Something Missing: A Novel

by Matthew Dicks

  This alone made Peter interesting to Martin. Then Peter’s marriage had recently ended when his wife of a dozen years realized that she was a lesbian and had fallen in love with another woman. Though the divorce had been relatively amicable, the couple underwent a complex negotiation over the four dozen animals that they had cared for as part of their animal rescue shelter in Milford. Peter’s vegan beliefs, the negotiated settlement of sheep, cats, dogs, chickens, piglets, and a goat, as well as the soap opera–type breakup, made him an interesting character in Martin’s mind, but one he would probably never have the opportunity to meet because of his own career choice.

  Though Alfredo was hardly a militant vegan with a lesbian for an ex-wife, he was a creature capable of communication and seemed to possess some degree of self-awareness and intelligence. To someone deprived of human contact during work hours, this appealed in ways Martin had never expected.

  So, three days after his research on the African gray parrot was complete, Martin made his second visit to the Grants’ home, this time planning to follow the rules that had made him so successful. Choosing a lot by the reservoir at random, Martin parked his Subaru and approached the house the same way as he had on his first visit, by cutting through the woods on Sidle Road until he emerged more than halfway up the Grants’ long crushed-stone driveway.

  Using his pick gun to quickly unlock the back door, Martin set his watch to count down fifteen minutes and entered the house. Though he was braced for Alfredo’s greeting, he still jumped at the sound of the bird’s voice.

  “Welcome home, Mommy dearest!” the bird squawked.

  Ignoring the greeting this time, Martin moved out of the foyer and into the living room, beginning the process of mapping that should have taken place on his first visit. Completing the outline of the room in less than three minutes, Martin crossed into the front hallway, mapping its dimensions and features, including the staircase to the second floor that he did not plan to explore on this visit. Backtracking, he turned, moving down the same hall that he had passed through on his first visit and into the kitchen, where he stopped and began mapping again.

  “G’day, governor!” the bird called as Martin came into view. Stifling a smile and giving Alfredo a cursory glance to determine if the bird was on his perch (he was), Martin refocused on the kitchen and all its details. After sketching the approximate dimensions of the room, the major appliances, and the furniture, Martin turned his attention to the refrigerator doors. Refrigerators held particular interest for Martin, because they often contained revealing information about his clients. Among the assortment of photographs and recipes that decorated the Grants’ Frigidaire were two items of particular interest.

  The first was an appointment card from the Grants’ dentist, Dr. Alfred Adams, for a date in mid-April, probably during the teachers’ spring vacation. It appeared that Mr. and Mrs. Grant had scheduled their appointments back to back for convenience’s sake, the first at 9:00 a.m. and the second at 9:45. This told Martin two things. First, the Grants were probably not going away on vacation in April, as many teachers did; and second, that the home would be empty from 9:00 to 10:00 a.m. on April 22, an ideal time for a visit.

  The second item of interest was a wedding invitation for a weekend in late June on the Cape. Though Martin couldn’t be sure that the Grants would be attending this wedding, it was something he could probably determine as the date drew near, and if they were attending, Martin could safely schedule a rare weekend visit to their home. Processing this information quickly, Martin took two pictures of the items stuck to the refrigerator before checking his watch (9:03 left) and turning east down the hallway that he had failed to explore on his first visit. The hall was flanked by two wooden doors on each side and came to a stop twenty-five feet away at a fifth door. In a home as large as this one, Martin’s goal was to complete a rough sketch of every room on the first floor, locate a spare set of keys if possible, and, if time permitted, photograph the clients’ food stock. Because more than go percent of Martin’s acquisitions were made from the first floors of clients’ homes, he would save the mapping of the second floor for the next visit.

  Investigating each of the unlocked rooms, Martin found a spare bedroom and a bath to the north, a walk-in pantry and some type of sitting room to the south, and a home office at the end of the hall, directly east. He took six photographs of the pantry’s contents, checked the usual locations for keys in the home office (finding none), and made his way back to the kitchen, photographing the interior of the refrigerator and freezer, and a shelf of cereal boxes over the sink.

  He then checked his watch. Just over four minutes left. Normally Martin would use this last bit of time to make a more thorough search for spare keys, looking for hooks inside closets and behind the doors to the basement and garage, searching desk drawers and any bowls and mugs that might be spread decoratively around the house (particularly on fireplace mantels, a most common location for spare keys), and inspecting the insides of the toilet tanks. Martin knew that keys were often hidden outside as well, under flower pots and garden stones, but searching the exterior of the house was something Martin never did for fear of being seen. Even passing in front of an exposed window was something he avoided.

  But Martin had come back to the Grants’ house for a specific reason, for Alfredo, and so he chose to spend his last moments with the bird, though he wasn’t exactly sure what he’d do. Descending the steps into the den (Martin had labeled it as such during his first visit), he approached the bird slowly. From his research, he had learned that African grays were extremely social birds and rarely aggressive, but still, he wanted to be careful.

  Five steps away, the bird began speaking to Martin, more rapidly than he could have ever expected. “Hey, stupid! What’s your problem? Hey! I’m talking to you! Gimme kiss! Gimme kiss! Kissy kissy!”

  Though Martin was armed with his research and excitement over the bird’s ability to communicate, this outburst still managed to startle him and cause his heart to race. He immediately wondered if this were a mistake after all, if he was taking too great a chance.

  As doubts began to creep into Martin’s mind, Alfredo began again. “G’day! G’day! G’day mate!” A brief pause, and then again. “G’day! G’day! G’day!” The bird continued this pattern, ruffling its feathers and becoming more agitated with each series of greetings. Martin found himself with an all-consuming urge to respond to the parrot, and was certain that if he did respond, the greetings would stop. But responding was dangerous, because Alfredo seemed capable of repeating anything that he heard. If his owners came home and found that the bird had acquired a new vocabulary word, they would begin to wonder from where the bird’s newfound knowledge had come.

  Then it occurred to him.

  Although he couldn’t introduce any new vocabulary to the bird, he could certainly respond using words that the bird already knew. And though he also knew that many of these birds can actually mimic the voice of an individual as well, Martin thought that if he spoke in a voice that approximated that of the bird, he would probably be safe. He considered this for a few more moments, looking for potential flaws in his logic and finding none. He would be forced to break his rule of silence while in a client’s home, but found himself surprisingly willing to take the risk. Martin had established the rule in the event that there was ever a recording device running in a client’s home (intentionally or accidentally), and he had adhered to it religiously until the day he’d first spoken to Alfredo. Nothing had come of that indiscretion, and though Martin despised violating any of his rules, his desire to communicate with the bird had become overwhelming. So after considering all his possibilities, Martin responded to the bird’s sixth iteration of “G’day” with his own, slightly squawked “G’day, mate.”

  Alfredo immediately calmed at the sound of Martin’s voice, settled back down on his perch, and stared with as much intensity as a bird can muster. Martin quickly removed the pen from his ear and began to make
a list adjacent to the sketch of the Grants’ home.

  G’day

  Mate

  Scotch and soda please

  Kissy

  Gimme kiss

  Hey stupid

  Martin knew that the bird had said more, but he couldn’t remember the words for sure and it was nearly time to go. With just over a minute left, he took one last look at Alfredo and turned in the direction of the kitchen.

  “Hey stupid,” the bird squawked. “Gimme kiss.”

  “Hey!” Martin answered, oddly hurt by the comment but stopping before saying more than his limited vocabulary would allow.

  “Hey!” the bird repeated. “Hey! Hey! Hey stupid! Kissy! Kissy!”

  Martin speculated as to what might constitute a kiss for a bird but had no intention of finding out. He turned again, needing to move faster this time.

  “Hey dumb-ass! Scotch and soda! Neat! Neat! Neat!”

  Martin wondered if Alfredo had timed his comment to match the moment that he passed by the Grants’ well-stocked bar. Either way, he had to move now, ignoring his desire to turn around and scold the bird, with the dozen or so words currently available. Despite his initial affection for Alfredo, the insults were starting to wear on him.

  Martin made his way back into the kitchen, taking one last peek at the bird before moving on. As he turned the corner and moved into the living room, he heard Alfredo squawk, “Arrivederci!”

  “Arrivederci!” Martin squawked back, quickly adding the word to his list.

  “Dumb-ass!” the bird squawked one final time, causing Martin to doubt the future of their relationship.

  Since that day more than four years ago, Martin had added more than seventy words and phrases to his list and had committed most of them to memory. Today Martin spent more than five minutes with Alfredo, listening to the bird speak, responding in turn, and kissing the bird whenever Alfredo demanded. It turned out that a kiss was merely the rubbing of Martin’s nose to the bird’s beak, an action that had frightened Martin at first but had become second nature by now. In fact, in the time that he had gotten to know the bird, Alfredo had become very familiar with Martin, often leaping from his perch onto Martin’s shoulder, as he had done today as Martin approached.

  Martin was particularly amused today by a routine that he had seen only once before. Alfredo began by pretending to kiss his own foot, cooing and imitating the sound of large, wet kisses, and then suddenly, without provocation, the bird would bite his foot, screeching “Ow! You jerk! No biting!” He would then hold his foot in front of his face, staring it down like a child in a no-blinking contest. After a moment, his expression would soften and he would begin cooing again, squawking “Gimme kiss! Gimme kiss Mommy dearest!”

  Martin did not believe that Alfredo had come up with this routine on his own, but he found the flair with which the bird performed the bit to be astounding. Though Martin often wore a smile of satisfaction during the workday, the smile that Alfredo brought to his face was quite different.

  It was the smile of pure joy.

  Following Alfredo’s routine, Martin began the business that had brought him to the Grants’ home in the first place. With the bird still perched on his shoulder, Martin moved to the kitchen and pantry, filling his burlap with half a bag of flour, two handfuls of artificial sweetener packets, five potatoes, a pound of lean hamburger, three boxes of frozen vegetables, and a bottle of barbeque sauce that had been in the pantry for six months without being opened. He took photographs of the usual locations, inspected the desk in the office, sorting through the mail and examining the Grants’ checkbook register, looking for anything new (he would inspect the Grants’ computer files the following week, as scheduled), and quickly made his way to the dining room, on the west side of the living room, the site of Martin’s latest project.

  Martin called large-scale acquisitions like Sophie Pearl’s diamond earrings “projects” because they required more time and research than the acquisition of a few potatoes or a bottle of barbeque sauce. He had made large-scale acquisitions at the Grants’ before, a string of pearls in 2005 and another in 2006, but it was the Grants’ crystal and silver that had been garnering large profits for Martin most recently.

  An enormous oaken hutch along the south wall of the dining room contained the Grants’ collection of silver, china, and crystal. Wine and champagne glasses were hung from racks across the upper half of the hutch, and drawers of silver and a cabinet filled with china and crystal comprised the lower half. Inside the cabinet, plates, saucers, and bowls were neatly stacked in front of a large assortment of crystal that was wrapped in thick sheets of bubble wrap. When he inspected the hutch during the Grants’ first month as clients, Martin had dismissed these items as unlikely future acquisitions. They seemed like the type of items that homeowners would use quite often. Still, in keeping with his thorough nature, Martin took photographs of the hutch’s interior and placed a thin sliver of tape across the drawers and cabinets, just in case. When he re-inspected the hutch six weeks later, he was surprised to find the tape still in place, indicating that the cabinets and drawers hadn’t been so much as touched.

  His interest renewed, Martin began a more careful, two-week study of the hutch, removing each item, placing it on the dining room table to photograph and catalog, and then returning it to its original location. Crystal candlesticks and bowls were removed from their bubble wrap, silver was sorted for inventory purposes, and china was meticulously photographed for its distinctive markings. At home, he began his research, starting with a study of crystal, and he found the market to be surprisingly healthy. On eBay for example, Martin found Lalique crystal bowls selling for as much as $5,300, and Waterford decanters eliciting bids of $2,000 and more. Though the Grants did not appear to own any crystal of this value, they did own several pieces worth at least $1,000 each. And he found silver to be almost as promising.

  Martin continued to survey the hutch for more than a year before planning his first acquisition, continuing his research in the meantime. In casual conversations, Martin would question Jim and his Starbucks coworkers about their silver and crystal, feigning interest by claiming that his mother had left him some when she died. In general, he found that people fell into one of two categories when it came to crystal and silver (Martin lost interest in the Grants’ china since it seemed to be used more often than the other pieces).

  The first category was comprised of homeowners who prized their silver and crystal and used it regularly. These people, like Jim’s wife, Karen, seemed to schedule dinner parties with the express purpose of displaying their finery. Their silver was always polished, and their china and crystal pieces could be found on museum-like exhibit in glass cabinets and handmade cupboards throughout the house. These were the type of people who would likely notice if even a single piece went missing.

  The second category, fortunately for Martin, were folks like the Grants, who probably received their crystal, silver, and china as wedding presents, registering for it out of obligation rather than desire. These were the homeowners whose silver was polished only on the rare days on which it was put into use and who kept their crystal stored away in cabinets and closets, still wrapped in the bubble wrap in which it was originally packaged, waiting to be passed on to some unfortunate offspring.

  In the year that Martin waited and prepared, the Grants had opened their hutch cabinet twice and had opened the silver drawer three times. Each time it appeared that the only items removed from the hutch were flatware and plates, and these items were always returned by the time of Martin’s next visit. Assuming that the flatware and china were probably being used for formal dinners, Martin identified a Waterford crystal bowl, wrapped in bubble wrap and stored in the rear of the cabinet, as his first target.

  Martin timed this acquisition to take place immediately after the holidays. If the bowl would be used at all, he thought, it would probably be used sometime between November and January, when the Grants expected a great deal of famil
y to visit for Thanksgiving and New Year’s Day (e-mails on the Grants’ computer had informed Martin of these plans). But observing no apparent use during the holiday season, Martin acquired the crystal bowl in mid-January the first of three acquisitions from the hutch thus far. The bowl netted Martin a profit of $889, and his other acquisitions, a silver pie server and a crystal decanter, had netted a total profit of just under $3,000, minus the cost of silver polish.

  The most recent project that Martin was working on was the acquisition of a silver serving tray worth more than $3,500. The tray was stored on the bottom shelf of the cabinet with a number of items atop it. Covered in a thick layer of dust, Martin was certain that the tray hadn’t been touched in years, but as it was a very large item, acquiring it made him nervous. He had continued monitoring the hutch, taking photos of the contents as he normally would, but was also going so far as to apply a thin slice of tape across the cabinet doors whenever the previous seal had been broken. Martin reasoned that if the Grants weren’t opening their hutch very often, it would be unlikely that they would notice the missing tray.

  Martin had scheduled this next acquisition for later on in the month if everything continued on its present course, and so as he made his way across the living room and into the dining room, Alfredo still resting on his shoulder, he hoped that the hutch would show no signs of recent use. To his delight, the tape across the cabinet was still in place, indicating that the Grants had not touched it in almost six weeks.

  “Hubba-bubba,” Martin whispered, an expression that he had picked up from Alfredo a while ago, and one that he had begun using with Jim, much to Jim’s chagrin.

  “I can’t hear you,” Alfredo sang out. This was one of Alfredo’s favorite phrases.

  “Pretty bird,” Martin replied apologetically, knowing that this would please his friend. Checking his watch, Martin saw that he had just over a minute before time expired, and so he moved quickly, returning Alfredo to his perch and handing the bird a walnut (making sure that it was completely eaten before turning to leave). As he exited the back door, locking it behind him with keys that he had copied long ago after finding a spare set hanging on a hook in the basement stairs, he heard Alfredo’s familiar “Arrivederci!” ring out through the house.