Boston Noir

“You don’t understand. Recently, she started sending me anonymous gifts. Like candy and flowers, then things like stuffed animals and scarves and hairbrushes and, you know, barrettes-almost like she has a crush on me. Then it got even creepier. She sent me lingerie.”

“How do you know it was her? Maybe you have a secret admirer.”

“Please. I have a lot of admirers, but she’s not one of them. I know it was her.”

“Well, the problem is, none of that’s against the law, or even considered threatening.”

“Exactly! You see how conniving she is? She’s diabolical!”

“Uh-huh.” He took a sip of his coffee. “Why do you think she’s doing these things?”

“I don’t know. I’ve been nothing but charitable toward her.”

“Although there was that minor thing of asking her to move out.”

“Look, something really strange has been happening. I got a high-meter-read warning from the Water Department. The bill last month was $2,500. You know what that amounts to? She’s been using almost ten thousand gallons of water a day.” She dug into her purse and produced the statement.

“This is grounds for eviction,” Toua said, looking at it. “Excessive water use.”

“That’s what I thought. But it’s not that simple. It could be contested as a faulty meter or leak or something, even though I’ve had all that checked out. She categorically denies anything’s amiss. You see what I mean? She’s trying to play with my mind. What I need is evidence. I need proof of what she’s doing in there.”

Ten thousand gallons a day. Toua couldn’t imagine. The woman had to be running open every faucet, shower, and spigot in the house 24/7, punching on the dish and clothes washers over and over, flushing the toilets ad nauseum. Or maybe experimenting with some indoor hydroponic farming, growing ganja.

“I guess I could do a little surveillance,” he said, giving the water bill back to Marcella Ahn.

“Round the clock?”

Toua laughed. “I have other cases. I have a life,” he said, though neither was true.

“I own another house on the same lot, a studio. The tenant just left. You could move in there for the duration.”

“You realize what this might cost?” he asked, trying to decide how much he could squeeze out of Marcella Ahn.

“That’s not an issue for me,” she said. “I want to know everything. I want to know every little thing she’s been doing or is planning to do, what she’s saying about the situation and me to other people, what’s going on in her life, a full profile. The more I know, the more I can protect myself. Your ad said something about computer forensics?” Business had gotten so bad, Toua had been reduced to stuffing promotional fliers into mailboxes, targeting the wealthy demographic along Brattle Street, where people could afford to act on their suspicions, infidelity being the most common. “Can you hack into her e-mail?”

“I won’t do anything illegal,” he told her.

“You won’t, or can’t?”

“Anything I get trespassing would be inadmissible in court.”

“Would it be trespassing if I gave you a key?”

“That’s a gray area.”

“As are so many things in this world, Mr. Shee-ong. I don’t care what it takes. Do whatever you have to do. I want this woman out of my life.”

Marcella Ahn, it turned out, was something of a slumlady. The house in Cambridgeport was a mess, a two-bedroom cape with rotting clapboards, rusted-out chain link, the yard over-flowing with weeds and detritus. The second house was a converted detached garage in back, equally decrepit. Toua spent two days cleaning it, bringing an inflatable bed and some furnishings from his storage unit to try to make it habitable.

The studio did, however, provide a good vantage point for surveillance. The driveway and side door were directly in front of him, and a couple of large windows at the back of the main house gave Toua a view into the kitchen through to the living room. He set up his video camera and watched the tenant.

Caroline Yip was an Asian waif, five-two, barely a hundred pounds. Like Marcella Ahn, she had spectacular butt-length hair, but it was wavy, seldom brushed, by the looks of it. She had none of Marcella Ahn’s artifices, wearing ragtag, thread-bare clothes-flip-flops, holes in her T-shirts and jeans-and no makeup whatsoever. She was athletic, jogging every morning, doing yoga in the afternoons, and using a clunky old bike for transportation; her movements were quick, decisive, careless. She chucked things about, her mail, the newspaper, dishes, flatware, never giving anything a second glance. Her internal engine was jittery, in constant need of locomotion and replenishment. Despite her tiny size, she ate like a hog, slurping up bowls of cereal and crunching down on toast with peanut butter throughout the day, fixing mammoth sandwiches for lunch, and stir-frying whole heads of bok choy with chicken, served on mounds of rice, for dinner.