“In my purse, why?”
“I need you to call Eliza, get Carter on the phone if you can. I need him to clear a path for me to see what happened over there with my own eyes.”
Gwen cringed. “Clear a path? I don’t understand. It’s probably an unfortunate accident.”
Neil looked around the room, spotted her purse, and brought it to her. “Just call her.”
Eliza’s voice might help to calm her down, even if Gwen had no idea why Neil insisted on sticking his nose into the investigation.
While Gwen removed her phone from her purse, Neil walked up the stairs to the officers in her bedroom.
The phone rang twice before Eliza picked up. “Hey, Lady…what has you calling this—”
“Eliza?” Gwen heard the distress in her own voice.
“Oh, no, what’s wrong?”
Gwen closed her eyes; saw the bodies. “My neighbors…they’re, they’re…”
“They’re what, honey?”
She swallowed. “Dead.”
Eliza gasped.
“I was washing dishes. Neil called, pissing about the monitors in the backyard.” Recalling the events now made her remember the distress in his voice. More than normal.
“And?”
“The monitors have been acting up a lot. They don’t work when the neighbors are in their hot tub for some reason.”
“The naked neighbors?”
Naked and dead neighbors. Gwen sucked in her bottom lip and refused to let tears surface. “Neil told me to go check if they were in the tub. I was pissing mad at him, Eliza. Ordering me around. I told him it was the last time I was running up stairs to look down at my neighbors. And then…then I looked. Then the house alarm went off, and Neil was ordering me to lock the door and wait for him.”
“Oh God, Gwen. That’s awful.”
“Neil needs to talk to Carter. Is he there?”
“He’s not. But I’ll call him and tell him to call Neil’s phone right away.”
“OK…thanks, Eliza.”
“I’ll call you right back.”
Eliza hung up and Gwen held her phone in her lap. Lights flashed out her front and back windows.
Two people were dead. Gwen wasn’t sure she could live in this house alone after all.
“You noticed something abnormal on the surveillance system?” the sarcastic, wet-behind-the-ears cop asked.
Neil lied. “Yes.”
“What?”
“I’ll have my assistant make a digital file for you to examine.” What Neil needed right now was to get out of the bedroom and over the fence into the neighbors’ yard to check out the scene himself.
“Did you know the victims?”
“No.”
“Miss Harrison?”
“You’ll have to ask her.”
“Who are you to Miss Harrison?”
Neil narrowed his eyes. “Her security.”
“This is hardly an upscale neighborhood, Mr. MacBain. Sounds like the security system you have here and the surveillance is over-the-top.”
Neil’s jaw twitched. “If you’ll excuse me, I need to investigate the scene.”
“Private security isn’t cleared, Mr. MacBain. I’m sure you know that.”
Neil clenched his fist.
The cell phone ringing in his pocket directed his attention somewhere else and kept him from committing a felony.
“MacBain,” he answered.
“Neil? It’s Carter. What’s going on?”
Neil turned his back to the cops. “Gwen’s neighbors are dead.”
“That’s what Eliza just said.”
“Mr. MacBain, this is an active scene, we don’t—”
“I need clearance from whoever’s in charge of Tarzana PD to check out the scene. And I need it before they f**k it up over there.”
The officers looked at each other with slight smiles on their lips.
Cocky kids.
Neil heard Carter talking to someone before he got back on the phone. If anyone could arrange his clearance, it would be the governor.
“I have someone on it. Eliza just called Dean.” Good. Dean was a detective with the LAPD, and a close friend of Eliza’s. “Do you think it’s a homicide?” asked Carter.
“I won’t know until I look. Hope the hell not.”
“Mr. MacBain?”
“I’ve got to go,” Neil told his friend. “Call Blake, tell him Gwen’s safe.”
“Will do. I’ll call back if there’s a holdup.”
After Neil hung up, the officers started questioning him again. “Where do you live?”
Where he lived wasn’t relevant and answering these kids’ questions while the uniforms were running around outside was a waste of valuable time. Neil cut them off. “I’ll talk to you after I’ve seen the area.”
He returned to Gwen’s side. She hadn’t moved an inch from the couch.
“You all right?”
Her blonde head started to nod and then she shook it. “You don’t think this was an accident.”
Neil didn’t confirm or deny.
“That’s why you told me to stay in my room, get the gun.”
Those few moments when she’d screamed and didn’t respond to him on the phone were the longest in his life. He ran out of his house and broke every traffic law to get to her. Rick’s words repeated in his head. I think they were just f**king with him…making him bleed on the inside, ya know?