Free The Pot Thief Who Studied Einstein by J. Michael Orenduff Page B

to commit a burglary,” I pledged. “Let’s just leave it at that.”

13
     
     
    I drove from Tristan’s apartment directly to 183 Titanium Trail.
    Where, contrary to my nature, I walked boldly up to the front door and rang the bell. Or at least pushed the button. I didn’t hear a bell. I put my ear to the door and my finger to the button and still heard nothing. I looked at the door and wished it was one of those with a little window. I could look inside, see the pot collection on the left wall, and know that Segundo Cantú was the guy I needed to see concerning my twenty-five hundred dollars.
    Maybe I’d also hit him up for another hundred and thirty thousand, which is what I calculated he would have cleared if he sold my copies as part of the collection.
    I got back in the Bronco and drove around back. I plugged in the jump drive. It didn’t jump, but then tech terms make no sense. I attached Tristan’s widget to the computer and pushed the button. In about a minute, the door shuddered slightly and then moved. Dust flew up from where the door had rested against the floor.
    I walked into the garage and put my hand on the hood of the Cadillac to see if the engine was warm. I don’t know why I did that, exactly. I’d seen it in an old movie, and it just seemed like something I should do.
    The hood was cold to the touch.
    The door from the garage into the house was locked.
    I said a bad word.
    Then I remembered something I read in one of Susannah’s murder mysteries, one where the hero was a burglar of all things, an expert at picking locks using a collection of little odd-shaped pieces of steel. The process requires placing several of those in the keyhole and then manipulating them until you get each one of the tumblers to move. I guess what you really do is make the little picks line up in such a way that they mimic the bumps on a key.
    I didn’t plan on trying that – way too complicated for me.
    But the burglar also mentioned something called ‘loiding a lock’, which is called that because you use a thin strip of celluloid. You just stick the celluloid into the door frame and it slides around the bolt, forcing it out of the bolthole. Loiding won’t work on a deadbolt. You have to pick those. But it will work on the simple locks where the bolt is held in the hole by just a spring. And where the door doesn’t fit in the frame too tightly because you need to have room to force the celluloid around the bolt. I pulled on the knob and the door moved at least a quarter of an inch. There was ample space between the door and the jamb. I thought I could break in.
    O.K., I know I told Tristan I wasn’t going to commit a burglary, and I wasn’t. It’s not a burglary if you don’t take anything.
    Loiding doesn’t require skill, but it does require celluloid. Or you can use a credit card. I had neither with me. My drivers license would probably work, but I didn’t want to risk damaging it. “No, officer, I didn’t try to alter my license. It just looks that way because I used it to break into a house.”
    I went back to the Bronco and found the service card that came with it, a little piece of plastic just like a credit card that I used when the Bronco was in warranty. I thought about how long ago that was, wondered where the years had gone, put that thought aside, and realized I had no use for the warranty card.
    Other than loiding the door which it did perfectly. But not until I had closed the garage door because loiding locks is an activity best done out of anyone’s sight.
    The door led into a kitchen. There was a swinging door against the back wall just where it should have been. I pushed it open. The window with the shade was where I remembered it. The beige carpet was still on the floor but dirtier than I remembered it. It was the same room.
    But the coffee table was gone. And the Danish modern couch was gone.
    I turned around to look at the fireplace. It was still there. Those things are the devil to