Somewhere a car started. In second gear now, faster, the noise was drawing closer. The car was now in view, heading toward him. Moses hunched his shoulders and walked deeper into the subdivision, heading toward the wall at the river. The mid-range car drove past him, an older white woman at the wheel. Keep on walking, searching. He reached the last T. The street now ran right and left, parallel to the wall. The houses really did all look the same.
Systematically or instinctively? He should go to the right in order to check out the furthest back corner of the gated community, but he had a feeling he should head in the other direction if he wanted to find the house.
The lots along the wall were wider than the others he’d seen, with lawns and gardens along the front and both sides of the houses. Who was watching the footage from the cameras? And how many had been put up in here anyway? He had already seen two, so there had to be more. He heard hammering coming from one of the houses along the wall. Across the street, a laundry basket was sitting outside an open front door. Sounds from inside, some kind of rattling.
Moses kept walking.
He hadn’t seen a security shack at the entrance. Wherever the footage was being viewed, it probably wasn’t being done on site here. Was anyone at all watching the footage? He had heard of fake cameras being hung up for appearance’s sake, but weren’t these a little too subtle for that? Too small? Fakes were supposed to be larger and immediately noticeable.
The next intersection. The street to the left returned to the entrance, the one straight ahead followed the course of the wall. The Nahoon was much louder here. Not a large river, perhaps twenty meters across. Normally not very deep, especially now in the hottest part of the summer. A voice called out something. Beyond the wall. A fisherman maybe.
Wow, Moses stopped. He hadn’t been wrong after all. Here was another mailbox that looked like a miniature house, exactly like the other one. These were probably sold in some building supply store. His memory hadn’t failed him.
And this was finally the house he’d been trying to find. He was completely sure this time. He remembered those funny red and green curtains. “Brought from Europe!” his classmate had said. He had probably even mentioned the country. Moses walked up to the door, quickly scanned the area around him, and pressed the doorbell. It produced a high-pitched tone that dwindled to a screech. The battery was pretty much shot. Moses waited a few seconds before ringing the bell again. The skewed tone again. This could mean any number of things. The Boers were pretty lazy, generally speaking. The battery might have already spent several weeks on the shopping list, but kept being forgotten. Or the new battery had been bought days ago, but since nobody ever rang the bell, it just hadn’t been installed. Anything was possible.
But, Moses thought, another possibility was that nobody had been living here for some time.
Focus. If he couldn’t get help here, where should he go?
8
The lounge and kitchen formed an elongated L. The large room this side of the front door took up almost half of the house’s footprint. Two bedrooms and a bathroom behind that. At the very least, maybe more than that. Somewhere was the connector to the garage.
“Are you going to do this area?” Thembinkosi asked. “I’ll take the small rooms.”
Nozipho nodded. Thembinkosi studied the furniture for a few seconds. A living room suite in corduroy with a tiled coffee table. A dusty wine rack, almost empty. CD rack, gigantic TV screen. A photo of a young couple on a console table. He with a beard, she with long curls. Both kind of blonde.
“Are they the ones you saw?” he asked.
Nozipho leaned closer. “I told you I saw two men. Did one of them have a beard? Psh, hard to say. Somehow…”
“I know. Somehow they all look alike.”
“White people?”
“Uh-huh…”
Nozipho and Thembinkosi exchanged glances, grinned. Nozipho gave Thembinkosi a quick kiss and vanished into the kitchen.
No books, Thembinkosi thought. Bad sign. Books indicated expendable income, more cash around, though less jewelry. But there might still be one or two small treasures. He already suspected what he would find in the closets. First and foremost, bad taste.
The first door he opened was to a large bedroom. The bed had been poorly made. On the nightstand, a pink clock on the one side, a small rugby trophy on the other. He didn’t care about stuff like this. He would rummage around in Madam’s lingerie a little later. He shut the door and turned the knob on the door across the hall. The second bedroom. Unused. That did interest him.
As Thembinkosi stepped over the threshold, he caught a glimpse of a smudge on the doorframe. He bent down to examine it more closely. He wasn’t completely sure, and this was a rather dark spot in the hallway… However, his first impression was that he was looking at dried blood.
9
Back out again? What else. Moses retraced his footsteps. What other options did he have? There was no way he’d find help here in the gated community. “Hello, do you happen to know how to fix a car?”
Although… he could ask the gardener. Perhaps he would know of someone, or might at least let him make a phone call if he had some free minutes on his account. He was already back at the intersection where he’d seen the gardener. But what if the failing doorbell really hadn’t meant anything? Maybe nobody had gotten around to it yet. It might not be a priority for them. Had he really paid enough attention to verify that there were absolutely no signs that someone was living there? He hadn’t been thorough enough. He should have taken a look inside the mailbox. Were the flowers in the front yard dried out? Were there any flowers at all? What if all of that didn’t mean anything, and Japie or Janie was about to get home? He could hear the sound of an engine not too far off. That might be him. On a parallel street. Just one more time, Moses told himself. One last try to get help there. The gardener was nowhere in sight anyway. He turned around and went back.
Already 1:16. What was Sandi doing? Hopefully, she was at least getting a little worried about him. Half the bottle of prosecco should have been drunk by now. And they should be… He didn’t want to think about that.
Back down the street along the wall, then to the left. There was the house. No flowers. The lawn was dry, but then again, it was really hot and had been for weeks. Moses rubbed his forehead and neck, wiping the sweat on his jeans. He couldn’t hear the car anymore. The windows weren’t all that clean. He pressed his nose against one to see inside.
The kitchen, neat. Nothing striking. The mailbox was empty, except for two ads. A building supply store and a chain drugstore, both fairly new. Somebody had recently picked up the mail.
No Janie. No Japie. Moses turned around. So out of the subdivision after all? What should he do then? Stand out by the road and wait? There weren’t many taxis around here, so it could take some time. But it would be one way he could get to a shop. The taxi driver might be able to recommend one. Money wasn’t a problem. He had several hundred in his pocket.