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Dataset card Data Studio Files
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“Not my idea of pleasant accommodations,” Fran said with a little shiver. “No matter what comes of this, Larry, I want to tell Stu everything tonight.”
Larry nodded. “Yeah, and not just because he’s on the committee. He’s also the marshal.”
Fran looked at him, troubled. Really for the first time she understood that this expedition might end with Harold in jail. They were going to sneak into his house without a warrant or anything and poke around.
“Oh, bad,” she said.
“Not too good, is it?” he agreed. “You want to call it off?”
She thought for a long time and then shook her head.
“Good. I think we ought to know, one way or the other.”
“Are you sure they’re both gone?”
“Yes. I saw Harold driving one of the Burial Committee trucks early this morning. And all the people who were on the Power Committee were invited over for the tryout.”
“You sure she went?”
“It would look damn funny if she didn’t, wouldn’t it?”
Fran thought that over, then nodded. “I guess it would. By the way, Stu said they hope to have most of the town electrified again by the sixth.”
“That’s going to be a mighty day,” Larry said, and thought how nice it would be to sit down in Shannon’s or the Broken Drum with a big Fender guitar and an even bigger amp and play something—anything, as long as it was simple and had a heavy beat—at full volume. “Gloria,” maybe, or “Walkin’ the Dog.” Just about anythin...
“Maybe,” Fran said, “we ought to have a cover story, though. Just in case.”
Larry grinned crookedly. “Want to say we’re selling magazine subscriptions if one of them comes back?”
“Har-har, Larry.”
“Well, we could say we came to tell her what you just told me about getting the juice turned on again. If she’s there.”
Fran nodded. “Yes, that might be okay.”
“Don’t kid yourself, Fran. She’d be suspicious if we told her we’d come up because Jesus Christ just appeared and is walking back and forth on top of the City Reservoir.”
“If she’s guilty of something.”
“Yes. If she’s guilty of something.”
“Come on,” Fran said after a moment’s thought. “Let’s go.”
There was no need for the cover story. Steady hard rapping at first the front and then the back door convinced them that Harold’s house was indeed empty. It was just as well, Fran thought—the more she thought about the cover they’d worked out, the thinner it seemed.
“How did you get in?” Larry asked.
“The cellar window.”
They went around to the side of the house and Larry pulled and tugged fruitlessly at the window while Fran kept watch.
“Maybe you did,” he said, “but it’s locked now.”
“No, it’s just sticking. Let me try.”
But she had no better luck. Sometime between her first clandestine trip out here and now, Harold had locked up tight.
“What do we do now?” she asked him.
“Let’s break it.”
“Larry, he’ll see it.”
“Let him. If he doesn’t have anything to hide, he’ll think it was just a couple of kids, breaking windows in empty houses. It sure looks empty, with all the shades pulled down. And if he does have something to hide, it’ll worry him plenty and he deserves to be worried. Right?”
She looked doubtful but didn’t stop him as he took off his shirt, wrapped it around his fist and forearm, and crunched the basement window. Glass tinkled inward and he felt around for the catch.
“Here tis.” He released it and the window slid back. Larry slipped through and turned to help her. “Be careful, kiddo. No miscarriages in Harold Lauder’s basement, please.”
He caught her under the arms and eased her down. They looked around the rumpus room together. The croquet set stood sentinel. The air-hockey table was littered with little snips of colored electrical wire.
“What’s this?” she said, picking up a piece of it. “This wasn’t here before.”
He shrugged. “Maybe Harold’s building a better mousetrap.”
There was a box under the table and he fished it out. The cover said: DELUXE REALISTIC WALKIE-TALKIE SET, BATTERIES NOT INCLUDED. Larry opened the box, but the heft of it had already told him it was empty.
“Building walkie-talkies instead of mousetraps,” Fran said.
“No, this wasn’t a kit. You buy this kind ready to go. Maybe he was modifying them somehow. It sounds like Harold. Remember how Stu bitched about the walkie-talkie reception when he and Harold and Ralph were out hunting for Mother Abagail?”
She nodded, but there was still something about those snips of wire that bothered her.
Larry dropped the box back onto the floor and made what he would later think of as the most wildly erroneous statement of his entire life. “It doesn’t matter,” he said. “Let’s go.”
They went up the stairs, but this time the door at the top was locked. She looked at him and Larry shrugged. “We’ve come this far, right?”
Fran nodded.
Larry bumped his shoulder against the door a few times to get the feel of the bolt on the other side, and then rammed it hard. There was a snapping-metal sound, a clunk, and the door swung open. Larry bent and picked up a bolt assembly from the linoleum kitchen floor. “I can put this back on and he’ll never know the di...
“Why bother? He’s going to see the broken window.”
“That’s true. But if the bolt’s back on the door, he’ll… what are you smiling about?”
“Put the bolt back on, by all means. But how are you going to draw it from the cellar side of the door?”
He thought about it and said, “Jeez, I hate a smartass woman worse than anything.” He tossed the bolt onto the Formica kitchen counter. “Let’s go look under that hearthstone.”