Neighbourhood Watch

Joyce Whitmore paused, plate of cookies in hand, as she watched a mother quail march confidently across the street, her brood of tiny, hopping dots bobbing behind her. She raised her hand to alert John from Number 4 as he pulled out of his driveway. He probably didn’t need the warning - John was a cautious driver, one of the considerate ones. Unlike Phyllis at Number 10.

“Those for me?” John joked as he drew alongside once the quail had disappeared into the garden shrubbery.

“Go on…” Joyce proffered the plate through his open window.

John plucked a still warm cookie. “Chocolate chip - my favourite! You’re the best, Mrs. Whitmore.”

“Better get along to work, John - you’re running ten minutes late - as usual.” She winked.

Joyce continued across the road to the modern rancher, kitty-corner from her own three-storied home - one of the oldest in town, its wraparound porch and weathered cedar shingles a familiar landmark on the tree-lined street. The scent of sun-warmed pine drifted on the air, mingling with the sweetness of ripening cherries from the nearby orchard. A lawn sprinkler clicked and hissed in the distance, its fine mist catching the morning light.

Claire frowned at the knock on the door. They’d only moved in yesterday - who could be dropping by already? She glanced at Ethan, who shrugged, pointed to his pajamas, and disappeared back into the bedroom. Claire, always an early bird, was fully dressed for the day, so had no excuse not to answer.

A smartly dressed, grey-haired woman stood on the step, holding a plate of cookies. Claire smiled politely, though inwardly she rolled her eyes - every small town had one, the friendly busybody, and clearly, Peachville was no exception.

“Good morning! Welcome to the Okanagan. I do hope you like homemade cookies. What am I saying - of course you do!” Joyce pressed the finely decorated porcelain plate into Claire’s hands. Claire accepted it automatically, the sugary scent rising between them, while wondering whether that last remark had been a sly jab at her slightly fuller figure.

“I’m Joyce - Joyce Whitmore.”

“Claire. Nice to meet you - and thank you. I’ll be sure to return your plate.” She smiled and nodded, stepping back to signal the conversation was over.

“So you and your husband…” Joyce paused expectantly. Claire didn’t fill in the gap with his name. Undeterred, Joyce continued, “You’ve moved here from Alberta?”

Claire’s eyes narrowed in puzzlement until she remembered the car in the driveway bore Alberta plates.

“Thank you again,” she said with a polite smile.

“You’re most welcome.” Joyce’s own smile was just as bright as the door closed between them.

From the window, Claire watched the old woman stroll up the street, slip a notebook from her pocket, and pause to scribble a few lines before moving on to her next destination.

Over the next few weeks, Claire found herself dodging Mrs. Whitmore’s invitations - baking club on Tuesdays, knitting circle on Thursdays, genealogy night every other Friday. Instead, she buried herself in her work: editing medical journals from home. The manuscripts arrived crammed with jargon, footnotes, and complicated data, which Claire spent hours turning into something readable. It wasn’t glamorous, but it paid the bills and gave her the perfect excuse to decline the persistent invitations.

Ethan was settling into his new role at the agricultural research centre and spent an hour or so in the basement most evenings trying to master the art of making fly-fishing lures. Claire too had found a rhythm of her own. Most mornings she joined a group of women who practiced yoga on the dock by the lake. On Fridays, four of them lingered a little longer, heading to the beach café for coffee before scattering into the rest of their day.

Claire shared her frustrations about Joyce Whitmore - how the woman had an uncanny knack of appearing just as she was collecting the mail, or as Claire rounded a corner at the library - there Joyce would be, tottering along with an armful of cookbooks.

“Hasn’t she heard of the internet?” Claire griped, “That’s where I get my recipes.”

The women laughed.

“She’s all right,” said Val. “Bit of a sweetheart, really - she’d help anyone out.”

“And she actually is quite computer-savvy, believe it or not,” Lisa added. “John went in to do a repair - said her setup was seriously high-end. He jokes she’s a closet gamer.”

“Smart as a whip,” Pat chimed in. “Barry Simpson - the bank manager? She suspected he was up to no good months before he got caught embezzling. She felt guilty she hadn’t gone to the authorities, but she had hinted at her suspicions at the Neighborhood Watch meetings.”

The others nodded in agreement before sipping the last of their lattes and heading out. Claire lingered a moment, unsettled. Sweetheart, gamer, watchdog, amateur detective – just who was Joyce Whitmore?

In spite of her best efforts to avoid small-town activities, Claire eventually gave in and attended a Neighbourhood Watch meeting - dragging Ethan along with her. Trouble had been brewing in their street for weeks: a broken shed lock here, a few car tires let down there. Just the morning before, they had woken to find a gallon tin of yellow paint hurled across the kitchen window at the back of their house. And the week before that, Claire could have sworn someone had been rummaging through their paper recycling bin.

Claire was surprised to see that Joyce Whitmore wasn’t the one at the front of the hall. A middle-aged man – wearing a reflective vest emblazoned with Safer Peachville - called the meeting to order and ran briskly through the agenda, but it quickly became clear who was really in charge. Joyce never raised her voice, never overstepped, yet every discussion seemed to bend back toward her. Parking disputes were discussed, and Gerry Baxter’s unruly dog. When neighbours argued about whether the recent vandalism was teenagers or outsiders, it was Joyce who suggested “perhaps both,” and the room nodded in agreement. When the official Chair fumbled for names or dates, Joyce supplied them smoothly, earning murmurs of thanks. By the end of the evening, every decision made was the one Joyce had gently steered them toward. What unsettled Claire most was that no one seemed to notice.

As the neighbours milled about with tea and plates of home-baked goods, Mrs. Whitmore drifted over to where Ethan stood beside Claire. “No doubt you’re still getting used to the recycling system here,” she murmured “Just a reminder, my dear - liquor bottles don’t go in the garbage bin. They go to the depot. Think of all the deposit money you’re missing out on.” She gave him a wink before moving off to put someone else’s world to rights.

Ethan shot Claire a quick glance. She kept her expression carefully neutral, refusing to give the old witch the satisfaction. Ethan had promised he’d quit drinking. The sting of betrayal was sharp enough, but it was far worse coming from the thin, tight lips of Joyce Whitmore.

At home that night, Ethan assured her it had only been two bottles, three weeks apart - red wine, not scotch - and that he’d already started attending meetings in the next town. Claire believed him; there had been none of the old signs that had haunted their marriage in the past two years. He wasn’t, by any means, off the hook for not telling her he’d slipped, but she renewed her vow to support him through it. And silently, she made a new vow - to find out exactly what the old lady was up to.

Claire began keeping notes of her own - recording the strained smiles from Doris, the bakery owner, after Joyce had cornered her at an event and whispered something in her ear; the Harpers, who had moved away suddenly, leaving in their wake gossip of a marital affair - rumors that seemed to have started with Joyce herself. But Claire had noticed something the others missed: just two days before the Harpers had left town, Joyce had strolled out of their house with a self-satisfied smirk on her face.

The night of the next Neighbourhood Watch meeting, Claire cried off with a headache at the last moment but urged Ethan to go.

“Apparently they’re updating the rulebook on the exact shade of green our hedges should be - and we don’t want to get in trouble for not getting it right.”

Ethan shook his head. “It’s not that bad. And Sally’s bringing her famous chili - your loss.”

He gave her a goodbye kiss on the forehead as she lay on the couch with a cool cloth over her eyes.

Claire waited a few minutes then slipped out. She would have preferred the cover of darkness, but the early evening suited her fine. Thanks to the meeting there’d be no one to see her except for the occasional babysitter who would be more interested in their phone than the comings and goings of a thirty-something blonde crossing the road.

She strolled casually to the side door of Joyce Whitmore’s garage and made quick work of the lock. It gave way with a soft click, and Claire slipped inside, closing the door quietly behind her.

Her eyes went straight to the glow of a single green light across the room. Just as she’d suspected, Joyce’s treasures weren’t limited to gardening tools and canning jars. Against the far wall, a sleek, modern computer hummed beside a tidy stack of notebooks.

“Thank you, Mrs. W,” Claire laughed as she spotted the yellow sticky note taped to the monitor – the neatly written password.

It took only minutes to confirm what she already suspected - Joyce wasn’t simply meddling; she was running a full-fledged blackmail scheme. And in some cases - like with the banker - she’d even engineered the downfall herself when someone had dared to cross her. Claire had suspected as much when her own research turned up no court proceedings involving the man or the bank.

What did surprise her was the number of cameras. Half-a-dozen concealed high in Joyce’s attic, their feeds covering almost every angle of the block and the neighbouring streets. Claire methodically erased the recordings and disabled the system.

Flipping through the notebooks, she grinned when she found one devoted solely to herself and Ethan. Line after line charted Joyce’s fruitless digging, each note tinged with rising frustration at what she couldn’t uncover. The final entry read: “Claire: unruly, resistant. Solution in progress.”

Claire’s smile widened as she closed the book. Joyce Whitmore thought she held all the strings, but she had no idea who she was dealing with. Claire had played this game before - and with far more dangerous opponents than an old woman with a notebook.