Rubbed Out by Barbara Block Page B

starting to come in on his skull. I wondered if they itched.
    â€œWhy’d you have to fuck everything up?” he demanded.
    â€œWhy’d you have to steal my friend’s dog?”
    â€œI didn’t. Myra found her. Maybe you should have asked her before calling Animal Control.”
    â€œI would have called them anyway.”
    He jabbed his finger at me. “You had no right to do that. They were Myra’s babies. They was the only thing she had.”
    â€œThen she should have taken better care of them. They could have died out there.”
    â€œShe was doin’ the best she could.”
    â€œShe was doing a bad job.”
    The kid hit the counter with the flat of his hand. The gecko that was on the ceiling skittered away in alarm.
    â€œPeople like you are always big with advice, but you never help out,” he cried. “Now she’s crazy, and it’s your fault.”
    â€œLook. What do you want?”
    â€œI want to tell you what you did.”
    â€œWell, you have. So how about leaving.”
    His face scrunched up, and he whirled around and ran for the door.
    I threw the article in the trash and started mopping the floors, but the kid’s words, the ones about always being big with advice, lingered in my mind. Calli had said that to me too. So had Murphy for that matter. Oh, well. I went back to thinking about where Janet Wilcox could have gone. It was more productive.
    When Manuel arrived, I cut out and headed for Woodchuck Hill Road. It was time to talk to the neighbors and see what they had to say about Janet Wilcox.
    Woodchuck Hill Road has two ends. The cheap end and the expensive end. The Wilcoxes lived on the cheap end, which is still more expensive than my neighborhood. The houses there are closer together, as opposed to the doctors’ end, where the houses are separated from each other by an acre or more of woods and the only things you see out your window are trees.
    It had started snowing again, a slow, steady drift. I had a vision of the snow piling up and up, shrouding everything, until silence was all that was left. As I turned onto Woodchuck Hill Road, I went by two cars that had slid into a ditch.
    Janet Wilcox’s house, as well as the ones around it, all looked as if they’d been built by the same builder. Three- and four-bedroom wooden colonials with attached garages. Only the trims on the houses were different. And the outside plantings. Other than that they were all the same.
    I started with the house on the left of the Wilcoxes. The young woman who opened the door looked to be about nineteen. She was blond and blue-eyed, and except for the ring through her right nostril, a ring that would have done Ferdinand the Bull proud, she could have been in a contest for All-American Girl.
    â€œPut a plug in it, Sam,” she yelled before turning her head back to me and asking what I wanted.
    I told her.
    Her eyes widened. “Boy, and I thought nothing ever happened around here.”
    â€œSo you know Janet Wilcox?”
    â€œI’ve seen her pulling in and out of her driveway.”
    â€œYou’ve never spoken?”
    â€œExcept to say hello. I’m the au pair.” She said it as if that explained everything.
    â€œPretty fancy.”
    â€œI thought so too until I started working.” Her grin flickered off. She wrinkled her nose. “Too many romance novels. That’s my problem. You probably want to speak to Mrs. Goldstein, but she isn’t in right now. You’ll have to come back later.”
    Before I had a chance to ask her when Mrs. Goldstein would be returning, the sound of wailing hit the air. The girl turned and ran toward it. I followed. Two five-year-old twins were locked in combat over a ball.
    The au pair put her hands on her hips and glared at them. “You’re both going to your rooms if you don’t stop that right now.”
    They didn’t.
    â€œI mean it.”
    The twins kept