Page 21 of Now or Never

“What do you think?” Lula asked me.

“I think this has to be it.” I knocked on the door. No answer. I pounded on the door. No answer.

“They could be inside, sleeping off the pork slider party,” Lula said.

“Or they could be out and about following the Amazon truck around, collecting goodies for the underprivileged.”

“You want me to open this door?”

“Yes,” I said. “Do it.”

Lula put her hand on the doorknob and turned it. “This is disappointing,” she said. “The door isn’t locked. Takes all the fun out of doing a B & E.”

We took the stairs leading up to the second floor. There was a small landing and another door. This door was locked.

I knocked a couple times. I called out to Kevin. No answer.

“Okay,” Lula said. “Stand back.”

She took a hammer and a screwdriver out of her tote bag and bumped the lock. I walked in and shouted, “Bond enforcement,” just in case someone was there, or, more important, we were caught on a security camera.

We were standing in one large room with a single door at the far end, which I assumed led to the bathroom. There was a studio-apartment-size kitchen tacked onto the back wall. Sink, refrigerator, freezer, four-burner stove, microwave, coffee maker. Overhead cabinets. A small square table with four chairs was positioned in the kitchen area. There was a cereal bowl and a coffee mug in the sink. A box of Cheerios was on the counter. A couple giant beanbag chairs on the floor. Huge flat-screen TV. A brown leather couch that had seen better days. A bed had been pushed upagainst the wall by the single door. Two pillows, a rumpled quilt, and a stuffed Pooh bear were on the bed.

Eight-foot-high rolling partitions were placed haphazardly between the living space and the sleeping space. A couple large collapsible tables and folding chairs were in the same area. One of the tables held a drone and its controller, two GoPro cameras with one attached to a body harness, an iPad, an open box of Fig Newtons, a lined yellow pad, and a bunch of felt-tipped pens. Various lights on tripods were scattered around. Some had reflectors attached. There was also an electric gaming/computer desk holding two large monitors, a PC, and a MacBook Pro. Headphones were hanging from a hook on the desk. A red and black leather gaming chair was pushed up to the desk. A crumpled Coke can and an empty personal-size pizza box were on the desk. An identical desk with similar equipment was a few feet away.

“Whoa,” Lula said. “There’s something serious going on here. Why would a couple geek gamers want lights and drones? They even got beauty lights like you use for close-ups. I know about that on account of I got one for when I was an influencer.”

“I didn’t know you were an influencer.”

“I only influenced for a couple months. It sounded good in the beginning, but it got old only talking into my cell phone with no one talking back. I’m a gregarious people person. I need a live audience, if you see what I’m saying. And I’m a big person with a large personality. I need time to do a good influencing job. I can’t squeeze myself into thirty seconds of influencing time. I gotta influence people with a attention span. I decided instead of influencing I would go to cooking school and be a pastry chef.”

“You went to cooking school?”

“I’m thinking on it.” Lula looked around the room. “Where do they even get the money to buy all this stuff?”

“Good question. And what’s with all the broken-down cardboard boxes in the corner next to the door?”

I took pictures of the gaming desk, the photo equipment, and the drone. We left Kevin’s loft apartment and returned to the office.

“Don’t forget your pears,” Lula said when I got out of her car.

“Do you want them?” I asked.

“No way. They’ll sit around turning brown and mushy and I’ll feel guilty because I don’t want to eat them.”

“Why don’t you want to eat them?”

“They aren’t soaked in rum. They aren’t coated in chocolate. They haven’t been injected with salt. What’s the point to eating them.”

I carried the basket into the office.

“What’s with the fruit basket?” Connie asked.

“Jug gave it to me. It’s mostly fresh pears. Do you want it?”

“Thanks, but no. Mom belongs to the fruit-of-the-month club and I’m up to my eyeballs in fruit.”

I took the new FTA file from her and shoved it into my messenger bag. “Is this capture going to make me rich?”

---