He pinned me to the floor with his body, his strong hands gripping my arms to my sides, his legs weighting mine. I lost my mind. I bit him on the ear.
“Goddamn! Stop it!” He never lessened his grip, which was what I was working for, but brought his forehead down on mine, using my own trick against me. He hadn’t used full force, not by a long shot, but I gasped with pain and felt tears form in my eyes.
He moved his head down to my ear, so his cheek was against mine, an oddly intimate contact. I heaved and bucked against him, but I could feel the weakness in my movements. “Listen,” he hissed. And then as I opened my mouth to scream, hoping to throw him off guard for a second, he said the one thing that could have achieved a truce.
“They’re breaking in,” he whispered. “For God’s sake, just shut up and be still. They’ll kill us both.”
I know how to shut up and I know how to be still, though
I couldn’t stop quivering. My eyes finally adjusted to the near-darkness of the closet, and by the faint light coming in through the partly open door, I saw that the man on top of me was Mr. Black Ponytail.
After a second, I wasn’t too surprised.
Those eyes were not focused on me, but staring out the closet door as the man listened to the faint sounds that were just now penetrating my tangled state of fear and rage.
He bent back so his mouth was by my ear, his newly shaven cheek again resting against mine. “It’s gonna take them a while. They don’t know shit about breaking and entering,” he said in a voice so low it seemed to come from somewhere inside my own head. “Now, who the fuck are you?”
Through clenched teeth I said, “I am the fucking maid.” Every muscle in my body was tensed, and the shivering would not stop no matter how I willed myself to be still. I began to make myself relax, knowing that if I didn’t, I would remain weak and disadvantaged.
“That’s better. We’re on the same side,” whispered the man as he felt my body soften and still beneath him.
“Who are you?” I asked him.
“I,” he told my ear, “am the fucking detective. ” He shifted on top of me. He wasn’t as calm or cool as he was trying to sound. His body was reacting to its proximity with mine, and he was getting uncomfortable. “If I let you go, are you gonna give me any trouble? They’re much more dangerous than I am.”
I thought about it. I had no idea if he really was a detective. And whose detective? FBI? Private? ATF? The Shakespeare police force? Winthrop County?
I heard glass shattering.
“They’re in,” he breathed into my ear. “Listen, the game plan has changed.”
“Huh,” I said contemptuously and almost inaudibly. I hated sports metaphors. I felt much better almost immediately. Angry is better than scared or confused.
“They’ll kill us if we’re caught,” he told me again. His lips, so close to my ear, suddenly made me want to shiver again in a completely different way. His body was talking to mine at great length, no matter what his mouth was saying.
“Now, what I want you to do, when they’re all in the house,” he whispered breathlessly, “is start screaming. I’m going out the front door, circling around to the alley to get their license plate number, identify the car, so I can try to find where they go after this.”
I wondered what his original plan had been. This one seemed awful haphazard. His hands, instead of gripping my arms, were rubbing them slowly.
“They’ll know it was me and come after me.”
“If you’re never in their sight, they won’t believe you saw them,” he breathed. “Give me three minutes, then scream.”
“No,” I said very softly. “I’ll turn on the vacuum cleaner.”
I sensed a certain amount of exasperation rolling off Mr. Ponytail. “OK,” he agreed. “Whatever.”
Then he slid off me, and rose to his feet. He held out his hand and I took it without thinking. He pulled me up as easily as he’d helped me do chin-ups that morning. He gave me a sharp nod to indicate the clock was running, and then he was gone, easing himself out of the closet, through Beanie’s bedroom, and presumably down the little hall that led to the foyer of the house. His exit was much more subtle than the burglars’ entrance.
I peered at my big-faced man’s watch, actually timing the self-proclaimed detective, trying not to wonder why I was doing what he said. At two and a half minutes, I risked stepping out of the closet. I could hear the intruders clearly now. Once they’d gotten into the house, they’d abandoned all attempts at silence.
After plugging in the vacuum cleaner, I suddenly began belting out “Whistle While You Work.” Without waiting to assess the reaction, I stepped on the “On” button and the vacuum cleaner roared to life. I was careful to keep my back to the bedroom door as I began industriously vacuuming, because I could see in Beanie’s dressing table mirror if I was being stalked. I caught a shadow swooping across the mirror, but its owner was in the act of departure. I’d spooked them.
When I felt sure they were gone, I turned off the vacuum cleaner. Watchfully, I once again toured the Winthrop house. One of the sliding glass doors leading to the pool area was broken. Looking across the covered pool, I saw one of the wooden gates standing ajar. The Winthrops needed a full-fledged security system, I thought severely. Then I realized I would have to clean up all the glass, and I found myself irrationally peeved.
Also, I had to call the police.
There was no way around it.
Should I tell them about Black Ponytail? If it weren’t for Claude, I’d lie in a jiffy. All my contacts with the police had been painful. But I trusted Claude. I should tell him the truth. But what could I tell him?
I was fairly sure Howell Jr. must have admitted Black Ponytail to the house or given him the keys. My doubts about their relationship recurred. But no matter what that relationship was, it seemed to me I’d be violating whatever loyalty I was supposed to have to the Winthrop family if I told the police Black Ponytail had been already concealed in the house, anticipating this very break-in.
This was knotty.
I called the police station and reported the break-in, and had a few moments to think hard.
The safest thing was a straight break-in. I don’t know nothin‘, boss.
It helped immensely that Claude didn’t come. Dedford Jinks, the detective who’d so frightened Bobo, and two patrolmen responded to my call. Claude was in a meeting with the county judge and the mayor and had not been told about the incident, I gathered from listening to the patrolmen.
Dedford was a good ole guy with a beer gut hanging over a worn belt buckle he’d won in his calf-roping days. He had thin graying hair, a thin compressed mouth, and a ruddy complexion. Dedford was nobody’s fool.
My story was this: I’d heard little noises, but thought that a member of the family had come in. From then on, I told the truth: I’d plugged in the vacuum and turned it on, I’d heard a big commotion, I hadn’t seen anyone.
After they’d checked out the backyard and found a gate unlocked, and many footprints in the flower beds, the police said I could go.
“I have to clean up,” I said, gesturing to the glass on the Winthrops’ thick hunter-green carpet. They’d gathered up the biggest pieces for fingerprint testing, but there were lots of fragments.
“Oh,” said one of the patrolmen, disconcerted. “Well, OK.”
Then Howell burst into the house, moving faster than I’d ever seen him move. His face was red.