Death Revokes The Offer

by Catharine Bramkamp

  “You’re from River’s Bend.” I reminded her.

  “But not from the right side of the river.” She pointed out.

  “That just means you’re exotic. Buck up, this is your chance and you should not blow it over one tiny little lecture about the trade deficit in China.” My window was closed and locked. Half of me was happy about the security and the other half wondered what my parents were so worried about.

  “How did you know?”

  “I read about the lecture, and I’m kind of sorry I missed it.” I replied. I ducked back into the bathroom and tested the lock on the door leading to the patio. It was secure.

  “Okay, okay, we’re going this Friday.” She meant the Forgotten Felines event, not another lecture on China. “Want to come along?”

  “No, I do not, and bless Patrick for taking my place.” Because last year I had to attend the Forgotten Feline Fantasy dinner and Litter Box Competition, or something like that. It was deadly. Not as dead, however as poor Mr. Smith. Which reminded me why I was stalking around my parent’s house in the dark testing to make sure all the windows were locked. Even though I knew the bad guys would come through the front door. And take it.

  “Okay,” Carrie signed off. “I thinks that’s him on the other line, I’ll call you back.”

  “Don’t worry about calling back, go to your prince.”

  She didn’t even deny it.

  Now the house was feeling really stuffy. I opened the two back windows in my brother’s old rooms, one for dad’s home office and one for mom’s projects. I didn’t recognize any of the heaps of things on various card tables and didn’t stop to look closely. I punched up Joan’s number on my phone. No one would hear me at the back of the house.

  “So this Norton,” Joan started immediately, she has caller ID. “What else do you know about him?”

  “Why? Did you trade a painted interior for sex?”

  “The hint certainly moved him along. That’s one lonely man.”

  “Careful of the lonely ones.” I paused and squinted at one of the tables, scrapbook paraphernalia.

  “Honey, I spend enough time in academia to know the signs. What does your Norton do anyway?”

  “Music teacher.” The second table was covered with old family photo albums and loose pictures. I once suggested she should go digital, if only to keep track of the granddaughters, but she prefers the old fashion versions.

  “Music teachers do not live in houses that size.”

  “He worked for Cerent when Cisco bought it out.” I explained briefly. I checked to make sure the windows weren’t open too far and moved back down the narrow hallway.

  “Any money left?” She asked.

  “You were just in it.” I paused at my bedroom door and decided I did not want to wait in there, it was still haunted by old Barbie dolls and probably the remnants of my first joint. Perhaps mom could make a whole scrapbook page from that denouncement.

  “Ah, I see.”

  “Change your mind?’’ The dining/family room seemed more neutral territory; from here I could see the living room and, I was sure, hear the sound of a car door being opened, I certainly would hear something at the front door.

  “Maybe, maybe not, but I did get you what you wanted. The house will be ready for the open house this Sunday.”

  “You’re pretty optimistic.” I flopped down on the leather sectional couch, the only piece of furniture my father was able to choose, and one of my childhood survivors. It was ugly, but very comfortable. Maybe I could meditate here in comfort instead of twisted up on the hard floor.

  “Not really, but I do still look pretty in a low cut tee. I hired some of my students to do the work, it will be ready.”

  I love my friends.

  “Let’s have dinner and talk after you sell his soon to be irresistible home.” She suggested.

  “Lets . . .”

  Headlights swept across the front of the house. SHIT.

  “Let’s do it next week, e-mail me.” I stood up, realized I could be seen through the kitchen window and quickly crouched down behind the back of the couch.

  “Are you all right?” Joan asked.

  “I’m excellent.” I whispered. The headlights shut off. A car door slammed.

  Shit and fuck.

  I had parked in the garage so it didn’t look like anyone was home, just to catch them.

  It never occurred to me that I may need a follow up plan after I surprised the crooks. I had nothing on me. On TV, the heroine has a gun, or a black belt in karate, or superpowers.

  “I’ll call you back.” I whispered into the phone. I stashed the phone in my pocket and crept back towards the kitchen. Mom keeps her knives in a big wood block on the counter. I pulled out the lowest one, because crouched as I was; it was the only one I could reach.

  It was the big cleaver. Menacing, shiny, maybe it would scare the dudes, if they were on this particular assignment.

  No super powers, no retroactive karate skills, and one of mom’s good knives, which would do me no good if these other guys had guns.

  Mr. Smith had been shot.

  I didn’t know if everyone knew that.

  The front door rattled and opened. A key? The bad guys had a key. I crouched down in the kitchen as if I could hide my bulk behind the granite-covered island.

  Footsteps approached.

  Chapter 8

  I snuck around the kitchen island towards the living room. The thief stood at the doors, fumbling with something. I waited from him (or her, I’ll be fair and politically correct, I was going to hurt them either way), ready to pounce.

  The fumbling at the door stopped abruptly. Were they leaving? I strained to hear footsteps but could hear nothing, maybe a faint roar from the freeway miles away.

  I flexed my legs to keep them from falling asleep. I knew I needed to spring into action, but I had no practice springing from a crouched position, to be honest, I doubted I’d be able to do it.

  Silence. I stretched my legs while still bent forward. Ouch, they tingled. Tiny needles covered my feet and pricked me so badly that I was distracted. I flexed my toes, and listened. The back gate squeaked. Ah, coming around back, just like I did. That makes them either clever or predictable.

  I quietly approached the back French doors. I could not hear the foot steps on the patio and had to guess at how many seconds before they reached the French doors. Should I run? Call the police right now? I’d have cause enough; stranger on the patio, me alone. I hesitated and in that moment of hesitation the back French door rattled and slowly opened. I thought I locked it!

  I took a breath, my course of action decided. One more step.

  Ha! I jumped up and almost managed to bring down my cleaver onto the head that finally appeared around the glass door.

  My poorly aimed blow was neatly deflected, the cleaver clattered to the floor.

  My heart stopped, now what? I had just taken a class on what to do when your goals fail, but I’ve never taken a class on what to do you’re your meat cleaver attack fails.

  “Allison?” asked the thief.

  “Ben?” I squinted, as if that helps in dim light. It was Ben. He was dressed all in black, black jeans and a tight black tee shirt decorated with a faded prism shot through with a rainbow. He looked much better than me, more appropriate for the occasion, since I hadn’t had time to change after dinner.

  “What are you doing here?” He walked through the door and closed it gently behind him.

  “Stakeout.” I retrieved the cleaver. Fortunately it landed on the kitchen tile instead of the living room hardwood floor. I didn’t want to have to explain a gouge on Mom’s pristine cherry hardwood.

  “And,” I pointed out, “this is my house. So the question really is, what are YOU doing here sneaking around the back of my parent’s house?”

  “Guessing that you would do something silly like staking out your parents house.”

  “I could have killed you.” I shook my foot to get the rest o
f the circulation moving, as if the adrenaline hit wasn’t enough.

  “No, you couldn’t.” He insisted.

  I replaced the clever to the butcher block.

  “But they could,” he continued. “What did you think you’d do when the boys came up to get their doors?”

  “They won’t come in.” I pointed out. “We replaced the doors, they’ll see that as soon as they pull up.” Even as I said it, I realized that was a critical piece I hadn’t considered. I’m not good at detecting, I know that. They would see the doors gone, and keep driving. I was safer than I thought. But not from Ben.

  In the half-light cast by the under cabinet illumination, I could clearly see how well his chest muscles filled out the top of the shirt, how nicely his biceps strained the arms. He had been much smaller and thinner when he bought that shirt, probably at a concert. Why is that a good thing for men and a bad thing for women? Just asking, but let’s go back to Ben.

  “But that doesn’t mean we can’t wait for them to come, then follow them.” He pointed out.

  “Is that what you planned to do? Follow them?”

  “And then call the police.” He said somewhat sanctimoniously. I should be insulted, but I had a vision of him standing tall, holding a scruffy dude in each hand saying something like, “boys, we need to talk.”

  “For audacity, I can’t help being impressed with the idea of smuggling coke in a door, and I can’t help being impressed with the shear stupidity of losing track of the shipment and having to retrieve the doors piece-meal. These are not the sharpest tools in the shed.”

  I suppressed a sigh. No heroics, we were just ordinary people and hero or not, he didn’t really consider me as anything but a nuisance. I wondered if Ben would attend a Forgotten Feline dinner just for me. “Nice construction metaphor. But if you plan to follow them, why come inside?”

  “Just checking. I found you didn’t I?”

  I had to admit he did.

  “Are you planning to spend the evening in your truck?”

  “Probably.”

  “I’ll come with you.” I didn’t want to let that tee shirt out of my sight. I was going to enjoy what I could, even if he didn’t care.

  At least he didn’t protest my company. We locked the French door behind us and circled around to his truck. I’ve already spent time in it, so I’m not going to dwell on it here, but he did keep his interior pretty clean. I liked that.

  It was not as exciting as I hope. We sat in silence, watching the road. I lasted about a minute in that state. There was no room to meditate, plus, there was no way I could relax sitting so close to the man.

  “I don’t smoke pot anymore you know.” I said, completely apropos of nothing.

  “You don’t strike me as someone who does.” He replied.

  “I hate my mother.”

  “Everyone hates their mother.” He kept his eyes straight ahead, which makes sense, because we were watching for the bad guys. But I wouldn’t mind if he turned and gazed at me with something resembling adoration, or attention, or even tolerance. Not happening.

  The night breeze wafted through the open windows. It’s warmer in Marin at night. You pay more, you get better air; that’s a rule.

  The silence folded around us, in its own way, the atmosphere was sensual, evocative, but I was getting none of it.

  “Why is Peter Reilly Klausen the Third so afraid of you?” I asked into the night. And why do you know the attorney of my clients, was another question, but I thought I’d begin with an obvious question and move into more subtle questions, ending with the ultimate feminine questions, and how do you feel about that?

  He sighed and shifted in his seat. He checked his keys to make sure they were in the ignition, they were. He adjusted his rear view mirror.

  Now I understood some of Carrie’s frustration with Patrick. It is difficult to generate engaging conversation when you have no starting place. The only thing Ben and I had in common was fixing a bathroom in Belvedere. Once that was finished (he still needed to paint), he was out of my life.

  I may as well learn a little, since I obviously have nothing to lose here.

  “Ben?” I prompted.

  “Shhh, they could come at any time,” he replied.

  “Answer the question or I’m going to think the worse, and perhaps repeat it out loud, really loud, make some kind of scene.”

  He stopped fiddling with the keys. He arched back in a stretch and ran his hands through his hair. “Okay. A number of years ago, and it doesn’t matter how many because I’ve forgotten; Reilly had an affair with a friend of mine. She was a teacher, he, a student.”

  “Ouch.”

  “Yeah, she had just left her husband and was really vulnerable, but in the end, he did not marry her and left her high and dry. I couldn’t just stand by helplessly, so I took matters into my own hands.”

  “What could you possibly do?”

  “For the first thing, prevent him from exposing her, she needed to keep her job. So I hired a private detective to follow Reilly around.”

  “What did you discover?”

  “Hmmm? Oh many, many things, none of which was useful in this case.” He grinned. “But I can use it for other purposes. I think Reilly knows, that’s why he’s so jumpy around me and that’s why, well.”

  “You goad him all the time.”

  “Come on, you saw him at the funeral, he thinks I’m a walking emotional time bomb, liable to blow up at any moment, for any reason and blurt out inconvenient truths.”

  “And are you?” I eyed him; he was impressive, much bigger than me in muscle and statue, which was part of the appeal of course. But would he blow? Was he a volatile guy? Reilly seemed to think so.

  “No, I’m pretty calm, pretty easy going.” He checked the rear view mirror again, but there was no movement on the street. It’s a pretty quiet neighborhood, part of the charm.

  “Are you sure you just followed him? Are you certain, deep in your black little heart that you did not hurt him or threaten him?”

  “Well, she was a good friend.”

  “Good friend or like a really good friend?” Now, who was goading whom?

  He shook his head with a smile at me. “We won’t go there, but just a good friend, I don’t like to see people taken advantage of and that’s what Reilly did. He did it to women back in high school and he did it again in this situation, so I finally had it.”

  “So you’re saying she really thought he loved her?”

  “Yeah, she really thought he loved her. The idiot.”

  “What happened to her?”

  “I gave her money to start over. She left the country.”

  “Why did she take up with a student? Why Reilly?” I could not see the attraction, Reilly was good looking enough for his job, he looked the part of an attorney, but he exuded no animal magnetism, no sex appeal.

  Ben regarded me, but I couldn’t make out his expression in the dim light. “Love makes people do stupid things?”

  “That’s your answer?”

  “It’s the only one . . . “ he began, but we were interrupted by the sound of a truck. It was loud and from the sounds of the muffler, pretty beat up. It slowly turned the corner towards my parents’ house. One headlight was cockeye and caught us head on. Before I knew it, Ben dived on top of me and pushed me down on the seat.

  “Shit, they may have seen us.” I could feel his breathing against my chest and my breasts reacted to the pressure in a rather embarrassing manner, but fortunately I wear nipple proof bras.

  “I can’t breath.” I whispered.

  “Oh, sorry.” He pulled up just a bit, but didn’t lift off completely. We spent what felt like hours chest to chest. My arms were pinned to my sides so I couldn’t even push him away. Perish the thought, he could stay here all night if he’d like.

  “Wait until they pass.” He whispered.

  “Oh, of course we’ll wait.” I whispered back. I wiggled a bit, just for the fun of it and in response; h
e dropped his full weight back on top of me. Even that close, I could not tell if he was interested in me or not. Maybe it was the glaring headlights and immediate danger that dampened his enthusiasm.

  The rattle of the truck grew louder as it slowly turned through the circular driveway. Ben and I knew what they were looking for. The car did not pause. They had seen the new doors. The engine gunned and the truck pulled out of the driveway with a roar that sounded like the truck was disappointed.

  “Here we go.” Ben popped off me like a prairie dog, a little too fast, and without enough regret, and started the engine of the truck. We were off, following, I may add, with no headlights.

  “Shouldn’t you have the headlights on?”

  “And risk being seen?”

  “Won’t we be pulled over?” I asked. Ben followed the truck south, onto the freeway, which, at 11:00 at night, could accommodate traffic traveling the speed limit.

  “I certainly hope so, the cops can help.”

  He had far more confidence than me. But he did turn on the headlights as we merged onto the freeway. The truck stayed ahead in the slow lane traveling at exactly 55. They didn’t have to, but the speed limit between Novato and San Rafael changes seemingly randomly from 55/hour to 65/hour with little or no warning. Our truck driver obviously did not want to be pulled over for a mere infraction of the speed limit. That was the first sensible thing these characters had done. I hoped their new found competency would not last.

  We crept behind our quarry, completely silent, as if they could hear us if we spoke.

  The truck turned off to south San Rafael, but not to the Doors and More store. That rhymes; it could be a haiku or something. We passed the Doors and More and continued down the frontage road towards San Quentin. I wondered if our dudes felt any irony about the location of their lair. Probably not. Not many people understand irony.

  “Great location.” Ben mumbled under his breath.

  We traveled down the narrow streets, keeping what we hoped, was an inconspicuous distance. The truck pulled into a small parking lot and the loud muffler was blessedly silenced. Two men jumped out of the cab. They were empty handed, sans doors, sans handy packages of incriminating coke. Not even a baseball bat or a tire iron. I never did figure out what they had hit me with. I hoped a tire iron; it was edgier and less wholesome than a baseball bat. Getting smacked with a baseball bat seems like such a cliché.