The Girl Next Door

by Brad Parks

“So you, uhh, heard everything I said just now, huh?”

  “It’s fine. I’m glad you liked my dress.”

  I felt my face getting red.

  “And sorry you lost your job,” she continued. “You don’t have to feel bad about that. It doesn’t matter to me.”

  “Yeah, about all that rebound stuff…”

  “Don’t worry about it. It was just a first date.”

  “And some date it’s been,” I said, gesturing to the surroundings. “I want you to know, I don’t take just any babe to a classy joint like this.”

  She smiled and closed her eyes again. I took her hand and let her relax for a while.

  “Nancy’s funeral is this morning,” she said, her eyelids still shut.

  “Yeah, I guess it is.”

  “I want to go.”

  “I’m not sure that’s the best idea. In any event, I don’t think they’re going to let you out of here.”

  Her eyelids opened, and she fixed those two lovely green eyes on me.

  “Can you go for me? Tell her I’m sorry I couldn’t make it.”

  I patted her hand and assured her I would. It seemed to be the least I could do.

  * * *

  I fetched the nurse, who did the necessary poking, prodding, and assessing, then left us in peace. Mostly, I just hung around as Nikki dozed. I might have caught a small nap myself, bringing my evening’s sleep to a grand total of perhaps three hours. Then I had to go home and ready myself for a funeral.

  When I returned to my house in daylight, it was difficult to tell what might have happened there the night before. I expected the SUV would have left deep, vivid tracks. But it had been so dry and the ground was so hard, it was difficult to make out where it had been. The trampling of my lawn and shrubbery was more from the EMTs than anything else.

  Upon entering my front door, I was greeted by Deadline, who had not been affected by the previous evening’s folderol, except for one important disruption to his daily routine: he hadn’t gotten his morning kibble. And he was rather frantic about this. He took one glance at me, walking in the front door, then ran to his food bowl in the kitchen. When he realized I wasn’t getting the hint, he came back and looked up at me, impatiently, as I thumbed through some mail. Then he dashed to the kitchen, because clearly I would fall in line and follow this time. He returned again, his anguish so pronounced—why doesn’t this moron take the hint?—that I finally walked toward the kitchen to remedy the situation.

  That’s when I noticed Deadline was leaving bloody paw prints on the hardwood floor. There were three distinct sets of tracks—one for each trip—and I followed them into the kitchen, where they became even more vivid on the off-white tile.

  Then I saw a brick, sitting in the middle of the room. There was broken glass scattered all about, which explained why my cat was bleeding. A strip of paper was wrapped around the brick.

  “Oh, what the…” I started to say.

  But I interrupted myself. The paper had block lettering on it:

  MESSAGE FOR CARTER ROSS

  Deadline, sitting by his food bowl, let out an urgent meow. I walked over to him, crunching on the broken glass, and scooped him up so he couldn’t frolic through any more of the wreckage. He allowed me to inspect his paw, which had a small cut in one of the pads. I know even less about feline first aid than I do about human first aid, but the wound didn’t seem mortal.

  Nevertheless, I couldn’t have my cat bleeding all over the place. The police were probably already looking at me hard for assault and battery. I didn’t need to add animal cruelty to my booking.

  I dumped some food in the bowl, then took it and the cat into the bathroom, where I unrolled a length of toilet paper and wrapped it as tightly as I could around his bloody paw. Then I set him down and observed. He attacked the kibble, unconcerned about his injury, so I closed him in the bathroom and returned to the mess in the kitchen.

  The brick looked old and well used, like it had been tossed around a lot in its day. The paper, which appeared to have been torn off a standard 8½-by-11 sheet, had been tied tightly to the brick with two pieces of twine—one lengthwise, one widthwise—in a very neat, tidy little package.

  I bent down and studied the “MESSAGE FOR CARTER ROSS” up close. The lettering seemed to be self-consciously anonymous, as though the writer wanted to make sure it could not later be identified by a handwriting expert. It had been done in black ink, probably a disposable ballpoint pen.

  “You couldn’t have just sent me an e-mail?” I said out loud.

  Picking up the brick, I pulled on the first string, then the second, then the third, letting the twine fall to the floor. I unfurled the paper and turned it over to find the same block writing on the backside:

  BACK OFF. OR YOUR NEXT.

  I stood there for perhaps a minute, brick in one hand, note in the other. Oddly, what really bothered me about it was not that they had brought my cat into this fight or that I had to replace a broken kitchen window. It was that either Jackman—or Gus Papadopolous, or the rent-a-goon they were using—didn’t know the difference between “your” and “you’re.” It’s one thing to be threatened. It’s quite another thing to be threatened in grammatically incorrect fashion. I felt like some basic right as a literate American had been violated. I folded the note and tucked it in my notepad.

  So, obviously, the drive-by had been a scare tactic, with the ol’ brick-through-the-window routine tossed in to make sure I didn’t miss the message. What I couldn’t figure out is why I was being left alive at all. Whoever I was dealing with didn’t place much value on human life. Maybe he just couldn’t figure out a way to kill me and make it look like an accident, and he thought frightening me off the story would accomplish the same purpose.

  I crunched across the glass, grabbed a broom from my pantry, and began sweeping, trying to make sure I found every last shard, shaving, and splinter—because if I didn’t, Deadline would. Somewhere around the third dustpan full, I started feeling strangely heartened to know I was still considered trouble. It gave me new hope there was something out there—maybe at the National Labor Relations Board—that would make this all come together, with or without confirmation of the threats Jackman had made in Jim McNabb’s presence, with or without evidence of the nefarious link between Jackman and Papadopolous.

  I just had to stay alive until I found it.

  * * *

  My transformation from hospital-weary caretaker to spit-polished funeral-goer took fourteen minutes. On my way out, I remembered to let Deadline out of the bathroom. Though, really, he probably wouldn’t have minded spending the day in there: when I opened the door, he was passed out on the rug, having gorged himself on Iams Weight Control. The toilet paper that was once on his paw was now a shredded mess on the floor, but the bleeding had stopped. So I left him alone. Never disturb a happy cat.

  The funeral was held a short drive away in Belleville at St. Peter Roman Catholic Church, a beautiful Gothic-style stone building that had been erected back in the days when people still knew how to make churches—not like these days, when so many of them can be confused with warehouses or big-box stores. Just to the right of the church was a cemetery, where a plot had been dug, draped, and made ready to accept a new resident. A row of white plastic chairs had been set up, giving close family members a graveside seat for the interment.

  I parked in the lot across the street, which was filling up like it was Easter Sunday, and walked toward the front entrance. I stopped and looked at the marquee, which told me St. Peter offered a Sunday Mass in Spanish. I’m sure some of the old Italians in the area probably griped about a bunch of Spanish-speakers coming in and taking over their church. What they didn’t remember is, once upon a time, the Irish who founded St. Peter probably griped about the Italians. And someday the Ecuadorians and Peruvians coming into the area would grumble about someone new.

  And really, they were all worshiping the same God; living the same American story; experiencing the emot
ions of thousands of births and baptisms, confirmations and communions, weddings and funerals. And it was tempting, standing in front of a church built by people who were long dead, to be so humbled by one’s own insignificance as to wonder what any of it could possibly mean. What’s one more life—or death—when we all just end up in the cemetery next door anyway?

  But I suppose at a certain point you have to resign yourself to the simple fact that while you don’t get many years on this planet—in the grand scheme of things—you sure do get a lot of days. So you might as well get on with the business of doing with them what you can.

  And maybe someday, someone wandering through the cemetery would see Nancy’s headstone, do a bit of quick math on her dates of birth and death, and wonder what ended her life after just forty-two years. And if they got real curious, I wanted to make damn sure that if they typed the name “Nancy Marino” into some supercomputer of the future, the archives would be waiting for them with the real story. Because that’s what I had chosen to do with my days on this Earth.

  I was standing there, still stuck in this thought, as Jim McNabb came strolling up.

  “Good morning,” he said solemnly. “Am I interrupting anything?”

  “Nope, just pondering mortality,” I said, staring up at the steeple. “And the things that really matter.”

  “Oh yeah? And what really matters?”

  “Getting the story. Finding the truth. No matter what it costs.”

  He stuck his hands in his pockets and looked down at the steps.

  “What’s it cost you so far?” he asked.

  “Well, my job, for one. After I left your place yesterday, I got myself fired. My girlfriend, for another. She and the job sort of went hand in hand. I might lose my house, too. I don’t exactly have a lot of savings to cushion being out of a paycheck. But all of that stuff is just, I don’t know, fleeting.”

  “You don’t give up, do you?” he said, taking a hand out of his pocket and clapping me on the shoulder affectionately.

  “Not if I can help it.”

  He nodded thoughtfully.

  “Well, I don’t know what your beliefs are. But I’m going to go in there and spend a little time on my knees,” he announced. “For Nancy and for me. We could all use a little confession now and then, you know?”

  “Yeah, sure. I guess you’re right,” I said, and followed him inside.

  It was five minutes to ten, a little later than I liked to arrive for a funeral, and the place was already near capacity. I recognized many of the same people from Monday’s wake, including an odd pairing three-quarters of the way back, sitting on opposite sides of the same aisle: on the left, a foppish-looking man with ash-blond hair and, on the right, a mostly bald man with thin strands stretched across his pate.

  Jackman and Papadopolous. Together. Again.

  I wanted to confront them, make a scene even. But this was hardly the right setting—especially when I wasn’t entirely sure what was really going on. Yeah, they were probably in cahoots. But for all I knew, Nancy’s murder had been entirely Gus’s doing and Jackman had nothing to do with it. Or it was just as possible it was all Jackman and no Gus.

  Nevertheless, the brick-through-the-window thing needed to be answered. I had to do something to show these guys that I wasn’t cowed by bullying. So I did what writers do: I composed a snarky note.

  I pulled out my notepad, opened to a clean page, and in the same big, anonymous block lettering my brick-tosser had used, I wrote:

  MESSAGE FROM CARTER ROSS

  Then I tore out the sheet, turned it over, and continued:

  “YOUR” IS A POSSESSIVE PRONOUN. “YOU’RE” IS A CONTRACTION OF “YOU” AND “ARE.” PLEASE LEARN THE DIFFERENCE.

  I made another copy of the note, then walked the short distance up the aisle to where they were sitting. I turned and faced both of them.

  “Hello, gentlemen,” I said, plastering a fake smile on my face.

  I then stuffed my pieces of paper in the breast pocket of each of their suits. Gus was so stunned by the assault he didn’t even move. Jackman physically recoiled, though he was more taken aback than anything—I had mashed his pocket square. I gave each of them a final head nod, then turned and walked toward the front of the church without looking back.

  It wasn’t the big scene I was really aching to cause. But, as juvenile as it was, it felt nice to be on the offensive for a change.

  * * *

  The only open seating that remains two minutes before the start of a crowded funeral is, inevitably, up front, close to the casket, where no one really wants to be. And that’s where I landed, in the row directly behind the pews that had been reserved for family.

  I hadn’t been seated for more than a minute when Jeanne Nygard was escorted in on the arm of her husband, Jerry. She had managed to find herself a black dress—no hippie-dippy floral pattern, for once—but was still wearing Birkenstocks. She was immediately followed by her stern sister, Anne McCaffrey, who had on another totally sensible charcoal gray skirt suit that, to the unschooled eye, was indistinguishable from all her other totally sensible suits.

  Jeanne slowly made her way down the row until she was directly in front of me. She sat but turned immediately, peering at me through those photochromic lenses that were still dark from the sun.

  “I’ve been trying to call you,” she said in a voice that was just a bit too loud.

  The stern sister pounced before I could answer.

  “Jeanne, no!” Anne hissed.

  Jerry wasn’t far behind. “Hon, we talked about this,” he growled.

  “I’ve been trying to call you, but your phone has been off,” she repeated, making a point of twisting a little farther away from her sister and husband as if to emphasize that she was ignoring them.

  “Sorry about that,” I replied softly. “I have a new phone number.”

  Jerry turned around, pointed at me, and whisper-shouted, “You leave her alone! This is none of your business!”

  Jeanne was still disregarding her family’s protestations, focusing on me as she said, “I need to talk to you as soon as possible.”

  “Jeanne!” Anne barked.

  “Come to Nancy’s house after the funeral,” Jeanne continued. “We’re having a reception. We can talk there.”

  “That’d be fine,” I said, while Anne was saying something along the lines of “Don’t you dare!”

  Satisfied, Jeanne turned back around. Anne glared at her sister while Jerry was trying to shoot me dirty looks. But any further hostility was cut short by an organ sounding the first mournful notes of a funeral procession.

  I spent the next hour or so fathoming the mystery of Christian death in the light of the resurrection, observing as the rite of committal was administered, trying not to screw up any of the prayers. Then it was off to Nancy’s house.

  Which, naturally, got me thinking about potato salad. A motivational speaker I heard once—can’t remember his name—had a monologue about potato salad. His conclusion, basically, was that life is all about what happens between birth and potato salad. And you have to accomplish what you can before the potato salad. Because after the potato salad, it’s all over.

  The joke, of course, is that after you die, your family and friends spend a few days saying wonderful things about you—things they might never have said when you were still alive—and then they take you out to some grassy spot, leave you there, and go back to your house and eat potato salad.

  And before long, that’s what we were all doing: eating potato salad at Nancy’s place.

  Her house turned out to be a small, white 1950s ranch with a sunken garage beneath the main floor. There were folks congregating on the front lawn, which had a decent-sized tent on it. Jerry Nygard was among them, and he put his hands on his hips when he saw me, like I would be scared off when I realized how offended he was by my presence. I thought about going up to him and offering him a Coke.

  Instead, after a morning of mourning, I needed
to find myself a bathroom. So I invited myself inside the house.

  The front door opened into a small living room. There was some food set out on the coffee table, but it had yet to attract any visitors, who were all still under the tent. At the far end of the room was a swinging door—probably to the kitchen—and a hallway that cut down the middle of the house and led, I hoped, to a bathroom. I started walking in that direction and was just about to take a left when I heard what sounded like Anne’s voice coming from behind the swinging door. I caught her midway through a sentence that ended:

  “… a spectacle out of our sister’s death.”

  Then I heard what was unmistakably Jeanne replying, “What do you propose? That we let the legal system work it out?”

  Anne: “Well, obviously not. She can’t very well testify now, can she?”

  Jeanne: “So what do you propose?”

  Anne: “Drop it. Just let it drop.”

  Jeanne: “I’m not going to let a murder drop.”

  Anne: “It wasn’t a murder.”

  Jeanne: “You don’t know that.”

  There was a momentary standstill. I heard the rattling of a pot, the running of water, the clicking of a gas stove being ignited, and then the soft whooshing of the flame coming to life. I kept myself perfectly still, not even daring to swallow, lest it make too much noise.

  “Do you really trust this guy?” Anne resumed.

  “He seems like a nice young man,” Jeanne answered.

  “Yeah, but would he, you know, blow things out of proportion?” Anne asked. “Reporters do that, you know.”

  By “reporters” I realized, of course, they were talking about me. But bursting into the room and insisting I wasn’t like all those other lowly journalists—who skulk around people’s houses and eavesdrop on their conversations—was clearly out of the question. So I just hung on and hoped Jeanne would do my fighting for me.

  “I don’t think he would,” Jeanne said. “He seemed very reasonable to me.”

  Attagirl. Sure, I might have worded it a little more strongly, but that would do.

  Jeanne added: “If anything, he seemed more reserved than I thought he should be. He talked about the need to be prudent.”