Naughty Neighbor

© 1992

Chapter 1

Pete Streeter came awake on the third ring-just in time to hear the answering machine pick up the call. Streeter knew what the message would be; he’d been receiving the same one for three days. The message came at all hours of the day and night. It was untraceable, originating from public phones throughout the city. It was cryptic. A single word. “Stop.” The voice was electronic. Streeter understood the warning. He also resented it. He swore softly, more out of habit than feeling, then rolled over and went back to sleep.

Louisa Brannigan looked up at her ceiling and tried to control the anger that was bubbling inside her. It was four-thirty in the morning and the idiot upstairs had just gotten another call. He got them all night long. Not that she cared, but her bedside cordless phone picked up his signal. The phone rang a second time, sending her flying from the bed in a rage.

“That’s it!” she shouted. “I can’t take it anymore. I need my sleep. I need quiet. I need…”

She stood with hands and teeth clenched, eyes narrowed, nose wrinkled, but she couldn’t think what else she needed, so she snatched the phone from her night table, marched into the bathroom, threw the phone into the toilet, and closed the lid. Almost at once, peace descended on her. “Much better,” she said.

Three hours later Louisa opened a tired eye and stared at the digital clock beside her bed. She stared at it for a full minute before her brain kicked in and responded with a shot of adrenaline. She’d slept through the alarm. “Damn.”

She hurled herself to her feet and ran to the bathroom with her red flannel nightshirt flapping around her calves. She stopped dead in her tracks when she saw the slim silver antenna caught between the toilet lid and seat. She’d drowned her phone. Raising the lid, she gingerly transferred the phone to the wastebasket. It was impossible not to reflect on the symbolism. Her life, like her phone, was in the hopper.

With no time to waste, she took a quick shower and dashed back to the bedroom, shaking her curly dark brown hair like a dog in a rainstorm. She peered into the mirror over her cherrywood bureau while she picked at her bangs and took stock: Dark circles under her bloodshot blue eyes, definite water retention, and she felt shorter than her usual five feet six. It was not going to be a power day, she decided, turning to her closet with a resigned sigh.

Three weeks earlier she’d celebrated her thirtieth birthday with lunch at the sedate Willard and a late supper at the Hard Rock Cafe. Be eclectic, she’d told herself. Go for it. This morning she wasn’t feeling nearly so expansive as she zipped herself into a black wool gabardine skirt. Her blouse was silk and matched the magenta suit jacket. Her earrings were big and chunky and gold. Her mood was dark and cranky.

She trudged to the kitchen, taking note of the grim fact that it was only Tuesday, wondering how she was going to make it through the week when the loser upstairs kept her awake all night long. She’d left polite notes on his front door. She’d called the rental office. To date, she’d avoided confronting him face-to-face. She knew it was a fault. She had problems with confrontation. She was aggressive, but she wasn’t assertive. She was a wimp. The admission dragged a groan from her.

The truth was, her problems ran deeper than lack of sleep. She had a monster job that was growing more unwieldly with each passing day. In the beginning being press secretary to Senator Nolan Bishop had meant clipping news articles and keeping his calendar in order. Recently, he’d changed his profile to high, and the office staff was scrambling, trying to adjust to the pressure-cooker atmosphere. Her hours and her responsibilities had doubled. Her new role was exciting, but she was much more tense. Her personal life was nonexistent.

She dumped a handful of beans into the coffee grinder, punched the grind button, and took pleasure in the simple act of smashing something into minuscule pieces. She was developing violent tendencies, she thought. “Today coffee beans, tomorrow mass mayhem,” she muttered.

She had to get a grip. She dropped a filter into the top of the coffee maker, added the ground coffee, water, and impatiently watched the coffee drip into the glass pot. She was grossly late, but she wasn’t leaving the house without her coffee. There were certain rituals that shouldn’t be sacrificed. In Louisa Brannigan’s opinion, a civilized cup of coffee in the morning was what separated man from beast.

She poured herself a cup and felt a stab of satisfaction when she heard the thunk of her morning paper against the heavy wood front door of the two-story brick row house. Lately, Louisa had taken to telling herself it was the little things in life that really mattered. Lunch at the Willard was nice on her birthday, but fresh sheets, perfectly cooked pasta, glasses without water spots, and five minutes to leaf through the paper before leaving for work were pleasures she could count on day in and day out. She especially loved the five minutes she allotted for the paper. Five minutes of peace and sanity. Five minutes to enjoy her coffee and read the funnies. It wasn’t too much to ask, was it?

Pete Streeter also heard the paper hit. When it suited him, Streeter occupied the apartment above Louisa Brannigan’s. He had his own entrance, his own on-street parking, and his own hot water heater, but he didn’t have his own paper delivery. Ordinarily, Streeter didn’t give a fig about the morning paper, but there was a movie review he wanted to read this particular day, so he padded down a flight of stairs and snatched Louisa Brannigan’s paper.

His door clicked closed a moment before hers was carefully opened. If he’d known Louisa, he might have smiled at the colorful cursing coming from the front porch, but he didn’t know Louisa, so he took himself upstairs, oblivious to the outrage he’d aroused.

He spread the paper on the scarred, butcher-block kitchen table and drained half a cup of industrial strength, scalding hot sludge from a twenty-five-cup coffee urn. He grunted at the movie review and shuffled off to his bedroom for a pack of cigarettes. When he got to the bedroom, he remembered he’d given up smoking.

He muttered a few satisfyingly crude phrases and scowled at his cat. Scowling at the cat was one of those gestures of habit that neither man nor feline took seriously. In truth, the cat was Pete’s best friend.

Louisa narrowed her eyes and glared at the door next to hers. It was him. The oaf had stolen her paper. She’d never met him. Didn’t know what he looked like. What she knew was that he came skulking in at all hours of the night, and that he played his music too loud. He leaked disgusting cooking smells into the heating system, left his laundry in the basement washer and dryer for days at a time, and more often than not parked his car in her parking space. She hated him with the sort of passion only forced cohabitation could produce. The man was scum.

She should bang on his door and demand her paper back, she thought. But what if he wouldn’t give it to her? What then? She could hardly duke it out with him. He was probably large and hairy. And she couldn’t prove that he had her paper, could she? It wasn’t as if there were witnesses.

All right, so she could do without a paper for one crummy morning. After all, she was late and probably didn’t have time to read the paper, anyway. Right? Wrong. She’d allocated herself five minutes. Five lousy minutes, and the creep upstairs was reading her paper on her time. What was worse, he was getting away with it because deep down inside she was a wimp. She was afraid of the big, hairy slob who lived on the second floor.

“Ugh,” she said. “I hate being a wimp. I hate being a wimp!”

Okay, that does it, she told herself. She was not going to be intimidated by a man who thought fried onions and Spam were the base of the food pyramid. She thumped on his door with her fist, and then she gave it a kick. “I know you’re in there!” she yelled. “And I know you’re reading my paper!”

Pete looked up from the sports section and frowned. It was seven-thirty in the morning and some rude person was raising holy hell on his front porch.

“This used to be such a perfect neighborhood,” he said to his cat. “One block from the Metro stop, three blocks from the zoo, reasonable rent for Washington, D.C.” He shook his head. “Now look at what it’s come to…weirdos hammering on my door at seven-thirty in the morning.”

A shrill female voice carried up to him. “Uh-oh,” he said, “it’s the ditz downstairs, and she wants her paper.”

He kicked back on a kitchen chair and grinned. She was mad, and she was not being polite. He looked at his watch. She’d have to leave for work pretty soon. He could wait her out. “We’ll let her cool off a little,” he told the cat. “It’s always best to avoid violent women.”

Louisa gave one last kick. He was ignoring her! “Slimy, yellow-bellied coward,” she shouted. “You’re not going to get away with this! I will not be ignored!” She stomped back into her house and took the broom handle to the kitchen ceiling. Thunk, thunk, thunk. “This is for parking in my parking space. And this is for hogging the dryer. And this is for waking me up every night with your late calls.” Thunk, thunk, thunk.

Pete sighed. She was becoming annoying. The floor was vibrating, and he could hear muffled shouts coming from the air duct.

“I like to think of myself as a patient person,” he said to the cat, “but she’s starting to get on my nerves. I can’t concentrate on the funnies with all this noise.” He pushed away from the table and stood, searching through his jeans for a stick of gum. When he didn’t find any, he gave another sigh and ambled out of the kitchen, down the stairs to the front porch. In her haste to harass him, the woman-from-hell had left her door open, so Pete Streeter walked in and followed the racket to the kitchen. He took a wide stance, hands on hips, dark black brows drawn together, and bellowed over her thumping and shouting. “Lady, what is your problem?”

Louisa whirled around in midthump. “Ulk.” Fury was quickly replaced with panic over the fact that there was a large, almost naked man standing in her kitchen. “Who are you? What are you doing in my house?”

“I’m Pete Streeter. I occupy the apartment above you, and you’re ruining my morning with your ranting and raving.” He grabbed the broom from her and threw it into the hall. “No more brooms. No more kicking my door. No more cussing at the top of your lungs.”

He paused to look at her. She was prettier than he’d imagined. Average height with a lean, athletic body and a classic oval face. Snappy dresser. Too bad she was such a fruitcake.

Louisa was temporarily speechless. She’d been right about him being big and hairy, she thought, but she’d been wrong about the overall effect. He was six feet, with a rawboned, tightly muscled body, low slung jeans that sat on slim hips, and the most glorious head of curly brown hair she’d ever seen. It was rock-star hair. Hair she’d die for. “Is that really your own hair?” she asked.

“Yeah.”

“You play in a band?”

“No. I write movie scripts.”

Figures, Louisa thought, a flake from Hollywood. Her eyes narrowed. “You took my newspaper!”

“Sorry.”

“I want my paper back.”

“Be reasonable, I’m not done reading it, and you don’t have time to read it now. You’re late for work.”

“How do you know I’m late for work?”

“Lady, I could set my clock by you. At five-thirty your alarm goes off. I don’t know what the devil you do at that hour of the morning, but it involves a lot of door slamming. At six-thirty there’s more door slamming. You take a shower, tune your radio to NPR, and force me to listen to news until you leave precisely at seven-thirty every weekday morning.”

“I didn’t know my noise carried up to you.”

“Sweetheart, I can hear when your zipper goes down. And you shouldn’t be talking to your mother about your dates. Time to cut the umbilical cord, you know?”

She felt the air stick in her lungs. “You listen to my phone calls?”

“Yeah, and it’s pretty depressing. Why don’t you move your phone away from the air duct-”

“Out!” she screamed. “Get out of my apartment, out of my sight, out of my life! I’m going to get Mace. I’m going to get a gun. If I ever see you again, I’ll permanently disable you!”

Streeter grinned. “Must be awful to have PMS like this.”

“Ugh.” She smacked her fist against her forehead.