Upstairs, Dawn and Rud entered her room together and closed the door. Joe had already gone ahead to bed, and I debated telling him they were sharing the room, but figured that neither of us had the heart for a big scene, especially when we’d decided that we just wanted to get through the visit and say good-bye.
Joe left the house in the morning before Dawn and me. She and I had breakfast and then hit the mall, but it was more chaotic than either of us could stand, so after making a few purchases that had us waiting in line forever, we headed home.
It wasn’t even eleven o’clock yet, and I expected that Rud would, as he’d predicted, still be in bed. But we found him asleep in the family room, the movie channel playing in the background. When he heard us entering, he woke up. I would have expected him to seem sheepish, having been discovered slack-jawed and almost drooling in front of the TV by his girlfriend and her mother, but instead he appeared irritated that we had interrupted his nap. At least, that was my first impression of his attitude. But then he adjusted quickly, jumping up to grab the packages Dawn and I carried, saying he hadn’t realized he was so tired.
Joe came home within the half hour, carrying his briefcase and a stack of folders directly into his office on the first floor. That was when he discovered that we had been robbed.
Something looked wrong about the cabinet in his study, he told me later, and opening it, he saw that my expensive binoculars were gone. Immediately he checked the closet, where he kept his grandfather’s telescope, but that shelf was empty as well. With a sick feeling in my throat, I rushed up to the bedroom to find that my mother’s ring was missing from my jewelry box. The crystal obelisk Joe had received as an award at the previous year’s accounting banquet had been taken, too.
Of course, the first person we turned to was Rud. Had he not noticed anything? Wouldn’t he have heard someone come into the house? Wouldn’t Abby have barked if someone tried? That was when he put on the embarrassed expression I’d expected earlier, and told us he was a hard sleeper: “My mother used to say they could test bombs in my bedroom without waking me up.” I thought I saw Dawn startle and almost say something, but she seemed to think better of it and tightened her lips.
We called the Everton police and they sent over Kenneth Thornburgh, who took down a list of the missing items and listened as Joe described the cabinet doors in his office being slightly awry, which was what had tipped him off that someone had opened them. “But you’re saying the doors were closed when you came in here, right?” the detective said. We didn’t know what he was getting at until he added, “Why would a thief come in to steal things, then bother to close the doors behind him? If it was just a grab-and-run?” This made sense, and I could see that Joe thought so, too. Dawn had left us and gone into the bathroom—hiding from the conflict, most likely—but Rud was still standing behind us, his hands thrust deep in his jeans pockets as he looked down somberly at the floor. “Can I talk to you two for a minute?” Thornburgh said, nodding at Joe and me. Rud mumbled something that sounded like “Sure, sure” and backed out of the room, though I sensed reluctance in his movement. Thornburgh shut the door.
“How well do you know your daughter’s boyfriend?” he asked, and though Joe understood immediately what he was implying, it took me longer.
“Not well,” I admitted. “But she does, of course. They came for Thanksgiving. Why?”
Joe moved closer to me, as if he thought I might need to lean against him when I finally understood what he and the detective had already grasped. “He was the only one here, Hanna.” In his face I saw relief, which at first I interpreted as a kind of gloating that his growing suspicions about Rud had been confirmed. It would take me a while to realize that he was relieved because if we knew who the thief was, we would likely recover what we had lost.
“But—why?” I looked from one man to the other. When neither of them could answer me, I said, “Isn’t it possible it happened the way he said—that somebody came in and robbed us while he was asleep by the TV?”
“It’s very unlikely.” Thornburgh spoke in a low voice, and it occurred to me that he thought Rud might be listening outside the door. “There haven’t been any reports of burglaries in this neighborhood, or the whole town lately, for that matter.” He nodded in the direction of the hallway. “Do you know anything about his finances?”
We didn’t. We knew only that he worked as a vet’s assistant—a job that, I assumed, didn’t pay very well. It hadn’t occurred to me to wonder about how he supported himself. But even if I had wondered, I would have thought only that since he came from a successful family, his parents probably helped him out if he needed it.
“I’ll want to talk to him,” the detective said, and we followed him back into the hall. Dawn had come out of the bathroom and was standing behind Rud, biting the tip of her thumb into bloodlessness. It was one of her old habits I associated with her most anxious moments, and I thought she’d gotten rid of it in college—when she met Rud—so I winced when I saw her doing it again.
Thornburgh asked Rud to accompany him downstairs and into Joe’s study, so they would be able to speak privately. Dawn asked if she could be there, too, but Rud turned and kissed her forehead and said, “Don’t worry, Kitten—I’ve got nothing to hide.” Though I tried to resist them, the words con man flashed through my mind.
While they sequestered themselves in the separate room, I made sandwiches from the leftover turkey. When I put plates down in front of Joe and Dawn, she said, “How can you guys even think about eating?” Joe had already taken a bite, and I could see that he considered feeling chagrined and decided against it.
“Maybe it’s all for the best in the long run,” he told her. “If this guy really is bad news, you want to know it sooner rather than later.”
“He didn’t steal those things. Honestly, Daddy, how can you think that?” She pushed her plate away, and nobody spoke for the next several minutes until we heard Rud and Thornburgh come out of the office.
The detective said quietly to Joe and me, “Apparently, there’s some camera equipment missing, too. Mr. Petty said his camera was stolen along with all your property.” His tone implied to me that he did not believe what Rud had told him, but Dawn didn’t seem to notice.
“I don’t remember seeing any camera,” Joe said, as we watched Rud walk over to Dawn and put his hands on her shoulders from behind. She lifted a hand to pat his in a gesture of support, though I recognized confusion in her face.
“Really, Mr. Schutt? You didn’t see me yesterday after dinner, taking pictures of the bird feeder out there?” Rud pointed to the yard, where behind the garden—which was essentially shut down for the winter—we kept suet and sunflower seeds in a contraption designed to let the birds get at the food while keeping squirrels out. “There was that gorgeous cardinal, don’t you remember? And what’s that other kind you said, Mrs. S.—nuthatches? There was a whole family of them.” Same smile on his face, same charm in his voice as during the rehearsal dinner before Iris’s wedding, when I fell for it all. Only this time, I was aware of the duplicity behind it. There had been no camera, no photographing of birds in the backyard. After dinner there was the football game and then a long evening of TV. I was the only one who had gone outside, to walk the dog. Rud had not left the house at all.
“That never happened.” Joe was shaking his head, looking at Rud with a smile on his own face I’m sure he didn’t even realize was there. Knowing my husband as I did, I could tell that as angry as he must be about Rud having robbed us, he also felt fascinated by the arrogance it took for him to lie about it.
“I set the camera right down there on top of the hutch,” Rud continued, pointing to where we stored the good tableware in the dining room. “And now it’s gone. They must have gotten that, too.”
They. The fictitious burglars who, having noticed someone sleeping in front of a blaring TV, and probably a dog as well, still chose to enter the house in broad daylight and scope it out for valuables before
removing those items and restoring order behind them. Of course it made no sense, and the fact that Rud was lying about the camera made me realize that he had to be the actual culprit.
Rud, still holding Dawn’s shoulders, leaned down to her and said, “I know you remember, Kitten. You said you couldn’t remember seeing anything so red as that little birdie.”
I watched my daughter freeze for a moment under his hands—just a moment; no one but a mother would have caught it—before she turned her face up to him, willing her features to brighten along the way.
“Of course I remember,” she agreed, but she could not look at Joe and me as she added, “Maybe you guys missed it when you were watching football.”
“We were all watching football,” Joe said. He spoke in his quietest voice, and I could see Dawn shrink, at hearing it.
It was clear that Detective Thornburgh understood what was going on. When he motioned for Joe and me to accompany him to the door, he told us as much. “But with him reporting himself a victim, too, and no other evidence, there’s not much we can do but file a report,” he said.
“You can’t search his car?” Joe asked, as we stepped into the driveway and remembered that Rud and Dawn had driven up in her Nova. “I mean, our daughter’s car?” Though it had started to snow, Emmett Furth was riding his motorbike down the street wearing only a tee-shirt and jeans. When he saw the uniformed officer outside our house, he gave Thornburgh the finger.
“Maybe he did it,” I said, forgetting for a moment that all the evidence pointed to Rud.
“Oh, we’re familiar with Emmett,” the detective said. “But he’s pretty small time. And he’s smart enough not to rip off the people next door.” Joe and I looked at each other, deciding between us not to mention the burning of the tree house. Thornburgh turned to Joe. “Do you own the Nova?”
Joe pursed his lips, shook his head. “No. It’s in her name.”
“Then she’d have to consent to it.”
I would have tried to stop him, but Joe had turned back toward the house before I could do so. “Dawn! Would you come out here a minute, please?”
In a moment she appeared, trailing Rud behind her with her hand locked in his. “What now?” Something had changed in her expression even in the short time since we’d been in the house with them. Her features were hardened against Joe and me, as if Rud had whispered a promise she’d been waiting to hear.
“Would you let the officer take a look in your car?” Though I could see that Joe also felt shaken by the shift in our daughter’s demeanor, he would not let it deter him from persisting in his inquiry. When she hesitated, he added, “After all, if there’s nothing to hide, there’s no reason not to allow a search, right?”
He was right, of course, and I saw that Dawn wanted to say yes, so that she would have the satisfaction of proving our suspicions wrong. But Rud stepped in front of her and said, “We are not going to stand here and listen to you accuse us like common criminals. I was taught not to talk back to my elders, but if you want to know the truth, Mr. and Mrs. Schutt, I think you should be ashamed of yourselves.” He lifted his chin, and literally standing by her man, Dawn did the same.
I thought about reminding him that nobody was accusing Dawn of anything, but I recognized it as one of those cases that called for restraint of tongue. At that moment I wished Joe were the type of man who would just say the hell with it and pop the trunk himself before anyone could stop him, or that I had the courage to do it myself, but neither was the case, and I knew it. A weighty silence followed, after which Thornburgh cleared his throat and told us that if anything changed we should call him, and he’d let us know if, on their end, the police had any news. “You have my number if that camera turns up,” Rud said to him, and Thornburgh—also exercising restraint, it seemed—barely acknowledged the statement before getting into his car and pulling out of the driveway.
“What now?” I whispered to Joe as I followed him into the house, but he must not have heard me.
Dawn said to Rud, “Honey, Mom made you a sandwich.” I hadn’t done so, and she knew it, but she held out the plate I’d prepared for the detective.
Rud just looked at it, and then at her, before taking the plate from her and setting it back on the table with exaggerated delicacy, as if he considered it contaminated. “We won’t be staying for lunch,” he said, ostensibly answering Dawn but directing his words at Joe and me. “Get our things together, Kitten. We’re obviously not welcome here.”
“Dawn is most certainly welcome here,” Joe said, unwilling to hold back what both of us wanted to say. Until then Dawn had only looked anxious as we all waited to see how the scene would unfold, but at her father’s words, she erupted in tears.
“How can you do this,” she said to him and me, pushing past us to run up the stairs. We heard her rummaging around in her bedroom, throwing clothes into bags, collecting things from the bathroom. The whole time, Rud did not move to help her, but pulled a chair out and sat down at the table. Despite his stated refusal to remain in our house for another meal, he picked up the detective’s sandwich and finished it in a few bites, all the while ignoring Joe and me as we stood by watching him, stunned by his nerve. Then he got up, strolled to the hall closet, took out his leather jacket, and fitted his arms into the sleeves as if he were a model preparing for a shoot.
When they left a few minutes later, Dawn having slung their belongings into the Nova’s backseat, it was without any further words among any of us. We listened to the car chug down the street, and across from me at the table, Joe put his face in his hands. “We shouldn’t have let them leave,” I told him. “It’s snowing, they’re angry, and we’re not really sure what happened.” I was pleading with him to agree with me. “Are we?”
“Oh, Hanna.” I could see that it wearied him to have to insist, again, upon what we both knew. I was grateful that he didn’t invoke our private expression: lacy eye. “Yes, we’re sure.” He rubbed at his temples. “This is my fault. I’m the one who left him alone in our house.”
“We all did that,” I told him, but I could tell it didn’t get through.
Then there was another long stretch of silence before he stood, rinsed Rud’s plate, and put it into the dishwasher, as if knowing that I would not want to touch it. (He was right; it was the kind of moment I loved him for.) Without even talking about it, we decided not to go to see Hamlet that night as we had planned. Our hearts were heavy, and we were in no mood to watch a tragedy. Instead, we stayed in and ordered a movie on cable.
I did not remember doing this; when Kenneth Thornburgh came to question me in the hospital, after I emerged from my coma nearly three weeks later, I could not tell him anything about the hours leading up to the attack. The last thing I remembered was turning the outside light on and watching the snow fall lightly in its track, then deciding to call Dawn to make sure she’d gotten back safely to her apartment. I resolved not to mention anything about the burglary, so that our conversation wouldn’t disintegrate the way the Thanksgiving visit had; I would keep it short and sweet, a check-up call just to say, “I love you, no matter what.”
But Dawn wasn’t home. Opal answered and told me she hadn’t seen Dawn since Tuesday night, and then she kept me on the phone for fifteen minutes, chattering away about anything and nothing; I sensed she was lonely, and I hoped for her sake as well as for Dawn’s that it would not be long before Dawn returned to their apartment. I asked Opal to have my daughter call me when she got home. But if she did so, I could not remember.
I also didn’t remember calling Claire to confirm our date to walk our dogs at Two Rivers the following morning, although she gave testimony that I did.
Opal maintained that Dawn was in their apartment from six o’clock on, when she returned after dropping Rud off at his place on the way home from our house. Our phone records showed that I made my call at five fifteen, so there was no reason for the grand jury not to believe her.
One of the investigators testified t
hat our cable records showed that Joe and I had ordered a movie that Friday at 8:11 p.m. When Gail Nazarian asked the witness what the movie was, he answered in as matter-of-fact a manner as his position called for, yet Gail Nazarian allowed a pause before her next question, to ensure that the irony was not lost on anyone in the room. Just hours before someone came into our house and crushed our skulls with a croquet mallet, my husband and I selected—and presumably watched—Catch Me If You Can. Even the judge raised her eyebrows as a nervous titter bounced off the courtroom walls.
Affinity Fraud
I’d felt sure that once Warren removed the graffiti from Dawn’s car, she would go out and try to find a job. It was what we had agreed on, one of the conditions for her coming home. But three days after Halloween the car still sat where it was, and still she did not leave the house except for the rare times I asked her to walk Abby, which both Dawn and Abby seemed to resent.
It annoyed me to come home from work every day and find her sitting in front of the TV. She’d made dinner only that one time, on Halloween—if you could call it dinner—and I found it more and more difficult to see any reason to cut her some slack. I knew Joe would never have stood for it. And frankly, I didn’t feel very sympathetic, either, especially given the fact that I hadn’t had much choice about going to work when I was younger than Dawn.
Lacy Eye Page 21
