Chapter Nineteen

Stan rubbed his hands together in anticipation of what they would find.

Sure enough, Gnorman appeared in his parents’ yard, as anticipated.

Normally Amber enjoyed visiting Stan’s parents, but this time it had almost killed her to find some excuse to make them stay inside the house while Stan ran into the yard to switch the memory card in the receiver. Now that they were back at Stan’s house, she could hardly wait to find out who had been taunting them with Gnorman’s escapes.

“I can’t believe your mother didn’t notice when Gnorman appeared in the backyard. She said she was home for most of the day and didn’t hear or see a thing.”

Stan pushed the card into the slot. “It doesn’t surprise me that Dad noticed Gnorman first.”

“I know. I thought it was funny when he said how badly the hippie costume clashed with your mother’s pink color-of-the-year scheme.”

Stan couldn’t stop his snicker. “It was funnier watching my mother. I really thought she was going to lose it. She said it had to be some kind of hint that they were getting old. But really, if you do the math, my parents would only have been kids in the hippie generation. It’s hard to believe that the activists of that generation are now retired grandparents.”

“Time marches on. Now march that video on. I want to see who’s been playing games with us. I need to get that trophy back into Becky’s yard before snowfall.”

“It’s a long way from winter. We haven’t reached the hottest part of the summer yet.” Before hitting the button, Stan ran his hand over his back pocket, which held the newest note. They’d been so excited about catching the Gnapper that neither of them felt the note was important. They were about to find out the Gnapper’s identity, yet he wasn’t as relieved as he should have been. Even though chasing the gnome had been a lot of gnonsense . . . nonsense . . . he’d thoroughly enjoyed all the time he spent with Amber. Except when she keeled over and nearly sent him into cardiac arrest. However, going on a wild goose, or rather, wild gnome chase, gave him the excuse to be with her nearly every day, which made him recognize that he wanted to see her every day. When life returned to normal he would no longer have an excuse to drop by unannounced or spend an evening together just to kill time. Even when they didn’t talk, he enjoyed simply being with her, which didn’t make sense, but that was how he felt.

With mixed feelings, he hit the button. “Here goes,” he said, trying to sound cheerful.

He set it to fast-forward, but it was still boring. Since they didn’t know exactly what time Gnorman showed up, they started at the beginning to watch eight hours worth of the yard in the dark of night. By morning the yard was still bare, which was what he’d expected.

Not long after sunup, his mother entered the yard wearing baggy sweatpants and rubber boots with her weeding tools in her hands, and proceeded to start weeding the flower beds.

“I don’t feel right about watching this,” Amber mumbled. “It feels wrong when she doesn’t know she’s being recorded. But it is kind of amusing watching it on fast forward. I wish I could get my weeding done in fast-action like this.”

As his mother made her way along the length of the bed, soon they had a close-up view of her rear end. Right in front of the camera, she got on her hands and knees and stretched to reach behind the bushes with her hand-held hoe.

“I don’t want to see this,” Stan muttered, and covered his eyes with his hands. “Tell me when she’s done.”

“She’s done.”

Just as Amber spoke, his father walked into the picture. Judging from the light, it was first thing in the morning, and he was leaving for work. He walked up to Stan’s mother and gave her a long kiss, with one hand making a journey down her back, pulling her close to him. She went willingly, and her shovel dropped to the ground.

Stan groaned and covered his face again. “This is something else I don’t want to see.”

He could feel Amber’s glare through his hands. He widened his fingers, looking between them to see Amber staring at him, her eyes narrowed, giving him the same look he used to get from his teacher in grade school when she caught him passing notes in the classroom.

“How dare you. It’s so sweet that they still do that after all these years together. They’re so in love after all this time. I wish I could see my mother and father like this.”

A wave of guilt washed through him. Not only were his parents still in love after more than thirty years of marriage, but they were both alive and active. Maybe when Gnorman and the trophy were recovered, he’d take both his parents and Amber out for a nice dinner to celebrate together.

He lowered his hands and turned back to the screen. “You’re right. After seeing so many marriages fail, I do appreciate the relationship my parents have. I just don’t want to watch it. After all, they’re my parents.”

“You’d watch if this was a movie, and two strangers were doing that.”

Instead of picturing strangers doing the same thing, he pictured himself with Amber.

He shook the thought from his head and returned his attention to the screen. His father left for work, and his mother returned to her weeding.

With the weeding complete, she went back into the house, and they watched the empty yard. It was almost as boring as watching the blackness of night, but not quite. It would have been more interesting if he’d turned the camera a bit more skyward, so they could at least watch the clouds move.

“Can you make the fast-forward go any faster?”

“No. There’s only one speed. I had to buy this thing without a lot of notice, and there was only one kind available. It was this or nothing. There isn’t a huge demand for surveillance equipment in Bloomfield.”

Suddenly the picture swayed. With it Stan’s stomach lurched, like he was seasick. The picture moved, and suddenly they saw the grass, from up close.

“What happened?”

Amber turned and snapped at him. “So much for your plan. That rattletrap conglomeration must have been too top-heavy, and got knocked over in the wind.”

He turned to her. “There’s no wind today. I had all the shop doors open. I would have felt any wind. I think someone knocked it down. “

From his peripheral vision, he detected more movement and turned back to the screen. When he did, Amber did too. The same movement of the camera happened in reverse, and the camera once again encompassed his parents’ yard, only this time Gnorman was there.

“This is just great,” he sighed. “The Gnapper knocked the statue over on the way into the yard, then very graciously righted it on his or her way out.”

Amber stared at the screen. “Don’t you think that was a little convenient?”

“No. It was top-heavy and we knew it. It would be easy to knock over.”

“I’m wondering if the Gnapper knew it had a camera hidden in it, and knocked it over on purpose.”

“That’s impossible. No one knew.”

“One person knew. Where did you buy the camera? Was it someone you knew?”

“That’s a difficult thing to answer. Lots of people bring their cars into my shop and they remember me as their mechanic, but to me, from behind the counter, most of the people I meet jumble into a sea of faces. I meet over a hundred people every week. Some I only see once, some come six months later for the next oil change, and some are regulars. Maybe it was someone I met before. I don’t know. But if it wasn’t someone I knew well, they wouldn’t know about me helping you try to find Gnorman and recover the trophy.” As he spoke, he tried to remember if he’d ever seen the woman who sold him the spy camera, and he honestly couldn’t.

“That’s not true. They could have seen your name in the Gazette.”

“While this is a lot of excitement for the garden club, this isn’t an event that’s going to make the local news in the paper.”

“But you said when this first started that the Gazette was running a contest, with prizes to see who could guess Gnorman’s next costume.”

“Right. I forgot about that.” He’d even read the article and groaned at how the reporter had worded the story. He or she had put a funny spin on it and had made it quite entertaining. Stan would have enjoyed it more if the story had been about someone else, but it was impersonal enough that he’d not felt it too invasive. Until now. “I’m sure I’d remember if I’d seen the woman before at the garden club.” Almost sure, anyway. Truth be told, he didn’t watch the women at the garden club. The only woman he watched was Amber. He wasn’t really interested in talking to other single women, but a lot approached him to ask about car trouble. To that, he always told them to bring their car to the shop so he could have a proper look, then he got one of his three employees to do it.

“In other words, you don’t know for sure.”

“Something like that. But I’d certainly know if it was someone who came in often. Anyone who didn’t wouldn’t care enough to be interested.”

“Did you use your personal charge card or your company charge card?”

Automatically he covered his wallet in his back pocket with his palm. “How did you know I used my credit card?”

“Because if it was over $20, you never carry enough cash.”

Busted. “So what? You don’t either.”

“That wasn’t the point. The point was that the person who sold you the spy camera knew your name and your business. If they were following the contest, they probably would have recognized your name and made the connection.”

At the time the article had come out, he’d convinced himself that since the reporter had also mentioned the name of his business, it had been good free advertising. Hayden had been the first to mention it, but after that a number of people who came into his shop in the week following the article had also talked to him about it. Some he knew, some he didn’t. Then he’d dug the issue out of his recycle bin and read it.

“I concede. Maybe the woman who worked there figured it out. But I say it’s a long shot.” He stared blankly at Gnorman the hippie, and sighed. “We have no choice. We have to tell my mother about the camera. It’s the only way we can be sure we’re going to catch whoever this is when Gnorman is removed.”

Amber groaned. “Then for sure we’ll be chasing Gnorman until it snows.”

He reached into his back pocket for the envelope, then froze.

Reading it now would be admitting defeat. He couldn’t do that.

He imagined his mother’s reaction when she found out that they had video of her backside. “This is something we should do in person. On the way we need to stop at the grocery store. This probably calls for chocolate cheesecake.”