to imagine Oksana mistaking a neighbor for someone committing a home invasion.”
Parker arched his eyebrows. “You heard the part about Mr. Purdy’s cat, right?”
Pet merely scowled and shifted her feet as she listened anxiously for Oksana to say something. When there was nothing but silence, she glanced to her phone and then hesitated. She didn’t want to call the police only to find out that it really was a new neighbor just checking on them. Sighing, she asked, “Do you have a phone in here?”
“Yeah. I got a cell phone for Christmas.”
“A cell phone?” she squawked. “You’re like eight . Who the hell buys an eight-year-old a cell phone?”
“Mom and Dad,” he said with a grin.
“Right,” she said with disgust, and then added, “Fine. Then grab your cell phone and stay here. I’m going to go downstairs and see what’s happening. But if I say ‘Spidey, come on down.’ Lock your door, hide, and call 911. Okay?”
“Spidey?” he asked, wincing slightly. “Seriously?”
Pet rolled her eyes at the complaint. “If they know your name is Parker Peters they’ll just think it’s a nickname. Get it? Parker Peters? Peter Parker? Spiderman?”
“I got it before you explained it,” he said with derision. “But it’s just so juvenile and lame.”
“Are you calling me lame?” she asked with amazement, and then realizing this wasn’t the moment for this discussion, muttered, “Whatever. Look, sweetie, this is serious. Just call 911 if I call you Peter then, okay?” She waited for him to nod, and then turned and eased the door open, pausing only to hiss “stay here” before sliding out of the room.
The hallway was surprisingly dim for seven o’clock in early June when the sun stayed up until nine or so, but it was light enough to see still. Pet had crept about halfway to the stairs at the opposite end of the hall when a voice called out, “Hello?”
The voice this time was female . . . but not Oksana’s. Pet paused to snatch up a crystal vase from a side table, hid it behind her back and moved to the railing that overlooked the front door entry.
Her eyes widened slightly when she saw the group of people crowding the large entry. Four men and a woman surrounded Oksana, and every one of them was dwarfing the housekeeper, who was a few inches taller than Pet’s own five foot two. They were also all staring up at her, she noted and then her gaze settled on the couple next to Oksana.
Pet felt her shoulders relax as she recognized the pair; Marguerite and Julius Notte. They’d been on the front porch talking to her sister, Quinn, when she’d arrived that afternoon, and had stuck around long enough for introductions before heading back to the Caprellis where they were staying for a couple of weeks. They were housesitting while the older couple visited their daughter in Texas.
Her gaze slid to the other three men now, and her eyebrows rose slightly. All of them were big, but while two were just tall and muscular, the third was a complete behemoth, taking up twice as much space as anyone else in the entry. He was the biggest man Pet had ever seen, and that was saying something. She dealt with a lot of jocks in her work, but not one of them could have measured up to this guy. The shoulders on him! Good Lord! She’d heard black was supposed to be slimming, but the black T-shirt he wore just seemed to emphasize the width and muscle it was stretching to cover. His black jeans, on the other hand, were making his hips look tiny, or maybe they just were tiny in comparison to his shoulders. She followed the line of the jeans down to the black Doc Martens he wore and then slid her gaze back up again, taking in his shaved head and the fact that he wore rings on every one of his fingers. They could have been mistaken for brass knuckles except that they were silver. All told, the guy definitely didn’t look too safe to be around.
“Hello, Petronella. How nice to see you again.”
Pet forced her gaze back to Marguerite and almost sighed aloud with depression. Honestly, the woman was everything she wasn’t but had always longed to be—tall, curvaceous and beautiful with long, wavy auburn hair, and perfect pale skin. Marguerite was wearing a pretty summer dress and sandals that just emphasized her femininity and made Pet feel like a slob in