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It was dark when Gertrude arrived home. Grateful for her porch light, she stuck her key into the keyhole, but quickly noticed the door wasn’t even locked. She was positive she’d left it locked. She gingerly opened the door and flipped on the lights and was greeted by several glaring felines. She couldn’t remember the last time she’d left them alone for so long.
“Sorry, kiddos. Momma’s got a job.”
Lightning, who was sleeping on a pile of assorted hymnals, licked his paw snobbishly in response.
Gertrude looked around. At first, nothing seemed to be amiss, but then she noticed that a new path had been carved toward the corner of her living room where she kept her rock collections. She gasped. She felt angry, scared, and violated all at once. As she entered the new path, she couldn’t stand the way things had been thrown about, all willy-nilly, so she began to reorganize as she went. The perpetrator had put records on top of her eight-track bins, and that almost pushed her over the edge. She moved the records back to their proper place and then refolded all the afghans that had been tossed onto her stacks of mason jars. When she had left home, her afghans had been neatly folded and stacked according to color in correspondence to the rainbow, leaning against her favorite hutch, which was full of decorative plates and butter dishes. She was so grieved by the mess of afghans, it took her several minutes to notice that the hutch stood open. A few butter dishes appeared to have been moved—she could tell by smudges in the dust, but nothing appeared to be missing. This is the weirdest break-in ever.
She finished refolding and reorganizing, fed her cats, and then put her coat back on and headed out into the cold.
She pounded on Calvin’s door.
“What?” he hollered over the noise of his television. She heard a burst of gunfire and figured he must be watching another western. She didn’t really enjoy westerns unless they featured Wild Bill Hickok. Something about that man just got her motor running.
She tried the doorknob. It was locked this time. That sneaky scoundrel!
“Calvin, open up! Someone broke into my trailer again,” she hollered through the door.
The gunfire stopped and she heard footsteps. Calvin opened the door. “I thought you were locking your door these days?” he asked.
She pushed by him. “I did, obviously. I didn’t just fall off the turnip truck, you know. Of course I lock my door. But someone must have picked the lock. Or used a key. I don’t know how they did it. I just know that when I got home, my door was unlocked and someone had messed up my afghan pile.”
Calvin closed his door. “A key? Where would someone get a key? And why would someone steal an afghan, Gert?”
“Don’t call me Gert, and I don’t know where they got a key. And I didn’t say someone stole an afghan. I just said they messed with my pile. As far as I can tell, they didn’t take anything. They just rifled through it. So did you see anything? Anyone suspicious in the neighborhood?”
“No, Gertrude. I’ve been watching television with the curtains drawn. I work pretty hard at not seeing anything that goes on in this neighborhood.”
“Oh, Calvin. Stop acting like you’re too good to live in a trailer park. You do live in a trailer park, you know. Anyway, you haven’t been watching TV all day. I don’t know when this thug broke in. Could have been this morning for all I know.”
“You’ve been gone all day?” Calvin exclaimed, incredulous. “Why? Where were you?”
“I got a job.”
Calvin laughed. “No. Really.”
“It’s not funny. I got a job.”
“As in someone actually hired you to investigate something?”
“No, as in I got a real job. At Goodwill.”
“Oh!” Calvin exclaimed as if suddenly everything made sense. “So you’re hiring yourself to figure out who killed that young woman?”
“I didn’t hire myself,” Gertrude said. “But yes, I’m going to solve Tislene Breen’s murder. I already know more than the cops do.”
“Of course you do,” Calvin said, and walked back to his recliner. He sat down. “So maybe the break-in is connected to your current investigation?”
“Oh!” she said thoughtfully. “I hadn’t thought of that.”
“You hadn’t thought of that? Why else would someone break into your trailer? Do you have anything worth stealing?”
“I have lots of stuff worth stealing. You should see my jewelry collection!”
“Gertrude, if you buy jewelry at a lawn sale, it’s probably not worth stealing.”
“Look, did you see anything or not?”
“Not.”
“Fine,” she said, turning toward the door. “Well, would you keep the curtains open tomorrow? I’ve got to go to work again.”
Calvin reclined. “Yeah, that’s usually how jobs work. You have to go to them more than once.”