My Neighbors Came Begging Me in Tears

I gave out my special rat poison for free, trying to fix the complex's rat problem. And my neighbor Brenda turned right around and reported me. She demanded I pay out of pocket to have the rats disposed of humanely. I looked around at the neighbors. "I know a place that'll do it at cost," I said. "Extermination plus sanitizing runs about thirty grand. Split it across every unit and that's maybe twenty bucks a household—" Brenda cut me off before I could finish. "Nora, honey, you're the one who decided to trap those rats." "Why should everyone else foot the bill for that?" "And come on, it's a few hundred rats. You really need that kind of money?" "We're all neighbors here. Don't go shaking us down." I looked up at the neighbors, every one of them dodging my eyes. I couldn't help but smile. Fine. They all just want a free ride. Just don't come crying to me later. Chapter 1 I glanced down at my chest. I checked that the little action cam clipped there, the one recording how the poison performed, was running fine. Then I turned to the guy from the health department. "So I'm handing the rats over to property management, and they'll hire a licensed company to deal with them. That's fine, right?" "That's fine." But Brenda got frantic. "Nora, if you dump this on management, who's paying for it?" I smiled. "By the rules, this is management's job. How is that dumping it on anyone?" "And the cost gets covered by all the owners who benefit. Obviously." I glanced back at the health inspector. "That's right, isn't it?" He nodded in agreement. The owners standing around weren't having it. "My place doesn't have rats. I didn't benefit. Leave me out of it." "Whoever started this pays for it. Not my problem." I ignored them. I walked straight up to the property manager. "Greg, while the health department's still standing right here, I'm officially handing these rats over to you. Please deal with them as soon as you can." Greg looked like he'd just swallowed a dead rat whole. But all he could do was grit his teeth and nod. As I left, I caught sight of Brenda, loud and shrill a minute ago, now oddly calm. She even pulled Greg off to the side herself. The two of them started whispering. Something felt off, so I stayed on my guard. I looped around behind them. Hidden behind a pillar, I caught their conversation. "Brenda, why didn't you back me up out there?" "She just dumped this hot potato in my lap. What am I supposed to do?" "You saw it. Nobody wants to pay a dime." Brenda glanced around, shifty. Once she was sure no one was watching, she patted Greg's shoulder. "Greg, are you slow or something?" "I reported that girl so she'd back off and quit sticking her nose in." "If she's dumb enough to front the money and the rats disappear, where does that leave us?" Greg still looked anxious. "Sure, but what do we do with this batch of rats?" Brenda smiled, dark and slow. "Rats chewing their way out of a cage? Happens all the time." "We can't do that." Greg's voice jumped before he could stop it. Brenda clapped a hand over his mouth, and he went on, timid. "If the owners find out, what happens to me?" But Brenda had it all worked out. "You just do as I say." "I've already lined up a fall guy for you." Right then, my camera beeped a low-battery warning. Lucky for me, I was quick on my feet. I slipped away a step ahead. Brenda never spotted me. Back home, I backed up the footage. As I did, I played back what Brenda had said, listening close. And if my guess was right? The fall guy she meant was me. I still remembered three days earlier, handing out my homemade rat poison to the owners for free. "Nora, take a word of advice: leave the professional stuff to the professionals." "Sticking your nose where it doesn't belong is a good way to make enemies." Back then, I hadn't seen what was hiding behind the smile. I'd missed the second meaning buried in her words. "Don't you worry, Brenda." "I did my PhD in biochemistry. Rat poison is literally my field." Turned out my good intentions were in her way. And sure enough. It was a little after ten that night. Management dropped an emergency notice in the group chat. [The rats chewed through the traps and most of them escaped. All residents, please take precautions.] The chat blew up. [Greg, what is management even doing over there?] [All those rats loose, and who's responsible if something happens?] Greg was worn out trying to explain and calm everyone down. That was when Brenda, head of the HOA board, spoke up. [Don't blame Greg, everyone. He's done his best.] [Getting handed that many rats out of nowhere, they're short on staff and experience, so a slip-up was bound to happen.] I smiled. There it was, passing the buck right on cue. I didn't even need to read the chat to know which way the wind was blowing. I thought it over for a moment. Then I muted the chat and kept the footage to myself. They needed to learn their lesson first. Chapter 2 The next morning, a dull pounding on my door dragged me awake. Bleary-eyed, I opened it to find Rachel from downstairs. Dark circles ringed her eyes, the whites shot through with red. She was scowling like I owed her five million bucks. Behind her stood Brenda and a crowd of neighbors. "Nora, those rats put us through hell all night." "How do you have the nerve to still be asleep?" I rubbed my eyes. "The rats weren't bothering me. Why wouldn't I sleep?" She stamped her foot, furious. She yanked a sheet of paper open. She shoved it in my face. "The rats chewed my son's SAT admission ticket to shreds, and he missed a whole section this morning." "You give me an answer today, or we are not done." By now I knew what she was after. I scratched my head. I pulled up my video doorbell footage. Then I played it back right by her ear. "You said it yourself. The rats did it." "What answer do you want from me?" Rachel crushed the SAT admission ticket into a ball, seething. Then Brenda and the neighbors crowded in. "Nora, honey, that's not the right way to look at it." I leaned against the door. I watched her put on her show. "If you hadn't gone and dumped those rats on management yesterday, none of this would have happened." "So when it comes down to it, this is your responsibility." "You owe Rachel for what she lost." I shot Rachel a look and gave a faint smile. "If I remember right, weren't you one of the ones saying your place had no rats, you hadn't benefited, so you weren't paying?" Rachel's face went red in a flash. "That's a lie. When did I ever say that?" I fiddled with my phone. Then I held it up for everyone to see. "You forgot? No problem." "Whatever anyone said, I've got the whole thing on video." They all glanced at each other. Rachel was at a loss for words too. I put the phone away and went on. "You didn't want to split a twenty-dollar disposal fee, so all I could do was hand the rats to management." "The health department signed off. Management took them." "Want me to pull the video up again?" They all dropped their heads. "So if you want answers, go talk to management." With that, I turned to head back inside. Brenda dug in and grabbed my arm. "Nora, don't take this the wrong way." "Rachel and these housewives don't know any better. But you? A fancy PhD, and you're telling me you didn't know handing rats to management could be dangerous?" "And secretly filming everyone to weasel out of the blame." "Don't you think that's selfish?" I studied Brenda, curious now. "Brenda, when we were trapping the rats, why didn't you tell everyone they'd have to be disposed of humanely?" "And the second we went to handle them, you filed a report." "If we're talking responsibility, as head of the HOA board, aren't you the one who can't wriggle out of it?" At that, Rachel shot Brenda a glance. "Brenda, about this..." Brenda's face darkened. "Rachel, don't you dare mix up right and wrong." "The only reason I didn't warn people is that I made the mistake of trusting this PhD." "I filed that report for the health of the whole complex." The more she talked, the more worked up she got. She raised a hand and pointed at me. "If you couldn't leave them in the complex, why not just dump them somewhere outside?" I put on a look of surprise. "Brenda, are you saying the health of everyone else out there in the city doesn't count?" Realizing she'd said the wrong thing, Brenda went dead silent. I couldn't be bothered wasting any more breath on them. I just raised my phone. "Anyone else got a problem? We can let the police sort it out." Getting nowhere, Brenda shot me a vicious glare. She was rounding up the crowd to leave when I called after her. "Brenda, don't rush off." I pointed at my kicked-in door. "Who's paying for this? Somebody owes me." At that, the neighbors all threw up their hands. "Brenda's the one who told us to kick it." "I just came to watch." Not one of them waited for Brenda to speak. They dropped her and packed into the elevator. I pulled up a Venmo request. She saw the amount and went green. "A thousand dollars?" "Nora, this is highway robbery." I smiled. "Too steep? Then let's call the cops." "And if it comes out to more than a thousand, we won't be talking about a simple repair anymore." Brenda hesitated a good long while. In the end she paid, grudging every cent. On her way out, she shot me one last venomous look. "Nora. You'd better watch yourself." Chapter 3 For a whole day, the resident group chat never went quiet. [Greg, how are there even more rats than before?] [What is management doing?] Aside from crying poor, all Greg could do was make empty promises. [This came out of nowhere. We really didn't have time to prepare. Please bear with us.] [I'm already working on a fix. Everyone please stay calm.] Brenda, meanwhile, went invisible right along with me. Not a single word from her. That evening, I got home from work. I took the stairs for my usual bit of exercise. But in nearly every stairwell corner, I found cracker crumbs and bits of bread. Heart thumping, I climbed to the floor just below mine. That was when a figure slipped past me. I fell in behind them at once. I got a good look. It was Brenda, scattering food crumbs outside a neighbor's door. I held my breath, tailing her and filming. I didn't stop until I had her face and what she was holding clear on camera. Then I backed into the stairwell and bolted home. I'd finished dinner and was sorting through the footage. That was when the chat exploded again. This time everyone was tagging Brenda. [Brenda, did you get things sorted with management yet?] [The hallways are full of food the rats dragged back.] [The rats chewed right through my front door.] [A buyer came to see my unit today and almost got bitten.] A full half hour passed. Only then did Brenda surface. [Given how bad the infestation has gotten, it's even dragging down our property values now.] [After talks between the HOA board and management, we feel it's necessary to bring in a professional team.] I perked right up. She'd finally tipped her hand. Someone in the chat jumped in right away. [A professional team is great and all. The real question is how much?] Her end went quiet for about ten minutes. Then she dropped a quote. [Complete extermination plus full sanitizing: two point eight million dollars, all in.] I froze when I saw the number. Our complex had around fourteen hundred units. A normal pest company would charge two hundred grand, tops. And Brenda had the nerve to quote more than ten times that. But I kept quiet and watched. [Doesn't that come to about two thousand a household?] [Brenda, why is it so expensive?] The doubts erupted all at once. Brenda hurried to explain. [This is already the discount price. Greg and I compared several companies and fought hard for it.] [You all know how bad the infestation is. It has to be handled top to bottom, in the shortest time possible.] [Naturally the labor and chemicals don't come cheap.] People still weren't buying it. So Brenda switched into her patient, motherly mode. [I know it's not cheap.] [But think about it. How much have we already lost on our property values because of these rats?] [And if this turns into some kind of outbreak, the fallout would be far worse.] [Anyway, it's all voluntary. I won't force anyone who can't accept it.] Just then, an owner who was strapped for cash tagged me. [Ms. Mercer, maybe we could just use your special poison to trap them.] [This time we're willing to split the humane disposal cost.] The chat turned into a chain, one message after another. Everyone started praising my bang for the buck. I made them wait a good while on purpose. Then, nice and slow, I posted a voice message in the chat. "I'm so sorry. I actually think Brenda's right." "The professional stuff really should be left to the professionals." And with that, I sent Brenda two thousand dollars right there in the chat. Maybe she hadn't expected me to play along. Because when Brenda replied by voice, she actually stammered. "Dr. Mercer's right... professional treatment is the only way to root out the problem." With me leading the way, the doubts in the chat gradually faded. Brenda and Greg got busy tallying and collecting money. An hour passed. Then Brenda personally brought the receipt to my door. Her whole attitude had done a one-eighty. "Nora, it means so much that you'd support the complex like this." "You know what they say, a good neighbor's worth more than a distant cousin. Let's put that little misunderstanding behind us. No hard feelings on anyone's part, all right?" Brenda was beaming. She had no idea I was just giving her a nice send-off. Chapter 4 In just two days, Brenda had collected seventy percent of the money. A full one point nine million dollars and change. And the extermination crew moved into the complex, right on schedule. They gathered the owners to go over the extermination do's and don'ts. And Brenda made a big show of hyping up the crew's poison. "Look, everyone. This is premium German import." "Over ninety percent kill rate on the bait." But one look at the packaging and I knew it was no-name junk. So I raised the question in front of everyone. "Brenda, are you sure this is imported from Germany?" "Did you check the import paperwork for it?" Brenda knit her brows and said, flat and certain, "Of course. Greg and I checked it together." One of the crew members darkened at once. "Ma'am, please trust our expertise." The words were barely out before an owner rounded on me. "Right. If you don't understand it, stop pretending you do." "If it weren't for you, we wouldn't be paying all this extra." There was nothing more to say. So I said nothing else, turned, and went home. While the crew worked, I quietly followed and filmed. But they were unbelievably careful. Every time I got close to filming something that mattered, Brenda or Greg would appear out of nowhere to stop me. Even when the crew came to exterminate my own unit, they wouldn't let me watch. In the end it was the cameras hidden in every corner of my apartment that caught the whole thing. Just as I'd expected. This so-called professional crew was a bunch of rank amateurs. Not only were the chemicals of unknown origin, but the placement and dosing were hopelessly amateurish. As for the rats they'd promised to dispose of humanely, they just hauled them outside the complex and buried them in a shallow, sloppy hole. Once I'd filmed all of it, the first thing I did was take the poison to my lab at work for testing. As the extermination went on, the rat problem in the complex really did visibly improve. Every day Brenda strolled the grounds with her hands clasped behind her back, looking exactly like an executive inspecting the operation. And when the neighbors saw her, they were full of praise. "Brenda, thanks to you we can finally sleep at night." "You've got our vote in the next board election, for sure." But the good times didn't last. Barely a week later, on the very day the crew was set to pack up, the infestation came roaring back. And this time it hit harder. Several owners were bitten inside their own homes. Some elderly folks and children were bitten badly enough to land in the hospital. The crew didn't manage to slip away in time. They got cornered at the front gate by a mob of furious owners. And Brenda became the target of everyone's rage. "Didn't you say this was completely taken care of?" "How are there rats out biting people again?" "Brenda, is this the ninety percent kill rate you promised?" Watching the crowd boil over, with some already shouting for refunds, a flicker of panic crossed Brenda's face. But she pulled herself together fast. "Everyone, please stay calm. There's got to be some misunderstanding here." "Don't worry. We'll give you all an explanation." Just as things were about to spin out of control, Greg pushed through the crowd with the crew in tow. He slipped a small bag into Brenda's hand. Then he muttered something in her ear. A moment later, Brenda motioned for quiet. "Neighbors, this is why the extermination failed." Then she opened the bag in her hand. Inside, plain as day, was the homemade poison I'd handed out earlier. The crowd erupted. "How is she mixed up in this again?" "Brenda, spell it out." A crew member took the bag from her. His face was grave. "Everyone, this extermination failed because of that untraceable poison you people used earlier." "It's got a compound in it that clashes with our special formula, so the rats didn't die. They just got more aggressive." "To fix it, we have no choice but to use an even more expensive product and start the whole extermination over." In an instant, every eye in the place swung to me. "Nora, look what you've done." "You're not dodging this one." "The cost of redoing it, you're covering that." Brenda shoved through the crowd and squeezed up to me. She wore that martyred, disappointed look, like I'd let her down. "Nora, honey, I told you ages ago to stop meddling." "Look at the mess we're in now." "I want to speak up for you, and I don't even know where to begin." I stared at her. I just gave a cold little laugh. "Brenda, don't be in such a hurry." "In a minute, you'll know exactly what to say." With that, I pulled a tablet out of my bag. The instant I opened the file, the color drained from Brenda's face.