The Neighbors (13 page)

He would have been a fool to decline.

Mickey didn’t know she was married, and even if he had, he wouldn’t have cared. Despite her age—at least forty was his best guess—the woman was hotter than fire: everything from the way she talked to the way she batted her eyelashes, her chin tipped downward just so—it was an instant turn-on. Just having dodged possession charges, he was in the shittiest spot in his life. Banging a woman like this, married or not, was a welcome distraction.

The night was predictable. Dinner. A few too many drinks—Mickey stuck to beer while she ordered exotic cocktails. She laughed a little too loudly, flirting like a girl half her age. Sex in the back of her sleek black Cadillac had been phenomenal. She had been wild, bloodying his back with her nails, bucking beneath him like she hadn’t been properly laid in years. For half a second, Mickey could have sworn he was in love.

A week later, she was parked in the same spot outside the Creekside Community Center, waiting for him. They repeated the process, this time trading the backseat of the Caddy for a roadside motel just off the freeway. She dragged her fingers up and down his chest as he stared up at the cracks in the ceiling.

And then things started getting weird. She started calling him even though he hadn’t given her his number. She started asking questions:
What are you doing? Where are you? When can I see you? Why haven’t you called?
Suddenly their torrid affair was turning sour. Harlow Ward wanted more than Mickey was willing to give, and that was strange, because he could sense that she
knew
she was pushing him beyond his comfort zone. He wanted to tell her that it was over between them, that he didn’t want anything to do with her, that it was just a fling, get over it, get fucking over it, lady, get a life. But for whatever reason, he
couldn’t bring himself to do it. He didn’t like confrontation. He was ill equipped for dealing with life.

Stressed out, Mickey folded beneath the strain of her advances. He found himself at his dealer, Shawn Tennant’s house. Unable to cope, he shoved bills into the hand of a man he had sworn he’d never allow himself to see again.

The next afternoon, Harlow left a message on Mickey’s voice mail: he would either meet her for dinner that evening, or he’d regret it for the rest of his life.

Mickey declined the invitation; the woman was a goddamn nutcase.

A day later, Mickey’s cell buzzed inside his pocket. “Your little friend?” her unexpected voice told him when he answered. “He’s dead, which is a real shame, since the cops are going to pin it on you as soon as they get here. You’d better beat them over here.”

He didn’t think—didn’t stop to question
why
the cops would finger him for the crime, didn’t consider that she could have been bluffing. He didn’t question these things because the number on his caller ID hadn’t been Harlow’s.

It had been Shawn Tennant’s.

He hadn’t driven as carefully as he did that night in all his life. He drove beneath the speed limit, slowed on every yellow light rather than blowing through them like he usually did. Every fiber of his being told him to floor it, to break the land-speed record and get to Shawn’s as fast as he could, but logic screamed no. Harlow was giving him a chance to fix this, and the last thing Mick wanted to see was the flash of red and blue in his rearview mirror.

The scene was brutal, bad enough to have Mickey stumbling away from it, nearly tripping over his own feet. There was blood everywhere. The walls. The carpet. The ceiling. Had it not been for the pulp that used to be Shawn in the center
of the room, it would have almost been beautiful—a Jackson Pollock in thick scarlet paint. Mickey turned to run but crashed chest-to-chest with the woman he’d been avoiding for weeks. Harlow gave him a stiff-armed shove into the room, and if she hadn’t had a way of pinning Shawn’s murder on Mickey before, she had one now: Mickey’s sneakers skidded on the carpet. He staggered backward, his arms flying out behind him like a pair of featherless wings. The wad of flesh that used to be Shawn caved beneath Mickey’s weight as his palms sank wrist-deep in human remains.

“Oh, dear!” Harlow singsonged, raising her hand to her mouth in faux surprise. “
That’s
going to stain.”

Mickey scrambled to get to his feet, his throat closing up, threatening to suffocate him. But the harder he tried to get up the more he slid around, spreading Shawn’s entrails across the floor like finger paint. He exhaled a scream—one that sounded far away and detached, as though somewhere in that room, somewhere away from that gore, Mickey was watching himself roll around in blood.

“You’re a murderer,” Harlow announced, canting her head to the side, doglike, watching him struggle, watching him gasp for air. “And you know what’s even worse?” she asked. “Not only did you kill him, but you stole all his drugs too. And from what I see in Mr. Tennant’s ledger, you were his very last customer.”

Mickey blinked up at her, unable to process what was happening.

“I’m not a police detective by any means,” she said, “but my husband
does
watch a lot of
CSI
. I’m pretty sure your name being the last name in that book marks you as suspect number one.”

He shook his head at her, speechless, waiting for her to let him in on the joke. This was some sort of trick, like that Criss Angel guy who walked the streets of Vegas blowing people’s minds. He
began to scramble again—but rather than trying to escape the mess, he was leaning into it, moving his arms in wide swoops to try to put Shawn Tennant together again.
Humpty Dumpty
, he screamed inside his head.
Humpty fucking Dumpty.
Because if he gathered the parts, if he scrunched them up together, he’d be able to ride out this nightmarish trip.

Shawn must have laced his coke with LSD.
What an asshole,
he thought.

“Mickey,” she said flatly, apparently tired of watching him slide around like a kid at an ice-skating rink. “Stop moving.”

He didn’t.

“Stop moving,” she snapped. “Or the cops will find you right along with your friend here.”

Mickey’s hands slipped beneath him. He fell flat on his chest, his T-shirt sopping up Shawn’s blood. The metallic scent—like warm iron—wafted across the floor and assaulted his lungs, assuring him that nobody had laced his drugs, that there was no smoke and mirrors here. He was sober. Awake. This was real.

“
Mickey
. Darling.” She offered him a smile. “I’ll kill you. I promise.”

He twitched, his eyes glazing over in alarm. Numbed with shock, he could think only one thing: her high heels matched the color of his hands, and his hands matched the color of Shawn’s insides.

Mickey Fitch spent that evening weeping—sniveling between dry heaves while scooping up human remains with his bare hands. Harlow sat across from the scene in one of Shawn’s armchairs, one leg crossed over the other. When Mickey finished his assignment, Harlow stepped to the edge of the bloodstain that had overwhelmed the carpet, leaned in, and held a tightly wrapped bag of white powder out to him—his payment. Delirious with fear, Mickey reached out to take it, wrapping his bloody fingers around the plastic, only to pull back a second too late. Harlow’s
smile was brilliant. She gazed at the fresh fingerprints on Shawn’s stash, Shawn’s blood marking Mickey as his killer.

“Oh, Mickey.” She sighed. “You’re so stupid. I love it.”

As it turned out, nobody cared if a guy like Shawn Tennant got axed, be it murder or otherwise. Mickey had pulled up the carpet in his drug dealer’s apartment—the final step in that particular cleanup—while Harlow tossed things into a couple of crappy old duffel bags. In the case of a vanished drug dealer, all it took was a few missing items to get the cops to drop the case.

It scared Mickey how easily the crime was covered up.

After that, Mickey moved into the house next to Harlow’s. He hadn’t wanted to, but she hadn’t given him a choice, and Mick wasn’t ready to go to jail.

That was when a series of short-term roommates began to filter through the house, all of them stragglers—kids trying to get away from their parents, kids who
wanted
to disappear. They were always fresh from a fight—slammed doors and screamed words, accusations and tears. Rent was cheap at Mickey’s place. It was a beacon of hope, a ray of good fortune that nobody could pass up. And Harlow was the cherry on top. She fed them, listened to their stories, comforted them.

And from what Mick had put together, Red didn’t seem to mind. There was no way he didn’t know what Harlow was, and yet he stuck with her, napping on the porch hammock and mowing the lawn, as though he never heard the screams.

Now, sitting in a dirty house twelve years later, Mickey pressed a hand over his mouth while his knee jackhammered up and down. He hated this part, hated being involved, hated knowing that he was part of the madness.

He would have never invited Andrew to move in, not of his own free will. But that was the bitch of it: Mickey’s free will was gone. He didn’t have any privacy, couldn’t do anything without
Harlow knowing about it. She knew every nuance of his life, because she had
become
Mickey Fitch. When Andrew had contacted him on Facebook, he had been contacting Harlow Ward. When Harlow boasted about exchanging e-mails with Mickey’s childhood friend, he crossed his fingers and prayed that she’d mess up, that she’d say something in one of her e-mails that didn’t make sense and Drew would back off, weirded out.

But Andrew didn’t have a clue.

Andrew had just been a kid the last time Mickey had seen him, but there was something about him, a profound sadness masked in hope. Mick had picked up on the same thing in Drew years ago, and it was what made him reach out to the neighborhood kid with nobody to hang out with. Harlow had picked up on it too. Drew had reached out to Mickey, and Harlow had caught his hand instead.

Chewing on the pad of his thumb, he considered what he could do to keep what was going to happen from happening. But he knew it was no good.

Stay out of it
, he told himself.
Disconnect.

Because he knew it was either him or Andrew, and Mickey wasn’t ready to die.

T
he afternoon sun shone through the windows. A vase of daffodils winked at Andrew from the center of Harlow’s breakfast table. She had settled into chopping the fruit he had brought, insisting on making a perfect summer salad. “It’s to die for,” she told him with a wink. She flitted about the kitchen, more like a bubbly schoolgirl than the refined woman she was supposed to be. She hummed while she chopped, expertly dicing while Sinatra crooned.

Drew watched her hips sway, the blade of a butcher knife catching the morning light. His nerves prickled as she danced, anxiety uncoiling itself beneath the cage of his ribs. The more he watched her, the more those disorienting thoughts crept back. He was tempted to reach out, to catch her hand and pull her close.

He winced at the bristle of anxiety stirring just beneath his skin. If Harlow suspected, she’d run him off. She’d tell him never to come back.

He looked away from her, chewing his bottom lip as he stared out the window toward Mickey’s place, trying to construct excuses for why he had to leave. But before he could formulate a
plan, she placed a bowl of chopped fruit in front of him with a smile.

“
Bon appétit
,” she told him, placing a dainty spoon on the gingham place mat next to his salad.

Drew smiled in thanks, hoping it didn’t look as awkward as it felt. Seeing her strictly as a mother figure would have been far easier if Harlow didn’t insist on dressing to the nines; if she didn’t traipse around in pumps that made her calves look so damn appealing. Magnolia Lane was lined with dream homes, but he had yet to spot a woman to rival Harlow’s looks. He had seen a few neighbors walking up and down the street since he’d moved in—one had been pushing a stroller, another had been walking her dog. Both of them had been unremarkable: ponytails and sweats, not full-skirted dresses and Audrey Hepburn shades.

Taking a seat across from him, Harlow placed a small bowl of fruit salad in front of herself and took a bite. “My mother used to make this for me when I was a little girl,” she explained. “She wasn’t much of a cook, but she could do fruit.”

“My mom doesn’t cook either,” he confessed. Mothers felt like a safe subject.

“No?” Harlow arched an eyebrow.

He shook his head in reply.

“She used to, but she got sick.”

“Sick?” Harlow’s expression went dark with concern. “Oh, Andy, I’m sorry.”

Drew lifted a single shoulder in a halfhearted shrug. “It’s OK,” he told her. “She’s been like that forever. Ever since my dad—” Drew blinked at a distant noise—the muffled hum of a garage door rolling up. Harlow lifted her chin, listening to the sound of Red’s engine purring as it pulled up to the house.

“Sounds like Red is home,” she announced.

Drew lowered his eyes, waiting for Red to walk in, to sense that something was off—men were supposed to be able to pick up on that sort of thing; like a sixth sense, they were supposed to
know when the neighborhood kid was ogling their sweet, innocent wife. Drew swallowed a mouthful of fruit as Harlow wiped her hands on a dishtowel, waiting for her husband to come in—Donna Reed, anticipating her beloved’s return. Red stepped into the house through the kitchen door. Drew half-expected him to bellow out,
Honey, I’m home!

“Andrew,” he greeted with a clueless smile. “I thought we weren’t starting until tomorrow.”

He was sure his guilt was obvious. Sitting at the table, his hand in a viselike grip around the spoon, he waited for Red to pick up on Drew’s mental transgression.

“Honey, look what Andy brought us,” Harlow gushed, motioning to the basket with the sticky knife blade. “Sweetest boy.”

“For the job,” Drew clarified. “Just to say thanks.”

“Well, that’s really nice of you, Andy, but you don’t have to buy us things.”

Harlow shook her head as if to say that she agreed. Drew offered the room a hesitant smile as Red met him at the kitchen table, taking a seat across from him.