Mrs. Keegan beamed at me. “I might just do that, Mark. Thanks for the invite. You know, I make the best weenie roast in the state. I’ll bring some of that with me.”
I’d never had a weenie roast and could only guess what it was, but given that Cole’s weenie was flying in the breeze in the footage and there was that gag reflex issue I’d just mentioned, I grimaced.
“Probably best not to have anything weenie related when you watch it, ma’am.”
“Ah!” she nodded understandingly. “I’ll bring my meatballs, then. They’re big, and I fill them with gorgonzola.” She made a circle with her hands like she was, showing how big the meatballs were.
For some reason, my stomach clenched, and the familiar pressure signaling I needed to burp returned. Pressing my fist against my mouth, I let it out. It wasn’t as long or loud as the last one, but the end sounded like I was about to puke—which wasn’t entirely a lie.
“Lemme guess, meatballs with melted cheese inside aren’t a good idea,” Mrs. Keegan sighed. “Well, damn.”
“What about meatloaf?” Luke suggested, then grinned evilly at me. “Or is there enough of Cole’s meat in the video, too?”
I groaned and leaned back against the wall. “Stop.”
“Say, Mark, how’s the refurb on the inside going?” Mrs. Keegan asked, jerking when her little dog yanked on its leash.
Concerned that she was going to get pulled over and seeing she had many questions to ask, I asked, “How about you come sit with us?”
I had some camping chairs that I sat on in the living room and one of those grossly oversized beanbags, so it wouldn’t be too hard to get her one.
“I’m good.” She waved a hand through the air. “Rex just has a lot of power in his little legs.”
Dad cut the lawnmower at that point, which allowed her to do some sort of whisper-yell thing. “Plus, I never know what they sat on or touched in there. I’d need a hundred gallons of Lysol and some of that medical-grade disinfectant to go in there.”
“Told you,” Luke sang, smiling smugly at me.
I was rethinking spending another night there until a hundred gallons of Lysol and some medical-grade disinfectant were delivered.
My dad got off the mower and joined us. As an architect, he was in love with the layout of the house. Also as an architect and as a normal human being, he hated the décor inside it.
“Do you really think two people require that much sanitation? Surely if you just remove those damned mirrors, redecorate, change the flooring, and things like that, you’ll get rid of their… taint.”
I hated the word ‘taint’ when we were using it in relation to something that’d likely involved a lot of Mr. Marshall’s taint.
“What do you mean just two people? The Marshalls were notorious for kinky parties. People traveled from all over the country and the world for them. When my husband was still alive, he went over to complain about the noise and amount of cars parked everywhere,” Mrs. Keegan told him.
“It wasn’t either of the Marshalls that opened the door, and my Wayne said there were so many naked people, you couldn’t see even an inch of the walls behind them. They were just standing there, necked as the day they were born. They even had special glass cleaners who came to wipe down the mirrors for them because there were…” she looked to the side, and I swore she blushed “…body part outlines on them.”
“I’m burning it down,” I ground out. “I don’t care that Layla loves it. I need a blowtorch, gas, and paper. I’m insured. Mrs. Keegan can tell the insurance company what she just told us, I’m sure they’ll understand.”
“Why not bring some of that stuff from work which shows up bodily fluids,” Luke suggested, with the biggest grin I’d ever seen on his face.
Okay, I’ll hold my hands up—part of me went ‘hell, yeah.’ I don’t know if it was my career or just the fact I was a curious asshole, but the prospect of seeing what they’d gotten up to kind of tweaked my curiosity. The other side of me, the homeowner who didn’t want to know, became more resolute about burning it all down at the mental image of all the glowing marks around the place.
“Oh, I know,” Mom cried. “Take swabs. I watched this program on Netflix just last week where they submitted DNA into a database, and they tracked a murderer through samples people had submitted looking for other family members online. I forget what it’s called, but how clever was that?”
In all honestly, this was another situation I wasn’t sure about. For the sake of the murdered victims, yes, it was a great thing. For the safety of the public, again, awesome. But in terms of rights, misusing something designed for people who wanted to know their roots or track down the rest of their family members? Well, I was squarely on the fence.
Mrs. Keegan, however, wasn’t. “I saw that, too. It’s outstanding what they can do these days, isn’t it?”
Luke moved until he was leaning on the wall next to me. “Mrs. Keegan has Netflix?”
I scowled at him. “That’s all you’ve got out of this whole discussion?”
He lifted a shoulder. “Well, yeah? I mean, she never struck me as the type of person to Netflix and chill.” He was quiet for a moment but then added, “Although, the Mitchells were probably pros at it.”
I shuddered and groaned. “I think it’s cool she’s got Netflix. It means she has something to fill her time at night.” Just as Luke opened his mouth to say something likely to do with the Mitchells, I snapped, “Don’t you dare!”