The Nosy Neighbor (Busybodies Collection, #4)

by Nita Prose

The thing about Doris is she’s a busybody with her nose up in everyone else’s business.

I’ve always been determined to love my neighbor, though Doris has never made it easy.

He’s the kind of man who wouldn’t hurt a fly.

And with that, she click-clacked her inappropriately pink kitten heels out of my house and back to her own.

candy-apple-red sedan

Only Doris would welcome guests with a joke about their underpants.

The wall behind it features new “artwork”—hairy male nudes in various states of undress.

“Well, stuff my cornhole with a beanbag,”

In the old days, it was bursting with activity—kids on bicycles, dogs running loose (mostly Doris and Bob’s stupid cocker spaniel).

We both just sit there, quietly trying to figure out a reasonable explanation for why a man who is deathly allergic to peanuts would have an empty jar of peanuts in his recycling box.

Those ridiculous frilled sleeves have no place on a man,

At first, Bob’s shoes appear dusty, but as I bend, I see it’s not dust on them but a gritty powder. A deodorizer perhaps? The last thing I want is to sniff Bob’s shoe, but I do it. Then I rub some granules between my thumb and index finger. I smell them too. I even put a tiny particle to my tongue to make sure my senses aren’t failing me. They are not. Peanuts—ground peanuts. In Bob’s shoes.

“Peanuts everywhere,” I gasp between labored breaths. “Doris—what if she wanted him dead all along? I think maybe she’s gone and done it. I think she killed Bob.”

until suddenly my shovel crashes against something that won’t yield. I kneel in the dank muck, hoping to find an old brick or a stone, but when my fingers clear the dirt, I’m horrified by what glows in the shadowy light—a stark, white bone.

“You dug up Princess, our old cocker spaniel,”

“She mentioned a husband,” the sergeant replies. “Harold,” I say, insinuating myself back into the conversation. “My husband’s name is Harold.” “Should we call him?” the sergeant asks. “Marge,” says Doris before I can answer. “You know perfectly well that Harold is in an urn. He died two years ago, and you’re still not over it.”

“I told you before, Marge. If you don’t live life to the fullest, you deserve to die.”

Shame about poor Harold, falling off a ladder the way he did, smacking his head on your garage floor. Pity, too—you finding him there, bled out and dead. A terrible accident.”