Hoarder (2 page)

Chapter Two

Keith was the first to pull back his hood. Mounted on the bill of his black baseball cap was a small spy camera. Now that they had reached their destination, it was time to start gathering video evidence. Dani, Will, and Ian followed Keith’s lead and dropped their hoods, uncovering the spy cameras mounted on the bills of their black caps.

Whatever footage they eventually released would have to be carefully edited to remove their identities. Video evidence could also be used as back-up insurance, as an assurance that they would not reveal Missy’s crimes if she didn’t reveal theirs. However, meeting Missy was not a part of their plans, if they could get in and out fast enough.

Keith, Will, and Dani pulled small handheld video cameras out of the big front pockets of their hoodies, because one could never have enough footage or angles in today’s uploading age. None of these cameras was a phone or personalized device, nothing identifiable whatsoever. All serial numbers had been scrubbed off.

Ian’s presence had not been counted upon and he was left without a hand cam. Ian was still grateful to Will for the baseball cap cam he had been provided. Will was an active skater and videographer who tried to record all of his gravity defying feats, and perhaps more profitably, his gnarly falls. The bloodier, the better for selling.

Over the past two years, Will had cleared six thousand selling his spill videos to shows like
Most Shocking: Banged Up Boneheads 2
and
Whacked Off Sports
(actually
Whacked Out Sports
, but he was a teenage male, so whacked off always came out of his mouth). He got fifteen hundred dollars per clip, and he invested it in more and smaller cameras to fasten everywhere for more dynamic shots. Every one of his cameras was employed in their mission tonight.

The eyes and lenses trained on Missy’s house numbered fifteen. Ian felt the need to voice his doubts. “You’re certain she’s not home?”

Ian’s question was aimed at his brother, but it was Will who replied, “I’m sure. She never misses the Tuesday night late sale, ten p.m. sharp.”

“And she lives alone?” Ian inquired to anyone.

Keith replied this time. “She must. I’ve never seen anybody else go in or out.”

“She shops alone, too,” Will added.

Ian wasn’t assured. “But you’ve said she buys a ton of food.”

Will had his own theory. “She has a hearty appetite. She’s as big as an MMA fighter. She loves her food as much as her sales.”

“And she’s not married?” Ian asked. Will looked revolted at the thought and countered, “Who would marry her?”

Ian figured Will had a solid point. Who would marry the local witch with the scary house except for a warlock? And if that were the case, he’d be a part of the legend. Plus, Ian doubted Missy would want to give up her eerie last name, which also fed into her mythic reputation. Something like Creeperskin, or Crepitus, or Hagalina. “What’s her full name?” Ian needed reminding.

“Ms. Missy Wormwood,” Will had the misfortune to know all too well.

Keith smirked at the irony. “Perfect name.”

Ian pulled up his sleeve to look at his watch. It was 10:04 p.m., just a few minutes after the start of Missy’s weekly shopping frenzy. He should have been relieved, but he wouldn’t let his guard down. “What if she comes right back?”

“She won’t. She always shops until midnight, at the earliest. One thirty to two is her usual check out time,” Will said.

Keith bristled at Ian’s incessant questioning of his plan. He had spent nearly two weeks putting together this operation, and he was confident they would succeed. There was only one variable so far, his younger brother’s participation, and he hoped that wouldn’t be his plan’s undoing. And since when had Ian become so doubtful of his older brother anyway, who he usually idolized and followed dutifully? He had to quell this mutiny now. “If you’re so scared, Ian, you shouldn’t have come.”

“I’m not scared,” Ian challenged back. He hoped the look on his face wouldn’t betray him. And he wasn’t scared he tried to convince himself. He was just creeped out a bit. A lot of bits, maybe.

“Why did he come?” Will chided Keith about Ian’s presence.

“He said he’d tell mom if I didn’t let him tag along,” Keith reluctantly admitted.

Dani grinned at the simplicity of Ian’s plan, and while she was concerned that no trouble should come to the kid, she was glad to have him there. “That old ploy. Always works, doesn’t it?” Dani winked at Ian.

Ian’s creeps didn’t prevent him from cracking a grin. She was right. Ian would not tell this to his brother, but he and Dani were secret co-conspirators. They could understand each other and had a connection the others did not. Ian was happy to keep it his little secret, and he knew that most guys would do anything to have his closeness to one of the most desired and unattainable girls at school. Ian had never seen Dani wink at anyone else.

Keith didn’t see Dani wink at Ian, but he was getting frustrated at the delay caused by their tag-along variable. It was long past time for him to take back what was his. “Let’s get out of the open.”

Keith started into Missy’s yard, and Will, Dani, and Ian followed him. Keith stayed close to the unruly hedge, keeping their advance cloaked in the shadows. Once they were beside the house, Keith led the others across to the walls, keeping them out of the open as they headed back.

Ian looked at the covered windows beside him. The next window he passed was covered with heavy curtains. A gray cat sat on the windowsill, so still Ian thought it might be a fake. The cat’s eyes followed him, proving it had life. Ian was disturbed to know they were being watched, even if the eyes were feline. Missy’s house was filled with kitty spies. Ian was also disturbed by the unhealthy look of the cat. All of its bones could be counted beneath its gray, nearly hairless skin. Ian didn’t stick around long enough to add them up.

Keith looked back at the three he was leading. “Over here.” Keith passed a few untrimmed bushes against the house and stopped on the other side. Will, Dani, and Ian stopped beside him, and they all looked down at a rectangular basement window.

Brown construction paper was taped over the inside of the window, glowing from the basement light behind it. The kids crouched down in a line before the low window, filming it without obstructing each other’s lenses. Near the bottom of the window, there was a seven-inch tear in the construction paper, the result of weather and wear, with a flap hanging down.

“There it is,” Keith said as he filmed through the gap in the window covering. His crew leaned in with their cameras, looking at the limited interior through their viewfinders.

Through the tear in the construction paper, the blue striped handlebars of a bike were visible in the basement below. The clutter around the bike was indiscernible from their limited vantage point.

“My stolen bike. Disappeared off my porch twelve days ago,” Keith announced with satisfaction that his friends could see it for themselves. Dani saw the handlebars, but she was not familiar with Keith’s bike, so she had to ask the obvious. “You sure it’s yours?”

Keith wasn’t bothered by Dani’s doubt; he welcomed her questions, whereas he was annoyed by his brother’s inquiries. “The stripes on the handlebars, my dad did those. That was the last gift I got from him before he split.”

“I thought you hated your dad, for running off on you guys,” Will said.

Hate was too soft of a word for how Keith felt about his father. Words like
father
,
dad
, or even his name Roland were not terms that he would attribute to the man now. In Keith’s mind, he was only
Asshole
, or
Coward
, or
Selfish, Loveless Motherfucker
, names that started with a capitol letter. He could think of a hundred other derogatory names for the man who had gone to work six months ago and decided to never come home. No note, no goodbyes, nothing but a secret new start for himself and endless questioning grief for his family. So Will was right, but it was hate Keith felt entitled to harbor. His brother and mother were entitled, too, but whether they chose hate or forgiveness, he didn’t know.

“I do,” Keith replied, “but it’s my history, not hers. And I’m taking it back.”

Dani chimed in again. “Why not report it to the police instead of breaking and entering?” Ian nodded in agreement with her.

“How do I tell them I found it here? By creeping in her bushes?” Keith questioned in answer. Everyone understood the necessary risk.

“What led you here?” Dani was curious to know.

Keith’s mission at Missy’s house had begun as schoolhouse rumor, coming from a trusted source. “When I put out the word my bike was swiped, Megan told me in the library she saw Missy walk by the week before last, pushing a bike with blue stripes. A day I was also at school while my bike was on our porch. She has a car. What does she need my bike for?”

Nobody had a good reason they could think of. Will offered a theory anyway. “She uses them for toothpicks.”

Keith thought that was funny, but he wouldn’t laugh and make light of their dangerous situation. He felt responsible for his friends, and he would even be fine if there was desertion among the ranks. He felt inclined to offer an out to doubtful Dani with sincerity. “I’ll understand, Dani, if you don’t want to go through with this.”

Keith had not noticed that Dani was even more grim and committed to this recon mission. “Oh, I want to. I have to.”

Ian could tell Dani was not saying that out of bravado. “What did you lose?” he inquired.

“Fiddlesticks, my cat. Six weeks ago,” Dani said, and it still wounded her to say it. Ian winced at her pain. He knew Dani had been grieving for many weeks over her lost cat. Only now did he connect that unfortunate event to their current location, and the idea that her cat might have been snatched shocked him. A cat was worse to lose than a bike because a cat was warm-blooded and reliant on its owner. Keith might miss his bike, but the bike would never miss him back.

Keith added fuel to Dani’s fear. “She’s a crazy cat lady, too. I’ve seen a bunch of them on her property. Wild, feral cats. One of them clawed me last night.”

Ian thought of the emaciated kitty spy in the window they had passed and knew his brother was right. Keith held up his left hand for proof. There was a white bandage on top, saturated with blood in the center.

Ian had been doubtful of Keith’s initial explanation for the hand dressing this morning, that it was the result of slamming his hand in his locker door. That was the kind of clumsy move that Keith might make, but he knew his brother hadn’t been wearing a bandage after school yesterday. Now he knew the reason for his brother’s lie, and considered it justified.

Will did not want Dani to get her hopes up, since he had painful, personal experience with this in his youth. He would always remember lil’ Sheba, the Shih Tzu who had split the first and only time he had left the front gate open when he was eight years old. He’d always wondered what had happened to that lil’ shithead, and he equated the feeling with the pain Keith harbored from his father, to a much lesser degree, of course. “Cats run away, Dani. All animals do.”

“Fiddlesticks was fat, he couldn’t run anywhere. I think somebody lifted him off our porch.” Dani’s conviction that Missy was the culprit stemmed from proximity; Dani lived on the same street as Keith, and thieves often revisited areas they knew were good for raiding.

Ian was inclined to believe in Dani’s suspicion. Missy had a well-deserved reputation among young and old alike. Her behavior had raised her to the level of neighborhood legend, the lady most likely to be seen as the local Boogeywoman by the little ones and
that insufferable bitch
by any adults unfortunate enough to have crossed her path. “She gets around. Kids in my class have stories about her taking things,” Ian added to the legend.

Will had his own stories to tell, far more than his current company, about the neighborhood witch. “She shoplifts, too. She’s the town klepto.”

“She ever take anything from you?” Ian asked Will.

Will nodded. “Yeah, my virginity. That was her in that dark room at the farm party.”

Nobody laughed out loud, but they all found that funny, even Ian, who was the only one of the group who had not been at that legendary party. Dani belted Will in the arm playfully. They all needed a laugh, and Will could always be counted on to cut the tension at just the right moment.

There was a rustling nearby, in the bushes to the left of Dani. “Shhh,” Dani instructed the guys.

Everyone stood still and silent. They heard more rustling, relocated to the bushes to the left of Ian. Ian looked over as branches began to shake. A gray haired cat leapt out of the bush, claws out, with a hiss of attack. Ian dodged the feral feline by an inch. An inch more than his brother had.

“Shit!” Ian exclaimed. Apparently, Missy’s kitty spies also acted as a clawed security force. They would do well to keep on guard for this threat. Hopefully, Dani’s cat Fiddlesticks had not been indoctrinated into Missy’s violent kitty cult.

Ian watched the cat run off toward the back of Missy’s house. Will slapped Ian on the back, startling him a second time. “Almost had your first shave there, Squirt.” Ian flipped Will off, but he smirked while doing it.