Los Angeles Noir 2 by Hamilton Denise

Author:Hamilton, Denise.
Language: eng
Format: epub, mobi
Tags: ebook, book
Publisher: Akashic Books
Published: 2010-04-23T16:00:00+00:00

PART III

KILLER VIEWS

THE PEOPLE ACROSS THE CANYON

BY MARGARET MILLAR

L.A. Canyon

(Originally published in 1962)

The first time the Bortons realized that someone had moved into the new house across the canyon was one night in May when they saw the rectangular light of a television set shining in the picture window. Marion Borton knew it had to happen eventually, but that didn’t make it any easier to accept the idea of neighbors in a part of the country she and Paul had come to consider exclusively their own.

They had discovered the site, had bought six acres, and built the house over the objections of the bank, which didn’t like to lend money on unimproved property, and of their friends, who thought the Bortons were foolish to move so far out of town. Now other people were discovering the spot, and here and there through the eucalyptus trees and the live oaks, Marion could see half-finished houses.

But it was the house directly across the canyon that bothered her most; she had been dreading this moment ever since the site had been bulldozed the previous summer.

“There goes our privacy.” Marion went over and snapped off the television set, a sign to Paul that she had something on her mind which she wanted to transfer to his. The transference, intended to halve the problem, often merely doubled it.

“Well, let’s have it,” Paul said, trying to conceal his annoyance.

“Have what?”

“Stop kidding around. You don’t usually cut off Perry Mason in the middle of a sentence.”

“All I said was, there goes our privacy.”

“We have plenty left,” Paul said.

“You know how sounds carry across the canyon.”

“I don’t hear any sounds.”

“You will. They probably have ten or twelve children and a howling dog and a sports car.”

“A couple of children wouldn’t be so bad—at least Cathy would have someone to play with.”

Cathy was eight, in bed now, and ostensibly asleep, with the night light on and her bedroom door open just a crack.

“She has plenty of playmates at school,” Marion said, pulling the drapes across the window so that she wouldn’t have to look at the exasperating rectangle of light across the canyon. “Her teacher tells me Cathy gets along with everyone and never causes any trouble. You talk as if she’s deprived or something.”

“It would be nice if she had more interests, more children of her own age around.”

“A lot of things would be nice if. I’ve done my best.”

Paul knew it was true. He’d heard her issue dozens of weekend invitations to Cathy’s schoolmates. Few of them came to anything. The mothers offered various excuses: poison oak, snakes, mosquitoes in the creek at the bottom of the canyon, the distance of the house from town in case something happened and a doctor was needed in a hurry … these excuses, sincere and valid as they were, embittered Marion. “For heaven’s sake, you’d think we lived on the moon or in the middle of a jungle.”

“I guess a couple of children would be all right,” Marion said. “But please, no sports car.

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