Neighbors - Danielle Steel Page 0,1

noticed their disappearance. Debbie liked them so she “relocated” them to their quarters. In addition, Meredith had a bank account dedicated to paying household expenses. Debbie had volunteered years before to pay those bills and relieved Meredith of the tediousness of it. Debbie deposited small amounts to her own. The amounts were so minor that even Meredith’s accountant hadn’t questioned them. Debbie and Jack were clever thieves.

Jack and Debbie were attentive to their employers’ every need, and appeared to be deeply sympathetic and kind when Meredith’s life fell apart fourteen years before. Her golden world unraveled rapidly after they arrived and lay in ashes at her feet within less than a year. It had made her less cautious about her accounts, and easily distracted.

Fourteen years before, Meredith’s husband, Scott, had had a highly publicized affair with a young Italian actress who was starring in a movie with him. She was twenty-seven, and he was more than twice her age at fifty-five. His marriage to Meredith had seemed solid, when Jack and Debbie took the job. They seemed unusually stable for people in show business. They were devoted to each other and their children, from what Jack and Debbie had observed, and then Scott left for location in Bangkok for a picture. By the time he came back, their marriage was a shambles. Once he was home, he left Meredith for Silvana Rossi, and moved to New York with her.

Meredith had been deeply wounded by the betrayal, but kept a brave face on for her children. Jack and Debbie were surprised that they never heard her maligning Scott to their son, but Debbie saw her crying alone in her bedroom more than once, and put her arms around her and gave her a warm hug.

Humiliated by the stories about Scott and Silvana in the tabloids, Meredith stopped having any kind of social life, rarely went out, and turned her full attention to her son, driving him to school and sports practices, spending time with him, having dinner with him every night. Debbie overheard her turning down a movie she’d been offered. Meredith wanted to be at home with her son until the excitement over the scandal of the separation died down. Justin was very upset. He talked to Jack about it, and flew to New York to see his father several times. He came back every time saying how much he hated his soon-to-be stepmother. Scott was planning to marry her as soon as the divorce was final. At fourteen, Justin had called her a cheap whore when confiding in Jack about her, which Jack had reported to Debbie. Justin had said that his older sister, Kendall, didn’t like her either. Jack and Debbie hardly knew Kendall, since she had moved to New York before they arrived.

Meredith refrained from talking about Silvana with Debbie. She was a dignified, discreet, respectful woman, although Debbie guessed that Meredith must have hated the young Italian starlet, and Scott was hell-bent on a divorce. Their previously, seemingly happy marriage had evaporated into thin air. Meredith put her massive career on pause, to spend all her time with her son. Although Debbie didn’t know her well at the time, she admired her for it.

Jack and Debbie had no children of their own. They had worked in Palm Springs for an elderly couple, both of whom had died within months of each other. Jack and Debbie had met in rehab in San Diego two years before getting that job. They had both grown up in Southern California, but never met. He had had a number of arrests for petty crimes, mostly credit card fraud to support his drug habit. Debbie had been prosecuted for shoplifting, petty theft, stolen credit cards, and possession of marijuana with intent to sell. The courts had sent them to the same rehab program. They were both twenty-two at the time and spent six months there. While in rehab, they formulated a plan to work together, which ultimately turned into love, or harnessing their ambitions to the same wagon. They got married because they could get better jobs that way, as property manager and housekeeper, as a couple. Jack had suggested that working for rich people in their homes could be lucrative, and a rare opportunity for grander schemes in future. Debbie was adamant that she didn’t want to be a maid, scrub toilets, or wear a uniform, and he explained that as property managers, they would have the run of