The Deadly Neighbors (The Zoe Hayes Mysteries) Read Free

basement air was chilly and mildly rank. Rotting garbage? Dead rats?
    I squatted beside her in the shadows, wiping smudges off her face with soiled fingers, making them worse. “Molls, I’m sorry. This visit is all messed up. Hang in there a little longer, okay? We’ll go— I’ll take you for ice cream as soon as we find Grandpa.”
    “I don’t want to find him. I don’t like him.”
    “Well, we still have to find him and see how he is.”
    “I don’t care how he is. I hate him.”
    Oh dear. I wondered if I’d traumatized her, if she’d forever associate the word “Grandpa” with dank slimy stairs and chilly dark basements. Actually, to me, the description didn’t seem far off.
    “Mollybear, Grandpa’s an old man, and he might not be feeling well. We have to make sure he’s okay.”
    She glared, defiant. But she let me take her hand, and together we started across the expanse of darkness under my father’s house. The basement was an open underground space, unbroken by walls. We stepped around support columns, piles of newspapers, stacks of cartons, mountains of luggage, mounds of old clothes. We passed hunkering silhouettes—the water heater, a tangled mass of pipes, the furnace. The guts and bowels of a big old house. I told myself that I was imagining the crawling sensations on my arms. No spider webs were clinging to my face, no whispers tickling my neck, taunting me with secrets I couldn’t quite remember. No shadows flickered in the dark corner near the cedar closet. I hurried Molly through the clutter, around discarded furniture and broken appliances, barely escaping the grip of a familiar uneasiness I’d thought long forgotten. By the time we reached the stairs we were almost running, and near the bottom of the staircase, afraid to look back, I felt certain we were merely two steps ahead of some deathly embrace.
    My mouth went dry. I clutched Molly’s hand and sped up the steps. Panicking about something nameless and unseen, telling myself I was being childish, I literally dragged Molly up the steps. We flew, but, as in a nightmare, the staircase seemed to elongate before us, each step seeming steeper and farther away, harder to climb than the last. With each step, Molly got slower, her breath faster. She was upset and tired; I was being insensitive, expecting too much of a six-year-old. I forced myself to slow down, grasping her hand until, finally, we made it to the top of the narrow, creaking steps, and, relieved to escape the basement, I pushed open the kitchen door.
    Even before we’d stepped onto the fading linoleum, though, I’d stopped breathing, stunned first by the sight of my father, then by the knife and the widening pool of blood.

T HREE
    I NSTINCTIVELY, I STEPPED IN front of Molly, trying to protect her, to block her view. But that was futile. We stood at the basement door, gaping.
    I took it in quickly, but in a jigsaw of pieces. A giant bottle of orange soda. A bowl of potato salad. White paper napkins. A jar of mayonnaise. I saw each item separately, in close-up. Cabinet doors, hanging open on loose hinges. A parched philodendron beside the window. A broken platter in shards near the trash can. Dishes of dog food and water. Slices of white bread peppering the floor. A woman in a floral housecoat, spread-eagled on the floor near the refrigerator. My father, unshaven, thin, his white hair long and unkempt, crouching over her, his hands dripping red, gripping a carving knife, slicing her neck.
    Suddenly, events blurred. I was in the air, flying, plunging across the room, over chairs and countertops, landing on my father, knocking him over and sending the knife soaring from his grasp, clattering to the floor. Somebody yelped; someone howled. Angry and spry, my father shoved me away, pounced to retrieve his weapon and grabbed it by the blade, cutting deeply into his palm. Righting it swiftly, he began brandishing it over my head, mindless of the bleeding gash. My father’s face