Wolfie starts barking. Looking over to him, Moira sees he’s staring into the hedge that shields the garden from the street. Marigold copies him. Her bark is deeper and louder than the older terrier. Moira shakes her head. ‘What are you guys barking at?’
Beside her, Pip sits up; suddenly alert. His hackles are raised.
Wolfie barks louder and launches head first into the hedge. It’s dense and leafy, and Moira knows there’s a wire mesh fence on the other side, so Wolfie can’t get out on to the road, but still her heart thumps in her chest a little faster.
She’s never seen the dogs act this way. What the hell is on the other side of the hedge?
Jumping up, she hurries across to Wolfie and Marigold. The hedge isn’t high – barely four foot – so it’s easy to see over, and she can’t see anything obvious to upset the dogs. But Wolfie’s growling, still focused on the other side. Marigold is standing alongside him with her head cocked. Pip’s hackles remain raised.
‘What is it?’ says Moira. ‘What did you see?’
Then she hears an engine start up a little way along the street. Turning towards the noise she peers further over the hedge and sees a vehicle pull away from the kerb and accelerate fast.
Her breath catches in her throat.
It’s a silver VW Beetle: the car that had been parked on the road near Manatee Recreation Park. The one the young blond guy who’d taken her photo had been hiding behind.
Her heart beats faster.
What’s he doing on the road outside her house? He’s not a neighbour. Did the dogs barking and Wolfie being so fixated on a specific spot on the other side of the hedge mean the guy has been loitering on the pavement outside her home?
Was he watching her, again?
Moira shivers. She’s always lived alone, and has never felt bothered by the solitude. But seeing the wiry blond guy near the park and now outside her home is weird. He could be connected to the murder. Hell, he could be the actual murderer. Or he could be something, somebody, far, far worse.
He could be looking for her.
Moira feels nauseous. Suddenly she’s dizzy again.
What if her old life has found her here? She’s made a career out of being tough and staying resilient. But her toughness has crumbled over the past year. The idea of being discovered makes her feel weirdly vulnerable. And she hates the feeling.
Her phone buzzes in her pocket. She looks at the screen, glad of the distraction. It’s another message from Lizzie:
Please say you’ll come over. I could do with your support.
There’s a lot of ways to read the message, and meaning is always so hard to determine from a typed note, but the wording strikes Moira as odd. Why would Lizzie need her support? Surely with Philip and Rick they can manage anything that comes from the meeting of the neighbourhood patrollers? They don’t even know that she’s ex-law enforcement; as far as they’re concerned she’s just a civilian.
Leaning down, Moira tickles Pip behind his greying ears and takes some comfort as the sausage dog licks her hand. His hackles are down now, and Wolfie and Marigold have gone back to chasing around the lawn with the ball. Moving here, starting this new life was meant to be her tabula rasa. Do something different, the police doc had said. Leave this life, and what’s happened, behind and start a new chapter.
I tried, thinks Moira, but this morning there was a dead body on her tabula rasa. Her blank slate is now splattered with water and blood, and sprinkled with dollars. She needs to find a way to clean it off.
Maybe her finding the victim was a test – part of her recovery. Or maybe it’s just Sod’s law. She’s tried to distance herself from Lizzie and Philip. Worked hard to protect her secret and avoid making connections with people who could compromise that. But a young woman died. Can she really walk away when Lizzie, Philip and Rick are trying to find information to help the cops solve the murder?