Chapter 79: Trouble

“What in the hell?” I said, half to myself and half to Marilyn. Suddenly I was glad we had gotten our clothing back together. I turned up and into the driveway and parked behind the Baltimore County Police cruiser with the lights flashing. When I had laid out the grounds, we put in a large circular driveway, able to hold more than just the two cars we had at the time. At least we weren’t blocking him in.

I climbed out of my side of the car and looked around. At the front door a policeman was talking to Becky, who was holding Charlie in her arms, and Dum-Dum was on her leash, straining to get loose. Nothing seemed out of the ordinary, but what was going on? Everybody had turned towards us when I pulled into the driveway. I limped over as Marilyn ran towards her baby. Charlie didn’t seem all that bothered, but simply held his arms out towards his mother, who took him from Becky. Dum-Dum tried to climb up Marilyn’s leg to play.

“What’s going on?” I asked. Both Becky and the officer tried to talk at once, with Dum-Dum barking and Charlie talking up a storm to Marilyn. I made the time out signal. “One at a time.”

“Who are you?” asked the police officer

“I’m Carl Buckman, and this is my wife, Marilyn. We live here. What happened?”

Becky was nodding in agreement. Any further response was stopped when another car pulled into the driveway and Becky said, “It’s my mom! I called her, too.”

Lauren Devlin hopped from her station wagon and came running up. “Are you alright? What happened?” She looked very accusatorily at both me and the cop.

I just shrugged. “We just got here, too.” I turned back towards Becky and the officer, Branson according to his name tag.

“Who are you, ma’am?” asked Branson.

“This is my mother. I called her right after I called the police,” answered Becky. “I thought I saw somebody, and I got scared.”

My eyes opened at that, and I looked at Branson. “We got a call about a suspicious vehicle, and I was routed out here. Whoever was here, they weren’t here by the time I got here.”

Dum-Dum was being a real nuisance by now, what with all these visitors here to play with her. I took Charlie, who was very curious, but otherwise fine, from Marilyn, and she dragged the mutt inside. She really didn’t miss any of the conversation. Becky tried to explain what was happening, but her mother kept badgering her for more details. Mom seemed more concerned than Becky.

The gist of it was that Becky had noticed a green car driving up and down our side road three or four times, parking several times near the driveway. The driver never got out, and she couldn’t clearly see who was driving the car, but she thought it was a man. The first time she hadn’t thought about it, and Becky was hazy on how many times it happened. Once she had seen the car parked there, but when she went to a different window to get a better look, the car left. Another time, she only saw the car as it pulled away. When the sun started to go down, she got nervous, and eventually called both the State Police and her mother.

As Becky went through her story, Marilyn and I looked curiously at each other. It got stranger when the police officer started asking everyone some questions. Did we know anybody with a green sedan? Did Becky know somebody with a green sedan? Who knew we were going out tonight? Who knew Becky would be here alone? It was curious to consider that maybe somebody was following Becky and not us, but maybe it was a disgruntled boyfriend.

Nobody knew anything, and Officer Branson decided it was time to go back on patrol. I delayed him for a second. “Becky, your family lives in Hereford, right?” I looked at both Becky and Lauren as I asked this.

Becky nodded and Lauren replied, “Yes, about five miles from here, back down Mount Carmel Road. Why?”

“Well, maybe Officer Branson can follow you and make sure everything is okay. Better safe than sorry, right?”

Both women looked relieved at that, and Branson agreed to follow them home.

Next, I pulled out my wallet. Good babysitter wages at the time might have been a couple of bucks an hour, maybe $20 for the night. I pulled out a pair of fifties. I laid one in the palm of her hand and said, “This is for taking care of Charlie. He obviously had a fine time and is none the worse for the wear, and a nice tip on top of that.” Then I laid the second fifty next to the first one. “And this is for being smart and brave and knowing what to do. That’s worth a nice bonus.”

Lauren protested it was too much, and Becky just gabbled, “Oh my God!” That was probably more money than she would make the rest of the month combined.

I smiled. “It’s not too much. You did the smart thing, and we appreciate it. Besides, this way I get guaranteed future baby-sitting service!”

“Meaning what?” asked Lauren, curiously.

“Meaning that even if Becky didn’t want to babysit, or couldn’t, you know she’s going to tell her girlfriends at school and church. Marilyn will be able to line up any number of girls to help!”

Lauren laughed at that, and Marilyn groaned. “Okay, enough of you being a businessman. Let’s let Lauren and Becky go home, and I need to change Charlie and put him to bed. This is way past his bedtime!” She hugged Lauren and Becky and headed inside. I shook Branson’s hand and gave Becky a shoulder hug and waved as they all left. Then I cleaned out the back of the car and followed my wife inside.

I let Dum-Dum out of the laundry room, where Marilyn had locked her, and put her on her tie-out in the back yard. Then, while she did her business, I took Marilyn’s purchases down to our bedroom and dropped them off. I could hear her in Charlie’s room reading him a bedtime story and trying to get him to go back to sleep. It had been an exciting evening, and he wasn’t interested. I smiled to myself and then went back and let Dum-Dum back in. She ran around in circles in the living room until I sat down in my recliner, and then she jumped up with me, and I rubbed her belly while she licked my face, and I calmed her down.

When Marilyn finished with Charlie, she came out looking for me. “Hey, that’s my seat!” she protested to Dum-Dum.

Our dog looked up at her with supreme indifference. “I think Dum-Dum thinks it’s the other way around,” I told her.

“Lazy mutt!”

I chuckled and sat upright, dropping Dum-Dum to the floor (gently). “You want some wine? I think I could do with a drink?”

“Me too!” agreed Marilyn. She followed me out to the kitchen, where we had our wine rack on the side counter. I pulled out a bottle of Louis Jadot Chardonnay and dug out the corkscrew. Marilyn plopped onto a bar stool and asked, “Do you think there’s a problem?”

“What, with what Becky saw?” Marilyn nodded. “No, I don’t think so. She doesn’t know what she saw! A green car that may or may not have been stopped on the road, but that she didn’t see very well - you did see that her glasses have lenses like the bottoms of a couple of Coke bottles, right? For all we know, somebody up the road just bought a green car, and was out taking a test drive.”

“So, you think it’s nothing?”

“Probably. Just keep an eye open the next few days. If you see anything odd, let me know,” I assured her. Seriously, it sounded like absolutely nothing to me. The only reason anybody could possibly be looking the place over was if they wanted to kidnap Charlie for ransom. But how would they know I had any money? I wasn’t well known in the business field, and even in the private equity business we were small potatoes. Nobody had written about us in the paper or a magazine. If it was a kidnapping attempt or setup, it seemed incredibly amateurish. Why drive back and forth around the house first? It had to be a neighbor.

“It kind of put a damper on the festivities, tonight!” commented Marilyn, with a wicked smile to her face. “I was planning on getting ready while you took Becky back home. I wasn’t figuring on having Charlie awake when we got home.”

I gave a light laugh at that. “Kind of killed the mood, huh?” I smiled and shrugged. “We’ll have to plan a crazy night by ourselves this winter, when we take that Mommy-Daddy vacation.”

We kept chatting for a moment, keeping an ear out for Charlie, who woke up once and Marilyn had to settle him back down. He was over-tired, a strange concept unless you have small children, and didn’t want to sleep. He was fighting it, but I knew once he did fall asleep, he would be out all night. When my wife came back, I topped off my glass and then poured the rest of the wine in her glass. “I think I’m going to sit and read for a bit.” I told her.

“I’m going to take a quick shower.” Marilyn took her glass of wine and headed for the bedroom. I nodded and followed her but stopped in the living room and sat down. Dum-Dum was in the room but gnawing a bone on an old throw pillow in the corner.