Something Missing: A Novel

by Matthew Dicks

  From the Gallos’, Martin drove west for ten minutes before arriving at the home of the Grants, two middle-aged high school teachers who also owned and operated a successful travel agency from their home. From the photographs that Martin had seen throughout their house, it was apparent that Lucy Grant had married her husband, Maurice, for reasons unrelated to physical appearance. Even in portraits, the man appeared less than appealing, with an amoeba-like bald spot atop his head that seemed to mysteriously change shape and size from photo to photo and a single brow stretching across two beady eyes. A short, pudgy man, he appeared to have difficulty smiling even in his wedding photos. In contrast, Lucy Grant was a trim, sophisticated woman who was probably coloring her hair but otherwise appeared a dozen years younger than her fifty-three years. The impetus behind her attraction to Maurice had managed to escape even Martin’s keen detective skills.

  Maurice and Lucy Grant’s children, Maurice Jr. and Susan, were both married thirtysomethings who had left the nest a long time ago, making the Grants ideal clients. Not only could Martin be fairly certain that neither Maurice Sr. nor Lucy would ever return home during the school day, but he was also able to remain keenly in tune with their vacation schedule just by logging on to their school’s website and checking the calendar that was posted.

  The Grants’ home was also nearly adjacent to the town’s large, oval-shaped reservoir, allowing Martin unlimited parking options. Unlike at the Gallos’ home, which was more than three miles away from any public parking, Martin could park less than a mile from the Grants’ home and walk, jog, or bike there while blending in with the multitude of stay-at-home moms, lunchtime power walkers, and retirees who lapped the reservoir each day. In keeping with his cycling persona from earlier in the day, Martin had chosen to take his bike to the Grants’ home, laying it down on the side of the road under the cover of several bushes about five hundred feet from the Grants’ driveway before proceeding the rest of the way on foot.

  Despite the advantages of maintaining the Grants as clients, things had not started out very smoothly. His first visit had almost ended in disaster. Every initial visit to a client was stressful for Martin, for a number of reasons. Though he didn’t see any sticker advertising an alarm system, he could never be sure that the house was unprotected until he first cracked the door. It was also impossible to predict what he might encounter upon first entering the home. Though his surveillance of the Grants’ home hadn’t indicated the presence of a dog, it was always possible that he had missed something. The first few moments in a new client’s home were the most trying of Martin’s career.

  Martin began his initial entry to the Grants’ home, as he did with all visits to his clients’ homes, with a ringing of the doorbell. If someone was unexpectedly home, he or she would open the door and Martin would offer a look of surprise, indicating that he must have the wrong home. “My uncle Bill asked me to stop by to pick up a mattress. Do I have the wrong house?” he would ask, followed by a heartfelt apology and a quick exit. Ringing the doorbell would also help him to determine if a dog was present inside the house, and though no one had ever answered the door following the ringing of a doorbell, Martin had managed to identify the presence of a dog more than once by this maneuver. While it was easy to determine a client’s schedule through careful surveillance, the presence of a dog was sometimes difficult to ascertain from a distance.

  And Martin hated dogs.

  Using his pick gun, Martin had disabled the relatively simple lock on the Grants’ back door and swung it open slowly. As he placed his moccasined foot onto the welcome mat, he was greeted by a voice from somewhere within the home.

  “Welcome home, sweetie pie!”

  The greeting had startled Martin so badly that he had fallen backward down the steps, landing in a puddle of slush, his pick gun clattering to the cement patio. His first instinct had been to run. Execute the escape route that he had planned for each of his clients’ homes in case of emergency. In the Grants’ case, this route would take him across their backyard (an approach Martin wouldn’t normally consider with fresh snow on the ground at the time), over the chain-link fence that backed onto a grove of scrub pine, and through the trees for about seven hundred feet before emerging onto Chamberland Avenue. Cross Chamberland and Martin could be on any of the reservoir’s many footpaths in seconds, safely mixing in with the crowd until he reached his car.

  But as this thought flashed in his mind, the unexpected voice repeated itself from the house. “Welcome home, sweetie pie! Welcome!” and it was this second greeting that had caused Martin to realize that the speaker was not human. Unnerved but feeling slightly more at ease (and frightfully exposed at the bottom of the Grants’ back steps), Martin quickly retrieved his pick gun, made sure that his hairnet and rubber moccasins were still in place, climbed the back steps again, and entered the home, bypassing standard procedures in favor of locating the source of the voice as quickly as possible.

  Normally Martin would begin his first visit to a client’s home by mapping the entire house on a sheet of the graph paper that he carried in bulk on a clipboard. Beginning at the point of entry, he would work his way forward, step by step, room by room. Dimensions would be roughly estimated at first, rooms labeled, and large furniture drawn in as best he could, strictly observing his fifteen-minute time limit. A search for spare keys in the usual locations would also be conducted, and if time permitted (and it usually did, thanks to Martin’s efficiency), photographs of the refrigerator, pantry, and shelf contents would be taken. In subsequent visits Martin would catalog the contents of each room, begin a photographic study of the couple’s household supplies, and search for information that would eventually prove invaluable to his business. This would include inspecting checkbook registers, the contents of file cabinets, and files on the couple’s computer, if these files weren’t protected by passwords. More than three quarters of his clients’ computers were not password protected, and the information stored on these machines had helped Martin more than any shred of paper that he had ever found, particularly when the client kept financial information on the computer as well. With this information, Martin could often determine a client’s net worth, recent purchasing history, and occupation, if that had not yet been determined.

  Eventually Martin would spend time examining photo albums, searching through boxes of old letters and greeting cards, and reading diaries (though sadly most of his clients kept no such written record of their lives). He watched his clients as they aged, celebrated holidays and anniversaries together, and suffered through hardships. On one occasion he followed a client through her diary entries as she discovered a lump in her breast, was diagnosed with cancer, and battled her way to recovery, losing a breast in the process. There were mornings when he was in tears as he read through her words while sitting at the woman’s desk. Through this detailed and thorough analysis, Martin began to understand the course of his clients’ lives. All of this information would be considered when deciding which items were safe to acquire and when the acquisitions would take place. Without this information, he would be flying blind.

  But standard procedures were put aside that first day at the Grants’ home as Martin made his way toward the source of the unexpected greeting. In those few moments of unplanned movement through the house, thirty-four spontaneous steps in all, Martin felt more alive and more terrified than at any other time in his career. With warning bells sounding off in his head, urging him to leave immediately, he pressed on, through a frightfully unmapped living room and into a foreign kitchen of black-and-white tile and suspended pots and pans. To the east (though he didn’t know it was east at the time, forgoing the use of his compass in favor of speed) was a wide hallway lined with several closed wooden doors, and to the west were four stone steps that descended into a paneled den. At the far end of the den, perched atop a wooden post that resembled a coat rack, was a bird more than a foot tall. Covered in shades of gray feathers with a bright red tail and a solid black b
eak, it turned its head in Martin’s direction as he came into view, made eye contact, and squawked, “Gimme kiss.”

  Martin froze for a moment, unsure what to do. The bird wasn’t confined in a cage, and it didn’t appear to be tethered to the post. For all he knew, it could attack at any moment. The warning bells began sounding again in his head, insisting that he leave at once.

  But Martin maintained his ground, staring the bird down for more than a minute before slowly descending the stairs into the dimly lit den. The bird followed his progress, ruffled its feathers once, causing Martin to pause, and then repeated, “Gimme kiss.”

  With no intention of obeying the bird’s command, Martin began surveying the room, automatically returning to familiar routines. About fifteen feet long and ten feet wide, the room was carpeted in olive green shag and dominated by a gas fireplace centered on the south wall. A small, well-stocked bar was positioned at the foot of the stairs, and a couch and several plush chairs were situated around the room. Without a conscious thought, but keeping the bird in his periphery, Martin removed the fine-point pen from his right ear, lifted the clipboard into a writing position on his hip, and began diagramming the room, noting smaller details as his eyes scanned the space. Photos of the couple lined the fireplace mantel, as well as a son and daughter at various ages and wedding photos for both. Built-in bookshelves filled the entire east wall, crammed with leather-bound novels and a complete Funk & Wagnalls encyclopedia, all of which appeared more decorative than utilitarian. The room was wallpapered in a simple floral pattern, and the curtains in the two large windows along the north wall were dusty (a confirmation of no maid service) but stylish. A teardrop-shaped coffee table with a glass top was positioned in front of the couch, covered by a round, wide vase of silk daisies (also dusty) and a neat stack of magazines, topped by Martha Stewart’s Living. As his eyes took in these details and many more (the texture of the ceiling, the wattage of the bulbs in the overhead lamp, the temperature at which the thermostat was set), he returned his attention to the bird and noticed a small souvenir license plate nailed to the post just below the perch, the kind you find revolving in racks at shops in the airport or along the boardwalk, seemingly filled with every name but your own. The state represented was Connecticut; a blue background with raised white lettering that read “Alfredo.”

  “Hello, Alfredo,” Martin whispered, unconsciously breaking his rule of silence when inside a client’s home. The sound of his own voice startled him, shocked him really, but not nearly as much as what followed from the bird.

  “Hello chickadee! What’s cooking?”

  At this outburst Martin gasped and found himself holding his breath, though he wasn’t sure why. This was a bird, after all, and he had dealt with pets before. Never dogs, of course, but cats were common to many of his clients’ homes, and he was once in a house where a ferret had been on the loose. Birds were also nothing new to Martin, though the birds he had seen thus far had been tiny little things jammed into iron cages. This bird was large, free, and talking. Worse still, it was responding to Martin’s words and actions.

  “Scotch and soda, please, neat,” Alfredo squawked, ruffling his wings again. “Thanks mate! What’s cooking? Gimme kiss! Gimme kiss! Gimme kiss!” With each word, the bird grew louder and more agitated until it appeared as if it would leap off its perch at any moment.

  At this, Martin’s warning bells became a cacophony of screaming sirens. He could feel himself beginning to sweat and felt a tremor in his hands. At last he succumbed to instinct. Moving quickly, unaware of his dramatic shift in speed, Martin backed up the four stairs to the kitchen, through the living room, and out the door, barely remembering to relock it as he left. Walking more quickly than he should, Martin backtracked halfway down the Grants’ quarter-mile driveway before cutting into and through the woods and emerging back on Sidle Road, a side street adjacent to the reservoir, where he had parked his car in the small dirt parking lot. He drove for more than two miles before realizing that he was still wearing surgical gloves and rubber moccasins and that his lock-pick gun was lying out in the open on the passenger seat. Turning into the parking lot of a family grocer, Martin took several long breaths before restoring his Subaru and himself to proper traveling order.

  Martin’s initial reaction was to cancel the Grants as clients immediately and for three days he operated under this assumption, planning no further visits to their home, though he did not delete any of the files on the Grants from his computer. Prior to his visit, Martin had conducted surveillance of the Grants’ home on fourteen separate occasions, at varying times of the day, in order to identify patterns in their life. Sitting in his car, armed with his laptop, or walking the block several times with a digital voice recorder in hand, Martin would gather the information required before entering a client’s home. It was during these sessions that he would look for signs of dogs and maid service, determine departure and arrival times to and from work, and identify clients’ shopping patterns. Were the Grants the type of couple that stopped at the market each day, or did they do all of their shopping on Sunday? Information of this type was invaluable to Martin, and by the end of his fourteenth day, he had gathered a great deal of it on the Grants. Though he had told himself that the correct move was to cancel them as clients and delete his computer files, something inside him was still holding out hope.

  Oddly enough, the reason was Alfredo.

  Something about the parrot had caused Martin’s mind to stir for days. Unaccustomed to daydreaming, he was surprised to find himself thinking about the bird at the oddest possible moments: while cracking hard-boiled eggs in the kitchen, while photographing a client’s pantry, and while flossing for the fifth and final time that day before going to bed. He tried to dismiss his musing as ridiculous, but still his thoughts returned to the bird that had caused him to break several of his most important rules and flee recklessly from a client’s home. Eventually Martin began considering a return to the Grants’, for reasons he could not imagine. He didn’t need the business. He had plenty of clients and plenty of new referrals worth investigating. Still, something inside him continued to tug, and so by the fourth afternoon, Martin found himself at his computer, researching parrots online. In no time he had identified Alfredo as an African gray parrot, had seen pictures of birds nearly identical to Alfredo, and had learned a great deal.

  With a lifespan of up to eighty years, the African grays’ claim to fame is their incredible intelligence. With vocabularies of more than a hundred words (with some birds mastering more than two thousand) and the ability to understand and use these words properly, African grays are the most verbal of all birds able to reproduce speech. Grays can also mimic just about any sound that they hear and can perform many tasks on the same level as a four-year-old child, including distinguishing colors, shapes, and numbers of objects.

  But Alfredo’s mental acuity wasn’t the only thing that had interested him. Martin’s career demanded that he work alone, and for the most part he enjoyed this element of his profession. He was his own boss, never saddled by inefficient or incompetent coworkers, yet there were times when he craved a little human contact. To combat this need, Martin maintained an almost continuous running monologue in his head, a mixture of play-byplay and commentary on his ongoing actions and decisions that filled the silence of his day. He was constantly analyzing, debating, and reconsidering his choices, and he actually found it difficult at times to turn this internal conversation off.

  But there were occasions, such as when Jim told stories about interesting or unique coworkers, or spoke of receiving recognition for a job well done, that Martin lamented the solitary nature of his profession. Martin believed that he was the best there was at his work, but sadly there was never anyone with whom to share his success or celebrate his achievements.

  It was also impossible for Martin to meet new people or make new friends, save at Starbucks, where Nadia and his three usual coworkers seemed to have plenty of time to chat with cus
tomers but not enough time for anything but pleasantries for their barista. Though he often said that he didn’t need anyone other than Jim (and almost always believed this to be true), Martin found people to be entertaining and enjoyed getting to know them better. More precisely, he enjoyed figuring people out, uncovering their predilections, understanding their nuances, and determining what made them tick. Without coworkers, these opportunities were unavailable to him.

  Recently, Martin had found himself particularly envious upon learning about Jim’s new colleague, Peter. Peter was a vegan in the strictest of senses, refusing to eat even food that contained whey, a by-product of the making of cheese that manufacturers use in the production of crackers and cookies because it is both nutritious and illegal to dump into rivers and oceans (two reasons that always seemed to collide in Martin’s mind). Vegetarians of Peter’s ilk, as Jim had explained, do not eat whey because they do not eat cheese and eggs, and this was because of the impact that dairy consumption had on the nondairy producing animals such as bulls and roosters. Because they could not produce milk or eggs, bulls and roosters were instead killed for meat, and therefore dairy consumption indirectly contributed to the deaths of these animals.