Chapter 8

 

Gracie Nelson pulled her gray minivan into the parking lot at Amber’s building a few blocks from the Arizona State campus. She’d been here before—to the tiny efficiency apartment with the personality of a shoebox. The lack of ambiance didn’t especially surprise her. Amber lived in a mental and virtual world where her enjoyment came from cyberspace. A dwelling with no views and few other amenities, and the constant traipsing of college students probably didn’t bother her at all. For Gracie, college and that whole scene felt a lifetime away.

Her own home in Mesa was a decently sized split-level, nothing grand. At least they enjoyed a few niceties such as a spacious kitchen and a backyard swimming pool, which saved her sanity when the outside temperature was a million degrees and her two kids and all their friends began to make her crazy within the confines of the house. She leaned back in her seat, took a deep breath and composed a short text message on her phone.

Within a moment, the response: BTS

What? Oh—Be there soon.

Amber emerged from the walkway between two buildings, dressed in black leggings, black hoodie, a black backpack slung over her shoulder. Seriously? Although dark, it was more than eighty degrees outside. The outfit must be stifling.

“Hey,” Amber said, plopping into the front passenger seat, tossing her backpack behind.

“Hey.”

“So?”

“I’m still up for it. You?”

A row of shiny white teeth glimmered in the darkness. “Oh yeah. Let’s do this thing.”

Gracie put the van in gear and backed out of her parking spot.

“Oh, I printed out those bank statements I found last night,” Amber said with a nod toward her pack.

“Sandy’s gonna have a blast with that.”

Gracie made the turn onto University Drive where the traffic was backed up. College towns. The same anywhere, she supposed. By the time they reached Price and the 101, the quieter roadway felt more like that in her own area. People here had eight-to-five jobs and many had to arise before dawn to do their hour-plus commutes. Bedtime came early, with dinner and homework occupying the early evening hours.

She exited at Thomas Road in Scottsdale and made her way to the address Amber read off for Holbrook Plumbing. She could have programmed her GPS to take her directly there, but all this cloak and dagger stuff had made her paranoid about some authority later being able to go back to her logs and find out where she’d been this date and time. Tonight’s little foray needed to stay completely anonymous.

They drove past the Holbrook shop once at normal speed, Amber studying the building while Gracie concentrated on not being noticeable. Holbrook Plumbing had display windows showing sinks and bathtubs, softly lit with low indirect lights. A metal grate protected the large plate glass from bricks hurled by smash-and-grab robbers. As if someone would go to all that effort and then try to haul away a bathtub. The neighborhood was one of small businesses, all closed at this hour. There was a sandwich shop, a dry cleaner, a shoe repair (did anyone actually repair their shoes anymore?), and a pawnshop with metal shutters over the windows and door. Several other storefronts seemed geared toward the same clientele as Holbrook’s—hardware, carpet and an electrician’s place. It was a small neighborhood completely devoid of big-box stores, like a slice of 1970 somehow out of sync with the rest of the mega-metropolis Phoenix had become.

Amber pointed at the pawnshop. “What’s that?”

Gracie wracked her memory to think whether she’d actually ever been in one. Nope. “I remember my dad talking about them. When he was in the Air Force, there were pawnshops near the base. Guys who couldn’t quite squeak by until payday would take something of value—their guitar or the ring they’d planned to give their girl the next time on leave—hock it for some cash, bail it out when their pay came, provided they weren’t in even more debt by then. I suppose it was the days before kids just ran up credit card debt to cover everything.”

Amber nodded as if she still didn’t really get it.

Gracie circled the block and parked down the street from Holbrook Plumbing. “Was there any sign of somebody around?”

“No one,” Amber assured her. “But there was a security company sticker on the front door.”

“You could see that from the car?”

“Yeah, well, I’m blessed with excellent vision.” She sat facing the darkened building.

“And how are we getting past that?”

Amber turned to face Gracie, taking the tone of a kindergarten teacher explaining the colors of the rainbow. “The company was Franklin Security. They sell one of two very basic alarm systems. The Bell 47206 or the Bell 38921. Either one is pretty much a piece of cake if you know the codes.”

“But we don’t know the codes.”

“You don’t know the codes. Don’t sweat this, Gracie.”

I’m risking arrest for this, based on a twenty-one-year-old telling me not to sweat it? Gracie nearly reached for the ignition key again.

“Hey, I’ve never let you down yet, have I?” Amber said with an impish grin.

“I’ve never done anything like this with you,” Gracie pointed out.

Amber tilted her head, acknowledging the truth of the statement. “Come on. I looked it up on Google Earth. There’s a fence around the back of the property, which we’ll reach from the alley. It looks like chain link, which is an easy climb. The back door has a keypad and I’ll get the alarm for us. Bada-bing—we’re in.”

“Bada-bing? Where do you come up with this stuff?”

“Eh, me and my mom watched The Sopranos a lot.”

Gracie reached for the ignition again.

“Pull around the corner and go in the alley,” Amber said. “But we probably shouldn’t park directly behind. In case there’s cameras or something.”

“You know how to use the keypad and bypass the alarm, but you don’t know whether they have cameras or not?”

A shrug was the only answer she got. I need to go home right this minute, do not pass Go, do not collect anything, Gracie thought.

She drove into the alley and followed Amber’s instructions as they got out of the car.

The chain link fence surrounded a small dirt yard, a place where the discarded toilets and tubs went when they got replaced by shiny new ones during a remodel job. Three company trucks were backed into spaces to their right, two big dumpsters sat on the left, one of them sprouting the shaggy ends of nasty old carpeting. Amber paused in the shadows, taking a full two minutes to scope out the place from outside the chain link. The whole area was dead quiet. She coughed loudly—no response. When she was satisfied no guard or watchdogs were about to pounce forth, she slung her backpack off her shoulder and unzipped the front compartment.

“Whaaat’s thaaat?” Gracie asked, stretching out the words in the singsong way she used when she thought her kids were smuggling Oreos to bed.

“Lock picks. I think it’ll be quicker to get the padlock off this gate than to scale the fence and deal with the razor wire at the top.”

“You didn’t mention razor wire when you were talking about Google Earth,” Gracie reminded.

“It doesn’t show up real well in those images.” Amber opened her little kit and inserted a tiny metal stick into the hefty padlock.

Gracie nervously scanned from one end of the alley to the other. Movement behind the pawnshop caught her eye, but it turned out to be a plastic shopping bag flapping in the breeze.

“Okay, done.” Amber said. She slid the rolling gate open a few inches and squeezed herself through.

“Look, I’ve had two kids. I need a couple more inches of space than you, Miss Skinny.”

The gate rolled easily enough for Gracie and they pulled it closed behind them. “In case someone comes along,” Amber said.

They edged their way through the clutter using small penlights from Amber’s pack rather than going down the driveway, which felt a little too exposed by the security lights at the corners of the property. Gracie noted that Amber also hadn’t mentioned those when she cased the place on Google.

A small loading dock filled the left half of the back façade of the building, nothing sized large enough for semi-trucks, but adequate for mid-sized delivery trucks to bring new stock. Perfect for Holbrook’s own small fleet to load up the tubs and sinks and granite slabs they would take out to their jobs. To the right of the concrete dock was a walk-through door, solid metal, and beside that was a numeric keypad. Amber headed directly for it.

“See? Told you it would be a Bell.” She pulled out her phone and went to some internet site she’d already bookmarked.

Gracie felt like an actor on a stage, the way the back porchlight shone directly down on her head. She shrank to the shadows, her heart going into overdrive at every tiny sound. Amber pecked away at the phone until she found what she wanted. She took a deep breath and began pressing digits on the keypad.

“If this doesn’t work we’ll just jimmy the door and then I can disconnect the alarm wires once we’re inside,” she said, without looking directly at Gracie. No big deal.

Oh, god, what am I doing here? Gracie sent a silent wish heavenward that she would very soon be safely home in her own bed next to her sweetheart of a husband, rather than calling him from jail begging him to come bail her out.