The Case of the Old Man in the Mailbox Page 15

  Chapter 15

  The Break-In

  The bus rumbled through our neighborhood, and as it rounded the last corner before our stop, it was clear that something was wrong. Several cars were on the side of the road near our stop, and many people were standing around, looking down towards Scooter’s house. When we got off the bus, we could see police cars parked in and around the Parks’ driveway.

  Well, I probably should have stopped by my house first to let my mom know I was home and OK, but I was too excited and curious to know what had happened at Scooter’s house. (I would come to regret that decision.)

  The three of us ran down the street and up Scooter’s driveway, but we were stopped at the door by a large police officer who filled the entire doorway. “Sorry, boys, nothing to see here.”

  “We live here!” Scooter exclaimed. Not exactly the truth, but AJ and me did practically live at the Parks’ house. “Where’s my mom?”

  “She’s upstairs, son,” the cop replied. “She’s checking to make sure nothing was stolen.”

  “What?” Scooter squeezed past the officer and rushed up the stairs. The officer started to make a move to stop him but then figured “why bother” and motioned to AJ and me that we could follow.

  “Mom are you OK?” Scooter blurted as we barged into his parents’ upstairs bedroom. “What happened?”

  “Yes, I am fine, Sean. I wasn’t even home; I was out grocery shopping with Wyatt when this happened.” She had been just staring at the wall, with her jewelry box in her lap. She was sub-consciously fumbling with the jewelry in the top tray. Three-year-old Urpy was sitting on the bed beside her, racing cars up and down his own legs, oblivious to all the drama going on around the house.

  “I just got home about ten minutes ago. It looks like they didn’t do anything upstairs, but oh, they made such a mess of downstairs. It’s going to take weeks to get things back in order.”

  “Downstairs?” Scooter said with a gulp. We had all run upstairs so fast to check on Mrs. Parks we had not even looked to see what all the commotion was about downstairs.

  “Yes, they broke in and destroyed everything downstairs. The police are trying to decide if it was a robbery or just vandalism. I was up here checking to see if anything was stolen, but it doesn’t look like it. Downstairs is such a mess, though, I am not really sure if anything was stolen.”

  “Can I go downstairs and check it out, Mom?”

  She reached out and gave Scooter a tight hug. “Oh, Sean, I’m so glad you’re OK! You can go downstairs; just stay out of the police’s way. Let them do their jobs.” She let him go, her eyes fell back to the jewelry box, and then she put her head in her hands. I could hear her start to sob.

  “Mom, are you going to be OK?”

  “I’ll be fine, Sean, I just need some time. I’m just glad no one got hurt.” With that, she wrapped her arm around Urpy and pulled him in closer to her side.

  We quietly walked out of the room and headed down the stairs much slower than we’d gone up. The mammoth officer from the front doorway met us at the bottom of the stairs and directed us to sit at the kitchen counter while they finished their investigation of the living room.

  Once we sat down, we could finally take in the whole scene downstairs. The kitchen was separated from the living room by the counter where we were currently sitting. Connected to the kitchen on the other side was the dining room where the Parkses ate most of their meals. We couldn’t really see the dining room from where we were sitting, but it only contained a dining table and chairs and a hutch full of dishes. If anything was out of place in there, it would pale in comparison to the mess we were surrounded by.

  The kitchen floor was covered with pots and pans and half-empty cereal boxes. The countertops were littered with a mixture of spices, baking soda, and a bunch of cereals that had been dumped out of the boxes. It looked like someone had opened up every cupboard, pulled out everything inside, and just let gravity take over.

  On the other side of the counter was the living room. At least, it used to be the living room. It appeared the most costly damage had happened there. The pictures that once hung above the couch had been pulled off the wall and their glass panes had shattered. The lightweight bookcase that used to hold small picture frames and other trinkets was tipped over, and the contents of the shelves had been left to find a resting place wherever they could on the living room rug. The couch and recliner appeared to have been slashed by a knife, and much of the stuffing was spread throughout the room. The cushions had been tossed aside, but they too had been slashed by a knife. The cushions’ stuffing took the slashes as opportunities to escape from their cloth confinement.

  The television had been pulled off the TV stand and was lying facedown in front of the stand. Maybe the Parkses would get lucky and the TV would still work, but I doubted it. I imagined when they picked it up, the TV would have a big spiderweb of cracks in the screen from a steel-toed boot or a baseball bat. That’s how the whole room looked: like someone had some real anger issues and had taken it out on the Parks’ living room.

  The back door was halfway open, and one of the small panes of glass had been broken. I guess the intruders must have broken the glass and reached inside to unlock the door. This was “the point of entry,” as they say in the cop movies. The police must have been thinking the same thing because there was a police officer wearing plastic gloves inspecting the door. He wore glasses and was so skinny he made the door look fat. He looked more like a chemistry teacher than a cop. I wondered if he got the “sciencey” jobs because of his training, because he enjoyed it, or because he was the runt of the police department and they forced him to do all the dirty work. Probably all three.

  Skinny-chemistry-teacher-cop pulled a Zip-loc bag with gray dust out of his left jacket pocket and a little brush out of his right pocket and began to dust the doorknob, checking for fingerprints.

  Two other policemen, finished writing on their clipboards, began picking up the furniture cushions and putting them back on the couch and recliner. Now that the floor was a little cleaner, they began to inspect the carpet—perhaps for shoeprints or something.

  The three of us sat in silence and watched as the police went about their work. There was just too much information to take in and make sense of. I looked over at AJ and Scooter. AJ had his typical deer-in-the-headlights look. Scooter, though, had the look I’d seen so many times before. His eyes darted around the room, which told me his brain was hard at work processing every little detail. His half-grin, half-frown told me he was onto something. For the next few moments, I found myself staring at him, watching him. I felt if I looked hard enough, I could actually read his thoughts as they scrolled across his eyes.

  Suddenly, he snapped out of his trance and whispered to us, “My mom was wrong—this was not done by a robber or a vandal.”

  “How can you tell, Scoot?” I whispered back.

  “They weren’t trying to rob us—look there on the floor.” He pointed near the overturned TV. There was a gold pocketwatch on the floor next to it. “See that gold watch? It was sitting on that bookcase at about eye level; there is no way they didn’t see it. And if they were thieves, they would have definitely taken it. That watch is probably the easiest thing to pawn in this entire house. Plus, it looks like they didn’t even go upstairs; if they had, it would have only taken two minutes to take all my mom’s jewelry. You saw that her jewelry box was just sitting on the dresser. No, this was not a robbery.”

  “What about vandalism?” AJ whispered. “Looks like they trashed your place pretty good.”

  “It looks like it, doesn’t it?” Scooter answered. “But did you notice outside? Not a thing was disturbed! Only the inside. Why would they risk tripping a burglar alarm to break in just so they could trash the place? It makes no sense.”

  “You have a burglar alarm?” AJ asked.

  “No, we don’t,” Scooter answered.

  “But I bet you will now,” AJ chuckled.


  “Not funny,” I said, and AJ shut up.

  “My point is,” Scooter continued, “they sure took a lot of risk if all they wanted to do was destroy property. I don’t think this has anything to do with robbery or vandalism at all.”

  “Then what is this about?” I whispered, my curiosity piqued.

  “Look at the couch and chair.” I looked over at the furniture. By now the police had put all the cushions back in roughly the places they came from. Each cushion had an almost identical diagonal slash from the top left corner down to the bottom right. Each slash had a significant amount of stuffing pulled halfway through the opening. Strange. I looked at the recliner. Same diagonal slash with stuffing coming out.

  “I think that our visitors were looking for something.” Scooter then whispered even more softly, “And I think it has everything to do with the three of us.”

  By this time, the officers in the living room had moved to the hall near the front door and were filling in the rest of the team on what they knew so far. The human pencil with glasses was now standing on the back porch, working on the outside of the door. Still, Scooter whispered as quietly as he could.

  “I think this break-in has something to do with Mr. Mathisen.”

  “But he’s dead!” AJ blurted out a lot louder than any of us wished he had. Luckily, none of the officers must have heard; we could see them across the room with their backs still turned toward us.

  “OK, just trust me. I’ll show you,” Scooter whispered, with his hands held out as if to keep us from jumping out of our seats. He turned toward the group of police officers, “Um, Officers, is it possible for us to leave now? We wanted to go outside and play in the backyard. Is that OK?”

  A heavyweight officer with fire-red hair emerged from the center of the crowd of police and took a couple steps toward us. Although most of his bulk looked like muscle, it was clear that he hadn’t chased any bad guys on foot lately, but he must have in his heyday because he clearly commanded respect wherever he went. Every officer turned as if to give this man every ounce of their attention. Even before the formal introduction, it was clear this man was in charge.

  He extended his hand toward Scooter. “Commander Erik Coleman. And you are?”

  “Scooter. Er, I mean, Sean Parks, Sir,” he said, shaking the Commander’s hand.

  “And who are they?” he asked, pointing to AJ and me.

  “My friends—Tyler and AJ,” Scooter answered nervously. “They practically live here, too.”

  “I see,” Commander Coleman said. He turned to one of the officers standing nearby. “Perimeter?”

  “All clear, Sir. We checked the woods all the way back to the next housing development and questioned all the neighbors who were home, and nobody saw anything.”

  “Nothing, huh?” he said with a frown. “At least it should be safe. Good work, Saunders. Well, Scooter,” he said Scooter’s name with a smile and a twinkle in his eye, “going outside will be just fine. But stay within shouting distance; we may have some questions for you in a little bit. By the way, I noticed you looking around pretty intently earlier. Even though this is quite a mess, did you notice anything missing?”

  “Not that I noticed, no, Sir.”

  “Are you sure, Scooter?” he asked again.

  “No, Sir, I am pretty sure everything in this house is accounted for,” Scooter answered confidently and truthfully.

  Commander Coleman turned toward me. “How about you, Tyler? Did you notice anything that I—or rather we—should know about?” He said that last little bit with the same smile he’d had for Scooter’s name.

  The more I thought about it, the more I realized that I had seen that same smirk before on Scooter’s face when he knew something and was holding it over AJ’s and my head.

  “N-n-no, Sir,” I mumbled, feeling like I was expected to say something else. And I couldn’t help but wonder why he had asked me and not asked AJ.

  “OK, then,” Commander Coleman said with a wink, still wearing that huge smile. “You boys go get some fresh air.”

  “Thank you, Sir,” we all said in unison.