Let Me Call You Sweetheart

40

On Tuesday afternoon, Jason Arnott drove from Alpine to the remote area near Ellenville in the Catskills where his sprawling country home, hidden by the surrounding mountain range, concealed his priceless stolen treasures.

He knew the house was an addiction, an extension of the sometimes uncontrollable drive that made him steal the beautiful things he saw in the homes of his acquaintances. For it was beauty, after all, that made him do those things. He loved beauty, loved the look of it, the feel. Sometimes the urge to hold something, to caress it, was so strong it was almost overwhelming. It was a gift, and as such, both a blessing and a curse. Someday it would get him in trouble. As it almost had already. It made him impatient when visitors admired carpets or furniture or paintings or objets d’art in his Alpine home. Often he amused himself by contemplating how shocked they would be if he were to blurt out, “This place is ordinary by my standards.”

But, of course, he never would say that, for he had no desire to share his private collection with anyone. That was his alone. And must be kept that way.

Today is Halloween, he thought dismissively as he drove swiftly up Route 17. He was glad to get away. He had no desire to be victimized by children endlessly ringing his doorbell. He was tired.

Over the weekend he had stayed at a hotel in Bethesda, Maryland, and used the time to burglarize a Chevy Chase home at which he had attended a party a few months earlier. At that gathering, the hostess, Myra Hamilton, had rattled on about her son’s upcoming wedding, which would take place on October 28th in Chicago, effectively announcing to one and all that the house would be empty on that date.

The Hamilton house was not large, but it was exquisite, filled with precious items the Hamiltons had collected over the years. Jason had salivated over a Faberg’ with a gold egg-shaped handle. That and a delicate three-by-five-foot Aubusson with a central rosace that they used as a wall hanging were the two things he most wanted to wrest from them.

Now both objects were in the trunk of his car, on their way to his retreat. Unconsciously, Jason frowned. He was not experiencing his usual sensation of triumph at having achieved his goal. A vague, indefinable worry was nagging at him. Mentally he reviewed the modus operandi of entering the Hamilton home, going over it step by step.

The alarm had been on but easy to disengage. Clearly the house was empty, as he had anticipated. For a moment, he had been tempted to go through the place quickly, looking for anything of great value he might have missed noticing at the party. Instead he stuck to his original plan, taking only those things he had scoped out earlier.

He had barely inched his way into the traffic on Route 240 when two police cars, sirens screaming and lights flashing, raced past him and turned left onto the street he had just exited. It was obvious to him that they were on their way to the Hamilton home. Which, of course, meant that he had somehow triggered a silent alarm that operated independently of the master system.

What other kind of security did the Hamiltons have? he wondered. It was so easy to conceal cameras now. He had been wearing the stocking mask he always put on when entering one of the houses he had chosen to honor with his attention, but at one point this night he had pulled it up to examine a bronze figurine, a foolish thing to do-it had proved to be of no real value.

One chance in a million that a camera caught my face, Jason reassured himself. He would dismiss his misgivings and go on with his life, albeit a bit more cautiously for a while.

The afternoon sun was almost lost behind the mountains when he pulled into his driveway. At last he felt a measure of buoyancy. The nearest neighbor was several miles away. Maddie, the weekly cleaning woman-large, stolid, unimaginative and unquestioning woman that she was-would have been in yesterday. Everything would be shining.

He knew she didn’t recognize the difference between an Aubusson and a ten-dollar-a-yard carpet remnant, but she was one of those rare creatures who took pride in her work and was satisfied only with perfection. In ten years, she had never so much as chipped a cup.

Jason smiled to himself, thinking of Maddie’s reaction when she found the Aubusson hanging in the foyer and the Faberg’ desk seal in the master bedroom. Hasn’t he got enough stuff to dust? she would wonder and go on with her chores.

He parked the car at the side door and, with the rush of anticipation that always surged over him when he came here, entered the house and reached for the light switch. Once again, the sight of so many beautiful things made his lips and hands moist with pleasure. A few minutes later, after his overnight case, a small bag of groceries and his new treasures were safely inside, he locked the door and drew the bolt. His evening had begun.

His first task was to carry the Faberg’ seal upstairs and place it on the antique dressing table. Once it was in place, he stood back to admire it, then leaned over to compare it with the miniature frame that had been on his night table for the past ten years.

The frame represented one of the few times he had been fooled.

It was a decent Faberg’ copy, but certainly not the real thing. That fact seemed so obvious now. The blue enamel looked muddy when compared to the deep color of the desk seal. The gold border encrusted with pearls was nothing like authentic Faberg’ workmanship. But from inside that frame, Suzanne’s face smiled back at him.

He didn’t like to think about that night, almost eleven years ago. He had gone in through the open window of the sitting room of the master bedroom suite. He knew the house was supposed to be empty. That very day, Suzanne had told him about her dinner engagement for the evening, and the fact that Skip would not be home. He had the security code, but when he got there, he saw that the window was wide open. When he entered the upstairs floor, it was dark. In the bedroom he spotted the miniature frame he had seen earlier; it was on top of the night table. From across the room it looked authentic. He was just examining it closely when he heard a raised voice. Suzanne! Panicking, he had dropped the frame in his pocket and hidden in a closet.

Jason looked down at the frame now. Over the years he had sometimes wondered what perverse reason kept him from removing Suzanne’s picture from it, or from throwing the whole thing away. The frame was, after all, only a copy.

But as he stared at it this night, he understood for the first time why he had left the picture and frame intact. It was because it made it easier for him to blot out the memory of how gruesome and distorted Suzanne’s features had been when he made his escape.