Chapter 63: Friday The 13th, Part II

Friday, December 13, 1985

Tonight was the last day of ‘Dead Week,’ which many of us had taken to calling ‘Slacker Week.’ We hadn’t been slacking, but many people were.

Most of our efforts today were around tonight’s party. It wasn’t a complicated one. Lots of appetizers (mostly simple ones), snacks, hot dogs, hamburgers, sides, and non-alcoholic drinks. We were sticking to the ‘serving no alcohol’ plan. For us, getting drunk felt like the wrong thing going into finals week.

This one was almost entirely for the members of our various study groups. Dates and roommates were welcome, and Amy would hopefully be joining us, but it was mostly a quiet group. Oh, these were college students. Some of them undoubtedly had a wild side. We didn’t want it to be a wild party, though, and I was nearly certain it wouldn’t be.

The hot tub probably wouldn’t get much use until fairly late at night. Too many people earlier, and some of them would be less cool with nudity. We hadn’t asked our study buddies about nudity, though.

This was it until the spring. We weren’t holding an end-of-finals party. I had invitations to two of them, but I also had an invitation to hang out with Darla. Guess which one was going to win out?

When I arrived at Hullabaloo Cafe, Amy’s outfit was a surprise. The rest was as usual, but she was also wearing a black witch hat with purple trim. It was, undoubtedly, Halloween surplus, but it worked.

“Happy Friday the 13th!” she said when I came in.

“And Happy Friday the 13th to you!”

“Hey!” Trev said. “The same!”

“And to you!”

I went over and squeezed her hand briefly.

“Good day?”

“So far, there are no particularly strange events. There is scientific evidence for Friday the 13th being unusually full of strange events, though, so I expect it may happen.”

“Definitely!”

She lowered her voice and said, “It was a wonderful evening. Thank you!”

“Thank you, Amethyst. Remember: the girl always deserves the thanks!”

“Remember: I am the exception to the rule!”

We grinned at each other.

“I’ll see you tonight?”

“You will,” she said. “It sounds like too much fun to pass up. And I do wish to meet Tony and Cleo.”

“They like meeting new admirers.”

“Unsurprising!”

“See you then,” I said.

“Yes!”

As I was walking home, my pager went off. I didn’t recognize the number. Since it was Al’s new code attached to the number, though, it was obvious who I would be calling back.

When I got home, no one else was there, so I gave him a call right away. It turned out that his schedule had gotten crazy next week and he wanted to come by a bit after ten tonight. I had no problem with that. I told him we would have a party in progress, but that it should be fairly quiet and we would be happy to show him everything he needed to know. That seemed fine, so we agreed that was the plan.

Angie and Paige got home just after I got off the phone, and Cammie and Mel joined us only a bit later. Candice and Sherry were the last to arrive. They were included as hosts. Candice had her own freshman-class study groups, and Sherry had one of her own as well as the groups of ours she joined in.

Certainly, not everyone would come. If everyone came, we would be tight on space and entirely out of comfortable seating. It wasn’t that warm outside, so a backyard party was only going to work for some people.

Still, I had been at college parties with forty people in a tiny one-bedroom apartment before. Not often, but it had happened. We had far more space.

Everyone would fit. They just might not be able to sit.

We most likely had enough food, too. Most of it was relatively non-perishable and a lot could be frozen if we didn’t eat it. If we got low, I would run to the store and get more.

Things got rolling very quickly as the first guests arrived. I was quickly dividing my time between meeting and greeting and cooking hot dogs and burgers.

Cammie set out a tip jar. She had a very good argument for it, I thought. It wasn’t that we needed the money, because we didn’t. It was that, first, we should probably look like we could use the help. Second, and even more important, people wanted to help. This gave them an easy way to do so. We would spend the money on the next party, anyway. It was another win-win, so we all embraced it.

Darla was the first of my dates to arrive. She and Louise, along with a few others from Krueger, arrived around six-thirty. Darla greeted me with a big hug and kiss, which got a few hoots of ‘woo-hoo’ echoing around the room. It was probably a measure of how many people knew about my dating life that no one looked at Jasmine as if she should be going after me with an axe.

“How are you?” I said.

“Great! Good week, and I’m looking forward to the weekend,” she said. The grin she had told me plenty about what she was really looking forward to.

“I am, too.”

“Linda says ‘hi!’ Also, ‘good job!’”

I chuckled and said, “Hi, Linda. And thanks!”

“We’ll talk later. Most likely anyway. Mostly ... not party conversation.”

I leaned in and whispered, “Good girl.”

“No fair!” she said, groaning a bit and turning slightly red. “Seriously!”

“Well, you are,” I said, grinning.

“I am, aren’t I?”

Amy arrived about half an hour later, and she hadn’t compromised. She had on a fully Amethyst outfit, complete with the witch hat. I was proud of her for that. Meg came with her, as did two friends of Meg’s I didn’t know. We could handle extras, so that was fine. I handed off cooking duties to Larry and Carl so I could show Amy around. Well, and the others, if they wanted a tour.

I met Amy with a hug, one of the ones I added a little extra to. Amy made some happy noises against my ear as I held her.

“It’s busy,” she said. “But good.”

“Let me introduce you to Tony and Cleo first,” I said. “They’re put away right now. We’ll let them out when fewer people are coming and going.”

“Meg wants to meet them, too.”

We wound up with eight people making the trek up to the spare bedroom on the second floor. As soon as admirers turned up, Tony and Cleo were front and center. I’d seen cats whose reaction to humans was to hide in as deep and dark a corner as possible. Thank goodness ours didn’t share that.

Amy said, “Oh, my! They’re so pretty!” and started petting Cleo immediately. Cleo launched into a pretty loud purr, which wasn’t always her reaction, so that was a good sign.

I left five of the guests, including Meg, entertaining our feline overlords and took Amy on a tour of the rest of the house. She loved it, as I’d fully expected, from Cammie and Mel’s slightly unusual apartment to the basement guest room. I was going to skip Candice and Sherry’s apartment, but Sherry came out, saw Amy, and invited her in.

Well, invited us in.

I hadn’t been in there since move-in day. Their home was very well-kept, and they had added lots of little things that really made it a home. I was happy to see the apartment so well-loved.

Once Sherry was done with her tour, Amy and I joined hands and headed back upstairs.

“This really is amazing,” she said. “Such a nice place! Honestly, I enjoy the dorm, but it’s nothing like this.”

“We got very lucky,” I said. “It works because the six of us are so close. Candice and Sherry, too, but...”

“They’re a little more removed. Physically and also emotionally,” Amy said.

“You picked up on that quickly.”

She blushed a bit, and said, “Thank you! I am learning.”

“You’ll stay a while?”

“I plan to. I would like to meet people. This is the first college party I have ever attended. It ... may ... arguably ... be the first student party I have ever attended. It is slightly intimidating, but everyone has looked at me like I belong here, which is new.”

“I didn’t warn anyone,” I said. “You’re seeing honest reactions.”

“That is good,” she said, nodding. “I will see how I fit in once we actually start conversing.”

“If you need me, just shout. Or have someone find me. Or find me yourself.”

She smiled widely.

“I will. Thank you!”

We probably hit peak attendance around eight. Things were fairly packed, and we had groups in the basement living room, second-floor sitting area, kitchen, living room, back yard, and some sitting on the stairs. Just about every chair we had was occupied, and people were having a great time.

Only a small handful had brought their own beverage, and they were people I knew were legal. Most of them were older — we had some juniors and even a few seniors in some of the groups, including two from Angie’s math groups and my computer group.

Even with the crowd, people kept it reasonable. I wanted to be sure, so I went out in the front yard around eight-thirty for a bit. With the door closed, you couldn’t tell there was a party going on without looking in the windows. There were no significant sounds from the backyard, and the house insulation kept all of the living room chatter down.

We had put in a lot of insulation. Plenty was in the exterior walls. This was yet another proof that it was all paying off. We weren’t loud, and we weren’t going to be loud, but the safer we were from annoying the neighbors, the better.

Al arrived at about ten-fifteen. He was out of uniform, thankfully. It would have been fine showing an officer around, but most people are at least a bit nervous around cops. I was more immune than most, but I’d had a friend who was a police officer in my other life.

Al shook hands, then said, “Yeah, they cleaned this place up but good! Not that I’ve seen the inside before, but it looks completely different on the outside. And the inside looks nice from here.”

“Let me show you around,” I said.

I did, taking him upstairs and showing him the whole place, room by room. He immediately made friends with Tony and Cleo when I showed him the room that might well be his temporary lodging. That boded well for his role as their obedient human servant.

We made it clear that we weren’t expecting much trouble. He appreciated the extra money we’d put into locks, and in general felt like we had done an excellent job in making the house theft-resistant. And the security system met with his approval, though I got the feeling he was the sort who would never be satisfied with ‘good enough’ when ‘better’ was available.

We went out back and I showed him the backyard, hot tub, and fencing. He made the same point we had: someone could jump the fence and use it to their advantage. That was true, but we hadn’t felt like it was worth putting up additional climbing deterrents. There could be liability issues there, possibly. He agreed, but wanted us to consider it.

I unlocked the gate, then showed him the wall our vandal preferred. He agreed: it was extremely unlikely that a kid with some paint was going to look around carefully enough to note the slight glint of glass from the knothole we were using for the camera. The whole thing looked like it would work, and he liked the time delay between the camera and the house alarm.

After that, we went over the kitchen and laundry room. He was adamant about bringing his own food, and refused our offer of using our laundry supplies on the grounds that he had allergies and needed a specific brand of detergent. That might well be the case, but I also thought he was being careful to make sure of the lines between his work and our being good hosts. If he never took anything from us, even little things we offered, there would be nothing for him to have to explain if we alleged he took a big thing. He could deny taking anything with a clear conscience.

Well ... he agreed that he didn’t need his own toilet paper. That was something. But I wouldn’t have put it past him to bring some, anyway.

He would use our pots and pans, plates, cutlery, and so forth, but promised to wash them all and put them away.

I really liked the guy, so far. Hopefully, I still would after our vacation, because we would be in need of house-sitting for many vacations to come.

Oh, we could just take Tony and Cleo to Houston and mothball the house. Mom and Dad would happily watch them. I was pretty sure the other parents would as well. But this was better for them, and having someone watching the house was better for us.

After all, and while Al didn’t and wouldn’t know it, there was a non-trivial (if not nearly as excessive as before) amount of cash in the well-hidden safe, along with some other fairly valuable or hard to replace things. Our house was a good target, though people would need to do some serious exploring (and safe-cracking) to really get money out of it.

On the other hand, if our intruder simply hated us — as seemed entirely possible — deadbolts only went so far. If we were gone for a month, a broken window or a reciprocating saw would be perfectly effective at gaining entry, and the odds of someone noticing a little mid-day sawing on, say, Christmas or New Year’s Day approached zero. With the run of the house, the amount of damage some motivated individual could do was astronomical.

Even the alarm wouldn’t help. We didn’t have it wired to call the police, and a savvy bandit would cut the wire anyway. It would only take a few minutes for them to make a giant mess as well, then be gone long before anyone could arrive.

Al, Cammie, Mel, and I were in the kitchen talking about appliances when I heard some sort of commotion at the front door. I excused myself and headed up there, thinking maybe a guest had gotten rowdy or there was some sort of disagreement.

Instead, we had an uninvited guest, one Officer Michaelson, who was apparently trying to make his way further into the house. He very likely shouldn’t have been inside the house at all — no one who lived here had granted permission, I was nearly certain — but that was something to deal with later.

I moved to intercept him and said, “Hello, Officer. Steve Marshall. Can I help you?”

I extended my hand as he spoke.

He ignored it and said, “You live here?”

“I do,” I said.

“We have a series of noise complaints...” he said.

“I find that hard to believe,” I said. “I was just outside and it’s impossible to hear anything. Would you...?”

I motioned to Jas, who came over.

“Would you mind stepping outside with me and telling me what you hear?”

“I’m staying here,” he said. “We’ve noise complaints, like I said, and I have some other concerns.”

Jas said, “Can you tell me what those are?”

“Look at all of these people! There’s a very good chance there’s underage drinking going on here. Or something else.”

“We’re not serving any alcohol tonight,” Jas said.

“Give me just a minute, and I’ll check with the others,” I said, knowing Jas would guess I had something in mind.

He halfheartedly tried to slow me down, but I wasn’t under arrest. It was lucky that I broke away, because Cammie was talking with Al on their way out of the kitchen. I quickly waved them back and mouthed, “Stay in the kitchen please, and listen,” hoping they got it.

I headed into the bedroom, opened a desk drawer, grabbed my microcassette recorder, hit record, and shoved it in my pocket. On my way out of the bedroom, I locked the door. Not the usual, but it would block any warrantless search he might attempt.

Game on, Officer Michaelson. I have a couple of aces in the hole you don’t know about.

As I rejoined Jas and Officer Michaelson in the living room, he was saying, “ ... not allowed to tell you who reported you. Retaliation, you know. All reports are confidential. Most are anonymous. But we’ve had four complaints. This isn’t the first time, you know.”

“We don’t know,” Jas said. “None of our neighbors have complained to us before.”

“We got two in ... September,” he said. “Labor Day. Couldn’t get a car out here before people cleared out. And one in November.”

The second was clearly nonsense, but Labor Day rang a bell. Just not the one Officer Michaelson thought it was ringing.

“We’ll be happy to help, Officer. But, as you can see, everyone is quiet now. Would you like me to make an announcement to everyone to please keep it down?”

“What I would like is for you to tell all of these hooligans to go home,” he said. “Three noise complaints in a night means I’m shutting this down.”

“And I’m sure you can document that?” I said.

“Of course I can!” he said, raising his voice and waving an arm in the air.

Normally, I would have just given in. It was nearly eleven. Most of our parties ended then, and we’d already lost almost half of the original attendees. But this...

Well, this was a golden opportunity. A tape recorder and an off-duty Bryan police officer as a witness? Against a cop with a flimsy story?

Let’s see how far he would go to hang himself. This might prove to be quite entertaining.

“Still,” I said. “We’re a very law-abiding bunch. These are people we know from studying together. We’re not being loud, we’re not doing anything illegal...”

“What’s in those cups?” he said.

“Depends,” I said. “We aren’t serving any alcohol tonight.”

“A likely story. You!” he said, pointing at Amy. “Yes, you! Purple hair! What’s in that cup you have?”

I gave Amy a reassuring look, but she didn’t need it, I was pretty sure.

“Water?” she said, holding it up.

“And what’s in the water, hmm?”

“It’s water, Officer. It’s literally just water.”

He went over, sniffed, then harrumphed.

“A likely story!”

Then he looked around theatrically — Steffie Smith would have had him redoing that move for days, I thought — and sniffed the air several times.

“Well, well,” he said. “I’m going to have to have to search this place. There is a distinct odor of a certain contraband narcotic in here. Very strong.”

“I don’t smell anything,” Jas said.

“Well, of course not! You’ve been soaking in it for hours! Now, call this whole thing off now or I might drag the lot of you in for toxicology screenings and a night in the drunk tank!”

We were getting to some more serious stuff now. Officer Michaelson, I’ll see your bet and raise you.

“This seems like it might be a serious matter,” I said.

“That’s what I’ve been telling y-”

“So I’m going to call my lawyer. He’ll...”

“A-ha!” he said. “No reason for you to have a lawyer unless you’re already in trouble with the law. I knew there was something going on!”

“In the meantime, if you’ll wait right here, since no one has given you permission to search...”

“I don’t need permission!” he shouted. “I have probable cause! The smell is very strong!”

Jas intercepted him.

“We are not giving permission,” she said. “Now, if you would like to get a warrant...”