Free The Prisoner of Snowflake Falls by John Lekich Page B

wanting to hire myself out to do chores around the neighborhood. Just in case someone answered.
    Of course, there are some homeowners who prefer not to answer their door while they are at home. They figure it’s just some dorky salesman or maybe someone going door-to-door offering personal insight into a particular religion. They could even be sick in bed, which happened to be the reason for my second narrow escape.
    I was already inside the house. It was unusually big with a lot of ground to cover between exits. I was thinking how hard it would be to make a quick getaway when I heard a woman call from upstairs.
    â€œAl, is that you?” she asked, sounding like she had a very bad head cold.
    Here’s another important rule for any aspiring burglar: Do not answer a resident who is calling out from another part of the house. For example, it is never a good idea to reply, “Yes, honey. It is definitely me, the one and only Al.” Mostly because you don’t know what Al’s voice sounds like. I mean, he could have a very heavy Lithuanian accent and how would you know?
    Sometimes the homeowner will provide you with a convenient way out of your predicament. For instance, the woman in bed with a cold said, “Al, have you got your nose in the fridge again? How many times do I have to tell you? That leftover chicken is for dinner tonight.” I guess Al liked to go into the fridge a lot, because she added, “I better hear that fridge door closing. And I better not hear any chicken-eating sounds after that. If I have to come down there, you’re going to be sorry!”
    I knew that if she came downstairs, I was going to be twice as sorry as Al would ever be. What if she saw me? I would be in real trouble if she screamed. Even with her cold, I could tell she was probably an excellent screamer. And an excellent scream can cause the worst kind of chain reaction for a professional burglar. The first thing you know, a dog starts barking like there’s no tomorrow. Or the next-door neighbor, who keeps a baseball bat in his umbrella stand, decides he needs to check things out.
    At times such as these, it doesn’t always pay to think like a thief. What you have to do is think like good old Al. I opened the fridge door very quietly, so my benefactor wouldn’t hear, and then slammed it shut with a loud thunk . I thought if she heard the loud thunk from upstairs she would assume that Al was wisely following orders.
    Sure enough, she seemed to be comforted by the sound of the fridge door closing. “I love you, Al,” she said, before taking a break to blow her nose. “But you are so predictable.”
    I figured that it was safe enough to carefully make my way out of the house. I was about to do so when I heard her say, “Al, honey, would you run to the store and pick me up a box of Kleenex? There’s some money on the kitchen counter.”
    I put the money in my pocket. It was more than enough for a box of Kleenex. And then I remembered that I had a new packet of tissues in my backpack. Before making a smooth getaway, I took the packet out and placed it on the kitchen table. I hope that—in some small way—it helped her get over her cold.
    There’s one very interesting thing that I have yet to mention about being in the burglary business. You can be patient, cautious and very smart—all good things for a thief to be—but no matter how careful you are, bad luck is unpredictable. It’s like my Uncle Andy always says: “Bad luck has put more clever crooks in jail faster than you can say, ‘Do you hear sirens?’”
    While Uncle Andy and his associates have many practical skills, they are probably the most unlucky crooks you would ever want to meet. Once I overheard them planning to liberate a bunch of mattresses from a warehouse. They planned the whole thing for weeks, but when they got to the warehouse, it didn’t have any mattresses in it.