"Ooh, Duane, you gonna get us in trouble with Drake," sneered the blond man.

The last thing Paul Highsmith heard as the door swung shut behind him was a chorus of high, insolent laughter.

Recalling that evening of a week or so ago as he still idled in front of the interminable light, Paul locked his car doors. When he finally got the green, he accelerated away from the Winking Dog Saloon, took a left on Crenshaw and cruised home.

Chapter Seven.

As Todd wheeled around the corner several steps ahead of Kathy Lee Dwyer, he steeled himself for the worst. The high-pitched screaming had stopped, but only to be replaced by the snarling profanity of an adult male. Whatever he was about to find, he wasn't going to like it, Todd told himself.

His fatalism was an effective habit. He'd survived long stretches of unemployment by visualizing his family homeless and hungry. With that future planted firmly in mind, the reality of the situation never seemed quite so severe.

Just like the mental picture of his daughter squirming in the grasp of a lust-fueled child molester thoroughly overpowered the reality of a barrel-chested man pounding a large stick against a garbage bin while Melanie stifled her sobs behind one hand she'd planted to her mouth.

Todd wrapped an arm around her while a chorus of "What'sa matter, what happened?" erupted around them. Almost instantly, Todd, Melanie and the cursing lunatic were surrounded by sweat-stained workmen and a handful of bedraggled women.

"I'll tell you what's the goddamn matter," roared the enraged man with the stick. "It's those fucking rats again. They nearly took off that little girl's foot this time." He turned from his Dumpster-beating to reveal a blunt pair of arms with bunched muscles and a thick beard that hid a good deal of his contorted anger.

All eyes fell on Melanie's sandal-clad feet. Todd could only breathe again after counting ten intact toes.

"What's going on, Judd?" calmly asked a tall man with wide shoulders and a pink face.

"I'm telling you, D.B., it's getting worse around here. About time we did something ourselves 'cuz they sure as hell ain't gonna take care of it."

The man apparently known as D.B. winked at Melanie as he ambled over to his infuriated friend and laid an arm casually on his shoulder. "Come on, Judd. Whatever it was, it's long gone. And there's no damage, thank God."

"There really is a bite mark there," mumbled a very thin, middle-aged man with pinched voice and a ponytail.

As all eyes turned to her exposed red polished toenails, Melanie buried her face in her father's hard belly in mortification.

"Yeah, right," a black woman drawled.

"Well, not on her feet, maybe," the ponytailed man admitted. "But on her sandal. See?"

Todd squatted for a closer look. Yes, there seemed to be some kind of mark on the dirty white strap separating her big toe from the rest.

"It almost got me," Melanie murmured into her father's neck.

"What'd I tell you?" said the enraged man with the stick and fire in his eye. "What did I tell you? The fuckers nearly got her. You heard her."

"Judd Maxwell, don't you be using language like that in front of a little girl," Kathie Lee snapped. "Where the fuck is your common sense?"

Judd glared at the garbage bin, then exchanged glances with everyone gathered around them, a fairly large crowd by now. The man's body quivered like he'd just grabbed a power line. Todd was glad that the wild beard contained at least some of his intensity or he'd have scared Melanie even further.

"I'm leaving if we gotta keep putting up with this shit," the man snarled.

His eyes seemed to blame everyone in his path for whatever calamity had befallen them. "The good news, D.B.," he said, "is I finally got one of them little fuckers." His tone now indicated the possibility of a smile lurking within all that hair, but who could tell?

The tall, pink-faced man showed a shade or two of interest. "Yeah? Let's haul it into the open."

Todd watched the two men paw through the garbage in and around the big metal bin. They yanked at bags that had fermented in the late-summer sun, and he backed away from the hot stench of rotting vegetables and sour milk, the wave of repulsion blending uncomfortably with the sweat and grime of the off-duty laborers. He clenched his daughter even tighter, wondering if this was what it was always going to keep coming back to: body odor and beer and cigarettes and raging rodents.

"So what's all this fuss about?" called out a black guy with square shoulders and round belly. "Like you never seen rats before, fer crissake."

Judd, sitting like dislodged royalty on a throne of garbage bags, his big stick in hand like a scepter, stopped directing D.B.'s efforts long enough to glare at the disbeliever. "No doubt you got rats where you come from, Carl, and maybe they're even big enough to cart off little kids, but in my neck of the woods we tend to take care of problems like this."

"What I see is a little girl with, at worst, a nibbled-on sandal. Mice, probably. Let's not call out the National Guard, huh?"

Excellent point, thought Todd. He patted his daughter's head, wordlessly sending the point home to her.

"That's right," said a big man of about fifty. "You want to make waves 'cuz the town's got rats? Hell, what town don't?" He had the kind of voice that began life as a rumble from deep inside his immense chest cavity and grew to enormous proportions by the time the words broke free.

"Rodents big enough to wear dog collars, and twice as mean," Judd grumbled as he pointed out new places beneath the bin and in the shadowy corners of the building for D.B. to look.

"Judd, I don't see nothing," his friend said.

The compact man sitting in garbage cursed, then hopped down to take a more active role in the investigation. "I gotta do everything," he grumbled.

Todd bent to his daughter and, speaking close to her ear, said, "Tell me about it, Mel. What happened out here?"

He felt her nuzzling his face as she found his ear with her lips. "Rat," she stage-whispered. "Big one with huge teeth."

Or mouse, Todd thought. You couldn't blame her for confusing the one with the other. Especially after hearing the guy with the beard blowing it all out of proportion. He patted her shoulder, then pulled her to the fringes of the crowd.

"What the hell's going on here? Judd Maxwell, you'd better have some damned good excuse for tearing through my trash. And why are all these people here?"

Silence descended like midnight snow. It sizzled out the fire in Judd's eyes. He lowered his gaze from the fiery Sundown Motel owner to the thick stick he tapped on one foot. D.B., meanwhile, became one with the shadows gathering between the motel's stucco wall and the overflowing bin.

"I see you, Don Brandon," Mona Dexter bellowed, apparently using the man's proper name. "You get out here with Judd and explain to me what you're doing throwing my trash around like that."

"It's the rats, Mona," Judd whined as the tall man with the fine red hair and an even rosier face than before shuffled reluctantly into full view.

Todd watched the motel owner's face twitch, briefly lose its frozen rigidity, then gain it back with a vengeance. "Rats," she said.

"It's true, Mona," Judd sputtered. "I'm tired of being called a liar."

"I seen 'em too, Mona," said the big man with the big voice. "I'm not complaining or nothing, 'cuz your day rates suit us fine, but-"

"I'm glad to hear you're not complaining, Denver," she said, advancing on him as quick as a hound dog going after bear.

Denver backed up. He looked like he would have gladly climbed the nearest tree.

"This time I got proof," Judd volunteered. He twirled his big stick, rested it on one shoulder and waited for a reaction.

D.B., looking no more intent on getting further involved than the bear of a man Mona Dexter had just treed, said, " Judd thinks he got one this time."

Judd said, "Mona, you got rats here. You need to get an exterminator."

The motel owner's dark eyes pierced Judd's. "What do you mean, you got one?" she finally asked, hitting every consonant.

Making Todd somehow glad he wasn't the asshole with the stick.

Judd, for his part, seemed to sense a trick question. The triumphant glint died in his eyes as the big stick left his shoulder. He pointed it toward Todd, standing along the outer ring of crowd, Melanie clinging to him. "The damned thing bit the little girl," he said, putting more of a whine into it than he probably would have liked. "We got evidence this time, Mona. Look at her shoe."

She did no such thing. Her dagger stare never left Judd. "What do you mean, you got one?" she repeated, even slower, even harder this time.

"Well, I thought I did, but..."

"Apparently, it got away," D.B. finished softly. "But Judd did get in a few licks, judging by this fresh yellow shit smeared on the wall back here. Pus, I guess. Or something."

"You wanna see?" Judd asked, and of course everyone did. Even the women who looked revolted and held their kids back.

Todd melted from the surging crowd, but his ears picked up murmurs of "Gross," and "Ooh, what is it?" He'd have gone for a quick peak himself, but Melanie's grip held him in place. Besides, his attention was drawn elsewhere.

As set adrift from the crowd as Todd and Melanie, the motel owner seemed unaware of anyone around her as she stared vacantly into the distance.

Paul watched her lips move.

"I'm not responsible for this," Mona Dexter mumbled to herself. "I didn't even want 'em here."

Chapter Eight.

Paul sighed at the sight of the sky-blue Escalade in his driveway. What reason could Savannah Easton possibly have for paying them an unannounced visit tonight? She'd already put in her requisite housewarming appearance, presenting Darby and him with a bottle of moderately priced champagne and an oversize basked of fruit when they'd moved in. Paul had seen so much of the real estate agent over the past several months that, unless she was here to pay off their next month's mortgage out of gratitude for the commission, he really wasn't interested.

"Paul, come in, come in," Savannah commanded as exuberantly as though it was the real estate agent's home he'd accidentally entered. "Darby's brewing coffee. I'll make sure she's making enough for three. I certainly know my way around the kitchen by now."

The interior of their new home was a spacious expanse of glass and white stone with a balcony overlooking the two-story foyer. Less than five years old, it was no accident that it looked absolutely nothing like the 1930s Tudor in which Paul and his former wife had raised three kids. A month after moving in, it was still stacked with half-empty boxes and neatly folded piles of clothing. Darby's potted plants were everywhere, including weirdly flowering cacti he couldn't even identify and would never know how to water. There were bamboo and granite floors, walls of windows and high, swooping ceilings. Some, like the one in the family room, had hidden tract lighting aimed at blank walls in need of expensive artwork yet unpacked or un-envisioned.

Savannah Easton returned from her kitchen errand and tucked herself, one shapely leg under her, in a wicker love seat in what had been christened the sunroom by Darby. Not that it contained any greater glass exposure than just about any other room in the massive house.

"No thanks," Paul said, belatedly turning down the offer for coffee.

Savannah languidly held out her arm to him and he forced a smile as he took her hand in a loose embrace. He was never quite sure how to shake a woman's hand and always suspected that he was somehow insulting female executives with a too-weak or too-firm grip.

"So how are you finding your new neighbors?" she asked him when he'd returned her hand to her. "Have you met anyone yet?"

The real estate agent's expressive eyes were violet today. Paul suspected tinted contact lenses. He glanced toward the doorway, hoping to see Darby approaching. No such luck. He eased into a fabric easy chair across from her.

"We really haven't had a chance to get out," he said. "As busy as we've been around here."

The truth was, they'd met literally no one. Not a single neighbor had dropped by, unless Darby had struck up a stray conversation without telling him, and he doubted it.

"It's the times we're living in," he said, more or less thinking out loud. "It's been that way in the cities for a long time, people keeping to themselves, avoiding their neighbors. It's just that television and the Internet let small town residents see how it's supposed to be everywhere, and they've become as isolated as everyone else."

Where that came from he wasn't sure, but it rang true.

"I'm sure you're right, Paul. But even beyond that, the residents of Babylon have something of a reputation for maintaining their distance. That's why you don't hear of outsiders moving in here."

That included Savannah herself, who lived closer to the lake. She'd tried talking the Highsmiths into lakefront living, which suited Paul fine. In fact, he had a fantasy of moving to one of the Lake Erie islands and living the life of a beach bum. It had been his younger but far more practical wife who'd reminded him of the need for good schools and easy access to the mainland in case of emergency.

Savannah shared very little about the odd town the Highsmiths had stumbled into by accident during the course of an aimless drive, but she'd helped them find their property and close the sale. Of course, there hadn't been any frank discussions about the reclusive nature of the locals when they'd been considering the house and the area. Or the lack of cell phone coverage and spotty Internet access, for that matter.

Darby floated into the room with two steaming mugs.

"Hi, honey," she said as she planted a kiss on his cheek and set down a stone mug on a stand in front of their visitor.

Darby Kinston-Highsmith always rushed her entrance as though it was part of her latest workout routine. It appeared to be such a routine that had been interrupted by the unannounced arrival of their real estate agent, for Darby's face was still flushed with cardiovascular strain, her ash-blond hair tangled with sweat and hanging in her crystal-blue eyes. She was a black, skintight body stocking under a baggy number 23 LeBron James jersey.

"What's this about the neighbors?" she asked. "Oh, shit. I forgot the cream."

"Doesn't she look wonderful," Savannah murmured as Darby dashed from the room.

Paul looked for signs of sly bitchiness in the other woman's face, voice or body language, but found nothing. He was chronically beset with imagined scenarios spinning in small minds: married boss with three grown children lays eyes on the sexy new girl in the office. Things start innocently enough with meetings after work, and escalate quickly into overnight business trips, quick promotions and suspicious cell phone records and credit card charges. Eventually comes the discovery, tears, lawyers, painful talks with the kids, and divorce of a middle-aged wife who'd let herself gain a few pounds over the years. Then, an engagement announcement, a ring with a rock twice the size of the ex-wife's, and remarriage with baby shower suspiciously soon to follow.

Although that had pretty much been the sequence of actual events, it gave no one the right to air their nasty little thoughts. There'd been so much more to it that couldn't be reduced to mere facts. For instance, his and Meredith's marriage had, in reality, died at least six years before Darby Kinston had ever walked into the firm. And it really had been her sharp mind that had drawn him to the much younger woman-though he didn't expect even his closest friends to believe that one.

"Much better," said Darby, returning just as swiftly with spoons and cream in a silver pitcher she must have frantically dug through an unpacked box to find. "I've been trying to use skim milk lately, but it makes the coffee look like mud. So cream remains my one vice, or at least the only one I'm admitting to right now. But I apologize for it."

It was impossible that Darby carried more than 110 pounds on her five-four frame, but she carefully monitored her fat grams.

Savannah was a beautiful woman in her own right, but at about fifty, she'd started to use tricks of makeup and wardrobe and coloration to gain the effect that the Darbys of the world got without yet thinking about it. Savannah's raven hair came from a salon, not a bottle. And of course there were those eyes, large and almond-shaped and violet today.

"Honey, how about you? Have you met anyone yet?"

Paul forced himself back into the conversation. He'd missed the last minute or two of it, but managed to catch up quickly enough. "No. That's what I was just telling Savannah. But I also told her we've been busy around here. Unpacking and putting the house together. And then there's Tuck, of course. We really haven't had time to get out."

Why did he sound so defensive? It was as though he found it important to convince Savannah that their shunned state was their own doing. Yes, that was it. After he'd lost the respect and companionship of so many friends and neighbors and business associates following the dramatic breakup of his marriage and career, it seemed important to show that he wasn't still experiencing rejection.

Maybe that's why they'd moved to this hidden, reclusive little town in the first place: to escape further shame.

Savannah sipped delicately, then carefully set her mug down on the table. "Well, I hate telling the both of you this because of the unfortunate timing, but Paul, do you remember that darling renovated Victorian you commented on in North Shores?"

Paul shrugged. "Yeah, I guess so." Wondering where this was going.