Hi Neighbor

I came home and saw my neighbor, who is also one of my best friends, crawling out of the side window of my other next door neighbor’s house.  I could not believe what I was seeing.  I jammed my car into park and jumped out and ran to him.  The lower half of his body was dangling out of the window. 

“Phil!”  I said.  “What the hell?”  He told me to keep my voice down and help him.  I looked around and grabbed his legs and pulled him through the window.  He fell back onto me with bottle of wine in his hand.  He told me it was a two hundred dollar bottle of wine.  I asked him what the hell he was doing.  He said that Rita, the owner of the house and my neighbor, was passed out on her sofa.  She is an alcoholic.  The whole neighborhood knows it.  He said he had gone over to keep her company.  But she had locked the door and he could not get out.  The window happened to be open so he crawled out.  He told me he had been visiting her for a month.  She had given him that bottle wine for keeping her company.  He tried to explain their relationship.  “I don’t want to hear it,” I said. 

Rita Blanchard was sixty-eight and rich—family money.  Her husband, David Blanchard, was seventy-two and a smart man.  He was a physicist.  But he did not have Rita’s wealth.  I reminded Phil that David was not an idiot.  Phil was forty-six and married with children.  He joked he only did it for the wine and gifts.  He acted as if he was not worried about getting caught.  I told him to never talk to me about it again.  “This never happened,” I said.   

I tried to forget about the whole incident, until three weeks later.  That is when David came home and found Rita naked and strangled to death in their bed.  The police investigated everyone.  David was even investigated and cleared.  The police had no suspects.  Phil was panicking that he would be implicated.  I told him it served him right.  We speculated who could have done it.  Two weeks after Rita’s death we quit speculating.                          

David Blanchard approached Phil and me in Phil’s yard.  He began making small talk.  We gave him our condolences.  He thanked us and said, “I can’t live in that big house anymore without her.  Why don’t you two purchase the house from me as an investment?”  We told him we did not want to purchase another house.  Nor could we afford to.  “I paid one point two for it.  The most I could get now is seven hundred and fifty.  I’m underwater like everyone else.  You two can pay my original purchase price and my problem is solved.  I plan to move in with my assistant.”  His assistant looked to be in her early thirties.  I had seen her before at his house dropping off papers. 

We told him again that we were not interested in buying his house.  “Funny thing about what you see when you least expect it,” he said and squinted.  “Like a certain someone helping a certain someone else crawl through a window.  Then, there’s that matter of bodily fluids showing up in places where it shouldn’t be.”  I forced myself not to look at Phil.  I hoped he was not panicking.  “Police may call that motive.  They’ll at least investigate.  What do you two think?”  He paused and sucked air through his teeth.  “Well, you two give that purchase some thought.  One point two million is a steal for that house.”

John Martin