Something Missing_ A Novel - Matthew Dicks [111]
On the far end of the room, opposite the stairway to the second floor, stood the front door to the home. Martin checked the locks on this door and was surprised to find both disengaged. Preparing for the possibility of a quick exit, he opened the front door slightly so that a quick pull, rather than a turn of the knob, would gain him access to the front yard and street. He then moved past the door and into the adjoining room, presumably meant to be a dining room, now empty, and into a hall that connected the kitchen with the bathroom and another room at the end of the house. This room was also empty save for a stack of empty boxes, another TV tray stacked with mail, and an upright, rotating fan.
Martin moved back down the hallway toward the kitchen, opening a closed door opposite the bathroom and finding an empty closet, leaving him to assume that the house was built on a slab and had no basement. More important, there was also no other exit to the outside. If Clive Darrow arrived home, it was the front door that Martin would use for his escape.
With the layout of the first floor set in his mind, Martin ascended the stairs to the second floor, where he found two empty bedrooms and a small, unused bathroom. No beds, no bureaus, no clothing of any kind.
As he returned to the first floor, Martin grew concerned. Though town records indicated that Clive Darrow had lived in this house for almost two years, the house was barely furnished, with no living room furniture, no television, and no telephone to be found. Other than a room full of cardboard boxes and a couple of TV trays, the house was nearly empty, as if someone had broken in and stolen everything of value from the place.
Martin moved back to the kitchen and took a peek through the window above the sink, which looked out onto the backyard and garage, and saw no sign of Darrow. He hoped that if the man returned, he would hear the sound of the truck moving up the driveway and past the house or the noise of the garage door opening and closing, but he wasn’t sure if this was possible. The garage was set to the rear of the property and there was no telling how loud the door might be. In order to aid his cause, Martin opened the window above the sink about four inches, hoping that this might be enough to allow some sound indicating Darrow’s return to waft into the house.
With little to investigate, Martin made his way back down the hall and into the room of boxes at the end of the house in order to examine the stack of mail on the TV tray. As he entered the room, he noticed three rolls of packing tape, still encased in cellophane wrappers, stacked in one corner, along with several cardboard boxes not yet assembled into cubes.
It appeared that Clive Darrow was in the process of moving.
Martin began sorting through the stack of mail, which was more than a couple of inches high. On the top of the pile were envelopes that Darrow had previously opened, and beneath them junk mail and other unopened envelopes. The light was dim inside the house now and, not daring to turn on any lights, Martin drew each sheet of paper close to his face for inspection. The first opened envelope contained a letter from Wachovia Bank, indicating that foreclosure proceedings were to begin in less than a week as a result of Darrow’s failure to make the monthly mortgage payments on the property. Several other opened letters from Wachovia, going back more than six months, indicated that Clive Darrow hadn’t paid his mortgage for quite some time. Martin also found a shutoff warning (two days from now) from the electric company with an outstanding balance of $818.45, and similar notices from the gas and water companies. By the end of next week, Darrow’s home would be without