Kyson didn’t know how he managed to keep a straight face. “Can we get back to why you called the station?”
The six ladies nodded.
“So who wants to go first?”
“I will,” Juanita stated proudly. “I was awakened at precisely 2:12 a.m.”
“How are you so sure about the time?” Griff asked, cutting her off.
“I looked at the clock,” she answered as if she dealt with a simpleton.
“Right,” Griffin said at the obvious answer. “Please continue.”
Ms. Perkins drew an impatient breath, but went on with her story. “I woke up at precisely 2:12 a.m. when I heard a loud bang.”
“A bang?”
“Well, maybe it was more like a thump,” she said, drumming a finger against her chin.
Kyson closed his eyes and counted to ten.
“Anyway, my bedroom window faces the Matthewses’ residence—at least the driveway and the carport area—and what I heard was someone running over the Matthewses’ empty garbage can. It’s plastic—sort of like that Rubbermaid material.”
“We’ve told Philip about leaving the container out,” Estelle cut in.
“That’s right,” Juanita concurred. “Everyone is supposed to roll their garbage cans back from the curbside the same day the garbagemen empty them.”
“You know,” Estelle leaped in again. “For curb appeal.”
“Uh-huh,” Kyson said, suspecting that he was not only talking to an overzealous Neighborhood Watch but also the Home Owners’ Association group.
“Of course, we’re pretty lenient with folks. You know, sometimes if you are going to be away for some reason. An extended vacation, one of us will be more than happy to make sure the plastic receptacles are rolled back for you.”
“That is very…kind of you.”
“Yes, well.” Juanita cleared her throat. “Well, the Matthewses have been sort of a problem since they moved into the neighborhood.”
“Not Phil,” a new woman corrected. “Oh, by the way, I’m Louise.”
Kyson gave her a nod in greeting. He, and apparently no one else, hadn’t the heart to tell Louise her wig was seriously off center.
“Oh, no. Phil is a sweetheart,” Juanita agreed. “It’s her that was always the problem.”
“Her?” Kyson questioned, but he already knew to whom they referred.
“Yes. Her.” Louise straightened. “Mrs. Matthews.”
“Ex-Mrs. Matthews,” Juanita corrected. “She evidently thought the rules didn’t apply to her. One year she painted the shutters this horrible cotton candy pink and then had the nerve to install a chain-link fence instead of the Home Owners’ Association-approved private fence. Ugh!” Juanita tossed up her hands. “Just thinking about the daily battles we had with that…that…woman is enough to spike my blood pressure.”
Another club member piped in. “One time, she installed a vulgar mailbox of a man bent over, poking his bum out. Every time the mailman opened the mailbox, essentially he was pulling the man’s pants down.”
The circle of women groaned as if they remembered the horrific event clearly.
“And when there were envelopes ready to pick up,” the woman went on, “it looked like…like…”
“We got the picture,” Kyson said, saving her from having to complete the sentence. However, he couldn’t stop the subtle smile curving his lips.
“Anyway,” Juanita said, seizing control of the conversation, “when I heard the thump, I looked at the clock and then grabbed my glasses because I can’t see a thing without them.”
The circle of women nodded as if they could all testify to the statement.
“Once I got those on, I made it over to the window and sure enough there was this dark sports-utility vehicle everyone drives nowadays, blocking Phil’s car.”
“Did you see anything else?” Griff asked.
“Well, I heard a slam—I think it was the vehicle thingy’s back door or trunk.” She stopped. “Do those things have trunks?” She waved the question off. “Anyway. I did make out two big, black shadows racing to the driver and passenger doors and then speeding off. This time when they ran over the garbage can, they dragged it out to the middle of the street. Unfortunately, that’s going to be another fine for poor Philip.” She shook her head. “Rules are rules.”
Without looking at each other, Kyson and Griffin shook their heads in commiseration for the people who had the misfortune to live under this board’s charge.
“Did you get a look at these, uh, big, black shadows?” Kyson asked in his best Joe Friday voice.
“Unfortunately, no,” Juanita said, looking disappointed. “Everything happened so fast, I forgot to grab my infrared binoculars.”
“Or call the hotline for backup,” Louise added in equal disappointment. “Really. What’s the point in investing in all this if we’re not going to use them or follow the set guidelines?”
The other women mumbled their agreement.
Juanita appeared thoroughly chastised.
“You have infrared binoculars?” Kyson asked, astonished.
“It allows us to be able to see in the dark,” Juanita perked. “Most crimes happen in the middle of the night, so it seemed like a great investment,” she answered as if it all made perfect sense.
“And you each have a pair?” Griff asked the group.
Again, they performed another round of head bobbing.
“And yet, you didn’t see anything last night?”
“Well, I went to bed early because I had a dreadful headache.” Juanita swallowed. “I didn’t follow protocol last night. I swear it’s the first time I, uh, sort of fell asleep on the job.”
Kyson couldn’t help but ask, “Is there a fine for that?”
Juanita’s mouth flattened.
“Just asking,” he said and tried to backpedal his way onto her good side by returning to the subject at hand. “What did you do next?”
“Well, nothing,” she admitted. “It may be a violation to leave your garbage can in the middle of the street, but it’s certainly not against the law,” she reasoned. “It wasn’t until this morning when I walked over to deliver the violation ticket that I got a chance to talk to Phil’s sweet new girlfriend. Sweet woman,” she stopped to add. “He must have been hiding her under lock and key. I’ve never seen her around before. She said when she came over she found the place ransacked and that’s when I knew,” she said.
The pause was deliberate, so Kyson decided to play along. “You knew what?”
“That she was behind it.”
Kyson ignored the woman’s tone.
“By she, do you mean Mr. Matthews’s ex-wife?” Griff asked.
“Absolutely,” Juanita insisted while the gray-and-white-haired ladies surrounding her nodded. “If there’s foul play to be had in this neighborhood, you better bet the farm that Michael woman is the root of it.”
Chapter 6
Peyton loved her life.
She had a wonderful husband, great family, successful career, nice home and now she was looking forward to motherhood. But she was totally over her future bundle of joy sitting on top of her bladder.
“Uh-oh.” Her husband, Lincoln, lowered his Sudoku puzzle book. “I know that look. You’re having one of your strange cravings,” he assessed and then climbed to his feet. “What would you like? Peanut butter and pickle sandwich or ice cream and pickles?”
“No. That’s not it.” She struggled to stand.
Lincoln zoomed to her side and helped her up. “Bathroom?”
Peyton nodded. “Bathroom.” At her look of misery, Lincoln gave her a peck on the nose.
“How about I make a sandwich for you anyway?”
She wobbled her way toward the hall. “Make it the ice cream and pickles and you got yourself a deal.”
“I’m headed to the kitchen now.”
Her trip to the bathroom felt like a twenty-minute cardiovascular workout, and on her way back to the living room, the pain in her back ma
de her wish for an early delivery.
Bam! Bam! Bam!
Peyton jumped, mainly because she was walking by the door when the abrupt series of hard knocks hammered the wood. “Gee whiz. Is there a fire?” she mumbled.
“Who’s at the door?” Lincoln called out from the kitchen.
“I don’t know,” she said and inquired through the door, “Who is it?”
“It’s us!”
Peyton rolled her eyes. She didn’t know exactly which grouping of the family members qualified as “us,” but she had hoped to have a private day vegging out on the sofa with her husband. The last thing she wanted was any of the normal shenanigans that were associated with her sisters.
“It’s just the girls,” Peyton yelled to her husband.
“If you get rid of them, there may be a foot massage in it for you,” he promised as he passed the hallway, waving her bowl of ice cream and jar of dill pickles.
“Say no more,” she responded and opened the door. She took one look at the Nosy Sisters Network and told them to, “Go away,” and then promptly slammed the door in their faces.
Michael blinked, closed her mouth and then glanced at her sisters. “What the hell?”
Sheldon crossed her arms and muttered, “Heck, I don’t blame her.”
Frankie’s grunt sounded like agreement.
Michael faced the door again, determined to bang the damn thing down if need be. This time when the door opened, Lincoln’s tall frame filled the threshold.
“Can I help you ladies?”
Michael swallowed. Linc was quite a formidable figure. It seemed completely laughable that three years ago she believed him to be her brother’s boyfriend instead of her sister’s.
Frankie stepped forward. “Can Peyton come out and play?”
“Well, to tell you the truth, girls, we sort of wanted to spend the day together,” he said with an apologetic smile. But when three sets of eyes only blinked up at him, he added, “Alone. We wanted to spend time together alone.”
No response.
“So if you want to maybe—I don’t know—come back tomorrow?”
Again—silence.
Finally, he heaved a deep breath. He knew his sisters-in-law well enough to know their wall of silence meant they weren’t leaving until they got what they wanted. “Fine. I’ll go get her. But you only get five minutes, girls. I mean it.” Without waiting for their agreement, Lincoln disappeared back into the house.
A few seconds later, an irritated Peyton returned to the door. “I told you all to go away.”
Michael and Frankie each grabbed one of Peyton’s arms and dragged her out through the front door.
“What on earth?”
Sheldon closed the door and quickly followed behind the girls down the walkway.
“We got ourselves in a bit of a situation,” Michael said.
“We?” Sheldon and Frankie echoed in unison when they came to a stop behind Michael’s black Volvo.
“Yes—we!” Mike insisted, digging out her car keys from her pants pocket. “We’re all in this together now.” She jabbed the key into the trunk.
“How come I get the feeling I don’t want to know what you guys are talking about?” Peyton asked, glancing around.
Michael popped open the trunk.
Peyton looked down and screamed.
Three hands clamped around Peyton’s mouth while Phil, hog-tied and gagged, squirmed and bucked in the trunk.
“Keep it down,” Michael hissed. “The last thing we need is to draw attention.”
Peyton’s hands clamped around her bulging belly.
“Just great!” Sheldon panicked. “We’re going to send her into early labor. I told you, Mikey, this was a bad idea.”
“Calm down,” Michael coached her baby sister. “Take a deep breath.”
Peyton followed the instructions and her sisters peeled their hands away in order for her to exhale. However, she didn’t stop clutching her belly or backing away from the car.
“I know this looks bad,” Michael said gently. Somehow she reasoned if she talked low and soft she could keep the panic to a reasonable level.
“Have you all gone crazy?”
“I’m going to vote yes,” Frankie said.
“Same here,” Sheldon added.
Phil mumbled something that also sounded like it was in the affirmative.
“Please tell me you guys are playing some kind of game,” Peyton begged. “If so, I don’t want any part of it.”
Michael didn’t want any part of it, either. In fact, she still held out a thread of hope all of this was part of some crazy dream. Maybe someone slipped something into one of her drinks last night and this was just a nightmare with apparently no end in sight.
“Look, P.J.,” Mike said, stepping forward. “Please say you still have Ricky’s number—or some way to contact him.”
“Ricky?” Peyton asked. “Ricky who?”
“Your ex-husband, Ricky,” Sheldon said. “Wasn’t he best friends with the Damon twins?”
Peyton grunted and rolled her eyes. “You mean the Demon twins, don’t you?”
Sheldon glanced at Mikey, smirking. “I told you so.”
“Granted, their methods are a little extreme, but up until last night I’ve always viewed them as harmless,” Michael confessed.
“Wait. Ray and Scott are behind this?” Peyton asked. “Okay. I definitely don’t want anything to do with whatever the heck is going on.” Peyton turned. “I’m going back into my crime-free house and I’m going to pretend you guys were never here.”
The three sisters blocked Peyton’s escape.
“You can’t just act like you didn’t see anything. Phil is threatening to throw us in jail for kidnapping.”
“I’d say he has a pretty good case.”
“And what—you think he’s going to omit you refused to help him?”
“Fine. I’ll call the police.”
Michael easily called her bluff. “You’ll do no such thing. Besides, the police have already been to my place this morning, asking about his disappearance.”
“What?” Peyton clutched her belly again. “Mike, this is serious!”
“What? You think I don’t know that?” Michael snapped. Her patience was at an end and her blood pressure was at an all-time high. “I’m trying to find those damn twins so they can convince my idiot of an ex-husband I did not instruct them to kidnap him, or at the very least tell him I was plastered and didn’t mean any of it.”
“Why don’t you just tell him that yourself?”
“He doesn’t believe me!”
Sheldon and Frankie coughed.
“No one believes me!” Michael amended. Her eyes burned with a sudden rush of tears. What the hell? Maybe she should just cut Phil loose and then just take her chances trying to convince a jury. Yet, at the same time, if she couldn’t convince her family, she stood no chance of convincing a jury of her peers.
Peyton drew a deep breath—several, actually—while she clearly weighed her options.
“Please, P.J.” Michael dropped to her knees, her hands forming a steeple. “If you do this for me, I swear I’ll never ask you to do another thing.”
Her baby sister’s brows lifted in obvious disbelief.
“Hell,” Frankie said, jabbing a fist into her hip. “What about us?”
Michael ignored them, but kept her pleading gaze on Peyton.
“Oh, all right,” Peyton gave in. “Who knows, maybe we’ll all get to share a room in the mental ward.”
Michael caught a movement from the corner of her eye and turned to see that Phil had managed to sit up in the trunk. “Oh, no you don’t.” She climbed back onto her feet, pushed him down and closed the trunk. When she faced her sisters again, they were all just staring and shaking their heads.
“Oh, he’ll be fine. Let’s just hurry and find that number. The faster we find the twins, the faster we can end this nightmare.”
Peyton turned and led the way back t
o the house. Michael followed while Frankie and Sheldon brought up the rear.
“I just thought of something,” Frankie whispered to Sheldon.
“What’s that?”
“Can you ever remember a time when Michael’s plans worked out?”
Sheldon fell silent, thinking.
“Yeah,” Frankie said. “Me neither.”
By the time Kyson and his partner returned to the station, their notepads were full and their heads were spinning with information regarding the ex-Mrs. Matthews. Kyson had no doubt that the geriatric Neighborhood Watch gang would’ve held them hostage longer if Griff hadn’t faked a call from the captain and then lied about having to return to the station.
“There’s only so much mothballs and Ben-Gay a man can take,” Griff said.
Kyson agreed. Now that he was back at his desk, he immediately pecked Michael’s name into the police files, hoping the elderly women had exaggerated their former neighbor’s character.
They hadn’t.
“Oh my God, take a look at this,” he said, staring at the screen.
Griff stood from his desk and rushed around to Kyson’s.
On-screen, the computer looked as if it was going haywire as arrests, citations, warnings and detailed footnotes scrolled before them.
“I told you she was an odd bird, didn’t I?” Griff leaned forward, reading what was being printed on-screen. “It doesn’t look like she was booked for anything too serious.” He chortled. “Looks like she’s one hell of a prankster.”
Kyson released a low whistle. “That, or she has anger-management issues.”
Scrolling with the mouse, the partners quickly learned that all charges in Michael Adams’s criminal file were eventually dropped.
“Either the woman is incredibly lucky or most people are afraid to cross her,” Kyson concluded.
“I’m going to place my money on the latter,” Griff said, straightening and then shuffling his way back over to his desk. “Hopefully her file has softened that hard-on you have for the chick.” He plopped down in his seat. “Those old ladies were on to your girl.”
Kyson ignored the comment and stared at Michael’s arrest pictures. Even looking at those was a source of amusement. The woman had put an artistic spin on posing with her arrest numbers as if she’d been hired for comedy stills. There were pictures of her throwing deuces, sticking her tongue out, flipping a bird and even a few of her blowing kisses.
Controversy Page 4
