Jeremy was on the verge of marching right up to the front door and offering to mow the lady’s lawn himself. But when he tugged on the cockapoo’s leash, the dog resisted. Its head was still stuck in the brambles that had sprung up around the Osborne woman’s lawn. Annoyed, Jeremy gave the leash a yank. The dog yelped, but refused to budge, forcing him to reel it in like a fish. When the beast’s head emerged, Jeremy realized there was something clamped between its jaws. The object was fleshy, faintly gray in color, and ended in five limp fingers. The dog, whose name he could never remember, dropped its discovery at Jeremy’s feet.
Later, as he was speed-walking home, Jeremy made a mental list of the neighbors who might have seen him stumbling backward into the gutter while the dog mocked him with its slobbery grin. (As it turned out, only one person had witnessed the scene. Unfortunately, that person was a twelve-year-old with a popular TikTok account, whose video of the incident would break platform records.) After the tumble, which left his Dockers stained with sludge, Jeremy had crept toward the object with his palm poised to shield his eyes. He was one hundred percent certain the dog’s discovery had recently belonged to a human. Upon closer inspection, however, it appeared to be a species of mushroom. A monstrosity, Jeremy fumed as he cut across his own perfectly manicured lawn. If that was the kind of revolting fungus the Osborne woman was introducing to the neighborhood, the gloves would need to come off. It didn’t matter what people whispered about her. He wasn’t afraid to take her on. So as soon as he was safely inside his 1950s Cape Cod, Jeremy pulled out his phone and dialed an old friend, Brendon Baker.
Until March, Brendon Baker had never missed a meeting of the Mattauk Homeowners Association. His encyclopedic knowledge of the rules, and his fervor for enforcing them, had helped him rise from member to treasurer to president of the organization in record time. When he moved to Mattauk five years earlier, he’d been appalled by the town’s lackadaisical approach to landscaping. In the spring, the grass on half the town’s lawns had been allowed to grow far past the two-inch limit. In autumn, piles of leaves were left to molder for months. It took a single HOA gathering for Brendon to identify the problem. The board was composed of former stay-at-home moms who seemed far more interested in sourcing organic mulch for the playground or building beaches for babies than in enforcing regulations. When Brendon decided to run for a seat on the board, he went door-to-door every weekend, when he knew the husbands would be home. It was time, he convinced the men he met, for the HOA to finally get serious.
As soon as Brendon was elected president, he made good on his promise. Everyone he spoke with agreed that Mattauk had never looked better. Then, in March, complications from a hemorrhoid operation kept him home for a month. Brendon had never placed much faith in his HOA colleagues, and he knew work would pile up while he was away. But he’d never imagined that a dire situation like 256 Woodland Drive would remain unaddressed for so long.
His first day back from medical leave, Brendon walked into the HOA board meeting ten minutes late and dropped his leather messenger bag down on the table with a satisfying thump. Instead of claiming a seat, he crossed his arms over his fleshy chest and stood with his thighs pressed against the table’s edge, displaying his crotch for the five women who’d been waiting. He’d done this often, even before his condition had made sitting a challenge. His fellow board members couldn’t be certain he chose the posture on purpose, but all agreed it was completely revolting.
As usual, there was no chitchat. Brendon preferred to get straight to business. “Have any of you been down Woodland Drive lately?” he barked at his colleagues.
They all had. Woodland Drive was a main route to the train station. But no one in the room spoke up. They’d known this moment was coming, and they’d made a pact.
Their silence only fed Brendon’s indignation. “Does anyone here know”—he glanced down at his phone and the notes he’d taken—“a woman named Harriett Osborne?”
A couple pairs of eyes inadvertently darted in the same direction.
“Celeste?” Brendon asked.
“Yes, I know her.” Celeste Howard had won a seat on the board the previous fall after her youngest had started kindergarten. She was a perfect example of the kind of woman the HOA attracted, Brendon thought. Her most recent work experience was limited to changing diapers and singing nursery rhymes. He suspected that just like the rest of them, Celeste had no real interest in community management. For her, the board was a social club—and a sad attempt to justify the fancy education she’d wasted.
“Is the Osborne woman a friend of yours?” he asked.
“Harriett used to work with my husband. I can’t call us friends.”
Celeste considered herself more of a secret admirer. Years earlier, when Celeste and her husband had started out in the advertising business, most of their equals had been women. Then Andrew was tapped on the shoulder to become the COO’s latest protégé. The higher he rose, the less estrogen there seemed to be in the atmosphere. Harriett was one of the few women who never slipped or got shoved off the ladder. She managed to hold on far longer than Celeste had. In fact, for a while, everyone had assumed Harriett would be the company’s first female president.
“Last night, I received an anonymous tip from one of Harriett Osborne’s neighbors,” Brendon announced. As a favor, he’d promised to keep Jeremy’s name out of it. Situations such as these were likely to become emotionally charged. “I have to say, I had a hard time believing what the gentleman told me. So I drove past the house, and turns out, it was true. The place is a jungle. What the hell happened to all of the gardeners?”
The question was directed at Celeste. She knew he would wait until she responded. “It seems they’ve stopped showing up.”
“You think? And where is the husband?” Brendon asked. “My source says he hasn’t been in town since last fall.”
This time, Celeste refused to speak. She failed to see how Harriett’s marital status had anything to do with her lawn.
“He’s gone,” someone else confirmed. Chase Osborne was, by all accounts, living in the couple’s Brooklyn apartment with the head of his agency’s production department.
Brendon nodded as if everything suddenly made sense.
“I believe Harriett might be going through a bit of a rough patch,” Celeste offered. She wasn’t going to give him any more than that.
The previous October, Celeste’s husband, Andrew, claimed he’d seen two security officers drag Harriett Osborne out of the advertising agency where they worked and deposit her at the curb. Rumor had it that an altercation had taken place behind the closed doors of the CEO’s office. The promotion Harriett had been expecting hadn’t come through, and she hadn’t received the news gracefully. After hours, Andrew had peeked inside the office to confirm the stories he’d heard. The Cannes Lions and One Show pencils were back on the windowsill, but telltale gouges in the Sheetrock confirmed they had, indeed, been flung at the walls.