Neighborhood Watch

Neighborhood Watch

I've read so many stories that involve a community party gone bad that I had to try my hand at it. As seems to be the case lately, I do like to celebrate good friends and faithful wives. There is no explicit sex in this story, so if that's what you're looking for you'd best move along.

>>> >>> >>>

Friday evenings in the summer air make every winter night worthwhile. Where I live, we have neighborhood parties about once every month during the winter months, but during summer it's every other Friday night and most of the time the turnout is good. This prompted the teenage girls in the neighborhood started a very successful babysitting business and all the kids, both young and old, were happy to have their parents away for a few hours. The parties rotate from house to house and about once each year we have what's called a progressive dinner where five families get together to host a dinner and each course is served at a different home. Party goers spend forty minutes at one house, enjoy the food, drinks, and conversation, and then everyone walks to the next house and the next course. The last course is coffee and dessert and it's a good thing we all live within walking distance of the last house. It takes the burden off one family and it's great fun. The rest of the parties rotate in the normal manner from house to house and from host to host, and every party is a little different.

Our community is diverse and that's a blessing. Some of us are fairly traditional about it. We fire up the grill, throw on some burgers and sausages, make a few salads and side dishes, and everyone digs in. At least I tried to have a good selection of relish and such to top off the meats. However, Karen and Bob Jackson are big into making their own barbeque. They have a smoker dedicated to the effort and their parties are legendary. The Patels are Indian by descent and they serve up some of the best chicken vindaloo, aloo gobi, lentils and assorted curries that you will find anywhere. The last two years, Darrin and Michelle Stevens prepared the very best grilled tri-tip steak and roasted corn on the cob that I have ever had and served it up with two different home-brewed beers. Pat and Steve Elliott are vegetarians, but when they host nobody misses the meat. I don't know what they do to those vegetables, but every bite is a different treat. And then there's Marie and Henry Benedict. Henry likes to fish. He can grill fish ten different ways and you want a little bit of every different type he prepares. All told, there are about two dozen families that get together for our community parties. Some families have backyard pools and there's dancing with the usual debates and gossip. It's a great community and I like the people here.

Well, I like most of them, anyway. Frank Baxter I could do without. I took an instant dislike to Frank the moment I met him. He had that smarmy way about him and a smirk that said, "I'm one step ahead of you." I thought Frank would pick my pocket the first chance he got, but it turns out he would steal more than a man's wallet when given a chance. I wasn't alone in my dislike for Frank; most of the men disliked him and behind his back we called him Baxter. He was the only guy we routinely called by his last name. The thing that irked us was that the wives seemed to like the guy. That's the thing with wives, or at least our wives. They never seemed to have a bad word to say about anybody. I would bad mouth the guy and she'd just say, "Oh, Jim, just get over it. He's not that bad." I've known Julie for twelve years and we've been married for eight, and that sort of comment was the only time in our marriage that I ever felt uncomfortable about our relationship. Baxter was a predator.

It was mid-May and the cookout was at our place. I had two grills going with steaks and potatoes while the asparagus and assorted vegetables were roasting in the oven. Salads were waiting in the fridge. The turnout was good with about sixteen couples while the rest were on vacation or otherwise committed. Steve was manning the bar just a few steps from the grill. I had the horseshoes out, which is always a great way to figure out who's had too much to drink. The speakers were in the back windows with music playing, and everyone was having a great time. As was always the case, the guys would gather around the grill, coming and going between the grill, the bar, the horseshoes, and the dancing in the yard, as we talked about the affairs of the day. Actually, "affairs" was the one word we never used, but I started noticing that every married man would casually glance in Baxter's direction. Baxter never hung with the men by the grill. He never had much to say to the husbands; he was always with the wives. They would laugh at whatever crap he was selling, and he'd take them for a dance. Baxter never sat out a slow song and he was always there to get to a man's wife ahead of her husband. We had a fox in the hen house, or maybe he was just a skunk.

On this night the discussion around the grill turned to crime. There had been some break ins not many blocks from us and one car had been vandalized in the night just one block over, so we felt that crime was coming our way. It came to a head when Henry told the six of us gathered by the grill at that moment about being called up for jury duty. There was a fellow on trial for breaking into homes in the middle of the night while the families were sleeping. We looked at each other and everyone thought the same thing: that guy had to be carrying a gun to be that brazen. Then Henry told us how the accused was wearing an ankle bracelet that he could plainly see because his pants leg didn't cover it when he sat down. If our attention wasn't focused before that, it was then.

We started talking about a Neighborhood Watch. Some of the men thought we should take turns walking or driving around the neighborhood in the middle of the night, but that didn't gain much traction. Everyone agreed it would be too easy for someone to sneak past us, get into a house and get out, without us detecting them. Then we thought about home security systems and we did like the idea of that, but they are expensive, and it still leaves each of us on our own. Some of us eventually went for it, but most of us didn't. Then I suggested a screwy idea. "You know, thieves probably case a street before they choose their target. Suppose we got a bunch of those little inch-cube dash cams? They can be made to take stills every few seconds with a rotating buffer that will last a few days and the batteries last longer. We could use a little Velcro and mount them over the outside window trim on the second floor where they can watch the exterior of our houses. We can help watch each other that way and if anyone sees anything suspicious, they can alert the rest of us."

There was a momentary pause and then we all glanced over at Baxter.

"We don't need to tell everyone what we're doing."

"No need to make the wives worry needlessly." That was Henry again. Baxter was dancing a slow song with Marie.

We ended the discussion with talk of motion detectors and exterior lights and guns. Thankfully, my neighbors mostly dislike guns, and I don't think that idea caught on. Still, I made a mental note to avoid walking through the back yards of my neighbors without telling them.

That night I ordered four to experiment with. A week later I knew they worked, and I ordered another dozen to get us started.

I told myself this would be just a little toy to play with. If I were truthful, I'd admit that I didn't want my wife to know about it. I didn't want any of the wives to know. Baxter worried me and I think he worried the other husbands. My fear were playing on my mind and I knew that I needed to get it under control. Julie had never given me a single reason to doubt her. I knew this, and still I worried. That's what a smirking shit like Baxter can do to a man. He fuels fear and doubt in a husband's mind, and I could swear the bastard likes it.

I checked my cameras every few days while Julie was out or asleep. I caught Jackson walking his dog and twice he just stood there while the mutt pissed on my mailbox post. I know dogs do this, but it bugged me to watch it and see Jackson do nothing. I made a mental note to piss on his post myself while everyone was asleep. I saw kids playing, the mailman delivering the mail, my neighbor across the street getting his morning paper in his boxers (classy guy), husbands and wives going to work and coming home, and absolutely nothing out of the ordinary. Truth be told, I was relieved. This is how it's supposed to be, and my mood improved with each viewing. In fact, I soon began to enjoy it. I got glimpse into the life of my neighborhood while I was normally at work and with the exception of a dog or two, I liked what I saw.

About a week after we got the Neighborhood Watch up and running, I got a call at work from George Mitchell. George and Margaret are about fifteen years older than Julie and me and they've always impressed me with how steady they seem. They are like the rock that anchors the neighborhood and whenever we have a question or a problem with the locals I go to George. He asked if I could meet him for lunch and I agreed. It was a rough lunch, and our usual roles were reversed. We each ordered the Reuben and uncharacteristically I got a beer.

He got out his tablet and began activating it. "Last night I was reviewing the images on the camera in the front of my house. I caught something and I need your opinion on what to do about it." George lives across the street from Baxter, so he had my attention. He turned his tablet around and ran the images. I watched Baxter's front door carefully, but I didn't see anything. "Did you see it?"

"No. What am I looking for?"

"Watch again. This time, watch Baxter's back yard between his place and Darrin's." Darrin Stevens was one of our friends who had missed the last cookout. I watched and there it was, plain as day. Baxter was walking across the back yards to Darrin's house. George stopped the images.

"Did you catch him going home?"

George advanced the images, turned the tabled, and started the viewer again. "Almost two hours later." Sure enough, there was Baxter walking home.

We were both quiet for a bit after that until I finally stated the obvious, "Darrin's not going to like that."

"Well, that's the sixty-four-dollar question, isn't it? Do we tell him, or do we keep it to ourselves? I mean, what do we really know? He visited for two hours, but they could have stayed on the back porch and it might have been perfectly innocent."

"Or Darrin may be married to a cheat and not know it."

"What the hell do these wives see in that jerk, anyway?"

"That question has been nagging at me for a long time now."

George looked at me for a moment. "You don't think...?"

"No. There's just this little nugget of doubt that's bored into my brain. You know Julie. She never has a bad word to say about anyone. I wish that just once she'd spit in his eye and kick him in the nads."

George was laughing at this point. "Yeah, I know Julie. She'd never spit in his eye, she'd never kick him in the nads, and she'd never cheat on you any more than you would cheat on her. The girl loves you, so push those thoughts out of your mind."

"I know. Shits like Baxter have a way of creating doubt. It's one of many things I hate about him."

"Well, if it makes you feel any better, he got to me, too."

"Seriously?"

"What do you mean, 'Seriously'? Margaret is still a beautiful woman."

"No, no, I didn't mean it that way. It's just that I always think of you two as a rock and I'm a little surprised you'd let Baxter get to you."

"Welcome to the club. Anyway, a few weeks ago I had a little talk with Margaret about Baxter, and I asked if he'd ever 'been a problem' to her? That's how I worded it."

"What'd she say?"

"She laughed and said she was too old to attract a player like Baxter."

"How do you respond to something like that?"

"I stopped off on the way home from work the next day and bought the sexiest negligee I could find and a necklace with some seriously big rocks on it."

I laughed as I shook my head and dropped my gaze to my beer, but the seed was planted. A few moments later I looked back at my friend and asked, "Where did you get that negligee?"

"They've got a store at the mall for that sort of thing. You can't miss it. It's the one where all the married men stand in front of the window while their wives shop elsewhere." George was smiling and paused for a moment, then he added, "She laughed when she opened it, but she wore it that night. It was a good night."

I followed George's advice and two nights later I presented Julie with two boxes, carefully gift wrapped by the saleswoman. The rocks might not have been as big as the ones that George could afford, but the teddy was a gossamer dream. Her response was slightly different from Margaret's: "What'd you do?"

"What do you mean what did I do?"

"Eight years and this is only the second time you've given me something like this." She held up the shear teddy. "And the first time was our honeymoon."

"I just wanted to do something nice for my wife. I wanted some way to say, 'I love you!' That's all."

She was smiling, but she wasn't buying any of it. "Would this have anything to do with those little cameras you put around the outside of the house?"

Shit! "No. Well, maybe a little, indirectly, but I really did want to show you that I love you very much and I'm more grateful for you than I can say." That got me a meaningful kiss.

"I love you, too. So what's with the cameras?"

God, she was like a dog with a bone. "It all started as a high-tech neighborhood watch, but I'm afraid it's become something else." She just sat there looking at me. "We think we caught Baxter messing around with one of the neighborhood wives."

That got a wide-eyed response of shock followed by not a small amount of anger. "And you thought that I might be...?"

"No! No. Never."

"But you had your doubts."

"I was scared. I never doubted you, but I know that asshole's game and I think he got into my head."

She looked at me with sadness, then kissed my lips, gave me a light tap-tap on the cheek, and said, "Get your head out of your ass, Daniel. I'm your wife past, present, and always. Got it?"

"Got it." I thought nothing could feel as good as when she lifted that awful weight off my shoulders. That night she wore the teddy I'd bought for her and it turns out I could feel even better.

It occurred to me later the next day that I'd spilled the beans to Julie. I honestly didn't know if that was good or bad. I never told her who we suspected, and it struck me that she didn't ask. I wasn't sure what, if anything, that meant. Maybe she didn't want to know. In the end, it changed nothing, and the cheating continued. I guess she hated cheaters as much as I did.

Two days after I gave Julie the teddy, she was planting annuals in our front garden. My camera caught Baxter walking up to her. I couldn't hear what was said, but about a minute later she was stabbing him in the chest with her spade. Even without audio, I could tell she was offended. I decided that camera was the best $35 I ever spent and picked up some pamphlets on cruise ship vacations the next day. (We never went on the cruise. Julie insisted we take the kids to Disneyland, instead. It was actually more fun than I anticipated, and the kids had a ball.) She did tell me that Baxter had been subtle with his inappropriate remarks in the past, but for some reason he was more brazen on that day. She surmised that he had mistaken her willingness to ignore his remarks as acquiescence. He would not make that mistake again.

So, George spoke with the Pat and Steve Elliott. They lived behind Baxter and disliked him even more than the rest of us. It seems that Baxter made a habit of blowing his cut grass into the vegetable garden they planted every summer along the back of their yard. They had two cameras but put neither in the back thinking they didn't want to be accused of spying on their neighbors. At George's urging, they got two more directed so they could observe Baxter's comings and goings in both directions. It didn't take long, but still we were surprised by what their cameras turned up. It seems that Baxter had at least two cheating wives living in opposite directions from his house. They caught Baxter going into Craig and Barbara Perkin's house and not coming out for another two hours.

George, Steve and I got together for a beer after work and we tried to decide what to do. On the one hand, we could be kicking a marriage down the stairs, and on the other hand we could be betraying a friend. George said it best, "If you were the husband, what would you want us to do?" Well, that was an easy question to answer and we decided to call Darrin and Craig and invite them out for a beer on Saturday. Somehow, I was nominated to make the call.

I was starting to hate this whole Neighborhood Watch idea.

You have a pretty good idea what that friendly beer was like, right? There were five of us at the table, three snoops and two angry husbands. The first plate of nachos ended up on the floor. The first pitcher would have followed if Steve hadn't grabbed it first.

"Guys, I know this looks bad, but all you know is that he visited."

"Yeah, he visited our wives for two fuckin' hours while we're at work!"

"Well, two hours, anyway. We don't know if there was any..." The looks they gave stopped me from finishing the sentence. "Look, it's your decision, but if it were me, I would want to know without a shadow of a doubt."

"How many times has he visited my wife?"

George spoke up. "Well, only once that we know. Darrin, I hate to tell you, but he's been to your place twice."

"Two hours both times?"

We just nodded.

"How much are those cameras you guys have been buying?"

"They're cheap -- just about $35 each and we always get an extra memory card to make it easier."

"I want three, one each for the living room, kitchen, and bedroom."

"Me, too."

"How are you going to keep your wives from finding them?" I had a mental image of their wives finding the cameras and then all hell breaks loose without them ever getting the answer they needed.

George had the solution. "See if you can put them in the AC units. The grill will hide them."

We had anticipated their request and I handed each man three cameras plus extra batteries and memory cards. All I could say was, "I hope we're wrong."

"Thanks, Daniel, but we all know you aren't."

It didn't take long, and both men got the proof they needed. They kept silent about it until they had everything arranged with their lawyers. Divorce papers were drawn up, bank accounts divided, and then credit cards were cancelled at the last moment. Eventually, families were divided, fathers became part-time dads, and nobody was happy. It wasn't pretty and the whole affair left the neighborhood in mourning. They say that a divorce is like a death in the family. Well, we had two deaths in our community, and they were all people that we loved and cared for.

The first party after the blow up was a somber affair. Two wives were conspicuous by their absence and two husbands were conspicuous by their drinking. We got our friends to their beds that night, but the whole night was more like a wake than a party. It was a long time and a blazing fire before things returned to normal.

George and Margaret Mitchell celebrated their thirtieth anniversary in early October. The neighborhood got together and rented a dance hall for the night. We booked a band, stocked the bar and hired a caterer, and we invited the whole neighborhood. It was a night to remember. George and Margaret's family was there along with several prominent members of the town, and we encouraged everyone to bring their cell phones and take lots of pictures. We specifically encouraged lots and lots of photographs with everyone in as many as we could manage. To be certain there was evidence (I mean documentation) of this happy event, all the minicams were removed from their windows and spread about the room. Then, while we were all celebrating, Frank Baxter's house burned to the ground. Baxter was out of town and all his neighbors were at the party. By the time anyone noticed the blaze, it was too late for the fire department to save the structure. The arsonist was never caught. Frank sold the property and moved away. He was not missed by anyone.