The neighbors, p.1
The Neighbors, page 1
DEADLY NEIGHBORS
“Tobias decided to check it out once and for all.” Taft was frowning, thinking hard.
“So, where is he?” asked Mac. “I mean, is that what happened to him? He ordered the exhumation and somebody got scared? Somebody in the neighborhood or one of the Friends of Faraday? Somebody who’s afraid the exhumation is going to prove Victor died of poisoning, not heart failure, and an investigation will start, so . . . they decide to stop Tobias . . . kill him . . . ?”
“Who is this somebody?” asked Taft, going with her.
“One of the neighbors? The one who killed Victor?”
“And they killed Victor because . . . he was building the three overlook houses and they couldn’t stop him?”
She heard the unspoken questions in his voice. It didn’t feel like enough to her either. “Okay, there’s another reason, too. A different reason. I just don’t know it yet. The old guard have a lot of problems with him. Maybe the answer’s with them.”
“So, one of them killed Tobias Laidlaw and that’s why he’s missing . . .”
Books by Nancy Bush
CANDY APPLE RED
ELECTRIC BLUE
ULTRAVIOLET
WICKED GAME
WICKED LIES
SOMETHING WICKED
WICKED WAYS
UNSEEN
BLIND SPOT
HUSH
NOWHERE TO RUN
NOWHERE TO HIDE
NOWHERE SAFE
SINISTER
I’LL FIND YOU
YOU CAN’T ESCAPE
YOU DON’T KNOW ME
THE KILLING GAME
DANGEROUS BEHAVIOR
OMINOUS
NO TURNING BACK
ONE LAST BREATH
JEALOUSY
BAD THINGS
LAST GIRL STANDING
THE BABYSITTER
THE GOSSIP
THE NEIGHBORS
Published by Kensington Publishing Corp.
THE NEIGHBORS
NANCY BUSH
ZEBRA BOOKS
KENSINGTON PUBLISHING CORP.
www.kensingtonbooks.com
All copyrighted material within is Attributor Protected.
Table of Contents
DEADLY NEIGHBORS
Also by
Title Page
Copyright Page
Prologue
Chapter One
Chapter Two
Chapter Three
Chapter Four
Chapter Five
Chapter Six
Chapter Seven
Chapter Eight
Chapter Nine
Chapter Ten
Chapter Eleven
Chapter Twelve
Chapter Thirteen
Chapter Fourteen
Chapter Fifteen
Chapter Sixteen
Chapter Seventeen
Chapter Eighteen
Chapter Nineteen
Chapter Twenty
Chapter Twenty-One
Chapter Twenty-Two
Chapter Twenty-Three
Chapter Twenty-Four
Chapter Twenty-Five
Chapter Twenty-Six
Chapter Twenty-Seven
Chapter Twenty-Eight
Epilogue
ZEBRA BOOKS are published by
Kensington Publishing Corp.
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Copyright © 2022 by Nancy Bush
This book is a work of fiction. Names, characters, businesses, organizations, places, events, and incidents either are the product of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously. Any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, events, or locales is entirely coincidental.
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ISBN: 978-1-4201-5079-7
ISBN-13: 978-1-4201-5080-3 (eBook)
Prologue
Tobias stepped out of his car into a surprisingly cold, rain-drenched night. The parking lot lights were blurred with precipitation, rain falling incessantly, dismally. His eyes searched around the darkened lot. His SUV was the only vehicle.
Throwing the hood of his parka over his head, he strode quickly across the slick black pavement. His car alarm gave a quiet chirp-chirp as he pointed his remote key fob at his Land Rover, locking it.
He put a palm down to his waistband, checking for his handgun, a movement he’d made twenty times since arming himself before he’d left home. The gun gave him a sense of security. Now he tracked toward the edge of the laurel hedge, his shoulder touching the wet leaves, droplets of water cascading over him as he rounded it.
Tobias was consumed with frigid fury. This ridiculous midnight meeting was imperative to set things straight if he wanted cooperation. Would he have rather met at his office? Somewhere professional? Somewhere dry? Of course. But he also wanted expediency and a certain amount of discretion while he decided his next move, and this was what it had come to.
His booted feet sank an inch into the muck of the soggy ground as he crossed from the pavement and over a swath of grass toward the meeting place. Ridiculous, he thought again. Melodramatic. A full moon was trying to compete with the cloud cover and mostly losing the battle.
He felt something in the air a heartbeat before he turned the corner of the hedge and—
Whack!
One moment he was standing, the next he was staggering like a drunk, unable to hold on to his footing, hands on his head. Grass, mud, booted feet spiraled in his vision; then he was on the ground, the fall’s momentum rolling him over the turf onto his back, rain pelting onto his face.
I’m hit. I’m hit, he thought, disoriented. His head buzzed with pain and confusion. Something had slammed him hard.
He gazed upward into the black sky, dulled moonlight lifting some of the darkness. He squinted against the furious rain. A row of watery angels waved in and out of his vision, gazing down at him.
I can’t die, he thought, frightened, struggling to rise.
“Goodbye-us, Tobias . . .” he thought he heard.
A flashlight burst on. Its beam caught on crystalline drops of rain. The blade of a shovel was raised directly above his throat, its tarnished dagger tip glimmering dully, an arrow pointing to his destruction.
No! his mind screamed. He drew a breath to shout, but it was too late. The shovel blade flashed downward, severing tissue and bone.
Angels save me . . . he silently begged as the light clicked off and darkness descended quickly.
With a gurgled sigh, Tobias said goodbye to this earth. One moment he was there, the next gone, unable to hear the whispered epitaph:
“. . . and good riddance.”
Chapter One
“You look fine,” Mackenzie Laughlin assured her stepsister into her cell phone as she wheeled her RAV4 with its gleaming new bodywork into Taft’s condominium visitor parking lot. She chose her favorite spot, which was open today, a space she’d started thinking of as her own. “You’re glowing.”
“Growing,” Stephanie corrected sourly. “As big as an orca.”
“You might be losing your sense of humor over this pregnancy,” warned Mac.
“Oh, it’s gone. Along with my waistline. I know it’s temporary. I know I shouldn’t complain. I know, I know.” She exhaled on a snort of disgust. “I just didn’t know it would be this hard and there are months left. God . . . I’ll never make it.”
“You will.”
“I won’t.”
“You will.”
“Promise?” she asked on a sigh.
“You need to do something. Have Nolan take you out for dinner.”
“Oh, yeah. Just what I need. More food.”
“You’re eating for—”
“God, Mac, if you say I’m eating for two, I may have to kill you.”
“—two.”
“Argh!”
Mackenzie grinned. “Goodbye, Steph. Call me later.” She clicked off, cutting short her stepsister’s vague threats of ending their friendship forever.
Tucking her small notebook with the clipped-on roller ball pen into her jacket pocket, she climbed out of the RAV and headed to Jesse James Taft’s front door. A onetime police officer, Taft was now a private detective, and recently he and Mac—herself a recent departee of the River Glen Police Department—had joined forces and were working together to make River Glen a better, safer place to live, one case at a time. Sort of. At least that was the way Mac wanted to see it. Taft was a little harder to read.
Truthfully, Taft was a pain in the ass. He was too good-looking, too smart, too intuitive, and too much trouble. This was the mantra Mackenzie tried to tell herself as she ignored the spark of sexual awareness between them that just wouldn’t die. She knew it would be self-destructive to go that route with him, and not just because it would spoil their working relationship. Taft was the kind of guy who could break your
She was still smiling about Stephanie, who was happy in her pregnancy no matter what she said, as she headed to Taft’s front door. Thinking of her stepsister reminded Mac of her family and her latest conversation with her mother.
“You’re not going back to the department, then?” Mom had queried . . . again. She just couldn’t quite hide the hope in her voice, having never really been on board with Mackenzie’s choice to “protect and serve” with the River Glen PD. She’d always encouraged Mac’s interest in the arts, specifically drama, which Mac had certainly enjoyed but had never believed was a solid career choice. But Mom still hoped acting would supersede her daughter’s bend toward any kind of law enforcement.
“I’m not going back to the department,” Mac had assured her.
“But you’re with . . . Mr. Taft?”
“Well, I need a job.”
“But that job?”
“Yes, that job.”
“Pri-vate in-ves-ti-gation.” Mom sounded out the syllables slowly, as if that would somehow make the idea more palatable.
“I like the work. And I’m careful.”
“I just don’t want to worry about you.”
“I know.”
Mom had gone through surgery and chemotherapy and had recently been declared cancer-free, a relief to all of them. Her remission had given her the strength to file divorce proceedings against Mac’s stepfather, Dan Gerber, “Dan the Man” to Mackenzie. A great step forward in Mac’s biased opinion. Even Stephanie knew how difficult her father was. But now that Mom was living alone, she was turning her attention and concern toward Mac. An unwelcome side effect. Mac, who’d helped take care of her during her recovery, had recently moved into her own apartment, and Mom was having a hard time with the change. Both of them were adjusting.
She knocked on Taft’s door, grimacing at her own thoughts. She could brush Mom’s concerns aside, but she understood where they came from. She and Taft had just come off two interlocking cases that had put both their lives at risk. Mac had escaped serious harm, but Taft had taken a bullet that had passed through his torso below his right shoulder, luckily missing vital organs and apparently causing no lasting harm. At least that was what Taft assured her. Mac, who had some harrowing memories of her own, wanted to argue with him about it but knew he wouldn’t take her fussing over him well. She’d already tried that. And anyway, she was attempting to push it all away herself, at least for now. Postmortems were for later.
“Door’s open,” Taft called, and Mackenzie pushed into his condo.
She was immediately faced with a twenty- or thirty-something woman in a black jacket, a black midcalf skirt, black boots, and a mane of artfully tousled light brown hair that gave her the look of someone who’d just rolled out of bed. Her eyes were green and slanted and her lips were plump and possibly filled, but they looked a luscious, glossy pink under the lights. She was attractive and vibrant and a wholly unwelcome surprise.
Mackenzie lifted her brows. It wasn’t like Taft to invite clients to his home. He met them at restaurants or parks or public buildings or their own homes. She’d never known him to bring one back to the condo. If that was what this woman even was . . . Maybe she wasn’t the client Taft had called about. Maybe she wasn’t the reason Mackenzie had dropped everything to come over and eagerly find out what he had in store for her work-wise.
Maybe she was . . . something else?
Mackenzie did a quick review of her own appearance, wishing she’d taken a little more care to dress up a bit, although she never did when she was expecting to be on the job, because why would she? And caring too much about her appearance was a trap in her quest to forget anything even marginally romantic as far was Taft was concerned. That was a no go and—
“Mac, this is Daley Carrera.”
“Hi,” Mac said, drawing a mental breath. Then, “Daley?”
The woman smiled a bit tightly. She was assessing Mac the same way Mac was assessing her. She looked vaguely familiar. “I know,” she said. “Parents couldn’t decide between Haley and Dana. It’s been my cross to bear all my life.” She looked at Taft, as if for corroboration.
“Daley’s just moved into a house in Staffordshire, actually in the Villages,” said Taft. “You remember.”
She remembered. She and Taft had taken a look at those very homes with a real estate agent, pretending to be a married couple shopping for a house a few months earlier, reconnaissance on that job she’d shoved to the far reaches of her mind.
“She’s been harassed by the neighbors and is looking for protection,” said Taft. He was wearing a pair of jeans and a long-sleeved tee that fit him well and looked masculine and relaxed. He spread a hand toward Daley, silently inviting her to continue.
“I need someone to watch over me, basically. I asked Jesse, but he says he’s too busy.” She made a moue at him with her glossy lips. “I wasn’t really expecting to have a woman be my bodyguard. I sort of wanted a man. Though my husband probably will like a woman better, I suppose.”
“You’re married?” said Mac with a lifting of spirits.
“For now. Whoops. I guess I’ve started at the end again.” A shadow crossed her face. “When Leon and I moved into the Villages we immediately became personas non grata. Someone started stealing from our porch, then putting dog poop in our mailbox. I don’t know what we did wrong, why they singled us out. Maybe it’s just because we moved in? They’re very territorial. We put in a Ring security camera, but all we’ve caught is someone in oversize clothes in a hoodie tied up so you can’t see his face . . . or her face, hard to tell.”
Mackenzie was having trouble understanding why Daley needed a bodyguard if she and her husband were still together, but okay. “You have any idea who’s behind it all?”
“The whole neighborhood? They’re like a nightmare. We never should have bought there. I mean, I love the house and all. It was added on to and redone last year and it’s beautiful. A ranch with a hot tub and open concept. But the people . . .” She rolled her eyes. “They’re the most unwelcoming bunch of old assholes you’re ever like to meet. I’m too young for them. Too much. Oh, sure, there’s one group about in their thirties or so and they’re okay. But the old guard? They make all the rules and they’re just awful. Leon calls them ‘intractable.’ They want us out.” She tossed up her hands and shook her head, her brown hair shimmering in the light. “They’re the only ones I can think of.”
Mac lifted Daley’s age range to midthirties as she told her story. “How long ago did you move in?”
“Two months. The harassment started right away.”
“What about the people who lived in the house before? Maybe some resentment there?” suggested Mac.
“It was an estate sale and the heirs sold it to a flipper who sold it to us,” Daley dismissed.
“Could it be anything to do with Leon?” asked Taft. “His line of work, maybe.”
“There is no line of work anymore. Leon was ahead of the game on those e-cigarettes? Had a small company and sold it out to the big guys for big bucks. Before all the bad publicity. He sold before we got married and that’s why he insisted on a prenup. But I’m not giving up.”
“On your marriage?” Mac ventured.
“I suppose, but I was talking about the house, my house. I’m not leaving it. No way. No how.”
“Where’s Leon living now?” asked Mac.
“Oh, he’s in the house with me. We’re both there. In armed camps, so to speak. He’s on one end of the wing, and I’m on the other.” She nodded with her chin first one way, then the other.
Mac threw a glance at Taft. Did he really want her to take on this case? He met her gaze, but she couldn’t read what he was thinking.
“Does your husband feel the same way?”
“Hard to say. We’re not speaking a lot. That’s why I want someone to move in with me. Before we stopped speaking, Leon joined the younger group’s ‘hot tub time,’ not at our house, but at others’. I declined. Is it a sex swap thing?” Daley’s arched brows lifted a bit higher. “Who knows? But probably. And yes, these are the good people. The younger group. Leon’s twelve years older than I am, so it makes him feel virile, I guess.”
