The Schuyler House

by Cade Haddock Strong

  I browse the racks and racks of running clothes and scan the running shoes on display. Eventually, a salesman approaches and I ask to try on some shoes. He asks me a few questions about how much and how often I run and then asks me to walk toward the front door and back so that he can observe my gait. He thinks for a bit, disappears into the back room and quickly emerges with some shoes for me to try. I decide on a pair of pink-and-blue Saucony the salesman assures me will rock my running world. I grab some running tights and two pairs of running socks and follow him up to the register. While he’s ringing me up, I take the shoes out of the box and tie them to the outside of my pack and stuff the tights and the socks into my now-full daypack.

  I hand him the empty shoebox. “Do you mind recycling this for me?”

  He nods and takes the box before handing me my receipt to sign. I try to rationalize my purchase with the fact that there is virtually no snow on the ground in DC—the storm that socked the area near Schuyler House went well north of DC—and it will be nice to trade my big Sorel snow boots for some sneakers. Plus, who knows? Maybe my new sneakers will motivate me to go for a much-needed run. I sign the receipt and head back outside.

  It’s now almost two o’clock and my stomach is growling even though it’s only been a few hours since I had the bagel breakfast sandwich at the airport. Adams Morgan is known for its diversity of ethnic restaurants, and I pop into a Middle Eastern deli near the running store and order a Falafel wrap and a Coke before continuing to Logan Circle to meet Bettie, my Airbnb host. I arrive at the address that Bettie gave me a little before three o’clock, and there’s a petite woman, with jet-black hair, multiple piercings and Goth-like attire pacing out front. She isn’t exactly the image I had conjured up for a woman named Bettie, but I walk up to her anyway.

  “Bettie?” I ask.

  “Oh, hi! Yes, I’m Bettie. You must be Sarah?”

  I almost correct her but then remember I booked the apartment under Sarah’s name. I say a quick prayer that she doesn’t notice that I don’t look anything like the picture on Sarah’s license as I extend my hand. “Yep, that’s me. Nice to meet you!”

  She opens the door to the building and motions for me to enter. She nods a hello to the doorman/security guy, and we head up to her apartment in the elevator. The apartment is on the fifth floor of what I guess is a six-story building. The urban myth in DC is that no building can be higher than the Capitol dome, but a planner for the city once told me that was completely untrue. Either way, there are no tall buildings in DC, and that, in my opinion, is one of the many things that makes the city so livable and charming.

  Bettie unlocks the door to apartment 511, and I walk in to take a quick look around. It looks very much like the pictures I saw on the Airbnb website—it’s a very open loft-like space with high, exposed cement ceilings and a wall of floor-to-ceiling windows. The apartment is somewhat sparsely furnished with a couch, coffee table, and TV in the living area, and I can see the foot of a bed through the bedroom door, but it appears to have all the basics and is incredibly tidy. I notice there is no dinner table but the kitchen has a nice, big island with four barstools so that should more than suffice.

  Bettie walks around the island and opens and closes a few cupboards to show me that the shelves are full of glasses, plates, bowls and pots and pans. “As you can see, the place has all the kitchen stuff you need,” she says as she sets the apartment keys on the kitchen island. She points out the location of the washer/dryer and gives me a piece of paper with instructions on how to use the Wi-Fi and TV before heading toward the door. “Well, that’s about it. My cell number is on that piece of paper so call me with any questions. Enjoy your stay.” She heads out the door, leaving me alone in the apartment.

  I take a quick walk around the apartment, open and close the fridge and check the cabinets in the bathroom. The fridge is pretty bare, but there’s what I estimate to be a year’s supply of toilet paper and paper towels in the linen closet in the bathroom. I am utterly exhausted but feel like I should make a quick run to the store before I crash. There’s a Whole Foods a few blocks away on P Street, so I pull everything out of my daypack and dump it on the couch and then head out the door with my empty pack—I know it’s a cardinal sin not to bring your own bags to Whole Foods. They say there’s a thing called the Whole Foods Effect since the grocery chain has a knack for opening in “up and coming” neighborhoods, and as soon as they do, real estate prices seem to skyrocket literally overnight. The Whole Foods in Logan Circle opened in 2000 when the neighborhood was definitely still considered “on the fringe.” Today, only fifteen years later, the neighborhood is teeming with yuppies (gay and straight), there are hip restaurants and bars on every corner and two-bedroom condos can sell for a million dollars.

  I walk the short distance to Whole Foods and grab a small cart at the entrance of the store. The place is totally mobbed, and I maneuver slowly through the aisles somehow managing to pick up some soap, shampoo, deodorant, a comb, and a small bottle of organic laundry detergent before searching out the cheese-and-wine section of the store. I select some wickedly overpriced but delicious-sounding cheese and grab a bottle of wine that’s on sale and supposedly gets ninety-two points from the Wine Enthusiast before working my way over to the prepared food section to find something for dinner.

  I load up a carton with pasta and vegetables and get in the line for the express checkout, which is incredibly long but moves pretty quickly because the queue feeds no fewer than twenty express registers at the front of the store.

  Once I get back to the apartment, I put away my groceries, head into the bathroom, strip down, and climb in the shower. While I’m in the shower, I make a mental note to buy a razor the next time I’m at the store. I dry off and wrap the towel around my body and run a comb through my hair. I wrap another towel around my head and then pad over to the couch where I dumped the contents of my daypack. I carry everything into the bedroom so I can lay it all out on the bed and take an inventory of what I have.

  Ski hat and gloves

  Ski parka

  Fleece pants

  Three long underwear tops, one of which is heavyweight

  Down vest

  Jog bra

  Lots of socks, ski socks, wool socks, and running socks

  Flashlight

  Six-pack of Fruit of the Loom underwear

  Pad of paper and pens

  Toiletries

  Laptop and charger

  Two pair of jeans

  Belt

  Two bras

  Two long sleeve T-shirts

  V-neck sweater

  Running shoes and Sorel boots

  Running tights

  I proceed to empty the pockets of my ski coat and Sarah’s fanny pack and assess their contents as well. I, of course, have a ton of cash and two credit cards—Sarah’s personal credit card that I found in her fanny pack plus the business credit card for Hatshepsut Consulting I got from the safe deposit box. I dig through the kitchen drawers to find some scissors and cut up Sarah’s personal card and toss it in the trash.

  I also have two phones—my new iPhone and the Motorola cell phone that I bought on Christmas Day in New York. I take the Motorola phone out to the kitchen and plug it into the wall and set it on the kitchen counter so it will always be visible and fully charged. The Motorola still has the SIM card associated with the “Ellen number” so I plan to keep it turned on all day, every day until I hear from Ellen.

  I cut the tags off the rest of my new clothes and throw them in the washer. I add some detergent and start a load before realizing I’m wearing nothing but a towel—everything else is in the washer. I remember seeing a neatly folded bathrobe in the linen closet so, hoping it’s clean, I slip it on and hang the towels back up on a hook in the bathroom.

  I walk back out to the kitchen, pour myself a glass of wine, cut up some cheese, plop down on one of the kitchen stools and open my laptop. As always, I scan the main news sites. When I don’t see anythin
g new, I navigate to the website for Carbonite—a company that backs up people’s personal files and saves them in the cloud so that they’re protected and can be accessed from anywhere where there’s a decent Internet connection. I set up a Carbonite account a few years ago mostly to make sure I never lost the important documents and all the photos on my home computer.

  I log in to my Carbonite account and scan through all the files that reside on my desktop in Vermont just to make sure everything looks okay. I figure the chances that the police have found my desktop are slim because, before the incident at Schuyler House, I’d been living temporarily in an apartment in Burlington I was subletting from a rich University of Vermont graduate student. He’d decided to take time off from school to travel the world. We only had a verbal agreement; it wasn’t an official lease, and I doubt that his landlord knew he had sublet the place out to me. I think his parents were paying the rent, and I don’t think they even know he decided to skip town.

  I was living in the apartment because I’d recently bought about twenty acres of land with only a small rustic cabin on it. I usually refer to the land as “my farm,” but I don’t have any animals or anything, at least not yet, so it’s a stretch to call it a farm. I lived in the cabin through the summer, but it’s not winterized so I’d sublet the apartment in downtown Burlington for the winter. Not long after I bought the property, I’d hired an architect to help me design my dream house to build on the land and I’d been talking to a couple of builders with hopes of breaking ground in the spring. Although now, I admit, that all seems like a distant pipe dream.

  At any rate, the desktop was one of the few personal items I’d moved to the apartment with me. I figure, at this stage, the police might know about my land and the cabin but they probably don’t know about the sublet. To be honest, though, my sense is that the police are looking for me but they haven’t exactly launched a nationwide manhunt. I just don’t sense from the news that the cops are expending major resources to hunt Ellen and me down. We didn’t actually steal anything from Schuyler House, although they probably know that’s what we were trying to do. And the news reports all seem to indicate that Kat and Sarah’s deaths were the result of the deck collapsing rather than any foul play. Plus, the security guard is expected to make a full recovery from the injuries he sustained on Christmas Eve.

  Even though they’ve uncovered enough information to link Ellen, Kat, Sarah, and me, I still haven’t seen any indication at all that they’ve connected the four of us to any of the previous thefts in which we did successfully steal art. Even if the police have Sarah’s computer, which they probably do, I think they’re unlikely to find anything on it. We were so incredibly careful about our electronic trail when planning our burglaries, and we weren’t dumb enough to deposit large amounts of cash into our personal bank accounts or buy extravagant cars that, from the outside view, were way beyond our means. Of course there’s the bank account that we set up for Hatshepsut Consulting, but it would take a ton of police resources to ever link that account to any of us. As a result, I’m working really hard to convince myself that the cops will never link any of the other burglaries to us. If they did, I would likely be in a much bigger heap of trouble than I am now, assuming they’re able to track me down.

  Not surprisingly, this gets me wondering about the statute of limitations for our past burglaries so I Google “statute of limitations for burglary.” My eyes glaze over when I start to read some of the search results. The first few sites I read are full of complicated legal definitions that spell out the difference between burglary, theft, and robbery, words that I have always used pretty interchangeably. Regardless, from what I can tell, the longest statute of limitations seems to be about five years. I decide to try a different search and instead Google “statute of limitations for Isabelle Stewart Gardner heist.”

  The Gardner Museum in Boston was robbed in 1990 and remains the biggest art theft (from a dollar perspective) in US history. This time the search results are more informative. I find a New York Times article from 2013 that says the statute of limitations for breaking into the museum has long expired, but it goes on to say that prosecutors could potentially convict someone for possession of the stolen art today. Well, the four of us were always very quick to get rid of the art we stole—we typically had it in our possession for fewer than twenty-four hours—so hopefully I’m good there.

  I’ve been nibbling on cheese but am still pretty hungry, so I pull my pasta and vegetables out of the fridge and toss them in the microwave. I find some paper napkins and utensils in one of the kitchen drawers and sit back down at the kitchen island to inhale my food while scanning the CNN website to learn more about the blizzard in the Midwest.

  After I finish eating, I move my clothes from the washer to the dryer and my mind wanders to Kat’s husband Todd. Since I still haven’t heard from Ellen, I decide to give him a call. First, I want to tell him how sorry I am about Kat and about everything and see how he’s holding up under the circumstances. It’s a good bet that the cops are putting a lot of pressure on him which seriously sucks because he just lost his wife and, although he knew what we were up to, he had no direct involvement whatsoever in any of our illicit activities. I pour myself another glass of wine, pick up my new iPhone and dial Kat’s home number. It rings multiple times, and I’m about to hang up when I hear Todd’s voice.

  “Hello?” he says softly.

  “Todd…it’s me…Mattie,” I say just as softly.

  “Oh my God…Mattie, is that really you?” His voice trails off, and I can tell he’s fighting off tears when he finally continues. “It’s so good to hear your voice.”

  Tears well up in my eyes. “I’m so sorry about Kat. We never thought something like this would happen…How are you holding up?”

  “I’m in complete and utter shock. I cannot even put into words what I am feeling right now. I can’t believe she’s gone.” He succumbs to the tears he was trying to hold back.

  He asks me what happened, and I walk him through the events at Schuyler House on Christmas Eve and everything that’s happened to me since. When I’m done, I ask him, “How could we have been so stupid?” It’s a rhetorical question, and he doesn’t answer. “God, we should have at least had the sense to quit while we were ahead. I will never ever steal another piece of art in my life. I know that this comes a little late for Kat…and for you, but still…”

  “I blame myself too,” Todd says. “I should have put a stop to it a long time ago.”

  “Like Kat would have listened,” I say with a laugh. “You know she wasn’t one to take orders!”

  Todd laughs. “Yeah, no one would ever describe her as being meek!”

  “I’m sorry you’re left to deal with the mess we created. Are the cops putting a lot of pressure on you?”

  “Nah, they haven’t been too bad,” he says somewhat unconvincingly.

  “Are you sure they haven’t been too hard on you? I mean, you just lost your wife, for God’s sake.”

  He assures me again that the police haven’t been hounding him, so I move on to my next question. “Have you heard from Ellen?”

  “Nope, I haven’t heard anything from Ellen, but I did hear that Jake’s got the boys and they’re holding up all right, under the circumstances.”

  We chat for a little longer. I don’t tell him exactly where I am now, and he doesn’t ask.

  Before we hang up, he tells me he’s in the process of trying to schedule a memorial service for Kat and that friends and neighbors have been really supportive even given the circumstances of her death. I find a tiny bit of solace in that, give him my new Gmail address, and promise to call again soon.

  Chapter Twelve

  I jog down P Street toward DuPont Circle and drop into the park just before officially crossing over into Georgetown. It’s in the low forties outside, which isn’t too bad for January, so when I woke this morning I decided to go for a run in Rock Creek Park. Once I’m in the park, I head north on the
bike path toward the zoo, a path I’ve run hundreds of times. It feels so good to breathe in the fresh air and relieve some of the stress and sadness that I’ve got bottled up inside me. It doesn’t take long, however, before tears begin to roll down my cheeks. I pick up my pace, but this only seems to cause the flow of tears to increase. The crying causes my nose to run, and my face quickly becomes a mess of tears and snot. Nice.

  When I reach the zoo, I slip inside the gates and duck into the closest women’s room. The zoo is a Smithsonian Institution, and, like all Smithsonian Institutions, entrance is always free of charge. Given that it’s winter, the zoo, including the ladies’ room, is a total ghost town. I step into one of the many empty stalls, pee and blow my nose and then step up to the bank of sinks, where I splash warm water on my face in an effort to rub away the tears on my cheeks. I glance in the mirror and, after a few more splashes of water, deem my face marginally presentable, so I head back outside.

  I stretch my incredibly tight leg muscles before continuing to run north on the bike path for another mile or so before turning around to run back toward P Street. Despite the chill, it’s really a beautiful day; unsurprisingly, there are a good number of joggers and bikers using the path. I am keeping up a pretty good pace and quickly cross under the Calvert Street Bridge and then under the Connecticut Avenue Bridge.

  Suddenly, a big, burly guy on a mountain bike comes flying down the hill to my right. The bike path curves sharply at the bottom of the hill, and he cranks his handlebars to try and make the turn and almost takes out a woman in his path. She’s forced to leap off the bike path to avoid being plowed down and tumbles down the adjacent steep grassy slope.

  The biker is totally oblivious to what has happened and just continues speeding down the bike path without even a backward glance. I run ahead and hobble down the embankment to help the woman. “Are you okay?” I gasp.