The Perfect Neighbor Read Online Free PDF

open window across the street. “You want I should call the cops?”
    “Yes.” Cybil snapped the word back as she wiggled her fingers and Preston probed, then blew out a steadying breath. “Yes, please. Thanks.”
    “Polite little victim, aren’t you?” Preston muttered. “Nothing’s broken. You might want to get it x-rayed anyway.”
    “Thanks so much, Dr. Doom.” She jerked a hand away, kept her chin lifted and gestured with her uninjured hand in what Preston thought of as a grandly regal gesture. “You can go. I’m just fine.”
    As the man sprawled on the sidewalk began to moan and stir, Preston set a foot on his throat. “I think I’ll just stick around. Why don’t you go get my sax for me. I dropped it back there when I still believed the Big Bad Wolf ate Red Riding Hood.”
    She nearly told him to go get it himself, then decided if she had to hit the jerk on the sidewalk again, she’d hurt herself as much as him. With stiff dignity, she walked down the block, picked up the case and carried it back.
    “Thank you,” she said.
    “For what?”
    “For the thought.”
    “Don’t mention it.” Preston added a bit more weight when the man on the ground began to curse.
    When the squad car pulled up ten minutes later, he stepped back. Cybil wasn’t having any trouble giving the cops the details, and Preston harbored the hope that he could just slide away and stay out of it. The hope died as one of the uniforms turned to him.
    “Did you see what happened here?”
    Preston sighed. “Yeah.”
    * * *
    And that was why it was nearly 2 a.m. before he trooped up the steps with Cybil toward their respective apartments. He still had the unappealing taste of police station coffee in his mouth and a low-grade headache on the brew.
    “It was kind of exciting, wasn’t it? All those cops and bad guys. It was hard to tell one from the other in the detective bureau. Well, you could because the detectives have to wear ties. I wonder why. It was nice of them to show me around. You should have come. The interrogation rooms look just the way you imagine they would. Dark and creepy.”
    He was certain she had to be the only person on the planet who could find a sunny side to being mugged.
    “I’m wired,” she announced. “Aren’t you wired? Want some cookies? I still have plenty.”
    He nearly ignored her as he dug out his keys, then his stomach reminded him he hadn’t eaten anything for the past eight hours. And her cookies were a minor miracle.
    “Maybe.”
    “Great.” She unlocked her door, left it open, stepping out of her shoes as she walked to the kitchen. “You can come in,” she called out. “I’ll put them on a plate for you so you can take them back and eat them in your own den, but there’s no point in waiting in the hall.”
    He stepped in, leaving the door open behind him. He should have known her place would be bright and cheerful, full of cute and classy little accents. With his hands in his pockets, he wandered around, tuning out her bubbling chatter while she transferred cookies from a canister in the shape of a manically grinning cow to the same bright-yellow plate she’d used before.
    “You talk too much.”
    “I know.” She skimmed a hand over her spiky bangs. “Especially when I’m nervous or wired up.”
    “Are you ever otherwise?”
    “Now and then.”
    He noted a scatter of framed photos, several pairs of earrings, another shoe, a romance novel and the scent of apple blossoms. Each suited her, he thought, as perfectly as the next. Then he paused in front of a framed copy of a comic strip on the wall.
    “‘Friends and Neighbors,’” he mused, then studied the signature under the last section. It read simply, Cybil. “This you?”
    She glanced over. “Yes. That’s my strip. I don’t imagine you spend much time reading the comics, do you?”
    Knowing a dig when he heard one, he looked back over his shoulder. It must have been the late hour, he decided, after a long day