Grant? Is that you?” his sister said, cracking the heavy oak frame door to the sprawling, old house, keeping the chain on.
“Open the door, Nor, we have to talk,” he said, and after a moment she closed the door, unhooked the chain and let them in, scowling at Rhonda the whole time.
Noreen was casually dressed, the TV was blaring in the den and a glass of red wine was on the table next to her Barka lounger. There were rich Oriental and Persian rugs all over the first level, living room, dining room, hallways and den. Their mother had been partial to them and after she died Noreen thought about re-carpeting the whole house, changing it, but when Grant said he would take the rugs if she was going to get rid of them, she decided to keep them.
The house had been left to both she and Grant but he hadn’t wanted it, so he sold his half to Noreen. Besides the businesses, they had also inherited a surprising amount of money. They always knew their mother was canny about money but had, nevertheless, been surprised at the amount she left, stashes of gold and silver coins in boxes all over the house, never mind the blue chip stocks like Exxon and AT&T.
“What is it?” Noreen snapped now, gesturing them to chairs in the den and flicking off the sound on the TV. “You know I don’t like surprise visits, Grant, especially this time of night,” she added, ignoring Rhonda.
“It’s your son, Dor, I’m afraid, he’s…in trouble,” Grant said. “Bad trouble, unless I’m badly mistaken.”
“What kind of trouble? And what are you doing visiting people at this hour of the night, pray tell?”
“We think he’s the home invader,” Rhonda said abruptly, unable to contain her upset.
“What? What in the world are you saying,” Noreen as good as shouted. Then, glaring at Rhonda, added, “Our family business is none of your business, you ingrate!” There, she thought, I’ve finally said it.
“Nor, you have to listen, just listen,” Grant said heavily. He had a big voice when he chose to use it, though he had learned over the years to soften it in certain situations, sensing its volume came across as aggressive and threatening. But he was too agitated now to modulate it at all.
“We just came from visiting him and he had these…things on his desk that look like a couple of the objects described in the papers as taken from two of the homes that were invaded…”
“And he spoke of a ring he’d hocked, also mentioned some binoculars, a jewelry box apparently full of jewelry, and a…trophy,” Rhonda said, clearly agitated, jiggling her crossed legs nervously, up and down, up and down, one white sandal flipping in the air like a dead fish.
“I think we have to go to the police,” Grant said. “But I wanted to warn you up front first.”
“Warn me? My Andrew couldn’t possibly be involved in those…home invasions. It just isn’t possible. You are jumping to ridiculous conclusions, totally unwarranted. And what about the gun, huh? It said in the paper the…invader had a gun. Andrew does not have a gun.”
“What gun?” Rhonda shrieked.
“One of the victim’s mentioned in one of the newspapers that the man had a gun. It said he waved it around, hit one of them with it or something. Andrew doesn’t have a gun, couldn’t possibly have gun, and even if he did, he is incapable of doing anything like that,” Noreen said, picking up her wine glass and swallowing what was left.
“So you have read about the invasions then,” Grant said.
“Of course I have, everyone has, they’re scaring everyone to death with those stories, especially the interviews in the Gazette…I mean how do you think I feel living alone here? Why do you think I had the chain on my door tonight? There is no way my son had anything to do with those crimes, no way in hell. I can’t believe you’re even considering such a possibility,” Noreen said, her voice high and breaking.
They sat in silence for a moment, then Grant leaned toward his sister intently and said, “What about Dad’s gun, Nor? The one he kept in the trunk in the basement here, the one that Mom wouldn’t allow him to keep anywhere else, the one he brought back from the War and sometimes used to scare off the deer and foxes with in the early days…” he trailed off, and for a moment there was dead silence in the room, Noreen chewing her bottom lip, eyes on the floor.
“It’s gone,” she finally said in a tight voice.
“Gone? Where?” Grant persisted.
“Gone. I got rid of it when I took over the house, threw it out in the trash,” she said.
“Oh,” he said, momentarily silenced.
“He could have bought one,” Rhonda said. “You heard him say he pawned the ring he got from one woman, he could have bought a gun with the money he got.”
“No, he could not because he wouldn’t and I think we’ve gone about as far as we can go here with this. My son may be strange but he is neither a robber nor a…murderer and I can’t imagine how you, of all people, Grant, could ever come to such a conclusion, my own brother,” Noreen said, suddenly standing up and heading out of the room, back toward the front door.
“Nor…”
“And now I think it’s time for you both to leave,” she said. “You’ve done what you came to do, upset me, implied all these terrible things about my one and only son, your nephew for God’s sake, Grant. I want you to leave now or I will call the police,” she said, and without another word, they left.
She slammed the door shut and locked it behind them then turned and rushed down the steep stairs to the dank, dark basement. She had always intended to have it made into a recreation room but never got around to it. She hurried over to the large, old, chipped and rusting trunk shoved into a far corner of the huge cement-floored basement. With some effort, she slammed it open and scrabbled around inside, shoving and pushing the musty smelling contents in all directions, finally throwing everything onto the floor…old rags, tools, pieces of stone ware, clearly intent on finding something that wasn’t there.
After a while she grimaced, left everything where she’d thrown it and returned to the kitchen where she grabbed her handbag and a sweater and hurried out through the kitchen’s side door to her garage and her huge black Caddy. In moments she was out of the garage and heading up the long, sloping driveway to the street.
• • •
“We have to go to the police, Grant,” Rhonda said, as they slowly pulled onto Bradley Boulevard a few blocks from Noreen’s house.
He didn’t respond for a moment, then abruptly pulled over to the side of the road and turned off the ignition.
“What if we’re wrong? What if we are jumping to conclusions because…well, because he’s, as Noreen says, odd?” he said.
“But you saw those things, and you heard him…he as much as confessed he’d done it…or certainly had done something. You heard him, Grant.”
“I didn’t hear exactly what he’d done except that he’d taken those things from someone, Rhonda. I mean you could see he was drunk, really drunk, you could see that, and he probably read about the crimes or saw about them on the TV like we all did, so he could have been…making it up, making it sound as if he’d done it…you know, bragging…” Grant said, trailing off.
“Grant, we saw the objects, heard what he said, drunk or not, evidence is evidence. He was not making it up,” she said, sinking into the far corner of his Jeep Cherokee, hand over her eyes.
“I know, I know,” he sighed, and slowly reached for the ignition.
• • •
She pounded on the door five or six times after ringing the bell and he finally cracked the door open, peering out like a cat from a box.
“Mother,” he said, dragging the word out in a long, soft, sibilant voice. “Is that you?”
It is me,” she said, pushing by him and charging into the house. “I want to know where it is,” she said, without preamble, in a harsh voice.
As if in slow motion, he carefully closed the door behind her and followed her into the living room where she stood glaring at him.
“Where is it?” she repeated. “Get it.”
“Late for you to be visiting, isn’t it?” he mumbled, holding the empty tumbler in front of him. “Wanta drink?” he added dreamily, swishing the remaining ice cubes around in the glass and heading for the kitchen. “I do need a drink.”
“Where is your grandfather’s gun?” she shouted. “Where is it? We have to get rid of it.”
“Grampa’s gun. Why do you want it? I like it, don’t want to get rid of it…do you want to see my treasures? I have some treasures, you know, all my own now…” he trailed off, reversed direction and headed toward his desk. “Gave you the gold chain, ‘member? Didn’t like it so much, knew you would…gold, you always liked gold.”
“You have to give me the gun, Andrew,” she said, more calmly now, firmly , realizing she needed to placate him. “Where is it?”
“The gun,” he said. “Not gold, the gun.” He smiled and picked up the antique knife from the desk. “Gold handle you know,” he said, balancing it in his hand and holding it out toward her.
“Get the gun, Andrew. I’ll wait here. Go and get it and I will take care of it,” she said, quietly now, cajoling him as she had always done when he was upset about something, when things weren’t going the way he wanted them to go.
He looked at her for a moment, frowned, returned the knife to the desk, carefully positioning it the way it had been, beside the colorful curled crystal snake. Then, glass still in hand, he left the room, made his way down the basement stairs where he slowly walked over to the knotty pine trunk he’d made himself in a kind of homage to his grandfather and carefully opened it. He lifted the towel-wrapped gun out, dropped the towel to the floor, and carefully walked back up the stairs to where his mother was waiting, standing at his desk now, peering down at his treasures.
She turned as he approached, a tight look on her face.
“I can’t believe you did those things. Tell me you didn’t do them,” she said, as he gently set his still empty glass down on a coaster on the desk, then lifted the gun and pointed it at her, a sad expression on his face.
“Is this the gun you wanted?” he asked dreamily, and before she could respond, he shot her in the face. Then, as if in a trance, in slow motion, he turned it on himself and fired again.
His grandfather liked to clean it and reload it, saying, “You never know when you might need a weapon.”
• • •
Newspaper Article
Home Invasions, Murder Solved
There could be no trial of Andrew Carpenter Ortega because the now notorious home invader had not only killed himself but, inexplicably, according to his uncle, Grant Daniel Carpenter, his mother, Noreen Belle Carpenter Ortega. Horrifying as the invader’s death is, it brought relief to a community where fear had become palpable.
A hearing with all the evidence was presented as well as testimony from the first three victims, the fourth, Mrs. Ardis Hopp, sadly unable to be there except in spirit, having been viciously murdered.
However, after the hearing it appeared that the three aged female victims had bonded, actually deciding to get together for lunch, inviting their interviewer, Margaret Anne Phillips, along, who was later able to report some of the victims’ conversations.
“Why did he have to tie us up? We’re just old women,” 92-year-old Mrs. Gisele Koch said, while Mrs. Letitia Sharpe, 89, and Mrs. Gertrude Perlmutter, 88, vigorously nodded their heads in ardent agreement.
The three widows were attacked, hogtied and gagged in their own homes, one of them, Mrs. Gertrude Perlmutter, left to spend almost two days bound to a pole in her basement, chewing her way through a duct tape gag and cracking two molars in the process.
“It was awful, just awful, and I’ve had to have so much dental work done that it hurts just talking about it…never mind the bills,” Mrs. Perlmutter said, with a sly smile at her own humor, in spite of it all.
“I can’t imagine why he took my tennis trophy. That is a real puzzlement,” Letitia Sharpe said. “Maybe he thought it was real silver. Didn’t have much of an eye for the real thing I’d say if that was his reason. Except for the gold chain, probably just an impulsive grab I’d say since he left some pretty valuable stuff untouched.”
“Well, my husband loved that antique letter opener he took, the handle was 18K gold, you know, so the man’s taste ran to good and bad I’d say. Edward brought it back from Algeria and set great store by it, wouldn’t let me use it to open letters even, no matter that was what it was made for,” Gisele Koch said, laughing.
“The ring he took and hocked, that was worth a lot. I bought it in Paris on my honeymoon. I just loved it,” 88-year-old Gertrude Perlmutter said, sounding nostalgic. “But it was too large and heavy to wear except for brief periods,” she sighed.
The three women seemed to take comfort in each other’s company and their shared experiences, clearly enjoying their three-hour lunch together at Congressional Country Club, so much so that they decided to do it again.
Afterward, Letitia Sharpe said, “We’re all talkers and have so much in common, we’ve decided to get together again, maybe make a habit of it. Why not?”
“I may have to take a cab, but I’ll be there,” Gisele Koch said. “Count on me.”
“I’ll pick you up, dear, if my daughters don’t take my car away. And if they do, we’ll take a cab together,” Gertrude Perlmutter said.
“We did feel a little sorry for that criminal’s Uncle though,” 89-year-old Letitia Sharpe said. “He looked so…lost. Seems like such a nice man.”
“Lost,” the other two women echoed, nodding their aged heads in emphatic agreement.
• • •
“Well, that’s a relief. Terrible for the last victim’s family, but it’s a relief for the community,” Margaret Anne said to her bridge friends the Wednesday after the final story appeared in the Washington Post. “But still, I can’t help wondering why, what drove him from just stealing to…well, killing. I mean I know he was on medication, or supposed to be, for his problem, and I know the things he was doing can escalate from minor stuff to major violence, but…do you think he hated old women or something?”
“Oh, for heaven’s sake, the man was crazy, sick. I mean I read somewhere that the Uncle said his nephew had been diagnosed with bipolar disorder years ago but what’s that got to do with…well, ‘old women?’” one friend said, then laughing, added, “He probably hated his mother.”
“Why is it always the mother,” someone sighed.
“I don’t think he liked ‘old’ women is what I think,” another friend pronounced, as if stating a fact.
“Easy prey,” someone else said knowingly.
‘Well, he may have hated some woman in his life, but…damn, we’ll never know will we?” Margaret Anne said.
“You’re the writer, Margaret Anne, you figure it out. Or make it up. Now, shut up and deal,” one of them said, and they all dutifully picked up their bridge hands and began to bid.
End