Chapter 388: Meeting the Neighbors

I might as well get this out of the way. They will be seeing a lot of other teenagers around here and me driving around here now.

“Well, that was rude,” I said to the woman.

“Who is getting robbed?” the lead officer said, coming over to me.

I laughed and said, “These people swatted me. My parents told me we were moving into the mansion I got from that Darren guy when he died last fall. I sure as hell wasn’t going to have my Maserati anywhere near the movers. All of them dodge the Camry as if someone covered it in crap or something. I didn’t think about delivering takeout after turning eighteen, but I may go back to doing the bike messenger thing. That was a blast.”

The old crone came over to say, “This is the criminal we have seen casing the neighborhood. He shouldn’t be able to get in here. Ours is a secure, gated neighborhood.”

“Miss,” the cop said. “I should haul you and your conspirators to jail for calling in a false report. You could do with a little bit of attitude correction.”

I joked, “Maybe a mental-health evaluation would be better.”

“How dare you, young man. Who do you think you are?” she asked.

Ah, now she asks.

“If you had bothered to ask, you wouldn’t be looking like a cranky old hag who can’t even a pay pool boy to give you the dick your husband won’t,” I told her as her eyes went wide and the two old guys chuckled. “My name is David Jones. I’m moving into the mansion at the other end of the neighborhood in the center with my parents, siblings, and daughter. It is the one that is twice the size of all the others. A friend of mine now lives in one with her children and her grandmother. On the other side of my mansion, the people moving in are friends, but I don’t quite know their whole story there yet. I just got back last night, so I am a bit behind on my information. Oh, one more thing. In case you don’t know, my friend’s grandmother owns her mansion. I own the rest, including yours, as you are leasing it from one of the corporations I got when this guy I met a few times died. If I got your adult diaper in a twist, I suggest you live in Florida or some other place where nasty old women like you go around annoying neighbors. I’m seventeen, and I have a lot of friends who come to visit all the time. There will be a lot more traffic in our neighborhood.”

She started going off on the cop, and then her phone started screaming out that she had a message.

Her jaw dropped as she read the lease details for her home. The ping to my implant let me know she just received it. The woman had signed it thinking it was sales paperwork without reading the text. Better yet, I had the right to terminate any leases, without any notice, effective immediately. I didn’t even have to give them any time to move. If I wanted it, someone would escort them from the neighborhood like people who got evicted. On the other hand, she and her husband had to give a minimum of six months’ notice, pay a fifty-thousand dollar renovation fee, and cover the costs to repair all damages, plus wear and tear. The house had to be move-in ready with it back to the same as they got it when they moved in. That included all the hard-wood-floors.

By the time she finished reading through the bullet points, all but the one cop had left, and we had gathered a crowd of busy-bodies. Right then, a Mercedes drove past and pulled into the hag’s driveway. A greying, fit man got out of the driver’s side and a high-priced lawyer from the other.

“You must be David,” the man said, shaking my hand. “Please call me Irving. I would apologize for my wife, but I’ve quit trying to cover her nasty ass. I already provided my notice six months ago of my intention to terminate the lease on contingency. You happen to have done me a big favor getting my wife out of the house as she put a restraining order on me to keep me or anyone representing me from being within ten feet of the house. It only covers the house, not her. My lawyer has provided the police officer with a copy of the other to ensure I am complying.”

He turned to hag and said, “Per the prenup you insisted I sign, sexual impropriety on my part is immediate grounds for divorce. As you requested, you get the house. Should you screw around on me, you don’t see a dime of alimony. I have footage from multiple security cameras showing you banging the landscapers, starting the day after moving in. You need not sign the paperwork. I only required video footage of you have received them in person. I’m not the moron you have believed me to be all these years. Our prenup also qualified as an uncontested divorce agreement.”

Oh, I can see what is coming.

“Mrs. Canopy,” the lawyer said. “You agreed to take the house and signed the associated lease agreement. Per the contingency filed with the leasing company, the lease terminated when you received the pre-agreed upon divorce settlement paperwork. Because you committed adultery, you forfeit alimony. By taking the residence, you have the sole responsibility to return it to the new condition as when you moved in. We have frozen all of your assets to cover the costs of the renovations and repairs. You are now trespassing, and the police officer will escort you from the neighborhood. I do wish to thank you for your diligence in providing a complete and thorough inventory of the household when you filed the restraining order. It was very kind of you to have your husband’s possessions removed at that time as well. When you provide my firm with a forwarding address, we will have those items valued at less than one thousand dollars sent to you. The remainder will be held in escrow to auction if your frozen assets fail to provide sufficient funds to meet the lease termination repairs.”

“I only do this because of your step-children requesting I give you a parting gift. I am providing fifty-thousand dollars in cash and a twenty-five-thousand dollar prepaid debit card. These are free and clear from seizure for failing to pay your debts. I have also moved your phone to a prepaid plan and covered the first two months. The appraised values of each item on your inventory list came attached to the same email as the lease agreement,” he told her. “It has been hell since the day I married you, and my children all despise you. Enjoy the rest of your life.”

To add insult to, well-deserved it seems, injury, the lawyer had the police officer serve her with a restraining order banning her from coming within fifty miles of the man, his children, any of his businesses, and this neighborhood. She had two hours from right now to get the hell out of here.

At least she is one of those women who carry those gym bag purses with them everywhere they go.

“Mrs. Canopy, I do not wish to have to handcuff you, but I will if you do not take a seat in the back of my SUV,” the cop told her.

That got through her thick skull.

I watched her try to come up with something to say to her ex-husband, but her transmission was out of gear, and the clutch burned up.

I went over to introduce myself to the two old men who had stepped in front and behind my car and then said, “Hey, no hard feelings. I’m glad you were willing to risk your lives to help protect our neighborhood from those who weren’t invited in and have no business here. Mrs. Canopy seems to have damned herself a long time ago.”

I then went over to the crowd of nosey neighbors to introduce myself. None of them were the least bit upset to find out Mrs. Canopy was no longer in our neighborhood.

A sweet grey-haired man and woman in their eighties asked if I would mind helping them move some furniture. They could hire someone to do it, but it wasn’t all that much, and it wouldn’t take long.

It took me longer to get upstairs to the study than it did to move things around. They were very appreciative.

“Sorry for getting you here under false pretenses, but it wasn’t a discussion we wanted to have around the other neighbors. We did need the furniture moved, though,” the woman told me. “Mrs. Canopy has been a complete cunt since the day that bitch moved in. She called the police on anyone she saw driving in the neighborhood who wasn’t a resident or approved delivery driver. We have great-great-grandchildren we’ve never gotten to meet since we aren’t able to travel anymore. That bitch ensured any visits by any of our family was a living hell. Do you have any problems with kids running around yelling as they enjoy the lake, ride bikes and scooters around the neighborhood, and just be kids? All of those living here have children and grandchildren.”

“On one condition, my kids and siblings get to do the same,” I joked. “There are going to be a lot of kids running around here now. If you have any problems or any visitors are causing trouble, please let me know. I prefer that we work together to resolve things as a neighborhood and not call the police all the time.”

The man said to expect to see the police coming to drive around the neighborhood frequently for a while to be sure someone hasn’t killed everyone. A few years ago, the police department set up a substation to respond to all of Mrs. Canopy’s frequent calls each day. She would call the mayor, city council members, and even the governor if the police didn’t show up in ten minutes or less. What a bitch.

I would have canceled her lease the first time she pulled that crap on anyone again.

The woman insisted that she offer me cookies and milk to butter me up before asking, “It was never against the leases, just not worth angering that cunt. We have grandchildren that aren’t living in the best of places. They made some bad life choices that found them with a rundown apartment full of our great-grandchildren and now great-great-grandchildren. We moved here to let them have space for them to come live with us while they try to get their shit together. All of them are very well behaved, none do drugs or drink heavily, and only one has spent jail after he beat the living shit out of three boys tag-teaming his daughter. They had slipped her a mickey.”

“By all means, bring them here. It is your home until you decide to move away. If issues arise, we can talk it out,” I told them.

Why wouldn’t I let people have their families move in with them? I wasn’t paying for their food or utilities.

My parents were a bit pissed that I was gone for so long, at least until I brought them up to speed on what happened.

“You need to go next door to talk with Chrissy’s mom, and I will leave it at that,” he told me.

If she had the money to move in here, why did she live next to us and not even have a nanny to watch Chrissy?

When I got there, she took me to her study for a private discussion.

“David, as big as this Earth is, it is still a small world,” she told me. “Let me start by saying that our old neighborhood has many clueless people. I thought that they got paid to ignore things, knew what was going on, or not notice anything odd. Only the guy across the street seems on the ball. It was the main reason I moved Chrissy and me here. I did need that emergency help the first time I asked to have Chrissy stay at your house. Your family became her second family overnight. From that day, you have watched out for her and made sure she didn’t get in any real trouble. That brings me to why I needed to talk with you today.”

She had to stop to yell for Bart, Dolly’s big brother, Dolly, and Chrissy to get their asses right in front of her right then. Chrissy was the most dressed because she had on socks. Chrissy’s mom read them the riot act about fucking in every room in the house. She was not going to have it. They needed to pick one suite and keep their activities confined in there. The group agreed and slowly went back upstairs from whence they came.

“That will keep them out of our hair for a while,” Chrissy’s mom said. “I knew you came into a lot of money unexpectedly last fall. Then the thing on Christmas to kidnap April. None of it surprised me. I met Paula before the accident. Crystal loved you since she met you. I don’t even need to start to talk through what Molly has done once she met you in person. Annie, well, let me say that her grandmother speaks very highly of you, and she has never spoken nicely about anyone in her life. How to begin?”

Another interruption, this time with a moving truck, took us a while to get finished.

Chrissy’s mom continued, “You know much more about that Elite world than you should, David. Many centuries ago, a group of elite families tired of having a dictator over them who took a cut of what they earned to feed his opulent lifestyle. They split away from the larger group to form their own small, tightly-knit group. Changing their businesses and practices not directly to compete with the elite families made them slowly fade from their memory. Over time that group became an invisible counterbalance to the unsavory actions taken by those in the elite families. Sometimes extreme measures were required.”

She had to collect her thoughts, so I went to get us drinks and some sort of fruit to snack on.

“While I’m not part of that smaller group, I work for them. They found out that someone had some heavy protection carefully hidden around our neighborhood but couldn’t find any information. Then something happened to you. I asked around, and someone told me that I didn’t want to know, so I quit asking. Whatever accident you had, it caused a big stir around town. That was the same time as multiple groups of security services began arriving to provide even more protection. None of these new teams had any clue about who hired them. Some digging found that unrelated parties contracted each group. My bosses managed to learn that a lot of strange things were happening around your home. Some told us that you were their primary responsibility when you were home or in school. The home where Chrissy and I lived previously became ground zero of a turf war, of forms, between the knuckle-draggers from four different elite families. I did my part to encourage them not to be in that part of our country anymore, but it put Chrissy’s life at risk from the fallout. My bosses wanted to determine why you were so heavily protected, so they arranged for Chrissy and me to move next to you. The first time Chrissy stayed at your house was an emergency where I couldn’t make other arrangements. I took the chance with all of the protection you had to protect Chrissy as well. Seeing how Chrissy was almost an instant part of your family allowed me the freedom to go where my bosses needed me at a moment’s notice. Your family did a better job of raising her than my job would allow. When I saw you two together and learned how you treated her like a little sister, I didn’t care why you were protected anymore. You were family. Then came last fall,” Chrissy’s mom told me.