by Penny Drake
Next to me sat Keshia Bishop, another long-termer. Tall, rangy, and very dark-skinned, she’s one of the few black female veterinarians in the country. Farther down sat a couple of short-term women whose names I keep forgetting.
At the other end of the table sat the men. We have four right now. Kevin Baumgartner and Gary Kovak are long-termers, the other two are college guys whose names I also can’t remember. There’s no rule that the men have to sit down at Mr. Biemer’s end of the table while the women sit with Mrs. Biemer. It just sort of happens that way.
By now everyone was sitting down with various murmured hellos and how-are-yous. The bowls and platters were heaped in front of us. Pot roast in thick gravy, mashed potatoes with cream and butter, fresh-baked rolls, a platter of sautéed vegetables. All of us were hungry, but we waited until Mrs. Biemer sat down and Mr. Biemer tapped his water glass with his knife. As one we all reached for the food.
Platters and bowls zipped clockwise around the table, then landed back in the middle. No boarding house reach at the Biemers’. If you want something, you have to ask someone to pass it to you. Conversation tends to be sparse until everyone’s plate is filled and we’ve all had a few bites.
I gave a contented sigh as I picked up my fork. I like living at the Biemers’. Ms. Hawk recommended their place to me when I moved to Ann Arbor three years ago. The boarding house had initially been meant as a stopping point, a place to stay until I got settled at Hawk Enterprises and could look for a place of my own. But somehow, I never got around to hunting for an apartment. Living on my own would mean coming home to empty rooms and cooking for myself every day. Here, someone else handles the domestic chores, and someone always greets me when I get home. In some of my more introspective moments, I think the Biemers’ rules bring a little order to my otherwise chaotic life. That’s what I tell myself, anyway. At other times I think I just couldn’t handle being completely alone. Not yet.
“Long day at the agency, hon?” Clara asked me, her brown eyes magnified hugely by her thick glasses. Her plate was mostly bread and potatoes—easy to chew and digest.
“Very,” I said. “Just once, it’d be nice to have an easy case.”
“What kind of work do you do?” asked one of the short-termers. Marvin? Marty? Mark? I couldn’t remember.
“She’s a detective,” Mrs. Biemer said proudly before I could answer. “Her cases take her all over the world.”
“Really?” Marvin/Marty/Mark said. “So you’re, like, a PI?”
My mouth was full, so I nodded. I have a PI license, so it’s not technically a lie to let people believe that’s what I do. The PI lie also makes long absences and odd hours easier to explain. Ms. Hawk likes to keep Hawk Enterprises low key, mostly because most of our clients need strict confidentiality, though I suspect it’s also to lend Hawk Enterprises a certain exclusive cache. You have to Be Connected to have heard of us, even if the connection is your neighbor’s daughter’s best friend. I privately call it the Women’s Underground.
“That must be so cool,” Marvin/Marty/Mark continued. “You get to spy on people and shit.”
“Not at this table, please,” Mr. Biemer said with pointed mildness.
The kid flushed a little. “Sorry.” He went on eating.
“Anything interesting at the clinic?” I asked, changing the subject.
Keshia shrugged. “The usual parade of spayings and neuterings and shots. I don’t think anyone wants me to get more graphic at the table. We did manage to adopt out another of those kittens from that crazy woman’s house.” She gave our landlady a sidelong look. “You know, Mrs. B, this house could use a furry presence. Besides Mr. Biemer, that is.”
“I heard that, young lady,” Mr. Biemer harrumphed. Anyone under fifty is young lady or young man to Mr. Biemer.
“County regs, Keshia,” Mrs. Biemer said. “No animals allowed if we have a commercial kitchen.”
“Crazy woman’s house?” asked a short-termer. “What’s that about?”
“This woman was caught hoarding animals,” Keshia said. “She had twenty-some cats in her house and who-knows-how-many cages of rodents—gerbils, hamsters, pet rats. The cages had wire floors and they were all stacked on top of each other, so the animals on the bottom were covered in—well, you can probably imagine.”
“Sounds like a metaphor for our society,” Kevin grumbled. “The ones on the top sh—er, dump on the ones below.”
Greg Kovak set down his fork. “That’s horrible! What happened?” Greg’s a retired autoworker who once worked for Ford. He’s a big, hearty old man who doesn’t look like he harbors a soft spot for kitties and puppies, but he does.
“The neighbors had been calling social services and the police for months to complain about the smell,” Keshia said. “They finally sent someone over to check it out. The humane society called the clinic for help when they saw the condition of the animals, and I came over to see what I could do. It was…pretty bad.” Her voice shook a little, though with rage or sorrow, I couldn’t tell. “The county is leveling charges of animal neglect. The house will probably be condemned, so the landlord is furious.” She shook her head, her mouth set hard. “What’s really horrible is that it’s the second time the county’s been called in about this woman. Last time it was an apartment. She lost her security deposit, moved to a different place, and started collecting animals all over again.”
“Where does she get them from?” Clara asked.
Keshia spread her hands. “Who knows? The local animal shelters recognize her and won’t give any to her, but you can find free animals in the classifieds every day of the week. In all other respects, she’s a very nice lady, someone you’d happily give Fluffy’s litter to—if you hadn’t seen her house. It’s an illness, of course. A compulsion she can’t control. But the animals suffer for it.”
I thought about the uncles and their horrible house. At least their hoarding hadn’t hurt anyone but themselves.
“I’m majoring in psych,” said the one guy, and I finally remembered his name was Marcus.
“We’ve talked about this in class. Officially there are three kinds of hoarders—people who hoard animals, people who hoard paper, and people who hoard everything.”
“Paper?” I asked, thinking of the piles on Uncle Lawrence’s dining room table.
“Printed material,” Marcus clarified. “They can’t even throw away junk mail, let alone stuff like newspapers and magazines. They’re terrified they might need it someday. Haven’t you ever had the feeling that you should keep those coupons or bank statements, just in case?”
“Oh, my yes,” Mrs. Biemer said. “With me, it’s recipes. Whenever they do the food section in the paper, I keep thinking, ‘That would be a nice dish to try,’ but I never get around to it, and the clippings stack up until I give up and throw them away.”
“Except compulsive hoarders can’t throw them away,” Marcus said, clearly enjoying the fact that he had something to contribute. “The ‘just in case’ feeling never fades, and they’re stuck with all the junk.”
At seven on the dot, Mr. Biemer rose from his place and helped his wife whisk the decimated food platters away. We boarders dutifully brought our plates and silverware into the kitchen and left them on the counter. The Biemers’ kitchen is just big enough to qualify for commercial status. Two refrigerators and a dishwasher take up most of the space. One fridge is stuffed with the “touch this and die” food Mrs. Biemer cooks every day for us. The other is divided into sections, one for each boarder, with another section set aside for leftovers, which are community property. The dishwasher looks like it was built by NASA and is a requirement of the county health department. Thousands of people in Ann Arbor let the family dog lick their plates before putting them in a plain old Kenmore, but God forbid a spoon should pass human lips in Mrs. Biemer’s house without first being scalded in boiling water surrounded by stainless steel.
Back in the dining room, Mrs. Biemer set a covered platter on the table. Dess
ert and coffee don’t count as official supper time. This makes it easier for boarders on diets to slip away before temptation sets in. As it happened, all of the short-term female boarders had vanished, to which I say, “All the more for me.” Mrs. Biemer whipped away the cover and revealed…a cherry cheesecake. Crunchy graham cracker crust lovingly surrounded smooth white cheesecake under a pile of homemade cherry topping that glistened like rubies. I made a low sound of ecstasy.
“I told you I had a surprise,” Mrs. Biemer said with an impish smile.
I had two large, creamy pieces with three cups of coffee. After a day of slogging through dirt and grime, I deserved every mouthful.
After dessert, I headed for my room—my nice, clean, uncluttered room—slotted a DVD into the player, and flopped onto my bed to fulfill the last piece of my fantasy for the day. I’d already had the cool shower and the cherry cheesecake; now it was time for some Orlando Bloom. Elizabethtown got rotten reviews, but it’s sappy and gooey and totally the thing to unwind with after spending a day in gray grime and grit.
After a dose of Mr. Bloom, I went to bed at ten-thirty, my usual time, and got up at six-thirty to pull on sweats and stuff my dobak into my gym bag along with a set of khakis, a work shirt, baseball cap, and the boots I’d retrieved from the front porch. Mrs. Biemer serves breakfast buffet-style from the sideboard in the dining room, and I helped myself to French toast, sausage, and coffee. Lots of coffee. I don’t care what junkies on the street might tell you—no drug in the world is sweeter than caffeine. Wakeful, head-clearing, world-changing caffeine. Even the delivery is wonderful. Sweet black coffee in the morning and crisp diet soda in the afternoon with more coffee at supper. How can you top that with a syringe or a snort? I slugged down my first cup of Mrs. Biemer’s best and felt perfection thrill through my veins.
Mrs. Biemer herself was at work in the kitchen, and the only other boarder at the table so far was Marcus, who was buried in a psychology course packet and didn’t seem inclined toward conversation. Perfectly fine by me. For all that I’m an early bird, I’m not much of a talker in the morning. Even after several doses of coffee.
I drove downtown to Ann Arbor’s spiffy new YMCA building, which conveniently straddles its own parking lot. Major plus in this town. They finished the building just a few years ago, and it’s way better than the old one across from the library, which looked like a barrack and smelled like a kennel. Well, okay—maybe it wasn’t that bad, but it’s fair to say no one mourns the loss of the original place.
I changed into my dobak in the women’s locker room, grabbed my padded sparring equipment, and trotted out to the section of a workout room, one with a matted floor. A martial arts class was sparring in pairs in one half of the room, and their shouts echoed off the walls. Elaine Harker sat in the other half, stretching her way through a warmup. The instructor lets us advanced students use half of the workout room during the early-bird beginner class. I greeted Elaine with a smile and sat down beside her to do some stretches of my own.
“Anything new down at the office?” she asked, reaching for her chest protector and padded helmet. Her equipment is all pink. Mine is green.
“New case came in yesterday,” I told her as I climbed into my own gear. “Messy. And I mean literally.”
Elaine slid her feet into the shin guards and pulled on soft, puffy sparring gloves. “Anything you might need some help with?”
Elaine is a single mother of two who came to Hawk Enterprises for the most common reason we get—to escape her abusive spouse. Her ex-husband pays alimony and child support on time, thanks to us, and Elaine herself got hired by a company that does freelance security work. She long ago paid off her favors to Ms. Hawk, and we now hire her from time to time.
“Not sure,” I told her, straightening up. “We might need a hand later.”
“Give me a call if you do,” Elaine said, and punched me in the chest.
I evaded the blow and countered with a snap kick to her midriff. She swept it aside without hesitation. We went at it, blow and counterblow. Elaine knocked me on my ass twice, and I flipped her flat on her back once. We moved faster and faster, a blur of arms and legs. Elaine and I are both red belts, an even match, and I relished the adrenaline rush. I unhooked my mind and let my reflexes take over, a passenger in my own body. Block, lunge, punch, kick, duck, dodge, kick. At the end of an hour, Elaine was massaging her thigh, where I’d landed a solid kick, and I had a bruised shoulder where I’d failed a block and the protector didn’t cover me. The pain was a penance—penance for letting myself get angry, for not watching my diet, for relishing a fight. Elaine and I bowed to each other, then realized the gym was silent. We turned. The early-bird martial arts class was watching us in silence.
“Observe and learn,” the teacher said. “Observe and learn.”
I flushed a little with pride. I don’t cook, I won’t clean, I can’t do math, but I sure as hell can fight. The class turned back to their own sparring while Elaine and I hit the showers and dressed. Elaine dried her mass of dark brown curls while I slid into slacks and a blouse appropriate for office wear. I decided to forgo makeup: five minutes in the Peale house and I’d look like a weeping clown in a black velvet painting. So I chatted with Elaine while she put on hers. Elaine, who is way prettier than I am, doesn’t need much in the way of Maybelline. She has huge blue eyes and a cute little nose beneath all that hair, and her trim little body doesn’t look like it can flip a two-hundred-pound man over it without breaking a sweat. The wide-eyed, harmless look has played well during some of the undercover work we’ve hired her to do.
I glanced at the clock and realized I was running late for my meeting with Zack at the Peale mansion. And there was no way I was going to let him root around in there by himself. I bid Elaine a quick good-bye, then retrieved my little Jeep from the open-air parking structure beneath the building and hotfooted it across town to the Peale house. At five to nine I was just pulling into the gravel driveway when my cell phone rang. It was Ms. Hawk.
“I have to investigate another case,” she said. “I’m sorry to leave you alone like this, but I have little choice.”
“I won’t be alone,” I said, swallowing my annoyance. Ms. Hawk owns Hawk Enterprises and she can do or not do as she likes. “Zack will be here.”
“Of course he will,” Ms. Hawk said with a hint of sarcasm. “Listen, Terry—I don’t want you going in there by yourself. It’s too dangerous. If Mr. Archer doesn’t arrive, call Elaine Harker and see if she’s available.”
I acknowledged this would be a good idea, and Ms. Hawk clicked off. I got out of the car and faced the tall, moldering mass of house. The place looked sick and exhausted from holding in forty years of hoarded junk. Not a single leaf moved on the massive trees, and the crystal-blue sky promised another hot, humid August day. Great. And Ms. Hawk was probably right—Zack wouldn’t show up. I’d have to call Elaine and go through the whole business of explaining the case and then wait until she arrived.
I got my equipment belt out of my trunk, clicked it around my waist—and realized I’d forgotten to stop at the Sweetwater Café to fill my thermos with its usual quart of morning coffee. Wonderful. I checked my watch. Five after nine, and no sign of Zack. Why was I not surprised?
Annoyed, I headed around to the back yard, feeling isolated and grouchy. Maybe I’d sniff around the basement before calling Elaine. The caffeine jonesing was already setting in, and it got worse the more I tried to think of something else. If I’d had the thermos with me, I wouldn’t even have cracked it open for another half an hour, but because I didn’t have it, I wanted it all the more. I could have ducked out to get some, but then I’d be late, and even though I had no witnesses, I didn’t feel right running a personal errand on time Belinda was paying for. I’d just have to wait until lunch.
I was just about to call Elaine and tell her we needed her after all when I heard the distinctive clicking sound of bicycle gears and the rush of rubber tires over long grass. Zack s
ped around the corner, steering precariously with one hand while the other balanced a cardboard takeout tray that sported three Styrofoam cups. A yellow backpack was strapped to his broad shoulders, and his hair shone gold in the morning sun—the picture of athletic manhood.
He gave a cheery wave, shoved his bike into some long grass, and trotted over with the tray. My eyes went straight to his cups. They were so big. Huge. Whoever said size doesn’t matter is a big, fat liar.
“Morning!” he said. “Sorry I’m late, but—”
“You brought coffee?” I gasped.
His face fell. “I’m sorry,” he said. “Shouldn’t I have?”
“Gimme!” I tore a lid open, mixed in two packets of sugar, and drank. Oh yeah. Mama Caffeine worked her magic and I felt fine. Zack grinned at me, set the tray on the ground, and extracted a waxy paper bag from his backpack.
“Do doughnuts get the same reaction?” he asked.
I eyed the bag warily. “What kind of doughnuts?”
“Got a variety.” He rummaged through the sack. “Devil’s food, Boston creams, strawberry jelly.”
“Any plain ones?”
He made a face. “No. What’s the point of plain doughnuts? You notice they’re always the last ones left? It’s because everybody hates them.”
“Okay,” I said, reaching for the bag, “you can stay.”
While I alternated sugary bites and magical sips, Zack took an equipment belt of his own out of his backpack and buckled it on. I automatically took note of what he had—photography paraphernalia, mostly, along with a cell phone and water bottle.
“Batman and Batgirl,” he said, “utility belts at the ready.”