Break and Enter (8 page)

“Then you need to try harder.”

“How do I do that?”

“Try tickling him under his arms. He’s very ticklish.”

“Are you sure?”

“I’m sure. Your lemonade will be ready when you get back.”

A few minutes later, I heard sounds of childish laughter coming down the hallway. Then Robbie came running back into the kitchen and said, “He tickled me back.”

“You mean like this?” I said, and I grabbed him and began to tickle him. He squealed with delight and mock protest.

Robbie had just settled down with his lemonade when Mike came into the kitchen and said, “Did you put him up to that?”

“Who, me?”

“That’s what I thought. I’ll get you for that.”

“Promises, promises.”

“Do we have a nice bottle of wine to take to the Bridges’s this evening?”

“Does a bear sh—oops, never mind. Yes, we do.” I handed him a glass of tea, saying, “I’m going to take mine out on the deck, if anyone wants to join me.”

The three of us, accompanied by Thor, went out onto the deck and settled down in our chairs. We went back in the cabin eventually, and by six forty we were in the truck and on our way. As we pulled up in their driveway, the chief and Sarah came to the porch and down the steps. Evidently, they had been watching for us. I helped Robbie out of the truck, took him by the hand, and started up the walkway.

“Oh, my,” Sarah said. “You didn’t tell me Robbie was so adorable.”

“Robbie,” I said, “this is Chief Bridges and Mrs. Bridges.”

“Hi,” Robbie said.

“Hi, yourself,” the chief said.

“I have a grandson your age,” Sarah said. “Why don’t I take you inside and show you our toy box.” She took him by the hand and led him up the steps.

“Nice place you’ve got here, Chief,” I said.

“We like it. Now fill me in on the details about the kid. Sarah was a little short on information.”

We sat in rocking chairs on their porch, and Mike and I told the whole story from the moment we’d found Robbie in the shed.

“That’s amazing,” the chief said. “What can we do to help?”

“For one thing,” Mike said, “you can call on our lawyer and make a statement as to what lousy characters we are.”

“Not a problem,” the chief said. “Just give me his name and address.”

“I can do better than that,” I said, and I pulled out my wallet and found Ernest’s card. “Here’s his card.”

“I’ll take care of it Monday,” he said.

“In case you haven’t checked, I was online earlier, and everything is quiet and serene in Jacksonville at the moment.”

“Good.”

“Can we have the fifty-cent tour?” Mike said.

“You bet,” the chief said. “Follow me.”

He led us into the cabin, which I would have characterized more as a house, based on its size. Robbie was busy coloring at a little table in one corner of the living room, and Sarah was bustling about the kitchen. Mike handed her the bottle of wine we had brought, and the tour continued. There were three bedrooms and two baths.

“You’ve got a lot of space here,” I said.

“Probably a little too much space,” the chief said, “but Sarah wants to be able to have both boys and their families up here at the same time.”

“And she’s the boss, right?” Mike said.

“Pretty much,” the chief said with a sigh of resignation.

“What kind of heat do you have?” I said.

“The air-conditioning system includes an oil-fired furnace,” he said.

“You’ll need that furnace in the winter.”

“We came up several steps to the entrance,” Mike said. “Does that mean there’s a basement?”

“Yes,” the chief said, “follow me.”

He led us through a door and down a flight of steps. The basement was paneled and, in addition to a large recreation room, contained a couple of small rooms, a full bathroom, and appeared to extend under most of the house.

“Wow,” I said, “you could hold one heck of a party down here.”

“Like I said, it’s really more space than we need, although we’ll probably put some bunk beds down here for the grandchildren.”

We went back up to the kitchen, and Sarah said, “Just in time, boys, dinner is ready.”

I went to the living room and said, “Okay, Robbie, it’s time to eat, but you need to wash your hands first.”

“Where?”

“Follow me,” I said.

Over dinner, the conversation centered mostly around Robbie and our plans for him. “What are you going to do about school?” Sarah said.

“We’re going to do our best to get him in St. Mark’s,” I said, “and when the time comes, if he has the grades, Episcopal High School.”

“You can’t do any better than that.”

“George has already begun drafting plans to build a second story over the garage,” Mike said. “We’re going to put a new master suite for us in the addition, so Robbie can have our room, and we’ll still have a guest room.”

“If you ever need a babysitter,” she said, “you know where to find me.”

“Thanks,” I said. “We’ll hold that in reserve. I’m pretty sure our next-door neighbor Mrs. Tumblin will jump at the chance to run over and take care of him.”

After dinner, Robbie went back to the little table and the coloring books, and we sat around the dining table talking.

“He’s awfully quiet, isn’t he?” Sarah said.

“Not nearly as much as he was just a few days ago,” I said, lowering my voice. “Remember, he witnessed his father literally beating his mother to death, and that’s a lot to process for a not-quite six-year-old.”

“We’re going to get him some counseling when we get home,” Mike said.

“And he has no relatives?” the chief said.

“Just an elderly, and very ill, maternal grandmother,” I said. “She’s already signed off on the adoption.”

“As it happened,” Mike said, “Lucinda has been friends with her for years, and she put in a very good word for us.”

“‘As you sow, so shall you reap,’” Sarah quoted.

“What the devil does that mean?” the chief said.

“Think about it, Henry. George and Mike started doing good things for those two sweet boys when they first started coming up here. As a result of those good deeds, they managed to buy some adjacent property from a man who wouldn’t even have talked to them without Lucinda’s intervention, and now this.”

“Point taken,” he said.

“Speaking of the twins,” she said, “I guess they’re at your house.”

“Either there, or at the beach, or hard at work at the Golden Arches,” I said.

“Won’t it be a bit crowded at your house when you take Robbie home?”

“We’ll work something out,” Mike said.

“The twins can stay with us, if necessary,” she said.

“Thanks,” I said. “We’ll keep it in mind.”

We had finished the bottle of wine, so the chief opened another one and poured refills all around. We sat at the table, lost in conversation, through another glass of wine, until I said, “I’d better check on Robbie.” I got up and went into the next room and saw that he was sound asleep on the sofa, so I went back to the dining room.

“He’s fast asleep on the sofa,” I said.

“You boys are going to make great parents,” Sarah said.

“I hope so. Goodness knows it’s not something I ever pictured myself becoming.”

“Me neither,” Mike said, “but this little guy sort of landed in our laps, and we kind of like it.”

“We’re just hoping the adoption thing can be handled by Friday, so we don’t have to make a special trip.”

“Or worse,” Mike said, “so we don’t have to go home and leave him up here temporarily.”

“A friend of ours is coming up from Atlanta to assist our local lawyer, if necessary, for the court thing,” I said.

“Who would that be?” the chief said.

Mike and I took turns telling them about our first meeting with Charles and Philip, adding what we knew about them and Charles’s firm.

“They came down for the weekend and ran the River Run with us this year,” I said, “and we’re going to Atlanta to stay with them on the
Fourth of July and participate in the Peachtree Road Race.”

“Your lawyer friend sounds like the kind of guy you want to have on your side,” the chief said.

“According to our local lawyer, Charles is much more than that,” I said, and I told them some of the things Ernest had mentioned.

“I’ll look forward to meeting him,” the chief said. “Sarah and I will certainly attend the court hearing, in case we’re needed.”

“Thanks,” I said. “We have absolutely no experience with this sort of thing.”

“That’s why you’ve hired professionals,” Sarah said.

The second bottle of wine was two-thirds gone, and we decided it was time to gather up Robbie and head back to the cabin. Mike picked him up and carried him to the truck while I said goodnight to our hosts, thanked them again, and got in the driver’s seat.

At the cabin, we peeled Robbie’s clothes off down to his underwear and tucked him in bed. After Thor came back inside from taking care of his business, he curled up at the foot of Robbie’s bed as usual, and we shut up the house for the night and retired to our bed. We were too relaxed from the food and wine to do much more than cuddle a bit before we drifted off to sleep.

We spent the next several days relaxing and enjoying our vacation. Each day the new addition to our family brought a new surprise and an occasional challenge. We woke up several mornings to find Robbie sandwiched in between us. His explanation was always the same—a bad dream. We made a run to Asheville and visited a couple of bookstores, where we purchased some books suitable for an almost-six-year-old, along with a set of phonics CDs. We had fun going through the phonics program with Robbie, and he caught on very quickly. There was little doubt in our minds that he would be at least on the same level as his classmates when he started school in September.

Ernest Rodgers gathered affidavits and other material, and Martha’s department made short work of the requisite background investigations. Fortunately, both Mike and I were squeaky clean in that respect. In fact, neither of us had even had so much as a traffic ticket since we were in our teens, and both of us had sterling records from those days as well. The adoption hearing was set for Friday at ten in the judge’s chambers, and Charles and Philip were planning a three-day weekend in the mountains so they could be present. We were looking forward to seeing them again.

We had a couple of meals with the chief and Sarah, and they and the Plotts came over to the cabin once for a cookout.

Wednesday morning, we got a call from Zeke.

“What’s up?” I said when he identified himself on the phone

“Zeb and I drove by the rental houses this morning just like you asked,” he said.

“And?”

“It looks like the bungalow on Forbes Street is vacant.”

“Are you sure?”

“It looked kind of deserted, so we stopped and looked in the windows. Zeb and I think the renters have moved out—we couldn’t see any furniture.”

“You know where we keep the spare keys to the houses, don’t you?”

“Sure.”

“Can you go over there and do an inspection before you have to go to work?”

“You bet—we’re both working three to eleven right now.”

“Take a yellow pad and make notes of any damages. Hopefully, they didn’t take the stove and refrigerator with them.”

“They didn’t. We could see that much through the back door.”

“Call me when you’re done.”

“George.”

“What?”

“Will you and Mike rent that house to Zeb and me?”

“The two of you?”

“Well, us and our two friends, Josh and Norm.”

“Josh is the blind guy we met at The Loop and Norm is the guy that spent the night with Zeb?”

“Yeah.”

“Is this getting serious?”

“I don’t know how serious, but we’ve decided to all live together for a year and see what happens.”

“What about school?”

“We can transfer to FSCJ.”

“Okay, then. Mike and I will make you a deal for month-to-month rental. What will you do about furniture?”

“Lots of Goodwill and Salvation Army stores around. What will the rent be?”

I gave him a figure, and he said, “We can handle that. The four of us will check out the house and let you know.”

“Good. We won’t do anything until we hear from you.”

Mike was standing behind me as I sat at the desk, so I said, “How much of that did you get?”

“Enough, I think. The bungalow is vacant, and the twins and their new friends want to rent it.”

“Yep.”

“They got over the ‘fuck everything that moves’ phase a lot sooner than I thought they would.”

“True.”

The week sped by quickly, and before we knew it, the fateful day was at hand. We met at the courthouse about twenty minutes before the ten o’clock hearing was scheduled in the judge’s chambers. Ernest had found a small, unused room not too far from the site of the hearing, and we held a brief meeting. Martha had brought a young woman named Linda Mears from her office, and she was going to stay in the room with Robbie and keep him company.

Charles and Philip showed up about five minutes after we arrived, and I introduced them to everyone present, that is, Ernest Rodgers, Lucinda Hawkins, Bob and Martha Plott, Sheriff Sutton, and Chief and Mrs. Bridges.

“Okay, everyone,” Ernest said. “It’s time to go down the hall to the judge’s chambers.”

“What’s the judge’s name again?” Charles said.

“Rosalie Jordan,” Ernest said. “She’s very good at this sort of thing. As you know, she interviewed Robbie yesterday and accepted all of our documents in evidence. She told me today would be a mere formality.”

“Then let’s get on with it,” Charles said.

Ernest led us down the hall and stopped at a door marked “Judge Jordan’s Chambers.” He opened it, and we followed him inside, where we found a slightly frantic secretary.

“Oh, Mr. Rodgers,” the secretary said, “I’ve been trying to track you down. I’m afraid I have bad news. The judge was rushed to the hospital early this morning and probably won’t be available again until late next week.”

“What do we do now?” Ernest said.

“The clerk has reassigned the case to Judge Williams,” she said. “You know where his chambers are, and I believe you’re expected.”