I JUST WANT to get this off my chest. Liz Coleman’s blueberry crumble cookies were not that good. Not in the way that everyone went gaga for them. I mean, they were fine, but did they deserve to beat out my award-winning double chocolate chunk cookies at the HOA’s Cookiestravaganza? I don’t think so. But would I have killed her over it?
Of course not! Like everyone else, I loved Liz. In fact, I was the one who took her under my wing when she first arrived next door. Everyone in the neighborhood watched that moving truck pull up and unload furniture. Once it looked like things had settled down, I knocked on the door bearing a plate of my famous chocolate chunk cookies as a ‘welcome to the neighborhood’ gift. I must say, I didn’t expect what I saw when she opened the door. For a moment, I thought that the Addams family moved in. Despite the summer heat, she was dressed all in black, her dark hair pulled up in a sporty ponytail. She was young, couldn’t be more than thirty, and would have been very pretty except, well, the people in this neighborhood have a certain, let’s say type, and with her nose piercing and sleeve of tattoos, she would have stood out like a bear among honeybees. Of course, it’s not my place to say that, so I just smiled and said, “I’m Tiffany McDonald and I just wanted to say hi and give you a plate of my award-winning double chocolate chunk cookies.”
I could feel a touch of judgement as she looked me up and down. Can you imagine? Here I was in my Sunday best, and she had the audacity to look like she’d just stepped in doggy doo.
“Thanks,” she finally said, taking the cookies and setting them aside on a pile of boxes. “I’m Liz.”
“Is it just you or are there others about? A husband? Kids? I’ll have to introduce you to the PTA. They know how to hook your kid up with all the best teachers.”
At that, she visibly winced, and I began to feel like I was making a fool of myself. “No kids,” she replied, “Just me and my husband.”
“In this big house all by your lonesome? What do you do for a living?”
Her eyes were shifty when she said, “I’m a writer, but I’m taking a break for a while. Allan is a neurosurgeon.”
“Oh, what do you write? It’s such a guilty pleasure, but I love those thrillers you buy in the grocery stores right next to the greeting cards.”
“Horror,” she replied, and she certainly looked the part if I do say so myself.
“I’m too much of a chicken for that,” I replied with a laugh. “You know, the Ladies’ Club is having a luncheon tomorrow. Come with me and I can introduce you to the rest of the neighborhood.”
Sometimes I regret that offer if only for what came after. When I knocked on the door the next afternoon, she was dressed like some kind of witch, and carried with her a plate of those darn blueberry crumble cookies. “Oh, you’re wearing that?” I asked.
She glanced down at her dress and back up at me. “Do you have a problem with my outfit?”
“I just don’t want you to make the wrong impression. The people in this neighborhood have certain views about proper attire for our luncheons, and, well…”
“I look like I just walked out of a Spirit Halloween.”
“No!” I exclaimed, my face reddening, “It’s a very nice outfit. It’s just—”
She cut me off, which was a bit rude. “It’s fine. I don’t mind the funny looks. Morticia is my icon, after all. I own my strangeness.”
“Well, then let’s go meet the neighbors,” I said, leading her to our social club up the street. I must admit, I spent the whole day fretting about what the other housewives would think of the newest member of our neighborhood. She was just so…so…different from what we were used to.
Apparently, all that fretting was for nothing because she immediately hit it off with the ladies. Apparently, she was quite charming when she was talking to other people, and everyone raved about her blueberry crumble cookies. They were a bit too sweet for me, but there’s no accounting for taste.
They oohed and awed over her long list of publications and laughed at her every outlandish story. I mean, sure it must have been interesting to spend the night at the Lizzie Borden Ax Murder House with Stephen King, and a part of me almost wanted to channel that Lizzie while she showboated about her life. Not that I did, of course. I was just glad she got along with the rest of the housewives with nothing better to do. But I will admit that the story of the séance they held in that house bothered me. I’m sure she thought it was all in good fun, but Pastor Smith warned us about conjuring spirits just about every other Sunday. It opened doors to all kinds of evil, and I would hate for something evil to think it was welcome in our neighborhood, if she went around summoning spirits again. It didn’t seem to bother anyone else, though. In fact, it looked like it made her more impressive in the eyes of the ladies at the luncheon. Still, a worry lingered in the back of my mind that she was little more than a novelty to them, someone to be cast aside once she was no longer new and mysterious.
While we walked back, she was the one to break the silence, surprisingly enough. “Thank you for inviting me,” she said, staring down at the empty plate in her hands. “I didn’t know how much I needed that, Tiffany.”
“You’re welcome back any time,” I said. “The ladies all seemed to love you.”
“I just might take you up on that,” she replied with a slight smile.
The trouble began a week later. As head of the HOA, I have the unfortunate duty of sending out nastygrams to the people who violate our rules. One such rule was that no one was allowed to leave their trash bins out after eleven in the morning. I had an all-day appointment, and when I left that morning, her trash cans were out. Then, that afternoon, they were still out.
With a smile, I knocked on the door. No response, so I knocked again. There was some rustling on the other side, and Liz opened the door. I could smell the alcohol on her breath, but graciously ignored it. “Hi, Liz, I’m really sorry to come here not as a friend, but as president of the HOA, but there’s something we need to discuss.”
She squinted at me, and I wasn’t sure if she even understood what I said. “What’s this about?”
“Well, you’re new here, so I understand if you haven’t read our bylaws yet, but we have a rule about trash cans being out after eleven. Do you mind putting them back inside?”
“Yeah, sure, I’ll do it.” We stood in an awkward silence for a moment, neither of us making a move. Finally, she said, “What, right now?”
“Better to do it while it’s on your mind,” I replied cheerfully. “Lord knows I forget important tasks when I put them off.”
“Right,” Liz said, pushing past me and putting away the garbage bins. That was the day I discovered that Liz had a vindictive streak. Every trash day, she would leave her bins out until 10: 59 and put them away just as the clock struck eleven. Sure, I understood the little screw you for what it was, but she still put her bins away on time, so I was happy.
Then came the matter of Halloween decorations. Given her darker inclinations, I guess I shouldn’t have been surprised. We have a rule against blow ups in the front yard. When I reminded her of the fact, she filled the back and side yards with them. She also kept her Halloween out through December, dressing the skeletons with Santa hats when I mentioned that maybe she should have more seasonally appropriate decorations.
The Ladies’ Club thought she was a riot. Her little acts of malicious compliance made her a sort of neighborhood folk hero, positioning me as the stick-in-the-mud who wants to murder everyone’s fun. Not that I’m a murderer—of fun or anything else. I feel bad crushing flies and I take spiders out in cups. But admittedly, I was tired of the rest of the ladies and their defense of her indefensible spite.
“You’re too hard on her, Tiffany.”
“Come on, you have to admit it’s funny, Tiffany.”
“You’re just jealous because her cookies beat yours at the Cookiestravaganza, Tiffany.”
“She’s wily, that one. I can’t help but respect her sticking it to The Man.”
Dolores, we are The Man! It’s our job to keep this neighborhood safe and beautiful. A suburban paradise where we all look after our own, and this outsider was dividing us, turning us against each other one blueberry crumble cookie at a time.
The thing is, though, I knew Liz’s secret. She wasn’t the loving wife she pretended to be. I began to notice strange people spending the night while Allan was out of town. Men and women, sometimes all at once. They’d sneak in under the cover of darkness and emerge the next morning before the sun was up. I made sure to take pictures as proof. My friend was making a bad decision, and we all needed to come together and help her find her way again.
First, though, I thought I’d confront her with the evidence. One evening when Allan was away, I knocked on the door. Liz looked terrible, almost like she’d been in a fight with a rabid raccoon, and the raccoon won. She wore a torn t-shirt with a bizarre creature on it, a humanoid with angel wings, and a goat’s head and hooves. Something about the image was familiar, and it unsettled me in a way I couldn’t quite put into words. It just felt evil. “What do you want?” she slurred.
“To talk,” I replied, holding up a picture of her with one of her liaisons. “Can we go inside?”
Raising her eyebrows, she blinked and looked at me unimpressed. “Is having friends over against the HOA rules too?” With that, she turned and headed inside without checking if I followed. In the months that I’d known her, I’d never been inside her house. I was struck by the fact that there were no photographs on the walls or tables, and the art on the walls looked like the tarot decks they sell at the mall. No precious memories of her and her husband. The only photo I could find was on the kitchen refrigerator featuring a small family. I recognized Liz and Allan, but the little girl was unfamiliar.
In a corner by the kitchen window, there was a strange little setup of dried flowers and crystals. In the center was a plate with one of those Satanic pentagrams that Pastor Smith warned us about. Did the girl have something to do with this satanic shrine?
I waved my photo again. “Please, her hand is on your heinie. You’re doing more than having an innocent girls’ night.”
With a sigh, she said, “Not that it’s any of your business, but Allan and I are in an open relationship. We agreed to experiment with different partners.”
“Aren’t you worried that he might leave you for someone else?”
Her eyes skirted towards the picture and back. “Not really. If he leaves, he leaves. He deserves that much.”
“And you wouldn’t mind if I brought this up to your husband?”
Taking a sip from a half-empty wine glass, she shrugged. “Might be a bit embarrassed that you caught me, but that’s about it.”
“And your drinking?” I blurted out before covering my mouth.
She shot me the kind of glare that made me glad she wasn’t actually a real magical witch because it most definitely had a curse in it. “Yeah. We all deal in our own ways. I’ve cut back a lot, but nights alone are hard.”
And then it clicked. “That little girl in the picture. She’s your daughter?”
Any defiance still in her face melted away. Deflated, she sat down at the kitchen table. “We lost her last year in an accident. Drowned in the neighborhood pool. We’d only looked away for a second.” Her eyes reddened and she sniffled, blowing her nose into a napkin. “I thought moving would give us a fresh start, but I just feel like I’ve abandoned her.”
My heart went out for the poor woman. I can’t imagine what it would be like to lose one of my kids. With a sigh, I sat down beside her and took her hand. “Well, if you ever need me, I’m a doorbell away.”
“Right. Thanks,” she said, wiping her eyes, “You’re a good friend, you know that?”
“Oh, you’re just saying that,” I replied, dismissing the compliment with a handwave.
“It’s true. You might have a stick up your ass, but you’re not nearly as bad as the Ladies’ Club says.”
“What do they say about me?” I asked, feeling a sudden and inexplicable spike of anxiety.
She shrugged. “Just that you were uptight. I think Dolores once called you a petty tyrant.”
Well, that wasn’t nice to hear at all. I thought Dolores was my friend. To hear her call me that hurt beyond words. “I’m sorry she feels that way.”
“And since we’re all such good friends, don’t tell her I said that. I’m such a chatty drunk. Alcohol goes in and the secrets come out.” She put her head in her hands and I took advantage of her distraction to snap a few pictures of that satanic shrine. Just looking at it gave me the willies, and a part of me feared that her daughter’s death hadn’t been an accident after all. Could she actually have been some kind of sacrifice to Satan?
Picking up her head, she wiped her eyes and asked, “Any other questions or is my interrogation over?”
I gave her my warmest smile. “I’ll just get out of your hair. If you need anything, you can knock on my door whenever you want.”
“Thanks,” she said, returning my smile with a lopsided one of her own.
I returned home even more unsettled than before. Of course, what people do in the privacy of their own homes is their own business, but I had the sinking feeling that she wasn’t telling me the whole story. Between the witchcraft, the dead little girl, and the comings and goings of her various liaisons, I feared that something much darker was lurking just below the surface, and I was determined to get to the bottom of it.
These late-night visitors seemed to creep around like a secret coven. And the more I thought about it, the less I was able to avoid seeing them for what they obviously were. I took to watching their movements carefully, hitting paydirt two weeks later on a full moon when several people arrived at her house, together as a furtive group wearing hooded robes and singing a song in Latin. I watched them go in and then one by one they reappeared out the back an hour later with a lit candle in each hand. One handed her a shovel and she began to dig a small hole. Another handed her a small parcel and she placed it inside before filling the hole once more. Then, they gathered in a circle and began to chant something I couldn’t quite hear. I got it all on video, and once they had gone inside and the lights turned off, I snuck out into the backyard and excavated the hole. The parcel smelled strongly of sage and cinnamon, and inside was a lot of tissue paper, which enshrouded a small, worn teddy bear.
What on earth was this? Could it be evidence left-over from a crime, or—my God—were they planning to kill again? They clearly took this well-loved toy from a child. Was this ritual the precursor to another sacrifice? Whatever it was, it was bad for the neighborhood. Something had to be done about the witch before another child suffered the same fate as her daughter. So, I did what any concerned citizen would do: I wrote a letter to the editor of the local paper about this Satanic threat to our community, making sure to include pictures of what I’d seen.
I guess I shouldn’t have been surprised by the knocking on the door so loud it practically shook my house the night after they’d published it. I opened the door to find an irate Liz clutching the paper. “Are you kidding me, Tiffany?” She pushed past me and let herself into my house.
“I was just concerned for the soul of the community,” I replied, following her to my living room.
Her breath stank of whiskey. “Bullshit! You’ve had it out for me ever since that stupid bake sale. You’re just so…so…petty and small and you want to make everyone around you small because if they’re smaller than you, then you’re the big woman in charge.”
I’ll admit, my temper got the better of me. Here she was throwing baseless accusations, and for what? She owed me for introducing her to all her new friends. “And what are you, exactly? The young, hip girl who thinks she’s too cool for this neighborhood but is still lonely enough to attend every Ladies’ Club meeting?”
“You’re the one who invited me to join the Stepford Wives,” she shouted before closing her eyes and taking a deep breath. When she opened them, they were full of tears. “Look, I know I was being obnoxious about the HOA rules, but how could you say those things about me? About my husband? I was just doing a private ritual to say goodbye to my daughter and now people won’t make eye contact with me on the street.”
“And how could I just sit by and let Satanists worship in our midst? I did it for the safety of the community.”
“I’m not a fucking Satanist,” she screamed, pushing me.
The next few seconds were a blur. She was going to kill me and turn me into a sacrifice for Satan, so I did the only thing I could do; I defended myself by pushing back. How was I supposed to know that she’d fall and crack her head on the coffee table? I remember standing over her, watching the blood pour out of her head and thinking that it looked like spilled cherry preserves. She was still alive and making the most awful sound, the kind of sound that sets your teeth on edge and I…I needed the sound to stop, so I stuffed a dish towel in her mouth and carried her back to her house, laying her at the bottom of her staircase. She was still breathing when I left. I thought maybe the police would just assume she got drunk and fell down the stairs. She was an alcoholic. Tragedies like that happen. Unfortunate, but not uncommon. And if Sheriff Waites did find something suspicious? Well, let’s just say that he wouldn’t see a cent from his biggest campaign donor next election.
Finally, I had to clean up the evidence. Do you know how hard it is to get blood out of carpet? Luckily, my husband, Julien, was out of town, so I had the whole night to clean without any interference. I nearly gassed myself to death using ammonia and bleach to get it all up. Then, the police would have had two corpses on their hands, I suppose.
But you have to understand I didn’t kill her. Liz killed herself. The alcohol made her wobbly on her feet, and when I protected myself, she fell and died. It was kill or be killed, and I certainly wasn’t going to let a Satanist get the better of me and poison this community.
You should thank me. Everyone should thank me! I did what I had to and saved us all from Liz and her coven! If it wasn’t for me, every child and neighborhood pet would be sacrificed to Satan by now. So, you’re welcome and know that I’d do it again in half a heartbeat if anyone else threatened the safety of this neighborhood.