The Nosy Neighbor

by Fern Michaels

  Coop looked up and threw back his head and howled. Lucy jumped at the sound. Sadie moved across the deck to the fence gate. Her nose in the snow, she walked back and forth, but she didn’t bark. Did that mean she’d picked up the scent of someone she knew? Who?

  “Who? Who? Who?” She sounded like an owl. She called to the dogs. They all bounded into the house. Lucy waited to see if they’d sniff out anything unusual. They didn’t. That meant no one was in the house. Who in their right mind would enter a house where a dog like Coop barked? Who?

  Jonathan, that’s who.

  Lucy felt an adrenaline rush at the thought. She looked down at her watch. It was quarter to eight. Time enough for Jonathan to have gotten there from wherever he’d been when he had called last night. Lucy could feel her insides start to clench up at the implications of what she was thinking.

  Quicker than lightning, she ran around the downstairs rooms, turning off all the lights. In the kitchen she snapped off the night-light over the stove. Total darkness washed over her. Sadie growled at the strange goings-on. Lulu yelped to be picked up, and Lucy obliged. Coop started to prowl, sniffing at the track of the sliding glass doors.

  Lucy crept over to the little alcove off the kitchen where the pantry was located. No windows, no doors where a person could be seen. She started to shake. Hot tears of anger and frustration burned her eyes. Weaklings and sissies cower in fear, she told herself. Top-notch lawyers with brains are trained to stand up to just about anything. Yeah, well, today was over the top. He’s playing with my head, that’s what he’s doing. I know it because I know Jonathan. I should call the FBI right now and tell them what we found.

  “Maybe I should call the feds,” Lucy muttered. “But if I don’t know if I should trust them, what’s the point?” She thought about how nasty they’d been to her, how cold and uncaring. “The hell with it,” she muttered again. She backtracked in her thoughts. If she told them she thought the footprints belonged to Jonathan, they’d probably laugh their heads off. They’d say she was just trying to wiggle out from under their scrutiny. She smacked her hands together. That thought alone convinced her it was not in her best interests to call the agents. Lucy dropped to her knees, Lulu clutched tight against her chest. “Listen up, you two,” she said to Coop and Sadie. “We’re going to Wylie’s house. Straight across the yard.” Her voice was so jittery and shaky that the dogs actually paid attention to what she was saying. Lulu licked at her chin.

  She was still wearing her jacket. She slipped into her rubber boots, scuffling along as she herded the dogs to the front door. Key in hand, she took one last look around before opening the door to let Coop and Sadie out, then locked it. There were wings on her feet as she crossed the yard to Wylie’s house. She didn’t bother to knock, just let herself in. Wylie was watching her from the foyer when she turned around and snapped the dead bolt.

  Lucy was breathless from the run in the deep snow across the yard. “Someone was in my backyard. They must have been by the front door, too. Coop pitched a fit, but not Sadie, so that means the scent she picked up was someone she knew. Lulu picked up on it, too. I’d appreciate it if you’d close your blinds, Wylie,” Lucy said. She could have saved her breath because Wylie was already closing the vertical blinds. Mitch meandered into the foyer, Jake behind him. Both had beer bottles in their hands.

  Wylie explained Lucy’s nervousness as she kicked off her boots and shed her jacket.

  Mitch was the first to speak. “When it snows like this, people have a tendency to look out their windows from time to time to see if it’s still snowing, how deep it’s getting. Call some of your neighbors and see if they saw anyone at your house, Miss Lucy.”

  Lucy hung up her ski jacket. “After being in that house, I think I’m spooking myself. I suppose it could have been a youngster wanting to shovel the driveway.”

  Mitch swigged from his near-empty bottle. “If that’s the case, then the kid would have knocked on other doors in the neighborhood. It won’t hurt to call around, Miss Lucy.”

  “While you’re doing that, Lucy, I’ve got to finish the meat loaf for Coop. By the way, that’s what we’re having for dinner, with baked potatoes and canned corn. I have some cabbage if anyone wants to make coleslaw or fried cabbage. Then I have to go across the street to feed Rachel Muller’s cat and change the litter box. I almost forgot I was supposed to do that. She’s liable to call me tonight to ask how the cat is. It won’t take me long.”

  Curiosity ringing in her voice, Lucy asked, “Where’s Rachel? I thought I saw her this morning.”

  “She went to Delaware to spend Thanksgiving with her sister. Her brother was picking her up just as we were leaving. I’ve had a key to her house forever. She used to take the cat, but he’s old now and doesn’t travel well. On nice days she used to walk Coop while I was at work.”

  “Lulu is going to be mighty upset if you come home smelling of cat,” Jake warned. “We might as well have something besides corn. I’ll do the coleslaw.”

  They were chatting about mundane matters, hoping to wipe away the look of anxiety on Lucy’s face.

  “I think I’ll have a beer. Jonathan could have been on a plane when he called me last night. If he was, he could very well be here. Maybe I should call one of the agents. I think I figured it out. Jonathan is trying to play with my head so I’ll go off the deep end,” Lucy said as she marched into the kitchen. “Jonathan knows I haven’t made any real friends since I moved here. Aside from Nellie, that is. He also knows Nellie goes south for the winter, and so he figures I’m here alone. I’m sure that’s what he’s doing. When I walked away from my law practice, he said a stable person wouldn’t do something like that. When I said I didn’t want to be a judge and was going to turn down the offer, he made a really big deal about it, saying I was losing it, that I wasn’t stable, that I was teetering on the edge. Believe it or not, I laughed in his face.” Lucy gulped at the beer she was holding.

  “And, Miss Lucy, he would do this…why?”

  Lucy watched as Wylie pulled on his jacket and boots and made his way to the front door, Rachel Muller’s key in his hand. An ordinary, kind thing to do for a neighbor. Jake was chopping cabbage, and Mitch was pacing the kitchen. The dogs were tussling in the family room with a long, coiled, braided rope. Everything just then seemed normal.

  “Why?” Lucy shrugged. “An unstable person, someone teetering on the edge, wouldn’t make a good impression on the FBI now, would she? They’re crawling all over me, trying to wear me down. They think I’m lying about the brokerage accounts and the house in Watchung. Remember what you were thinking when I came up with that card that opened the gate? I saw all of your faces. You were thinking, how convenient it was that all of a sudden I remembered I had it. You know you all thought I might be mixed up in whatever Jonathan has going on. I’m not,” Lucy said wearily as she sat down next to Mitch.

  Mitch locked his gaze on her. “And you think he’s here now because of the footprints you saw in the snow.”

  Lucy nodded. “Yes.”

  “Call around the neighborhood and see what you can find out. Want another beer?”

  “Yes, thank you, I would like another beer.”

  Wylie blew into the house like a wild gust of wind, his arms loaded with groceries. His eyes were watering, and his cheeks were red from the stinging snow. “Rachel left all this stuff on the table for me along with a note. She won’t be back till next Saturday. We are going to have a feast, lady and gentlemen. The cat is doing nicely, thank you.”

  Jake was the only one who seemed interested in the array of food.

  “I saw Rudy clearing his driveway,” Wylie continued, “so I asked him if anyone had been around asking to shovel driveways, and he said no. He said he was watching television in between blowing out his driveway. As a matter of fact, he said other than us and Rachel leaving, no one has been on the street all day. What he said was, there were no strange cars on the street.”

  A look of disgust washed
over Lucy’s face. “A kid wanting to shovel snow wouldn’t arrive in a car. Nor would Jonathan if he was up to something and being sneaky about it. He could very easily have come in from the back, off Frances Road. He could have parked on Richard Road and walked up this street. We haven’t been plowed out. Maybe he didn’t want to get stuck. I’m telling you, it was Jonathan. Where’s your phone book, Wylie?”

  Wylie bent down to open one of the kitchen cabinets. He handed her the white pages. “We’ve eliminated three already, Nellie, Rachel, and Rudy. That leaves Carol, Joan, the new people on the corner, the Hendersons, and Tom and Alice.”

  They watched as Lucy dialed her neighbors, one by one. The conversations were short and succinct. No one had offered to shovel their driveways. No one had seen anyone around her house all day.

  “Then who was at my house?” Lucy demanded when she hung up from the last call. “Did he just drop from the sky?”

  Jake scooped his chopped cabbage into a bowl. “This could turn out to be one of those little mysteries in life that is never explained or solved. You’re here, you’re safe, the dogs are safe, and that’s all that matters. We won’t let anything happen to you, Lucy.”

  “What’s the game plan, guys?” Mitch asked. “I’m going to be heading home in the morning. But I can always come back if you need me. If you just want to ask me something, call or e-mail me. I’m going to write up a report for you. You can hand it over to the feebs or you can just keep it. Your call. My firm does work for a bunch of different government agencies, and our credibility is above reproach. I think I’ll start on the report right now, Wylie, if you show me where your computer is. After dinner, I’m going straight to bed. The plows will be working overtime tonight, but by five or so, the roads should be in good shape. I’ve got a business to run, and I hate being away more than a day or so. Did I mention that my bill will be in the mail?”

  When Wylie and Mitch left the kitchen, Lucy plopped her elbows on the table, dropping her head into the palms of her hands. “I think I’m scared, Jake. I thought I knew Jonathan, but I don’t know this Jonathan. My God, I was going to marry the man. I don’t know what he’s capable of. I wouldn’t make a good spy. I guess I gave myself away a hundred different ways when I spoke to him. The one thing I do know about Jonathan is he is not a stupid man. Then there’s this…this thing going on inside my head. I’m staying here tonight. I don’t care if I have to sleep on the floor.”

  Jake sat down across from Lucy. “Fear is a healthy emotion, Lucy. I would probably be worried about you if you tried to blow all this off as inconsequential. My personal opinion is you have to open up to the feds. Don’t hold anything back, or it will jump up and bite you. Truth always wins out in the end.”

  “No, Jake, truth does not always win out in the end. I’m a lawyer, I should know. If I had a nickel for every dishonest client who said they were telling the truth, I’d be rich. God, I’m tired. How about you?”

  “I can’t remember when I had as much fresh air as I’ve had today. I think I’m going to go to bed after dinner, too.”

  Lucy leaned across the table. “Jake, after seeing that house, what do you think Jonathan is up to?”

  “Jeez, Lucy, I don’t know. Like Drew said, the guy’s a badass dude. He must be one hell of an actor for you to have been so bewitched.”

  “I swear to you, Jake, it never occurred to me that my ex-fiancé was anything other than what he professed to be. Maybe I was too busy with work and wrapped up in my own world to pick up the clues. Fool me once, shame on you; fool me twice, shame on me. He knows I’m onto him. I just wish I knew what all that stuff at the house means.”

  “If you put my feet to the fire and I had to venture a guess, I’d say your old friend Jonathan is bringing illegal people into this country, and that house is a stopover. A place that is safe and secure until they get to their final destination, wherever that might be. Money laundering is a billion-dollar business. Then there are the drugs. I think you can just about take your pick or go with all three.”

  “Aside from all that first-class security, there’s something about that house that bothers me. I can’t quite put my finger on it,” Lucy said, frowning.

  Jake nodded sympathetically.

  Ninety minutes later, the kitchen was cleaned, the leftovers—of which there weren’t many—were wrapped and stored in the refrigerator. Mitch and Jake both headed off to bed, saying good night.

  Wylie turned to Lucy and put his hands on his hips. “It’s just you and me, Lucy. I’m as tired as those guys, but I’m wired, too. Let’s put another log on the fire, have a snort of brandy, then we can go to sleep. You can have my bed, I’ll take the couch.”

  “No, Wylie. I’m not taking your bed. I sleep on my own couch fairly often. I’ll just curl up with the dogs here by the fire. I’ll be fine.”

  Wylie added two logs to the fire. Sparks showered upward. Lucy was reminded of the Fourth of July sparklers she and Steven used to wave around when they were kids.

  While Wylie poured brandy into two balloon glasses, Lucy wiggled her fanny back and forth, the warmth from the fire racing up and down her back. How good it felt.

  Glasses in hand, Wylie led her to the couch. They sat down next to each other, each of them more than a little aware of the other. Lucy strained to hear Wylie’s thoughts. She almost fell off the couch when she heard…what now, Romeo? Do I put my arm around her shoulder, do I kiss her? Maybe I should ask first. She’d laugh her head off if she knew I haven’t been with a woman in over a year. What the hell is she thinking? Is she waiting for me to make a move?

  Lucy watched as Wylie gulped at the fiery liquid in his glass. When she saw his eyes start to water, she set her glass aside, moved to the right, throwing her right leg over his and yanking him toward her, all at the same time. “I think you need to kiss me right now.” The command came out in a sexy, throaty growl.

  Wylie obliged. Talk about wishful thinking.

  When they finally came up for air a long time later, the three dogs were on their haunches staring at them intently. Lucy burst out laughing.

  Wylie stared at Lucy. “I liked that. Yeah, I did. I mean, I really did. You’re a great kisser. I haven’t been kissed like that in oh…”

  “A little over a year.” Lucy giggled.

  Wylie pretended outrage. “You read my mind. That’s dirty pool.”

  Lucy laughed again. “I was getting impatient. You couldn’t make up your mind. You know us lawyers, we have to make snap decisions. By the way, I liked it, too. Want to do it again?”

  “Are you one of those women who likes to toy with a man’s affections? I don’t want to have my heart broken.”

  “You’re serious, aren’t you? That wasn’t a fun question, was it?”

  Wylie jumped up and walked over to the fireplace. He poked at logs that didn’t need to be poked. He turned around, his eyes bright. “I was serious. I think I started to have feelings for you that first day I met you. Coop loves you, so that endeared you to me right off. I don’t want to catch you on the rebound, Lucy. Been there, done that. I’m thinking if you aren’t ready or if you don’t share my feelings, then we should sit on separate chairs. Or…or something.”

  Lucy bounded off the couch, causing the dogs to move backward. “Do you think I just go around kissing guys who have nice dogs? Huh? Well, do you? Listen, there’s a lot going on in my little world right now. The fact that I allowed myself to kiss you, and make no mistake, I kissed you, should be all the proof you need that I…that I…care about you.”

  She was right next to him, her body a hairbreadth away from his. She could smell the brandy on his breath. He opened his arms, and she stepped into them. She felt the hardness of him as she laid her head against his chest. Nothing had ever felt this right, this good. A sigh of pure happiness escaped her lips.

  Wylie swayed dizzily, his gaze going to Coop, who seemed to be drooling in anticipation. His mouth worked silently. She likes meat loaf. The huge dog stared at hi
s master a moment before he lay down, stretched out, his head dropping onto his paws. Wylie almost swooned. That was Coop’s seal of approval.

  “Want to go for it right here, or are you one of those women who needs a bed?” Damn, was that growling voice his?

  “A bearskin rug would be nice.”

  “Uh-huh?” His eyes almost bugging out of his head, Wylie couldn’t believe what he was seeing. A sweatshirt flying across the room, sweatpants dropping to the floor.

  Lucy laughed as she unhooked her bra. “You better hurry or you won’t be able to catch up.”

  Speed. She wanted speed. “Watch this!”

  Lucy watched.

  11

  The man standing at the twentieth-floor window of the Woodbridge Hilton Hotel that was a mere seven minutes by car to Lucy’s house bore absolutely no resemblance to the man known as Jonathan St. Clair. His identification, international driver’s license, credit cards, and passport said his name was Spiros Andreadis, a Greek national. His credentials said he worked for a Swiss clock company. Thanks to shoe lifts, Spiros Andreadis was two inches taller than Jonathan St. Clair. His eyes were a startling blue opposed to Jonathan’s hazel and now stood out sharply against his olive complexion. Spiros’s hair was coal black and matched his mustache. Jonathan St. Clair sported sandy-colored hair, and his upper lip was clean-shaven.

  The Greek’s clothing, shoes, and all items in his possession shrieked that they were not made in America. His luggage, one bag, was sturdy, battered cowhide and bore travel stamps from all over the world.

  His shoulders stiff, his stance angry, Jonathan whirled away from the window. It was late, he should go to bed. The only problem was that he was too angry to go to bed. He’d spent close to two hours tramping through a virtual blizzard to reach Lucy after a dozen phone calls to her home and cell went unanswered, only to find she wasn’t home. He was further irritated that he didn’t have a key to her house. Lucy’s explanation for why she wouldn’t give him a key was simple, “Jonathan, I’m always home, why do you need a key?” What Lucy didn’t know was he did have a key. Three visits ago, he’d been so miffed at her refusal to give him a key, he’d waited till she finished her fourth glass of wine and fell asleep, at which point he took the key from the peg by the back door and pressed it into some melted candle wax. The next day he’d gone to a drugstore and within ten minutes he had a bright, shiny key in his hand. For all the good it did him. Who knew Lucy would add a new lock, the kind that went into the molding at the top of the doorframe. She’d never stuck dowels in the sliding doors before, either. At least he didn’t think she had. Right now he was too angry to think straight.