Murder Thy Neighbor Read online

  “I just wish he’d focus on one thing and get it done,” Ann says, thinking specifically of the house next door.

  “Has he been working on the house at all?” Marjorie asks.

  “He’s over there all the time now,” she says, “but doesn’t seem to be getting anywhere fast.”

  It’s true—Roy is often next door. She sees his truck parked out front, and she’ll hear the occasional banging noise or whine of a power saw. One day he showed up hefting a new porcelain toilet into the house. Another day he had a bundle of bricks delivered to the front yard, which he has yet to touch. He set two bags of cement next to the stack, leaving them out in the elements to get rained on. They must be hard as rocks by now.

  Most days she sees his truck, yet she hears nothing coming from next door.

  “I don’t know what he’s doing over there,” Ann says. “He’s spent all this time tearing out wet and rotting wood, but I bet this storm is soaking everything all over again.”

  “I feel bad for the guy,” Marjorie says.

  “Me, too,” Ann says. “I think he’s in over his head and just doesn’t want to admit it. But if the guy can afford to buy eight houses, he should be able to afford to hire a contractor to do the work for him.”

  After they hang up, Ann decides to make it an early night. It’s the kind of miserable weather that begs a person to climb into bed, get cozy, and read a good book before drifting off to sleep.

  Upstairs, the sound of the rain is louder, pummeling the roof. She walks to the corner to turn on her bedside lamp.

  She yelps when her feet step in cold water.

  “What the…?”

  A puddle the size of her kitchen table is growing on her hardwood floor. A drip falls from the ceiling and splashes into the puddle with a soft plop. She stares at the ceiling. Sure enough, a wet spot close to the wall that she shares with Roy is discernible in the plaster.

  Her roof is practically brand-new. It’s Roy’s roof that looks like a dog with mange. The water must be leaking in from his side and pooling atop the ceiling, spreading over to her side.

  Her heart pounding, she picks up the phone in her bedroom. She tells herself to remain calm. Be polite. Don’t let Roy know how angry you are about this.

  But he doesn’t pick up the phone, and she’s unable to leave a message, either.

  “Damn it, Roy!”

  She stomps downstairs and grabs a pan from the kitchen and a beach towel from her linen closet. She mops up the puddle and places the pan under the drip.

  As the water pings into the pan over and over, she can’t sleep. Her mind races, and she can feel her blood pressure rising.

  She wishes Roy Kirk had never bought the house next door.

  Chapter 9

  The next morning, Ann peeks out her front window and sees Roy’s truck sitting at the curb. She steps out onto the porch. The gutters have finally emptied, but the grass and pavement are still wet. The air is cold, but there’s a hint of blue breaking through the gray sky.

  The familiar extension cord runs up the wet sidewalk and into Roy’s front door, ajar as always.

  Ann knocks on the door. When there’s no answer, she pokes her head inside.

  The one previous time she was in the house, when Roy began working, she thought it was in disrepair—but it looks ten times worse now. The hallway is cluttered with both construction debris and tools, so jumbled together that she wonders how he can keep track of them all.

  She hears some kind of rustling noise upstairs.

  “Roy!” she calls out, trying to make her voice sound as friendly as possible. “Are you home?”

  “Who is it?” Roy says, his voice not particularly friendly.

  “It’s Ann,” she says. There’s a pause, and she has the weird feeling that maybe he’s forgotten her name. “Your neighbor,” she adds.

  “Be right down,” he says.

  She hears the clatter of some kind of tool—it sounds like he threw it down—and then his feet clomp down the stairs. He emerges from the darkness so quickly that she wonders if he’s hurrying because he doesn’t want her to walk into the house.

  She steps back out onto the porch, and a second later he joins her, closing the door behind him as much as he can with the cord in the way.

  “Sorry,” he says, smiling. “I’m just trying to clean up some water. The storm made a mess of things last night.”

  “I know,” she says. “That’s why I’m here.”

  “You’ve got a leak, too?” he asks, his voice so innocent and naive that she momentarily feels bad for what she’s about to say to him.

  “No,” she says. “The leak is coming from your side of the roof.”

  “How do you know?”

  Her patience snaps.

  “My roof is practically new, Roy. Yours is the one missing shingles. Anyone walking by the house can take one look at your roof and know it’s going to leak.”

  Roy looks up as if he can see through the porch ceiling, with an expression on his face as if it’s never occurred to him to work on the roof. Ann’s frustration with Roy has been brewing for a long time, and she decides not to hold back now.

  It’s time to give him a piece of her mind.

  “Roy,” she says, “the roof is the first thing you should be working on. You’re spending all this time ripping out water-damaged wood inside. Well, where do you think the water is coming from?”

  “It’s not all coming from the roof,” Roy says. “Some of it’s coming through the walls, too.”

  Ann stares at him, dumbfounded. So fix that, too! she wants to shout.

  Instead, she says, as calmly as she can manage, “Look, I know you want to do all these repairs yourself, but you need to hire some help. I have the number of a good roofer. Get someone to fix your roof right away. Then you can take your time doing whatever it is you’re doing inside.”

  “Take my time?” he says, giving her a sharp look. “I’m sorry if I’m not moving fast enough for you.”

  Ann ignores the comment.

  “I’ll get you my guy’s number,” she says. “He can probably come over today, put some tarps up there to stop the worst of it, and then reroof the whole house as soon as the weather breaks. It’s going to rain again tonight, you know.”

  “I’ve got some tarps,” Roy says. “I’ll go up there and do some triage.”

  “Do you have a ladder that can get you on the roof?” Ann asks, astounded that she feels the need to ask such a question of someone who claims to be a contractor.

  “It might reach,” he says, stepping to the edge of the porch and looking from the grass to the porch roof.

  “Roy,” she says, stepping out into the yard and pointing toward the roof. “The leak is on the second floor. You need a ladder to get up there.”

  “I know, Ann. I’m not stupid.”

  He steps out into the yard with her, looks up at the second story of their row house.

  “I’ll take care of it, okay?” With that, he stomps up the porch steps.

  “Thank you,” she says, trying to sound genuine but sure she’s coming across as pushy.

  As Roy steps into his place, he tries to slam the door behind him, but the door won’t close because of the extension cord in the way. It bounces back open and he grunts in frustration, trying to force the door shut, but again, the cord won’t let it latch.

  Finally, he storms away, leaving the door hanging open a few inches.

  Chapter 10

  Not long after, Ann sees that Roy’s truck is gone. She assumes he’s headed to the hardware store to purchase an extension ladder and some tarps. She tries to play her piano, but she can’t concentrate. She paces, checking and rechecking the front window for any sign of Roy.

  Three hours go by, and still there’s no sign of her neighbor.

  The clouds in the sky start to darken again, building toward another storm. The forecasters are predicting another gully washer.

  Ann has the sinking suspicion that Roy isn’t going to return. She paces the house, unsure what to do. Then she gets an idea—two, in fact.

  First, she picks up her cordless phone and takes it to her office. She looks through her file folder with all the receipts and invoices from the work she had done on her house, and dials the roofer who installed her roof. She explains who she is, reminds him that he did her roof, and explains that she has a leak.

  “I don’t think it’s my roof,” she assures him. “I think it’s coming from my neighbor’s. I just want you to come over and check it out to make sure.”

  She wants to have documentation from a professional showing that the problem isn’t on her side.

  The roofer says he doesn’t mind checking, since he wants to ensure she’s happy with the work he did on her roof, but it’ll be a few days before he can make it over—his plate is full after last night’s storm.

  Ann agrees, and after she hangs up, she puts her second idea into effect.

  She goes into the storage closet in her office and roots around. A minute later, she pulls out her Canon camera. She hasn’t used it in a while and is worried she doesn’t have any film, but she checks and finds one roll. She’ll have to buy more if this problem with Roy continues, but one roll should be enough for what she has in mind today.

  She steps outside and begins snapping photos of the trash filling Roy’s yard, and the broken, boarded-up windows. She crosses the street to get a photo of the entire property. She tries to zoom in on the roof on Roy’s side, but she’s not shooting from the best vantage point. She goes inside and calls a neighbor, Phil, whose property backs up against theirs.

  “I know this sounds like a weird request,” she says, “but can I take a photo from your second-story window?”

  When she explains what s
he’s doing, Phil says, “Be my guest. I’m tired of looking at that dump. I can’t tell if it’s a house or a landfill.”

  From Phil’s bedroom window, she has a good angle on the roof, both her side and Roy’s. She takes plenty of photos, but she makes sure to leave a few frames on the roll.

  She stays for a few minutes to chat with Phil, but when she notices raindrops starting to fall onto the sidewalk, she hurries home. The sprinkling turns heavier, and soon after she gets in the door, the sky opens up and unleashes another deluge onto Pittsburgh.

  Ann watches from her front window as the rain pours down.

  There’s still no sign of Roy.

  Tonight, she’s prepared. She takes a pan upstairs, positions it back in the spot where she had it last night. An hour later, the ping, ping, ping of water begins to sing through the room.

  The ceiling plaster has turned a shade of gray from the saturation.

  Ann points her camera at the wet spot.

  Click.

  Part 2

  Chapter 11

  October 1996

  Rebecca Portman walks down Lawn Street to Roy Kirk’s residence—not the property next to Ann Hoover’s house, the place down the street where he actually lives. She is a petite woman in her early thirties, with curly brown hair and freckles on her nose and cheeks. She wears a black trench coat and carries an umbrella to shield her from the rain that’s just begun.

  It’s dusk, and the sky is full of black, menacing clouds. The light rain she’s walking through is only the beginning—a real storm is only minutes, if not seconds, away.

  When she knocks on the door, Roy answers almost immediately, beaming at her.

  “Hello, beautiful,” he says.

  This comment brings an electric smile to Rebecca’s face—a smile that Roy says is what made him fall in love with her.

  She’s never met anyone quite like him before. When they started dating a year ago, she wasn’t sure what to make of him at first. He was sweet, kind, attentive. Not like the guys she usually went for.

  Not long after she and Roy started dating, Rebecca had a little too much to drink one night and showed up at her ex-boyfriend Bill’s house to tell the jerk she’d found someone who finally treated her right. Bill called the police on her, and she ended up in the drunk tank. She sat in the cell, worried sick she’d blown it with Roy, but he surprised her by arriving with bail money and an understanding smile. She’d expected an angry, judgmental reaction, but he simply told her everyone makes mistakes.

  She realized just how much he cared about her. Two months later, when he dropped down on one knee to propose during an evening walk along the Allegheny River, she said yes.

  She hasn’t regretted the decision, although she’s been reluctant to take him up on his offer to move in together. As much as she loves Roy, Rebecca doesn’t particularly like coming over to his house.

  His front hallway is lined with animal cages filled with mice, hamsters, and other rodents. The air smells of the wood chips that line the bottoms of the cages. The animals squeak and squirm, and she averts her eyes so she doesn’t have to look at them. Otherwise, the place is nice. Roy doesn’t own much, but what he has he takes care of well. The living room is neat and orderly. He even keeps his bathroom clean—which, in her experience, is unheard of for a man living alone.

  But the thing he keeps in the upstairs bathroom?

  Just the thought of it makes her shudder.

  Roy and Rebecca head to the kitchen, where Roy is making them dinner. He moves about the kitchen as he moves about life—full of energy. He never sits still. He stirs the spaghetti sauce, adds spice, starts the noodles boiling, all while asking her how her day was, taking her coat, pouring her a glass of wine.

  “How’s the work going on the houses?” she asks, hoping for good news.

  His mood changes at her question.

  “Everything’s going fine,” he says, but his words don’t sound convincing. “I just have a lot to do.”

  She notices that he doesn’t quite look himself. The way he bounced around the kitchen had distracted her at first, but there’s definitely something wrong. He looks tired, like he’s not getting enough sleep.

  “Can I help?” she says. “I don’t mind getting my hands dirty.”

  “No, no, no,” he says. “I want to surprise you when the house is ready.”

  She isn’t sure which house he means. He’s driven her past most of them, but she’s only been inside a couple.

  As they’re sitting down to eat, the phone starts ringing. He doesn’t answer it. And since he has no answering machine, it just rings and rings.

  “Aren’t you going to get that?”

  “No,” he says. “I’m sure it’s just my pain-in-the-ass neighbor.”

  “Why would she be calling? I thought you two got along. You did that porch thing together.”

  He rolls his eyes and smirks.

  “Her roof is leaking, and she thinks it’s coming from my side. Don’t worry. I’ll take care of it.”

  Rebecca tells Roy that he needs to be more mindful of his neighbor’s feelings.

  “Don’t close off communication with her,” Rebecca says. “You still have to live next to her.”

  “I don’t live there.”

  “We could live there someday,” Rebecca says.

  “Fine,” Roy says. “I won’t ignore her.”

  As if on cue, the telephone rings again. Roy looks at it hanging from the kitchen wall, and his expression makes it clear that answering it is the last thing he wants to do.

  “Fine,” Rebecca says, standing. “I’ll do it.”

  Before Roy can stop her, Rebecca snatches the phone out of the cradle and says hello. She listens for a moment and then says, “May I tell him who’s calling?” She covers the receiver and whispers to Roy, “It’s Henry from the neighborhood association.”

  Roy frowns and takes the phone. Rebecca sits back down and watches Roy on the phone while she picks at her food. She only gets his half of the conversation.

  “No…I haven’t looked at it yet…you’re kidding?” And then after a long period of silence on Roy’s end, he says, “Thanks for letting me know.”

  When he hangs up the phone, he is quiet for a moment.

  “That bitch!” he finally snaps, so violently that Rebecca recoils.

  “What happened?” Rebecca asks, concerned.

  “That woman,” he says, angrier than Rebecca has ever seen him, “you won’t believe what she’s trying to do.”

  Chapter 12

  Thank you all for coming,” Ann says to the neighborhood association board. “I’ve called this meeting today to consider a motion of no confidence in our president.”

  Ann stares out at the members of the association, letting her eyes linger for an extra few seconds on Roy. His expression—scared, hurt—reminds her just how young he is. He’s wearing a shirt and tie for the occasion, but the shirt clearly hasn’t been ironed.

  He seems like a nervous wreck, and she actually feels sorry for him.

  But he’s brought this on himself. If he’s in over his head, it’s irresponsible of her—and the board—to keep enabling him.

  “As you all know,” Ann says, “since Roy took over the presidency, we’ve accomplished virtually nothing as a community association. All his big talk has turned out to be just that—talk.”

  The mood in the room is far different tonight than when she first brought Roy to a board meeting. Then, everyone was all smiles, full of hope and admiration for their new young, energetic neighbor. Now the mood is grave. Every face staring at her is silent.

  Ann clasps her hands in her lap to keep them from shaking.

  “But even worse than his ineffectiveness on this board, the state of disrepair of his own home exemplifies exactly what this board stands against.”

  Ann opens a manila file folder in front of her and passes around eight-by-eleven photographs she’s taken of Roy’s property. The pictures emphasize the bricks missing from the foundation, the flaking paint on the siding, the holes in the roof. Really, it’s the garbage in the front yard that’s the most disturbing. Without the trash, his house might look like just another abandoned building. With the trash, it looks much worse.