The Neighbours

Eight

"Did they live together?" He asks as we wait in our room for either the night to fall, so we could go break in to Melissa's house again, or for us to stumble onto something through the information from the husband's computer that we missed before.

"Yeah, why?"

"She would've known that there was an extra ten feet of her house not accessible by another room inside. She'd have to be stupid not to know. The wall is going to look extremely thick. I can't remember what it looked like from the front, we weren't in long enough."

I nod. "So we're assuming she knew about the operation, or at least that her husband did something requiring him to have this secret room in their house."

"I'm thinking it is a safe assumption at this point that she has known for a while. Between the house, the time of her death, and your conversation, I'm thinking she must have known."

"And she was with him on all their vacations. He'd either have left her behind for a good portion of their vacation every time or she would've been with him. And that's a lot of excuses to make up every time."

"So if she knew, why was she killed?"

"Because she spoke up about it? Because she's the reason I found out about it? Because she basically gave me reason to look into their financials?" I thought out loud.

"So they both knew about it, but she was the reason people, meaning you, found out about it. Doesn't seem right. He would've killed you, mad at her yeah, but I don't think he would've killed her over it."

"How come their house wasn't closed off? How come the police hadn't roped it off?"

"She was killed at her brother's house."

"Her brother? She has a brother?"

"My buddy said she was killed at his house."

"I never looked into her family." I bring up my information of their file on my laptop and looked over to see him shaking his head, "What?"

"You can dig up someone's whole life in seconds, can't you?" The way he said it made me want to ask a lot of questions.

"Anything with a trail online, but I don't do it for fun. I only do it for cases or if it's someone I want to know about." I shrug.

"Someone you want to know about?"

"It's not like I look up the past of everyone I talk to, mind you it's maybe five people, but people like my car buddy, yeah. Then I know how deep of trouble I could get in having him as an asset."

"So people you work with?" He walks to the coffee pot and pours two more. Zack looks really... tense, maybe.

"I'd never met him before, so yeah. I'm going to look into his life a bit. It's not like I looked everything up. Just to see if I should've helped him how I did. And whether I was okay to meet up with him in dark and secluded places to get cars. It'd be stupid not to. I just wanted to make sure I'd put my trust in the right place."

He nods but stays quiet as he hands me a coffee. And he doesn't meet my gaze. Odd.

"Zack, what is it?"

"Nothing-"

"Don't lie to me. You just lost all the colour in your face over the last two minutes. Even I know something is-"

"It's nothing." He growls.

"Zack, I know we're not super close-"

"All the more reason to drop this."

"If I hadn't been hired, I wouldn't have known any of this."

"I just hadn't thought of it. Can we let this go?" He still wasn't looking me in the eye, "Please, Keys."