Death Notes

tonight.’
    ‘Tonight?’
    I’d seen enough of the place to know it was an easy mark: high shrubs around the house, isolated from the rest of the block, and piece-of-cake locks on the doors and windows. By the same token, it’d be a quick and easy installation.
    ‘What’s the hurry?’
    She flushed. ‘I’m all alone now, honey. You saw those papers. All that publicity means kooks are going to start coming around.’
    I could’ve been wrong, but somehow she didn’t strike me as the defenseless type. And her rush to get a system seemed a little overblown given her explanation. I took a guess.
    ‘Did somebody break in?’
    She hesitated. ‘Well... somebody tried. Last night.’
    ‘What did the police say?’
    ‘The police?’
    The way she said it, I knew she hadn’t called them.
    ‘They ought to know,’ I told her.
    I could feel the specter of Philly Post breathing fire in my face.
    ‘It might have something to do with Match’s death,’ I said. ‘Maybe they’d step up their routine patrols in the neighborhood. Maybe post a man out front.’
    She waved the idea away impatiently.
    ‘I need publicity, honey, but not that kind. Some crackpot’ll read that and it’ll put notions in his head. Then I’ll have ten people trying to break in instead of one. No thanks!’
    ‘The police don’t give out everything to the papers, you know.’
    ‘Where’ve you been, honey? I asked them not to tell the reporters about Saturday night until I was ready and look where it got me. My doorbell started ringing at eight o’clock yesterday morning.’
    ‘That was a murder, a homicide. There’s no way they could suppress that. We’re talking about a little break-in here. An attempted break-in. The smaller the crime, the easier it is to keep out of the papers.’
    Her eyes focused on the disc over the mantel. She wasn’t listening any more.
    ‘Can you handle a gun, honey?’
    ‘No, and you don’t need—’
    ‘I need somebody who can handle a gun, honey. Now are you going to help me or not?’ She drew her squat body up, bristling.
    I told her to check the Yellow Pages.
     

6
     
    I tried to worm out of the burglar alarm deal, too, but she wouldn’t hear of it, so we talked money. Most contractors will quote some exorbitant sum if they don’t want to be bothered with a job. I usually just say I’ll pass, but that didn’t work with Sharon. So I asked for enough to cover six months’ rent and ballparked a figure I thought my friends at Electronic Systems would charge for a quick installation if I designed it. I knew it wouldn’t do me any good, but I asked her not to call me ‘honey’ any more as part of the deal.
    Without a blink, she agreed and gave me five hundred dollars cash and promised to write a check for the balance when we finished. I got the impression she didn’t really care what it cost.
    Afterward, we went around outside and she showed me the windows, doors, and basement entrance in the back, while I took notes and sketched out the schematics on paper I borrowed from her.
    ‘Where’d the burglar try to get in?’ I asked her.
    ‘Over there.’
    She pointed to a window at the back of the house partly obscured by some tall bushes. We were standing midway between the house and a dense thicket of brush that marked the beginning of Mount Davidson.
    The day was warming up to another typical Indian summer high and little beads of sweat were popping out on Sharon’s forehead. She looked out of place and artificial outdoors, sort of like those pink plastic flamingos people put on their lawns. The natural light exposed all her painted wrinkles and covered bulges.
    ‘I couldn’t sleep last night,’ she said. ‘You know how it is, honey, so I went downstairs for a little nightcap. I never would have heard him otherwise.’
    The burglar knew what he was doing. If I was going to hit the place, I would have picked that very window. Any of them at the back were fair game, but that one was the best. A tall pine blocked it from view on the right and from behind. Nobody could see anything from the left, and there weren’t any exterior lights nearby, so a burglar could work as slowly and carefully as he needed to. No rush, no fuss.
    ‘Did you see him?’
    ‘I heard him. That’s why he left, honey. I turned on every light in the house and shouted that I had a gun.’
    ‘Why not just call 911?’
    She looked at me like I was crazy.
    ‘Oh, right. I forgot. The reporters.’
    We went back indoors