Janet Evanovich - Naughty Neighbor

The more she thought about it, the more exotic and heroic it seemed, and her life sounded dull in comparison. She’d lived all her life within the beltway. She’d barely traveled because she’d never had time for a vacation. She’d never seen a jungle or a desert or even the Pacific Ocean. In the past, she’d never much cared about seeing Kuala Lumpur or San Salvador or Shagai Fort, but suddenly she felt rabid with wanderlust. She should broaden her horizons, she thought. She should see more of the world. Maybe she should get a job with the CIA or Cunard or join the Peace Corps.

She was on adrenaline overload, she acknowledged. She was romanticizing Pete Streeter, and she was grossly exaggerating her desire to trade modern plumbing for a glimpse of the Khyber Pass. Still, she felt exhilarated over the idea that, suddenly, there were all sorts of new options and exciting experiences available to her.

Pete went east on the beltway to Connecticut Avenue and then cut south. He wasn’t sure if it was the best route, but it seemed the most straightforward. Louisa probably knew of a better road, but he didn’t want to disturb her. She was lost in thought, chewing his last piece of gum for all she was worth.

Her cheeks were flushed, and her hair was wild and tangled. She was steamy from passion and their run through the woods. She smelled like sex and Juicy Fruit, and just sitting next to her made his heart race. She was primordial woman in a Porsche. She was beautiful and erotic and naively blind to the power she held over him.

He couldn’t imagine what she was thinking, but the next morning she was going to wake up with her blood pressure back to normal and the passion of the night hours behind her. She was going to be furious that she’d almost made it in a car, on the side of a road, with a man she’d only known for three days and thought was a notch below slug spit. He was going to keep his door locked and his sound system cranked up until she was done breaking things.

He left Connecticut Avenue with its neon-lit restaurants and twenty-four-hour traffic. A block off Connecticut on 27th Street, urban Washington was dark and quiet, settled in for the night behind locked doors. Globed streetlights dropped dim light over gray sidewalk and made the porch and shrub shadows seem black and deep.

Pete always felt comfortable here. There was a softness to 27th Street. It was unpretentious with its old-fashioned above-ground wires, rickety garages, and messy lawns. The residents were busy but not unfriendly.

His house in Santa Barbara had privacy because of the exclusivity of the neighborhood. His Manhattan condo had privacy because the doorman strictly enforced it. 27th Street was a place where privacy needn’t be guarded. Privacy occurred naturally on 27th Street through a lack of interest and a shortage of idle hours.

There was normality here, Pete thought. It was a place to raise children and grow old with grace. At least, it had been prior to the pig business.

Pete parked the car and followed Louisa to her door and into her apartment. He checked out each room, including the closets. He made sure the windows were locked and the back door secure. The following day the alarm system would be in place. For the night he’d have to hope for the best.

“It would be safer if we stayed together tonight,” he said.

Louisa weighed the risk of being attacked in her sleep and decided she was safer taking her chances with the pig people. “I don’t think that’s a good idea.”

“I’d sleep on the couch.”

Louisa rolled her eyes.

“Unless you’d rather I slept in your bed…”

She felt the flush creeping up from her shirt collar. “I don’t want to talk about it.”

Pete grinned. He pulled her to him and kissed her long and hard. When he was done, he sighed in satisfaction. “Still hot for me, huh?”

He was right, of course, and that made it all the worse. “Out,” Louisa said. “Out, out, out, out, out!”

He gave another sigh. This time it was clearly regret. He opened the front door and stood on the porch until he heard the lock click.

Louisa wasn’t sure she wanted to get out of bed. It was morning, and the sun was shining, and Washington was on the move without her. She had no place to go-no job, no future. Even if she had a place to go, she couldn’t go there because she still hadn’t gotten her car repaired.

The beaches of Belize no longer beckoned. Only one memory held vibrant in her mind. She’d almost done it with Pete Streeter in his Porsche. She buried her face in her pillow and screamed. She was a slut, no doubt about it. Even worse, she was a dumb slut. Getting involved with Pete Streeter was dumb and would bring her nothing but grief. She groaned. Who was she kidding. She already was involved.

Okay, what could she do about it? The only thing that came to mind was suicide. The more she thought about it, the more appealing it became. The method of death would have to be lingering and pathetic, she decided. She wanted to suffer. She wanted to be an object of pity. Guns were too gory. A knife would be too painful. Pills might make her throw up. She could drive off the Woodrow Wilson Bridge, but first she’d have to rent a car. Hanging didn’t sound like fun. She didn’t want her eyes to bulge out of her head. Starvation was the way to go, she finally concluded. She would simply lay in bed and waste away.

She went back to sleep and awoke again at nine-thirty. She was hungry, but she supposed she had to get used to it if she was going to starve to death. She was examining a crack in her ceiling when she heard someone pounding on her front door. Ignore it, she told herself, but the knocking was relentless. It intruded on her self-indulgent depression. She lurched out of bed and shoved her arms into her robe. She went to the front door and threw it open. It was Pete Streeter.

“Yes?”

He handed her the morning paper and a big white bakery bag and eased past her into her apartment. “I figured you’d be bummed out this morning, so I brought you some doughnuts.”

She stared nonplussed at the bag. Here she was trying to kill herself, and Streeter had brought her doughnuts. Damn.

“So,” she said, “what kind of doughnuts?”

“All kinds. I didn’t know what you liked so I got four of everything.”

“Boston creams?”

“Fresh made this morning. They’re right on top so the icing doesn’t get smeared.”

Okay, she thought, she’d starve to death tomorrow. She had lots of time. There was no rush. She took a Boston cream and chomped off a big bite. Might as well make coffee since she wasn’t going to do the suicide thing, she told herself. She padded into the kitchen and poured some coffee beans into a grinder.

Pete tagged along and slouched in a kitchen chair. Her hair was a mess and her robe was unbelted, revealing a flannel nightgown that would have discouraged a lesser man. He thought she looked great. “You sleep okay?” he asked.

“Yep.”

“I expected you’d be up and dressed by now.”

“I was in the early stages of death by somnolence, but you disturbed me.”

“There’s always tomorrow.”

“Exactly,” she said, finishing off her first doughnut, selecting a second. Maybe she wouldn’t starve to death, she decided. Maybe she’d eat herself into obesity and explode. Death by doughnut.

“Have plans for the day?”

“Nothing past these doughnuts.” She made the coffee, poured two cups, and gave one to Pete.

He took a piece of lined paper from his shirt pocket. “I made a list of things we should do.”

“If any of this involves taking my clothes off, you can forget it.”

“Undressing is optional.”

She looked at the list. “You want me to proofread your rewrites?”

“I can’t spell, and I don’t have time to use the spell check on the computer. Then I want you to systematically call all your Capitol Hill friends and catch up on gossip. Try to steer the conversation around to pigs and Stu Maislin.”

“What are you going to do while I’m gossiping?”

“I’m going back to Pennsylvania. I want to take a look at the pig farm. Then I’m meeting a friend for lunch.”

He downed his coffee and stood. “Horowitz Security is supposed to show up sometime this morning. They’ll be working on both apartments.” He tossed a key onto the table. “This is for my front door.”

He thought about kissing her but decided against it. She didn’t look as if she wanted to be kissed, and she had her mouth full of jelly doughnut. “See you later.”

She had a third doughnut in her hand. “Mmmphf.”

It was twelve-thirty when Pete pushed his way into the McDonald’s on K Street. Kurt Newfarmer was already there. He was sitting in a front booth with what looked to be a firebreak around him. He wasn’t the sort of man people naturally gravitated toward.

Pete got a coffee and joined him, counting up the cartons and crumpled wrappers on the table. “Two Big Macs, one fish filet, three large fries, McNuggets, and a chocolate shake. Not hungry?”

“Watching my waistline.”

They were the same age, late thirties, but Kurt’s brown hair had already started to recede, and what was left had been cut in a Marine Corps buzz. Kurt Newfarmer was six feet with a corded neck and tightly muscled body that looked deceptively lean and loose. He was wearing a grimy ball cap, grimy jeans, running shoes, and a hooded sweatshirt of indeterminate color. Stained thermal underwear showed at the neck of the sweatshirt. He had a three-day-old beard, his eyes were lined and narrow, and years ago his nose had been reshaped by a gun butt. He reminded Pete of a down-and-out homeless hundred-and-eighty-pound ferret.

Pete had first met Kurt when he was in Argentina, and Kurt had been the signal man for a ranger unit. Kurt was a communications genius. Two years ago he’d quit the army and started doing freelance wiretap. It was rumored he was also semi-officially on the payroll for one of the three-word agencies.

“I’ve got a problem,” Pete said.

“Don’t we all.”

Pete pointed to his eye. The swelling had gone down, but he had a classic shiner. “Three days ago this problem broke into my house.”

“I like the part along the bridge of your nose that’s turning green,” Kurt said.

Pete knew Kurt had him pegged as a bad apple. Pete figured that was pretty funny since next to Kurt he thought he looked like Mr. Nice Guy. “I might need some help.”

Kurt gave the bulge under his left armpit a pat. “Just tell Uncle Kurt, and he’ll take care of it.”

“Must be awkward to get at your gun with that sweatshirt on.”

“Hell, I hardly ever use it. It’s been days since I’ve shot at anyone.” Kurt took a cigarette from the pack on the table and lit up. He dragged smoke into his lungs until there was a half inch of glowing ash at the end of his Camel. Smoke curled from his nose and rolled out the side of his mouth. He squinted at Pete through the haze. “So what’s going on? Bummed-out husband?”

Pete felt dizzy with nicotine deprivation. He automatically leaned forward to catch the secondary smoke, caught himself in midlean, and reluctantly shoved himself away.

Kurt caught the movement. “Trying to stop smoking again?”

“Could you look like you’re enjoying it a little less?”

The grin broadened. “It’s great, man.”

“You available for hire?”

“What do you want done?”

“For starters, I want to listen to a couple of people.”

“You’ve come to the right place.”

Louisa sat at her kitchen table and stared out her back window. There was a small gray bird sitting on her bird feeder. It wasn’t eating, it wasn’t preening, it wasn’t chirping. It was just hunkered down, its feet automatically clamped onto the wood dowel.

Louisa supposed it was wondering what to do next. She was in a similar state. She was the firstborn in her family and like most first children, she’d been the achiever. She’d been the honor roll student, the responsible daughter, the first to graduate from college.

Despite all this, her sense of purpose had never been well defined. For all her intelligence and discipline, she’d been a drifter. She’d made the major decisions of her life by default. She’d worked hard to excel at whatever task was before her, but she’d never charted a course for herself. She’d never felt impassioned about a career choice, so she’d simply traveled the path of least resistance.

It hadn’t been so bad, she thought. But it hadn’t been great, either. At best, it had paid the rent and kept her too busy to dwell on the fact that her life lacked zest. Looking at it in retrospect, she decided her life had been…adequate.

All that had changed since she’d met Pete Streeter. Pete Streeter was to her life what the big bang had been to the creation of the universe. She imagined herself as traveling in a new orbit, amid cataclysmic forces. Plague, pestilence, volcanic destruction were now hers for the asking.