The Girl Next Door

by MacDonald, Patricia

  THE GIRL

  NEXT DOOR

  BOOKS BY PATRICIA MACDONALD

  Stranger in the House

  Suspicious Origin

  Not Guilty

  THE GIRL

  NEXT DOOR

  A NOVEL

  PATRICIA

  MACDONALD

  ATRIA BOOKS

  NEW YORK LONDON TORONTO SYDNEY

  ATRIA BOOKS

  1230 AVENUE OF THE AMERICAS

  NEW YORK , NY 10020

  THIS BOOK IS A WORK OF FICTION. NAMES , CHARACTERS, PLACES AND INCIDENTS

  ARE PRODUCTS OF THE AUTHOR’S IMAGINATION OR ARE USED FI CTITIOUSLY. ANY

  RESEMBLANCE TO ACTUAL EVENTS OR LOCALES OR PERSONS, LIVING OR DEAD, IS

  ENTIRELY COINCIDENTAL.

  THE GIRL NEXT DOOR

  PATRICIA MACDONALD

  ATRIA BOOKS

  New York London Toronto Sydney

  COPYRIGHT © 2004 BY PATRICIA BOURGEAU

  ALL RIGHTS RESERVED, INCLUDING THE RIGHT TO REPRODUCE

  THIS BOOK OR PORTIONS THEREOF IN ANY FORM WHATSOEVER.

  FOR INFORMATION ADDRESS ATRIA BOOKS , 1230 AVENUE

  OF THE AMERICAS, NEW YORK , NY 10020

  LIBRARY OF CONGRESS CATALOGING-IN-PUBLICATION DATA

  MACDONALD, PATRICIA J.

  THE GIRL NEXT DOOR / PATRICIA MCDONALD-1ST ATRIA BOOKS HARDCOVER ED .

  P. CM .

  ISBN 0-7434-2361-5

  ISBN-13: 978-0-743-42361-8

  ISBN-13: 978-1-439-14105-2

  www.SimonandSchuster.com

  1. MARRIED WOMEN—CRIMES AGAINST—FICTION.

  2. CHILDREN OF MURDER

  VICTIMS—FICTION.

  3. MOTHERS—DEATH—FICTION.

  4. SUBURBAN LIFE—FICTION.

  5. YOUNG WOMEN—FICTION.

  6. UXORICIDE—FI CTION.

  I . TITLE.

  PS3563.A287G57 2004

  813′.54—DC22 2004047693

  FIRST ATRIA BOOKS HARDCOVER EDITION JULY 2004

  10 9 8 7 6 5 4 3 2 1

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  TO MY FRIENDS CRAIG, MICHEL, AND DANIEL GRAS, AND TO JOSEPHINE HALFPENNY, WHO BROUGHT US TOGETHER . HAPPY BIRTHDAY, NAN!

  ACKNOWLEDGMENTS

  Special thanks to Rich Terbeck at the New Jersey State Parole Bureau for patiently, thoroughly answering my questions. And my apologies to Rich for any liberties I took with the facts!

  Thanks, as ever, to Art Bourgeau, Jane Berkey, Meg Ruley, Annelise Robey, and Maggie Crawford for tough questions and brilliant suggestions.

  PROLOGUE

  NINA AVERY tried to concentrate on her highlighted script. Even though she loved to act, and was thrilled with the part she had landed in the school play, she could not focus on learning her lines. She was distracted by the April breeze that drifted through her bedroom window, and by the fact that it was Friday and school was over for the week. But most of all, she was distracted by thoughts of Brandon Ross, the boy who lived next door.

  His family had moved in last November, and she had met him at Christmastime. Her mother, Marsha, had invited the new neighbors to a holiday party. Brandon’s father, Frank, was balding and stocky. His mother, Sheila, was blond, stylish, and thin. The party ended, not surprisingly, in an argument between Nina’s parents. Her mother accused her husband, Duncan, of flirting with Sheila. Duncan insisted that Marsha had ruined the party all by herself by drinking too much egg nog and getting sloppy.

  But the party wasn’t ruined for Nina. She had fallen head over heels for Brandon.

  Unfortunately, she hadn’t seen much of him in the months that followed. They took the same bus to school, but in the winter everyone ran to the bus stop at the last minute to avoid the cold. Now that spring was here, Nina had been leaving the house early just so she might be able to spend a few more minutes with Brandon before the bus arrived. He was taller than Nina, and a year older. At fifteen, he had broad shoulders and soft brown hair that fell over his forehead. His eyes, when she dared to meet them, were brown with flecks of gold in them.

  “No, you listen to me, Marsha. I have patients waiting for me. I left my practice to go over to that school and be humiliated …” her father shouted.

  Nina sighed and returned to reality. She knew very well that it wasn’t only spring fever and Brandon Ross that were distracting her. It was impossible to memorize lines over the sound of the shouting from downstairs. Her parents had just returned from the high school, where they had been summoned to discuss her brother Jimmy and the problems he was having. It didn’t sound like it went too well. Their angry voices spiked up the stairwell and mushroomed in the hall.

  “Your patients can spare you for an hour,” her mother retorted in a sarcastic tone. “You don’t hear me complaining because I couldn’t work this afternoon.”

  “Excuse me, I’m a doctor. I’m not just dabbling in a paint box,” Duncan replied.

  “You see, Duncan?” she cried. “This is your attitude. Nothing is important but you. My painting is a waste of time. The children are a waste of time. This is why Jimmy has problems. Because you have no time for him,” Marsha shouted. “Because you’re too busy with your … other interests.”

  Jimmy was now sixteen, and had started hanging around with a garage band called Black Death. In a lot of ways, Nina thought Jimmy was sweeter than her older brother, Patrick, but lately he got into fights, cut school a lot, and came home glassy-eyed from the Black Death rehearsals. The band’s lead singer, Calvin Mears, was a known drug user whose single mother did not seem to care what he did. A lot of girls thought Calvin was hot. He was lean and mean, with shoulder-length blond hair and haunted-looking gray eyes. Nina thought he was a little bit scary. She had heard the rumor that he had gotten a ninth-grader pregnant. Her brother Jimmy was the opposite of Calvin. Girls thought he was cute, too, but in a different way from Calvin. He was tall and broad-shouldered, with curly black hair and a face that was scarred up from a million childhood scrapes. He acted as the band’s general grunt and Calvin’s personal bodyguard. No amount of punishment had succeeded in keeping him away from his new friend.

  Nina couldn’t understand why her mother blamed her father for Jimmy’s behavior. Her father was a hero in her eyes. Just last year it had been in all the papers when his astute diagnosis and quick treatment had saved the life of their mailman’s young son, who had a rare, often fatal blood disease. Nina liked everyone to know that Dr. Avery was her dad.

  But Nina’s mother was always mad at him. Her father would try to avoid the arguments, but her mother would persist. And then he would snap back with something mean—that she was a nag, or she drank too much, or she had let herself go. Which wasn’t fair either, Nina thought. It was true that she didn’t look much like the raven-haired beauty in her wedding picture. Her hair was graying now, and she was pudgy. But it didn’t help anything when her dad, who was still fit and handsome, brought up her mother’s shortcomings. Nina sighed. She loved them both so much. Why couldn’t they just get along? But arguing had become a way of life for them. It was sickening. It gave her a stomachache.

  Nina heard the front door slam. She went to her open window and looked out. Marsha Avery, wearing sneakers and her old green sweatshirt, her face like a thundercloud, was crossing the front lawn, toting her paint box and her large zippered portfolio. Nina knew where she was headed. At one end of their street was the Madison Creek Nature Preserve. A state-owned woodland, it was her m
other’s favorite place to paint. The woods ran along the banks of a burbling stream, and its winding trails were overgrown and shady. Nina started to call out to her mother, but then she hesitated. Nina and her brothers all pretended not to hear the arguments between their parents. She didn’t want her mother to know that she had been listening.

  Nina rested her elbows on the windowsill, her chin in her hands, and breathed in the balmy April air. The New York suburb of Hoffman, New Jersey, never looked more beautiful than it did in the spring, and Madison Street was especially pretty. There were large, comfortable old houses and lots of trees fuzzy with new leaves and buds. If you turned right out of the Averys’ driveway, it was a short walk to the quaint downtown shopping area of Hoffman. If you turned left, you were headed for the preserve. It wasn’t the ritziest part of town. That was the horsey area of estates called Old Hoffman. But Nina loved her street with its towering elms, lush gardens, and gas streetlamps.

  Today, though, instead of cheering her up, the loveliness of her neighborhood made Nina feel more melancholy than ever. Melancholy and lonely. Her thoughts drifted back to Brandon Ross. “He’ll never like me,” she said aloud. She turned her head and looked into the mirror over her bureau. She had long, wavy black hair and creamy skin with no zits, knock on wood. She had often been told that she was beautiful when she smiled. But why smile? If Brandon thought about her at all, it was probably to think how boring she was.

  Nina heard a car engine stopping and she looked out the window again. A shiny Jeep with the sunroof open was pulling into the wide driveway beside her father’s car. The Jeep belonged to Lindsay Farrell, a beautiful girl with straight platinum-blond hair. Her dad was some kind of mogul in New York and they lived in Old Hoffman. Nina thought she had never seen teeth as dazzling as Lindsay’s or eyes as blue. Lindsay got out of the car, as did her passenger, Nina’s older brother, Patrick. Patrick was a dreamboat with brown curly hair and an athlete’s body. He looked like a younger version of his handsome father, and together he and Lindsay looked like some Vogue advertisement for the good life.

  Patrick came up close to Lindsay and tilted her face up to his with one finger under her chin. Just then the front door slammed again, and Nina saw her dad come out into the driveway, glowering and rattling his keys.

  Patrick and Lindsay jumped apart. “Hey, Dad,” said Patrick warily.

  Nina’s father mumbled a greeting and headed for his car.

  “Dad, did the mail come?” Patrick asked.

  “I don’t know. Check the box. I’m heading back to the office.” He climbed into his car and began to back out of the driveway.

  Nina sighed and turned away from the window. She lay down on her bed, pushing her script to the floor, and looked up at the ceiling. She didn’t feel like learning lines. She didn’t care about the play. She was overcome with a combination of weariness and the jitters. Nina closed her eyes. “Life sucks,” she said.

  The phone beside her bed rang. Nina picked it up.

  “Nina,” said a familiar voice. “It’s Brandon, next door.”

  Like she didn’t immediately recognize his voice. Nina scrambled up and sat Indian style on the bed. She was shaking all over, glad he couldn’t see her.

  “Hi,” she said. “How are ya?”

  “Okay. I’m fine.” He spoke in a rush, as if he wanted to be finished with an unpleasant task. “Nina, I was thinking … do you like … um … Julia Roberts?”

  “Of course,” she said. “Who doesn’t like Julia Roberts?”

  “Well, that new movie she’s in is downtown. You wanna go see it tonight?”

  Nina couldn’t believe her ears. It was Friday. He was asking her to go to the movies on a Friday night. She wanted him to say it again. “Tonight?” she asked.

  “If you’re not doin’ anything,” he said.

  This was how it happened, she thought. In an instant, with one simple question, your life was utterly changed. “I’m not,” she said.

  “I don’t know the time,” he said. “I have to call the theater.”

  “I have a paper,” she said eagerly. “I’ll look it up.” She promised to call him back and hung up feeling numb. She had a date. A real date! With the boy she liked most in the world. This day, which had seemed so bleak, now seemed magical. Of course, she still had to ask her parents, but her mother would say yes. She had to.

  The paper, she thought. I’ve got to get the paper and call him back. Nina clattered down the stairs and spotted the Hoffman Gazette on the coffee table. She stopped to read the caption under the photo of a familiar face on the front page and then checked the index. Her hands were still trembling as she turned to the section that had the movie schedule. Just as she found the listings, she heard a war whoop from the kitchen. Putting down the paper, she walked over to the kitchen door.

  Patrick was embracing Lindsay, a letter clutched in his hand. A torn envelope lay on the kitchen table. When he spotted Nina, he waved the letter at her.

  “I got into Rutgers!” he cried. “I got accepted.”

  Nina beamed at her brother. “Patrick, that is so cool.” So now it was certain. In the fall he would be going to college. Sometimes, though she hated to admit it, she thought she might miss him.

  As if to remind her of how sentimental she was being, Patrick let out a loud belch.

  “Patrick, ugh,” said Lindsay, grimacing.

  Patrick released Lindsay and came over to Nina, lifting her briefly off her feet.

  “Does Mom know?” asked Nina.

  “Not yet,” said Patrick.

  “They’re going to be really happy,” said Nina, hoping, selfishly, that perhaps her parents would be reconciled, however briefly, by this good news.

  Patrick set Nina down and stared again at his letter. “I can’t believe it,” he said.

  “I always knew you’d get in,” Nina said, although that was not entirely true. Patrick’s acceptance at college had never been a given. He wasn’t much of a student.

  Patrick seemed to have a sudden realization. “I’ve got to call the brainiac!”

  Nina knew who he meant. Gemma Johnstone, the smartest girl in the senior class, was Patrick’s tutor. Searching the paper for the movie times, Nina had just noticed the picture of Gemma, accepting the Delman Prize, which was given to the best scholar in the school. Gemma had gotten early admission to Princeton months ago. With Gemma’s help, Patrick had worked hard and brought up all his grades.

  Lindsay knew who he meant, too. She tossed her shiny blond hair like a glimmering curtain. “She wasn’t in school today.”

  “Where was she?” Nina asked.

  Lindsay shrugged. “Still sick, I guess. Yesterday she had to leave early.”

  Patrick had dialed the number and was leaving a message. “Gemma, it’s Patrick. I’ve got big news. Call me.”

  Just then the back door opened and Marsha Avery came in, looking glummer than when she had left the house earlier.

  “Hello, Mrs. Avery,” Lindsay said politely.

  “Mom,” Patrick cried. “Look.” He waved the letter at her. “I got in.”

  Marsha frowned, and then her face cleared. “Let me see!” she cried. She took the letter and scanned it. Her gloomy expression vanished. “Oh, Patrick, that’s wonderful, darling. Just wonderful. I’m so proud of you. I knew you could do it.” She beamed, and hugged her son. “Did you tell your father?” Marsha asked.

  “He went back to the office,” said Patrick.

  “You better give him a call,” said Marsha.

  Patrick took the phone into the living room, with Lindsay following behind him.

  Nina wanted to protest that she needed the phone to call Brandon, but she knew this was more important. Marsha began to put her painting equipment back in the closet. She unzipped the green paint-spattered sweatshirt that they all referred to as her camouflage outfit.

  “How come you’re back so soon?” Nina asked.

  Marsha’s expression darkened again. “I had to leave
. There was a lot of commotion there. Police everywhere. TV reporters. It was a zoo.”

  “Police?” Nina asked. “What were the police doing there?”

  “You know that baby that was kidnapped?” said Marsha. “The Kilgore baby?”

  Even Nina, who paid little attention to the news, knew what her mother was referring to. Everybody around there knew. April Kilgore, a cocktail waitress, and her baby had moved in with her new boyfriend, a guy named Travis Duffy, who had a history of child abuse from his first marriage. One night, while April was working the late shift, the baby disappeared. Duffy insisted that the child had been stolen while he was asleep on the couch. The police had been investigating it for a couple of months now. “Yeah. What about it?” Nina said.

  “Someone said they found him.”

  “The baby? He was in the park?”

  “Well, found his remains, I should say. Apparently a dog was digging there ….”

  “You mean the kidnappers killed the baby?” Nina asked, confused.

  “Oh no,” Marsha scoffed. “There never really was a kidnapping. Nobody believed that story for a minute. That boyfriend of hers was lying through his teeth. But they’ll get him now. Now that they’ve found the body. I blame the mother, for leaving the baby alone with him. She knew he had a violent history. What was she thinking?”

  Nina didn’t really understand and, in truth, didn’t find it all that interesting. Not compared to what was on her mind. “Mom,” she said. “I have to ask you something …”

  A tap on the kitchen screen door interrupted her. They both looked up.

  “Excuse me. Is Patrick here?” asked the girl at the door.

  “Oh hi, Gemma,” said Nina shyly. “He’s here. Come on in.”

  Gemma entered the kitchen. “He called me but I didn’t get to the phone in time. I tried to call back, but …” Her large brown eyes stood out against her pale skin and her brunette hair looked greasy. She was dressed as always in baggy overalls and a shapeless T-shirt. Nina felt protective of the shy, studious girl who was often the butt of jokes.

  Patrick came back into the kitchen and hung up the phone. When he spotted Gemma, he rushed over to her and lifted her up just as he had lifted Nina.