Disclaimer: See Chapter 1
A/N: I would like to thank everyone who has reviewed or added this story to alerts and favorites. I'm truly humbled.
Chapter 2—And Who Is My Neighbor?
It was nine in the morning. Ray Jr. was in school. There was nothing for her to investigate, so Yelina sipped her coffee and basked in the silence for as long as possible.
But there were those bills that lay in front of her, taunting her, reminding her that she couldn't pay them. One by one, she thumbed through them. Car insurance. Electricity. Ray's burial. The cost of moving what she could salvage from Brazil. Cable. The credit card that was just about maxed out. . Getting Ray Jr. some new clothes for school. Her new job as a P.I. paid most of the expenses, but not all. At least she had her retirement pension from Dade County. The money Raymond had brought in from those drug runs was now completely gone, spent on that huge hilltop house in Rio. Raymond insisted that the house would be good for them, up and away from all the crime, but she had felt like a bird in a gilded cage. Besides, it didn't work. Ray Jr. still found his way to the drugs and the favelas.
With a sigh, she just slapped the papers on the brown table again. Yelina didn't want to admit it, but she felt trapped. Alone again. Helpless.
She had forgotten all about that desperate, lonely prayer she'd prayed that night. Still, that dark, shadowy figure stood out in her imagination. She found herself staring out the front window. Who was she? Where did she come from? A stately woman like that should be jetsetting and surrounded by friends. She should be on the arm of a rich husband, arranging flowers, volunteering in a church, or teaching college. But not locked up in a plain, barren little house.
Curiosity won out. Figuring she'd take a break from her finances, Yelina picked up her coffee cup and stepped out into the balmy morning breeze.
The little blue stucco house was still quiet, just as though nothing had ever happened. But this time, instead of just being a vacant house, it was just quiet. The blinds were closed.
Still, she found herself drawn to look. That burgundy four-door car in the driveway. Was that an old Buick Regal? A 1986 model? It was certainly in pristine condition for its age, she thought. Yelina knew a lot about American cars from being a detective and now a PI, and that old Regal looked as though it had just been driven off the lot. It bore a Minnesota license plate. She committed the number to memory and headed back inside to her laptop where she clicked keys and searched the Minnesota Motor Vehicles website.
The car was registered to Adelaide Johannsen, born June 1955. Using her search function, she then went to the Minnesota Bureau of Licenses and typed in Adelaide Johannsen.
Staring back at her on the screen was the stone-cold face of a beautiful, stately woman in her fifties. License photos were hardly ever flattering, but the loneliness and sadness in this woman couldn't be missed. Her last known address was in the tiny town of Grace, Minnesota, just a stone's throw from the South Dakota state line. This looked like the shadowy figure, she thought.
She then went to another search website to find out about recent home sales in the city of Miami. She typed in the address across the street and hit Enter. The house had been purchased by Adelaide Johannsen. No other useful information. She had simply moved here from Minnesota.
Yelina was tempted to run more information based on Adelaide Johannsen's name and birthdate. But at the same time, she couldn't be nosy. After all, this woman's only crime was to want some privacy.
She then ran a simple search on Adelaide Johannsen of Minnesota and hit return.
Some news notes included a house fire in Okley, Minnesota in 1986. No details. She scanned over more articles to include a Joshua Michael Johannsen whose little league team took Minnesota State Championship in 1985.
No wedding announcements. No obituaries. No births. Nothing else that might shed some light on this woman. No arrest records. Only a driver's license from the state of Minnesota. She thought about doing a Lexis-Nexis search under the name, but she could not afford the fifty-four dollars, she reasoned. Not for something like that.
Yelina just watched out the window when something moving in the back yard of the house caught her attention. She stepped outside and looked again.
The woman wore a lavender beach hat and long sleeves in the Florida heat. She looked as though she was pulling weeds, slowly and painfully, paying no attention to anything else around her. She kept her head down, shadowed by that lavender brim, bending down, pulling weeds, looking around, then very delicately taking a cloth and wiping her brow.
Yelina craned her neck. It looked like the woman said something to someone in the house, but she was too far away to be heard.
Slowly, step by step, Yelina came to the edge of the curb, across the street, and watched again. The woman had her back turned and seemed unaware of her presence. Finally she was at the edge of the front yard.
"Hello? Miss Johannsen?" Yelina called. "Miss Johannsen?"
The woman turned with a start, head down, sure to keep her face covered, but Yelina could see from her body language that she was shocked, scared, and angry at the intrusion. She held her white-gloved hand over her lavender hat and bolted into the back door and slammed it shut, sure to let Yelina know that she wasn't pleased about this disruption.
Stunned, Yelina stopped. At this point she wasn't sure whether to go back into her house or try to apologize to the woman. Probably best to give her some space, she reasoned. She walked back across the street, glancing behind her, just in case the woman might change her mind and come back out, or maybe at least peer out from those closed blinds.
As she stood safely back in her own front yard, Yelina studied the plain house. Except for the Buick Regal in her driveway, everything stayed just as plain and barren as though it were still vacant. Lonely ladies in their fifties typically liked to adorn their yards with flower pots, mail box flags, yard statues, or at least a welcome mat. Maybe even a noisy little dog to keep her company. Everything about this yard seemed to say "Nobody lives here!"
It was after dark when Yelina heard that familiar tap on the door. Given the day's events, she came to the door more cautiously.
Horatio stood at the door expectantly. "Yelina."
She smiled. "Checking up on me, Horatio?"
"I left my sunglasses here when I brought Ray Jr. home."
She opened the screen door. Somehow she sensed that wasn't the real reason he came over, but she would accept that. "Come in. I haven't seen them, but you're welcome to look."
As Horatio followed her into the living room, he couldn't help but notice that her stack of bills lay face down as though she didn't care to look at them. "How are you doing?"
She glanced at the floor. "All right."
"Are you sure?"
"Positive."
Yelina turned her attention to the front window when she saw a light come on across the street. She came to the window and watched, trying not to be too conspicuous. Curiosity got the better of Horatio, and he crept behind Yelina, also peering over her shoulder.
"Have you met your new neighbor yet?" he wanted to know.
Yelina turned around, smiling to see Horatio so close to her. "No. She's very quiet. Her name is Adelaide Johannsen. I did a search on real estate transactions in this neighborhood. She's the new owner."
The woman came out of the dark house. She wore the lavender hat, full sleeves, long skirt, and those white gloves again. She had her head down so that nobody would see her face, even in the darkness. Quickly and quietly she climbed into her pristine blue Buick Regal, started it up, and drove away.
"She seems very lonely" Horatio observed.
Yelina looked over her shoulder at him. "Mmm. She does."
Both of them watched out the window in silence for a moment.
"Do you ever feel lonely, Horatio?"
He looked into her eyes. "Why do you ask?"
She looked out into the dark street again. "Lonely like that?"
The P.I. lay in her bed, alone again, when she heard a car door slam. She turned over and glanced at the clock. Eleven-thirty.
As Yelina peered through her blinds, she could see the woman, mysterious as ever, holding several bags of groceries in her white-gloved hands. She had just moved in, so Yelina thought that maybe she was just buying cleaning supplies.
Should I go outside and offer her some help?
She turned around and picked up her binoculars, peering at the grocery bags. The faint streetlight gave her the lighting she needed.
Cocoa Puffs? Juice boxes? Flintstone Vitamins? Hardly something a lonely woman in her fifties would eat. The woman had been there for several days now and had no hint of family. She came out to collect the rest of the white plastic bags, never looking around, and then shut the door behind her. The house went dark again.
Yelina put her binoculars down and just watched. Something was very strange about this woman.
She would meet her neighbor tomorrow.