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.
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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?"
