“Who’s he?”
“One of the commissioners. You know him.” Sam grinned. “At least, I hope you do—you voted for him. He’s a real wheeler-dealer, always has an ear to the ground. Anyway, he’s heard that a few boys are about to be moved in—maybe within the next week or so. He seemed fairly sure that the commission will be asked to grant a variance to the zoning, and he’s dreading having to make a decision on something that’s so controversial.”
“Oh, my goodness, Sam,” I said as we stepped into the house and began to divest ourselves of coats and gloves. “What’re we going to do?”
“Prepare to speak against granting any kind of exemption. Which, as I’m sure Binkie’s warned you, will, as a public meeting, hit the papers and divide the town.”
“And,” I added, “label us selfish and immoral. Oh, Sam, why couldn’t Madge have done it legitimately in the first place? And why couldn’t the zoning board have told them from the start that they couldn’t use that house? It could’ve been stopped in its tracks at the beginning if people had simply done what they were supposed to do.”
“I know, I know,” Sam said, a worried frown deepening. “But what concerns me now is Pickens. He said that if that house is allowed to function as planned, he’ll sue the Homes for Teens board of directors as a group and as individuals for loss of value to his house and for anything else he can think of. He’ll do it, too, because he doesn’t care what people think of him.”
“That’s because he’s gone half the time,” I said, shivering from the cold. “He doesn’t have to see people day in and day out, but Hazel Marie and Lloyd do.” Then, heading out of the room, I said, “I’m turning up the thermostat. It’s cold in here.”
After turning up the setting a notch or two, I walked on into the library, switched on a lamp, and stopped dead in my tracks.
“Sam!” I cried, then called him again, unable to take in what I saw.
He ran in, calling, “What is it? What is it?” Then he, too, skidded to a stop at the sight of what had been done to our beautiful room.
Cold air was rushing in through an open window, chairs and a sofa were overturned, papers from the desk were strewn across the floor—all of which I had taken in with one sweep of my eyes. Now they were trained on the most unbelievable object taking pride of place right in the middle of the floor.
“Is that . . . is that what I think it is?” I asked, pointing to the yellowish-brown swirled blob dead center of my Mohawk carpet.
“Oh, my word,” Sam said, mopping his face with his hand. “Yes, I think I can safely say that it is.”
Swallowing hard, I said, “Oh, Sam, who would do such a thing? We’ve not only been broken and entered, we’ve been desecrated! Let’s get it up. Let’s get it up right now!”
“No,” Sam said, taking my arm and urging me out of the room. “Leave everything as it is. We have to call the sheriff.” He turned to leave, murmuring, “Whew. Glad my photos were upstairs.”
Closing the library door behind us, Sam went to the kitchen phone, while I looked around to see if any other room had been equally profaned. Thank goodness, the rest of the house seemed undisturbed, but what had been done to and in my favorite room was far and away more than enough. You would’ve thought that he’d have used the bathroom. It was right next to the library.
Who would’ve done such a thing? Who could’ve done such a thing? It would’ve taken an analytical mind of uncertain status to figure out when the house would be empty, then to synchronize his own body clock in order to be prepared to make his daily deadly deposit.
I declare, it beat all I’d ever heard, seen, or smelled, and I was so outraged that I was ready to take up arms. Instead, though, I waited with Sam for a swarm of detectives to arrive and take charge.
I’d wanted to call both Sergeant Coleman Bates and Mr. Pickens, but Sam assured me that we’d hurt the feelings of the on-duty detectives if we did that. So we waited in the kitchen while officers with flashlights scoured the yard for evidence. The guilty scoundrel—whoever he was—had broken a pane in a side window near the back of the house, reached in, and unlocked the window. He’d slid it open, crawled in, and done his business—and hadn’t had the courtesy to close the window behind him. The officers found footprints under the window outside the house, but they were mostly mush in the melting snow. Nobody was sure that they could be matched, although I heard one officer tell the chief detective that the prints came from running shoes—of which there were thousands of pairs in Abbotsville alone.
Chief Detective Warner asked Sam to come into the library and gather up the books and papers strewn all around the room. “Let me know,” he said, “if anything’s missing.”
There wasn’t, for most of the papers concerned Sam’s trip—receipts from hotels and restaurants, pamphlets he’d picked up on his travels, and notes he’d made. He went around the room, scooping up all the items that had been on the desk, then left them in a pile on a bookshelf for later sorting. They were now out of the way of trampling feet, but, bless his heart, nobody but him would want any of it.
Two other detectives occupied themselves with brushing black powder over the window, the windowsill, the desk, and even the furniture legs—most of which were sticking straight up in the air. Remarkably, though, after the fingerprints—which turned out to be mostly smudges—were taken, those same detectives righted all the
