I am using Hive account@mariannewest’s #freewrite prompt (https://steemit.com/freewrite/@mariannewest/day427-5-minute-freewrite-friday-prompt-sequin) which today is:

Sequin

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As usual I started with the freewrite prompt and used themostdangerouswritingapp.com to write the first five minutes:

And then I kept on writing...
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Neighbours

I always thought Marie dressed so fine. Gary said she looked like a whore, and I'd catch him looking at her with a look that was hard to read, sometimes. He said she was asking for trouble going out like that. But I thought she looked nice, and if you can wear dresses like that, well... why not?

In the end it was one of Marie's dresses that caught her killer.

Or at least, a tiny piece of one: a tiny morsel from the sequin dress she wore that fateful New Years Eve.

We weren't a close neighbourhood. Not really. I mean we were polite enough on the surface. Old Mr Harp from across the road would always raise a hand when you caught him staring at you when you dragged the trash can out on a Thursday night. And Mrs Hollins from three doors down was pleasant enough.

But we didn't really know our neighbours. Not until the Brays moved in. The house next door but one, on the right, was a little bit run down, to say the least. It was owned by a couple, Mr and Mrs James, who kept themselves to themselves and never seemed to go out, not even in their own front yard. Only one visitor, once a month, a lady. Gary said she was their daughter - he’d spoken to her, he said - but she was never invited it, not even offered a glass of water on a hot day. In the end, well, Mr James he died and Mrs James stopped eating or taking care of herself at all - according to what Mr Harp told Gary one day, anyways - and the daughter arranged for her to be taken into a home, and the house was up for sale.

Gary said they’d never sell it. A right mess, inside he said. Too much work. It’s a money pit. Be cheaper to knock it down and build another one, than try to make something of that place.

But turned out Gary was wrong. On that occasion, anyways. The For Sale sign was only up for a week - maybe two - when it was changed to Sold and Gary said whoever bought it must be mad.

One day a young couple pulled up in an old car, followed by a big white van. I watched them stand side by side, his arms around her shoulders, hers around his waist. Even from inside the house I could see they were happy. I don’t usually spend much time looking out of the windows, you understand, but that particular day, I happened to be giving them a clean with a bit of vinegar and newspaper, the way my mother taught me - God rest her.

I wondered perhaps I should go round, say hello and welcome to the neighbourhood, like I’d seen people do on the television. Take a pot roast round, offer to help. But we didn’t really do that round here so I left it. After a while I ran out of windows to clean, so could no longer justify watching the new neighbours moving box after box into their house, so I went into the laundry room to tackle the ever growing stack of ironing.

The doorbell rang after I had ironed three of Gary’s shirts, and - careful to place the iron where it would not burn anything - I smoothed down my apron, checked my hair in the mirror and answered the door. And that was when I first met Marie.

“Hello!” she said, her voice as bright and full of promise as her sparkling eyes. “I’m Marie! I’m your new neighbour!” She was holding a small box which she handed to me. “I baked some biscuits,” she said, by way of explanation. “Before we packed up the old house. It’s a ‘thank you for being our new neighbour’ present.”

“Oh my gosh!” I said. “How wonderful! I’m Shelia. Please come in, have a glass of wine!” I checked my watch. “Oh, my! Only eleven o’clock! A cup of coffee, then!”

“Thank you, Shelia! But I have to help Andy - that’s my husband, over there the tall one with the large box - there is so much to do! But I might take you up on that offer of a glass of wine, very soon if it still stands!”

And that was the beginning of a short but very sweet friendship.

Marie and Andy turned out to be just what the neighbourhood needed. That summer they organised barbeques and for the first time in, well forever, we came together as a neighbourhood and started to talk to one another!

Gary wasn’t keen, not at first. He said just because we lived next to folk didn’t mean we needed to live in one another’s pockets. And he nudged me and pointed out the window as Marie pushed a lawnmower up and down the garden. She was wearing a very short crop top and shorts that left very little to the imagination.

“Not much room in her pockets as it is!”

But it turned out that Andy was just what he needed for him to come out of himself too.

“See,” I said to Gary, one night, leaning over to give him a goodnight kiss before turning out the light. “It’s nice to have neighbours who are friends too.”

“I guess,” Gary said. “Andy is a great guy. Marie is okay. But I’m sure glad you don’t dress that way, Shelia. I wouldn’t be able to hold my head up in public.”

“Now, you’re just being rude,” I said. “Marie is a beautiful woman. Nothing wrong with showing off what God gave you.”

Everything seemed so perfect... until the New Year’s Eve party.

I was never a big fan of the New Year. Seemed to me people pinned a lot of hope on things getting better for no other reason than a change of number on a calendar, instead of working hard to make things better for themselves. But when Marie came round just before Christmas and said she and Andy were hosting a party, well I jumped at the invitation like an over excited bunny rabbit.

At first everything seemed to go quite well, although I noticed Andy and Gary seemed to be in a competitive mood, and it wasn’t long before they were engaging in some kind of drinking game. Now, I don’t mind a glass of wine now and then - more than now and then, if truth be told - but I don’t hold with spirits, and I don’t hold with getting drunk for the sake of it. It wasn’t long before they were blind drunk and I could see Marie was embarassed when Andy fell over into the cocktail table knocking all sorts over the floor. Gary thought it was hillarilous of course and I had to have words with him. I helped Marie put poor Andy to bed, and by the time I returned to the party Gary himself had fallen asleep on the sofa. I left him too it, and went into the kitchen and ended up having quite an informative discussion on grewing orchids with, Old Mr Harp. It turns out he was a florist back before he retired, and he was quite the mine of information.

I don’t know what time it was when I returned to the living room and found that Gary was awake. Marie was sitting next to him, almost on top of him, if I’m to be honest. They were kissing and I stood there, my mouth wide open - catching flies my mother would have said - watching Gary’s hand travel up the bottom of Marie’s sequin dress.

I don’t know what would have happened if Mr Harp hadn’t have appeared next to me and said, “You gonna let that carry on dear? Because I don’t think that’s right.”

I suddenly came too and grabbed hold of Gary by the collar of his shirt and pulled him off Marie and the sofa, dragging him halfway across the floor.

“We’re going home!” I said as calmly as I could.

Marie tried to say something but I told her I’d talk to her in the morning, and Gary was so drunk he didn’t say anything that you’d have recognised as English. The cold air must have hit him in the face as hard as I wanted to, because we weren’t two strides from the house before he threw up in the shrubbery. I dragged him up the stairs and pushed him on the bed in the spare room. I didn’t give him any blankets. I had half a mind to open the window and let him freeze to death.

The next day all hell broke loose. I was up making coffee, when Gary came down, pale faced and shaking. He knew he’d done wrong because he’d woken in the spare room, but he claimed he couldn’t remember anything.

I didn’t tell him what he’d done. Not at first. I let him stew in his own juices for a bit.

Then Andy came round. He looked worse than Gary, and he was in a right state. Said Marie had gone missing. He didn’t know where she was. Did I know? Did Gary know? I said I didn’t, but I felt bad about lying to Andy. It wasn’t his fault his wife was a no good bitch.

Andy called the police but they didn’t do anything for a while and then when she didn’t come home, and her mother hadn’t heard anything they started asking questions about Andy. They interviewed me too. Asking about what happened that night, and was it true what Mr Harp had told them, and if so was it possible Andy had seen it too. I told them anything was possible, but I didn’t think so. Marie was a no good woman, I said. She probably has taken off with some other woman’s man.

And then they asked questions about Gary. He told them he didn’t remember anything and I told them he was with me, in our bed, the whole night long.

“He didn’t go anywhere after you got home?” theys asked.

“He kept me awake all night, officer,” I said. “He was snoring so loudly, I didn’t get a wink. He couldn’t have got up if he’d wanted to.”

After they’d gone Gary thanked me. But said I shouldn’t have lied about him spending the night in the spare room. I said he’d covered for me, so it was only fair I’d do the same for him. He said he didn’t do anything wrong, so there was no need to cover for him. I told him he was so out of it, how did he know he didn’t do anything wrong? And besides if he thinks copping off with the neighbour is “not doing wrong” then he needed to think again. Then I said we weren’t to talk about it anymore, we should put it behind us. Like the last time.

And so we did.

But then, a couple of weeks later Gary decided to vacuum out the car. He appeared suddenly at the kitchen door, whilst I was doing the washing up. He was holding something in his hand. Something that sparkled in the light.

“Something got caught in the pipe,” he said. “And when I looked I found this!” He held up the tiny piece of sequin dress. “It was blocking the suction.”

Her bloody sequin dress! It must have fallen on the floor of the passenger seat, when we fought.

Gary said he recognised it straight away.

“I bet you did!” I said. “You were drooling all over it, all night!”

“I’m not covering for you again,” he said. “You told me the last one was an accident.”

“The last one was an accident!” I screamed. “This one, less so, maybe. I might have planned this one. Just a bit. But I couldn’t sleep, Gary! Every time I closed my eyes all I could see was your hand up her dress. And the look on her face, as you did it. So I took a knife from the kitchen and I went round there just to have a quiet word. And she was sitting out on the porch, smoking a cigarette, her dress all hitched up, showing her knickers. I felt my blood boil. Just like the last time. What’s up? she says. I want a little chat with you, I says. And she smiles, then. She soon stopped smiling when she saw the knife. I told her I’d cut out her tongue if she made a sound. That got her attention, I can tell you! I had her drive the car up to the lake, and when she realised what I had in mind we had a bit of a scuffle and her dress tore then. I thought I’d cleaned everything up. But I missed that.”

“I’m not covering for you again,” Gary said, shaking his head, taking the car keys from the hook by the door.

I smiled and pulled the knife from the rack on the work surface.

“No one asked you to, Gary,” I said.

…