Karen McCullough

A teaser from my story in the forthcoming anthology: 𝐷𝑒𝑡𝑒𝑐𝑡𝑖𝑣𝑒𝑠, 𝑆𝑙𝑒𝑢𝑡ℎ𝑠, & 𝑁𝑜𝑠𝑦 𝑁𝑒𝑖𝑔ℎ𝑏𝑜𝑟𝑠: 𝐷𝑦𝑖𝑛𝑔 𝑓𝑜𝑟 𝑎𝑛 𝐴𝑛𝑠𝑤𝑒𝑟!

The People in the Neighborhood

Elle almost dropped the crumpled piece of paper in the trash.

What impulse stopped her, she had no idea. Curiosity, maybe?  But then she didn’t know why she’d picked it up in the first place, instead of raking it into the growing mound of debris. She yanked off her gardening gloves, dropped the rake, and smoothed out the wrinkles in the sheet. A stray spring breeze almost snatched it from her hand, but she held tight.

The penciled lines, written in a shaky hand, might represent some schoolkid’s first attempt at a homework assignment. Elle painstakingly deciphered the spidery printing. Her first reaction—that it was a kid’s prank or joke—drowned in growing unease as she stared at it.

The note said, “Help, please! Prisoner in my own house.” It was signed, “Annie Henderson, 1606”

She didn’t recognize the name. The number belonged to the house immediately to the left of her own, and she’d found the note just a foot from the chain-link fence that separated the two properties. She’d bought her house in this pleasant Charlotte suburb three months before, and in that time the only person she’d seen go in or out of the place was the rather surly middle-aged man she assumed owned it. When she’d tried to introduce herself to him, as she tried to say hello to all of her new neighbors, he’d nodded icily, hopped into his battered F-150 pickup, and driven off, leaving her gaping.

Elle stuffed the note in her pocket. While raking up more debris previous owners had left in the yard, she considered what to do about the note. Would the police even believe her if she took this to them? Would they take it seriously? Should she take it seriously?

Maybe enough to try to check it out, at least. First, she wanted to find out if anyone even knew an Annie Henderson.

That afternoon, she talked to the people in the house on the other side of hers, but it didn’t help. The family with two small children had moved there a year or so ago. They did vaguely remember an older woman living at 1606 when they first moved in, but they hadn’t seen her in quite a while and never caught her name.

The couple directly across the street, though, did remember.

“Annie, right,” Martha Lambert, the middle-aged wife said. “I’ve wondered what became of her. She’d be in her late seventies, I think. She liked to putter around in the yard, though she never accomplished much. Seemed a bit ditzy, but sweet and friendly. Haven’t seen much of her since her son moved in about six months ago.”

“Nephew,” her husband Sam said. “Said he was her nephew. She never had any kids. He moved in to help take care of her. Dementia. She was becoming a danger to herself. I feel bad for her, though. He doesn’t seem a very friendly or caring sort. But it’s not our business.”

Martha frowned. “Come to think of it, we haven’t seen anything of her in months. But it’s been winter and she’s kind of frail for being outside in the cold.”

After a quick internal debate, Elle showed them the note she’d found.

Martha sucked in a sharp breath. “Oh, my.” A moment later, she added, “I think this is Annie’s handwriting. She wrote down a recipe for me a while back. Let me get it.”

She went to a desk on the other side of the room and extracted a sheath of papers. “Here it is.” She pulled one from the stack and brought it over.

They all compared the two papers. “It is Annie’s writing,” Sam said.  “Still, if she has dementia, she may not be…all there. In her right mind.”

“But what if she is?” Elle asked. “Or even if she’s not, but she’s being mistreated?”

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