Excerpt: LIVING PROOF (that no good deed goes unpunished), Neighborlee, Ohio, Book 4
"Hey, Gordon.Who reported us?" I tipped back, pivoted to face him, and balanced on myback wheels for a few seconds.
"Mr.Poldruhy." He stepped over to the railing at the bottom of the ramp andleaned on it. The two-inch pipe groaned in protest.
"He's threeblocks over. Man, those dogs have lungs."
"Joyce says shesaw somebody creeping around the fence just before the dogs woke up. All thissnow reflection, even with the lights out, it's hard to find a dark spot."He hooked his thumb over his shoulder at my neighbor across the street and onedoor down.
I would have to wheelover to Joyce's place tomorrow with a plate of cookies and thank her. Problemwas, I hadn't even started my holiday baking. The combination of my folks beingin the vicinity of the Bermuda Triangle and missing their last two check-inphone calls took a lot of the steam out of me.
Harry came outsideand retrieved the big spotlight from under the passenger seat of the Jeep. Pophad insisted that I needed to have one, just in case I had car trouble in themiddle of the night, in the middle of nowhere. What was I going to do? Turn itinto a klieg light and wave it at the sky until the Mounties showed up? Well,Pop would have been laughing now, as Harry helped Gordon look around theperimeter of the fence for footprints.
Problem was, betweenthe melting and freezing of old snow and the blowing of new snow for the lastthree hours, it was hard to tell what footprints all over the yard were new andwhat were old, what belonged there and what didn't, and what had been coveredup already. Gordon loved to play with his CSI toys, but he didn't even make ahalf-hearted offer to take footprint casts and try to match the soles withfamous brands in the national registry. I knew that had to depress him, so Imade sure he took two pieces of pizza when he left. From the boys' meat-loversbox, of course.
"So, who waspoking around, do you think?" Pete said, when we finally settled down inthe kitchen. He flipped the lid open on the top pizza box and didn't go throughhis routine of inhaling loudly and smacking his lips. The boy was distracted, forsure.
"If the securitycameras Kurt installed in the fence posts were working…" I shook my head.Felicity felt bad enough about breaking Kurt's newest toys. I didn't want torub it in, even though she wasn't even in the house.
"Whoever it iswill come back, eventually." Harry opened his mouth and turned the pizzaaround so he could devour it crust first. The glitter in his big, dark eyeschallenged me.
"Pete, say theblessing this time?"
He hadn't even gottenhis pizza onto his plate, let alone lifted it to his mouth. He groaned, let histwo slices drop, and licked sauce off his fingers before folding his handstogether to pray.
I barely listened tohim recite the standard lines he had been using since he was seven. My mindswitched back and forth between the rotten turn my day had taken, and themystery that greeted us when we got home. Sure, we had some weird characters inNeighborlee, but on the whole even the weirdos were friendly, and mostlyharmless. Other than the Grandstones, and some of the wackos who ignored thesubliminal “go away, we don’t like you” vibe the town gave off.
