I don’t know what to say about the Greens.
Their blinds are shut as usual, and except for a furtive silhouette moving past the window, I can’t make out any of what’s happening inside.
“That’s their house,” I say to Jane.
“Whose?”
“Those people I told you about. The spies. Or maybe they’re fugitives.”
Jane sighs. “Geez, Ma. Jump to conclusions much?”
“There’s something odd about those people.”
“Because they won’t eat your zucchini bread?”
“Because they don’t socialize with anyone. They make no effort to be part of the neighborhood.”
“It’s not illegal to be private.”
Their black SUV is parked in their driveway. The garage is only big enough to hold one vehicle, so Mr. Green’s SUV always sits outside, conveniently available for perusal by any passerby.
I head across the street.
“Ma,” Jane calls out. “What are you doing?”
“Just gonna take a peek.”
She follows me across the street. “You’re now trespassing, you know.”
“It’s only the driveway. That’s like an extension of the sidewalk.” I put my face right up to the driver’s window but it’s too dark to see the interior. “Give me your flashlight. Come on, I know you always have one.”
Jane sighs as she reaches into her pocket for her flashlight and hands it to me. I struggle for a few seconds to turn it on. The blue-white beam is blinding and just what I need. Aiming it into the SUV, I see spotless upholstery. No rubbish, no papers, no loose change.
“Satisfied?” Jane asks.
“It’s unnatural to be so clean.”
“For a Rizzoli, maybe.” She takes back her flashlight and turns it off. “Enough, Ma.”
The living room blinds suddenly flick open and we freeze. Matthew Green looms in the window, his broad shoulders almost blotting out the light behind him. We’ve been caught red-handed in his driveway, standing next to his SUV, yet he doesn’t make a move, doesn’t yell through the window. He just stares at us in silence, like a hunter studying his prey, and it makes the hairs stand up on the back of my neck.
Jane waves at him, a casual, neighborly gesture as if we were merely passing by, but we know he’s not fooled for an instant. He knows what we were doing. Jane grabs my arm and pulls me back to the sidewalk and across the street to my house. As we mount the porch steps, I cast a backward glance.
He is still watching us.
“Well, that was a smooth operation,” Jane mutters as we walk into the house.
I close the front door and lean back against it, my heart pounding. “Now he knows I’ve been watching him.”
“Something I’m sure he already knew.”
I take a deep breath. “He scares me, Jane.”
She goes to the living room window and looks across the street at Mr. Green, who’s still at his window, watching us. The two of them regard each other for a moment in a duel of stares. Then he flicks the blinds shut and disappears from view.
“Janie?”
She turns to me, a distracted look on her face. “Can you just stay away from those people? It would make them happier, and me too.”
“But you see what I mean now, don’t you? There’s something strange about them. Why do they keep avoiding me?”
“Geez, I have no idea.” She looks at her watch.
“What about Tricia? What are you gonna do about her?”
“I’ll call Revere PD, see if they’ve got any new info. But right now, I’m still inclined to think she’s a runaway. She’s clearly pissed at her mom, took money from her purse, and she’s done this several times before.”
“I say when a teenage girl keeps running away, you should take a look at the father.”
“Sounds more like Tricia’s problem is with her mother.”
“So how do we find her?”
Jane shakes her head. “It won’t be easy. Not if that girl doesn’t want to be found.”
* * *
—
“I never much liked Rick Talley,” says Jonas as the four of us sit in my living room, stirring Scrabble tiles on the table. “Fine-looking gal like Jackie, she could’ve done a lot better. He keeps moving around from job to job, never sticks it out. Jackie’s probably the one who brings in most of the money in that house. High school pays pretty well, I’m guessing. Hey, Larry?”
Larry Leopold just grunts and reaches for seven new tiles. As usual, he won the last round, thanks to his triple-word score with zymosis. I had to look it up to be sure it was a real word, and yep, there it was in Webster’s Dictionary. Anyone else would use the Z tile to spell out zoo or zip. Or in a really inspired moment, ooze. But that’s Larry the high school English teacher, always showing us up. It irritates Jonas no end, because he hates it when another man defeats him at anything. Since Jonas knows he can’t best Larry on the Scrabble board, he focuses his annoyance instead on Rick Talley, who isn’t here to defend himself.