I shoved Chava under the desk and clicked madly at the computer, trying to put it back to sleep. Just as I finished doing that, I realized the obvious. Despite Chava’s small frame, there was no room for me under the desk with her. Frantically searching for a hiding place, I noticed a small closet door I’d missed earlier in the dim light. Clicking off the Banker’s lamp my mother had turned on, I shot over to the door and prayed there would be space for me. If the door hid only shelves, I was screwed.
I tucked into the coat closet just in time to hear the door to the office open and see the overhead light come on through the gap between the closet door and the floor. I held my breath and worked hard at not moving a muscle. The last thing I wanted to do was jingle the coat hangers together. Only two coats hung in the closet, and the rest of the metal hangers sat empty, daring me to breath hard and start them up like a set of wind chimes.
After steadying my breathing, I waited for the sound of Hallings discovering Chava Ester Schultz hiding under his desk. Part of me anticipated what kind of ridiculous story she might come up with to explain her presence. I heard a few unexplainable thumps, then the sound of Hallings’s voice.
He sounded remarkably calm for someone discovering a short, middle-aged Jewish woman hiding under the desk in his home office.
It took me a moment to realize what I heard was the sound of him talking on the phone. He must have come in and picked up the receiver without walking around his desk. Hopefully, he would remain that way and not need to get a pen or piece of paper out of a drawer. I listened carefully to his side of the conversation, ignoring the fact my feet and legs were cramping from being in a crouched position under the hangers.
Best guess was a discussion with a realtor. Apparently Mr. Hallings wasn’t getting the slew of offers he expected on his palace. He got rather sharp with the other person on the phone, demanding that sheI’d heard the name Joycefind him a buyer at his current listing price.
“I am not dropping the price,” he finally said after a few more minutes of arguing. “Find me a buyer.”
With that, I heard the phone slam down in its cradle. I held my breath again. I didn’t see any reason for him to open the closet for one of the coats—he must have had one on when he came in—but now might be the time he sat down at his desk and found his legs didn’t fit underneath.
Instead I heard his voice again, this time on a much different kind of call. He sounded subservient, maybe even scared. He begged for “more time” and told whomever he spoke to he would come up with the money soon. Then I heard a lot of “uh-huhs” and the phone being slammed down again, followed by clicking sounds I couldn’t place.
I held my breath. I wasn’t sure how much longer Chava could keep quiet under the desk. A sneeze or a shift in her position would be enough to alert him of her presence.
Then I heard a chirping sound.
“Kendra?” Hallings voice spoke again, and I realized the chirping sound had been his cellphone. Had the missing Kendra called her husband?
“Who is this?” he barked. Clearly it wasn’t Kendra on the line, but was the call coming from Kendra’s phone? Why else would Hallings think it was her?
I leaned against the door, trying to hear as much as I could. I guessed Hallings had stood up from his desk and paced away toward the window, because his voice had gotten harder to understand. There was mumbling for a while, then he must have turned back because his voice became clearer again.
“Why should I believe you?” was followed by another long moment of silence as Hallings listened. “Wait a minute. I’ve got to get rid of someone. Let me call you back from my office; it’s more private.”
Rid of someone? Did he mean the two women hiding in his house? And wasn’t he already in his office?
Instead I heard more clicking and beeping sounds followed by Hallings’s voice back on the phone again.
“Okay, now I can talk,” he said. “Tell me that again.”
There was a long moment of silence, then, Hallings said a few more things I couldn’t catch. Maybe Chava was hearing more from her hidey-hole under the desk.
“Fine,” Hallings said, his voice clearer. A moment later, I heard the phone hung up and other clicking sounds. The light went out, and the office door opened and closed. I waited another moment, but he seemed to be gone.
I slowly opened the door and crawled out, willing the circulation to return to my legs. Then I cruised behind the desk. I could see Chava’s grin even in the shadows, her teeth like a beacon in the dark.
“That was more exciting than trying to fill an inside straight with big money on the table,” she said. Great, Chava’s next career—burglary.
Excuse me, trespassing.
“I think we need to wait for him to go to sleep, then make a run for it, even if it means setting off the alarm,” I said, pulling her out from under the desk and shifting my weight back and forth to rid my feet of pins and needles.
The sound of a car engine starting up broke through the silence. I crawled over to the window and peered out, seeing a shiny new Escalade pulling out of the driveway with Hallings behind the wheel.
I waited until he’d navigated the long driveway and turned left onto the street in front before I started breathing again and grabbed Chava’s hand to pull her toward the door. We’d still set off the alarm, but we would make it out of there long before anyone showed up. Even if the video surveillance did record me on the front porch, I hadn’t seen any other cameras, and it wouldn’t prove I’d been the one to break in. I could explain I’d come by looking for Kendra. Thanks to the winter weather, Chava and I both wore gloves.
Standing by the front door, I looked at the alarm panel and saw it wasn’t set.
“We can go out now,” Chava said, starting to reach for the door handle.
“Not so fast,” I said, catching her hand. “Out the back. We know for sure there’s a camera over the front porch. Maybe there isn’t one the other way. We’re going out just like we came in.”
A moment later found us dodging through the kitchen, where Hallings’s dinner sat half finished on the counter. He’d clearly left in a hurry, neither finishing the meal nor putting anything away. On a whim I picked up the phone on the kitchen counter and listened for a dial tone. Setting the handset back down, I gestured to my partner in crime and we went out the back door.
Scurrying around the corner of the house, I walked as far from the front entrance as I could—I didn’t want to be picked up in the corner of any video—and we made our way back to my car without further mishap. I breathed a huge sigh of relief as I started up the Subaru and drove away the same direction as Hallings. I didn’t anticipate catching up with him, but it couldn’t hurt to try.
“Why’d you pick up the phone?” Chava asked.
“I couldn’t figure out why he came in the office to make those calls. Then I realized he might have a different business number. I wanted to check the home line.”
“And?”
“No dial tone. He’s already shut it off.”
“What do you make of him being broke? Does it have anything to do with Kendra’s disappearance? Or Deirdre’s death?”
“You ask good questions,” I said. “Too bad I don’t have any good answers.”
Yet, I thought, give me time.
The situation had definitely piqued my curiosity. I wanted to find out where Kendra disappeared to, and whether or not she’d gone under her own steam or with a little help from a “friend.” Was she in danger from the same person who killed Deirdre? Or was she in cahoots with them?
“Why would a guy with an elaborate alarm system not turn it on when he leaves home?” Chava asked.
“Because he’s not worried about theft,” I said. “He’s worried about someone coming after him.”
“Who?”
“Another good question.”
“We’re going to find out though, right?”
For the moment, I ignored the “we.”
“Could you hear much of his conversation on the cellphone?”
“The call he thought came from Kendra?”
I nodded as we arrived at a four-way stop and I debated which direction Hallings might have gone.
“Not much. It was hard to hear under that desk.” Chava thought a moment. “I did hear him say, ‘why would you help me,’ but I don’t know what that was in reference to.”
Help him what? Find Kendra? Sell the house? Or something we didn’t know about yet?
A few miles later I determined I was never going to catch up with Hallings and decided Chava and I should just go home. Maybe I could find out more about him and his current situation the new, old-fashioned way—in cyberspace.