Something Missing (18 page)

Eight minutes later Jillian delivered a stack of blueberry pancakes to Martin, and fifteen minutes and two cups of coffee after that, Martin was ready to leave his tip and pay for his meal. Tipping Jillian had always been awkward for Martin. He wanted to tip her well every day, above the customary 17 percent that he tipped most serving persons. But at the same time, tipping her above and beyond what she deserved felt wrong to Martin, like he was trying to purchase her affection. In the end, he decided to round Jillian’s tip up to the nearest dollar, something he never did under ordinary circumstances. This decision had also made things easier for Martin, since the Quaker Diner was one of the few restaurants he frequented that did not accept credit cards. Paying with his Visa allowed Martin to calculate his tips to the penny, which he usually did. Prior to his relationship with Jillian, Martin had been forced to fill his pockets with change prior to coming to the diner, in order to tip properly.

Martin lay two dollar bills down beside his plate (almost a 25 percent tip today) and made his way to the cash register at the front of the restaurant. When time permitted, Jillian would walk the length of the counter in order to collect his payment, but because she was responsible for the rear section of the diner, this was often impossible, as it was today. She was pouring refills and making small talk with a father and daughter sitting at the
counter when Martin passed by and said, “See you tomorrow, Jill.”

Jillian looked up briefly, smiled at Martin, and said, “Tomorrow it is, my dear” before returning her attention to her newest customers.

Martin loved it when she called him “my dear.” Though she said it almost every day to him, he never got tired of hearing those two wonderful words.

Before pulling out of the parking lot, Martin refocused his attention on the business of the day. Client referrals were next on Martin’s list, and though he normally disliked everything associated with Housekeeping Day, this was one task that he enjoyed very much. His latest referral had come by way of the Gallos of Kensington, who had proven to be an excellent source of potential clients. As professional chefs, the Gallos were constantly hosting and (more important) being invited to a large number of dinner parties in the area, so their refrigerator magnets were rarely devoid of a new invitation. Almost all of Martin’s referrals came from invitations stuck on the sides of his clients’ refrigerators or filed away on a desktop, reflecting his belief that like-minded people traveled in the same circles. Married couples befriended other married couples. Couples without children sought couples in similar circumstances. People also tended to associate with others of similar financial standing. The culmination of these suppositions was Martin’s belief that the best source of potential clients was his current clients’ friends, and the wedding, anniversary, birthday, and dinner party invitations (which usually included the couples’ full names, addresses, and telephone numbers) served as access to these people and their lives.

Invitations were also effective at weeding out the wrong kind of client. An invitation to a bar mitzvah, for example, signaled the presence of a child in the home. A daughter’s wedding
invitation, on the other hand, might signal a child leaving the nest, making that couple a potentially profitable one. Invitations could also effectively signal a family’s financial standing. A catered party in the home or the use of the dining room at a moderately priced country club usually indicated a certain level of financial success and lifestyle that appealed to Martin when choosing a client. A dinner party at a beach home on Martha’s Vineyard, however, indicated that a client might be too wealthy for Martin’s taste. Martin had even taken the time to learn about greeting cards and their pricing, and he could now tell with a cursory examination how much someone had spent on an invitation—a good clue to their financial status.

While all of this information was helpful in identifying potential clients, none of it could replace a site visit and extensive research. The site visit always came first, because just by examining a home and its surroundings from the street, Martin could eliminate 75 percent of all couples referred to him.

Martin’s referral of the day brought him to the home of Jennifer and David Hugh of Southington. From the invitation that Martin had photographed two weeks ago, he knew that Jennifer and David were planning a Hawaiian-themed dinner party for an unspecified number of guests in five weeks. The invitation, printed on average card stock in typography, had encouraged the Gallos to “Get into the spirit by dressing like a native! Colorful leis, flowered shirts, and even hula skirts are all welcome!” Martin had taken this as a good sign. Though the Gallos’ finances were well within Martin’s specifications, he had found that, unlike most clients, the Gallos also had friends who were much wealthier than themselves, and so he was frequently disappointed to discover that a Gallo referral lived in an enormous home along the Connecticut shoreline and maintained a stable of polo ponies nearby. Inviting guests to wear hula skirts did not seem like something that multimillionaires would find amusing,
so he held out hope that Jennifer and David Hugh would prove to be potentially profitable clients.

Less than thirty minutes after leaving the diner, Martin pulled onto Ridgewood Road in the quiet town of Southington and began scanning mailboxes for number 32. If the site visit didn’t eliminate the Hugh family as clients, his next step would be to research the couple thoroughly, a task from which Martin extracted great pleasure. The Hughs’ home turned out to be a large blue Colonial set more than fifty feet from the road and more than a hundred yards from any neighbor, bordered by trees at the rear of the lot. A relatively discreet location on a dead-end street with a probable backyard approach was an extremely good start.

Though Martin typically relished the process of vetting client referrals, he found his mind continually wandering to the last item on his list:
Alan
. He knew that the client referral needed to be addressed first, but he couldn’t help but look ahead to the afternoon, when his plan for Alan would be put into place. As he drove past the Hughs’ home a second time and prepared to stop, he forced himself to refocus on the task at hand. There would be plenty of time to address the Alan situation after his work was finished in Southington.

Martin brought the car to a halt alongside the Hughs’ front lawn and extracted a map from the glove compartment, opening it until it nearly filled the front seat. If anyone ever questioned him (and it had happened once about seven years ago), Martin would play the role of a lost motorist, in search of the road that he was on but in another town entirely.

“I’m looking for Locust Street. Is this the right street?” he had said to the police officer who had pulled up behind him, exited the cruiser, and approached his car. Martin had been parked on a residential cul-de-sac at the time, and no doubt the police officer (or more likely one of the neighbors) had become suspicious
of a man sitting in his car in a neighborhood that received few visitors.

“This
is
Locust Street, sir,” the officer had said, continuing to look down upon Martin with grave suspicion. “What house number are you looking for?”

“This one,” Martin said, indicating the 566 on the mailbox. “Is there another Locust Street in Berlin?”

“This isn’t Berlin,” the officer chuckled, relaxing his face. “You’re in Cromwell, sir. You’re on the right street but in the wrong town.”

Martin had escaped the encounter (his only one with law enforcement while working) unscathed and had never returned to that neighborhood. More important, he was now secure in the knowledge that if questioned, his strategy would likely work again.

Looking through an irregular-shaped hole in the map about two inches in diameter, located at the junction of Interstates 84 and 684 (there were several of these holes, placed to make it appear that the map was old and worn, rather than deliberately altered), Martin began examining the home more closely. A two-car garage abutted the home, something Martin did not like since it would be impossible for him to tell if there were cars parked inside, but not something that he couldn’t work around. The lawn was well kept (a sign of orderliness), the curtains were drawn (always a plus when moving through a supposedly unoccupied home), and there was no blue octagonal sign warning of an alarm system. So far, Martin thought, this was looking good.

Initial inspection complete, Martin then doubled back onto the main road and parked the Subaru about two miles away in the parking lot of a Chinese restaurant. From here he would proceed on foot. Dressed in full jogging regalia (sweat suit, headband, headphones, strap-on water bottle, and pedometer), Martin made his way back to Ridgewood Road, carrying a broken dog
leash in his left pocket and a supply of plastic bags used to retrieve dog feces in the right. It had taken Martin more than a year to build up his endurance to the point that he could run this far while remaining observant and vigilant, and he took great pleasure in knowing that another aspect of his career had been mastered. Though walking would have likely been an effective means to reconnoiter the referral’s home, Martin believed that a jogger attracted much less attention than a stranger walking through a neighborhood. A runner could be just passing through in an effort to squeeze a couple extra miles out of a lengthy run, whereas walkers tended to stick to their own neighborhoods and became more a part of the landscape, and a stranger would stand out considerably more.

After years of training, Martin was able to run more than five miles with relative ease, and so as he made his way past the sixteen homes that lined Ridgewood Road on the way to the Hughs’ home, he slowed his pace and paid special attention to the houses and driveways of the Hughs’ neighbors. Too many cars in the driveways would indicate a concentration of stay-at-home moms, and if this were the case, Martin might reject the Hughs as clients. Nosy neighbors were not good in Martin’s line of work, particularly stay-at-home wives with no children. Without children, the women could easily find themselves in the role of bored housewives, and these were people whom Martin did not trust. Too much time on their hands spelled a potential disaster for someone attempting to remain unnoticed.

Traffic cameras, ATM machines, and locations like gas stations, where exterior video surveillance cameras recorded automobile and foot traffic, were also areas of concern for Martin when evaluating a neighborhood. He had read that the average American is recorded by no less than half a dozen video cameras in a single day, at traffic lights, inside stores and banks, and at
hundreds of other locations where video surveillance was routine. If the entrance to Ridgewood Road was manned by a traffic camera, and this was the only approach that he could make to the Hughs’ home, Martin would likely eliminate them as potential clients, fearing that his routine visit would be recorded and used as evidence against him one day. Fortunately, Ridgewood Road was an offshoot of an equally residential street, so traffic cameras and local businesses equipped with video surveillance were of no concern in this case.

As he approached the Hughs’ home, Martin removed the broken leash from his pocket and allowed it to dangle from his hands while assuming a worried look by furrowing his brows and widening his blue eyes (a routine he had practiced many times in the mirror before today). A few hundred yards from the target, he increased his pace and began darting his eyes left and right, glancing across lawns and side yards and into the copses of trees that separated many of the homes in this neighborhood. He then altered his pace, slowing down briefly gazing intently at a line of shrubs and a stand of poplars before speeding up again. All of this movement had been carefully choreographed and rehearsed many times before, and Martin had actually videotaped this performance several times in order to critique it. In his mind, his actions were flawless. He was playing the role of a man looking for his dog, and he was playing it brilliantly.

With less than fifty yards to go, Martin looked left, stopped, and then sprinted into the treeline along the south side of the Hugh property, moving far enough into the trees in order to gain a full view of the Hughs’ backyard. It was almost noon on a Tuesday, and there was no evidence that anyone was present in the Hugh residence, but for the benefit of someone who might be home, Martin also began shouting “Sandy?” as he closed in on the Hughs’ backyard. “Sandy” had been the name of the dog
in Martin’s first-grade reader,
Bing and Sandy
, and in homage to his first-grade teacher, Mrs. Dubois, he had chosen the name for his ruse.

He didn’t need to go far before he was hit with disappointment. Along the rear border of the Hughs’ expansive back lawn stood a wooden swing set in excellent condition, a small swimming pool, and several pieces of sports equipment. The Hughs clearly had children, and this immediately invalidated their candidacy as clients.

Less than 10 percent of all his referrals actually ended up as clients, so Martin was accustomed to disappointment. This one, however, was especially difficult to swallow. Ridgewood Road had proven to be an ideal neighborhood, and other than the presence of children, the Hughs’ home gave off all indications that they would make excellent clients. It made the jog back to the car seem especially long and painful.

Pessimism was not a common sentiment to Martin, but the disappointment at the Hughs’ home was weighing on his mind as he made his way north on Interstate 91. It had been more than ten months since Martin had added a new client to his roster, and in that same time he had lost three others. One of them had moved out of state and two others had added children to their homes, one through pregnancy and another through adoption.

The adoption had been particularly startling to Martin, considering the child had arrived without the usual warning that accompanies a pregnancy (home pregnancy tests, baby shower announcements, ultrasound photos stuck to the refrigerator, and the slow but constant accumulation of pacifiers, high chairs, and the like). Though Martin routinely went through his clients’ papers and mail, he had found nothing to indicate that the Brandners had been in the process of adopting a child. Had Molly and Scott Brandner not purchased the furniture for their four-year
old son’s bedroom and left a photo of him on the dresser in a gold frame, Martin might never have known about the adoption until he was greeted at the door by the Asian boy during one of his regularly scheduled visits. Making this loss even more difficult to accept had been the fact that he had been in the process of acquiring a diamond broach from Molly Brandner at the time, a six-month-long operation that he had been forced to abandon with the new arrival.