Kevin O'Brien - Disturbed

He didn’t reach out to her. “Excuse me,” he muttered. Then he retreated toward the house — with Erin clinging to him.

“Nice to meet you!” Rachel called.

Molly was embarrassed that he’d acted so rudely — especially to Rachel, who was her friend. Jeff was like a zombie. She watched him and Erin head inside the house.

“Officer?” she heard Rachel say. “Officer, I don’t know if this has anything to do with it, but right before Mrs. Dennehy and I noticed that guy in my backyard, this crazy woman left me a really weird, threatening voice mail.”

Molly turned toward them.

Rachel nodded in her direction. “Mrs. Dennehy said this same woman has been harassing her, too.”

The cop frowned at her. “Have you reported this, Mrs. Dennehy?”

She shook her head. “We had a lot of crank callers and hang-ups after Angela was murdered. I just figured this one was taking longer to move on than the others.”

“Are the calls of an obscene nature?” the policeman asked.

“Well, she called me a bitch,” Rachel chimed in. “And usually people don’t call me that until they know me better.”

The cop looked a bit mystified, as if he wasn’t sure whether or not to laugh.

“I still have her on my answering machine,” Rachel continued. “Would you like to hear?”

The cop turned to Molly. “Could you come with us, Mrs. Dennehy?”

She followed them toward Rachel’s house. The cop mumbled something into a little walkie-talkie device on his shoulder. Molly glanced over at her house, wondering about Jeff and his odd behavior. He’d been so concerned when she’d told him about the attempted breakin, and within a minute or two, he’d just walked inside the house — leaving her behind.

She was reluctant to report the harassing phone calls. What if the police wanted to put a tap on the phone and listen in? Then they’d hear this woman asking where Jeff had been the night Angela was killed.

She knew Jeff couldn’t have had anything to do with Angela’s death. But the police didn’t know that.

“Have a listen,” Rachel announced, once they were in her kitchen. She pressed a button on the answering machine.

“You have no messages,” the machine’s mechanical voice announced.

“What? Oh, damn it!” Rachel said. “I must have pressed the wrong button and erased it when I was trying to shut it off. Of all the stupid. .” She sighed. “Well, you can ask Mrs. Dennehy. It was this crazy-sounding woman with a scratchy voice — and a weird way of talking, almost like she was reading a nursery rhyme. She said I’d be sorry I ever moved onto this block.”

The cop turned to Molly. “What kind of things has this woman said in her messages to you, Mrs. Dennehy?”

“Well, she’s never actually left me a message,” Molly explained. “I’ve only spoken with her a few times — and mostly it’s just gibberish.” She tried to avoid eye contact with Rachel. “She hasn’t spouted anything obscene or threatening.”

“One minute, please,” the officer said. He retreated down the hallway — by Rachel’s front door. He muttered into his shoulder walkie-talkie again.

“Molly?” Rachel whispered. “What gives? Don’t you want to report this?”

“I just don’t feel like getting into that whole thing about my brother again,” she said under her breath. And it was partially true. In that note left in Chris’s locker and the letter sent to Rachel, the telephone woman was holding that over her head as well. “I’m sorry, but right now, I’d just as soon drop it.”

Rachel patted her arm. “Okay, Molly,” she sighed. “But something tells me I’m not getting the whole true story here.”

When she walked through the front door five minutes later, she glanced over toward Jeff’s study at the stack of old credit card bills on his desk. If he asked what she’d been doing in there, she would tell him, “I’m trying to figure out why the hell there’s no record of where you were the night Angela was murdered.”

She’d just told that nice policeman it wasn’t worth reporting a few strange phone calls. But she knew she couldn’t ignore them much longer.

She found Jeff mixing a drink in the kitchen, while Erin watched TV in the family room. Jeff offered her a highball. It looked like a bourbon and water — her I-really-need-a-drink drink of choice. “Something tells me you need this,” he said.

She shook her head. “Thanks, anyway.” She turned toward her stepdaughter. “Erin, could you go watch that down in the basement, please?”

With a sigh, Jeff set the drink down and reached for one he was already working on.

Oblivious to the tension in the air, Erin passed between them and retreated down to the basement. Molly found the remote and switched off the family-room TV. She took off her cardigan sweater and draped it over the back of her chair at the breakfast table. She could hear the television in the basement starting up.

She turned to Jeff. The kitchen’s island counter was between them. “Okay, so what was that all about?” she asked him quietly. “Why were you so rude to our neighbors?”

He shrugged. “Why should you care? You hate them. They’ve been awful to you.”

“I don’t hate Rachel. I happen to like her very much. She went to shake your hand, and you just ignored her.”

Jeff put down his drink and rubbed his eyes. “I’m sorry, honey. I was distracted. I was worried about you and Erin and the house. If you want, I’ll send each one of them a written apology — starting with your friend. .” He seemed to falter for her name.

“Rachel,” she said. “I’ve already apologized for you. But you need to know something, Jeff. That crazy woman caller who’s been harassing me—”

“Damn it, Molly, I’ve told you, if you’d just screen your calls—”

“Let me finish,” she insisted. “The woman left a message on Rachel’s answering machine today. I heard it. She threatened Rachel. The same woman called Angela and Kay shortly before they were killed. I’m beginning to think Kay’s death wasn’t an accident. She could have been murdered. Have you stopped to consider all the deaths and accidents and tragedies this one little block has experienced lately? You should have heard Lynette last night accusing me of stirring up some kind of hornet’s nest of bad luck for everyone here on Willow Tree Court. She even brought up Charlie in her little tirade.”

“You can’t take what she said seriously,” Jeff pointed out. “She was half out of her mind last night.”

“But the thing of it is I don’t really blame Lynette for feeling that way. I’ve felt it too, at times. After what Charlie did, I’ve always worried about something horrible like that happening again to someone else I love. I’ve tried to prepare myself for when the other shoe might drop. Maybe that’s why I became so obsessed over the cul-de-sac killings. I didn’t want to tell you, but I’ve had some nights here when you’re out of town that I’ve been absolutely terrified.”

“But you’ve always acted so brave,” he whispered. “Why didn’t you say anything?” Setting down his drink, Jeff looked like he was about to come around the counter to hug her.

“Would it have made a difference if I said something?” she asked. “You’d have gone on your trips anyway. Am I right?”

It stopped him in his tracks.

She put her hand up. “My point is — I can’t really blame Lynette for thinking bad luck follows me around. But I know it’s not me or my bad luck that’s making all these horrible things happen lately. I think it’s the work of this demented woman on the telephone — I think she may be responsible for everything from Erin’s smashed pumpkin to Courtney’s car wreck. I need to tell this to the police — before someone else is hurt or killed. But one thing is holding me back, Jeff. She has something on you. You weren’t in Washington, D.C., when Angela, Larry, and Taylor were killed. And yet you’re sticking to that story. Well, sooner or later, the police are going to figure out you’re lying. And Jeff, God help me, I don’t want to be the one who exposes your lie. But I will. I will, if it means I can stop this woman from hurting someone else.”