It was eight at night and time for the evening surveillance.
I was in my bedroom on the second floor, sitting in the dark, my eye to the telescope, focused in on the Tweed kitchen window. The long distance microphone brought their voices in loud and clear.
They had just arrived home this evening, having extended their Tahoe vacation an extra two days, and were finishing dinner. They were sitting at the kitchen table, working on a bottle of red wine.
“The insurance company will cover it,” Art was saying.
“You’ve been saying that for two days. They won’t.”
“Stop being so negative.”
“I’m not,” Margaret said. “I haven’t said anything.”
“For two whole days. It’s not my fault, dammit.”
“Fat chance,” Margaret said.
“What a disaster. They’ll cover it.”
“They don’t cover anything. Let alone everything falling off the car while we’re on vacation in Tahoe.”
“We should have made sure it all fell off while we were home? Like that would make a difference?”
“You’ll have to check the policy. Check the fine print. I know they’ll think it’s suspicious.”
“It fucking is suspicious. How the hell could we drive two hundred miles and then everything falls off right when we’re leaving for home?”
“You’re saying somebody sabotaged the car?” Margaret asked.
“Duh. What else? Don’t forget the gas tank. There were two holes in it.”
“Somebody crawled under our car in the night and unscrewed everything? Who would believe that? I don’t. It’s insane.”
“I do. It’s true.”
“There’s got to be some other explanation. The insurance company won’t believe it. It’s not like we had a car accident.”
“What do you call it then?” Art asked.
“A nightmare.”
“A disaster.”
“Who would do that to us? It’s crazy.”
“I can think of somebody. Fucking Monona. He’s crazy enough and mad enough to do it. I can think of him real easy.”
“Be serious, Art. He’d take a ball bat to it, not a wrench. He’s a Neanderthal.”
“I wonder where he is. He’s not at the trailer park anymore. I checked.”
“Miserable little jerk. His lawsuit sure blew up in his face. That was a real pleasure. I loved sticking it to him. Arrogant little snot.”
“Then Teresa died. His life’s in the toilet. Big time.”
“You won’t get any sympathy from me,” she said. “I couldn’t stand either one of them.”
Art finished his wine and poured another. “I miss the business.”
“Not me. I hated it. I love being typesetters again.”
“I don’t. It sucks. It’s boring. It’s small time.”
“At least we’re making a living.”
“Barely.”
“Our Money Market funds are back up, too. Thanks to Weasley.”
“That must have killed Monona.”
“I hope so.”
“What the fuck’s he doing now?”
“Drinking himself to death probably. What a loser. Why did we ever get involved with him? Another one of your bad ideas.”
“You didn’t mind it so much when the money was pouring in.”
“I minded it every day. I couldn’t stand the sight of him.”
“He never came around.”
“He didn’t have to.”
Art finished his wine and poured another.
“You’re drinking too fast,” Margaret said. “Slow down. You’ll turn into Monona if you keep it up.”
“It’s only my third glass.”
“Only?”
“Relax. It’s just a glass of wine. I wonder where he is?”
“Who cares. I hope I never see him again.”
“He’s around somewhere. I can feel it in my bones.”
“Your feelings are never right. Neither are your bones. He’s gone. He can’t show his face anymore.”
“Who else would sabotage our car?”
Margaret poured a glass of wine. “We should go to the police.”
“Right,” Art said. “I’ll go tell the cops we drove to Tahoe and somebody made everything fall off our car while we were there. When they finish laughing, they’ll say it wasn’t in their jurisdiction.”
“What if it happens again?” she asked.
“Maybe it’s a one shot deal. Some punk vandals in Tahoe.”
“What about the gas tank? That happened here, not there.”
“Right. It’s him, Margaret. I tell you it’s him.”
“It can’t be.”
“It is.”
“Great. What are we going to do about it?”
“Nothing. What can we do about it? We don’t know where he is. We don’t even know if it is him.”
“You said it was him. Make up your mind.”
“I’ll think about it tomorrow.”
Art held up the wine bottle. There was only a small amount left. He poured it into his glass.
“Don’t drink any more,” she said. “You’ve had enough.”
“This is the last one.”
“It better be. The bottle’s empty. Don’t open another one.”
“I said this is the last one. Give it a rest.”
Margaret left the room. The curtains closed over the front room window. The glow of a TV appeared.
Art drained his glass of wine.
Their house, like the one in Nevada City, was built on a slope. The front door was level with the street. The back yard was ten feet below the house. It was a very old wooden building, with a rickety front porch and an even ricketier back porch. You had to walk softly on it. Some of the boards were worn through. It was propped up on rotting four-by-fours. The Tweeds didn’t like anything that was modern or new.
Through the telescope, Tweed moved furtively and quietly to a cupboard near the kitchen table. He opened it and fetched out a bottle of wine. He took the wine to the back porch and over to the side railing. Out of sight of the back door, but visible to my telescope’s all seeing eyeball.
He opened the bottle of wine and poured a fresh glass. He left the glass on the railing and went back inside and put the bottle back in the cupboard. Then he returned to the railing, drank from his glass, and stood there looking out over his backyard, silhouetted by the street light on the corner.
The backyard was small. Small and virtually unusable. It sloped drastically from under the deck down to a neighbor’s fence which was covered with vines and various other kinds of unkempt vegetation. Off to the left of the deck was a side yard. It was also small. But it was flat and supported a wimpy lawn.
The lawn was wimpy because it was mostly in the shade all day. There was a massive tree there. So massive it had some two-by-fours nailed into the trunk that led up to a platform that was obviously some sort of tree house for whatever kid had lived in the house before the Tweed’s moved in.
Tweed drank his wine and mulled the world over. Finally, he finished his wine and walked down the stairs to the ground. Carefully. The stairs were as rickety as everything else about the deck. The street light gave him enough of a glow to tiptoe over to the tree without tripping over his ass. He climbed up the ladder of two-by-fours.
At the top of the ladder, he crawled over the edge of the platform that was there and stood up. He looked around left and right. The coast was clear. He bent over and fetched something from a the crotch of a nearby branch.
There was a sudden flash of a match being lit. It illuminated his face as he held the match to the end of his cigarette. He took a big drag to light it.
Suddenly, there was a loud pop and a spray of light as the tip of the cigarette exploded under his nose.
Pleasant dreams, Mr. Arthur Asshole Tweed.
To be continued . . .
