Neighborhood Watch (30 page)

“What the hell . . .”

She jumped up and ran to the front door, opening it and stepping out just as the patrol turned and continued down the street. Even under the state-of-the-art streetlights, the dark figures merged with the darkness and were lost in the shadows.

“You bastards!” Kristin screamed. Her voice echoed and died. She waited a moment and then slammed the front door closed, her heart pounding so hard now, she was afraid she might just faint. She put her hand on the ledge and took a deep breath. Memories of her miscarriage sent electrifying chills up and down her spine.

“Mommy,” Jennifer said, her face lit with fear. One look at Jennifer forced Kristin to get control of herself quickly.

“I’m all right, honey. It’s all right,” she said and managed a smile. “Someone was just letting us know we had our curtains open too wide at night.”

She closed them and turned back to Jennifer.

“Let’s finish the story.”

She returned to the table and focused her thoughts as hard as she could on the words and pictures, waiting with great anticipation for Ted’s return, but he didn’t return until nearly eleven.

After she had put Jennifer to bed, Kristin tried to distract herself with some television and reading, but nothing worked. She kept gazing at the clock and listening for Ted’s car in the garage. Finally, she relented and took one of the tranquilizers Doctor Hoffman had prescribed. It made her a bit groggy and she dozed off in her chair, not hearing Ted enter the house. However, she sensed his presence and woke abruptly, nearly leaping out of the chair.

“Easy,” he said smiling. “I didn’t mean to frighten you. I was just surprised to find you here. Sorry the meeting took so long, but we went into pension plans and—”

Suddenly, Kristin just started crying, the tears streaking down her cheeks.

“What’s wrong, Kristin?” He knelt down quickly and took her hand.

“They . . . they came into our house.”

“Who came into our house?”

“Nikki Stanley and her patrol,” she said, wiping the tears off her cheeks. She quickly related what had occurred.

“Jesus,” he said. “She has gone overboard.”

“She’s horrible. I don’t want her near my house ever. Ever!” Kristin cried.

“Take it easy.”

“You’ve got to say something, Ted. You’ve got to do something about that woman,”

Kristin demanded.

He nodded and stood up.

“It’s late, but I’ll call Philip in the morning and speak with him. I’m sorry this happened while I wasn’t here.”

“Can you imagine her dictating how we should arrange our furniture? Can you?”

He shook his head.

“Take it easy, Kristin. I promise I’ll do something.”

She relaxed and closed her eyes.

“If she puts this in her weekly report . . .”

“She won’t. Come on, honey. Let’s go to bed. You can’t let yourself get so upset.”

“I’m not letting myself. It’s these people, this insanity that’s taking over the

development. You should have been here and seen their faces. Charles and Barry were like total strangers. They didn’t crack a smile. They’re so taken with themselves. I was frightened, Teddy. I didn’t let them see it, but I really was!”

He nodded and guided her to her feet.

“And then afterward, for spite, I’m sure, someone directed a flashlight beam through the front window and frightened Jennifer. I suppose our curtains weren’t closed properly. Can you imagine?”

She babbled about the whole episode all the way to the bedroom until she was under the covers. Teddy repeatedly reassured her and finally she closed her eyes, but the security guard’s rattling of the doors to check on the locks snapped her lids open again.

“They’re driving me mad,” she said. “Get them away from our house. GET THEM

AWAY! ”

“Easy, honey, easy.”

“I don’t want them to check our home, Ted. Keep them off our property.”

“Okay,” he said. “Okay.” He didn’t want to remind her that it was development property.

There was no way to prohibit the security patrol from stepping on the grounds, but

maybe, until Kristin gave birth at least, he could keep them away from the house.

How the hell did this all happen? he wondered and then put it out of his mind so he could get some rest.

In the morning Kristin felt like she had a mind-numbing hangover. She actually studied herself in the mirror to see whether or not her forehead had grown out and protruded over her eyes. She was pale, her lids drooped, and the corners of her mouth dipped so she resembled a clown’s sad face. She took as cold a shower as she could stand and put on more makeup than usual before joining Ted for breakfast and getting Jennifer started.

After Ted and Jennifer had gone, Kristin sat gazing out the rear patio door while she had a second cup of coffee. Poor Angela, she thought and recalled that Elaine Feinberg had been sitting in this very seat focused on the rear patio just the way she now was when she and Teddy had first come to look at the house. She vividly remembered Elaine’s look of terror and words of warning when she had confronted her in the supermarket. Suddenly an idea blossomed.

Kristin went to the phone and called Michele Lancaster, the real estate agent. After what seemed an interminable cross-examination and effort to intercede, Michele reluctantly gave her Elaine Feinberg’s new address. Without hesitation, Kristin grabbed her purse and a light jacket and left the house.

Carl Stark seemed to move deliberately slower when Kristin pulled up to the gate. He was reading something with his head down so long Kristin had to beep the horn. He

looked up without expression, nodded and gazed at whatever he was reading for another few seconds before coming out of the booth. He walked with ponderous steps.

“Open the gate,” she demanded.

“How long will you be gone?” he responded.

“Open the damn gate,” she snapped. “Now!”

He stared at her long enough for her to assume he wasn’t going to move.

“Open that gate or I’ll drive right through it,” she threatened and actually gunned her engine. His eyebrows rose.

“I’m just—”

“Doing your job, I know. Open the gate.”

He turned and walked back to the booth. For a moment he just stared at her, daring her to do what she threatened, and then he opened the gate. Her wheels screamed as she shot through and accelerated, nearly missing the turn. Her heart was pounding so hard, she thought she might faint and crash. After a moment she calmed herself and slowed. All she needed was to get a speeding ticket, too, she thought.

A little over twenty minutes later, she parked in front of a cottage-size brown and white house that had the tired, anemic look of a structure five years beyond its time for restoration. The lawn had a sickly, pale green look with bald patches here and there. It was one of the poorer neighborhoods in Sandburg. Most of the homes resembled each

other as if they all suffered from the same infectious neglect. In actual distance, Kristin was only fifteen or so miles from Emerald Lakes, but in quality and style of life, she might as well have been in the South Bronx. What a far cry from what Elaine Feinberg had enjoyed before her husband’s death, Kristin thought as she emerged slowly from her car.

She walked over the cracked and pitted sidewalk and pressed the door buzzer button. She heard nothing and pressed it again. Feeling certain it didn’t work, she knocked on the wooden door and waited. It was as if Elaine had been standing just to the side, for the door was thrust open without warning. The abrupt action not only stunned her, but

seemed to suck in the air and her along with it. She gasped and then widened her eyes even more when Elaine stepped into the opening.

The woman’s hair was disheveled. It looked as if she had been pulling on it in a rage of self-destruction. She wore no makeup; her face was ashen to the point that even the color in her eyes looked dulled and her lips were almost indistinguishable from the surrounding skin. Age, like a predator waiting for opportunity, had seized on her grief and

despondency and etched deeper lines in her forehead and along the corners of her eyes.

She wore a pair of dungarees and a sweatshirt with frayed sleeves. There was no

recognition in her face.

“What do you want?” she demanded. “I don’t want to talk about Jehovah or buy any

magazines,” she added before Kristin could reply.

“I’m not a saleswoman, Mrs. Feinberg. I’m Kristin Morris, remember?”

Elaine gazed at her skeptically.

“Morris. The people who bought your home in Emerald Lakes.”

At the sound of the name, her face took on some color. A shot of crimson flashed across her cheeks when she grimaced.

“What do you want now?”

“I just wanted to talk to you. Please. I don’t want anything else. I know you’ve had a terrible time. There’s been some trouble at Emerald Lakes and I thought—”

“I know,” she said, smiling for the first time, although it was a cold, bone-chilling look of glee. “I saw it on the local news.”

“The woman was my neighbor.”

“So? You’re all neighbors in Emerald Lakes,” she added with a sharp twist in her mouth.

“Please. Can we just talk a few minutes?”

Elaine considered and then stepped back.

“This isn’t as pretty a place as my home in Emerald Lakes,” she said. “And I’m afraid I haven’t been much of a homemaker lately.”

Kristin entered, looked around, and reflexively nodded in agreement.

“Why did you move here?”

“Why? They found it for me. It was part of the package, so to speak. I took it until my money comes from the sale of the home. The little money that’s due me, that is,” she added. “This is rent free. Actually,” she said with a macabre laugh, “it’s part of the penance, part of my sentence for Sol and me daring to challenge the homeowners

association.

“But,” she said, perusing Kristin for the first time, “you already know a little about that, don’t you? Otherwise, why would you come here? Well, go ahead. Sit down if you don’t mind the thrift store furnishings,” she added, nodding at the well-worn, light brown sofa.

As soon as Kristin sat, Elaine relaxed in the thick-armed, deep-pillow easy chair across from her. “You realize you’re associating with a known undesirable.”

“Why is it taking so long for you to get your money? I don’t understand,” Kristin said.

“Just some legal shenanigans to prolong the torment,” Elaine replied. “But at least I’m out of there,” she added with a sigh of relief.

“You really hated living in Emerald Lakes that much?”

“Not in the beginning. In the beginning Sol and I thought we’d found Nirvana. We

embraced the lifestyle, the regulations, the security system. Actually, Sol liked Phil very much in the beginning, and we both felt sorry for him and Marilyn. Now,” she said

bitterly, “now I think the little boy was lucky to escape being Phil’s son. It’s a terrible thing to say, I know, but you’ll have to excuse me. I’m not in the forgiving mood these days.”

“What happened to you and Sol?”

“Happened?” She laughed. “Yes, I suppose you could say things happened to us. Sol

started to take a more active role in the life of the development. Even though he wasn’t a board trustee, he went to the meetings and started to voice opinions. Little Miss

Napoleon, Nikki Stanley, never stopped reminding him he had no vote in executive

session, so he decided to run against her. Nikki’s campaign, if you can call it that, became somewhat bitter. There was a lot of arm twisting and threats. Sol was soundly defeated.

“But my husband was a proud, independent man. He didn’t withdraw; he became more

of a thorn in her back, and therefore, more of a problem for the executive board. Sol started to rile other homeowners up about some of the restrictions. He even began a petition. Few signed it, but he did try.”

“Angela and I were doing something like that just before she was killed,” Kristin said.

Elaine nodded.

“I had a suspicion about that when I heard about the attack. Why would anyone, even an idiot, choose the most securely guarded development to burglarize when there are so many other beautiful homes nearby without half the danger of being caught?”

“Surely, your husband didn’t take his life over the situation at Emerald Lakes.”

“My husband did not take his own life,” she replied firmly. “He was not a quitter. Why would he initiate a civil law suit against the homeowners association if he were going to give up? The action was never brought to court so he was still optimistic. And he was about to be a father. Is that the point in your life when you decide to end it all? We’d also discussed our future plans; we were going to sell and move out if we got no satisfaction from the courts.”

“What did your husband do for a living?”

“He was the business manager for Marlin Enterprises. They make home construction

materials like aluminum siding. Suddenly, he was being pressured at work. Phil Slater’s doing, I’m sure,” she said nodding. “Sol was fired a week before his death. The police like to remind me of that. They hang their hats on it; it hammers home their comfortable conclusion that he committed suicide.”

“He did shoot himself, right?”

Elaine turned away and took a deep breath.

“Sol was not a gun person. He never hunted. I never knew him to have a gun.”

“But surely the police checked that.”

“It was an unregistered pistol, the kind no one can trace but is, unfortunately, easily available. That’s what the detective said. I kept asking how would he know where to get it? He wasn’t that sort of man.”

“What was their response?”

“Desperate men do desperate things. Only his prints were on the pistol. He shot himself in his office. We were the only people in the house. He’d lost his job.” She shrugged.

“What could I say?”

“Was the detective an Oriental man? Japanese?”

“No, it was a redheaded man.”

“Martin?”

“Yes, I think that was his name.”

Kristin thought a moment.

“So what do you think really happened?”

Elaine stared a moment.