Dawn Stewardson - Close Neighbors

“Honest, Daddy?”

“Yes…” He waited, suspecting his daughter wasn’t quite done.

Sure enough, she said, “Anne was just gonna tell me how we could stop the police from thinking Aunt Rachel killed Graham.”

“You told Anne that Rachel is the girlfriend the reporters are referring to?”

“No, just that I knew somebody with a problem….”

“Julie, why did you think you should talk to Anne about this?”

“Because she knows all about what the police do. When Penelope Snow figures things out in Anne’s books, that’s only make-believe. Really it’s Anne.”

“I know, baby. But when she makes up a story she puts in details that all fit together. That doesn’t mean she can figure out a real-life mystery.”

“Yes, she can. ’Cuz she used to be a private detective. She told me her father’s one, too.”

“Really,” he said again, his brain shifting gears. Here he was, not knowing what on earth he should do, and he’d suddenly acquired a neighbor who might be able to give him some advice. “Julie? Do you think it would be okay if I went back over and talked to Anne with you?”

Dear Reader,

Close Neighbors is a story about relationships, not only the developing romantic one between Anne Barrett and Chase Nicholson, but also the long-established ones in Anne’s and Chase’s families—particularly between Chase’s nine-year-old daughter, Julie, and the significant adults in her life.

The book spans a short period of time, yet each of these relationships evolves during the story. Most of us find change frightening, but as Julie’s grandmother tells her, “Darling, if everything always stayed the same, life would be awfully boring.”

I think it’s safe to say that Close Neighbors is anything but boring.

This book is special to me because my father helped me plot a good deal of it while he was in the hospital. That gave me a wonderful head start when it came to the actual writing, so if you ever find yourself spending a lot of time visiting someone in the hospital, you might consider trying your hand at a book. In the meanwhile, I hope you enjoy Close Neighbors.

Warmest,

Dawn Stewardson

Close Neighbors

Dawn Stewardson

www.millsandboon.co.uk

This one is for my father, who spent countless hours helping me with the plotting.

And for John, always.

PROLOGUE

CHAPTER ONE

CHAPTER TWO

CHAPTER THREE

CHAPTER FOUR

CHAPTER FIVE

CHAPTER SIX

CHAPTER SEVEN

CHAPTER EIGHT

CHAPTER NINE

CHAPTER TEN

CHAPTER ELEVEN

CHAPTER TWELVE

CHAPTER THIRTEEN

CHAPTER FOURTEEN

CHAPTER FIFTEEN

EPILOGUE

“THERE. ALL DONE.” Julie set a third glass of water on the table and smiled, then felt awful when Aunt Rachel didn’t smile back.

She hadn’t smiled all day. In fact, she’d been crying earlier. She’d come out of her room with her eyes red and her face puffy. So even though both she and Daddy kept saying there was no reason to be worried, Julie knew there was.

They’d kind of fooled her this morning, when they’d sat her down and explained what had happened. They’d made it sound okay.

Well, okay wasn’t exactly right. If you knew somebody and he got killed, it was probably never okay. But they’d said it was just one of those unfortunate things, so she hadn’t really been afraid. Not until the police detectives arrived.

That had been scary. And the stuff on TV was even worse.

At first, Daddy wasn’t going to let her watch it. Then he’d decided she’d see it at a friend’s house or something, anyway, and it would be better if she watched with them—so they could explain what was true and what wasn’t.

It was the stuff that wasn’t true that had been really bad. ’Cuz even though the newspeople never said Rachel’s name, they kept talking about an ex-girlfriend being the last person to see Graham alive—except for the killer. Only, somehow, they made it sound as if the police thought Rachel was the killer.

Daddy’d said they just did things like that so people would watch their news instead of somebody else’s. But when they made it sound like your aunt was a murderer, you felt awful.

“Hon?” Rachel glanced at her, then dropped a handful of spaghetti into the boiling water. “Would you go tell your dad that dinner’s in ten minutes?”

“Sure.”

She headed out of the kitchen and started up the backstairs. Her friends thought it was funny that their house had an extra set of stairs. But after her mom left, Daddy built a big addition across the back—so they’d have a family room downstairs and his office upstairs—and he’d put in the second staircase.

That was way before she’d started school, and he’d wanted the office so he could work at home more. Then, after her aunt moved in, one of them was almost always home. Rachel only worked when she had an assignment taking pictures to go with a magazine article or something.

Just as Julie reached the upstairs hall, the office phone began ringing. That meant she’d have to make one of those throat-cutting signs to her dad, ’cuz Rachel hated when the spaghetti got cooked too long, and—

“You’re insane!”

Daddy’s words froze her before she reached the doorway. He sounded angry, but kind of afraid, too, and he was never afraid.

Listening in on someone else’s conversation was against the rules, but she stayed right where she was, barely breathing.

“Of course I know they haven’t found it.”

Her heart had begun thumping, and she half wanted to run back down the stairs, half wanted to stay and hear more.

“You’re out of your mind! She didn’t kill him, so her fingerprints can’t be on it.”

The words kill and fingerprints started a hot, prickly feeling in her chest. She wished she’d decided to run back downstairs, because she was getting so scared that she felt like hiding in her closet, the way she used to when she was real little.

“You bastard! We’ll see what the cops think about that!”

Her eyes began to sting with tears. Daddy never swore. Maybe hell or dammit, sometimes, but never anything worse.

“Oh? And if I do call them? Are you going to walk into police headquarters with that gun? Don’t you think they’d have the brains to—”

One Mississippi, two Mississippi, three Mississippi, she silently counted. How many seconds would it take for Daddy to hear what would happen if he called the cops?

She kept counting and counting but never found out.

The next thing she heard was the little beep his cordless made when you clicked it off.

“SWANSEA, SWANSEA, how I love ya, how I love ya…”

Her song dissolving into laughter, Anne stepped out of the shower and grabbed a towel. She was such a dreadful singer that anyone hearing her would take off running. This morning, though, she felt so good she doubted it would bother her.

Rather than having to sleep through the rumble of streetcars and honking horns in downtown last night, she’d been treated to silence. And she’d awakened to the twitter of birds.

Thus far, she thought, searching through a carton labeled Shorts & Stuff, not a single one of her brand-new-home-owner fears had become a reality. And even though she’d barely moved in, she was already starting to think her real estate agent had told her the truth. That she’d never regret buying in the peaceful west-end neighborhood of Swansea.