

His family was real. His failure was real.

That era of apple pie and mom and dad and Last Straw magic was over. That air of
here, the best days of your lives will happen right here
vitality that perhaps one in a thousand bars manages to capture, was gone. It was his home, his real home, and the sight
of it tonight, dark and half-looted, put a mighty hurt in his heart.

He turned away, heading for his truck. The parking lot was as black as a city park until it reached the grocery store and
strip mall on the far side. He watched the Albertson’s sign flicker and blink out, eleven on the nose. Mick always parked
somewhere in the empty middle, leaving nearer spaces for his customers, but that was a useless habit now. Blue Thunder was
waiting for him, the tiny red alarm bulb on the dash beckoning, another beacon in the relay of his commute. At home he would
disarm a third, in the mud room, at last the captain safely ashore.

He walked head down, the truck fifty paces off.

His conscience fired one last warning across the bow. A bit past the legal limit, boss? How many whiskey sours did we have?
Five? Seven? No. Maybe. Sure, but if he called Amy for a ride, she would just browbeat him, and he’d have to ask her for another
ride back in the morning, and that would start another day off with a breakfast of cold resentment. And just when, exactly,
was the right time to tell your family that the organism which sustained 75 per cent of their existence was dead?

So, no. No phone calls, no rides. He might’ve been so tired he couldn’t hold his head all the way up, but he could drive a
couple miles. The Diagonal was empty this time of night. He was a bar man. Alcohol no longer affected him.

His running shoe ground a stray piece of bottle glass.

Six paces from his truck.

Three.

Mick fingered his keyring, dipping into the miniature
Broncos helmet Briela had given him last Father’s Day. The helmet squirted from his grip, he juggled the ring spastically,
the brass wad fell to the ground. He stared at it.

Is that some sort of a sign, old man?

As he bent, a sharp aluminum
clink
echoed behind him. He recognized it at once, for it was a childhood sound, not easily forgotten. Flinty and cruel, it was
the sound an Easton aluminum baseball bat made connecting with the long ball (or falling on warm summer asphalt). Mick’s had
been a thirty-one-incher with a brushed blue finish and a sticky rubber sleeve, his father’s benediction for Pony League.

He scooped his keys and turned to face them. There were three, spread in a narrowing net. Hardly more than high-school kids,
but wired for high voltage. Black combat boots, warm-up jackets zipped to the chin, cold eyes in expressionless masks. They
requested nothing, offered him no bargain. Mick was not a large man, but he was a former state champion wrestler, fit from
working on his feet, and he could still carry a half-barrel on one shoulder.

I wasn’t imagining it. It was a vision, another episode like the one about Sapphire, and the other one about Myra. Terry Fielding,
or some force borrowing his likeness, came to warn me, just in the nick of time. Whatever happened to me, whatever is going
on inside me, it has the power to change the course of my hours, my days, my life. But I didn’t pay attention and now I am
in deep shit
.

‘This is gonna be too fuckin’ easy,’ the smallest one said. ‘I almost feel bad for you, know’msayin’?’

The two of them might not be a problem, but the third was a freak. A tall Hispanic with four shoulders and no neck, some kind
of bloated-faced goon. The Easton belonged to the short one on the left, bleached hair under a red-and-blue Avalanche cap.
I know why things are the way they are
, Render had told him in the yard.
I know why the others come, preying on you. They are out there right now. They have a nose for weakness, and they will keep
coming for you and it will get messier unless you allow me to help you
.

Vince Render, whatever he was, was involved in all of this. Everything that had happened since that day on the lake, it had
to do with the people next door.

‘Only three?’ Mick said. ‘I guess the other Mous keteers had a curfew.’

They didn’t laugh. The bat changed hands once it all went in motion, and it went in motion quickly.

After hugging Amy goodbye, Melanie Smith had closed the front door softly behind her and stepped out onto the curving sidewalk.
She walked head down, her heart broken for Amy. Rita Larson was the kind of mother who pretended to be above the stress of
parenting, but it was a charade. Melanie knew that the Larsons had been financially reeling since Rita’s husband, Don, lost
his position as a project manager at Ball Aerospace, after NASA shelved its latest project and withdrew the firm’s funding.
Rita’s back was against a wall here, and if she no longer had health insurance to pay for the injury (which was probably minor
but had looked bad enough to scare any parent into shark-infested litigation), she was going to come at Amy and Mick, as Melanie’s
mother used to say, with both barrels loaded, tits on fire.

Melanie had been trying to remember the name of that ex-boyfriend (well, he was really more of a two- or three-night stand)
she’d met a few years ago in Denver, a small claims lawyer and proud ambulance chaser, when a shadow fell over her feet and
she almost bumped into the psycho. She jerked in surprise, halted.

A thin woman with black hair was staring at her with beady eyes the color of tin. She was six inches shorter than Melanie
and yet her stance was defiant, as if she had no intention of making room for her on the sidewalk.

‘Oh, excuse me,’ Melanie said. ‘The party just ended. Are you here to pick up your child?’ But she couldn’t be, because all
of them were gone.

‘No.’

Melanie waited for the woman to elaborate. Finally said, ‘Okay. Now’s not a good time, so maybe—’

‘You should leave now,’ the woman said. Her voice was soft and she was not smiling. ‘You don’t belong here.’

For a moment Melanie was too stunned to respond. Who was this woman? A friend of Rita’s, one who had already heard about the
accident and come back to rip into Amy? But it had just happened, no way the news had spread unless Rita was tweeting about
the party on her way to Urgent Care. During this lull she noticed that the woman wore the same blouse as Amy. And the same
skirt. And sandals. And her hair was flat, shining as if recently oiled.

Melanie laughed. ‘I’m sorry, what? Is this a joke?’

The woman did not answer but her eyes seemed to darken, the tin deepening to charcoal beneath brows plucked down to broken
black toothpicks.

Melanie tried again. ‘You’re a friend of Amy’s? Have we met?’

‘Cassandra Render.’ The woman’s chin jutted forth. ‘I am her best friend.’

‘Somehow I doubt – hey, wait, you’re the ones in the new house? Amy told me about you.’ For the first time, a ripple of uncertainty
passed over Cassandra’s mask of intimidation. ‘See, that’s funny, because I checked with the title office and that’s not your
house. The builder disappeared almost a year ago and the bank is about to take it over. You don’t belong there. I don’t know
who you think—’

‘Watch yourself, dyke,’ Cassandra Render said.

‘Excuse me?’ Did she just say what I think …

The crazy little woman took a step toward Melanie. ‘It’s mothers like you who create the pressure and expectations that lead
to problems like this. But Amy will no longer be judged by inept creatures like you. Go on, Melanie. Get back in your car
and go back to your sad house and eat a bucket of ice cream. Call your daughter and make sure she’s still safe.’

Hearing her name, her daughter’s safety put into question, Melanie’s temper went volcanic. ‘Oh hell no, bitch, I know you
did not
just threaten me. Don’t you dare talk about my daughter, who do you think you are—’

But that was all she got out before Cassandra Render seized Melanie by the ear, yanking her head down with savage force. Melanie
cried out, certain the woman was going to bite her ear off, but instead she whispered, ‘Go home now and forget you ever saw
me unless you want to relive that lonesome October night you spent at the Kappa Sigma house, and this time it will be an alley
and all five of them will wear masks.’

Melanie was shoved aside, gut-punched by the airing of a memory so heinous she had never told anyone about it, not even her
mother or her best friend, Kana McMullen. She was still reeling in shock as Cassandra continued up the walk as if she had
just stepped over a piece of garbage.

‘You’re gonna pay for that,’ Melanie shrieked, rubbing her ear, bet your sweet ass hoping to find blood. ‘Do you hear me?
And what do you think you’re doing? Get away from that door right now.’

She was stomping toward the porch when Cassandra turned slowly and pointed a finger at her, waving it in a circle as a deranged
smile drew her mouth into a slit. Her eyes rolled back with pleasure and came to rest on Melanie.

‘I put them,’ the woman said in a sing-song voice, ‘on you.’

Melanie stopped, some deep part of her cavewoman brain warning her not to take another step. Every inch of her skin crawled
in repulsion and pants-wetting fear. The only sensation she had to compare it to was the time she had nearly jogged into a
nest of recently birthed rattlesnakes out on Eagle Trail, the first dozen already breaching their clear gelatinous sacs, and
then backed into the grass and nearly stepped on the depleted and hungry mother, a long, rough diamondback whose pink wet
mouth and glass-needle fangs had leapt up at her in such ferocious silence, Melanie had nightmares about it for weeks.

If you take another step
, the voice of survival inside her
warned,
you will suffer things worse than death, and Rayell will never come home from college again
.

Cassandra Render wasn’t mentally ill, and she wasn’t merely dangerous. She was flat-out evil. She continued to stare at Melanie,
her lips moving soundlessly, until Melanie backed away and ran to her car, slammed the door and locked it, fumbling her keys
around the ignition. When she looked up again, Cassandra was pushing the front door open and slipping inside.

Melanie picked up her cell phone to warn Amy, but found herself dialing her daughter’s number instead. Rayell was a junior
at Montana State up in Bozeman, far away from this madness. And yet Melanie could not help but feel that it – whatever this
woman had set in motion – had already come for her.

Five rings, six. On the seventh, Rayell’s voicemail answered. Melanie hung up and dialed again. The phone was still ringing
when Melanie turned onto Jay Road and headed toward home, pressing the gas pedal to the floor.