B Is For Burglar

"God, I been honking at you for blocks! How come you never called me back? I left a message on your machine on Monday," he said.

"Sorry. I didn't realize it was you back there. I thought you said you were going to call me."

"Well, I tried to, but I kept getting your machine so I gave up. Where were you?"

"Out of town. I just got back last night. Why? What's happening?"

He pulled his motorcycle gloves off and tucked them in his helmet, which he cradled in the crook of his arm. "I think my Uncle Leonard has a girl friend. I just thought you might like to know."

"Oh really? How'd you find out about that?"

"I was moving that… uh… stash out of the shed at his old place and I saw him go into the building next door."

"The condo?"

"Well yeah, I guess that's what it is. That big apartment building."

"When was this?"

"Sunday night. That's why I called you so early Monday morning. At first, I wasn't sure it was him. I kind of thought it was his car pulling up out front but it was almost dark and I couldn't see that good. I figured he was coming over to the house for something and I was shovin' shit in my duffel bag like crazy. Man, I didn't know how I was going to explain what I was up to. Finally I was in such a panic, I whipped into the shed and pulled the door shut and watched through the crack. He ended up going over there instead."

"What makes you think he has a girl friend, though?"

"Because I saw him with her. I didn't have anything else to do, so I went across the street and hid behind a tree and waited until they came out. He was only in there five or ten minutes and then the lights went out, second floor left. Pretty soon they came out and shoved some stuff in the trunk and got in the car."

"Did you get a good look at her?"

"Not really. It was hard to see 'em from where I was and they were walking kind of fast. Then when they got in the car they were all over each other. He nearly jumped her bones right there in the front seat. It was kind of weird. I mean, you usually don't see people that age making out, you know what I mean? And anyway, I never thought about him like that. I figured he was just some old dried-out fart who couldn't even get it up. I didn't think he had it in him."

"Mike, the man is probably fifty-two years old. Would you knock that off! What did she look like? Had you ever seen her before?"

Mike held his hand up to his chin. "She came up to about here on him. I noticed that. She had her hair tied back with a scarf-like a babushka or whatever you call 'em. I don't think I'd seen her before. I mean, it wasn't like I thought, Oh yeah, there's old what's-her-face or anything like that. She was just some babe."

"Look, do me a favor. Go find a pencil and paper and write all this down while it's fresh in your mind. Make a note of the date and time and anything else you remember. You don't have to say what you were doing around here. You can always claim you came over to check on the house or something. Will you do that?"

"Okay, sure. What are you going to do?"

"I haven't made that part up yet," I said.

I got back in my car, and five minutes later I was being buzzed through from the lobby to Tillie's apartment.

She was waiting for me at the door and I followed her into the living room. She was wearing a pair of spectacles low on her nose and she peered at me over the rims. She took a seat in the rocker and picked up some needlework. It looked like a hunk of upholstery fabric printed with a scene of mountains and forest, deer grazing here and there, a stream gushing down through some rocks. She had wads of cotton and she was shoving them into the back of the cloth with a crochet hook. The deer were puffed out into three dimensions, surrounded by stitching, to produce a quilted effect.

"What is that?" I asked, sitting down. "Are you stuffing it?"

She smiled faintly. She'd finally let her new permanent wave have its way and her head was a nest of tight, frizzy curls the color of apricots. "That's right, I am. It's called trapunto. When I finish, I'll have it blocked and framed. I do it for the church bazaar in the fall. This is cotton I save out of the tops of pill bottles, so next time you open some Tylenol or cold caps, you keep the packing for me. Sit down. I haven't seen you for days. What have you been up to?"

I gave her a summary of events since Friday, which was when I had seen her last. I did some censoring. I told her how I'd found the cat, but deleted the stash of drugs Mike kept in the shed next door. I told her about Aubrey Danziger and my confrontation later with Beverly, the suitcases, the trip to Florida, the threatened lawsuit, and Mike's tale about Leonard Grice having a girl friend upstairs. That made her take her glasses off and click the stems against the frames.

"I don't believe it," she said flatly. "Mike must have been high."

"Well, of course he was high, Tillie, but a little grass isn't going to make him hallucinate."

"Then he's inventing it."

"I'm just telling you what he told me," I said.

"Well, who in the world could it be? I'd be willing to guarantee Leonard wasn't having an affair with any tenant of mine! And from his description, it would have been Elaine's apartment, and that's simply impossible."

"Oh come on, Tillie. Don't be naive. It's the perfect setup. Why couldn't he have a woman over here?"

"Because there's no one in the building who fits that description."

"What about the woman in apartment 6? The one you thought might be up early the day your place got broken into."

"She's seventy-five."

"But you have lots of other tenants."

"Young married couples. Kinsey, I have more single men who'd go for Leonard than I do single women."

"I'd buy that too. What about Elaine? Why couldn't it be her?"

Tillie shook her head stubbornly.

"What about yourself?"

Tillie laughed and patted herself on the chest. "Well, I'm flattered. I'd like to believe I'm still capable of hip-grinding out on the street, but he's not exactly my type. Besides, Mike knows me. He'd have recognized me even in the dark."

I conceded that one. I truly couldn't picture Tillie in a liplock with Leonard Grice. It just didn't parse.

"What about Elaine?" I persisted. "What if she and Leonard had a thing going and decided to eliminate his wife? She does the deed while he's off at his sister's place that night. She takes off for Florida a few days later and then lays low for the next six months, waiting for him to get his affairs in order so they can run away together into the sunset. Once they realize

I'm on to something, they step up the pace so they can blow town."

Tillie stared at me for a long time. "Then who is Pat Usher?"

I shrugged again. "Maybe they enlisted her help and she's covering for them."

"But who broke in here and why? I thought you were convinced Pat Usher did that."

I could feel myself getting exasperated. "I don't have all the answers, Tillie! I'm just telling you it's possible that he had some little tootsie stashed over here. Maybe it was Pat."

She didn't say a word. She just put her glasses back on and started stuffing the mountain with cotton, making it bulge like Mount St. Helens before it blew.

"Can I have the key to the apartment upstairs?"

"Of course," she said. "I'll go too."

She put down her needlework and went over to the secretary, taking a set of keys out of the drawer. She handed me a bunch of bills while she was at it and I stuffed them in the back pocket of my jeans. It reminded me vaguely of something, but I couldn't think what.

She locked her apartment and we headed for the elevator.

"You haven't heard anyone walking around overhead?"

She looked back at me. "Not at all, but this place is well built and someone could be upstairs without my hearing them. You really believe he was keeping someone up there?"