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Read Part One Here.
Read Part Four Here.
Enjoy Part Five!
Another Monday.
I’m looking out the window, watching Nora Rasmussen pull out of her driveway for her daily lunch with her sister.
Grover is on the floor playing Matchbox cars with Ryan.
Vroom!
Vroom!
That’s an underrated thing about having kids. You get to play with all the old toys you haven’t played with since you were a kid.
Daisy’s on her blanket, having a little tummy-time, watching us, trying to figure out how to keep all the men in her life jumping through hoops for her.
With the excitement of the case over, it’s just another lazy afternoon watching the kids, so why’s Grover here?
I ask, “Red Rover, Red Rover, what’s Grover doing over?”
Grover says, “Oh, I almost forgot. I scouted us this sweet office location.”
“What do we need an office for?”
Grover looks at me like I’m the dumbest person who has ever or will ever live and says, “Our detective agency, duh.”
“Duh,” Ryan says. “Duh, Dadda, duh, duh.”
Great, that’s another word he now knows.
“I think I’m hanging up my fedora and magnifying glass. It’s not like we did a bang-up job on ‘The Case of the Boring Housewife.’”
“What are you talking about? We solved the case. We’re one for one.”
“Duh, Dadda, duh,” Ryan says to me, enamored with his new word.
“We didn’t solve anything. Nothing happened,” I say to Grover.
“Just because there was nothing to solve, that doesn’t mean we didn’t solve anything? Ty wanted to know if his wife was cheating on him, we found out she wasn’t. Hence, we solved the case.”
“I guess you’re right. OK, we solved the case. But unless another one of my neighbors needs me to stalk their spouse in between naptimes, I doubt I’ll get another case.”
“I wouldn’t be so sure. You live in the suburbs. A lot of weird people live in the suburbs.”
“True. OK, just for grins, let’s see those office photos.”
Grover hops up and walks over to his beat-up leather satchel he left sitting on the end table. “It’s perfect. It’s got a frosted glass door that we can stencil our agency’s name on and an old wooden desk with a drawer to store your whiskey bottle. I took some pictures and developed them in black and white to give it that noir look. Check it out.”
Grover pulls out a large manila envelope from the satchel, but a plastic baggie filled with dark squares flies out of the bag with it.
Brownies.
Grover and I watch the baggie hover in the air in slow motion.
Ryan hears the baggie hit the ground with, what to his highly attuned ears sounds like, an exaggerated bass drum thud.
His eyes zoom in on the baggie.
His brain processes the information.
“Choc-choc,” he says.
Chocolate.
He knows that word.
He points and runs over to the baggie yelling, “Choc-choc, choc-choc. Mine. Mine.”
Grover runs over and swipes the baggie from the ground and holds it over his head. “No, Ryan. It’s not chocolate,” he says.
“Choc-choc,” Ryan says, jumping up and down.
“It’s too late, Grover, he’s already seen it. Just let him have one.”
“No, dude,” he says to me. “They’re not regular brownies.”
Oh, no.
“Choc-choc! Choc-choc!”
Grover looks down at Ryan and says, “No, they’re not kid brownies. They’re MAGIC BROWNIES.”
Ryan stops jumping up and down and looks at Grover as if he was just told that the greatest thing in the world was that much better.
“Magic choc-choc,” Ryan says with wide-eyed wonder.
I slap my forehead with the palm of my hand. “What made you think bringing pot brownies was a good idea?” I say to Grover.
“I thought it was better than bringing New Sparky.”
His bong.
“New Sparky? What happened to Old Sparky?”
Grover looks sad. “I don’t want to talk about it.”
Ryan ups his game. “CHOC-CHOC! CHO-CHOC! MY CHOC-CHOC! MINE!”
Then Daisy starts to cry because people haven’t been paying attention to her for the last two minutes and that is NOT something a pretty girl, any pretty girl, will tolerate.
“CHOC-CHOC! CHOC-CHOC! CHOOOOOOOOC-CHOOOOOOOOC!”
This is getting out of control. I pick up Daisy and say to Grover, “He’ll never give up. New plan. You go to the grocery store and buy a box of brownie mix and I’ll bake a fresh batch.”
“They say you shouldn’t give in to a child’s demands.”
Ryan takes it to a new level by flopping on his back and writhing in fake pain on the carpet.
I look at Ryan, then I look back at Grover and say, “Where’d you read that, Unrealistic Parenting Monthly?”
“CHOOOOOOOOOC-CHOOOOOOOOOC!”
“LAAAAAAAAA,” Daisy cries just because.
Grover says, “Can we get extra frosting?”
“Oh, yes! Ooooooooohhhhhhhhh, YES!”
“OK, someone wants frosting,” Grover says in response.
“Uh, that wasn’t me, dude,” I say to Grover.
And it wasn’t Ryan.
Or Daisy.
“Yes! Yes! Yes! Yes! No! Don’t stop! Yes! Yes! Yes!”
All four of us look at the monitor.
The same monitor that Ty Rasmussen gave me that I never returned.
“Do you think it’s still turned on in their bedroom?” I say.
“YES! YES! YES!”
“Someone’s turned on,” Grover says.
“Oh, Ty! YES!”
“Looks like Ty and Nora made up,” Grover says.
“That’s impossible. I just saw Nora pull out and drive away.”
We run to the front window and see a white BMW parked in the driveway.
Ty’s car.
“That’s not Nora upstairs,” I say.
The woman who is not Nora lets a really inappropriate for children moan/scream/expletive.
Unprintable too.
Don’t even bother speculating.
I run over to the monitor and turn down the volume, before Ryan learns any new words. The dots along the top of the unit spikes red in a steady rhythm.
***
An hour later, we watch Ty walk out the front door with a short busty woman with frizzy black hair. He opens the passenger’s side front seat and pats her butt as she slides in. Then he get in the driver’s seat, backs out of the driveway, and pulls away.
“That son of a bitch,” I say.
“He’s lucky he’s getting out just in the nick of time, because Nora should be due home from lunch any minute,” Grover says.
“Dude, he’s not lucky.” I say. “He’s smart. Smarter than us at least, because we got played.”
“What do you mean?”
I point out the window. “Just watch.”
Ten minutes later, Nora pulls up into the driveway.
Grover says, “OK, there she is, right on time. So what?”
“Don’t you see? Ty didn’t suspect his wife of cheating. She wasn’t the one having an affair, he was. And he wanted to know exactly when she was out of the house so he could cat around in his own bed. We provided him with two weeks worth of her exact comings and goings down to the minute.”
“But doesn’t that seem excessively risky? Why not just go to a hotel room or back to that frizzy-haired chick’s place?”
“I don’t know, maybe he didn’t want to leave a hotel receipt paper trail or maybe the woman has an annoying roommate?”
Grover shakes his head. “I feel really bad for Nora, she’s at home making all those delicious hot snacks for a cheating jerk and she doesn’t even know it.”
“Too bad all our surveillance evidence is about her and not him,” I say.
The answer is right in front of us.
We nod in silent agreement.
Grover says, “Looks like the Grover and Cal Detective Agency is back on the case!”
“Or the Calvin Recker Detective Agency with Grover in a limited sidekick role.”
“Well, I think I can still call the printer to make last minute changes before they ship.”
“The printer? For what?”
Grover smiles. “Our business cards, of course.”
Ryan pulls on my sleeve. “Choc-choc,” he says like I’ve forgotten.
“OK,” I say to Grover. “But first we have to make the brownies.”
Come back tomorrow for Part Six of "Monitor".
