“Hmm,” he said, sounding puzzled. “I just touched base with the central office, and they say the computer says your line’s cutting in and out. Intermittently. Would you do me a favor and just check for a dial tone real quick? I’d hate to have you find out your line’s dead after I’m already gone. Might be Monday or Tuesday before we could come back.” He gave her a friendly, apologetic smile.
“I didn’t even know you guys worked on weekends.” She sounded less guarded now.
“We don’t, in most neighborhoods, you know? Problem like this in East Knoxville? We’d get to it in a month or two.” He chuckled knowingly; conspiratorially; as if to say, Nice to be rich white folks, huh? “I’ll just wait out here while you check it.”
She shrugged, then nodded. “Okay, I’ll be right back.” She closed the door; after a beat, he heard the dead bolt slide into place—slowly, almost sneakily, as if she didn’t want him to know she was locking the door. He smiled at that. Thirty seconds later, her footfalls returned and the door opened again, a little quicker and a little wider this time. “Well, you’re right,” she said. “The computer’s right. There’s no dial tone. Did you say everybody on the street is having problems? Wouldn’t that mean it’s somewhere farther up the line? A substation or transformer or whatever you call it?”
“You’d think so, but it’s not that simple. You get trouble in one house—a short, some kind of interference—and it can run right up the line, cause a ripple effect, knock out a whole block.” He shook his head in an expression of good-natured exasperation. “You mind if I run a quick check on your wiring?”
She frowned. “How long will it take? I need to leave in half an hour.”
“Oh, I should be long gone by then,” he said. “I don’t need much time. Five minutes, maybe ten.”
“Okay, come on in.” She stepped back and swung the door wide.
That’s right, Satterfield thought, stepping across the threshold and into the living room. You have to invite me in the first time. “Do you know where all your jacks are, ma’am?”
“There’s probably one in every room, isn’t there?”
“Not necessarily, a house this old. How long have y’all been here?”
“Not long. Not quite three years.”
“Added any more lines or jacks since then?”
“No.”
“Well, show me the jacks you know about, and I’ll see what I find.”
She nodded, then pointed to a cordless-phone base station on an end table beside a sofa. “The jack for that’s behind the sofa.” She turned and went into the dining room, scanning the baseboards. Satterfield watched her walk. She was wearing sweatpants—baggy in the legs, but snug across her ass. Nice ass, for a woman pushing forty, he thought. Running? StairMaster? She disappeared around a corner. He followed, and found himself in a large kitchen, with a wooden table and four chairs. On the table was a dirty plate—crusts of toasted bread, smears of jam, a few bits of egg, a greasy knife and fork. “There’s one,” she said, pointing to a wall phone with an extra-long cord, its coils kinked and twisted together.
Next, she led him down a hallway to a pair of bedrooms—a sparsely furnished guest room first, then what was clearly the master bedroom, big and lived-in and rumpled. The doorway faced the bed, which was loosely made; a quilt was pulled up crookedly, and four pillows were piled against the headboard. A pair of nightstands flanked the bed. One, obviously hers, was crammed: a stack of books, another of magazines; bottles and tubes of lotion; a fragile-looking antique lamp, trimmed with teardrops of crystal, its frilly shade made of something that looked like silk. The other nightstand held a digital alarm clock, a pair of toenail clippers, a simple wooden lamp with a paper shade, and a phone in a charging cradle. “That’s another cordless,” she said, “but there’s a jack down in that corner.”
He nodded, then glanced around the room, taking in the details: a tall chest of drawers and a low, wide dresser, its marble top strewn with bracelets and necklaces. In the far corner stood a tall wooden coat tree, a half-dozen hooks hung with jackets and bathrobes—a big robe of navy-blue terrycloth, a smaller one of powder-blue satin, with a matching satin belt hanging from one loop of the robe, stretching almost to the floor. “Any other jacks in this room?” Satterfield strolled toward the coat tree as he said it, pretending to check the baseboards. “Sometimes a big room like this’ll have a couple jacks in it.” His eyes were locked on the belt. So easy, he thought again.
“I don’t think so,” she said. “But there are a couple in the basement. I’ll show you those, then I’ll get out of your way and let you work.”
“Yes, ma’am,” he said. “I’ll check the basement first, work my way back up. Basements cause a lot of the problems I see. Basements and squirrels.” He turned away from the shimmering robe. It would still be there when he returned. Meanwhile, he could imagine ways to put the satin belt to good use.
As he followed her to the bedroom door, he reached out and snagged an object off the tall chest of drawers—a pocketknife. He could put that to good use, too.