Cheating at Solitaire (Cheating at Solitaire 1)

"Caroline," Nina whispered into the walkie-talkie.

"Caroline," she said again, risking a little more volume. "Do you see lights?" she asked, then nervously added, "Over."

Julia's mind flashed back to the diagrams spread across the changing table. She recalled the layout of the first floor, remembering that the master bedroom was upstairs—upstairs, above the garage. Ridiculous excuses log jammed in her mind. Oh, yes, officers, we're the community yard-sale committee. . . termite. inspectors . . . sleepwalkers?

"Caroline?" Nina asked again, this time not hiding the panic that they were all beginning to feel. A long, eerie silence followed before Caroline's static-riddled voice came through the walkie-talkie.

"Sorry guys. Nick was wet." ! "Caroline," Nina snapped, "are there lights?"

A terribly long moment passed while, presumably, Caroline checked the window. "You're clear, Alpha team, proceed as  planned. Operation is a go."

"Alpha team"? Maybe it wasn't a vacation Caroline needed—maybe it was there a— "Pit bull!" Nina hissed.

Julia spun around to see a big brown dog in a spiked leather collar standing at the top of the concrete stairs. The dog was looking at them as if it didn't know whether they were intruders or circus performers hired for his entertainment. Its front legs were perched on top of a giant bag of dog food. In the glare of the flashlight Julia could just make out the swinging flap of the doggie door.

"Oh, boy," Lance said. He eased toward the now-growling animal. "Hey, boy," he said. "How ya doing there, big guy? You don't need to bark. No. You don't need to bark." Then Julia saw Lance's hand move to his pocket, and moments later he was holding an uncooked hot dog. With a gentle flick, he tossed it onto the concrete landing. But the dog was unsure which piece of meat looked better, the weenie or Lance; it looked between the two of them, sniffing. Then it lowered its head and began to eat.

Julia watched in amazement, but Nina summed it up best: "Holy crap."

Lance didn't stop to marvel at his accomplishment. Instead, he turned to them and whispered, "Let's get out of here, quick. I've only got a few more with me."

"How did you know to bring hot dogs?" Nina asked.

He raised his eyebrows. "Not all crazy people lie."

"Okay," Julia said. "Let's spread out and find that manuscript. It's in a medium-sized brown box."

"You mean like those brown boxes?" Nina said and turned. The beam of her flashlight swept across the garage, illuminating a mountainous pile of boxes, each nearly identical to the one Myrtle had hauled from Caroline's curb.

"What kind of freak is she?" Julia asked, no longer trying to mask her voice.

"The kind who's gonna send us to prison if she finds us," Lance said softly. "Now let's look and get out of here."

With the mountain before them, it was pretty safe to assume that new arrivals were at the top. Plus, upon closer inspection, Julia noticed that not all of the boxes were plain or brown. Some had mailing labels, or black-and-white pictures of TVs and computer monitors, with instructions written in English, Spanish, and Japanese.

"It was plain?" Lance asked.

"Yes. A plain brown box. No writing of any kind. Probably two feet square."

"Like that one?" Nina asked, and sent a beam of light upward to a shelf that must have been fifteen feet above the concrete floor. The three of them stood with their heads craned back so far that they could have seen straight up to Heaven if it hadn't been for Myrtle's bedroom directly above them.

"How in the world did she get it up there?" Julia asked.

"You're sure that's the one?" Lance asked.

There wasn't a doubt in Julia's mind.

Lance steadied a ladder while Julia climbed almost to its highest rung, teetering. Don't look down, don't look down, she chanted to herself. She pried open the four corners of the box and, with a mini-flashlight in her mouth, saw what she hadn't seen in years. She pulled out early drafts of Table for One, old short stories she desperately wanted to stop and read, letters she'd received from Caroline and Nina that had inspired her to keep writing.

"We don't have time for a stroll down memory lane," Nina whispered. "Find the blasted book!"

Julia dug in again, wincing with paper cuts as her hands slid down between the pages, until panic began to set in. "It's not in here. I don't believe it. It's not. . ."

"Are you sure?" Lance asked.

"It's not in here!"

"Get down," Lance said, gesturing to the safety of the floor.

She stared down at him, so calm and safe on the ground beneath her, then she considered hurling herself off the ladder. Better to end the humiliation here.

"Just get down," he soothed. "We'll figure something out."

Julia began the long descent. At the base of the ladder, Nina put her arm around Julia's shoulders to comfort her as Lance asked, "What was it in?"

"That box," she cried, pointing again to the top shelf.

"I mean the manuscript, specifically. It wasn't just loose in there, was it?"

"No," Julia said, remembering. "It was in one of those accordion-type files that expands and has a flap that goes over and a piece of cord that wraps around."

"Okay," Lance said. "You and Nina are going to go home now, and I'm going to go into the house and look for that file." "Nuh-uh," Nina said.

"Three of us will be three times faster," Julia suggested.

"Yes, and three times louder," Lance replied. "That triples our chances of getting caught, and we haven't exactly been good at this so far."

"I'm not leaving you," Julia said defiantly.

"Me either," Nina said, sounding offended that she might get cut out of her own master plan.

Lance looked at them, seemingly weighing his options. "Fine. But we're just doing the downstairs. Agreed?"

Nina and Caroline looked at each other. "Agreed," they said in unison.

Lance handed the dog another weenie, and they were heading into the kitchen when Nina stopped and said, "My flashlight! I laid it down to help hold the ladder. I'll be right back."

"No," Lance said. "You two go on. I'll get it."

He disappeared before the walkie-talkie came to life with Caroline's muffled cry: "Abort!"

Julia and Nina froze.

Again, Caroline hissed, "Abort! Abort! Abort!"

Julia looked around for Lance; Nina was running in place, rotating from the waist up like a compass spinning out of control looking for north. All Julia could think of was Lance, finding Lance, getting Lance out of there.

"Closet!" Nina grabbed Julia and squeezed in beside her just as light came streaming through the frosted glass of the pantry door.

"Who's there?" Myrtle yelled. "You! Who are you?"

No! Julia thought but couldn't scream. She saw a solid, six-two form walk in front of the frosted glass.

"Oh, hoo!" Myrtle squealed like a schoolgirl. "This is so exciting! I knew my Johnny wouldn't forget my birthday," she said. "Every year he does this!" she exclaimed with glee. "Every year he gets me a stripper!"

Chapter Twenty Two

WAY #56: Turn up the music and dance.

There's only one remedy that's certain to take the blues away. If Put on your favorite CD, turn up the volume, and dance like  nobody's watching, because, lucky for you, nobody is!

" I've heard of cop strippers before, but you must be a new £ kind," Myrtle said, pondering it. "You must be a robber 5 stripper!"

Lance tried to remember the cab ride. He'd heard a good offer from a beautiful woman, but somehow that cab had brought him to a cluttered kitchen where he was being propositioned by a geriatric klepto. Next time, Lance told himself, keep walking.

"So, whatcha waiting on? Neither one of us is getting any younger."

Caroline had been right about the whiskey, Lance realized.

Myrtle was sloshed. She wasn't stumbling or slurring her words like a cheap, once-in-a-blue-moon drunk. Instead, she had the body control of a full-fledged alcoholic. Lance knew both kinds of drunks better than he would have liked; that's something that comes with the territory when working behind a bar. Who can drive? Who can't? Who's faking sobriety? Myrtle was an accomplished fake, but her glazed expression and ruddy skin betrayed her. The fact that she had two different color socks peeking out from beneath her hot-pink muumuu didn't help her case, either.

Lance was formulating a plan when he heard the faint hum of walkie-talkie static and knew immediately that the situation was even worse than he'd thought—Julia and Nina were still in the house.

"My Johnny didn't pay you to stand," Myrtle bellowed, shaking her curler-covered head. Then she began chanting, "Strip. Strip. Strip. Strip."

"I think maybe we should go in here," Lance said loudly, and began to steer her out of the kitchen, away from the sounds of static and spilling cereal. "I think it would be best if you sat here, with your back to the patio doors," he practically yelled. "There. That's perfect. You just sit there and keep your eyes on me."

"That's our cue!" Julia said to Nina.

She eased the pantry door open just in time to hear Lance yell, "Wait! Why are you going to the kitchen "

Okay, already, Julia thought. We're not deaf. She eased the door closed.

"I can't believe that old bat gets to see him naked," Nina complained as she and Julia stood, cramped and motionless. "If anyone should get to see him naked, it's us. We're the ones who—"

"Got him into this mess," Julia said, shutting Nina up.

They heard heavy footsteps outside, then the clank of ice in a glass and a bottle opening. Julia smelled liquor and hoped tint Myrtle would continue in her alcoholic stupor and wake tomorrow morning thinking the whole thing had been a dream. She also hoped the old bat wouldn't look in the pantry. She didn't want to think about what else Myrtle might be looking at by the end of the night.

"Don't you boys usually bring music?" Myrtle yelled.

"Oh, but I'm a robber stripper," Lance said. "I'm supposed to steal music from you."

Myrtle seemed pleased by the sound of that. "Sure," she said. "Just let me put on an album."

Julia heard the shuffling of feet going to the far end of the kitchen, and then nothing. A long moment passed before the door flew open.

"Ah!" she and Nina gasped. Julia held up a hand to shield herself against the glare of Lance's flashlight.

"Get out!" Lance hissed, dragging Julia by the arm toward the door. "Now! Go! Get!" And with one solid push, they were locked on the other side of Crazy Myrtle's patio doors. Julia turned and bolted away from the glass, but Nina stayed behind. "Do you think she'd notice if we stood here and watched?" she asked.

"Why isn't he back yet?" Julia asked while pacing a hole in the playroom carpet.

"Maybe he takes it off real slow," Nina said from her post by the telescope.

"Nina!" Julia cried, then realized her best friend had a point. Let's see . . . if it takes a minute per shoe, two minutes for a shirt? Pants? How long for the pants? She gave herself a mental slap.