Linwood Barclay
Take Your Breath Away
For Neetha
Prologue
“We can simply kill them, but there are alternatives you might want to consider.”
“If we even have any,” Brie Mason said. “Maybe it’s just one.”
“Oh,” said the man with the name charlie stitched to the front of his gray coveralls, “you never have just one.”
Brie felt her heart sink. “You’re joking.”
Charlie was on his knees in front of the kitchen sink, the lower cupboard doors open, waving a flashlight around in there.
“Well, mice aren’t exactly loners, if you know what I mean. They’re social little creatures and they like hanging out with other little mousies.” Charlie squinted. “I’m seeing what could be a couple turds back there under the trap.”
“I haven’t put out any traps,” Brie said.
“Not that kind of trap,” Charlie said. “The drain, under the sink.”
“Oh, of course,” Brie said, thinking she should know better, what with her husband being a contractor and all. She leaned back on the kitchen island, arms folded across her chest in a mock-supervisory pose. “So, by turds, you mean droppings.”
“Looks like it,” he said. “You had mice before?”
“Not that I know of. We haven’t been here all that long. Can you, I mean, can you tell how old those droppings might be?”
Charlie chuckled. “Well, I don’t exactly know how to do carbon dating on them or anything. If you’re not sure you have them, what prompted you to call?”
“I thought I heard something last night,” she said. “Some rustling. I was sitting here in the kitchen and it was very quiet. My husband’s away, and—”
She stopped herself. Brie hadn’t meant to say that. You don’t let on that your husband is away when you have a strange man in the house. Not that Charlie was strange. He was a state-licensed exterminator, wasn’t he? Although, she had to admit, he was a bit of an oddball. Huge, graying handlebar mustache with waxed, upturned peaks like he’d just come off the set of some Wild West flick. Put a top hat on him and he’d look like the guy who ties the girl to the tracks. Before he’d come into the house he’d stood on the front step finishing a cigarette right down to the filter, drawing in hard on those last couple of puffs as if he needed them to sustain him through whatever was to come.
Once he entered the house, Brie nearly passed out from the smell of tobacco, which seemed to waft off his entire body. Those coveralls, she figured, hadn’t seen a dry cleaner’s since Will Smith had a sitcom.
Aroma aside, he seemed professional enough, but still, you didn’t blurt out that you were on your own. She blamed her carelessness on the fact that she was already on edge. Bigger things on her mind than a few mice finding their way into the house.
“Out of town on business, is he?” Charlie asked, turning off the flashlight, putting one hand on the counter’s edge to help pull himself up. “Knees not what they used to be,” he said.
“I expect him back anytime now,” Brie said, nervously twisting the silver choker necklace at the base of her throat. The truth was, Andrew wasn’t due home from their place on the lake until sometime tomorrow, probably late Sunday afternoon. Of course, that could change, if things went the way Brie thought they might. His friend and business partner, Greg Raymus, was up there with him, at his own lake house, a stone’s throw away. They’d both gone up Friday, and Brie had a feeling their guys’ weekend might not go as smoothly as planned.
“What sort of work does he do?” Charlie asked.
“A contractor,” Brie said. “Small- to medium-sized projects. Strip malls, town houses, fast-food joints, that kind of thing.”
Charlie made a face, his eyes darting about the kitchen for half a second, as though making a judgment. “Okay,” he said.
Brie laughed nervously. “Let me guess. You’re thinking this isn’t much of a house for a contractor.”
“Didn’t say that.”
“What you see here is the before picture. The place needs a lot of work. We’re at that point where we have to decide whether the place can be renovated, then maybe flip it, or whether it makes more sense to tear the entire house down and rebuild. We’re one of the oldest houses on Mulberry.” She shrugged. “In the meantime, I’d rather not be sharing the place with little furry rodents.”
He smiled, showing off two rows of brown, tobacco-stained teeth. “Well, I don’t blame you there. There’s a couple things I can do.” He sniffed, ran his index finger across the bottom of his nose, careful not to disrupt the perfect symmetry of his mustache. “I can put some traps around, like glue traps and the conventional spring-loaded ones, bait ’em with peanut butter. Put them in the cupboard here, under the stove, out in the garage. Or I can put some poison around in all the same places. Strong stuff. You got pets?”
“No.”
“That’s good. You wouldn’t want them nibbling away on that stuff and getting sick. Downside of the poison is the mice’ll crawl away somewhere inside your walls and die and stink for a few days until they dry out pretty much to dust. You ever start opening up the walls you might find some tiny, furry little mouse skeletons.”
That gave Brie a shiver.
Charlie paused, appeared thoughtful, and then said, “And there is one other way you could go.”
Brie waited while Charlie opened up a large tool kit that looked like something her husband took with him when he went fishing, to hold everything from lures to a first-aid kit. But Charlie’s box was bigger. He took out a gray plastic rectangular container, no more than five inches long, about the same shape and size as a stick of butter.
“You see there’s a little door at the end,” he said. “You put some bait inside, leave the door open, and when the mouse goes in it triggers the door to close.”
He demonstrated.
“So when you see the door has dropped, you know you’ve got him. Then you can take him outside, open the door, and set him free.”
“Oh,” Brie said. “A humane trap.”
Charlie nodded.
“But won’t he come back inside again?” she asked.
“So, you go around the house and look for ways he and his friends might be coming in. Fill in the cracks, plug holes. Check dryer and stove vents, in case they’re getting in that way. I know it’s not as effective as killin’ them dead, but it’s something to consider.”
Charlie’s expression turned solemn. “What people forget is, animals have souls, too. Whether it’s us, a dog, a cat, even some lowly mouse, we’re all God’s creatures, you know.”
Brie said, “That’s... an interesting philosophy from someone in your line of work.”
He shrugged. “You know, sometimes I’ll find something in someone’s house and remove it, but I won’t kill it. And I won’t set it free, either, in the woods or whatever. I’ll keep it and take care of it.”
“What, in a cage?”
Charlie nodded. “I got lots of little critters I look after. Feed ’em, nurture them.”
“Well,” Brie said, not sure what to make of that.
“Anyway, back to business. I don’t know for sure whether you’ve got an infestation or not, so let me ask you this: Do you bake?”
“I’m sorry?”
“Muffins? Cupcakes? You make those?”
“Um, not that much. I’m not exactly the world’s greatest chef. Andrew, he cooks some.” She grinned. “We do a lot of takeout.”
Charlie looked disappointed. “Do you have any flour?”
“Flour? Like, for cooking?”
“Yup.”
She went over to one of the cupboards, opened it, and pointed to a tin on the first shelf. She brought it down and pried off the lid.