Fridays are supposed to be easy. I'd had the sort of day that could have only been made worse by running over a box of roofing nails on the way home. I hoped to improve it by spending the night decorating my Christmas tree and plotting my gift list. The tree wasn't big, and the list wasn't long, but it still might get me in the spirit of the season despite the fact I worked in an insane asylum masquerading as a personal injury law firm which passed out lumps of coal as Christmas bonuses.
My name is Jamie Winters. I'm in my early thirties, not married, have no kids, and am mostly okay with that. I'd worked at a local law firm since the invention of lawyers—or maybe it only felt that way—and I still hadn't worked my way out of a secretarial position. They'd spiced up my title to legal assistant, but that was only aesthetics; the paycheck remained vanilla. I still made just enough to keep me in Payless shoes and Walmart clothes. To be fair, there weren't any positions to promote me to. The bookkeeper, paralegal, and lawyer jobs were all taken. I was okay with that, too. I'd seen first-hand the nut jobs who traipsed through the doors, and I didn't mind limiting my exposure.
In keeping with the holiday season, there was a festive red light on every corner on my way home. I was waiting at the stop line when a red El Camino rocketed past me, tires squealing. I caught a glimpse of a lot of boxes and containers bouncing around in its bed before it shot into the intersection against the light, barely missed being T-boned by a mail delivery truck cruising along on the cross street, and disappeared in a puff of blue smoke.
Consumed as I was pretending to be with the spirit of Christmas generosity, I bit back the impolite words that leapt to mind and focused instead on the El Camino itself. I was a fan of older cars, a trait which worried my mother and pleased my father, and I hadn't seen an El Camino in years. But I indulged my affection for older cars by driving one—an '80s vintage Ford Escort I'd bought from my father when he'd gotten tired of feeding it hundred-dollar bills.
I managed to get home without witnessing any more red light abuse, and I parked in the driveway behind my landlord's Jeep. It had started snowing, thick flakes that immediately coated the ground and brightened the world, if not my outlook. Especially when I saw my landlord, Curt Emerson, standing at the hood of the Jeep, talking on his cell phone. Ordinarily Curt was something to see, but he was wearing a bulky winter coat that covered up his studliness.
I climbed out of the Escort, slung my handbag over my shoulder, and went to see what could be important enough to keep him standing outside in a snowstorm when he could have been nice and toasty and shirtless in his own apartment downstairs.
I stood next to him, shivering, until he hung up. "What's going on?"
He jabbed a thumb toward the house next door, a cheerful yellow Cape Cod with white shutters and window boxes, empty at the moment. "Jack seems to be missing." Jack Angelino had lived next door to Curt forever, and he was the ideal neighbor. His grass was mowed in the summer, his leaves were raked in the fall, and his snow was eventually shoveled in the winter, after he got done playing in it. I would have gone out with him in a second, except he was anywhere between 75 and 102. But he was adorable, short and round with a cottony white beard, a perpetually happy demeanor, and owner of a Flexible Flyer.
"Doesn't he go visit his kids for the holidays?"
Curt nodded. "One of his sons called, and said he didn't make it. He asked me to check the house."
"Do you think he had an accident?" I squinted at the house through the blowing snow. The living room light was on, but I knew that was on a timer. Everything else was dark.
"I hope not." Curt hesitated. "He keeps a spare key by the back door. You think I ought to go in and look around?"
"It might make his son feel better," I said.
"Depends what I find." Curt took a deep breath. I could see he really didn't want to go in the house. Curt felt the same way I did about Jack. Neither of us wanted to see anything bad happen to him. He was like the grandpa of the neighborhood.
"Want me to go with you?" I asked. Not that I wanted to be the one to find the poor old guy lying at the foot of the stairs or anything. But I really didn't expect that. The house looked empty. Probably Jack was out Christmas shopping.
The wind took a shift and suddenly came in harder and icier. I was about to retract my offer and go straight upstairs to a mug of hot chocolate and a pair of warm sweatpants when Curt showed me his dimple and nodded. I was a sucker for that dimple. At least that wasn't hidden under his Michelin Man coat.
It took us a few minutes of poking through the snow to locate the spare key inside a little garden gnome by the back door. Inside, the house was dark but warm. No sign of Jack. No sign of a struggle. The coat rack was empty of Jack's red goose down coat. An unlit Christmas tree stood in a corner of the living room, beautifully decorated. No wrapped gifts underneath. We went upstairs and found more of the same, minus the tree. The master bedroom was neat as a pin, the bed a smooth, wrinkle-free field of cotton. The bathroom toiletries were corralled neatly into a little basket on the vanity counter.
We stood in the upstairs hallway, considering our next move. The furnace fired on, providing white noise in the otherwise silent house. Usually I didn't like empty houses. Probably some neurosis going back to my childhood. I didn't feel settled in them and felt the need to constantly look over my shoulder.
I glanced through an open doorway into what I guessed must be a guest bedroom, fully made up in coordinating ocean blue drapes and comforter. Even the neck roll and throw pillows piled on the bed complemented the South Sea vibe. "He makes me look like a slob," I said, thinking out loud.
Curt grinned. "Honey, you are a slob."
"I am not," I said hotly. "I just have better things to do than dusting." Like sleeping. Apparently I couldn't get enough sleep. I didn't like getting up before eight, and I was usually asleep by ten. It was like I was trapped in perpetual adolescence. Lord knows I was built that way.
Curt sighed. "I guess we should check the basement while we're here. Then I can give Pete the all-clear."
I did a gallant hand wave. "After you."
"Don't push me down the steps," he said over his shoulder. "I don't really think you're a slob. I think you have a time management problem."
"Maybe you're right." Still, my palms itched to plant themselves on his back as I followed him down. "For instance, it might've been a bad time management decision to come here when I could be home, eating dinner."
"There'll be a hot plate of ravioli waiting for you when this is done," he said, and I took my hands back and shoved them in my pockets.
Jack's house was a carbon copy of Curt's but flipped around, so that where Curt's basement door was toward the left of the kitchen, in Jack's it was to the right. We stood in front of it, Curt's hand on the knob, hesitating.
"He's not down there," I told him, my fingers firmly crossed behind my back.
"Yeah. I know he's not." Curt didn't open the door. "So where is he in this weather? Where do we look when we don't find him?"
My chest tightened because the obvious answer was local hospitals. "Let's worry about that if we need to," I said.
"Yeah." Curt twisted the knob but didn't pull. "You know Jack's been slipping a little. Forgetting things."
I blinked in surprise. "I hadn't noticed."
"He tries to hide it. Sometimes he can." A shadow crossed Curt's face. "And sometimes he can't." Curt had lost his Aunt Ronnie to Alzheimer's. Years later, it was still a painful place for him to go.
"But he lives alone," I said. "How bad can he be?"
"Bad enough that his kids are thinking of moving him into assisted living," Curt said.
My heart sank at the thought of Jack gone from the neighborhood. "Then he probably ran away," I said. "And I don't blame him." I tipped my head toward the door. "Let's find out for sure."
I don't like empty houses much, but I don't like basements at all. Too many spiders and dark corners and weird sounds. I hadn't met a basement yet that I liked. Until Jack's. Going down the steps into Jack's basement was like stepping into a cozy kitchen filled with the good smells of chocolate chip cookies and gingerbread on a cold day. It was warm and welcoming and, when Curt flipped a switch, it was bright. We stood in the center of the room with our mouths hanging open. A model train track ran around the perimeter of the room, the train now sitting silently in its miniature depot, all the little buildings of the town shuttered and still. The miniaturized landscape was sprinkled with fluffy white cotton and silvery glitter to simulate snow. A second Christmas tree, grander than the one upstairs, stood to the right, fully decorated and sparkling with yards of tinsel and garland. Two metal folding tables stood dead center, loaded with toys in various stages of assembly. A pegboard on the wall held an array of hand tools. A single box sat on the table, wrapped in shimmering red gift paper. No name tag. "Wow," I said. "Would you look at all this. It's Santa's workshop."
"I didn't know Jack built toys." Curt picked up a few random pieces, studied them, and put them back where he'd found them. "He does good work."
"Who do you think all this is for?" I asked. "This is an awful lot of toys."
"Maybe he's a closet do-gooder." Curt walked over to take a closer look at the train set.
"You know, he might be one of those people who everyone thinks is dirt poor," I said, "and when he passes away, it turns out he's got a million dollars stuffed in his mattress." That was a lot of dollars. Probably if a few of those disappeared, they'd never be missed. I backed casually towards the stairs. "I think I have to run upstairs and use the bathroom."
"Don't even think about it," Curt said. "We've done what we came here to do. Jack's not here. I'll call Pete back and let him know, and then we'll go eat."
"Are you sure?" I asked. "'Cause I can be gone and back like that."
"Do you want dinner or not?" Curt hustled me toward the stairs, flipping the light switch on his way past so the basement was draped in darkness again. Now that I knew what was down there, it didn't scare me in the least.
I took the steps two at a time anyway. Never hurts to be careful.