Not A Girl Detective by Susan Kandel Read Free Book Online Page A

Keene. My ex, an English pro-
    fessor and master neurotic, was always after me about that. Heart pounding, I raced out the kitchen door with Lois right behind me, and toward my office. It was still locked, thank god, which made sense since it couldn’t be opened with the front-door key. I peered through
    the French doors and my Bondi Blue iMac peered
    back at me.
    “The research is secure,” Lois declared solemnly.
    We went back inside and into my bedroom, where
    things were not as sanguine. My bed had been pulled
    out into the middle of the room and stripped of the
    sheets and pillows. My comforter had been tossed on
    top of the TV. My books had been tossed off the night-stand. But I really didn’t care about any of that stuff.
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    Only my computer—and my clothes. I felt my stomach
    contract into a knot. My precious clothes that I’d been collecting for two decades. They were everywhere, like wrapping paper after you open your presents. But it wasn’t my birthday .
    “Do you have household insurance?” Lois was trying
    to be helpful, but I wanted to kill her. I knelt down to pick up my metallic knit cocktail dress; 1978 had been a good year for Missoni. And there was my silk chiffon skirt with the scalloped sunburst, one of my first purchases. I had so wanted to be Stevie Nicks when I was fifteen. I plucked my Pucci for Formfit Rogers dressing gown out of the heating vent and clutched it to my
    chest. You just can’t get those anymore, much less for seventeen bucks. Oh, and my Halston silver sequined
    beret.
    “This stuff must be worth a pretty penny,” Lois said, fingering a faux leopard bolero.
    “Not really. Only to me,” I said. But her inane com-
    ment got me thinking. I leapt up and yanked open the
    top drawer of my bureau. My black velvet Lanvin cape
    from the twenties, with its wide fur collar. At one thousand smackeroos, the single most expensive piece of
    clothing I’d ever purchased. It was there, safe and sound in its pink tissue paper nest. And that confirmed it.
    I’d been robbed and nothing was missing.
    My Lanvin cape, inviolate; my TV, still there; my
    CD player, the microwave in the kitchen, my computer, the god-awful china, all untouched. What was going on here? Had the robbers found religion halfway through
    the job? I probably needed better stuff. Or maybe my
    new best friend Mitchell Honey was behind this.
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    Maybe he wanted to make sure I hadn’t tied Edgar Ed-
    wards up and hidden him in my closet.
    “Are you going to call the police, Cece?” Lois was
    looking up at me with those hazel eyes, which were still beautiful and clear, unlike her mind.
    “Well, I think I have to,” I said, exasperated now.
    “Two strange men broke into my house and are out
    there wandering around with my key.”
    “But if nothing is gone, what’s the point?”
    “What’s the point? Lois, a crime has been commit-
    ted. This is what people do when a crime is committed.
    They contact the authorities.” I started looking for the cordless phone. Hadn’t she ever read number 33, The Witch Tree Symbol ? Never, under any circumstances, let a stranger lock up after you.
    Lois sat down on my bare mattress and burst into
    tears.
    I sat down next to her and patted her hand. “Are you
    worried I’m going to be angry at you? It wasn’t entirely your fault.”
    “I know that. It was your fault for leaving the key in such an obvious place. No, it’s the police. They don’t like me.”
    “What are you talking about?”
    “What part do you not understand? The police don’t
    like me. They don’t like my sister, they don’t like our dogs, they hate our landscaping—oh, I could go on
    and on.”
    And you will, I thought to myself.
    “They’ve been over here four or five times now,” she
    continued, “trying to get us to chop down that beautiful old tree in our front yard, but I have discovered they 48
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    can’t make