The House Across The Street

by Melanie Jones Brownrigg

  He chuckled. “I’m counting it as our third date then.”

  “Third?” I questioned, thinking last night was the first and this would be the second.

  “You asked me to that comedy club,” he reminded me.

  “That wasn’t a date,” I argued, knowing it was.

  “Right,” he said with a roll of his eyes. “Anytime a woman asks me to accompany them out for a night’s entertainment, including a meal afterward, I’m counting it as a date.” He chuckled again. “Rachel, you’ve asked me out on our first date and our third date,” he contended.

  “I didn’t ask you out just now either,” I bickered.

  “Third date. Now get over here and walk me to the door,” he ordered

  By now Rob had had enough of us and was already heading for his truck. So, I repeated Jackson’s moves last night in reverse. Leaning into him I could feel his beard rubbing against my forehead. After an almost kiss, I backed off. “Well, good luck. I hope you find something valuable.”

  “Tonight, I’ll walk you to your door … and maybe you’ll invite me inside,” he said with a wink and then turned and went out the door. “Lock up,” he yelled, waiting to hear the noise from the deadbolt.

  Running to the window to watch him leave, my eyes were glued on his tight jeans hugging his butt and showing off his muscular thighs. Holy cow, I thought, we really were in a relationship.

  Cooking a big pot of chicken and dumplings, I had piping hot bowls ready when the men returned for lunch.

  “Did you find anything?” I asked as I placed their servings on the table and grabbed three spoons.

  Jackson frowned. “No, it’s like we thought. Dawson has approached everyone in the neighborhood about insurance. And of course, we already knew Foster did odd jobs at their houses.”

  “Did anyone purchase a policy?” I asked.

  “A few took out homeowner policies. Some switched their auto insurance to him. But only three people took out life insurance policies and, in each case, the policy holder is still alive, and the beneficiary is either a spouse or a child.”

  “Nothing seems out of place,” Rob clarified.

  “There are still a few on the list. We’ll go back out this afternoon,” Jackson said.

  “Mrs. Tuttle is coming over,” Rob remarked from his chair facing the window.

  My heart rate picked up, wondering if it was going to be because Mr. Dawson had left. I met her at the door. “Come in,” I invited. “Would you like a bowl of chicken and dumplings,” I offered.

  “No, there’s no time. Jarrod Dawson just left. Get over there.” She pointed her index finger at her own house. “Right now,” she ordered.

  My feet became cemented to the floor and my mouth refused to work.

  Rob ran for his camera detecting equipment. “Here, Rachel. You know how to use this. And wear these.” He handed me some plastic gloves. “Now get over there and find us something.”

  “Uh…” I looked at Jackson.

  “Rach, you don’t have to do this,” he cautioned in a concerned tone.

  “She sure as heck does,” Mrs. Tuttle snipped at Jackson. “Let’s go Rachel. Get a move on.” She turned and glared at Rob. “Get in the alley and cover the back entrance.” She turned her gaze to Jackson. “And you need to watch the front from here.” Her head twisted to me. “Get your phone Rachel and get the lead out.” She yanked me out the door as soon as I fished my phone from my purse. “Call her if Dawson comes back. She’ll have time to get back into my place. Now everyone, do your jobs. Chop, chop.”

  With heavy leaden feet, I trudged across the street and into Mrs. Tuttle’s residence. “I don’t know about this. It’s really dangerous,” I protested.

  “Oh, for Christ’ sake, just climb up my attic ladder, crawl over to his place and go down his ladder. Then snoop around and stop whining.” She pushed me through her living room and then down the hall. “Get up there,” she blared, her head looking up at the attic hatch. “Hurry up.”

  Unable to reach the cord, I had to use a dining chair. Pulling the ladder down, I went up it at the speed of a sloth. Sticking my head into the dark space, I couldn’t see anything. “It’s dark up here. I guess I can’t go.”

  “Turn the darn light on. It’s to your right.”

  Shit. Flipping a switch, her area lit up nicely. A quick inspection revealed the right side of her attic was floored in and she was storing holiday decorations there. To my left, I saw her air conditioning/heater unit. Beyond this point, and toward Mr. Dawson’s townhome, the rest of the attic was composed of blown insulation between the ceiling studs. It was going to be a long trudge and I’d have to be careful not to fall through the sheetrock.

  “Times a wasting,” Mrs. Tuttle grouched below me. “Get your rear in gear.”

  Taking in a deep breath, I hoisted myself up and began crawling. Straddling my knees on two parallel boards, my hands doing the same, I inched my way toward Mr. Dawson’s unit. Making my way into the dimmer area of the attic, I wished I’d turned Mrs. Jenkins’ light on to provide me something to shoot for. It felt like I was making slow progress, and the longer it took me, the more likely it became for Mr. Dawson to return home. All the while, I had to manhandle Rob’s equipment which made the going tougher. The device was looped around my neck, but I had to be careful it didn’t break by swinging down on a stud, or catching on my advancement and causing me to fall through the ceiling.

  Nearing Mr. Dawson’s hatch, my heart began thrumming wildly in my chest. With any luck at all, I wouldn’t be able to retract the stairs from the attic side and my operation could be aborted. I hoped. Upon finally reaching it, I pushed on this side and it began opening, the stairs unfolding to the halfway point. Scooting my butt to the edge, I used a foot to kick the remaining one-half down. Dear God, I could enter his house from here.

  Fear inside of me grew at an alarming rate. Was I really going to do this? It was now or never.

  From Mrs. Tuttle’s unit, I heard, “Are you there yet?”

  “Yes, the stairs are down,” I hollered back.

  “Well get on with it,” she yelled.

  “Okay, I’m going in,” I said, wondering how in the world she could push me into doing something I clearly didn’t want to do.

  Descending the steps by crawling down backward, I found myself in Mr. Dawson’s hallway. Leaving the ladder down for a quicker getaway, I powered up Rob’s camera detector and began a slow sweep of the area. Because my time might be limited, I wanted to start in his front room, where his desk was. Of course, this was the most likely space he would have a hidden camera, and we already knew there would be one in his computer.

  As I worked my way down the hallway toward the direction of his front room, my stomach contracted to the point I feared vomiting. I couldn’t remember ever being this nervous in my whole life. Even deep breaths wouldn’t curtail the fierce pounding in my chest. I imagined myself being found by Mr. Dawson after I’d either fainted or had a heart attack.

  His office was at the end of the hallway and with every unsettled step, I fought hard to keep my legs under me. The door was closed, giving me a foreboding sense of what I would find on the other side. It might be locked, I surmised, almost hoping it was. With gloved hands, I turned the knob and shuddered when it opened. Peeking slowly inside, I was glad to find the curtains drawn which would help the camera detection equipment work more efficiently.

  Holding the gear in one hand and sticking it inside, I peered through the viewfinder to conduct an initial sweep of the room. The equipment picked up on his computer camera, but nothing else beeped, vibrated, or glinted. With a nervous shiver running down my spine, I took a tentative step inside.

  As if I were holding up the wall to the right of the door, I slithered down it to a lone four-drawer, solid black, metal file cabinet next to a fake Ficus tree. After another careful sweep of the room for hidden cameras, I rolled open the easy-gliding top drawer. It was filled with meticulously labeled files, alphabe
tically organized, beginning with “Auto.” Skipping this file, I moved to several “Bank” files. Taking each one out and laying it on the floor, I bent down to take photos of the front pages of each bank statement. Replacing the folders, I moved on to “Client Info” which I removed and photographed several pages, trying to steady my shaky hands. After skipping several credit card files, I selected “Divorce” and took a front-page shot of two separate divorces and a few birth certificates, including Jarrod Dawson’s and David Hutchins.

  Finishing with the top drawer, I moved to the second one. Pulling it open I gasped at the sight of several folders on “Insurance,” subdivided between California, Colorado, Florida, and Texas. The one from Florida was bulky and I imagined there were a lot of retired people living down there who he may have sold insurance to. It was going to take a long time to photograph each file and I knew my time was confined.

  Starting with California, I judicially took photos of multiple charts which detailed each client’s name, address, type of insurance purchased, amount of policy, and whether a claim had been filed and, if so, if it had been paid. Other information was on each sheet, but I didn’t expend precious time carefully perusing it. Instead, I concentrated on trying to get quality pictures, not blurred by my trembling hands. But as the minutes wore on and my anxiousness escalated, I wondered if the shots were even going to be decipherable.

  Losing my nerve, I hurried my progress, making my way through Colorado and Florida. Thankfully, there were only a few in Texas, considering he’d only moved here a few months before. With shaky hands, I returned the files and began on the third drawer, which was filled with mostly IRS files. Taking a cursory look inside, I made sure he was filing under his reported name of “Jarrod Dawson,” and not a corporation or some other business name. Satisfied he was, I moved to the bottom drawer. It included medical records, real property documents, general warranty information and a few other miscellaneous items. After briefly looking in each folder, I closed the bottom drawer.

  From my seated position on the floor, I looked around the room. His computer was on a desk against the wall the door opened against. Because it was centered, Rob had told me not to go past it. Having completed the file cabinet, I took a moment to crouch down and go through the desk drawers on the door-side of his computer, being careful to keep my body out of camera-range. After only finding reams of paper, insurance forms and note pads, I decided there wasn’t anything else to search. Climbing to my feet, I edged toward the door.

  Back in the hallway, I considered hauling butt to the ladder. My anxiety level had reached an all-time high and I desperately wanted to leave. At the foot of the stairs, I reconsidered my escape in favor of checking one last place … the garage.

  The hallway opened into the living room and I had to do a slow sweep, considering the likelihood he might have a camera facing his front door. Finding nothing, I advanced to the dining room where I did a speedier search, figuring if I didn’t detect one in the living room, it seemed less likely I’d find one there. Next, I came to the kitchen and then the laundry room, which led into the garage. After a careful sweep at the back entrance to the house, I placed my hand on the knob to the garage.

  My stomach was in my throat as I dared to twist the handle and crack open the door. I halfway expected the garage door to grind up and Mr. Dawson to catch me red-handed. It was all I could do to maintain a slow sweep of the garage area because my peripheral vision had already caught sight of what I most dreaded seeing … a freezer chest.

  Swiping the detecting equipment past a few tools hanging against the opposite wall, along with two trash bins, some folding chairs, an ice chest, and some fishing gear, I turned back to the freezer. With no cameras registering, I stepped in front of the freezer and took several photos.

  I also took a picture of the ceiling, to show the attic access wasn’t in there. Then I turned my gaze back to the freezer, wondering what was inside. Approaching it as if it were a deadly viper, I placed my hand on the lever. My heartbeat was near the point of an explosion and I felt my legs turning to cooked spaghetti. On the mental count of three, I steeled myself and lifted the lid, fully expecting to see Eugene Smith frozen inside. He wasn’t though, but what I found was as equally disturbing … nothing, not even a pound of ground beef. The freezer was nice and chilly, so it wasn’t malfunctioning. For the life of me, I couldn’t understand why he had a completely empty freezer inside his garage.

  Just as I was taking a few interior photos of an empty freezer, my phone vibrated in my back pocket. Retrieving it, I saw it was Rob.

  “Get out, right now!” he immediately warned as soon as I answered. “He’s coming down the alleyway. I’m heading back to the house.”

  “Holy shit,” I screeched. “Okay, I’m going.”

  Slamming the freezer lid closed, I raced back inside the house just as the garage door was opening. My feet couldn’t get me through the house and back to the ladder fast enough. Hurry, hurry, my brain warned me, letting me know my short countdown was running out. Bolting into the hallway and clambering halfway up the steps, I grabbed hold of the bottom portion to bring it up with me to close the unit back. Then I heard the garage door closing, causing my heart to pound against my ribs.

  Holding my breath, I scurried into the attic. The sound of the utility door slamming had my hands shaking to the point I could barely bring the stairs back into place. Fearing I might have left a telltale sign, such as a shard of insulation, a splinter from the wooden steps, or even a shaving of sheetrock, I inched the unit down just enough to peek at the floor. Seeing nothing, I breathed out a huge relieved breath of air and began quietly working my way back to Mrs. Tuttle’s, her attic light serving as a welcome beacon, guiding me to safety. Feeling like I was on the final stretch, I hurried to get to home base.

  A few feet from her ladder, Rob whispered in a low tone. “Rachel, please be out. He’s in the house by now.”

  “I’ll be out,” I assured him, already making my way down Mrs. Tuttle’s stairs.

  “Thank God,” he whispered.

  Mrs. Tuttle was waiting for me at the foot of her steps. “Well, what did you find?” she demanded as I folded her stairs back into place.

  “I took pictures of a bunch of documents, but I didn’t take time to read them. Mr. Dawson came home while I was still in his house and I think I’m going to have a nervous breakdown if I don’t get back across the street. I’ll let you know if I found anything useful … except, I will tell you he had an empty freezer in his garage.”

  Her eyes flew wide. “My God, I knew it. I just knew it. I had a bad feeling about this all along. Didn’t I tell you to mark my words!”

  I was already heading for the door. “I’ll talk to you later.”

  “I’ll make sure you do,” she said as I closed the door behind me and hauled my butt across the street. At the speed of light, I was back inside my own home where I bent at the knees, my breathing labored as I tried to catch my nervous breath.

  Chapter Fifty-Three

  Jackson

  “Oh God, Rachel, I was worried to death about you,” I croak out. “You were gone forever.” I can’t stop myself from yanking her to my chest and holding her against me. She is trembling in my arms and I know she is frightened to death. “I’m sorry I let you go over there,” I tell her. “We won’t use you again. Will we?” I sneer at Rob.

  Rob shrugs. “Depends on how efficient she is. What did you get Rachel?”

  “Rob,” I say shocked my friend is so willing to compromise my Rachel’s well-being. She is mine now. I really can call her my Rachel.

  “We were watching out for her,” he assures me. “She had time to get out.”

  “Just barely,” I point out with my brows bunched together.

  He ignores my hateful gaze and turns to Rachel. “Well, what did you get? Let’s see it.”

  Rachel stays in my embrace but pulls the camera detector from around her neck and hands it to Rob. “I took a ton of pictu
res. I just hope they’re not all blurry.” She pinches her cute lips together. “I was really nervous.”

  “I’m sure they’ll be fine. Let me see them.” Rob is so anxious and frankly I’m still holding Rachel and don’t want to let go.

  “Okay,” Rachel agrees, pulling out her phone and away from my embrace. She brings up her photos and hands her phone to Rob. “You can start looking at these, but I’ll pull the photos up on my computer from the cloud and start printing them.”

  “Thank you,” Rob says as he begins swiping through the material.

  “It’ll take a while to print,” she says addressing me. “In the meantime, you can use my iPad to start sifting through the documents.”

  As her printer begins chugging away, Rob and I sit at the table and begin reviewing the evidence. We are both quiet, because the amount of information she has returned with is abundant and will take a while to syphon through. An hour later, she has printed two sets, one for me and one for Rob, which we are now perusing, and she is looking through her iPad at the evidence.

  “My God,” I exclaim after noticing Dawson has indicated there was an insurance policy on Arnold Wilson.

  “Yeah, I know,” Rob says noting what I’m looking at. “According to his paperwork, there was also a life insurance policy on Norma Ramsey and Martha Hilliard.”

  “And one on Eugene Smith,” Rachel adds. “Julia, his daughter, believed firmly that Mr. Smith wouldn’t have taken out a policy because he couldn’t have afforded the premiums.”

  I nod at her, remembering the conversation she relayed to me. “Jesus,” I add. “There’s a policy referenced on Levi Crandall too.”

  Rachel turns pale. “I know there wasn’t a policy on him. Betty, his wife, would’ve known. When I spoke with her at the book club, she clearly stated they had benefits through Lockheed and wouldn’t have needed an additional policy.”

  “We talked to her earlier today. She said the same thing,” I tell her.

  “We talked to Mrs. Smith too,” Rob points out. “We also talked to Janet, Mrs. Hilliard’s daughter and to the neighbor of Mrs. Ramsey. They were all precisely clear. There was no insurance policy.”