Elaine Orr - Jolie Gentil 06 - Behind the Walls (21 page)

“Play with her so she won’t bother me, okay?”
Pebbles appeared nonplussed.

I glanced at the clock.
It was almost time for the eleven o’clock news and I had promised myself I would stop then. I got a shawl from the foot of my bed and turned out all the lights except the bathroom and got back on the couch.

I set the TV timer to go off at
midnight in case I fell asleep. The announcer had just finished a story describing which beach towns seemed more ready for Memorial Day Weekend when I began to doze. I woke up at about one in the morning and stretched, causing Jazz to jump from her spot by my head to the floor.

I pushed the shawl off of me and sat up and yawned.
I was about to go into the bathroom to brush my teeth when there was a tapping sound from the back porch. “What was that?” I whispered.

The light tapping sound became a louder one and I realized someone was tapping on the window glass in the kitchen.
Someone’s trying to get in here
! I heard Jazz hiss from the vicinity of the kitchen.
Not someone I know!

I rolled off the couch and crawled to where my house phone sat on a small table near the rocking chair.
I pushed the button for the dial tone. The line was dead.

I cursed and looked around my living room, feeling more frantic by the second.
The coat closet was a place to hide, but it was in the hall. To get to it I’d have to cross the hall and could be seen from the kitchen.

My cell phone was on the counter in the kitchen.
I debated going out the front door. But maybe someone else would be out there, a lookout or something. I felt cold all over.
Think, think.
At about one o’clock in the morning and scared out of my wits, thinking was at a premium.

My sofa sat against one wall, but it didn’t touch the wall.
If I turned sideways I thought I could scoot behind it. I half crawled and half slithered behind it, and flattened my back against the wall so my face was stuffed into the upholstery.

I held my breath and was just letting it out when Jazz stuck her head under the couch.
I was pretty sure her expression said, “That’s my spot.” I wanted to laugh. I wiggled a finger to her, but instead of walking to me she pulled her head back and disappeared.

What if they hurt Jazz?
I was moving from panic to mad.

After several seconds of silence I thought I heard whoever it was trying to get the sash up so they could come in the window.
I was about to scream when I heard a police siren, and it was very close. I held my breath, wishing it to come to my house. About ten seconds later, it sounded as if it stopped at the curb in front of my house.

Whoever was at the kitchen window apparently heard the car, too.
He or she ran down the couple of back porch steps. It sounded as if the person was running toward Virginia Mulligan’s house.

I jumped from behind the couch and pulled open the front door as a very young police officer stepped onto my front porch.
“Someone’s in the back. I think they…” Before I could say more, the officer pointed to the right and ran that way, and a second officer ran toward the left side of the house.

“Lights, I need more lights.”
I walked through my little house flipping on every light I could find. Then I sat in my rocker and shivered.

“Over there,” someone shouted.
I hoped it was a cop.

There was the sound of several people running, and then the noise grew fainter.
Suddenly a loud voice yelled, “Police. Stop!”

The voices were close, but not quite close enough for me to hear what they were saying, and I wasn’t moving out of my rocker.
Then they got closer and I heard a man say, “It weren’t me! I’m the one who called you.”

I stood up and walked to the front door.
The officer who had come to the door first was walking a handcuffed man toward the police car. A second officer started to come up my short walkway.

The man now in the back seat of the car saw me and yelled.
“You know me. You know me.” He was perhaps in his late thirties, a bit unkempt, with a shock of bright red hair and wire rim glasses.

The second officer I recognized as Edgar Quinn, and I opened the screen door.
“I think maybe the man in the car comes to Harvest for All.”

“So, he knows you?”
Officer Quinn asked.

“Sort of.”

“It weren’t me! All in black, they was,” the red-haired man yelled.

The police car with the apparent would-be thief pulled away as another car drove up.
Lights were coming on in the houses around me.

I gestured that Officer Quinn should sit down, but he said, “Better if I look around.”

“The tapping was on the kitchen window,” I said.

He pulled some latex gloves out of a pocket and walked back into the kitchen.
Using only two fingers he flipped my lock and opened the back door and walked out on the back porch. He looked at the window, then peered closely and said, “Take a look at this.” Apparently another officer walked toward him, because Quinn said something to him and then came back in.

“It looks as if someone scored it.”
At my blank look, he added, “They were using a glass cutter to make a rectangle on the glass. It makes it easier to break, and there would usually be less noise. Then they could reach in and unlock the window. You’re lucky something scared them off.”

I must have looked the way I felt, which was very light-headed.
He grabbed my upper arm and steered me to my dinette table and held out a chair with his other hand. “Sit, and put your head on the table.” He walked back into the kitchen and I could hear him running water. He came back to me and placed a glass of water and a couple of paper towels on the table. “Can you dampen these and wipe your face?”

He didn’t wait for an answer, but pulled what I knew to be a radio phone from his belt and pushed a button.
“Dennison probably told you, but we’re clear here. Need someone to dust.” He listened for a second and then pushed a button to end the call. Then he sat in the other dinette chair and smiled at me. “You look a little better.”

I nodded.
“Thanks. Do you know that man?”

“He lives at the rooming house on
F Street, and he’s been around town for years. Never knew of him to be in trouble.” He gave a brief smile. “It’s not remotely funny, of course, but Sergeant Morehouse will have something to say about the guy’s first brush with the law being here.”

He lives where Scoobie lives.
I was calmer, but more puzzled than ever. “Why do you suppose he was here?”

“Hard to say.
Word’s going around that you have some expensive jewelry here.”

I put my head back on the table.

CHAPTER TWENTY-SIX

AT LEAST MY UNWELCOME VISITOR had arrived too late to be in the Monday
Ocean Alley Press
.

Since I knew she would hear about the person on my back porch from someone, I called Aunt Madge and Harry early in the morning.
The part of the morning when you’re supposed to be up. I downplayed the event, trying to present it as someone who could have just come to the wrong porch.
Yeah, right.

“It had to be the jewelry.
And on top of the murders! Maybe you should come here until they figure out who killed those men.” Aunt Madge’s voice was almost strident.

“Pebbles and Jazz will keep an eye on me,” I said, in a light tone.

“I’ll call Virginia Mulligan and Charlotte Evans. They can be more aware of goings-on at your house.”

“They’re going to be really sorry I moved here.”

“Only when they get to know you better,” she said, and hung up.

I stared at the phone.
Aunt Madge was sounding more like Scoobie.
That can’t be good.

I SHOWED UP AT the police station at nine-thirty. The time had been agreed to by Officer Quinn and whoever was in charge at the station last night. I think Quinn convinced the person in charge that I looked like I needed sleep.

Which did not come easily, of course.
I had finally fallen asleep at about two-thirty.

I sat on one of the hard plastic chairs in the reception area at the police station and thought.
It seemed awfully risky for someone to try to break into my house. It was such a small house, surely they would know I’d hear them. It probably did look as if I was asleep, with all lights out except the bathroom. Maybe when the timer turned off the television set, the burglar, assuming that was the goal, thought I was asleep.

Since early this morning I’d considered whether someone could really be looking for the jewelry I’d found.
It was possible they had simply noticed that my bungalow had had work done lately and a new person had moved in. Fresh bait for a chronic burglar, I thought.

The locked door that led to the area where officers sit opened and Sergeant Morehouse motioned for me to come in.
As I got closer, he said, “Get a good night’s sleep?”

“You’re as funny as sand crabs.”

He grunted and I followed him down the hall. “What’s the guy’s name?” I asked.

“I keep tellin’ you, I ask the questions.”
He gestured to his office and I went it. “Reuben Harris,” he said.

“Right.”
I thought for a couple of seconds. “I’ve seen his name on our list of people who come to Harvest for All. He never says much, as I recall.”

Morehouse sat behind his desk and I sat across from him.
“The thing is,” he said, “he’s not someone who’s been in trouble here before, and it would take more skill than I thought he had to disconnect your Internet from that spot under your back porch.”

“Skill how?”

“I guess not real technical skill, but Internet doesn’t come into every house the same way, like a telephone line does.”

“And they wanted to be sure my phone didn’t work.”
I shivered. “They meant business.”

“We’re checking to see if Harris has a history somewhere else. Has he ever threatened you, or said anything even mildly unusual?”

I shook my head.
“I’ve seen him in the pantry, but he mostly deals with Megan or one of the regular volunteers.”

Morehouse made a note.
“Hmm. Okay, tell me about last night.” He opened his notebook.

I pulled a piece of paper from my purse.
“I made notes. I was so rattled I was afraid I’d forget something.”

After listening to me for a couple of minutes, he asked, “Where was Pebbles in all of this?”
Probably my exasperation showed, because he smiled and added, “Maybe you can get guard-dog training for her.”

I relaxed a bit.
“Under the bed. That’s her spot when anyone else is in the house.”

“Even Scoobie?” he asked.

“She’ll come to the door of my bedroom. She sees Jazz sitting on him, so she’s getting the idea that he’s not too dangerous.”

When I mentioned that the person who jumped off the porch sounded as if he was running toward Virginia Mulligan’s house, he stopped me.
“That’s not where we found him.”

“Maybe he runs really fast.
Where was he when your guys caught up to him?”

“By the Evans’ place.”

“What? That’s the opposite direction,” I said.

“It is, and it doesn’t…”

“Sergeant.” Dana Johnson was at the door and she held what appeared to be several pieces of something that had come in on a fax. “You’ll want to see this.” She leaned across his desk and handed them to him, and then looked at me. “You okay?”

“Sort of.”

“At least this guy was alive,” she offered.

“You’re taking after him.”
I nodded to Sergeant Morehouse.

“Well, I’ll be damned,” he said.
“We may have our Peeping Tom.”

“That’s what I thought,” she said.

“You’re kidding,” I said.
Morehouse kept reading, and I looked at Dana. “That’s all there was for him?”

Sergeant Morehouse cleared his throat and I looked at him.
“I’m not asking inappropriate questions. Dana brought it in while I was here.”

“You’re here a lot,” he said.

“Not by my doing,” I snapped.

He ignored me and looked at Dana.
“It does kind of match what he said.”

“What did he say?” I asked.

Morehouse looked at me. “You aren’t telling this to your buddy George, are you?”

“Of course not.”

“He said he was standing near a house across the street. That house with the red trim.”

I knew the house.
I used to baby-sit there the year I lived in Ocean Alley in high school.

“He said,” Morehouse continued, “that he saw the person on your porch and used his cell phone to call us.”

“I wonder why he hung around?” I asked.

“He says to be sure you were all right.
Says he knew the ‘food lady’ lived there, so he never went near your windows.”

I wasn’t sure whether to laugh or cry.
I might be in danger from a burglar, but the Peeping Tom was leaving me alone. “Now what?” I asked.

“Now we see if there’s any clear indication that the person who was at your window maybe did run toward
Virginia’s house. If that’s the case, Reuben Harris may be telling the truth.”

“You want me to check out footprints or whatever over there?”
Dana asked. When Morehouse nodded she walked out.

A voice from the hallway asked, “Sergeant, you wanna talk to the guy from the Press?
He’s on the phone.”

“Tell him I’ll call him back in five minutes.”

I smiled. “To hear George tell it, you never call him back.”

“I don’t want him makin’ stuff up.”

THE
OCEAN ALLEY PRESS
headline on Tuesday was, “Rumored Treasure Trove at Fixer-Upper.”

The article noted that “the homeowner was asleep when an unknown burglar attempted to gain entry through a back window.”
It then said, while identifying the house by the block rather than the specific number, that a new owner had discovered some items a prior owner had left behind. The article did not mention that the suspected Peeping Tom had alerted the police to the burglar.

I was in the Purple Cow on Tuesday morning.

“My house is the only one in that block that’s turned over lately.
The headline is like advertising that there’s stuff to steal in it!”

“I thought so, too,” Ramona said.
She tried not to smile. “At least this time you didn’t end up in the hospital for anything. And you and George are still speaking.”

“Says you,” I said, but quietly.
“Anyway, he’s staying out of my way.”

“Why don’t you call him?”

“Because I’m at Aunt Madge’s for a couple of days and she doesn’t like that much cussing.”

My sister had invited me to
Lakewood for a few days, but I said I had too much going on. I was mostly staying at the Cozy Corner for a couple of days to make my parents feel better. If I hadn’t agreed to stay out of my house “until everyone knew I didn’t have magnificent jewelry,” as my father said, my parents were going to come up from Florida. I didn’t need that.

“I think Madge has heard all the words before,” Ramona said.

I STOPPED AT Mr. Markle’s grocery to be sure that our order of liquid string (God help me) was going to arrive before the so-called birthday party.

“You know this stuff makes quite a mess, don’t you?”
He had his usual dour expression, but I detected a slight glint in his eyes.

“It was Scoobie’s idea, so I’m prepared.”

That out of the way, I stopped by the office to see if there were any faxes or phone messages. The doorbell rang as I was reviewing a fax from Lester. It suggested that Harry take off his blinders and revise an appraisal that Lester thought was too low. Since I had done the appraisal, Lester didn’t use some of his choicer language.

I peered from a window to the side of the door and saw George, who held a bouquet of daffodils.
I didn’t want to let him in, but since my car was parked on the street he knew I was in the office.

I opened the door.
“If you’ve come to lead an expedition to tear my house apart looking for treasure, you can go over there and wait on the porch.”

He walked in.
“I’m not sitting on the swing.”

I winced, and then took the flowers he held out.
“Thanks.”

He walked to the sofa.
“I didn’t say you found a lot of diamonds.”

“And I appreciate that.”
I sat next to him and placed the flowers, which were well wrapped, between us. “But you and Scoobie can’t be there all the time, and I figure your article will encourage other burglars.”

“So, I’m buying you a present.”

“Second amendment aside, I’m not going to keep a gun.”

“Right.
I’d give you a gun when you’re still mad at me.”

I smiled and gestured to the flowers.
“Very nice.”

“Those are a peace offering.
The present is a security system,” he said, as he looked at the floor.

“I bought window locks and deadbolts.”

“The guys from Ocean Alley Security are coming this afternoon.
If you can’t be there, Madge said she’ll hang out while they put in the sensors and the alarm box.”

“You talked to Aunt Madge?”

“Yeah. She found me, actually.” He gave a kind of awkward grin. “Well, me and my editor. I didn’t know she could get that mad.”

“She didn’t mention that you’d talked.”

“I mostly listened. Then I had the security system idea, and she calmed down a lot. Plus, I think she figured out everyone in the news room was staring at her for telling off the boss.”

This was starting to seem funny.
“Didn’t your editor give her a lecture on freedom of the press?”

“There wasn’t much of a chance to actually
talk
to her. Look,” he gave me an almost pleading look, “I had to write the story the way I would have written it for anybody else. There were valuables hidden in your house when you tore down that wall. It’s newsworthy.”

He looked pitiful.
“Okay, I get it. Mostly it was the headline. Did you have to call it a treasure trove?”

“That was my editor,” he said, quickly.

“I guess if you can mollify Aunt Madge I’ll get over it.”

His pained expression vanished.
“So, you want help looking for more stuff?”

“Nope.
If there’s more there, it’s staying put.” As he started to say something, I added, “Really staying put.”

“Okay.”
He glanced at the flowers and then back at me. “How about a movie?”

A few weeks ago I would have been thrilled.
Now, having George as a boyfriend didn’t seem to matter. I didn’t want to worry about whether something I did made him mad at me.

“I…don’t know, George.
It seems like we’ve struck a kind of happy medium. I think I like it.”

“I shouldn’t have broken up with you,” he said.
“I’m sorry.”

“You had every right to be angry.
We’d agreed we’d share information, and I didn’t share.”

“Yeah, but you weren’t any different than you usually were.
I was the one who wanted you to be different,” he said.