B is for Burglar

I knocked and waited a long interval while Julia thumped her way to the front door with her cane, calling encouragement.

"I'm coming. Don't give up. Six more feet to go and I'm bearing down hard."

On my side of the door, I smiled, peering over at Elaine's apartment. There was no sign of life. Even the welcome mat had been taken inside or thrown out, leaving a square of fine sand that had filtered through the bristles.

Julia's door opened. The dowager's hump sat between her shoulder blades like a weight, forcing her to bend with its burden. She seemed to be staring at my waist, tilting her head of dandelion fuzz to one side so she could peer up at me. Her skin seemed as sheer as rubber, pulled over her hands like surgical gloves. I could see veins and broken capillaries, her knuckles as knotted as rope. Age was making her transparent, crushing her from both ends like a can of soda pop.

"Well, Kinsey! I knew that was you. I've been awake since six this morning, looking forward to this. Come on in."

She hobbled to one side, making way for me. I set the four suitcases inside the door and closed it after me. She tapped one with her cane. "I recognize those."

"Unfortunately, they're locked."

Each of the four bags apparently had a combination lock, the numbers arranged on a dial embedded in the metal catch.

"We'll have to do some detective work," she said with satisfaction. "You want coffee first? How was your flight?"

"I'd love some," I said. "The flight wasn't bad."

Julia's apartment was crowded with antiques: a peculiar mix of Victorian pieces and Oriental furnishings. There was a huge carved cherry sideboard with a marble top, a black horsehair sofa, an intricate ivory screen, jade figures, a platform rocker, two cinnabar lamps, Persian rugs, a pier-glass mirror in a dark mahogany frame, a piano with a fringed shawl across the top, lace curtains, wall hangings of embroidered silk. A big portable television set with a twenty-five-inch screen loomed on the far side of the room surrounded by family photographs in heavy silver frames. The television set was turned off, its blank gray face oddly compelling in a room so filled with memorabilia. The only sound in the apartment was the steady ticking of a grandfather clock that sounded like someone tapping on Formica with a set of drumsticks.

I moved out to the kitchen, poured coffee for us both, and carried it back to the living room, the cups rattling slightly in the saucers like the tremor of a minor California earthquake. "Are these family antiques? Some of the pieces are beautiful."

Julia smiled, waggling her cane. "I'm the last person alive in my family so I've inherited all this by default. I was the youngest in a family of eleven children and my mother said I was fractious. She always swore I'd never get a thing, but I just kept my mouth shut and waited it out. Sure enough, she died, my father died. I had eight sisters and two brothers and they all died. Little by little, it all drifted down to me, though I hardly have a place to put anything at this point. Eventually you have to give it all away. You start with a ten-room house and finally you find yourself stranded in a nursing home with space for one night table and a candlestick. Not that I intend to let that happen to me."

"You've got a ways to go yet anyway from what I can see."

"Well, I hope so. I'm going to hold out as long as I can and then I'll lock and bar the door and do myself in, if nature doesn't take me first. I'm hoping I'll die in my bed one night. It's the bed I was born in and I think it'd be nice to end up there. Have you a large family?"

"No, just me. I was raised by an aunt, but she died ten years ago."

"Well then, we're in the same boat. Restful, isn't it."

"That's one way to put it," I said.

"I came from a family of shriekers and face slappers. They all threw things. Glasses, plates, tables, chairs, anything that came to hand. The air was always filled with flying missiles- objects rocketing from one end of the room to the other with howls on contact. This was mostly girls, you know, but all of us had deadly aim. I had a sister knock me out of my high chair once with a grapefruit thrown like a curve ball, oatmeal flying everywhere. Eulalie, her name was. Now that I look back on it, I see we were common as mud, but effective. We all got what we wanted in life and no one ever accused us of being helpless or fainthearted. Well now. Let's tackle those bags. If worse comes to worst, we can always hurl them off the balcony. I'm sure they'll open when they hit the pavement down below."

We approached the problem as though it were a code to be broken. Julia's theory, which proved to be correct, was that Elaine would have come up with a combination of numbers she already had in her life somewhere. Her street address, zip code, telephone number, social security, birthdate. Each of us chose one group of digits and started to work on separate bags. I hit it the third time around with the last four numbers on her social-security card. All four suitcases were coded with the same number, which simplified the task.