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Synopsis
If you lived here
It's one of the most exclusive addresses in town—a luxury development with pristine lawns and steep price tags. But there are unforgiving people living in the Villages, who know your secrets and have plenty of their own . . . secrets that no one lives to tell . . .
You'd be dead by now.
Mackenzie Laughlin has reluctantly moved to the Villages as bodyguard to Daley Carrera, who claims someone is pranking her and her husband. Mac expects a simple case of petty squabbles between new and longtime residents. Instead, she hears rumors of squalid affairs and sinister disappearances that tie in to a missing persons investigation led by her partner, Jesse James Taft.
Welcome to the neighborhood . . .
Behind every door and every smile, there are grudges that run deep and dangerous. Mac and Taft are being marked as targets, but why? Figuring out who to trust is the key to uncovering a killer who has no qualms about killing again. The neighbors are watching. And if getting into the Villages was difficult, getting out alive may be impossible . . .
Release date: June 28, 2022
Publisher: Zebra Books
Print pages: 384
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The Neighbors
Nancy Bush
“You look fine,” Mackenzie Laughlin assured her stepsister into her cell phone as she wheeled her RAV4 with its gleaming new bodywork into Taft’s condominium visitor parking lot. She chose her favorite spot, which was open today, a space she’d started thinking of as her own. “You’re glowing.”
“Growing,” Stephanie corrected sourly. “As big as an orca.”
“You might be losing your sense of humor over this pregnancy,” warned Mac.
“Oh, it’s gone. Along with my waistline. I know it’s temporary. I know I shouldn’t complain. I know, I know.” She exhaled on a snort of disgust. “I just didn’t know it would be this hard and there are months left. God . . . I’ll never make it.”
“You will.”
“I won’t.”
“You will.”
“Promise?” she asked on a sigh.
“You need to do something. Have Nolan take you out for dinner.”
“Oh, yeah. Just what I need. More food.”
“You’re eating for—”
“God, Mac, if you say I’m eating for two, I may have to kill you.”
“—two.”
“Argh!”
Mackenzie grinned. “Goodbye, Steph. Call me later.” She clicked off, cutting short her stepsister’s vague threats of ending their friendship forever.
Tucking her small notebook with the clipped-on roller ball pen into her jacket pocket, she climbed out of the RAV and headed to Jesse James Taft’s front door. A onetime police officer, Taft was now a private detective, and recently he and Mac—herself a recent departee of the River Glen Police Department—had joined forces and were working together to make River Glen a better, safer place to live, one case at a time. Sort of. At least that was the way Mac wanted to see it. Taft was a little harder to read.
Truthfully, Taft was a pain in the ass. He was too good-looking, too smart, too intuitive, and too much trouble. This was the mantra Mackenzie tried to tell herself as she ignored the spark of sexual awareness between them that just wouldn’t die. She knew it would be self-destructive to go that route with him, and not just because it would spoil their working relationship. Taft was the kind of guy who could break your heart without trying. Mac was constantly reinforcing the mental barrier she’d erected around her romantic notions, and so far it was still standing. Did she want more? Yes. Was she going to go there? No. Their relationship was professional and she wasn’t going to jeopardize that. She knew a romance would be short-lived and she needed more than that.
She was still smiling about Stephanie, who was happy in her pregnancy no matter what she said, as she headed to Taft’s front door. Thinking of her stepsister reminded Mac of her family and her latest conversation with her mother.
“You’re not going back to the department, then?” Mom had queried . . . again. She just couldn’t quite hide the hope in her voice, having never really been on board with Mackenzie’s choice to “protect and serve” with the River Glen PD. She’d always encouraged Mac’s interest in the arts, specifically drama, which Mac had certainly enjoyed but had never believed was a solid career choice. But Mom still hoped acting would supersede her daughter’s bend toward any kind of law enforcement.
“I’m not going back to the department,” Mac had assured her.
“But you’re with . . . Mr. Taft?”
“Well, I need a job.”
“But that job?”
“Yes, that job.”
“Pri-vate in-ves-ti-gation.” Mom sounded out the syllables slowly, as if that would somehow make the idea more palatable.
“I like the work. And I’m careful.”
“I just don’t want to worry about you.”
“I know.”
Mom had gone through surgery and chemotherapy and had recently been declared cancer-free, a relief to all of them. Her remission had given her the strength to file divorce proceedings against Mac’s stepfather, Dan Gerber, “Dan the Man” to Mackenzie. A great step forward in Mac’s biased opinion. Even Stephanie knew how difficult her father was. But now that Mom was living alone, she was turning her attention and concern toward Mac. An unwelcome side effect. Mac, who’d helped take care of her during her recovery, had recently moved into her own apartment, and Mom was having a hard time with the change. Both of them were adjusting.
She knocked on Taft’s door, grimacing at her own thoughts. She could brush Mom’s concerns aside, but she understood where they came from. She and Taft had just come off two interlocking cases that had put both their lives at risk. Mac had escaped serious harm, but Taft had taken a bullet that had passed through his torso below his right shoulder, luckily missing vital organs and apparently causing no lasting harm. At least that was what Taft assured her. Mac, who had some harrowing memories of her own, wanted to argue with him about it but knew he wouldn’t take her fussing over him well. She’d already tried that. And anyway, she was attempting to push it all away herself, at least for now. Postmortems were for later.
“Door’s open,” Taft called, and Mackenzie pushed into his condo.
She was immediately faced with a twenty- or thirty-something woman in a black jacket, a black midcalf skirt, black boots, and a mane of artfully tousled light brown hair that gave her the look of someone who’d just rolled out of bed. Her eyes were green and slanted and her lips were plump and possibly filled, but they looked a luscious, glossy pink under the lights. She was attractive and vibrant and a wholly unwelcome surprise.
Mackenzie lifted her brows. It wasn’t like Taft to invite clients to his home. He met them at restaurants or parks or public buildings or their own homes. She’d never known him to bring one back to the condo. If that was what this woman even was . . . Maybe she wasn’t the client Taft had called about. Maybe she wasn’t the reason Mackenzie had dropped everything to come over and eagerly find out what he had in store for her work-wise.
Maybe she was . . . something else?
Mackenzie did a quick review of her own appearance, wishing she’d taken a little more care to dress up a bit, although she never did when she was expecting to be on the job, because why would she? And caring too much about her appearance was a trap in her quest to forget anything even marginally romantic as far was Taft was concerned. That was a no go and—
“Mac, this is Daley Carrera.”
“Hi,” Mac said, drawing a mental breath. Then, “Daley?”
The woman smiled a bit tightly. She was assessing Mac the same way Mac was assessing her. She looked vaguely familiar. “I know,” she said. “Parents couldn’t decide between Haley and Dana. It’s been my cross to bear all my life.” She looked at Taft, as if for corroboration.
“Daley’s just moved into a house in Staffordshire, actually in the Villages,” said Taft. “You remember.”
She remembered. She and Taft had taken a look at those very homes with a real estate agent, pretending to be a married couple shopping for a house a few months earlier, reconnaissance on that job she’d shoved to the far reaches of her mind.
“She’s been harassed by the neighbors and is looking for protection,” said Taft. He was wearing a pair of jeans and a long-sleeved tee that fit him well and looked masculine and relaxed. He spread a hand toward Daley, silently inviting her to continue.
“I need someone to watch over me, basically. I asked Jesse, but he says he’s too busy.” She made a moue at him with her glossy lips. “I wasn’t really expecting to have a woman be my bodyguard. I sort of wanted a man. Though my husband probably will like a woman better, I suppose.”
“You’re married?” said Mac with a lifting of spirits.
“For now. Whoops. I guess I’ve started at the end again.” A shadow crossed her face. “When Leon and I moved into the Villages we immediately became personas non grata. Someone started stealing from our porch, then putting dog poop in our mailbox. I don’t know what we did wrong, why they singled us out. Maybe it’s just because we moved in? They’re very territorial. We put in a Ring security camera, but all we’ve caught is someone in oversize clothes in a hoodie tied up so you can’t see his face . . . or her face, hard to tell.”
Mackenzie was having trouble understanding why Daley needed a bodyguard if she and her husband were still together, but okay. “You have any idea who’s behind it all?”
“The whole neighborhood? They’re like a nightmare. We never should have bought there. I mean, I love the house and all. It was added on to and redone last year and it’s beautiful. A ranch with a hot tub and open concept. But the people . . .” She rolled her eyes. “They’re the most unwelcoming bunch of old assholes you’re ever like to meet. I’m too young for them. Too much. Oh, sure, there’s one group about in their thirties or so and they’re okay. But the old guard? They make all the rules and they’re just awful. Leon calls them ‘intractable.’ They want us out.” She tossed up her hands and shook her head, her brown hair shimmering in the light. “They’re the only ones I can think of.”
Mac lifted Daley’s age range to midthirties as she told her story. “How long ago did you move in?”
“Two months. The harassment started right away.”
“What about the people who lived in the house before? Maybe some resentment there?” suggested Mac.
“It was an estate sale and the heirs sold it to a flipper who sold it to us,” Daley dismissed.
“Could it be anything to do with Leon?” asked Taft. “His line of work, maybe.”
“There is no line of work anymore. Leon was ahead of the game on those e-cigarettes? Had a small company and sold it out to the big guys for big bucks. Before all the bad publicity. He sold before we got married and that’s why he insisted on a prenup. But I’m not giving up.”
“On your marriage?” Mac ventured.
“I suppose, but I was talking about the house, my house. I’m not leaving it. No way. No how.”
“Where’s Leon living now?” asked Mac.
“Oh, he’s in the house with me. We’re both there. In armed camps, so to speak. He’s on one end of the wing, and I’m on the other.” She nodded with her chin first one way, then the other.
Mac threw a glance at Taft. Did he really want her to take on this case? He met her gaze, but she couldn’t read what he was thinking.
“Does your husband feel the same way?”
“Hard to say. We’re not speaking a lot. That’s why I want someone to move in with me. Before we stopped speaking, Leon joined the younger group’s ‘hot tub time,’ not at our house, but at others’. I declined. Is it a sex swap thing?” Daley’s arched brows lifted a bit higher. “Who knows? But probably. And yes, these are the good people. The younger group. Leon’s twelve years older than I am, so it makes him feel virile, I guess.”
“Just to be clear. It’s only the older group you think are harassing you.”
“It’s those vicious ones in their fifties or sixties or whatever. I’m telling you, they’re awful people.”
“If you’ve already got a Ring, that’s helpful. Have you related your harassment to the police?”
“Oh, sure, I’m reporting dog poop,” she said dryly.
“Well, it sounds like there was theft involved, too.”
She lifted a shoulder dismissively. “Small packages I ordered online. My makeup. Are the police going to do anything?”
Taft explained, “Daley and Leon are separating and she wants to feel safe in her own home while they work toward a divorce.”
“He’s trying to screw me out of everything. I signed the prenup, yes. But he owes me the house. That’s what he promised when we bought it. That was our deal. Once I own it, I may have to sell it, but for now we’re both camped out there. Do I want him to leave? You bet. I really wanted Jesse to move in, but he says he’s too busy.”
Clients and most people in Taft’s circle called him by his last name. Hearing his first name on Daley’s lips sent frissons along Mac’s nerves.
“Move in?” Mac repeated.
“Just until Leon goes. After that I want a neighborhood watch, but not those neighbors. I want someone to watch them. I want someone to be with me and on my side twenty-four seven.” Her gaze was still on Taft, as if she could will him to do her bidding. She didn’t appear to want to hire Mackenzie any more than Mac wanted to be hired.
“There already is a neighborhood watch,” said Taft.
“For all the good it’s done me. Nobody really cares.” Daley snorted.
Mac was about to suggest that she could maybe keep an eye on Daley and Leon’s place from her RAV when Daley said, “I need someone in the house with me. I need a buffer between us.”
Mac could visualize herself caught in the middle of a domestic dispute between the feuding husband and wife. She pictured Daley throwing pots and pans at Leon, and she had an inner-eye view of herself ducking while kitchen cutlery flew overhead.
No. Dice.
“How’s Leon going to feel about someone moving in?” she asked.
“Well, he’ll hate it, of course, but like I said, I think he’d prefer a woman to a man, so there’s that.” She sized Mac up. “I really could use someone bigger and stronger, with more psychological heft, you know what I mean?”
“Mackenzie might surprise you,” said Taft.
“I agree I might not be the right person,” Mac responded at the same time.
Taft almost smiled. “Daley, how much are you willing to pay a bodyguard?”
“You’re really not going to do it, are you?” She looked at him with pleading, spaniel eyes. He calmly awaited her answer, and Daley sighed and named a figure that made Mac’s mercenary little heart skip a beat.
That was a lot of money.
Still . . .
Mackenzie met Taft’s gaze. The bastard knew her weak spot.
You are going to regret this....
“Okay,” she said, inwardly cursing herself while already counting up how much she could probably make. No use standing on ceremony while there were bills to pay.
Daley and Mackenzie exchanged information, but it took a while afterward for Daley to finally mosey out of Taft’s condo. She was reluctant to depart, her gaze lingering on him a little too long, in Mac’s biased opinion, as he held the door for her. As soon as she was gone, however, Mackenzie gave her “partner in crime” a long, hard look.
“What?” Taft asked, but that tiny smile on his lips was growing.
“Okay, who is she and what’s the real story here? I understand she’s married and getting a divorce, but what’s the history? She definitely wanted you, not me.”
“We’ve known each other a while,” he said again.
A pause. When he didn’t go on, Mac said, “Oh, thanks, Taft. That explains it all.”
“There’s nothing really to tell. We dated. It was short-lived. We left friends.”
“Hah.”
He lifted his palms and shrugged.
Mackenzie really wanted to delve deeper, but clearly Taft wasn’t going to give her much more. And anyway, she needed this business relationship to work out. Nothing else would work between them. She’d been warned plenty about Taft. Unsolicited advice had poured in from everyone and anyone who knew both of them, most of it warnings to her to be extra careful. Not only was he supposedly unavailable emotionally, he had a reputation for working just inside the law . . . with maybe a step or two over the line from time to time. Mac had bought into most of the rumors at first, but she’d seen a different side of him than the gossip, an honorable side. And, well, she liked him.
“Daley wants someone to look after her for a while, and I thought you might like the work,” said Taft.
“You had no intention of ever taking the job.”
He slowly shook his head.
“No?”
“I’m not going to move into her house and be her bodyguard, if that’s what you’re asking.”
“That’s exactly what I’m asking. You were never going to do it, but it’s okay for me to?”
“You said you wanted work. This is work.”
“Yes . . .”
“But?”
But I’m not working with you.
She lifted a hand in acquiescence. “Okay, just give me some background, then, so I know what I’m walking in to.”
“So, you do want the work.”
“Yes, Taft. I want the work,” she fairly snapped.
She could tell he was getting an inner hardy-har-har out of this, but she wanted to work with/for him, and if this was what was available, she shouldn’t look a gift horse in the mouth . . . much.
He settled onto the couch, easing himself into the cushions. She fought back asking him if he was all right. It hadn’t been that long since the bullet had ripped through his pectoral muscle, but she knew he wouldn’t take kindly to her solicitation. She’d already been down that road.
“I met Daley about six or seven years ago. Even then, Leon was kind of around. He and Daley weren’t dating, but his business was already doing well—exceptionally well—and he was getting offers to sell. Daley and I were casually seeing each other, but she . . .” Taft hesitated, clearly deciding how to proceed. After a moment he said, “She started looking at Leon differently as he succeeded, and I suppose I encouraged it.”
“You wanted out of the relationship.”
“‘Relationship’ is too strong a word.”
“How about you didn’t want her to get the wrong idea, so you kept her at arm’s length.”
“It just seemed like a natural move for her . . . and for me.”
“Taft, I can relate. You didn’t want to face the breakup that was coming, even though in your mind you weren’t really together.”
Taft seemed to want to argue but only said, “It was a long time ago.”
What justified a “long time ago” in Taft’s mind? Mackenzie wondered. She’d heard all about his apparently myriad ex-relationships/girlfriends from those same well-meaning friends and acquaintances who’d questioned what she was doing in his orbit. Even her old “friend” Donnie Gillis from her days of drinking/reconnaissance at the Waystation had read about her recent exploits and felt the need to address her about Taft when they happened to run into each other in downtown River Glen one afternoon.
“You and that ex-cop got something going?” Gillis had demanded. As ever, he was in cowboy hat and boots and pretending he was some kind of badass when it came to roping in women. He’d considered Mackenzie as his own even though she’d busted him for DUI twice while working for the River Glen PD. He apparently held no animus toward her and, considering their “day-drinking” afternoons, when Mackenzie was actually on the job working on surreptitiously following a couple who liked to hang out at the Waystation, as some kind of proof that he and she were together.
“You’re both ex-cops, that it?” he’d asked when Mac had decided she didn’t need to answer him. Gillis, however, seemed to feel he deserved answers.
“We were working on a private case.”
“Oh, like PIs?” He’d squinted at her as if he was doing a serious reassessment. She could tell he thought it was a bad, bad idea.
“Well, as you said, neither of us is with the department anymore.” Taft had quit two different forces, unable to fit the mold of an officer of the law. So far Mackenzie had only quit the River Glen Police Department, and even so, recently she’d been invited back. However, she had no intention of returning unless her finances became so crippled that she desperately needed a real job. She really wanted to be part of Taft’s investigation business. Currently she was like a trainee of sorts, and she sensed the bigger problem was Taft really didn’t want to involve her in his business, worse now since the last case. He felt responsible for her at some level, a fact he’d alluded to without outright saying so. She bristled at the idea even now; however, Taft also seemed to think she was a capable investigator, so it was difficult to work up serious indignation.
Now she looked at him and said, “I’m doing this bodyguard /neighborhood harassment job because of the money, and only because of the money.”
“Reason enough.”
“Yeah, but you don’t want to do it.”
“They can’t all be interesting.”
Well, that was true enough.
“Want a Goldie Burger?” he asked.
Goldie Burgers were a local institution with terrible burgers and great buns, but everyone around loved them anyway. Mac and Taft defaulted to Goldie Burgers on a regular basis because neither of them leaned into cooking.
Mac picked up her phone to order.
Two hours later, after she and Taft had made short work of the burgers, she drove away from his condo and took a turn past Daley and Leon’s house in the Villages neighborhood before planning to head to her apartment. The house was a U-shaped ranch, light gray with what looked like new, black fiberglass windows. The driveway was made of pavers that matched the house color, and a concrete sidewalk a few shades darker curved toward the front door from the street. The mailbox was black metal on a wooden post, not nearly as impressive as some of the others that lined the street, some full-on brick structures that sometimes incorporated their neighbors’, a few painted with flowers and vines, several on carved wooden bases. None were as plain as the Carreras’. Mac made a mental note to ask about it because it appeared to recently have been put in place. Was this related to the dog poop delivery? Or had the mailbox needed to be replaced?
The sky was threatening, low and gloomy, as Mac wheeled into her designated spot at her apartment complex. She hurried toward the outdoor stairs to her second-floor unit as fat raindrops landed on her head. Another slid, icy cold, down the back of her neck, and she shivered as she made her way inside, slamming the door behind her and turning the lock. Why was it that one drop of rain could find its way under her collar every time and chill her to the bone? And when was June going to live up to its reputation as a summer month?
Shaking off the chill, she glanced down her short hallway. The doors to both bedrooms were open and boxes lined the walls. One day she would open those boxes and put their contents where they belonged, but today was not the day.
She went to the kitchen sink and washed her hands. The thought of the Carreras’ mailbox infused with feces was enough to keep her at the faucet far longer than necessary.
She wandered to the second bedroom, where she’d put her laptop on a card table she’d squirreled away from her mother, seating herself on one of the three chairs she’d also managed to collect. She’d asked Mom where chair number four was, but it appeared Dan the Man had taken it with him. It was hard to become indignant about this poaching of her mother’s belongings when Mac was guilty of the same thing, but she managed it, saying in a very judgy voice, “What else of yours has he liberated?” to which Mom had replied with a shrug, “Probably a lot of things.”
She inputted her data on Daley Carrera into her laptop. She still used her notebook in the field, or sometimes the “Notes” app on her phone, but it was always best to write it into her computer, where she could add impressions and extra information she wouldn’t take the time to jot down in the moment. As a layperson now, she was still figuring out her modus operandi, but however she gathered data, she still preferred to have it transferred to her laptop, where she basically wrote up reports for herself now instead of the department.
It didn’t take long to input what little she had and when she was finished she stared at what she’d written. It did no good to wish and hope that Taft would open up and embrace her as a worthy partner, or at least employee of sorts; that wasn’t the way things were. And the hell of it was that it wasn’t even a matter of him thinking she needed to be seasoned: that she might be able to combat. He believed in her skills. It was more that he was a solo act and wasn’t good about delegating, and there was a little bit of macho bullshit mixed in where he worried about her safety as well.
Muttering to herself, Mac went into her bedroom, flopped on her bed—still just a mattress on the floor—and switched on the television. The cable guy had gotten her at least that far, so she turned to the news, found that depressing, and settled on a story about the cicadas that had made a mess out of the Northeast a few seasons back. They hatched every seventeen years. Seventeen years. Calculating how many times this would happen in her own lifetime, Mac was kind of disturbed it was so few.
Punching her pillow, she closed her eyes, letting the TV run, and even though it was way too early to go to sleep, she drifted off, vaguely worrying that she might not be able to sleep in this bed, such as it was, for untold days, maybe weeks . . . maybe longer, while she was playing bodyguard.
Morning came fast. Though it felt like she’d just closed her eyes, Mac jumped out of bed as if she’d been discovered in a nefarious act. She didn’t even want to think of how many hours she’d been out.
Quickly, she packed up some belongings in an overnight bag for her trip to the Carreras’. She figured it was mostly reconnaissance at this point, and she planned to take short trips home during the course of the job. She wasn’t going to be with Daley twenty-four seven, no matter what she thought. That would drive them both insane. Daley had been ambivalent when Mac had asked her when she should arrive, which made it seem like this bodyguard job was as flaky as it had sounded when Daley had posed it at Taft’s place.
But . . . money. Rent. Gas. Food. What the hell. It was a job.
Cooper Haynes stared blankly at the computer screen on his desk, his mind busy elsewhere. He was supposed to be writing up a report on the burglary attempts by a recent graduate of River Glen High, someone his daughter, Marissa, had shared a class or two with before he graduated, but he kept thinking of other things. Several other things, as a matter of fact. On the one hand, his mind was on his fiancée, Jamie Whelan Woodward, whom he was half-living with, his belongings slowly migrating from his house to hers; on the other, he was thinking about the auditory witness to a fight between two men at a construction site that had resulted in one of them falling to his death from the second story. That witness had sworn she’d heard two voices arguing, but had later recanted that she’d heard anything at all, then had firmly placed the blame on a man who had slipped into a coma and died, so there could be no corroboration. Debra Fournier had changed course almost from the moment she’d admitted hearing the argument, certainly from the moment Cooper had shown up to take her testimony. Since then, Chief Bennihof and the department as a whole had ruled Granger Nye’s death an accident, so there would be no further investigation. Case closed. Except Cooper wasn’t satisfied with the decision.
“You done there, Detective?” came the female drawl.
Elena Verbena, Cooper’s partner, was seated at her desk. She’d taken over his old partner’s spot, and now he looked across at her. Her dark curls had been scraped back into a severe bun, her favorite work “look.”
“Almost.”
Actually, he’d written exactly two sentences. He’d tried to concentrate, but Jamie’s face kept popping into his vision, and then Emma’s, her sister’s. Emma, the victim of an assault in her youth that had left her with permanent brain damage, was a unique and oddly endearing soul, a far cry from the teasing, maybe even manipulative, teenage girl Cooper had been so enamored with years earlier. After his marriage to Laura fell apart he’d thought himself incapable of falling in love, but then he’d remet Emma’s younger sister, Jamie, and here he was.
“Hey, Coop, I’m heading out.” Bryan “Ricky” Richards, an officer with the River Glen PD who was jonesing to be a detective bad enough to follow Cooper around like an imprinted duckling, cruised by Cooper’s desk. “You need an extra hand . . .” He lifted an open palm, tacitly volunteering himself.
“I’ve got that covered,” Verbena said coolly before Cooper could answer.
Richards left with a short chin lift of acknowledgment and Verbena slid a look Cooper’s way. “Coop?”
Cooper shook his head. Richards’s quirks for attention were somewhat annoying, but Verbena was damn near a man-hater and he didn’t want to add fuel to that fire. Except that sometimes you just had to say something....
“You’re just a man-hater,” he told her.
She said haughtily, “I hate everybody. Not just men.”
“Liar.”
To which she launched into a diatribe about how it was just the men in the department she really objected to—excluding himself, of course—not the entire gender.
He didn’t look up from his report. “Man hater.”
“Richards has a degree in suck-up. He wants your job, or mine, probably both, but he knows better than to try his tricks on me.”
“What tricks?”
She snorted, knowing he was just messing with her. “What about that teen burglary suspect? Blakely?”
“He’s being processed. Since he was found with the stolen gear the family’s got him a lawyer.”
“Hmmm.”
Cooper almost told her he planned to confront Debra Fournier again but didn’t. He had to keep reminding himself it wasn’t a case any longer. It was over, decided, done, and following up would do nothing but aggravate and enrage those who had closed it. Still, maybe he would just stop by an
“Growing,” Stephanie corrected sourly. “As big as an orca.”
“You might be losing your sense of humor over this pregnancy,” warned Mac.
“Oh, it’s gone. Along with my waistline. I know it’s temporary. I know I shouldn’t complain. I know, I know.” She exhaled on a snort of disgust. “I just didn’t know it would be this hard and there are months left. God . . . I’ll never make it.”
“You will.”
“I won’t.”
“You will.”
“Promise?” she asked on a sigh.
“You need to do something. Have Nolan take you out for dinner.”
“Oh, yeah. Just what I need. More food.”
“You’re eating for—”
“God, Mac, if you say I’m eating for two, I may have to kill you.”
“—two.”
“Argh!”
Mackenzie grinned. “Goodbye, Steph. Call me later.” She clicked off, cutting short her stepsister’s vague threats of ending their friendship forever.
Tucking her small notebook with the clipped-on roller ball pen into her jacket pocket, she climbed out of the RAV and headed to Jesse James Taft’s front door. A onetime police officer, Taft was now a private detective, and recently he and Mac—herself a recent departee of the River Glen Police Department—had joined forces and were working together to make River Glen a better, safer place to live, one case at a time. Sort of. At least that was the way Mac wanted to see it. Taft was a little harder to read.
Truthfully, Taft was a pain in the ass. He was too good-looking, too smart, too intuitive, and too much trouble. This was the mantra Mackenzie tried to tell herself as she ignored the spark of sexual awareness between them that just wouldn’t die. She knew it would be self-destructive to go that route with him, and not just because it would spoil their working relationship. Taft was the kind of guy who could break your heart without trying. Mac was constantly reinforcing the mental barrier she’d erected around her romantic notions, and so far it was still standing. Did she want more? Yes. Was she going to go there? No. Their relationship was professional and she wasn’t going to jeopardize that. She knew a romance would be short-lived and she needed more than that.
She was still smiling about Stephanie, who was happy in her pregnancy no matter what she said, as she headed to Taft’s front door. Thinking of her stepsister reminded Mac of her family and her latest conversation with her mother.
“You’re not going back to the department, then?” Mom had queried . . . again. She just couldn’t quite hide the hope in her voice, having never really been on board with Mackenzie’s choice to “protect and serve” with the River Glen PD. She’d always encouraged Mac’s interest in the arts, specifically drama, which Mac had certainly enjoyed but had never believed was a solid career choice. But Mom still hoped acting would supersede her daughter’s bend toward any kind of law enforcement.
“I’m not going back to the department,” Mac had assured her.
“But you’re with . . . Mr. Taft?”
“Well, I need a job.”
“But that job?”
“Yes, that job.”
“Pri-vate in-ves-ti-gation.” Mom sounded out the syllables slowly, as if that would somehow make the idea more palatable.
“I like the work. And I’m careful.”
“I just don’t want to worry about you.”
“I know.”
Mom had gone through surgery and chemotherapy and had recently been declared cancer-free, a relief to all of them. Her remission had given her the strength to file divorce proceedings against Mac’s stepfather, Dan Gerber, “Dan the Man” to Mackenzie. A great step forward in Mac’s biased opinion. Even Stephanie knew how difficult her father was. But now that Mom was living alone, she was turning her attention and concern toward Mac. An unwelcome side effect. Mac, who’d helped take care of her during her recovery, had recently moved into her own apartment, and Mom was having a hard time with the change. Both of them were adjusting.
She knocked on Taft’s door, grimacing at her own thoughts. She could brush Mom’s concerns aside, but she understood where they came from. She and Taft had just come off two interlocking cases that had put both their lives at risk. Mac had escaped serious harm, but Taft had taken a bullet that had passed through his torso below his right shoulder, luckily missing vital organs and apparently causing no lasting harm. At least that was what Taft assured her. Mac, who had some harrowing memories of her own, wanted to argue with him about it but knew he wouldn’t take her fussing over him well. She’d already tried that. And anyway, she was attempting to push it all away herself, at least for now. Postmortems were for later.
“Door’s open,” Taft called, and Mackenzie pushed into his condo.
She was immediately faced with a twenty- or thirty-something woman in a black jacket, a black midcalf skirt, black boots, and a mane of artfully tousled light brown hair that gave her the look of someone who’d just rolled out of bed. Her eyes were green and slanted and her lips were plump and possibly filled, but they looked a luscious, glossy pink under the lights. She was attractive and vibrant and a wholly unwelcome surprise.
Mackenzie lifted her brows. It wasn’t like Taft to invite clients to his home. He met them at restaurants or parks or public buildings or their own homes. She’d never known him to bring one back to the condo. If that was what this woman even was . . . Maybe she wasn’t the client Taft had called about. Maybe she wasn’t the reason Mackenzie had dropped everything to come over and eagerly find out what he had in store for her work-wise.
Maybe she was . . . something else?
Mackenzie did a quick review of her own appearance, wishing she’d taken a little more care to dress up a bit, although she never did when she was expecting to be on the job, because why would she? And caring too much about her appearance was a trap in her quest to forget anything even marginally romantic as far was Taft was concerned. That was a no go and—
“Mac, this is Daley Carrera.”
“Hi,” Mac said, drawing a mental breath. Then, “Daley?”
The woman smiled a bit tightly. She was assessing Mac the same way Mac was assessing her. She looked vaguely familiar. “I know,” she said. “Parents couldn’t decide between Haley and Dana. It’s been my cross to bear all my life.” She looked at Taft, as if for corroboration.
“Daley’s just moved into a house in Staffordshire, actually in the Villages,” said Taft. “You remember.”
She remembered. She and Taft had taken a look at those very homes with a real estate agent, pretending to be a married couple shopping for a house a few months earlier, reconnaissance on that job she’d shoved to the far reaches of her mind.
“She’s been harassed by the neighbors and is looking for protection,” said Taft. He was wearing a pair of jeans and a long-sleeved tee that fit him well and looked masculine and relaxed. He spread a hand toward Daley, silently inviting her to continue.
“I need someone to watch over me, basically. I asked Jesse, but he says he’s too busy.” She made a moue at him with her glossy lips. “I wasn’t really expecting to have a woman be my bodyguard. I sort of wanted a man. Though my husband probably will like a woman better, I suppose.”
“You’re married?” said Mac with a lifting of spirits.
“For now. Whoops. I guess I’ve started at the end again.” A shadow crossed her face. “When Leon and I moved into the Villages we immediately became personas non grata. Someone started stealing from our porch, then putting dog poop in our mailbox. I don’t know what we did wrong, why they singled us out. Maybe it’s just because we moved in? They’re very territorial. We put in a Ring security camera, but all we’ve caught is someone in oversize clothes in a hoodie tied up so you can’t see his face . . . or her face, hard to tell.”
Mackenzie was having trouble understanding why Daley needed a bodyguard if she and her husband were still together, but okay. “You have any idea who’s behind it all?”
“The whole neighborhood? They’re like a nightmare. We never should have bought there. I mean, I love the house and all. It was added on to and redone last year and it’s beautiful. A ranch with a hot tub and open concept. But the people . . .” She rolled her eyes. “They’re the most unwelcoming bunch of old assholes you’re ever like to meet. I’m too young for them. Too much. Oh, sure, there’s one group about in their thirties or so and they’re okay. But the old guard? They make all the rules and they’re just awful. Leon calls them ‘intractable.’ They want us out.” She tossed up her hands and shook her head, her brown hair shimmering in the light. “They’re the only ones I can think of.”
Mac lifted Daley’s age range to midthirties as she told her story. “How long ago did you move in?”
“Two months. The harassment started right away.”
“What about the people who lived in the house before? Maybe some resentment there?” suggested Mac.
“It was an estate sale and the heirs sold it to a flipper who sold it to us,” Daley dismissed.
“Could it be anything to do with Leon?” asked Taft. “His line of work, maybe.”
“There is no line of work anymore. Leon was ahead of the game on those e-cigarettes? Had a small company and sold it out to the big guys for big bucks. Before all the bad publicity. He sold before we got married and that’s why he insisted on a prenup. But I’m not giving up.”
“On your marriage?” Mac ventured.
“I suppose, but I was talking about the house, my house. I’m not leaving it. No way. No how.”
“Where’s Leon living now?” asked Mac.
“Oh, he’s in the house with me. We’re both there. In armed camps, so to speak. He’s on one end of the wing, and I’m on the other.” She nodded with her chin first one way, then the other.
Mac threw a glance at Taft. Did he really want her to take on this case? He met her gaze, but she couldn’t read what he was thinking.
“Does your husband feel the same way?”
“Hard to say. We’re not speaking a lot. That’s why I want someone to move in with me. Before we stopped speaking, Leon joined the younger group’s ‘hot tub time,’ not at our house, but at others’. I declined. Is it a sex swap thing?” Daley’s arched brows lifted a bit higher. “Who knows? But probably. And yes, these are the good people. The younger group. Leon’s twelve years older than I am, so it makes him feel virile, I guess.”
“Just to be clear. It’s only the older group you think are harassing you.”
“It’s those vicious ones in their fifties or sixties or whatever. I’m telling you, they’re awful people.”
“If you’ve already got a Ring, that’s helpful. Have you related your harassment to the police?”
“Oh, sure, I’m reporting dog poop,” she said dryly.
“Well, it sounds like there was theft involved, too.”
She lifted a shoulder dismissively. “Small packages I ordered online. My makeup. Are the police going to do anything?”
Taft explained, “Daley and Leon are separating and she wants to feel safe in her own home while they work toward a divorce.”
“He’s trying to screw me out of everything. I signed the prenup, yes. But he owes me the house. That’s what he promised when we bought it. That was our deal. Once I own it, I may have to sell it, but for now we’re both camped out there. Do I want him to leave? You bet. I really wanted Jesse to move in, but he says he’s too busy.”
Clients and most people in Taft’s circle called him by his last name. Hearing his first name on Daley’s lips sent frissons along Mac’s nerves.
“Move in?” Mac repeated.
“Just until Leon goes. After that I want a neighborhood watch, but not those neighbors. I want someone to watch them. I want someone to be with me and on my side twenty-four seven.” Her gaze was still on Taft, as if she could will him to do her bidding. She didn’t appear to want to hire Mackenzie any more than Mac wanted to be hired.
“There already is a neighborhood watch,” said Taft.
“For all the good it’s done me. Nobody really cares.” Daley snorted.
Mac was about to suggest that she could maybe keep an eye on Daley and Leon’s place from her RAV when Daley said, “I need someone in the house with me. I need a buffer between us.”
Mac could visualize herself caught in the middle of a domestic dispute between the feuding husband and wife. She pictured Daley throwing pots and pans at Leon, and she had an inner-eye view of herself ducking while kitchen cutlery flew overhead.
No. Dice.
“How’s Leon going to feel about someone moving in?” she asked.
“Well, he’ll hate it, of course, but like I said, I think he’d prefer a woman to a man, so there’s that.” She sized Mac up. “I really could use someone bigger and stronger, with more psychological heft, you know what I mean?”
“Mackenzie might surprise you,” said Taft.
“I agree I might not be the right person,” Mac responded at the same time.
Taft almost smiled. “Daley, how much are you willing to pay a bodyguard?”
“You’re really not going to do it, are you?” She looked at him with pleading, spaniel eyes. He calmly awaited her answer, and Daley sighed and named a figure that made Mac’s mercenary little heart skip a beat.
That was a lot of money.
Still . . .
Mackenzie met Taft’s gaze. The bastard knew her weak spot.
You are going to regret this....
“Okay,” she said, inwardly cursing herself while already counting up how much she could probably make. No use standing on ceremony while there were bills to pay.
Daley and Mackenzie exchanged information, but it took a while afterward for Daley to finally mosey out of Taft’s condo. She was reluctant to depart, her gaze lingering on him a little too long, in Mac’s biased opinion, as he held the door for her. As soon as she was gone, however, Mackenzie gave her “partner in crime” a long, hard look.
“What?” Taft asked, but that tiny smile on his lips was growing.
“Okay, who is she and what’s the real story here? I understand she’s married and getting a divorce, but what’s the history? She definitely wanted you, not me.”
“We’ve known each other a while,” he said again.
A pause. When he didn’t go on, Mac said, “Oh, thanks, Taft. That explains it all.”
“There’s nothing really to tell. We dated. It was short-lived. We left friends.”
“Hah.”
He lifted his palms and shrugged.
Mackenzie really wanted to delve deeper, but clearly Taft wasn’t going to give her much more. And anyway, she needed this business relationship to work out. Nothing else would work between them. She’d been warned plenty about Taft. Unsolicited advice had poured in from everyone and anyone who knew both of them, most of it warnings to her to be extra careful. Not only was he supposedly unavailable emotionally, he had a reputation for working just inside the law . . . with maybe a step or two over the line from time to time. Mac had bought into most of the rumors at first, but she’d seen a different side of him than the gossip, an honorable side. And, well, she liked him.
“Daley wants someone to look after her for a while, and I thought you might like the work,” said Taft.
“You had no intention of ever taking the job.”
He slowly shook his head.
“No?”
“I’m not going to move into her house and be her bodyguard, if that’s what you’re asking.”
“That’s exactly what I’m asking. You were never going to do it, but it’s okay for me to?”
“You said you wanted work. This is work.”
“Yes . . .”
“But?”
But I’m not working with you.
She lifted a hand in acquiescence. “Okay, just give me some background, then, so I know what I’m walking in to.”
“So, you do want the work.”
“Yes, Taft. I want the work,” she fairly snapped.
She could tell he was getting an inner hardy-har-har out of this, but she wanted to work with/for him, and if this was what was available, she shouldn’t look a gift horse in the mouth . . . much.
He settled onto the couch, easing himself into the cushions. She fought back asking him if he was all right. It hadn’t been that long since the bullet had ripped through his pectoral muscle, but she knew he wouldn’t take kindly to her solicitation. She’d already been down that road.
“I met Daley about six or seven years ago. Even then, Leon was kind of around. He and Daley weren’t dating, but his business was already doing well—exceptionally well—and he was getting offers to sell. Daley and I were casually seeing each other, but she . . .” Taft hesitated, clearly deciding how to proceed. After a moment he said, “She started looking at Leon differently as he succeeded, and I suppose I encouraged it.”
“You wanted out of the relationship.”
“‘Relationship’ is too strong a word.”
“How about you didn’t want her to get the wrong idea, so you kept her at arm’s length.”
“It just seemed like a natural move for her . . . and for me.”
“Taft, I can relate. You didn’t want to face the breakup that was coming, even though in your mind you weren’t really together.”
Taft seemed to want to argue but only said, “It was a long time ago.”
What justified a “long time ago” in Taft’s mind? Mackenzie wondered. She’d heard all about his apparently myriad ex-relationships/girlfriends from those same well-meaning friends and acquaintances who’d questioned what she was doing in his orbit. Even her old “friend” Donnie Gillis from her days of drinking/reconnaissance at the Waystation had read about her recent exploits and felt the need to address her about Taft when they happened to run into each other in downtown River Glen one afternoon.
“You and that ex-cop got something going?” Gillis had demanded. As ever, he was in cowboy hat and boots and pretending he was some kind of badass when it came to roping in women. He’d considered Mackenzie as his own even though she’d busted him for DUI twice while working for the River Glen PD. He apparently held no animus toward her and, considering their “day-drinking” afternoons, when Mackenzie was actually on the job working on surreptitiously following a couple who liked to hang out at the Waystation, as some kind of proof that he and she were together.
“You’re both ex-cops, that it?” he’d asked when Mac had decided she didn’t need to answer him. Gillis, however, seemed to feel he deserved answers.
“We were working on a private case.”
“Oh, like PIs?” He’d squinted at her as if he was doing a serious reassessment. She could tell he thought it was a bad, bad idea.
“Well, as you said, neither of us is with the department anymore.” Taft had quit two different forces, unable to fit the mold of an officer of the law. So far Mackenzie had only quit the River Glen Police Department, and even so, recently she’d been invited back. However, she had no intention of returning unless her finances became so crippled that she desperately needed a real job. She really wanted to be part of Taft’s investigation business. Currently she was like a trainee of sorts, and she sensed the bigger problem was Taft really didn’t want to involve her in his business, worse now since the last case. He felt responsible for her at some level, a fact he’d alluded to without outright saying so. She bristled at the idea even now; however, Taft also seemed to think she was a capable investigator, so it was difficult to work up serious indignation.
Now she looked at him and said, “I’m doing this bodyguard /neighborhood harassment job because of the money, and only because of the money.”
“Reason enough.”
“Yeah, but you don’t want to do it.”
“They can’t all be interesting.”
Well, that was true enough.
“Want a Goldie Burger?” he asked.
Goldie Burgers were a local institution with terrible burgers and great buns, but everyone around loved them anyway. Mac and Taft defaulted to Goldie Burgers on a regular basis because neither of them leaned into cooking.
Mac picked up her phone to order.
Two hours later, after she and Taft had made short work of the burgers, she drove away from his condo and took a turn past Daley and Leon’s house in the Villages neighborhood before planning to head to her apartment. The house was a U-shaped ranch, light gray with what looked like new, black fiberglass windows. The driveway was made of pavers that matched the house color, and a concrete sidewalk a few shades darker curved toward the front door from the street. The mailbox was black metal on a wooden post, not nearly as impressive as some of the others that lined the street, some full-on brick structures that sometimes incorporated their neighbors’, a few painted with flowers and vines, several on carved wooden bases. None were as plain as the Carreras’. Mac made a mental note to ask about it because it appeared to recently have been put in place. Was this related to the dog poop delivery? Or had the mailbox needed to be replaced?
The sky was threatening, low and gloomy, as Mac wheeled into her designated spot at her apartment complex. She hurried toward the outdoor stairs to her second-floor unit as fat raindrops landed on her head. Another slid, icy cold, down the back of her neck, and she shivered as she made her way inside, slamming the door behind her and turning the lock. Why was it that one drop of rain could find its way under her collar every time and chill her to the bone? And when was June going to live up to its reputation as a summer month?
Shaking off the chill, she glanced down her short hallway. The doors to both bedrooms were open and boxes lined the walls. One day she would open those boxes and put their contents where they belonged, but today was not the day.
She went to the kitchen sink and washed her hands. The thought of the Carreras’ mailbox infused with feces was enough to keep her at the faucet far longer than necessary.
She wandered to the second bedroom, where she’d put her laptop on a card table she’d squirreled away from her mother, seating herself on one of the three chairs she’d also managed to collect. She’d asked Mom where chair number four was, but it appeared Dan the Man had taken it with him. It was hard to become indignant about this poaching of her mother’s belongings when Mac was guilty of the same thing, but she managed it, saying in a very judgy voice, “What else of yours has he liberated?” to which Mom had replied with a shrug, “Probably a lot of things.”
She inputted her data on Daley Carrera into her laptop. She still used her notebook in the field, or sometimes the “Notes” app on her phone, but it was always best to write it into her computer, where she could add impressions and extra information she wouldn’t take the time to jot down in the moment. As a layperson now, she was still figuring out her modus operandi, but however she gathered data, she still preferred to have it transferred to her laptop, where she basically wrote up reports for herself now instead of the department.
It didn’t take long to input what little she had and when she was finished she stared at what she’d written. It did no good to wish and hope that Taft would open up and embrace her as a worthy partner, or at least employee of sorts; that wasn’t the way things were. And the hell of it was that it wasn’t even a matter of him thinking she needed to be seasoned: that she might be able to combat. He believed in her skills. It was more that he was a solo act and wasn’t good about delegating, and there was a little bit of macho bullshit mixed in where he worried about her safety as well.
Muttering to herself, Mac went into her bedroom, flopped on her bed—still just a mattress on the floor—and switched on the television. The cable guy had gotten her at least that far, so she turned to the news, found that depressing, and settled on a story about the cicadas that had made a mess out of the Northeast a few seasons back. They hatched every seventeen years. Seventeen years. Calculating how many times this would happen in her own lifetime, Mac was kind of disturbed it was so few.
Punching her pillow, she closed her eyes, letting the TV run, and even though it was way too early to go to sleep, she drifted off, vaguely worrying that she might not be able to sleep in this bed, such as it was, for untold days, maybe weeks . . . maybe longer, while she was playing bodyguard.
Morning came fast. Though it felt like she’d just closed her eyes, Mac jumped out of bed as if she’d been discovered in a nefarious act. She didn’t even want to think of how many hours she’d been out.
Quickly, she packed up some belongings in an overnight bag for her trip to the Carreras’. She figured it was mostly reconnaissance at this point, and she planned to take short trips home during the course of the job. She wasn’t going to be with Daley twenty-four seven, no matter what she thought. That would drive them both insane. Daley had been ambivalent when Mac had asked her when she should arrive, which made it seem like this bodyguard job was as flaky as it had sounded when Daley had posed it at Taft’s place.
But . . . money. Rent. Gas. Food. What the hell. It was a job.
Cooper Haynes stared blankly at the computer screen on his desk, his mind busy elsewhere. He was supposed to be writing up a report on the burglary attempts by a recent graduate of River Glen High, someone his daughter, Marissa, had shared a class or two with before he graduated, but he kept thinking of other things. Several other things, as a matter of fact. On the one hand, his mind was on his fiancée, Jamie Whelan Woodward, whom he was half-living with, his belongings slowly migrating from his house to hers; on the other, he was thinking about the auditory witness to a fight between two men at a construction site that had resulted in one of them falling to his death from the second story. That witness had sworn she’d heard two voices arguing, but had later recanted that she’d heard anything at all, then had firmly placed the blame on a man who had slipped into a coma and died, so there could be no corroboration. Debra Fournier had changed course almost from the moment she’d admitted hearing the argument, certainly from the moment Cooper had shown up to take her testimony. Since then, Chief Bennihof and the department as a whole had ruled Granger Nye’s death an accident, so there would be no further investigation. Case closed. Except Cooper wasn’t satisfied with the decision.
“You done there, Detective?” came the female drawl.
Elena Verbena, Cooper’s partner, was seated at her desk. She’d taken over his old partner’s spot, and now he looked across at her. Her dark curls had been scraped back into a severe bun, her favorite work “look.”
“Almost.”
Actually, he’d written exactly two sentences. He’d tried to concentrate, but Jamie’s face kept popping into his vision, and then Emma’s, her sister’s. Emma, the victim of an assault in her youth that had left her with permanent brain damage, was a unique and oddly endearing soul, a far cry from the teasing, maybe even manipulative, teenage girl Cooper had been so enamored with years earlier. After his marriage to Laura fell apart he’d thought himself incapable of falling in love, but then he’d remet Emma’s younger sister, Jamie, and here he was.
“Hey, Coop, I’m heading out.” Bryan “Ricky” Richards, an officer with the River Glen PD who was jonesing to be a detective bad enough to follow Cooper around like an imprinted duckling, cruised by Cooper’s desk. “You need an extra hand . . .” He lifted an open palm, tacitly volunteering himself.
“I’ve got that covered,” Verbena said coolly before Cooper could answer.
Richards left with a short chin lift of acknowledgment and Verbena slid a look Cooper’s way. “Coop?”
Cooper shook his head. Richards’s quirks for attention were somewhat annoying, but Verbena was damn near a man-hater and he didn’t want to add fuel to that fire. Except that sometimes you just had to say something....
“You’re just a man-hater,” he told her.
She said haughtily, “I hate everybody. Not just men.”
“Liar.”
To which she launched into a diatribe about how it was just the men in the department she really objected to—excluding himself, of course—not the entire gender.
He didn’t look up from his report. “Man hater.”
“Richards has a degree in suck-up. He wants your job, or mine, probably both, but he knows better than to try his tricks on me.”
“What tricks?”
She snorted, knowing he was just messing with her. “What about that teen burglary suspect? Blakely?”
“He’s being processed. Since he was found with the stolen gear the family’s got him a lawyer.”
“Hmmm.”
Cooper almost told her he planned to confront Debra Fournier again but didn’t. He had to keep reminding himself it wasn’t a case any longer. It was over, decided, done, and following up would do nothing but aggravate and enrage those who had closed it. Still, maybe he would just stop by an
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