Once out of sight of the school, Pete calls Andrew Halliday Rare Editions, a number he wishes he did not have on speed dial. He gets the answering machine, which at least saves him another arkie-barkie. The message he leaves is a long one, and the machine cuts him off as he’s finishing, but that’s okay.
If he can get those notebooks out of the house, the police will find nothing, search warrant or no search warrant. He’s confident his parents will keep quiet about the mystery money, as they have all along. As Pete slips his cell back into the pocket of his chinos, a phrase from freshman Latin pops into his head. It’s a scary one in any language, but it fits this situation perfectly.
Alea iacta est.
The die is cast.
16
Before going into his house, Pete ducks into the garage to make sure Tina’s old Kettler wagon is still there. A lot of their stuff went in the yard sale they had before moving from their old house, but Teens had made such a fuss about the Kettler, with its old-fashioned wooden sides, that their mother relented. At first Pete doesn’t see it and gets worried. Then he spots it in the corner and lets out a sigh of relief. He remembers Teens trundling back and forth across the lawn with all her stuffed toys packed into it (Mrs. Beasley holding pride of place, of course), telling them that they were going on a nik-nik in the woods, with devil-ham samwitches and ginger-snap tooties for children who could behave. Those had been good days, before the lunatic driving the stolen Mercedes had changed everything.
No more nik-niks after that.
Pete lets himself into the house and goes directly to his father’s tiny home office. His heart is pounding furiously, because this is the crux of the matter. Things might go wrong even if he finds the keys he needs, but if he doesn’t, this will be over before it gets started. He has no Plan B.
Although Tom Saubers’s business mostly centers on real estate search—finding likely properties that are for sale or might come up for sale, and passing these prospects on to small companies and independent operators—he has begun creeping back into primary sales again, albeit in a small way, and only here on the North Side. That didn’t amount to much in 2012, but over the last couple of years, he’s bagged several decent commissions, and has an exclusive on a dozen properties in the Tree Streets neighborhood. One of these—the irony wasn’t lost on any of them—is 49 Elm Street, the house that had belonged to Deborah Hartsfield and her son, Brady, the so-called Mercedes Killer.
“I may be awhile selling that one,” Dad said one night at dinner, then actually laughed.
A corkboard is mounted on the wall to the left of his father’s computer. The keys to the various properties he’s currently agenting are thumbtacked to it, each on its own ring. Pete scans the board anxiously, sees what he wants—what he needs—and punches the air with a fist. The label on this keyring reads BIRCH STREET REC.
“Unlikely I can move a brick elephant like that,” Tom Saubers said at another family dinner, “but if I do, we can kiss this place goodbye and move back to the Land of the Hot Tub and BMW.” Which is what he always calls the West Side.
Pete shoves the keys to the Rec into his pocket along with his cell phone, then pelts upstairs and gets the suitcases he used when he brought the notebooks to the house. This time he wants them for short-term transport only. He climbs the pull-down ladder to the attic and loads in the notebooks (treating them with care even in his haste). He lugs the suitcases down to the second floor one by one, unloads the notebooks onto his bed, returns the suitcases to his parents’ closet, and then races downstairs, all the way to the cellar. He’s sweating freely from his exertions and probably smells like the monkey house at the zoo, but there will be no time to shower until later. He ought to change his shirt, though. He has a Key Club polo that will be perfect for what comes next. Key Club is always doing community service shit.
His mother keeps a good supply of empty cartons in the cellar. Pete grabs two of the bigger ones and goes back upstairs, first detouring into his father’s office again to grab a Sharpie.
Remember to put that back when you return the keys, he cautions himself. Remember to put everything back.
He packs the notebooks into the cartons—all but the six he still hopes to sell to Andrew Halliday—and folds down the lids. He uses the Sharpie to print KITCHEN SUPPLIES on each, in big capital letters. He looks at his watch. Doing okay for time . . . as long as Halliday doesn’t listen to his message and blow the whistle on him, that is. Pete doesn’t believe that’s likely, but it isn’t out of the question, either. This is unknown territory. Before leaving his bedroom, he hides the six remaining notebooks behind the loose baseboard in his closet. There’s just enough room, and if all goes well, they won’t be there long.
He carries the cartons out to the garage and puts them in Tina’s old wagon. He starts down the driveway, remembers he forgot to change into the Key Club polo shirt, and pelts back up the stairs again. As he’s pulling it over his head, a cold realization hits him: he left the notebooks sitting in the driveway. They are worth a huge amount of money, and there they are, out in broad daylight where anyone could come along and take them.
Idiot! he scolds himself. Idiot, idiot, fucking idiot!
Pete sprints back downstairs, the new shirt already sweat-stuck to his back. The wagon is there, of course it is, who would bother stealing boxes marked kitchen supplies? Duh! But it was still a stupid thing to do, some people will steal anything that’s not nailed down, and it raises a valid question: how many other stupid things is he doing?
He thinks, I never should have gotten into this, I should have called the police and turned in the money and the notebooks as soon as I found them.
But because he has the uncomfortable habit of being honest with himself (most of the time, at least), he knows that if he had it all to do over again, he would probably do most of it the same way, because his parents had been on the verge of breaking up, and he loved them too much not to at least try to prevent that.
And it worked, he thinks. The bonehead move was not quitting while I was ahead.
But.
Too late now.
17
His first idea had been to put the notebooks back in the buried trunk, but Pete rejected that almost immediately. If the police came with the search warrant Halliday had threatened, where might they try next when they didn’t find the notebooks in the house? All they’d have to do was go into the kitchen and see that undeveloped land beyond the backyard. The perfect spot. If they followed the path and saw a patch of freshly turned ground by the stream, it would be ballgame over. No, this way is better.
Scarier, though.
He pulls Tina’s old wagon down the sidewalk and turns left onto Elm. John Tighe, who lives on the corner of Sycamore and Elm, is out mowing his lawn. His son Bill is tossing a Frisbee to the family dog. It sails over the dog’s head and lands in the wagon, coming to rest between the two boxes.