Sleep Like a Baby

by Charlaine Harris

  Robin strolled up to Chaka, still talking in that relaxed voice about what a good dog Chaka was. Though I was skeptical at the moment, I realized it was true that Chaka, though focused on Moosie, didn’t seem especially hostile. He gave Robin a glance when Robin reached his side, as if to say, “You see what the problem is?”

  Robin looked up in the mimosa tree, which had begun to shed its beautiful ferny leaves. “I see her,” he told Chaka. “But I don’t think she can hear you, big guy.”

  Peggy must have made record time running out her front door and to the far side of our house to enter through the gate. In a firm voice, she said, “Chaka. Stand down.”

  Chaka glanced at Peggy and whined.

  Peggy repeated her command, this time sternly.

  Chaka sat.

  Peggy took a deep breath before she said, “Chaka, come.”

  Slowly, his head down, Chaka went to Peggy and sat before her, exactly like a child who’s been caught raiding the cookie jar.

  Oh, thank God, I thought. I don’t know what I had feared would happen, exactly; but I was glad it hadn’t.

  “Chaka, heel.” Peggy walked to our gate. The dog followed her without hesitation.

  Robin and I looked at each other with vast relief. At least one crisis had been quickly resolved.

  Now that Chaka had left the yard, Robin began talking to Moosie, who was peering down at us, obviously anxious. I didn’t think Moosie could hear Robin talking, but she could see that Robin was extending a friendly hand to her. She began creeping down the branches, darting looks over to the Herman yard. Since Lulu had not stopped barking and was running up and down the fence, for a second I envied Moosie, who couldn’t hear the noise.

  At long last, I heard one of the Cohens emerge. Deborah spoke sharply to Lulu, whose agitation about Chaka had gradually abated. Now that the terrible menace in our backyard had vanished, Lulu consented to go inside, having successfully defended her territory.

  No voices, no barking, no agitation. The quiet was a relief. Moosie continued down the tree, until she was close enough for Robin to touch her. He scratched her head. The cat began to purr, and she didn’t stop even when Robin lifted her off the branch and held her to his chest. He began carrying the little cat to our patio door. I was about to follow him when Peggy appeared in her own yard. She waved me over. Reluctantly, I joined her at the fence.

  I didn’t know what to say, so I didn’t say anything. Peggy looked … I couldn’t decide. Protective? Abashed? She opened by saying the right thing. “I’m so glad Moosie wasn’t hurt.”

  I nodded.

  “Ridgebacks are very protective.”

  “Moosie is a threat?” I sounded skeptical, which I was.

  “In Chaka’s mind. He doesn’t have any issue with your cat until Moosie gets close to our fence.”

  I thought of several things to say, and I picked carefully. “The fence is ours, too,” I said. “I understand that Chaka doesn’t know that. But we can’t risk Moosie being killed when she goes outside.”

  “Absolutely,” Peggy said, nodding with vigor. “We’ve been working on Chaka’s training ever since we got him.”

  “He’s always been a very good dog.” I had to give her that. She looked grateful.

  Lena had joined Peggy. She looked miserable. Until now, I had never understood how much the dog meant to them, though I should have. After all, the Cohens had bought Lulu a little British coat last Christmas. And they made her wear it when they walked her in bad weather. Though the Hermans didn’t express their affection in such an elaborate way, they adored Chaka just as much.

  “We’ll keep up working with him,” Lena assured me. The edge of desperation in her voice made me very uncomfortable. They were both looking at me as though they feared I’d call Animal Control any minute.

  After all, what had Chaka actually done? He hadn’t barked (aside from that one deep woof), and he hadn’t lunged up the tree, and he hadn’t growled at Moosie … or at me. I began to relax. But there was a point to be made.

  “What I’m worried about is when Sophie is bigger, and walking, and she wants to go in the backyard to play,” I said. “How will the dog see Sophie? As another threat? You understand, we can’t have that.” That was plain as plain can be.

  “That gives us a long time to keep working with him,” Lena said, her shoulders losing their tension. “In his year with us, this is the only time he’s done something like this.”

  Peggy met my eyes, relief all over her face. “Thanks, Roe.”

  I nodded. As I turned to go inside, I wondered if I’d made the right decision. Chaka may have literally crossed the line only once … but with Sophie, once would be too much.

  I yelled “Robin!” the minute I shut the door behind me.

  “I’m in here,” he called, in a very hushed tone.

  I followed the sound of his voice to his office, wondering what else could possibly be wrong. At first glance, everything looked fine. Moosie was curled up on Robin’s armchair. Robin was behind his desk, holding the baby monitor, which was blessedly silent. I said, “What happened?”

  “When I came in, I went to the kitchen for a drink, and the helper guy was in there. I could swear he was up to something.”

  I had to sit down, and luckily there was another armchair available. “Like what?” I said.

  “He was over in the corner of the counter, where you drop your purse. I think he was looking in the drawers over there.”

  I was bewildered. “What can we do? Tell Arnie? Confront the guy? Call the police?”

  Robin shook his head. “I don’t know. I hate to call the police. I don’t think he actually took anything. It’s not against the law to open a drawer.”

  I nodded. I was doing a lot of that today.

  “And if we confront him, what good would that do? He’d just say, ‘I did no such thing,’ or ‘I saw a roach run under her purse and I was trying to kill it for her.’”

  “Right again. And … ewwww.”

  “But we can’t do nothing.” Robin looked gloomy.

  “So telling Arnie is our best option.”

  Something finally went right. Just then, Arnie came in the room with his invoice. “Tracked you down,” he said cheerfully. “We’re nearly done, Mr. Crusoe. One window isn’t secure yet, because I don’t have all the parts I need. I’ll have to come back tomorrow morning, but it should only take me about five minutes.”

  “Great,” Robin said. “Then you’ll have the system working. We have to talk to you about something.”

  “Okay,” Arnie said slowly. “What’s on your mind?”

  I don’t know how I expected Arnie to react to what Robin told him. Whatever I might have predicted, Arnie surprised me.

  The coroner/security expert stood with his head bowed for a long moment. Then he took a deep breath and looked Robin square in the eye. “The guy’s been my employee for a long time,” he said. “He’s been in some trouble before, and I should have fired him then. But he’s a great worker, and I like him a lot. I’ll have to let him go, now. I’m sorry this caused you concern.”

  Arnie had made a bad choice, but it seemed clear he was trying to rectify it. My eyes met Robin’s, and I gave a tiny shrug.

  “Okay, Arnie,” Robin said. “I want the guy to leave now. It scares me that he was even inside. Please be sure he doesn’t have any access to the house.”

  “Oh, absolutely not,” Arnie said hastily. “He won’t know what code you’re using for your system, and it’ll be up and running early tomorrow morning. I’ll get him to sit out in the truck while we settle up.” He laid the invoice down in front of Robin, and left the room hurriedly, his head bent as though he were thinking furiously.

  “Somehow I don’t feel much better,” I said.

  “What? He gave us an explanation, and offered to correct the situation.”

  “His words were convincing, but his tone wasn’t.”

  “We can’t give him the third degree over his tone
.” Robin wasn’t being a smart-ass, he was being practical.

  “When Sophie gets up, let’s put her in the car seat and take a ride. I’d like us to be out of the house and doing something fun.”

  “Okay by me,” Robin said. “I don’t know how much work I’m going to get done anyway.”

  We talked about his book for a little while, and he told me what the holdup was in his thought process. I had already learned Robin didn’t want me to offer a solution. He just wanted me to listen. I could certainly do that. I was always interested in how his mind worked.

  In a few minutes, I heard Sophie howl. She’d had the worst bowel movement in the history of baby bowel movements. It was amazing how something so disgusting could come out of someone so cute. I must say, it seemed to have made her happy. She was making cheerful little noises and pumping her legs while I changed her, which added considerably to the mess. Finally, I got her bottom clean, the changing table clean, and then my hands. Robin was ready to put Sophie in her car seat. We stopped by my mother’s so she and John could see the baby. I was sure John would get well much more quickly if he could see the magic baby. We only stayed a few minutes, so we wouldn’t tire John. But while we were there, he mentioned coming over at least three times.

  It was so nice being out together, and the weather was so pretty, we stopped off at the Finstermeyers’ house after I noticed that both Beth and George were at home.

  “Hey, Roe! Haven’t actually laid eyes on you since the baby came,” Beth said. George was sitting in the family room with a book in his hands, but he put it down and rose to greet us.

  They both said the appropriate things about Sophie, Beth admiring Sophie’s red hair, and George saying she was pretty like her mom, which made me laugh.

  We accepted their invitation to sit.

  “I know Phillip is over here a lot,” I said. “I hope he’s being a good guest?”

  “The best,” Beth told me, smiling. “He’s a good kid, Roe.”

  “We like him,” George said.

  We talked about Josh and Phillip’s chances on the track team. We didn’t need to worry about Joss—Jocelyn. She was an excellent athlete at every sport she’d tried.

  Robin said, “Arnie Petrosian installed our security system today.”

  “Arnie’s a nice guy, isn’t he?” George smiled. “When we decided we needed one, we knew he was having trouble making ends meet, because his bills from Halina’s illness were just incredible. And then the funeral was expensive, they always are. Our church took up a donation to help him with it.”

  This was a very different picture of Arnie’s finances than we’d gotten from Arnie.

  “He said he’d been a friend of the previous owners of our house, the Martinezes?” I said. “Did they go to your church, too?”

  “Yes, they did,” Beth said. “In fact, Laurie hired Arnie to repaint their bathroom, and David hired him to pressure-wash the brick.”

  “He knows how to do a lot of handy stuff,” I said, trying not to sound envious.

  “Hey,” said Robin mildly. “I know how to change a lightbulb.”

  I smiled at him. “You’ll do,” I said. “Do you two know his assistant? He made us pretty anxious, and we asked Arnie not to let him return to the house.”

  The Finstermeyers looked at each other, astonished.

  Beth said, “I don’t remember the guy. I remember Arnie had an assistant, but as far as picturing him … I’m really sorry you were worried.”

  George said, “If we’ve steered you wrong, we did it in good faith. We’ve been happy with our system, and Arnie needed the job.…”

  We let them know we did not blame them, at all, for anything. When we were back in the car, Sophie looking sleepy in her car seat, I looked forward to going into our quiet house and throwing some supper together and then (maybe) reading. Or (maybe) having some adult time with Robin. Or both.

  When we were home, and Sophie and all her baby paraphernalia were unloaded, I unlocked the front door and went inside. Robin, carrying the baby, was right behind me.

  The minute I stepped inside I knew something was wrong. I came to an abrupt stop. “Back up, Robin,” I said. “Get out of the house.”

  “What?”

  “Someone’s broken in.”

  He didn’t say “Are you sure?” or push past me to see for himself, and that was another thing I loved about Robin. He returned to the car, got the baby front carrier out and shrugged into it, inserting Sophie in the pouch.

  While he did this, I called the police. The first thing the dispatcher said was, “Get out of the house and don’t go back in.” I assured her we wouldn’t.

  We waited in the driveway. I was very anxious … and very angry. Our lives—and more importantly, our baby’s life—had become unpredictable and laced with danger. This had to stop.

  I hadn’t met the patrolman who answered the call. He was a very handsome young man of Asian heritage. (Of course I only noticed his good looks in passing, since I was a married woman.)

  He was quickly joined by Cathy Trumble, in her unmarked car.

  I was very surprised to see Cathy back on duty. Surely she ought to be taking a leave of absence or something?

  “You’re the homeowners?” the patrolman said.

  I nodded.

  “Is there any other family member inside the house?”

  “My brother lives with us, but he’s gone.”

  “Pets?”

  “They have a cat,” Cathy said shortly. “Let’s go in. Roe, you all get behind the car, at least. It would be better if you got farther away.” Cathy looked very tense. It was only when they both drew their guns that I realized the gravity of the situation. There really was a chance the intruder was still in the house.

  Not more gunfire, I thought. Please, no.

  Robin and I retreated to the Cohens’ front yard. Robin had one arm wrapped about Sophie in the carrier, and the other arm he wrapped around me. “How upset would you be if we moved somewhere else?”

  I thought Robin was joking at first.

  But he meant it.

  Chapter Twenty

  I had no ready answer for him, but sooner or later I’d have to respond. Right now I had enough trouble on my plate without making a life-changing decision … while the police were actually in our house with guns drawn.

  The Herman sisters came out in the front yard, with Chaka on a leash, and the Cohens joined us, minus Lulu … though she could be heard making a racket in their house.

  Deborah was clearly terrified, but Jonathan was angry. “I don’t know what’s going on in your house, Robin, but this should not be happening in our neighborhood. Everything was quiet until you moved in.”

  Robin took a deep breath. He’s not a guy who loses his temper easily, but he was right on the brink. “Our house got broken into, Jonathan.” (He said the name the same way he’d say “asshole.”) “I don’t think that we’re responsible for that. And this happened in daylight. I don’t suppose, with all your watching out windows and telling police you’d seen the wrong person, you happened to actually notice a criminal breaking into our house?”

  I looked in the other direction, because I didn’t want to see Jonathan’s face. Or Deborah’s. Unsurprisingly, the Cohens stomped back into their house trailing anger like crepe-paper streamers.

  As Lena and Peggy joined us, Lena said, “It’s hard to imagine a robbery in broad daylight on a middle-class street like this, right?”

  “Yes,” I said glumly. “It certainly is.” I knew it could not be a mistake that this mysterious incident had happened right after the terrible events of the previous week.

  “I’m so sorry,” Peggy said. Chaka looked up at her, perhaps hearing the distress in her voice.

  “Peggy, we weren’t there and we’re unhurt,” Robin said. “We’re okay.”

  It was far from okay, but we had not been attacked or injured, and that was enough. Just then Josh brought Phillip home. I could see them both gaping at t
he open door of the house, the two cars parked askew in front, and our little cluster in the Cohens’ yard.

  Phillip jumped out and hurried over to us while Josh waited in the car, peering out anxiously.

  “What’s up?” Phillip said. His eyes went from me to the baby to Robin, assuring himself that we were all well.

  “We came home to find the house had been entered,” Robin said. “Roe, is there a big mess?” He’d just thought of his office, and all our books, and the computer with his work in progress. Who wouldn’t?

  “Not too bad,” I said, untruthfully.

  By the time Cathy and the new patrolman came out of the house, guns holstered (whew), I felt we’d been standing outside an hour. My phone told me it had been seven minutes.

  “It’s clear. You want to come have a look-see? Tell us if you notice anything missing,” Cathy said. Clearly, Cathy was not going to talk about our shared ordeal in the hospital parking lot. And given the circumstances, I couldn’t think of anything tactful to say. Time to keep my mouth shut.

  Now that New Guy was closer, I saw that his nameplate read “Dan.” I remembered that a Sadie Dan had been valedictorian three years ago at Lawrenceton High. Probably a sister.

  Officer Dan began walking around the house, looking for signs of … well, I didn’t know what he was looking for.

  We followed Cathy into the house. As I’d seen when I’d first opened the door, the living room was a wreck. The couch cushions were on the floor, the kitchen drawers were open and their contents strewn around.

  But they weren’t ripped up. Whatever the searcher had been looking for, it hadn’t been something he (or she) suspected would be concealed in some elaborate fashion.

  Phillip went directly to his room, and returned within two minutes. “No problem in there,” he said, sounding surprised and relieved.

  Robin lit out for his office, with Sophie necessarily along for the ride.

  He, too, was happy to report that his office had been left pristine.

  But our bedroom had been tossed. I groaned. So much to put away! At least the bathroom was still orderly.

  We were thunderstruck when we saw Sophie’s room. It was a wreck. Robin unstrapped Sophie, handed her to me, and he and Phillip began silently righting the crib, restoring the bedding, picking up the stuffed animals and the diapers and the tiny clothes. Setting the rocking chair back on its base. I’d spent hours arranging that room while I waited for her birth. I started crying, and I wasn’t ashamed of it.