February 18, 2019 - The purloined wheelbarrow

        I sniff the air as I step out of my mansard-roofed home at the head of the Somerset Heights subdivision that borders against the best-known Botanical garden in the county. It is a fine morning after a long, sleepless night, and I proceed with my daily constitutional walk circling the posh subdivision.

        My walk almost complete, I notice my next-door neighbor, a slender blonde socialite carrying out trash.  How convenient of her to be hauling last night’s dinner party trash to the curb just as I am passing by her home.

        “Company coming?” I quip.

        “No company has departed,” she answers glancing up as she unloads the liquor bottles from a tablecloth bundle into a cardboard box at the curb.

        “Departed you say.  Are you just neatening up or are you wiping away all traces of a murder?”

        “The neighbor’s warned me about you saying you read too many murder mysteries.”

        “Did they?” I smile at her as I poke the box with my walking stick.

        “They say you have us all under constant surveillance.”

        “It is true, I must admit.  I watch, and I watch, and I watch, but mostly I am disappointed.”  She arrogantly tosses back her hair to look at me.

        “You old bat—”

        “Until last night.”

        “Excuse me?”

        “Oh, still playing the fine lady with your high society manners.”

        She shakes the tablecloth free of cigarette butts onto the pavement and starts to fold it. 

        “I counted twelve guests going into your home last night, yet only eleven guests coming out.”

        “Get lost you old bag.” She turns away, tucking the cloth under her arm.

        “I was disappointed until I recognized an intermittent squeaking around 3:30 this morning – then I was most delighted that my vigilance paid off after all these years.” 

        I couldn’t help but press a knowing smile on my face and watch her shoulders tighten.  She abruptly turns to speak to me, then decides against it, and moves quickly toward her front door. I call loudly to her,

        “If you’d returned my wheelbarrow, I might not have given it a second thought, your twelve guests arriving but only eleven leaving.  It didn’t take me long to find it at the far end of the gardens.”

        She glances back to stare at me as she walks slowly backwards up her front walk.

        “What are you accusing me of?”

        “I’m not sure how you will ever forget that squeaking wheel that pierced the darkness last night during, shall I call it a nocturnal escapade.”

        The blonde recoils with a gasp at the swarm of arriving police cars. 

        “You purloined my wheel barrow to move the body from your back patio to the Botanical Gardens.  Your biggest mistake was not having the decency of returning it to my potting shed.”

        “We found the body, just like you said we would.”

        “That’s her, officer,” I waved my walking cane at her as his men advanced.

       

NOTE:

This is a little essay after a “dialog” training at my monthly writer’s class. I was given the prompt “neighbor”.

If you own a squeaky wheelbarrow – you know it’s distinct sound on a hot summer night.

Hope you enjoyed.