Tar Heel Dead

by Sarah R. Shaber

  Under cover of night, the kitchen window turned out to be an open invitation. He didn’t even need the glass cutter. The pane was so in need of glazing he was able to pry the whole thing out with a couple of twists of a screwdriver, then remove the security bars—which someone had put on from the outside. Jimmy loved stupid maintenance men!

  Jimmy had an incredibly light touch—not a sound going in. He looked around the kitchen approvingly. Very neat, orderly—correct, except for the tray on the countertop by the coffeemaker. It held several bottles, a spiky potted plant, and two tiny cloisonné boxes. The arrangement was all wrong. Jimmy reached out to fix it, then caught himself. He wasn’t here to feng shui. He was here to gather information and maybe even go ahead and get the loose ends tied up.

  He crept into the living room, catlike. He wore coverings over his shoes that his cousin Sonja had gotten him from the hospital where she worked—so he could protect his shoes from the grease when he worked on his motorcycle, he’d told her. He wore latex gloves, no finger or palm prints. And he wore a balaclava, not only to hide his face, but to make sure he didn’t leave any forensic evidence, like hair. Jimmy knew about these things; he watched the Discovery Channel. He checked and rechecked his pathway to the window.

  It would be an incredible stroke of luck if he could get this over with the first time in. Old people went to bed early. It was a reasonable hope. He crept silently up the stairs and paused at the top, listening hard. He heard the muted sounds of classical music coming from the room at the end of the hall on his right. The door was slightly ajar, and a faint shaft of light fell in the hallway.

  Jimmy eased down the hallway until he could see between the door and the jamb. The old woman sat up in bed, a book propped on a pillow in her lap, huge round glasses perched on her nose. Her wiry gray hair spilled down on her shoulders. Jimmy had been watching the place for four days now and had seen the old broad a half-dozen times. Now that she’d let her hair down out of that stranglehold of a bun, her skin had relaxed into a series of loose wrinkles. She looked like one of those Shar-Pei dogs. All loose skin. Jimmy shivered involuntarily.

  He squinted through the slit and moved his head slightly, trying to get a fuller view of the room. The phone on the old woman’s bedside table shrilled and she jumped. So did Jimmy! He flattened himself against the wall and calmed his breathing, listening.

  “Oh, hello, Edith. No—no, I was just reading. What’s on your mind? Oh, you don’t say. Well, you want to hear something? You know what I got from Marge Styler? She said their daughter ran off with a cruise ship singer two days before her own wedding.…”

  Jimmy clenched his teeth. The noise coming from the old ninny was making his head balloon, and his neck was starting to stiffen. No way to do this now without bringing attention from the outside. And he couldn’t risk that. And he couldn’t wait around here all night, not with his head expanding and his neck starting to feel like some guy with a blowtorch was welding it in place.

  He retraced his steps to the kitchen and slinked up onto the counter to make his exit. He was halfway out the window, one leg dangling down into the bushes, when he stopped. He hauled himself back in and scampered along the countertop to the tray. Tall things go in the back, everyone knew that! He arranged the tray in its proper configuration, tilted his head to admire it for a moment, then let himself out the way he had come in. He was careful to replace the glass and the bars at the window, just as he’d found them, sticking the pane back in place with tiny globs of insta-putty he carried in his gym bag, into which he now stuffed his surgical booties, his balaclava, the gloves, and the screwdriver.

  Jimmy walked purposefully back out into the street. One more young guy returning from a late-night pilgrimage to the gym. One more seeker of buffdom. Jimmy knew how to blend in. So what if he had to go into the brownstone again. He knew the layout now. He knew which bedroom was occupied. He’d be back. Then it would be finished. No more loose ends.

  Deborah was sitting at her desk trying to organize the mountain of paperwork she had to finish by Friday, when the auditors were scheduled to arrive. The accounting secretary, Alison, put her head around the door jamb.

  “Deborah, your mother’s on line 1; she sounds a little upset.”

  “Ma?” Deborah asked as she snatched up the phone. “You okay? What’s wrong?”

  “Oh, Deborah. Everything’s okay. I’m fine, dear,” came the answer, though she didn’t sound fine in Deborah’s ears. “It’s just that, well, I have this feeling.…” She paused.

  In the silence Deborah felt pressure in her chest and realized she’d been holding her breath. “Ma,” she said, letting it out, “what’s the problem?”

  “Well, you’re going to think I’m hallucinogenic,” her mother said, “but I think someone’s been in the apartment.”

  “What do you mean you think someone’s been in there?” Deborah asked, ignoring her mother’s fractured syntax. “Do you think someone’s in there now, Ma?”

  “No, honey. I’m sure no one’s in here just now.”

  “Well, are things missing? Has someone forced the locks?”

  “No, no, nothing like that. I—well, you’re going to think this is a silly thing—but my medicine tray was out of order this morning.”

  “Out of order?” Deborah asked. “What exactly does that mean—out of order?”

  “Well, I always arrange it a certain way, you know. By how I take my pills—my vitamins, and herbs, and calcium—throughout the week, and it was all a mishmosh this morning. You didn’t bother it last night, did you?”

  “No, Ma,” Deborah said, now relieved—and exasperated. “I didn’t rearrange your tray. Are you so sure that it’s in a different order?”

  “Deborah Elaine!” her mother said sharply. “Think about who you’re talking to! I know how I had my tray set up, and it’s been moved. I’m very fastudious about these things.”

  Deborah sighed. “Fastidious,” she said. “Yes, yes, you are, Ma.” It was true. If her mother said things were rearranged, odds are, they were! Now, what to do about it? Call the police and say, My mother’s apartment has been broken into. No, no, nothing’s missing. No, no sign of forced entry. How do I know? Well, I know because her pill bottles are arranged in a different order than they were yesterday. Could you please send someone out to investigate this crime of the century? She wondered if they’d bother to reply or just hang up on her.

  “Ma, make sure your doors are all locked and call Mrs. Leiberman to come over and sit with you for a while, okay? I’ll be over right after work, and we’ll have another look around. You’re sure everything is okay in the apartment now, right?”

  “Yes, Deborah, everything but my tray.”

  “Yeah, aside from that,” Deborah said as Alison came in to plop another pile of folders on the end of her desk. “Okay, I gotta go. I’ll see you later. Everything’ll be fine. Just relax.”

  Jimmy lined up the apples in the wooden crate out front at the little greengrocer’s so that all the stems pointed in the same direction. Mr. Kwan didn’t like him to do that. He always seemed to think it was some elaborate scheme on Jimmy’s part to steal one of them, but Jimmy didn’t see how a person could stand to look at them all going this way and that. The oranges bothered him a little, but they didn’t have stems, so he could teach himself to pretend that they were just balls, with no this-end-up about them.

  Didn’t that old bat ever leave her house? He’d been waiting here for two hours. It’d be good if he could get in while she was out. Have the element of surprise on his side. Loose ends just drove Jimmy crazy. He walked down to the coffee shop and ordered a cup of regular coffee to go, then stopped in the bathroom. The reason he needed to buy the coffee was so that he could use the bathroom. They were really picky about people using their facilities without buying something. And then, because he’d bought another cup of coffee, he’d soon be needing to come in and use the bathroom again. What a racket!

  Just as he took up his
perch again outside the greengrocer’s the old lady came out the front door with another old hen. They were both bundled up and carried pocketbooks the size of suitcases. They trundled off down the street, both of them talking in that jet-engine whine. He could hear it from here, over the traffic and everything. Jeez! He shook his head to clear it.

  They turned the corner. Jimmy picked up his gym bag and sprinted across the street, looked around, and slipped behind the brownstone. Daytime was risky, but he’d checked out all the windows that looked out onto the back of the brownstone, and no one had a straight-on view. And he had a great friend in the form of this tall shrub by the kitchen window. He took out his telescoping mirror and used it to look around the kitchen. Then he took out the glass and then the bars again, just as he’d done before. He used the mirror to check that the kitchen was clear. Now for the split second it would take him to hoist himself up—and he was in.

  He drew the blind to obscure the open windowpane and sat very still listening. Nothing. He crept around the kitchen wall and noticed, with considerable irritation, that the tray he’d arranged properly last night had been messed up again. Keep your mind on your business, Jimmy! Loose ends! he reminded himself. He looked out onto the dining room, then crossed to the opposite wall and peered into the living room. All the furniture was covered with plastic, and the magazines on the coffee table were laid out in a symmetrical fan. Jimmy stared at the arrangement for a long moment. He nodded his head as if blessing the room.

  He listened again, then crossed to the dining room table, stood in the appropriate place, and looked out into the street. He needed to check. No use doing an unnecessary job. His heart sank. Loose ends, all right. The view was unobstructed, and with that streetlight where it was, he would have been lit up like he was on stage to sing an aria.

  He eased over to the stairs and made his way up them, his back flattened against the wall. A painting in a gilt-edged frame hung on the landing at the top of the stairs. He gave it a scornful frown. Fruit in a bowl—very original. It was hanging about three degrees off kilter, and Jimmy straightened it as he slipped past down the hall. He checked the bedrooms. Empty. He went into the bedroom where he’d seen the old lady reading and looked through the closets. Old guys’ clothes, old guys’ shoes, old women’s clothes, junk jewelry. He was glad he wasn’t here to burgle the place. Nothing here worth taking. He looked again at the old-man clothes. Where was the old codger? They must have one of those social rooms in the building, or maybe he was in someone else’s apartment. The coffee had made its journey, and Jimmy needed to use the bathroom again. He didn’t dare risk a flush, suppose the front door opened at that time? Couldn’t anything go right on this job? He squeezed his eyes shut and memorized the layout of the place, then made some calculations. Nighttime. Nighttime was better anyway. And he could do it clean and disappear into the dark.

  No one had squealed on him yet. At least he didn’t think so. He’d have heard on the street by now. But there was always the chance with old folks that they’d get all civic-minded. He had to follow through.

  Jimmy made his way back down the hall, no longer bothering to creep. The painting he’d just straightened was hanging crooked again. Jeez! He took a tiny piece of insta-putty from his pocket and placed it under the bottom of the frame and pushed it against the wall. Now the sucker would hang right! One thing accomplished, anyway.

  He made his exit, willing himself to leave the tray on the kitchen counter alone. If the old bat liked it that way, let her have it. Soon it wouldn’t matter anymore.

  Deborah threw her coat over a chair and dropped her shoulder bag on top of it. Her mother’s admonitions—Hang things up as soon as you come in the door—rang in her ears, but she was too tired to care. The auditors had been there for two days—this one a very long one—laboring over the books. After they had pronounced them clean and healthy, the gang from accounting had all gone out for a late dinner. And the boss had given them tomorrow off. All she wanted now was a long hot bath and her flannel pajamas.

  In the morning she’d need to go over early to check on her mother. This paranoia about break-ins was getting to be a real concern. The neighborhood had seemed safe enough, all things considered, until recently. That business with the man being killed in the street outside her apartment building had been unsettling. But the police had told Deborah they didn’t think it was a random mugging. They had reason to believe that the man was involved in some high-stakes financial shenanigans with the “wrong people,” as the cop put it, placing his finger beside his nose. He’d been moving money that wasn’t supposed to move to a numbered account offshore. “I guess someone objected,” the cop had said. “It’s always good to be careful, and your mother should always take precautions, but I don’t think this was a sign that the neighborhood’s going to hell.”

  Still, her mother had been adamant that someone had been in the apartment again when she went to see her yesterday afternoon.

  “Was your tray out of order again?” Deborah asked, trying to keep the scepticism out of her voice.

  “Well, no, it was okay. It was the way I left it.”

  “Was anything missing or anything else out of place?”

  “No, I couldn’t see anything. But someone had been in here. I could just tell. The place felt different. I have good initiative about these things, you know that, Deborah.”

  “Intuition,” Deborah amended. “Well, intuition or no, let’s check through the apartment and see if we can find anything a little more concrete.”

  They walked through every room in the apartment, with Deborah checking in cupboards, under beds, and in drawers. Her mother’s house was so exactly arranged and organized that anything out of place would be instantly apparent. Nothing.

  “Well, Ma, just make sure you lock all the doors and keep your phone right by the bed. If you hear anything, anything at all, you call 911 right away, then call me. Okay?”

  Deborah didn’t believe her mother was in any danger. Everything looked perfectly normal. But she appreciated how much the recent crime had upset her, and she knew, despite her mother’s protests, that she wasn’t adjusting well to being alone. She wished she could get her to reconsider moving to another building with more security. But her mother wouldn’t even entertain the idea.

  She was luxuriating in a deep tub of lilac-spiked hot water when the telephone jangled in the other room. She focused on her watch on the bathroom counter. Eighteen minutes past midnight. Who’d be calling her at this hour? She thought of her mother and sprang from the tub, grabbing a towel and wrapping it hastily around her, dripping water and lilac bubbles over her hardwood floors as she sprinted out to the phone.

  “Deborah, come over, please,” her mother’s voice, sounding strangely mechanical, warbled over the wire.

  “Ma, are you okay? What’s happened?” she asked.

  “I—he—I … Don’t ask! Just come over, Deborah,” she said, and the line went dead.

  When Deborah arrived, her mother was in the kitchen. A young man dressed in sweat clothes was sitting in one of her kitchen chairs—no, that wasn’t quite right—was tied to one of her kitchen chairs with four or five pairs of support hose. Two police officers were there, a male and a female. The male was taking notes in a little notepad as her mother bustled about making coffee.

  “What in the world is going on here?” Deborah shouted.

  “Do you have to yell?” the young man tied to the chair asked, bobbing his head back and forth in misery and blinking his red eyes.

  “I told you, you’ve got the right to remain silent,” said the female cop. “Now why don’t you just exercise it?”

  The male cop was tall, older, and fit. He obviously hadn’t fallen victim to the doughnut epidemic. He stopped scribbling and aimed his ballpoint at the window. “This young gentleman came in to see your ma without a proper invitation. Came in through that window there. Your mother here,” he gestured toward her, “pepper-sprayed him and coldcocked him with a sock
full of quarters. Then she tied him up, doctored his eyes, and called us.”

  “She WHAT?” Deborah exclaimed.

  Jimmy had been watching the place for over an hour when he saw the old woman come into the dining room and bend down to plant a kiss on the old guy’s head and gesture toward the stairs. Toddling off to bed, goodnight, dear. He picked up his bag and scooted behind the building. If he went in quiet, he could have this done and be gone before the old woman could even get her feet on the floor. He peered up over the kitchen window ledge. He couldn’t believe his luck. The swinging doors to the dining room were open. It was a clear shot.

  Now he was getting a preview of hell. The old woman had ambushed him coming in. She’d been sitting there in the dark, pepper spray in one hand and a homemade sap in the other. She’d let him have it just as he took aim and fired. And all because of that stupid piece-of-crap crooked painting. If he’d let the thing alone, she’d never have gotten on to him. She’d been in the habit, she told the cops, of straightening the picture every morning when she came down for breakfast. And as she tramped up and down the stairs during the day, it slowly leaned all akimbo again by nightfall. What kind of person would put up with that? Jimmy couldn’t understand it. She’d found the putty when she’d gone to straighten it this morning, and that had set her off on her own little Miss Marple tour of her apartment. Who’d ever have imagined she’d spot the tiny pieces of putty in the window. They were so small, and he’d applied them so neatly. If he hadn’t used the putty.…

  Jimmy was blinking his eyes furiously, trying to clear the pepper spray. He had come to tied to the chair by a tangled web of old-lady stockings. The old broad had him by the chin and was squirting eye drops in each eye as he thrashed around in the chair. She held his eyelids open and flooded them with water, none too gently, all the while telling him it was more than he deserved. His eyes still felt like lit cherry bombs. He needed to get his vision clear. He could have sworn he’d hit his target. Why wasn’t she telling the cops about that? Why wasn’t she doing something?