Page 5 of The Neighbor

The dog daysof summer have settled into Raven Terrace before Kimmy and Marilyn have a chance to get their party underway. All week, I’ve watched them scurry back and forth from one house to the other with armfuls of party goods, in addition to Misty, of course.

This week, however, the three boys have joined their mother in the party planning. The three of them look like rogue ducks following behind her each time she has to hurry over to Marilyn’s house. The oldest can’t take two steps without stopping in the road to pick up a pebble or a coin he’s found, and the twins never take a breather from their constant battling one another.

Always dressed identically, they make it difficult to tell them apart, but I’ve noticed the one has a deformity on his left hand that the other doesn’t. It’s nothing very big, but his pinky sticks out from the rest of his fingers. He’s the instigator of most of the fights, from what I can tell. Probably has some deep-seated issue from being injured, maybe at birth. Whatever his problem is, he never gives fighting his twin a rest.

So every few minutes, Kimmy goes traipsing across the street to Marilyn’s house with the disobedient ducklings following behind and Misty on her hip. Oddly enough, she never turns around to yell at the boys on these missions to get the party planned. She must be too focused on the Dog Day Extravaganza to do her usual screeching.

I speak for the entire neighborhood when I say thank God for that. Someone needs to figure out a way to keep Kimmy constantly distracted so she never barks at them again. It’s not like it does anything to stop them from acting out. They do it no matter if she yells or not.

For her part, Marilyn doesn’t appear as frantic while she’s making her way to Kimmy’s house. Then again, the older woman never seems in a hurry. She’s been around for a long time. Perhaps now is her time to slow down and take it easy. Or perhaps it’s simply her personality to not get flustered. She never acts like she’s out of sorts when that drunk fisherman she calls a husband comes home from the lake. He never has a single fish with him. Just poles and that tackle box.

Is it that she’s merely happy he isn’t out with another woman, so drinking while he pretends to fish each day is preferable? People will accept a lot of shit to keep their lives in equilibrium. Women especially, so it wouldn’t surprise me if she’s accepted that this bargain is one she can live with.

In the two months since I moved into this neighborhood, I’ve never seen anyone visit Marilyn and her husband with children. In fact, I’ve never seen anyone visit them at all. I think they might be childless. That would explain the wincing Marilyn seems to do a lot whenever Kimmy’s boys misbehave.

And just when I think I should turn away from the window because it’s always the same thing day after day in this cul-de-sac, a new person joins the party planners. The woman from the green house.

She looks younger than usual today with her dirty blond hair up in a ponytail as she tries to herd Kimmy’s boys across the street. Dressed in a white T-shirt, jean shorts, and yellow flip flops, she looks so fresh and new compared to the haggard mother of four and the elderly rose tender.

Her name is Caroline. Caroline Townsend. She’s twenty-seven with blue eyes. She rarely spends much time outside her home since she moved in, so today’s appearance with Kimmy and the kids is surprising.

Caroline intrigues me. I’ve searched online for everything I can find out about her, but I’ve come up with little. Her social media presence is sparse yet enough if someone is a busy working professional.

Except that I see no evidence of that being the case.

Someone her age, particularly a woman, usually spends more time on social media. She has only a Facebook account. No Twitter. No Instagram. No TikTok or Tumblr. I even checked Only Fans in case that’s where she’s making the money to afford living in this suburb of Philly. Nothing.

That leaves me with two ideas. Either she’s just a shy person who doesn’t like social media, which is possible, or she’s hiding something. My gut says the latter is more likely, so I’m making it my mission to find out what pretty little Caroline Townsend from 12 Park Circle is keeping from the world.

I’ve checked out every single person in this neighborhood. It’s easily done since that’s part of my position as a human resources consultant. My job is to find out what potential employees are concealing from the companies I work for. You’d be stunned to find out how many secrets people have.

Not that I ever am.

I know all about secrets. My life is an elaborately constructed façade to make sure no one finds out mine. I appear to be a mild mannered thirty-something year old man who works fromhome and happily attends the neighborhood functions. I keep my lawn at the appropriate height, always making sure to pay the landscaper a little extra so it never gets too high. That would make my house stand out from the others, and that’s the last thing I want to do.

You see, Amanda Michaels was my first kill but not my last. The way to keep that fact from being found out is to blend in with everyone else in the world. I look exactly like someone who has nothing to hide would. But who I truly am is nothing like the mask I wear.

So it’s clear Caroline Townsend must be hiding something because she’s doing exactly the same thing I am. She looks like someone who’s normal and belongs, but every fiber of my being says she’s hiding something behind that all-American girl façade.

And I intend on finding out exactly what that something is.

Two hours later,I haven’t paid attention to a single thing going on outside because I’ve been hellbent on finding out just who Caroline is. Unfortunately, all I’ve found is a Facebook account with a handful of friends and pictures of her new house here on Park Circle. What’s suspicious is she doesn’t seem to have anyone who she went to high school with on her friends list. Normal people usually do, assuming they went to high school. I’m not getting a dropout vibe from dear Caroline, so I’m going to guess she graduated from somewhere nearly a decade ago.

Just as I did right after she moved in, I spent the afternoon scouring the internet for any information on her and found little. She purchased the green house for nearly four hundred thousand dollars, which sends red flags up all over the place for me since I’ve seen no signs she works. Now yes, she may havewon the lottery or she may come from money, but neither of those possibilities are borne out from her Facebook account.

Perhaps she won the lottery when she was much younger and she’s weeded out all the people who only want a handout online, but I examined her entire history on Facebook and found nothing to indicate she ever even played the lottery, much less won.

So maybe she comes from money. The only problem with that is there are no friends on her list that could be her parents. As much as children might not like having their mothers and fathers join them online, the reality is they do. Anytime I see a job applicant who doesn’t have parents as friends on Facebook or other social media, I immediately search to find out if they’re still alive. Nearly always, if they aren’t online with their kids, they’re dead.

Caroline has no one who could be her parents as friends online, but when I search for deaths with the name Townsend, nothing matches. I’ve looked through death notices and obituaries in a hundred-mile radius from here, and nobody matches.

My expertise tells me that Townsend isn’t her real name. Or maybe it’s a married name, but there again, I’ve found no evidence of her being married.

So who is Caroline Townsend and how can she afford a home in this development right outside of Philadelphia on a salary that doesn’t seem to exist?

Without a social security number, I can’t check to see if she’s having money withheld from any job. I can do a credit check, though. I’ve held off on doing that until now because while the people who pay me to consult don’t much mind me searching anyone whether they’re applying for a job at one of the companies or not, they do tend to question when I run credit checks on people who aren’t potential employees of theirs.

My fingers hesitate over the keyboard on my laptop for merely a second or two before I type in her name to search her credit. If anyone asks, I’ll make up something to cover myself. They always believe me. Why wouldn’t they? It’s not like they think I’m some homicidal maniac stalking some woman who lives a few houses away from me.