Chapter 1

I would like to blame my daughter. It was her stupid idea that got us into this mess. And at first I did blame her. But in a rare moment of clarity I came to realize that I should have said no as soon as she made the stupid suggestion that led to our current predicament. And I can't deny that if I was a better mother, if I raised her right, if I taught her to be an honest, moral, respectable young woman and gave her a decent home life the foolish plan she came up with would never have occurred to her.

But the truth is I'm a shitty mother. I'm only being brutally honest. I admit that I'm not the brightest bulb on the tree. And my conscience never bothers me when I do something illegal or dishonest. It doesn't even bother me very much to admit that breaking the law isn't something that I do all that rarely if I don't think anyone is watching me. I've been known to take something that wasn't mine when I thought I could get away with it. I'm not very scrupulous about telling the truth, either.

The only reason I'm not an all out criminal is probably the fear of getting caught and going to prison. I'm terrified of being locked up in a prison. My fear of being imprisoned is almost irrational in its intensity.

Perhaps that fear haunts me because I have come so close so many times and have had to think about it more than most people I know. Or maybe it stems from the fact that my father died in prison. If it wasn't for that fear I'd probably be out robbing banks for a living. It looks like easy work.

Unfortunately that's the value system I instilled in my daughter as well. We have both been living hand to mouth on the borders of society, teetering ever closer to living a life of crime.

The last push came when our landlord showed up at our dilapidated old rental house on Friday and told us the cops were coming on the following Friday morning to kick us out of our sleazy, low rent home. In one week we were going to be homeless.

To be honest, it wasn't going to be a huge step down. The house we were living in was just about big enough to turn around in. It stank. The furniture was stained and broken and the only appliances, the range and the refrigerator, are older than I am. But it was a roof over our heads.

I pleaded with him for more time. When he only sneered I promised him that somehow I would come up with the money before then.

He shook his head and looked at me in disgust. He snarled, "No fucking way! I want you out. You have never once paid your rent on time. Not one time in the entire year that you have lived here. Excuses! That's all I get from you. Just excuses! I don't need this. You two are out on your ass in a week, one way or another."

He stuffed some legal looking papers in my hand that I didn't really understand other than the three words in large print on the front, Notice of Eviction. He stomped away looking pretty damned happy with himself. The motherfucker!

I turned around and pushed past my daughter. She had been standing behind me holding the door open and listening to everything that had just been said with a look of fear on her face. I went back inside and stood in the kitchen, wishing desperately for a drink of any kind of alcohol. But there wasn't any. There was no booze, no beer, no food, nothing!

I had no way of getting any, either. I had no job and except for a little bit of change on the kitchen counter I was flat broke.

I stood in the kitchen with tears of frustration, mixed with more than a little fury, running down my cheeks. I was so mad that I couldn't even think. Not that thinking was something I'm particularly good at anyway.

I heard the fear in the quiet voice behind me. Erin asked, "What are we going to do?"

I could only shrug. I had no idea. I was already at my wits end when the landlord showed up this evening. I had no chance of getting a job. I've been fired from every job I've ever had. Not that there were that many. I have an eighth grade education. That pretty much leaves out practicing law or medicine.

It didn't help that I've been arrested a few times for petty things. They charged me a couple of times with drunk and disorderly and once for disturbing the peace. I'm not sure what the difference is. I was just as drunk each time. I've been arrested for shoplifting and for writing bad checks. I've managed to stay out of jail because I'm the sole means of support for my daughter and I managed to get the judge to feel sorry for me.

My last remaining friend got me a job cleaning houses for the maid service she worked for a while back. Well, I didn't exactly work for the maid service. My friend would let me clean a few of the houses she was supposed to be cleaning and give me the money.

That was my last job. I got fired from that, too. But because I was getting paid under the table I couldn't get unemployment benefits. I used those up a long time ago.

A couple of guys have had the balls to offer me money to go to bed with them. If they were better looking I might have considered it. I was that desperate. But they weren't and I couldn't. It seemed like that was the one line I couldn't cross although I have to admit that it has been so long since I've been to bed with a man and I sometimes get so horny that I have thought about it. I'm not sure why I can't bring myself to cross that line. It isn't like I have a lot of pride left.

I collapsed into one of the rickety kitchen chairs and rested my head in my hands. I had stopped crying. But I wasn't thinking. My mind was blank. Sadly, there was nothing unusual about that.

Erin sat across from me looking just as glum as I felt. After a few minutes she quietly offered, "I have a suggestion."

I looked up, desperate enough to consider just about anything.

She cleared her throat and said, "Remember that house you used to clean over on Westminster?"

That was the last house I was responsible for cleaning before I got fired. I didn't steal anything or break anything. I just didn't do a very good job of cleaning. The owner of the cleaning company was furious when he found out that I was cleaning the house instead of the woman he hired. He fired me and my friend who it turns out was getting paid a hundred dollars for cleaning the house and giving me sixty-five.

Erin reminded me that I still had a key to the house and there was a lot of shit in there that could get us some money if we took it and sold it, including what appeared to be a very valuable coin collection. Unless he had changed the code I still knew how to disable his home alarm system.

The guy that owned the house lived alone. We could go to his house when he was at work, take what we could carry and get the hell out of there. We could wear gloves and be careful not to be seen. Or better yet, we could go in carrying a bunch of cleaning supplies and acting like we belonged there. No one would pay any attention to us!

It sounded pretty damned easy to me. I had a natural inclination to go with the easy solutions to my problems. And I couldn't think of any alternative. Maybe if I hadn't been so desperate I would have told Erin to forget it. But neither one of us had eaten a decent meal in days and I was dying for a drink.

I stared at my sixteen year old daughter in silence. She has my looks. In fact, she may be even prettier than me. We are both very attractive natural blondes with good figures and attractive features.

I noticed, and not for the first time, that she has grown into a very attractive young woman. She's smarter than I am, though. If she wasn't just as lazy as me she could have made something of herself. I was inordinately proud of how pretty she is. It wasn't like I was responsible for it beyond supplying the genes.

It really pleases me when people mistake us for sisters even though I'm thirty-four now. I still have a great figure and there isn't a line on my face. We wear our shoulder length blonde hair in the same simple style. When we dress up and stand side by side we do look like sisters.

The biggest difference between us is that my breasts are slightly larger. I have her to thank for that. My breasts expanded when I was pregnant with her and they never went all the way back to my original B cup. I have a very nice C cup now and it was almost worth what I had to go through to get them.

Erin was still waiting for my response to her suggestion. I never did really think about it. I returned from my reverie and without giving it much thought I said, "I guess we don't have much choice."

The bigger problem than planning the robbery was how we were going to survive until Monday when we could do this thing. There wasn't so much as a can of soup in the house. Not even a slice of bread.

On Saturday morning we swallowed what little pride we had and went to breakfast at a soup kitchen. I have an old junker car that makes a lot of noise and leaves a trail of smoke wherever I go. It still runs but it's low on gas and we were going to need it on Monday. So we had to walk almost five miles each way to get a greasy meal.

We went back for supper and we did the same thing on Sunday.

I didn't start getting nervous until Monday morning. Unlike most of the things that I have gotten in trouble for, what we were planning to do this morning wasn't a petty crime. This was something that could get me locked up for a very long time if we were to get caught. But it sounded so easy in my head.

We waited until nine in the morning and put some cleaning supplies in the car. I drove over to Mr. Barr's house on Westminster and parked in his driveway.

We carried the mop bucket and a broom and a handful of empty trash bags to the door as if we had every right to be there. I rang the bell and prayed to a god I don't believe in that no one would come to open the door.

When no one answered I used my key to unlock the door. I held my breath while I punched in the code and disarmed the alarm. I exhaled loudly when code worked and a little of the tension faded away.

To be honest, I pretty much expected that after attempting to punch in the code, Erin and I would be running like hell for the car. I almost couldn't believe he didn't change his code after they fired me!

We had to confine ourselves to small things. We didn't want to be seen carrying his big flat screen television out to the car. We headed straight for his coin collection.

He kept his most precious pieces in his safe. But that part of his collection that wouldn't fit in the safe was probably worth a small fortune. If I could get half of what his collection was worth when I sold it I would probably be able to live comfortably for several months. I'd be surprised if those coins weren't worth three or four thousand dollars!

We filled up the mop bucket and several large trash bags with what we thought would be the cream of his collection and put everything by the front door.

Before we left I filled up a couple of bags with food. No more soup kitchen for us! We carried everything out to the car and drove home.

I almost screamed after the car was unloaded and I remembered his well stocked bar. Damn! I should have grabbed a bottle on the way out! Double damn!! I needed a drink so bad right then that I was tempted to go back and get a bottle!

We would have to sell the coins as soon as possible. We would need the money to find a new place to live by Friday. I didn't know anyone who was a fence for stolen property. But I knew a few people who might. We didn't have a phone. That was disconnected a long time ago. But that didn't matter. I didn't know the phone numbers for these guys. I would have to wait until this evening and go to the bars where they hung out.

Until then, Erin and I put away the food we stole and I made an early lunch. We talked excitedly about how much money the coins might be worth and how much we hoped we could get for them.

It was pretty exciting. We've been living on next to nothing for a long time. Now we had the possibility of a large payout. A couple of thousand dollars may not seem like much to a lot of people. But we've been living on a lot less for a very long time. And this was like free money! There had been almost no labor involved at all.

In the back of my mind I was bothered. Not by what we just did. But by the knowledge that no matter how much money we made from those coins I would still be unemployed and without any prospects for finding a source for a steady income and hopefully improving our lives.

But I've always tended to wait until tomorrow to worry about tomorrow. Those nagging doubts about the future quickly faded from my mind. I was buoyed by the thought that I have been living frugally for a long time and if those coins were worth anywhere near as much as I hoped we could live for months on what we might get for them.

We ate a light supper that evening. We both knew that we needed to ration what little food we had until we sold the coins. After we ate I put on cleanest of my dresses. I really needed to do laundry. Nothing that either of owned was clean.

I was just about to hit the bars looking for my ethically challenged friends when there was a knock at the door.

I thought nothing of it. I went to the door and opened it without even looking through the peephole. The door was opened about a foot before I recognized the man at the door. It was the man from whom we had stolen the coins!

I screamed and attempted to close the door. I never had a chance. He slammed it open and stepped inside. He glowered at me and grabbed a handful of my hair without a word. He slammed the door closed with his foot and propelled me into the middle of my small living room, nearly tearing my hair out by the roots in the process.

Erin came running out from her bedroom and gasped loudly when she saw us. She started to turn and run but Mr. Barr yelled, "Don't you fucking move!"

She stopped instantly as if held in place by the power of his deep, booming voice alone. She paused, then turned and came into the living room looking very much like she was entering a minefield and every step might be her last. She was obviously just as terrified as I was.

He finally released his grip on my hair. He turned me around and pushed me down on the sofa as if I was a rag doll. Then he turned to Erin and pointing to the cushion beside me. He snarled, "Sit!"

She gave him a wide berth as she hurriedly took a seat beside me.

I saw the fury on his face and for a moment I wondered if we were going to die here tonight. I didn't know anything about this man. I met him twice. Once he came home from an out of town trip while I was cleaning his home. He spoke to me for a minute and then left for a meeting.

The second time I saw him he made a special trip home. He took time off from work to speak to me about how dissatisfied he was with the job I was doing. He was giving me a chance to do a better job before he went to my boss.

He didn't realize how truly lazy I am. I mean, after all, it isn't like I didn't know what a lousy job I was doing. I don't like cleaning houses. I would have thought that was obvious.

Mr. Barr stood in front of us, glaring down. The look on his face scared the hell out of me. He was furious. He looked capable of just about anything.

It was several moments before he calmed down enough to speak. He was still furious. But he seemed to be speaking in an almost normal, if somewhat strained voice. For some reason that made the situation even scarier.

"If you damaged any of those coins..."

He couldn't even finish the sentence! Finally he took a few deep breaths and growled at me, "Where are they, you stupid fucking cunt?!"

I was not in the habit of letting anyone talk to me that way. But I don't believe that I have ever before in my life seen anyone this angry. And when he put his hands on his hips his shirt pulled up enough that I could see the holster on his belt. He had a gun!

I whispered, "They're in my bedroom."

I started to get up to go get them. I had barely moved when I heard a metallic sound. I looked up and saw a huge pistol pointed right at my head. The hammer was pulled back and his trigger finger was white from the pressure he was applying. I may not be very bright. But I knew that at that moment I was a fraction of an inch from death.

That was when I pissed myself.

I stopped moving half way to my feet and whispered, "I was just going to get them."

He hissed, "Sit!"

He turned to Erin and said, "Go get them. If you come back out here with anything in your hands besides my coins you are both going to die tonight."

There was no question in my mind that he meant that from the bottom of his heart. I could see by the expression on my daughter's face that she believed him. Not that it mattered. We don't own a gun. If we had one I would have pawned it a long time ago.

Erin scurried to her feet and ran to my bedroom. She came back a moment later carrying an armful of coin display cases. She put them down carefully and made a half dozen more trips before they were all on the coffee table.

He was displeased to find scratches on the frames of some of the display cases. But the coins were all there and remained unscathed.

Erin sat back down beside me and in a shaky voice said, "That's all of them. That's all that we took, except for some food. Do you want me to get that, too?"

He ignored her and finished checking to make sure all the coins were there. When he straightened back up he didn't look any less furious. That huge gun was still in his hand. I wasn't yet certain that I was not going to die tonight.

He stared at me in disgust for a long time before he nodded down at his collection and asked, "Do you have any idea how much those coins are worth?"

I whispered, "No. But we..."

"Shut up! You stupid, lazy, worthless cunt! You have close to three hundred thousand dollars worth of coins on your coffee table right now. What the fuck was going through your empty head when you decided to steal something from a retired cop?!"

I almost told him that we didn't know he was an ex cop. But that wouldn't really have mattered. I couldn't speak, though. I was shocked. I had no idea. I had been hoping that those coins were worth as much as four thousand dollars!

He shook his head again and asked, "What the fuck am I going to do with you?"

I didn't say anything. He wasn't asking me.

Erin started to speak but he snarled at her and she stopped before getting two words out.

He finally said to me, "Do you know what you are looking at on that table?"

I looked in his eyes, trying to decide if he really wanted me to answer. He didn't.

"You're looking at about twenty-five years of your worthless life. That oughta make you close to sixty years old when you get out of the pen."

Erin gasped. I couldn't even make a sound. She gathered her courage and whispered, "It was my idea. I suggested it."

He sneered at her and asked, "And you are the adult here?"

I ignored the tears that were rolling down my cheeks in a steady stream now. I choked back a sob and said, "I was desperate."

He didn't yell at me. So I continued. "We haven't had any food in the house in days. I can't find a job. We are getting kicked out of here on Friday. We have no money and no place to go. Erin knew about your coins and she..."

He rolled his eyes and said, "I had a friend pull your record. You are broke and out of work because you are just about the laziest bitch on the planet. You can't hold a job because you can't be bothered to get to work on time or do your job once you get there.

"You get fired from every job you get because you don't want to work. You just want to get paid for doing nothing. To round off your stellar resume you drink too fucking much! You couldn't spell honesty if your life depended on it. Worse yet, when you drink too much you get rowdy and you have a tendency to write bad checks.

"And now I see that you've taught your daughter your version of right and wrong!"

He looked around our small living room and the disgust was obvious in his voice when he said, "Look at this place! I've seen cleaner pig sties! You don't have a job. You don't have any money to go out and play. Why the hell are you living like this?! You are disgusting on so many levels."

He shook his head once more and said, "Aw fuck it. What's the use?!"

He pulled out his cell phone and started dialing. I knew right away that he was calling the cops. I couldn't go to prison. Not for twenty-five years! I couldn't hold back the sobs of anguish any longer. I slid forward and fell to my knees. I begged him not to have me arrested. I promised him that I would do anything if he would give me a chance to make it up to him.

He laughed and asked in a sarcastic voice, "Do what, stupid? You tried cleaning my house. That didn't work out too well. You're a pig. You're lazy and sloppy. You've been trying to skate through life since you quit school. And your daughter is following in your footsteps. You must be so proud."