Page 46 of Sean's Sunshine
“Black hat, black clothes, black gloves. Didn’t even see his face, only the back of him.”
“Any impressions?” Sean asked. “Old, young, fat, thin, tall, short?”
“Mmm… young,” she said definitively. “He moved fast. And thin.” She shuddered. “Like… scary thin. And midsized, like you guys. Maybe five eight.” She blinked. “Oh! And blond hair! It was sticking out from the neck of his hat and sweater like a ponytail. So probably white!” Or dyed that way, Billy thought, but he didn’t say anything because she and Sean had a rhythm.
Sean pulled out his detective’s notebook. “Well done! And you say he worked alone?”
“Definitely.”
Sean frowned. “An air compressor isn’t a small thing. Was he riding the bikecarryingthe air compressor?”
She shook her head. “No, not at all. He had it on a skateboard, like a dolly. I think he’d lashed it there with bungee cords because it was fairly stable and he was towing it with, like, one of those dog nooses? You know, the ones that animal control use? I mean….” She crossed her brown eyes and shrugged. “On the one hand, what an asshole. On the other….”
“Really frickin’ clever,” Billy said, impressed.
“I know, right? Because that scene could have been right out of aBenny Hill, but it went pretty smoothly. The cops got there soon after that. I guess my Todd put on his big-boy voice because the thief disappeared. I mean, even on a bike you’d think the cops would have seen him fleeing, right?”
“Unless he went into the park,” Sean offered.
She scowled. “I tried to tell the cops that, but they were like, ‘The inside of the park is locked up, ma’am.’ But you can see people moving beyond the trees and in the underbrush. I mean, they have to clean the homeless encampments out periodically. There’s a lot of nooks and crannies in there where they can hide stuff. And they don’t have to sell it the next day, right? Wait a day, sell it then when nobody’s looking.”
Sean nodded, and Billy could tell the woman had impressed him. “You’ve been thinking about this quite a bit,” he told her.
“Well, the people across the street got hit too, and Linda and I, we have coffee in the morning. She’s got a kid Kensi’s age, and we let them play. Anyway, her experience is the same as mine but about a week earlier. That’s why I think they lay low, hide what they get, sell it later.”
“What’d they take from Linda’s house?” Sean asked, curious.
“Mmm… her house was a big score. I think they got her husband’s motorcycle.”
“Street legal?” Billy asked, because this was a huge score in the scope of what was going on.
But Marla shook her head. “No. It was more like a dirt bike. He put it in the back of his truck and drove it out to the lake.”
“How’d they start it?” Billy asked. Those things were notoriously loud, and getting it out of the garage would have been a trick.
“They didn’t, but they did reach inside the connecting door to find the key hangar. I’m not sure if it’s a lucky guess or what, but they unlocked the bike to wheel it out but didn’t start it.”
“How’d she know someone was in the garage?” Sean asked, picking up the thread.
Marla rolled her eyes. “She didn’t. Her weirdo cat likes to sleep in the garage for whatever reason. She opened the door for a ‘here kitty, kitty’ and saw the guy getting away.”
“Yikes! That must have been scary. Was the cat okay?” Sean asked.
Billy snorted, but Sean didn’t look at him. Billy was worried, though. It had occurred to him these last weeks that hereally likedanimals. Suddenly he didn’t want anything—dog, cat, hamster, whatever—to get hurt.
“Yeah,” Marla said, but she gave the smile of a demented gremlin. “But I’m not sure about the guy. That cat jumped on his head, he yelled out, and the cat took a chunk out of his face. I mean, Gustav’s more of a force of nature than a cat, you know?”
Sean grimaced. “A friend of mine has one of those. What breed?”
“I dunno. American Backyard Bird Murderer?”
This time SeanandBilly both laughed, and their helpful neighbor smirked.
“It’s a terrible joke, I know, but he’s a raggedy tiger-striped disaster. Linda adores him, though. Says a better-looking cat would take away her millennial mom card, and she refuses to even get him groomed.”
“Fair,” Billy said, and Sean met his eyes and nodded, still laughing.
“Her coolness is totally safe with me,” Sean agreed. “But I think you’re right. A dirt bike is one of the most valuable things I think they’ve stolen. I’d wager they sold that, used the money to hole up for a week or so, and then they’re back on the take.”
