Free A Cup Full of Midnight by Jaden Terrell Page B

watching HBO. No one had seen anything. No one had wanted to.
    I spent the rest of the morning and most of the afternoon talking to people the police had already interviewed. The single mother two doors down said she was afraid to let her eight-year-old son play unsupervised in the yard. The elderly woman across the street complained of loud, discordant music and “half-dressed trollops and homosexuals.” About an hour before sunset, the accountant next door, Roland Calder, pulled into his driveway. He invited me in for coffee, and told me he’d doubled the insulation in his house to keep his wife and daughters from hearing the foul language that often poured from Razor’s front porch and driveway.
    “Truth is,” Calder said, sliding a steaming mug onto the table in front of me, “the guy was a jerk. I’m not saying he deserved what happened to him—I wouldn’t wish that on anybody—but if he hadn’t been killed, we’d’ve had to put our house on the market, it was that bad. Cream or sugar?”
    “Black is fine.” I picked up the mug and inhaled the rich, earthy scent of Colombian roast. “Sounds like a popular guy.”
    “Yeah, right.” He rubbed a hand across his balding pate and patted down the long strands of his comb-over. “There’s this guy who lives down the street, you know? And one night, Razor . . . he’s having some kind of party or something, and this guy just goes down there and says something like, ‘Hey, we’re trying to sleep here.’ ” Calder dumped two tablespoons of powdered nondairy creamer into his mug, where it dissolved into a clotted cloud. “Not like the rest of us weren’t thinking the same thing. And Razor goes, ‘Well, Eff you, man. It’s a free country.’ Only he didn’t say eff you.”
    “Not very neighborly.”
    “That’s what I’m saying.” He swirled his spoon around the mug, nudging the powdery clumps until they dissipated. “So this guy, Hewitt, his name is, he calls the cops and makes a complaint.”
    “Razor must’ve been pissed.”
    “I guess so. Because the next morning, Hewitt goes out and the air’s been let out of all his tires.” Calder took a sip of coffee and smiled. “Ah, that hits the spot. So anyway, Hewitt figures it’s gotta be Razor that did it, and Hewitt makes another complaint. But there’s no proof.”
    “No proof, no prosecution.”
    Calder raised his mug in agreement. “Exactly.”
    “Was that the end of it?”
    “Not hardly. Razor went to Hewitt’s place and told him nobody liked a rat. A couple of days later, Hewitt’s dog was poisoned. The vet said it was antifreeze.”
    “Motherfu—”
    Calder frowned, and I caught myself before I finished the word. I meant it, though. Antifreeze is an insidious poison, a sweet-tasting substance dogs lap up like gravy. It takes less than a teaspoon to kill a good-sized dog.
    “The dog,” I said. “Did it survive?”
    “Touch-and-go for awhile,” he said. “Doing fine now, though.”
    “Let me guess. There was nothing to connect Razor to the poisoning.”
    “Nothing you could prove,” he said. “But everybody knew. When Hewitt went out to bring in the dog dish, there was a rubber rat in it.”

CHAPTER ELEVEN
    A ccording to Calder, the conflict had dragged on. Hewitt put sugar in Razor’s gas tank. Razor threw a brick through Hewitt’s front window. Garbage cans were overturned. Punches and epithets were exchanged. By the time Razor died, the feud was a neighborhood legend.
    When I’d learned as much as I thought I could, I thanked Calder for the coffee and walked four doors down to talk to Hewitt.
    A woman answered my knock, a petite brunette in a shapeless gray sweatshirt and baggy drawstring pants. Her light blue eyes were wary, but she gave me a reflexive half-smile. “May I help you?”
    “I hope so.” I flipped open my wallet and held up my P.I. license, which she studied through the screen. A beagle with a grizzled muzzle peered from behind her legs. It had