Kaela added, “The little kids take their own money at their own tables. When you make a sale put the peeled-off sticker on this page or just write the amount in that person’s column. We divvy up at the end. Here’s a yard stick for them to measure and that fat orange wire snaking out from under the garage door is an extension cord for testing electrical stuff. Grocery bags and old newspapers to wrap dishes are under the card table. Here’s the cashier apron with a calculator, pad and pencils in the left pocket, paper money in the center and change in the right pocket.” She removed it from her own waist and tied it around Hannah’s.
“I like the apron lots better than worrying about someone lifting a cash box when you’re distracted,” Hannah said, sitting down at the “check-out ” card table near the driveway entrance. The fenced yard with one closed driveway gate created a convenient funnel for customers entering and leaving. Shoppers necessarily moved past scrutiny from the card table before departing, which discouraged “walk-aways.”
“Good news for you, Mom,” Becca announced. “All your wicker pieces sold: the headboard, lamp, chair, mirror, elephant table, chest, hamper and wastebasket. One person took them all!”
“That’ll please Dad since my car will fit in the garage again.”
Becca carried a customer’s hat tree to the check-out table because his hands were full of other buys. “Mom,” she turned to Jennifer, “what do you think about pizza for lunch today? If it’s a go, would you mind ordering since we’re all so busy? Just in case, we wrote down our choices.”
Nodding, Jennifer looked at the neat displays as she meandered up the driveway, through their garage’s “people door” and into the house, relieved that the girls remembered to lock that entrance so no buyers could enter the house uninvited.
Once indoors, she spun her Rolodex for the pizza parlor phone number and finished placing the order just as the outside door burst open and Bethany rushed inside!
“Oh, Mom!” she moaned. “You won’t believe what just happened!”
Jumping to her feet, Jennifer reached anxiously for Bethany’s hand. “Honey, what’s wrong?”
“Someone stole Mike’s camera! And it’s all my fault”
“Your fault?”
“He switched to digital and didn’t need his old set-up any more. The camera, the case and all the attachments—he priced it at $300! He wanted to advertise it on Craigs List or E-bay, but I urged him to try our sale first. Now I can’t face him! It’s gone and I’m responsible! If only I’d watched more closely!” Bethany began to cry.
Jennifer put her arms around her daughter-in-law. “Sometimes shoppers pick up an item and carry it around so nobody else grabs it while they decide whether to buy it. If they don’t want it after all, they might put it down anywhere, not necessarily on the table where they found it. Have you checked the other tables?”
“I’ve looked, the other girls searched, even the children helped. It’s just not there! Mike will be so disappointed and so mad at me.”
“Another pair of eyes can’t hurt. Here, I’ll come out to help. And Mike may be more understanding than you think.”
They hurried outside, but despite feverish searching, located no camera. None who manned the check-out table recalled seeing anyone carry the camera away.
“I guess a woman with a big purse could smuggle it out,” Becca speculated, “or someone pushing a stroller might tuck it under a baby blanket.”
“With three hours to go, let’s watch everything very closely from now on,” Hannah said and, grim-faced, they all agreed. But the damage was done.
Besides the many customers drawn by their ads and easy-to-read street signs, the pizza deliveryman browsed their sale, as did the mailman and several construction workers remodeling a house a block away. A van with six women wearing house-cleaning uniforms explained they had a job today in the area, saw the signs and dropped by. All left triumphantly clutching purchases.
When the sale ended at 3 p.m., a few buyers still straggled in but the big crowd peaked about 2:00. At the end, the girls and their children dragged unsold items to their respective cars before gathering in the kitchen to count money and swap “sales tales.” All but Bethany felt successful and even she seemed somewhat resigned about the camera theft.
“It’s hard to imagine anyone stealing at a garage sale where everything is already so reasonable.” Hannah shook her head.
Kaela raised a hand. “Is stealing just about economics? Don’t some do it for the thrill?”
“And we thought we were too alert for this to happen to us! Hah!” said Becca.
“It’s obvious we’re no match for a skilled thief.”
“So, we had an actual criminal right in our yard today,” Hannah said. “Too bad Adam wasn’t here then.”
“Who?”
“The policeman, Detective Iverson. He told me to call him Adam.” All eyes turned toward Hannah but no one spoke. “What?” Hannah blurted defensively, blushing at their combined stares before a self-conscious, almost guilty, smile lighted her face.
Becca changed the subject. “Now that I think about it, we had some odd characters. Remember the foreign women wearing long dresses and head scarves even on this hot day? They insisted on bargaining over everything they picked up, big or small. Even those little hotel soaps and shampoos at five cents each. They were adamant, almost belligerent, about buying five for a nickel.”
“Bargaining is an accepted way of life in some cultures,” Kaela pointed out.
“Don’t forget that we sometimes bargain at garage sales, too,” Jennifer reminded.
“Yes, but Mom, we back off immediately if our offer isn’t accepted. These women persisted and persisted over small stuff until it was downright irritating,” said Becca.
“A really scraggly man saw how busy we were and asked to use our bathroom. Knowing Mom’s rule, of course I said no,” Kaela said.
“One woman asked if her little girl could use our bathroom,” Becca admitted. “At first I said no but the kid danced around and whimpered until I felt sorry for her, so I took her inside and stood right by the bathroom door until she reappeared and then escorted her back outside and locked the house door again. Was that okay, Mom, since she was supervised?”
“Supervised is the word.”
“By the way, did you notice that strange man, the one who bought Mom’s lamp?” asked Becca.
“You mean the big blond muscle man who never smiled?” Kaela volunteered.
“He was weird, Mom,” Becca continued. “He also bought your rowing machine and didn’t blink at the $75 price, but he wanted the instruction book. When I explained we didn’t have it any more, he got mad. While he shopped, he kept looking at me in a way that made me uncomfortable. I mean, not a flirty way but a scary way.”
“You know how heavy that rowing machine is? Remember how we struggled getting it out to the driveway? He just picked it right up, like a toy, and carried it out to his truck,” Bethany said.
“ Was… was it a black pickup truck?” Jennifer asked, keeping her voice calm.
“As a matter of fact, it was! He was so strange that I watched him when he left and remember his truck because of the furniture piled up in it. Do you know him, Mom?”
“No,” Jennifer said, apprehension mounting at the memory of Wrestler’s unflinching determination and unapologetic vice-like grip on her arm when they vied for the painting. Having that frightening man this close to her daughters and grandchildren chilled her, despite the warm afternoon. She shivered.
“Mom, are you okay?” Kaela touched her mother’s arm and the others looked over with concern.
“Just lots happening—a busy day!” she covered, not wanting to upset them with her own scare any more than she wished to unsettle Jason with the Wrestler tale the week before. And after all, she did not know that awful man and, mercifully, never would!
On the other hand, her daughters did listen to her occasional “life-lessons.” To imply they shouldn’t recognize an
d avoid threatening people didn’t serve her girls well, so instead she said, “Even if your instincts aren’t always perfect, listen to them anyway. When something or someone doesn’t seem quite right, your mind has made a quick study of the situation and compared it to your other experiences. That very strong uncomfortable feeling is there to protect you!”
Would any of them have occasion to use that advice? She earnestly hoped not.
CHAPTER 13
A thin, young man with curly black hair washed his hands at the bathroom sink. Reaching for a towel, Ralph Forbes thought smugly of the lucrative “business” he masterminded. Heists flowed smoothly, each successful job validating his ingenious formula. His mirrored reflection grinned back at him. A successful entrepreneur: not bad for a 23-year-old high-school dropout.
He hatched his “formula” during the one-year stint at the New Jersey Juvenile Detention Center when he was 17. He hated the boring regimentation of institutional life, being pushed around by fellow juvies and the periodic abuse from the despised staff, those self-styled regal lords reigning over their pathetic inmate inferiors.
Ralph partly escaped the detention center’s dreariness through books, eventually reading every volume in their modest library. He treasured the time spent with books, which increased his vocabulary and knowledge. A loner to begin with, he realized the superior attitude the books fostered further distanced him from his fellow inmates and the loathed staff.
Ralph returned again and again to one volume, “Reading and Drawing Blueprints.” To kill time, he mapped out all the rooms at the center and kept the growing stack of sketches in a box under his bed. Soon he tried designs on his own. These drawing exercises improved his skill to the point that when Ralph overheard the counselors discussing a new building to house offices and sports equipment, he submitted sketches for the exact structure they eventually built.
He took juvenile detention sullenly in stride until fellow inmate Bill Burdick ransacked his sketches, defacing or destroying them all. Discovering who did this, Ralph punched Burdick, who pulled a spoon handle he’d honed into a shiv. In the ensuing bloody attack, that damned bully nearly killed him. When he finally emerged from the juvie medical wing, his clothing hid healing defensive-wound gashes on his forearms, wrists, hands and across his chest, but the scar on his face advertised a visible reminder of his hatred for that swaggering Burdick. Gazing into the bathroom mirror this morning, he touched the healed slash across his cheek, despising Burdick yet again.
Patiently, Ralph plotted and then executed a wicked revenge that appeared as something quite different. He stifled gloating satisfaction the day a juvie staff member discovered Burdick’s body dangling limply below the open beamed ceiling in the eight-bed cottage where he and Ralph lived, an extension cord tightly constricting the bully’s bulging neck. Ralph feigned shock like everyone else at this unprecedented suicide. An unexpected bonus for Ralph’s primary effort came when the ensuing investigation focused blame upon the hated Juvie staff, resulting in the firing of two cottage counselors for negligence.
He could have “gone straight” by capitalizing upon his considerable self-taught blueprint skills, but the astonishing success of his revenge on Burdick infused Ralph with new confidence that he could outsmart most people… and any system.
When he finally tasted freedom, he tried out his heist ideas, at first barely escaping five or six very close calls. But he used those mistakes to refine his current winning tactics. While still on probation in New Jersey, he watched with fascination a TV documentary about a master thief named Bernard Welch in a town called Great Falls in Fairfax County, Virginia. The crime-and-punishment show described that place and surrounding neighborhoods as “embarrassingly affluent.” Ralph sat forward, watching keenly and mentally pinpointing Welch’s old territory as his own target destination. Moreover, he had an angle Welch didn’t.
He reached northern Virginia a year later when his probation ended. His primary focus remained his chosen mentor’s Great Falls, to which he added select areas of McLean and Vienna. But he and his brother Fred rented in adjacent Arlington County. They selected an inconspicuous house with a large, full basement—close to, but deliberately not within—Fairfax County. Should he ever become a suspect, this foresight might thwart cooperation between adjacent counties’ different law enforcement jurisdictions, allowing him to slip through the systems’ cracks.
Ralph’s plan was simple enough. While ostensibly attending moving sales, he cased the house and afterward drew rough draft indoor/outdoor blueprints of the property, noting security systems and escape routes. Armed with this information, he later burglarized the place. His spineless but doggedly dependable younger brother drove the getaway car and acted as lookout by listening with earphones to the police scanner. During jobs, he communicated with Ralph via a vibrating cell phone should a problem arise when a ring drew unwanted attention. To further minimize identification, they used code names should anyone compromise their cell phones. Ralph wore a ski mask and thin latex gloves during the heist. So far, foolproof!
Thrilled to be part of the action, Fred worshiped his older brother, never challenging Ralph’s leadership or their 70-30 split. Fred accepted Ralph’s greater role in planning each heist and greater risk as the inside man earning his greater cut. After a job they returned to their house, sorted the loot in the basement and used three South Arlington contacts as fences: one who fielded silver, jewelry, valuable coins, china and figurines; a second who peddled electronics and cameras, and a third for papers like passports, credit cards and checkbooks.
Fred accepted the new situation when Ralph added Celeste as his main squeeze. Far too shy and fearful of rejection to date anyone himself, Fred liked looking at her—the feminine way she moved, the girly way she giggled and the unfamiliar cosmetics and shampoos she left in the bathroom they all shared. Having no sisters, he found living in a house with a woman other than his mother fascinating.
Ralph first spotted Celeste at a garage sale. The way the petite, brown-eyed blond neatly filled her Capri pants and halter top caught his hungry eye. He watched as she lingered over the wares and did a double-take at what he saw her do next. Confidently he followed her down the sidewalk when she left the sale and asked, “Miss, may I speak with you a moment?”
She hesitated and turned toward him. “About what?” she drawled in her heavy West Virginia accent.
They stared at each other for a moment, both aware of an instant physical attraction.
“I saw what you did back there.”
A shadow crossed her face as she turned on her heel to walk briskly away from him.
Keeping in stride, he said, “I saw what you did back there and I liked it.”
Halting in her tracks, she turned a suspicious eye on him.
“You stole a bracelet and then a hair clip. That was good, but they were small. Slipping the figurine into your purse took more skill. I liked that better.”
A half smile played across her mouth, “You did?”
“Yeah, I admired how well you did it. So,” he paused for emphasis, allowing his eyes to travel over her, “I like what you did and I like how you look.” He hoped his Jersey accent sounded foreign to her. “And, I won’t tell if you won’t tell.”
Intrigued now, she asked, “If ah won’t tell what?”
“That I want to discuss some business with you over a cup of coffee. What do you say? And I want you to say plenty so I can hear more of that drawl of yours.” He felt the chemistry between them heighten another notch right there on the sidewalk.
She hesitated, cautious but also curious. “Well… well ah say, why not?” she decided, waving off the ride that brought her there before climbing into Ralph’s car.
That’s how it began. In the rush of discovery between the two, the coffee and small-talk became lunch. Ralph spoke little but listened well, deciding just how she might be useful.
Celeste told him her own odyssey began three weeks earlier in a dirt-poor West
Virginia “holler.” From a broken home like Ralph’s, she too quit high school. Bad enough were the pitiful local job prospects, never mind a live-in “step-Daddy” whose advances first disgusted and later frightened her. But the clincher lay when she revealed to her ever-mean mother the “step-Daddy’s” attempted rape. The woman slapped her to the ground for daring to speak ill of the man who provided for them both. Celeste realized then that no tolerable future lay ahead for her there.
Gathering her few belongings and her own meager savings, she grabbed every cent from her mother’s mayonnaise jar and top bureau drawer, stuffed her “step-Daddy’s” prized amber nugget (a plastic imitation, she later learned) into a cloth bag and walked five miles to the bus station in the next town. Nearly penniless after buying a ticket, with Washington, D.C. the coincidental destination of the next bus out, she climbed aboard and didn’t look back.
“That’s when ah met Amanda,” Celeste explained. Amanda Rochester, a gentle-voiced older woman, sat beside her on the bus and coaxed Celeste into conversation. Before long the 16-year-old girl’s story spilled out. Amanda clucked over the unfolding tale, muttering frequent “oh dear’s” and showing more interest and kindness than the girl could remember. Finally, Amanda suggested Celeste seek her new start in a safer suburb rather than her original big city District of Columbia destination.
“In fact, why don’t you just stay at my place for awhile, dear, until you get your feet on the ground?” Amanda patted Celeste’s hand. Absent a better plan, the girl nodded.
“Good. Then we’ll get off together in Arlington, where I live.”
Amanda’s small, clean, simply furnished house beat by a mile the weathered, drafty West Virginia shack with an outhouse she’d left that morning. Celeste couldn’t fully grasp her extraordinary good fortune in spending her first runaway night in a safe bed instead of drifting along the notoriously dangerous D.C. city streets, where she might not live to see morning. Even so, she vowed to repay this woman’s generosity, as was the code of the hills she’d left behind.
Garage Sale Stalker (Garage Sale Mysteries) Page 8