National Federated's retainer would be commensurate with exclusivity, but a scratching sensation behind Jack's sternum hinted that Gerry Abramson was holding something back.
Perhaps an untranscribed chat with a crime-unit investigator who suspected this Calendar Burglar carried an AK-47 in his pillowcase. Most housebreakers aren't armed; county jail or prison-time on a theft rap is measured in single-to double-digit months. Add a weapons charge and it's usually
sayonara
for a long stretch.
But kill somebody with itsay, the P.I. on your caseand it's twenty-five to life. A punishment befitting the crime, Jack thought, except for me still being dead.
"The newspaper may be downplaying the story," he said, "but this victims list must have lit a bonfire under the police chief's butt."
Gerry nodded. "It hasn't slowed, much less stopped these thefts. If the Calendar Burglar isn't arrested before Labor Day weekend, it stands to reason, he'll disappear again."
And bloom like jonquils along a fence row next May. "I understand the reasoning, Gerry. To be honest, just thinking about it has my motor running, and the fee for services could be a beaut."
Jack laid the paperwork on the desk, then sat back and crossed a leg on his knee. "What I don't get is why you think I can make a tinker's damn worth of difference."
"Fresh eyes. Fresh perspective." His gesture relayed "If I'm footing the bill, what's the problem?"
The response was credible, even logical, but a tad too quick. Jack thought back to Wes's earlier remark about advising Gerry to contact McPhee Investigations shortly after the burglaries recommenced. Then the polite bum's rush Wes received when he tried to invite himself to the powwow.
"You think Shapiro's the Calendar Burglar," Jack said. "He covered himself by concentrating on other insurers' clients, then either greed or smarts told him he'd better dip into the home well, or somebody'd get wise."
Gerry's expression slackened. Skin folds lapping his eyelids retracted, as though an instant blepharoplasty had been performed. Chuckles escalated to a belly laugh. "Wait'll I tell Letha. Picturing Wes tiptoeing around like Cary Grant in that old cat burglar movie will be stuck in our heads for who knows how long."
Great. Now that he mentioned it, the image implanted itself in Jack's mind. Sort of like Don Knotts resurrected for a remake. No, not quite that big a departure. Jerry Stiller, maybe. Or What's-his-namethat average Joe born to play average Joes.
"It's as simple as this," Gerry said. "I'm an independent insurance agent. A hub in a wheel with multiple spokes. When loss claims hike, instead of one provider's boot on my neck, it's a centipede." He blew out a breath. "I shouldn't have to tell you, I don't need the stress."
A half hour later, Jack left the building with an armload of files, a retainer check and no idea how he'd earn it.
4
S
ingle-story duplexes are usually long rectangles with mirror-reverse floorplans. By the county assessor's definition, two contiguous residential units separated by a foot-thick rock firewall were patio homes. Very la-di-da, in Dina's opinion, but such was government work. Whether duplex or patio home, the bisected building wasn't rectangular, either, but an L painted a cruddy shade of gray.
The units shared a three-quarter pie-shaped front yard, a sweetgum tree and views of an adjacent redbrick warehouse, but respective tenants seldom saw each other. The jackknifed design had the neighbors facing north at the corner of Rosedale Court and Lambert Avenue; the Wexlers' side pointed due east on Lambert at its intersection with Spring Street.
Visitors directed to the corner of Lambert and Rosedale would idle at the curb, look from one unit to the other and mutter "Eeny, meeny, miney." Occasionally they chose the right "mo." A few hit the gas and drove away in a huff. Those who rang the Wexlers' doorbell in error kept them apprised of the current neighbors' last name.
As Dina cruised up Lambert Avenue at 1:15 a.m., the Rosedale side's windows were dark. Lights blazed from Casa Wexler as if a party was in progress. Where Harriet's energy-conservation policy once consisted of "Flip off that switch when you leave a room. You think I own the electric company?", evidently, she now thought her daughter did.
Dina pulled past the mailbox, shifted the Beetle into Reverse and backed into the driveway. The engine hacked and sputtered. Mechanical bronchitis was typical of vehicles with a couple of hundred thousand miles on their odometers.
Someday she'd have the money to restore it to its original
well,
glory
was a bit highfalutin for an ancient VW. She'd settle for a new milky-cocoa paint job and straightening the Val Kilmer sneer in the rear bumper.
The Beetle was as short in the chassis as she was, but the single garage wasn't deep enough to squeeze between the wall and the car to open the front-end trunk. She shifted into Neutral, yanked on the emergency brake, then slumped in the seat. She was just too pooped to muscle up the garage door, back in the Bug, unload her stuff, then jump for the rope tied to the door's cross brace to pull it down again.
"Someday number two," she said. "I'll have a garage with an electric opener and shutter."
Leaving the Beetle to the elements, she reached into the trunk and wrestled with the magnetic Luigi's Chicago-Style Pizza sign earlier peeled off the driver's-side door. Her hobo bag slung over one shoulder counterbalanced the canvas tote on the other. Quietly, she closed the trunk, then relocked it.
The duplex's front door swung open the moment the key was inserted. Dina groaned in frustration. Sirens and extended commercial breaks often lured her mother from the world that was her chair to survey the larger, outside one. When the TV program resumed, or no disaster was visible beyond the stoop, she'd shut the door and call it good.
Harriet Wexler could notor would notget it through her head that the day was long gone when locked doors and drawn curtains meant you had something to hide.
Inside, an infomercial hawked its wares to an unoccupied glider rocker. The habit of leaving on the TV "for company" impelled silent prayers that her mother hadn't toddled off hours ago to the bathroom and collapsed in a heap on the floor.
Dina left her purse and bag on the table and tiptoed down the hall. Whuffly snores met her midway. In the master bedroom, clear plastic tubing tethered Harriet to the oxygen machine at the end of the bed. Yards of extra hose lassoed the cannonball footpost.
In the light slanting from the open bathroom door, she resembled a child actor made up and bewigged to play her future self. Fingers curled over the bedcovers pulled up to her chin suggested a foil for pixies and their nightly tug-of-war with the blanket.
Dina eyed the machine's distilled-water level, then blew her mother a kiss. "Sweet dreams, Mom."
Naturally, Harriet continued to insist she didn't need oxygen, though her color and energy had improved in the past four days. Dina worried about her tripping over the tubing, but fear of breaking a hip made Harriet extracautious. All in all, the two Bobs' no-fuss, no-muss solution deserved a Nobel peace prize.
In the hall bathroom, Dina ran water in the sink and pretended the mirror above it didn't exist. Off with the black cargo pants, her sour-sweaty top and bra; on went the giant Mizzou T-shirt she'd slept in the night before. Soaping and rinsing her face felt wonderful. A hot shower would be ecstasy, but water tattooing the plastic tub surround sounded like marbles in a cocktail shaker.
Her face buried in a hand towel, she yelped when a voice said, "Where the devil have you been, young lady?"
Dina's head whiplashed toward the door, her pulse spiking a zillion beats a minute. Clutching the towel to her chest, she shrieked, "Jesus
Chr-ist,
Mom. You scared the livin' hell out of me."
By Harriet's expression, she was gratified to know she hadn't lost the ability to strike terror in the heart of her kid from ambush. "That pizza joint closes at eleven on weeknights." She sniffed several times, then puckered her lips. "This is Thursday, you look like you've been dragged through a knothole backward and what I smell ain't pepperoni."
"Oh, yeah?" Dina flinched. Sure, her defense strategies were years out of practice, but they hadn't been
that
lame since fourth grade. What popped out was a snotty, even lamer, "Technically, it's been Friday for almost two hours."
"You said you'd be home before midnight."
"I said I'd
probably
be home
by
midnight." Dina hung the damp towel on the bar behind her, smoothing the wrinkles and leveling the hems. "If you needed me, all you had to do was hit the panic button."
An emergency alert device hanging like a pendant around Harriet's neck was programmed to automatically dial Dina's cell phone. An autodial to 911 would be faster, but a city ordinance prohibited a direct connection to an emergency dispatcher. It was up to Dina to contact emergency services.
"Too many false alarms for a direct call," a city official told Dina. "An average of sixteen a day when the city council passed the ordinance. And
that
was twenty years ago."
A subscription service would relay confirmed panic-button emergencies, but it cost forty dollars a month. Dina couldn't afford it and a cell phone, too.
"I'm sorry, if I" The doorway was empty. Peering out, Dina glimpsed the tail of a seersucker housecoat rounding the corner into the dining room. When Dina caught up with her mother, she was fumbling with the tote bag's zipper.
"What do you think you're doing?" coincided with the TV announcer's "Only thirty seconds left. Act now, before it's too late
."
"Since you won't tell me what you're up to," Harriet said, "I have to find out my own self."
Paper crackled as she jerked out three white pharmacy sacks, their tops stapled shut. Her righteous scowl deflating, she delved for paydirt at the bottom of the bag.
"What's this?" she inquired, an "Aha!" implicit in her tone. The alleged contraband emerged, cocooned in a plain plastic bag.
"Okay, you got me," Dina said. "You'd think I'd learn it's impossible to put anything over on you for long." She pulled out a chair and sat down hard. "Go ahead. Open it."
Hesitating, her eyes downcast and despair evident, Harriet unwrapped whatever Pandora's box she'd imagined and now wished she'd left alone.
While she stared transfixed at the carton, Dina said, "The pharmacist on the graveyard shift had customers stacked up three deep when I walked in. That's why I was so late. I wanted to ask some questions, or better, get his recommendation, instead of buying just any ol' electronic glucose monitor off the shelf."
Feeling guilty, among other things, for leading on her mother, letting her deliver her own comeuppance, Dina added, "The pharmacist showed me, it really is almost painless. No more finger-sticks to dread three or four times a day."
Harriet ran a knuckle under one eye, then the other. "I shouldn't have"
"Oh, hush. It's as good a surprise now as it would've been in the morning."
"Yes, and you're the sweetest daughter in the world for buying it, but" She picked up the empty bag and started fitting the carton back into it. "These things aren't cheap. Why, a fancy gizmo like this"
"Is top-of-the-line and worth every penny." Dina snatched the receipt from her mother's hand and crumpled it. The shopping bag was taken away and wadded. "You'd buy one for me, if I was being poked and pinched bloody all the time, so end of discussion."
Oops. She grinned, hoping to magically turn the last part, that teensy
finis
which might be interpreted as an order, into a joke. A witty rejoinder. A
Her mother bent down and kissed her cheek. "Thank you, baby. You shouldn't have spent the money, but it is a trial when my fingers are too sore to work a crochet hook."
She was quick to grouse about everything from foods she craved that were on the restricted list to unwed celebrities who hatched their young like guppies. Aches, pains and physical discomforts were endured in silence.
Bravery was admirable. Except it forced constant vigilance, attentiveness to every subtle twitch, grimace, blemishany deviation from whatever constituted normal. Had Harriet hovered over Dina and Randy as diligently when they were children, they'd have whistled up the stork and demanded a change of address.
The paper bags contained an anti-inflammatory prescribed for arthritis and two types of ophthalmic drops to control Harriet's glaucoma. One of the latter required refrigeration. As she moved to the kitchen, Dina cocked an eyebrow, angled sideways in the chair, then looked back toward the hall. No oxygen hose trailed along the carpet.
"Something seems to be missing. But jeepers, I can't imagine what it is."
Her mother shrugged and closed the fridge. "So I left my leash on the bed for a minute or two. What's the harm?"
Dina dropped her head into her hands. Maybe it wasn't too late to whistle up that stork.