Hold On

My next-door neighbor was cool—Tilly, an old lady. She was quiet. She was also private but friendly and happy to look after Ethan on the rare occasion I needed her. She did this because she was a good woman and she liked us, not because Ethan or I mowed her lawn and shoveled her snow whenever we did ours (which we did).

And she acted like the light of God shone down on her when her asshole son or her bitch-face daughter deigned to pay her a visit, bringing her grandchildren. I was not in my house 24/7, but I didn’t miss the fact that these pilgrimages back home to momma happened rarely. Ethan and I had lived there for over two years and those bastards had shown twice, collectively.

But the house next to Tilly’s was a rental. Not one like mine, where my landlord gave a shit. One where the landlord didn’t, so it was in visible disrepair, which meant the rent was lower and the renters were of the same level.

I’d seen the new tenants. They’d been around a few months. In that time, they’d had one party that was loud, which I’d had closed down.

But they were around a lot, in and out a lot, and had a slew of visitors, so I had a variety of opportunities to see them.

Being a person who was quickly judged, I was not judgmental.

Still, the man had dickhead written all over him, and the woman was a sister in the way she’d convinced herself she couldn’t do much better, so she didn’t try.

Now she was on the stoop, red in the face, still in her shapeless nightshirt, hair wild, clearly, even from a distance, pissed way the fuck off.

He was in jeans and a jeans jacket, a few feet down the walk from her, his back to me, but his body language was easily read and he shared his woman’s mood.

Since they were a house away, I didn’t hear what he said. I just knew he replied when she kept screeching.

“Fuck you! You don’t change your mind, motherfucker. Carlito will learn all your shit!”

At that, I knew it was time to go inside and do it quiet so neither of them would know I was outside and I’d heard what I’d heard.

This was what I did.

When I soundlessly closed my door behind me, I looked into my living room and hissed, “Shit.”

I didn’t know Carlito.

But I worked in a bar that served booze to cops, bikers, and bankers. Hairdressers and lady doctors. Farmers, plumbers, and lawyers.

And at a bar, customers considered waitresses deaf to anything but drink orders.

Also at a bar, customers considered bartenders their own personal shrinks.

So I knew that the least of what a man called Carlito was was a low-life loan shark.

But considering I’d heard his name murmured on more than one occasion by Colt, Sully, Mike, Drew, Sean, Merry, and a number of other cops in that ’burg, I suspected he was more.

I did not need that shit on my block, but it was more.

I did not need that shit on the block where my kid lived.

I went to my kitchen to pour myself a travel mug, emptying the last cup of joe from the pot into the mug to take out with me when the coast was clear. I was standing in the living room, holding it in my hand and listening for my neighbors, when my phone sounded with a text.

Excitement and annoyance chased its way through me as I looked to my phone on my purse, wondering if the text was from Merry.

Last night, through texts, his games had begun.

I was trying to ignore this.

It was hard to ignore.

I put the mug down on the coffee table, grabbed the phone, and saw it wasn’t from Merry. It was a text from Violet telling me she could pick Ethan up from school on Thursday when both Mom and I were working.

When I texted her back to confirm and give thanks, I saw I had a voicemail.

It was from that number I didn’t know.

I didn’t want to listen to it, but just in case the school got a new extension or some teacher was calling me from their own phone for some reason, I went to it, hit play, hit speaker, and heard, “Ms. Sheckle. This is Walter Jones. I would appreciate it if you could phone me back when you have a moment. Just so you know, I’ll make it worth your while. I was a profiler with the FBI, currently freelance, and am researching a book I’m writing on serial killers of the last twenty—”

I set my teeth and hit delete.

Fucking motherfucker.