A Skeleton in the Family (20 page)

T
here may be something that would panic me more than finding a police car parked in front of my house, but I didn't take time to figure out what. Instead I was out of the van and running for the front door without any memory of actually turning into the driveway, parking, or turning off the engine. I found out later that I'd left the key in the ignition.

The front door was unlocked, and to my indescribable relief, the first thing I saw when I burst in was Madison sitting on the couch with a police officer in the chair next to her. My daughter was up in a second to grab me into a bear hug.

“Are you okay? What happened? Are you okay?”

“I'm fine, Mom,” she said, but I could tell from her voice that tears were just below the surface. “Somebody broke into the house.”

“What?” I looked over her head at the officer.

“Mrs. Thackery?”

“Ms.,” I said automatically.

“I'm Officer Louis Raymond. Your daughter is fine, and I want you to know that you should be very proud of her. She did the exact right thing. When she realized something was wrong, she left the house immediately, called 911, and went to the convenience store down the street. She was never in any danger. You've got a very smart girl there.”

“I texted you, too,” Madison said.

“My phone was off,” I explained. “Did you catch him? Them? The one who broke in?”

He shook his head. “We suspect the perps heard her arrive and escaped out the back door. We found it ajar, and marks show that it was the point of entry. You'll want to get that lock repaired.”

“At least we know a good locksmith,” Madison said with a pathetic excuse for a grin.

Officer Raymond said, “Two other officers are canvassing the neighbors to see if they saw anything. In the meantime, do you think you could go through the house to see if anything was taken?”

“Of course.” I thought about leaving Madison downstairs, but she grabbed on to my hand, so we all went through the house together. Though I was still mostly concerned about Madison, I couldn't help worrying about what might have been stolen. I was supposed to be keeping an eye on my parents' house, after all. I needn't have worried. We couldn't find anything missing.

The burglar or burglars must have started on the second floor. They'd opened every bedroom closet, the linen closet, and even the cedar chest filled with winter blankets in the hall. But the TV in my parents' room and Madison's computer and stereo were still in place.

“I don't see a jewelry box,” Officer Raymond said, and I explained that my mother had left hers with Deborah for safekeeping before she left on sabbatical, while living in sketchy neighborhoods had trained me to keep my few valuable pieces nestled among the towels. Everything was where it was supposed to be.

The door to the attic was still locked, and I used that as an excuse not to take Madison or Officer Raymond up there. My brain was still too frozen to come up with a reasonable explanation for Sid's living arrangements, even if he were hiding. For the first time I wondered if he was okay.

I tapped gently at the attic door, trying to make it look like I was just drumming my fingers nervously, but there was no response.

We moved on to the first floor, but since nothing showed obvious signs of searching, apparently the burglar hadn't had time to do anything down there. The widescreen TV that had been my mother's sixtieth birthday gift to herself hadn't been touched, and that was the most valuable item visible.

“It looks like you were lucky again,” Officer Raymond said. “Your daughter must have arrived while they were still scoping out the property.”

“Do they usually pick and choose that way?” Madison asked.

He shrugged. “Sometimes it's a quick smash-and-grab, sometimes they're more particular.”

We sat down at the kitchen table and Officer Raymond asked about who owned the house and how long Madison and I had been in residence. We'd just finished our explanations when Deborah showed up—a neighbor had alerted her to the police presence—so we repeated the story for her. I could tell how worried she was when she immediately went back out to her truck to get what she needed to install a new lock on the back door, plus an alarmingly large deadbolt.

“When the hell are you going to catch these guys, Louis?” she asked Officer Raymond. “This is, what, the eleventh house they've hit? Not to mention that old lady they killed.”

I could have kicked her, because Madison went as white as a sheet.

“You mean the ones who killed that woman were in the house?” she stammered.

“There's no way of knowing it was the same people,” Officer Raymond said soothingly.

“Don't give me that crap!” Deborah said. “You really think we have two burglary rings in Pennycross?”

Officer Raymond sighed. “Hold it down, Deb. You're scaring your niece.”

“Do your job and she'll have nothing to be scared of!”

Now he was mad. “You could do some work of your own around here.”

“What the hell is that supposed to mean?”

“This is your folks' house, right? Why didn't you put an alarm system in here? If your sister hadn't moved in, this house would have been left unoccupied for months, which is like an engraved invitation for lowlifes. In fact, I bet the burglars—who may or may not be responsible for other break-ins in the area—thought it was still vacant. So why no alarm?”

Deborah glared at me as if it were my fault, when we both knew why Mom and Phil had never wanted an alarm. Sid was always around. “My parents didn't want me to go to any trouble,” she finally said.

“They might think differently now.”

“Fine. I'll install a system tomorrow.”

“Good.” He turned back to Madison and softened his voice. “Young lady, I don't think you've got anything to worry about. The burglars aren't likely to come back here now that they know the house is occupied, and your aunt is going to have it as safe as Fort Knox by tomorrow.”

I know he meant well, but Madison didn't look overly comforted, for which I didn't blame her.

The other police officers knocked at the door, and the three of them conferred while I made hot chocolate for everybody. Hot chocolate always makes Madison feel better, and I had a crazy image of throwing a steaming cup of mocha into the face of anybody who tried to break into the house. Crazy, but satisfying.

I really didn't like the idea of some stranger loose in my house—despite having lived in some borderline neighborhoods, I'd never been broken into before. It made me want to wash everything the burglars might have touched, or at least spray some Febreze around.

Before he left, Officer Raymond said, “Okay, don't quote me on this, but from what we've found out, the MO here is different from the other break-ins. One of the neighbors saw a single guy running out of the backyard and down the street—the other break-ins were at least two-man jobs, and they had a vehicle. Also, the other jobs were night-time runs, and they moved fast—they weren't the kind to go looking in closets. I think this guy was just taking advantage of what he thought was an empty house.”

That he offered that as comfort, and the fact that it really was kind of reassuring, showed how crazy that day had become.

“I'm still putting in an alarm,” Deborah said, “and if it goes off, Louis, it's ringing for help at the station and at your place! You just keep that in mind.”

He laughed and left.

“I take it that you know Officer Raymond,” I said.

“He and I bowl on the same league.”

“And you have his home phone number?” Madison asked. “It sounds like a very friendly league.”

Deborah sputtered, and Madison poked her some more, which was probably what both of them needed. We all realized we were hungry, so I thawed out some chicken breasts and stuffed them with spinach to roast while Deborah took out her frustrations by mashing potatoes until they were as smooth as silk. Under the circumstances, Madison decided against attending the weekly Yu-Gi-Oh! tournament and instead availed herself of her favorite release valve: she texted all her friends and accepted their sympathy.

After dinner, Deborah asked, “Mad, how did you know somebody was in the house anyway? You guys said nothing was touched down here.”

Madison looked embarrassed. “I didn't want to tell the cops, because it sounds crazy, but just as I came in the front door, I heard somebody telling me to run.”

“Are you serious?” I asked.

She nodded. “I swear it was just like an actual voice.”

“What did you hear?”

“It said, ‘Madison! Somebody's in the house! Get out!' So I did. Maybe there's something to all that talk about guardian angels after all.”

I looked at Deborah, but she refused to meet my eyes. She knew who Madison's guardian had been as well as I did.

“I'm awfully glad this particular guardian angel was keeping an eye on you,” I said in a slightly too-loud voice. I saw the barest of movement from the armoire, and realized where Sid had been hiding during the break-in and subsequent uproar.

D
eborah stayed at the house until bedtime and, before she left, insisted on inspecting the outside perimeter with a flashlight in one hand and a baseball bat in the other. She didn't find anything but the neighbor's cat.

Madison said she was all right by then, but my maternal instincts said she was putting on a show, so I insisted that she sleep in my room that night so I wouldn't be frightened. Of course, that meant there would be no conferring with Sid about the break-in, but I assumed he'd have found a way to let me know if he'd seen or heard anything that could help.

Even knowing Sid was on guard, I wasn't much more at ease than Madison was. I'd checked to make sure all the doors and windows were locked, and I had that baseball bat on the floor next to me, but I kept thinking of what could have happened if Madison had surprised the burglar. I didn't sleep well.

First thing the next morning, I called my parents—with the time difference, it had been too late to call them the night before. They were understandably concerned about the house, but of course their first priority was for Madison and me. I got their approval for Deborah to put in an alarm system, which was a good thing—she showed up before Madison left for school to take measurements for the equipment she needed.

The sooner the better, as far as I was concerned. While I knew Sid would be extra vigilant from that point on, Madison had no such comfort. Despite sleeping with me, she'd been restless enough to disturb my sleep. Frightened and bleary-eyed was no way for a teenager to face the day.

It wasn't a great way for me to start the day, either—though I trusted Sid to give the alarm should another break-in occur, I was just as worried about what would happen if somebody saw Sid himself.

I thought the day was looking up when I got a text message from Fletcher asking me to meet him for lunch at Hamburger Haven after my classes, but it turned out that the opposite was true.

Fletcher had gotten to the busy campus hangout early enough to grab a table, and as soon as I sat down, he handed me some papers. “I finished this last night, and I'm dying to see what you think.”

“What is it?”

“It's my article about being an adjunct. Could you take a look?”

I stifled a sigh. As a composition instructor, I've been asked to proof any number of colleagues' papers, grant proposals, even personal letters. Since even the worst writers seem to think their prose is golden, keeping a friendly relationship after fulfilling a favor like that requires a lot more diplomacy than I had on hand. Then I remembered that Fletcher was a professional writer who was used to being edited. How bad could it be?

While he went to the counter to get our food, I started reading and realized almost immediately how bad it could be.

He had a big grin as he brought back the tray with our burgers and sodas. “Well?”

“I'm appalled.”

His grin fled. “What—?”

“Fletcher, you can't blow the whistle on Charles! He'll lose his job.”

“I didn't use his name.”

“Oh no, you just describe a historian who maintains an impeccable personal appearance while living in college hidey-holes at McQuaid. Nobody will be able to figure that out.”

“I don't say it's McQuaid.”

“You said it's a Western Massachusetts college. Don't you think somebody might connect that to the Western Massachusetts college where you teach? He'll be fired, and then how long do you think it will take for every school in New England to get word? Who's going to hire him? No administration wants to admit that they don't pay their adjunct faculty enough to live on.”

“Making them admit that is the point of the article!”

“And that's a great message to get out, but you don't have to ruin Charles's life in the process.”

“But a college teacher squatting that way—it's such a compelling image.”

“The adjunct office is full of compelling images—pick somebody else's story. Include a picture of us all crammed into one room, and then compare it with regular faculty offices or even grad-student offices. Or just give the numbers—tell people what you make for teaching a class.”

“Numbers aren't sexy, Georgia.”

“I can see that, but you're a good enough writer to make it work.” I handed him back his manuscript. “The rest of the piece is great, and I really love the way you describe the way tenured professors look down on us. But you can't ruin Charles's career.”

“Can I at least mention that I'd heard a rumor of somebody living on campus?”

“Only if you imply really strongly that this rumor came from another part of the country.”

He finally agreed, and we ate in relative peace, but I could tell he was sulking. So I told him about the break-in at the house, thinking I'd get a little sympathy, but I got more sulking. He was irritated that I hadn't called him so he could cover the story. The fact that I might be more concerned with my daughter's mental well-being than him writing yet another article about a local break-in apparently didn't occur to him.

I don't think either of us enjoyed lunch very much, and when he left, all I got was a perfunctory kiss on the cheek. As he walked away, all I could think was that his butt wasn't
that
great.