Three-Point Play (9 page)

He sat rooted to the chair, willing the sounds to stop.
This can't be real
, he told himself.
This just can't be happening.

Then something clunked to the floor. Too big to be an earring, too small to be a picture frame. A watch, maybe?

Cody scanned the area around him.
Man
, he scolded himself,
of all nights to have remembered to put the phone on the charger up in my room—instead of tossing it on the couch. Okay, then, that settles it. I'm out the front door, right now. Just as soon as I can get my legs to move.

He felt sweat forming along his hairline.
C'mon
, he ordered himself.
Get moving. That burglar isn't going to stay up there forever. If it is a burglar. Could it be Gabe Weitz's brother? Whoever it is, you gotta move, dude!

But for some reason he felt glued to the chair. He sucked in three deep breaths.
Okay, then, time to, as Blake would say, assess the situation. In fact, maybe it's Blake up there, just trying to scare me. Get back at me for booting him out—which I am now regretting with all my heart. I'll call up to him right now. Use my new, deeper puberty voice. Tell him I'm on to him.

But when Cody opened his mouth, only a soft gasp escaped. He placed both palms on the arms of the chair and lifted himself up. Moving in slow motion, he eased his way to the front door and peered through the diamond-shaped window just below his eye level. There was no car in the driveway and nothing parked along the sidewalk either. He cupped his hand around the doorknob, ready to twist it and dash from the house.

Then he remembered Mom's wedding ring. Last he knew, it still rested in a jewelry box atop the chest of drawers. His dad kept saying he wanted to do something special with it, but he hadn't decided what.

Cody shook his head in disbelief. The ring was probably the only thing of value up there. The thief would be sure to take it. And Cody couldn't let that happen.

Moments later, Cody shuffled toward the staircase as if an invisible hand were pushing him. As he passed the smaller of two entryways from the living room into the kitchen, he noticed that the door leading into the kitchen from the garage stood ajar about a foot.
So that's how someone got in without noticing me, and vice versa,
he realized.

No way I should be doing this
, he reminded himself as he reached the bottom step.
This is so not like me. But it's Mom's wedding ring we're talking about here. I don't think I could live with myself if I just let some creep walk outta here with it.
He stopped suddenly when the third step creaked under his left foot. He closed his mouth, allowing himself to breathe only through his nose. For a few seconds the rummaging sound stopped, then it resumed.

He reached the top of the stairs. The largest bedroom was about fifteen feet down a hallway to the left, just past Cody's room. He chastised himself for not picking up a weapon while he was downstairs. It was too late to go back now.

He moved along the wall on the same side as the bedrooms, steadying himself with his left hand.
Be smart
, he warned himself.
Just make sure it's a burglar, not Blake or Pork Chop playing a joke, then you're outta here. At a neighbor's, calling the police.

He startled for a moment when he heard an abrupt clicking sound, but then he stifled a sigh when he realized it was just the furnace coming on. He clenched his right fist as he eased forward again.

Cody knew he should pray, but, as often was the case when he was tempted to step into trouble, he didn't want to be accountable for the answer, which he figured would reflect the advice in Matthew's gospel about earthly treasures versus heavenly treasures. He stopped when he reached his father's bedroom. There was still sound, but now it was coming from the bathroom off the bedroom.

I guess Mr. Burglar has moved on to new territory
,
maybe looking for Percodan or something
. Slowly, Cody leaned his head into the bedroom doorway. There was definitely no one near the dresser now. He took two tentative steps into the room. He thought about dropping to his knees and crawling along the floor, as the king-size bed might shield him from view of whoever was in the bathroom. But, just as he was about to bend his knees, he sensed someone behind him.

Oh, heaven help me
, he gulped.
There are two of'em
.

Cody stood frozen. He didn't want to whip his head around suddenly, as that would surely bring an attack from behind.
Maybe if Burglar Number Two thinks I don't know he's there, he'll just stay put,
he reasoned.
So, Cody Martin, eyes front. Don't even think about looking behind you!

Then Cody noticed the mirror. It was oval shaped, centered above the chest of drawers.
If I move just a little to my right,
he thought,
I might be able to see if anyone's behind me. Or if it's just my imagination.

Cody pretended to merely shift his weight to the right, but as he did, he picked up his right foot and let it slide about eight inches. He felt his teeth clench as he strained to see what might be reflected behind him.

The figure was large, wearing some kind of long coat. Cody felt the top of his head tingle, as if being pricked by a thousand tiny needles. Without thinking, he wheeled around and drove his right fist right where he hoped the burglar's throat would be.

He punctuated the punch with an involuntary gorilla grunt, as he heard the figure hit the wall with a loud smack.

He was cocking his fist for a follow-up punch when he felt a sharp blow between his eyes.

Cody stood half-stunned and staring at the large shape in front of him. He wondered why he hadn't gone down when the blow struck him, especially when he realized that it was a board or club that hit him, not a human fist.

“Who are you?” he growled at his opponent—his voice choking its way through a mess of rage, frustration, and fear.

No reply came. Tentatively, Cody stepped forward. He thought of something Blake had said in youth group earlier in the week: “Sometimes, fear is God's microphone.”

Okay, Lord
, he confessed.
I'm hearing you, loud and clear. I'm sorry I didn't bounce outta here a long time ago. But since I'm here, please don't let this stubborn, silent thing in front of me be a ghost. Especially not the ghost of Gabe Weitz.

He took a step backward, keeping his eyes fixed in front of him.

He laughed in spite of himself, as the scene came into focus. The sensation reminded of him when he used to watch
Wheel of Fortune
with his mom, and, suddenly, his mind would fill in the missing letters of a phrase or name.

It was his father's bathrobe. It hung from the back of the closet door on a temporary hanger that slid over the door's top. Cody usually found the robe wadded up on the bathroom floor or slung across an arm of the downstairs couch, but, obviously, the impending domestication was compelling Luke Martin to clean up his act. The closet door opened outward, so it was parallel to the wall when open all the way.

Cody rubbed the center of his forehead, chuckling again when he realized that his punch had caused the door to rebound off the wall, nearly putting a canyon down his skull
. At least it missed my nose,
he thought.
I already have five and a half zits; that's about all the imperfection my face can take at the moment. Anyway, big ups to you, Cody Martin. You're the first guy to beat up—himself!

Cody felt his smile vanish when he heard more stirring from the bathroom. And his heart, which had only recently slowed enough so that he could feel each individual beat, accelerated again until his chest practically vibrated with a rapid-fire drum solo so fierce that he couldn't tell where one heartbeat ended and the next began.
I can't believe
, he scolded himself,
that I forgot about the other burglar—who I guess is the only burglar. But that's more than enough!

He moved briskly to the doorway, risking one glance over his shoulder before he planned to descend all nine stairs with one bound and sprint all the way to—somewhere loud and bright and very, very public.

That's when he saw Miss Ella leap from the bathroom sink across the threshold of the bathroom.

“Oh, Miss Ella,” he said, his voice quivering. “Y-you're behind all of this? You're gonna pay, big-time.”

Miss Ella, who must have been patrolling the vanity in the bathroom, meowed and trotted toward Cody. Her purring intensified as she made figure eights through his legs, rubbing her lean body against his ankles.

“You scroungy feline,” he said, with mock disgust. “You almost gave me a heart attack—not to mention almost making it necessary for me to change my underwear! That's the thanks I get for letting you come over and hang with me?”

Cody's dad was severely allergic to cats, as well as ragweed, pollen, dust mites, and so on. Whenever Cody's mom had completed medical forms for her husband, she replied “Pretty much everything” to questions about “known allergies.”

So she and the then-sixth-grade Cody had conspired to covertly “adopt” Miss Ella, a midsize cat with a sleek gray coat, as a surrogate pet. Miss Ella's rightful owners, the Workmans down the street, didn't seem to pay much attention to her. They must have seen her lounging on the Martin porch or following Cody when he went to the mailbox, but they never came over and accused the Martins of trying to win their cat's affection and loyalty.

Miss Ella wasn't allowed in the Martin house. If Cody's dad had ever found cat hair on the couch, the game would have been up, and Miss Ella would be formally and finally banned from the premises. Occasionally, she managed to squirt between Cody's legs when he took out the trash, but either he or his mom would retrieve her before she was discovered.

Cody hadn't seen much of Miss Ella lately. Probably, he reasoned, because after his mom's death, the years-old tradition of sneaking the cat albacore tuna and whole milk on the back porch had all but vanished.

“Aw, Mom,” Cody whispered softly as he tucked Miss Ella in his right arm and carried her like a football down the stairs, “even a stupid cat reminds me of you. It was fun, having a secret pet with you.”

He gently set Miss Ella down on the front porch. “You head back to your real home, okay? I'll feed you some tuna this weekend. Sorry that I've been neglecting my duties.”

Back in the house, Cody felt his still-tense muscles relax when Blake picked up the phone on the first ring. “Uh, B,” he said tentatively, “I've been thinking, and I'm pretty sure my dad would be upset if you weren't over here, like physically, at night. I'm pretty sure he'd give me a lecture about following the letter of the law—as well as the spirit of the thing.”

He heard Blake chuckling on the other end of the line. “What happened, Code? You watch a scary movie and get spooked or something?”

Cody erupted with a laugh that he hoped didn't sound as fake as it felt. “Yeah, right, Blake. You think a stupid TV show can scare me? Ha!”