BURGLAR
Copyright (c) Phoebe Matthews
I was rushing around getting ready to
go to my afternoon job and not in the mood for Jimmy.
"Somebody smashed the glass on
the back door. Glass all over the kitchen floor!" he whined.
"Somebody broke into your place?
When?"
"Last night, I guess. I drove
down to Tacoma with some of the guys and it got late so we stayed over with
Wally."
The 'got late' part meant they had
all been drinking too much and so they spent the night sleeping on Wally's
floor in Tacoma rather than take a chance getting picked up DUI.
Good call, probably. The only real
puzzle was trying to figure out why anyone would break into Jimmy's house. He
uses the kitchen sink as a giant ashtray. The counter and floor are often
covered with dead pizza boxes. "Brave burglar. Could have tripped on the
garbage and got hurt."
He ignored me. We are pretty good at
that. Jimmy and I grew up together, living on and off with our Gran when our
sister mothers did their constant desertions. He was a sniveling little ferret
faced boy. I was a bossy little girl and learned young to take charge of my
life. I was so good at it, Gran constantly told me to look after Jimmy, too, to
make sure he got to school and didn't lose his sweater and lunchbox on the way.
"Listen up, Claire! The kitchen
door wasn't locked. So why break the window?"
Hmm. Right. Jimmy seldom locks his
back door. Maybe an angry burglar broke the window on his way out. I mean,
imagine breaking into a place and finding it contains about the same stuff as
any dumpster. "So what's missing?"
He gave me an odd look. "How
should I know?"
"Didn't you check through all
the rooms?"
He shrugged which meant no.
"That's the first thing we need
to do," I said.
A little color drained back into
Jimmy's face when I said 'we.' "Maybe we should call Tar."
That's my boyfriend, Tarvik. I preferred to keep him out of it. I mean, I
am kind of high maintenance all by myself. One day he may decide that me plus
my needy cousin are way too much bother. "If I phone, he will think he has
to leave work to help us. Let's you and me take a look at your place
first."
Jimmy's house is a few blocks from
mine. When we got there, we circled around to the kitchen door and yep, someone
had knocked out one of the small panes in the door window, making it possible
to reach through and turn the knob.
"Clue one. Stupid burglar,"
I said and ticked it off on my finger.
"What makes you think
that?"
"You said you didn't lock the
door. Wouldn't a smart burglar try the knob first?"
Actually, a smart burglar would never
have bothered entering Jimmy's house. It was exactly as I remembered it from
the last time Jimmy had an emergency that required me to hold my nose and
enter. Cigarette butts in the sink, empty beer cans and pizza boxes everywhere
else. I left the door propped open. And crunched across broken glass.
"For starters, we should check
to see if anything is missing."
"Go ahead," he said.
"What? How could I know if
something is missing?" I gave him a shove. Jimmy is taller than me but
just as thin, easy to push. "It's your house. Now get moving. I have to be
at work in an hour."
If I sound grumpy, keep in mind that
my live-in boyfriend and I both work. He has a full time job and I have two
half time jobs which add up to full time plus extra commuting. Jimmy's
situation bugs me. His employment consists of occasional jobs for contractors,
where he goes into old haunted houses and tells ghosts to leave. Yeah, I know,
it sounds weird but we live in a neighborhood of families with inherited magic,
none of it worth much and all of it getting weaker with each generation.
Jimmy's one skill is the ability to feel the presence of ghosts. And every
teardown contractor at some time gets a cranky ghost who makes trouble, knocks
over paint cans or drops stuff on workmen. That's when the contractor calls
Jimmy and slips him cash. Between those jobs and the occasional renter, plus
constant handouts from me, he slides by.
We circled through the kitchen,
dining area and front room. Nothing out of place, not really, or rather,
everything was its usual mess under layers of dust. Jimmy didn't think anything
was missing.
"What about cash? Check book?
Bills? Where do you keep that stuff?"
He looked at me as though I had lost
my mind. And then he opened the hall closet, pulled a shoe box full of loose
papers off the shelf, waved it at me and put it back. "Yeah, I got bills
and a check book in there. If anybody wants to steal my bills, they are
welcome. The only cash I have is in my pocket."
Occasionally he does the odd job for
somebody besides contractors, jobs that have nothing to do with ghosts. I never
ask about those jobs because if he told me the truth I would bang my head
against the wall until I passed out and we both know that.
"Okay, if nothing is missing
here, we should check upstairs and then I have to be leaving."
"Uh, what if there is somebody
up there, Claire?"
"Upstairs? Why would there
be?"
"Yeah, I guess. Okay, go
ahead," he said, and left me a choice.
I could stand at the bottom of the
stairs staring at him for the next hour while he tried to think of ways to
weasel out of searching his own house, or I could figure no burglar would be
dumb enough to hang around. Worst that could happen would be Jimmy and me
running down the stairs screaming. I doubted an ax murderer would remain all
night and half a morning in a house with an empty refrigerator. I stomped up
the stairs. Jimmy followed.
Both bedrooms were a mess, dirty
clothes on the floor, beds unmade, and how did he manage to keep two beds
unmade? Nah. I didn't want to know. I did look in the closets. Empty.
"See anything missing?"
"Uh, no. But I don't remember
any sheets on that bed." He pointed into the room across the hall from his
own. Occasionally he has a renter, a guy desperate enough to pay twenty bucks
to rent the room for a week. His renters usually find someplace else to live
before the week is up.
"You had it stripped?"
"I think so."
With my shoe I kicked aside a layer
of dirty clothes in the hall. "So all that leaves is the bathroom."
"You think there is someone in
the bathroom?"
"No, but if somebody broke into
your house and saw your downstairs and came upstairs anyway, I would guess he
was looking for drugs." I never heard of a burglar who came to steal dirty
clothes, I didn't say, because I didn't want to get involved in a long
argument.
"I don't do drugs. You know
that."
"Yes, I do know that. But a
burglar might not." I opened the door, peered in, and let out a screech.
When I turned around, my brave cuz
was half way down the stairs.
"Get back here," I shouted.
"Who did this?"
As I was merely shouting, not passing
out, Jimmy came slowly back up the stairs. From his expression, I knew he was
expecting a dead body in his bathtub. No such thing. Although almost as
shocking.
The room was spotless. Shiny clean,
except for a pile of rags in one corner. Someone had cleaned out the tub and
washed the floor. On the edge of the tub was a new bar of soap and a shampoo
bottle.
"What the hell?" Jimmy
muttered.
A damp towel was folded over the
towel rack. Not dropped on the floor. Not Jimmy's style.
"Somebody took a bath and made
up the extra bed. Sounds like a homeless person spent the night here."
"How does this happen to
me?" Jimmy moaned. "I go away for one night and a stranger breaks in.
Probably carrying some rare disease, ya know?"
"Good point," I told him.
"If it was my house, I would gather up all the sheets and towels and toss
them in the wash machine. And now I gotta run or I will miss my bus."
"You're leaving? What if this
person comes back?"
Spreading my arms, I did a slow turn
in my skirt and shirt and sandals. Nowhere to hide a weapon. "Do I look
like a body guard? If you are worried, call the police. Maybe you're the victim
of a serial housebreaker, maybe an escaped prisoner. The cops might know."
Jimmy had time to worry. I didn't. I
had a job. One that paid. I had done what I could, checked the house with him,
and that was that.
Yeah, well, not exactly. When I got
home from work, my boyfriend was in the kitchen cooking supper. Tarvik is blond
and adorable and kissable, so I did that, kissed him, one kiss leading to
another, until he said, "Jimmy is here. He was waiting on the steps when I
came home."
The kitchen opens into the front room
and there was Jimmy, stretched out on the couch in front of the TV.
Jimmy comes to supper with us every
night he doesn't have something else to do. Nothing new. "Is there a
problem?"
"He wants to sleep on the couch
tonight. I didn't ask why. I thought perhaps you knew."
Marching into the front room, I
planted myself between Jimmy and the TV. "Why do you want to sleep on my
couch?"
"Hey, cuz," Jimmy muttered.
He looked exhausted, even I could see that and I gave up worrying about Jimmy's
health a long time ago.
"What's up?"
He sat up slowly and rubbed his eyes.
"You know how you told me to wash the towels? Well, I tried to."
"Tried to? You have a washer.
What's to try?"
"Those rags in the corner of the
bathroom on the floor? Those weren't rags. They were my tee shirts. So I picked
them all up along with the towels and took them downstairs and opened the wash
machine and you're not going to believe this."
What I really wanted to do was go
take a quick shower and change into something cool and sloppy. Instead I did
the usual. I asked what he wanted me to ask. "Believe what?"
"It was full of clothes. Not my
clothes. I never saw that stuff
before."
"You think they belonged to
whoever broke into your place?"
"Must. What else could they be?
If he left his clothes in the washer, he must be figuring on coming back."
That answered my next question. Jimmy
was afraid to stay in his own house alone. I didn't know what to do. What if he
was right? What if the housebreaker was some crazy with a gun? I mean, the
housebreaker would have to be crazy if he planned to return to Jimmy's messy
house.
Over supper Jimmy and I explained to
my boyfriend what had happened. We all agreed Jimmy should sleep on my couch if
necessary and let me tell you, it takes a lot to make me accept that sort of
idea. One of my nightmares is a dream of Jimmy moving in with me after losing
his house, either to his mother who actually owns it but is living in another
state, or to the tax collector or to bankruptcy. Which is why I often come up
with the money for his taxes.
Now it looked like I might get him as
a housemate because of a stupid burglar.
Okay. If I could pay Jimmy's taxes to
keep him in his own house, I could definitely confront a burglar.
"Here's the deal," I told
him. "We are going to call the police and then we are going over to your
house tonight."
"No, we aren't," he
muttered. He stared down at the table and refused to look me in the face.
Because I know my cousin way too well, I suspected he had recently had a run-in
with the Seattle police department and didn't want to remind them that he was
still around.
"I'll go over and check the
house," Tarvik said.
Would getting shot to help out his
girlfriend's cousin be taking high maintenance way past the limit for him?
"Not by yourself," I said.
"Jimmy goes, too. And me."
Jimmy gave me an angry glance.
"How about getting backup?"
It wasn't actually the stupidest
suggestion he had ever made. Using my cell phone because he hadn't paid his
bill and had been cut off, Jimmy phoned a half dozen guys in the neighborhood
who play on the same soccer team. While he was calling, Tar and I did the after
supper clean up of the kitchen.
And then we walked down to Jimmy's
house and waited by the front curb for backup. Tarvik wanted to go on in and
get done what needed getting done, but Jimmy whined and I did a lot of arguing,
so he waited. By ten o'clock everyone was there, eight guys and me.
The six who arrived came armed with
an assortment of weapons including baseball bats and garden shovels. I didn't
ask what might be in pockets. We explained what was going on and then we all
went around to the back door and no, they weren't silent. They didn't
intentionally make noise. But eight guys can't move silently together, at
least, not that eight.
The downstairs rooms were dark. No
burglar. Tarvik flipped on the light and led the way upstairs. The doors to
Jimmy's room and the bathroom were open. He flipped on those lights. Empty.
The door to the second bedroom was
closed. Tarvik reached for the knob.
"Don't," I whispered.
"Jimmy, did you close that door before you came over to my place?"
Jimmy whispered, "No."
"What if someone is in there
with a gun pointed at the door?" I suggested.
They all watch too much TV. That whole
crowd did the cop thing, shouted, "NYPD, open up!" which was pretty
weird considering we live in Seattle.
Silence.
Enough's enough. I pushed past all
those noisy guys and knocked on the door. And then I gave it a push and it
banged open against the wall. Reaching inside, I flipped on the light. All this
by myself, avoiding Tarvik who was grabbing for me to pull me back.
So now do you believe how anxious I
was to keep Jimmy in his own house and not in mine?
Yeah, well, in a way, Jimmy was
right. There was a lump under the sheet on that bed, a man size lump, with the
top of his hairy head barely visible. He let out a snore. Talk about heavy
sleepers, though I guess that is common enough when someone first falls asleep.
"Hey, you!" I screamed. My
high voice did it.
The body in the bed let out a snort,
tried to flip over and rolled out onto the floor. A guy in an undershirt and
shorts managed to sit up. His eyes were slits. He rubbed at them. Gotta say, a
guy in his underwear, with his eyes practically glued shut with sleep, does not
look dangerous.
"Who are you?" I asked at
the same time Jimmy said, "Oh my God."
As the man on the floor didn't seem
able to speak, I swung toward Jimmy.
"What? You know him?"
The others had all pushed into the
room, a crowd of big guys holding rakes and hoes and baseball bats. They gave
the sleepy man a glance and then turned their stares on Jimmy.
"Uh, yeah. Sort of." He
looked ready to sink through the floor. "He, uh, he works for, uh, he's
looking for an apartment, uh."
He had to be one of the strays Jimmy
finds, guys new on a construction job or recently kicked out of a girlfriend's
apartment, so desperate they take Jimmy's offer and hand him twenty bucks.
"He rented this room," I
said.
"Uh, right. I forgot all about
him."
Met the guy the morning before going
to Tacoma with friends, that's what Jimmy had done, then had a night of
partying at Wally's place and had completely forgotten he had a new tenant.
"Do you know his name?" I
asked.
"Um, it's Tom or Tim or
something."
The man on the floor muttered,
"Greg."
The guys all said stuff like,
"Nice to meet you, Greg," and filed out of his room and down the
stairs and out of the house before they started yelling at Jimmy.
I stayed behind because I had a
question. "Greg, why did you break the window in the back door?"
He turned his face up toward me. His
eyes remained slits. I must have looked like a blur to him.
"Accident. Sorry. I was running
late for work and bumped the glass with my tool box. Couldn't find a broom.
Couldn't stop to look. I came back on my lunch hour. Somebody had already cleaned up."
Yeah, I had swept up the broken glass
and gone on to my job. And Jimmy had gone off someplace else, probably to the
store to buy cigarettes and pizza with
the rent money from Greg. The first and last rent money from Greg.
END
This story is included in the Rock's Dogs collection of 12 short stories.
Also available from apple, Kobo, nook
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Also available from apple, Kobo, nook
Visit HOME PAGE (link at top of this page) for information and links about books . 53
