3

"Fiona! It's your aunt Marge. How are you, dear? How are the kids?"

"Aunt Marge, it's two in the morning,"

Fiona replies. "You remember we're living in Denmark now, right?"

"Oh dear, I forgot about the time change again, didn't I."

"Listen, I'll call you another time, okay?"

"Yes, dear,"

I say. "I'm sorry."

I hang up, feeling ashamed of myself. Of course Fiona's in Denmark now. And of course it's hours ahead of us. How could I be so foolish?

I distract myself with a book, and it helps. When the streetlamps turn on, I'm filled with relief, though there are still hours more to while away before I can make my move.

When it's bedtime, I help Harold upstairs. I tuck him into bed as usual and kiss him good night, then I wait a few more hours, tossing restlessly beside him, counting the cracks in the ceiling, hoping to find a reasonable explanation for Doris's house to be filled with hidden peanuts. How long was she slowly poisoning Bob under everyone's noses, and to what end?

The clock on my bedside table reads 3:00 a.m. Doris will return from Spain midmorning, so this is my only chance. I slip out of bed and get dressed in all black. I tiptoe to Doris's house, make my way through the kitchen, and open the sliding door. The motion-sensor lights switch on immediately—something I never considered. In the house behind Doris and Bob's, a light flicks on—probably someone coincidentally making a nighttime bathroom trip before stumbling groggily back to bed.

Once the neighbor's house goes dark, I make my way to Bob's shed and locate a shovel. I set to work, digging up the hydrangeas, then stabbing the shovel into the heavy, wet earth below. I dig and I dig. This is no job for a seventy-five-year-old woman with bad knees and a fluttery heart. It's not long before beads of sweat are streaming down my forehead. Despite the stabbing pains in my joints, I keep digging, until suddenly my shovel crashes against something that won't yield. I kneel in the dank muck, hoping to find an old brick or a stone, but when my fingers clear the dirt, I'm horrified by what glows in the shadowy light—a stark, white bone.

I stagger backward, then rush back into Doris's house, shovel in hand. I'm hyperventilating. I can't see straight. I flick on all the lights, leaving muddy smears everywhere I step. I head to the living room, but my wet shoes slip on the carpet, and I fall on the floor with a thump. The shovel leaves my hands, twists in the air, then ricochets into Doris's picture window with a startling, high-pitched crash. The glass bursts into a million pieces, falling all over the credenza and taking out the photo of Doris and Bob in their flamenco outfits.

I brush the shards of glass off me and get back to my feet. Across the street, some lights flick on. The neighborhood hounds start to bark, and a man—my next-door neighbor—comes out onto his front porch, dressed in a housecoat.

I rush out Doris's stupid yellow door and call out, "Everything's fine! Just a bit of broken glass."

"Marge?"

he says, squinting. "What are you doing at Doris's?"

"Watering the plants!"

I yell back. "Nothing to worry about. Go back to bed!"

I watch as my neighbor pulls his housecoat tight, then heads back into his house, appeased for now.

I sink into Doris's couch. Think, I tell myself. Think. Should I call 911? And if so, what do I say? Hi, I've just dug up my neighbor, Bob, whose wife buried him in their backyard after poisoning him with peanuts? I'll sound like a lunatic. No, I have to pause, think things through ...

I stare out Doris's broken window, where the first rays of light are streaming up over the rooftops. I'm so tired, worn out. I rest my heavy head in my hands.

That's when the banging starts, making me jump halfway out of my skin. Someone's pounding on the front door.

"Open up!"

I hear a man's booming voice. "Open the door!"

I stay stock still, hoping the yelling will stop, that whoever it is will just go away and leave me to gather my thoughts.

"We can see you in there, ma'am. We're coming in!"

The front door opens, and two burly police officers waltz in. They survey the scene—the mucky footprints, the glass shards everywhere, a shovel on the carpet, the sliding door open to the backyard, and me, an old woman covered in mud, shaking on the sofa.

"Ma'am, we got a call about a suspected break and enter. Do you live here?"

"No,"

I say breathlessly. "I'm Doris and Bob's neighbor."

"Did you break into their house?"

"No. They keep a key under the welcome mat,"

I explain.

"Your neighbors gave you a key?"

"Not exactly," I say.

The officers look at the broken window, then at each other.

"And where are Doris and Bob?"

one of the officers asks.

"In Spain, dancing flamenco. I've been looking after things."

"Been doing a hell of a job,"

says the other officer as he scans the mud-caked floors.

"You don't understand. Bob's in the backyard!"

I say, and I can't help it. I burst into tears. As I blubber uncontrollably, one of the officers walks over to the sliding doors, looks out at the garden.

"No Bob out here, Sergeant. But the yard's a torn-up mess."

"Doris said Bob went to Spain with her,"

I say through sobs. "But he never left this house. He's buried out back! And peanuts are everywhere."

"Ma'am,"

says the sergeant as he steps toward me. "It seems to me you're not doing so well. And your neighbors were worried this might be a break-and-enter situation, or at the very least, someone causing mischief. Why don't we go to the station, and you can explain everything a bit more clearly there, okay?"

I can't believe my ears. Nothing makes any sense. "You think I'm the one causing mischief? It's Doris you want, and for something much worse than that!"

The other officer, who'd marched down the hall, now returns to the living room. "She ransacked the bedroom too. Clothes everywhere."

"Okay, ma'am. Let me give you a hand up. You're coming with us."

I'm in the precinct downtown. I fell asleep on a chair in an interview room, and now the sergeant has left. If I've known a deeper exhaustion, I can't recall when. Every sinew in my body aches. I'm caked in mud. There's a Styrofoam cup of cold coffee on a table beside me. The sergeant brought it earlier, but I couldn't drink it.

He spent a long time with me in this windowless room. He asked a lot of questions, and I answered as best I could.

"Like I said, I'm Doris and Bob's neighbor. I live across the street. My name is Marge."

He asked how old I was.

"Same as Doris—seventy-five."

I tried to make him understand what's really gone on here, how I've watched Doris from across the street for five decades, and how beyond being a nosy, grade A narcissist, she also murdered her husband. Several times, I explained that I was digging in her backyard for Bob because peanut particles led me there. "Bob's allergic,"

I explained. "And now he's in the ground. You'll find his bones if you check."

The sergeant asked me why I broke the window, saying something about forced entry. I tried to explain it was an accident, but he didn't buy it. He wrote something on his notepad, then stared at me vacantly.

"Is there someone we can call?"

he asked. "A family member who can vouch for you?"

"There's my husband,"

I said. "But he's no help in the state he's in. And there's my niece, but she's all the way in Denmark."

I realized then the ugly truth—that I have no one, not a single person, except ...

"Doris,"

I said. "She's due back from Spain in a couple of hours. If you wait for her, you'll see for yourself that Bob's not with her because she buried him in the yard !"

The officer snapped his notepad shut. "Okay, Marge,"

he replied. "You wait here."

And that's what I've been doing, waiting in this room, hoping the sergeant will return full of apologies, then thank me for keeping a close neighborhood watch that led to the discovery of a heinous crime.

The sergeant does return. In fact, he's standing in the doorway right now. He moves to one side so I can see who's behind him. It's her—Doris. She's dressed in a red-and-black polka-dot top with puffed sleeves. She's sun kissed, and I can smell her awful perfume from here.

"Bloody hell, Marge. What happened to you?"

she asks. "You look like a drowned mole. And my house has been ransacked."

"Where's Bob?"

I ask. "How do you explain that one, Doris? He didn't come back with you, did he?"

"No, he did not,"

Doris replies matter-of-factly. "He stayed in Spain."