House Burglary

Fbailey story number 263


House Burglary


I had cased that house for over a month. I knew where each of them was at any given time throughout the day. I also knew that they would be going to Cape Cod just like they did every Memorial Day for the past several years.

I knew exactly what I was looking for and the most likely place where it could be found. They had some very expensive paintings, some rare old books, some valuable stamp and coin collections. Then there was the known fact that he keeps large amounts of cash in the house. His wife has some pretty nice jewelry too.

The owner of the estate was a successful businessman, his wife was a local celebrity, and his three teenage daughters were pretty, smart, and very popular too.

As I was following him home from work that day I got caught in a traffic jam caused by a fatal accident on the Interstate. I was helplessly trapped in my car for the next hour and a half. When I finally managed to get free I cruised by his house. There was no sign of a car. I jumped to the conclusion that they had left for the Cape on time.

I parked my car some way away from the house and walked back. It was a stolen car and I had worn gloves so I felt safe leaving it there. When I got to the house I looked in the lower windows, I tried all of the doors, and I even looked in the garage. It was safe, so I went around to the back of the house and picked the lock. When I opened the backdoor I had just a matter of twenty seconds to get to a control box and shut off the burglar alarm. Since I did not know the code I would have to cut the right wires to silence the alarm. So I took a deep breath, opened the backdoor, and made a mad ran through the house to the front door. I pried the security box open, studied the wires for a second or two, and then I went snip, snip. The alarm failed to sound aloud and I only had to wait a few minutes to see if some kind of a silent alarm had gone off. I was prepared to make my escape but I didn’t need too, everything was quiet on the home front.

I had planed on taking the most obvious things last, such as the paintings that hung on the walls. However, just in case something went terrible wrong I located her jewelry, his stamp and coin collections, and removed the rare books from the shelf. I moved some books around to cause less suspicion. All I had to do was locate his safe and open it, take his money, and then grab the paintings on my way out.

I had found the safe hidden in the back of his closet and I was in the process of trying to open it when I heard a noise downstairs. I crept to the top of the stairs and looked down. Damn it! The three teenage daughters had come in. All I could think of was ‘what to hell were they doing home.’

I just watched and listened to them. They were planning a Memorial weekend party while their parents were away. Apparently the eighteen-year-old Muffy had managed to convince her parents that she could be trusted babysitting her two younger sisters for the weekend. Babbs was the sixteen-year-old and Kandi was the youngest at fourteen years old.

It was Friday evening and their party would start about four o’clock on Saturday afternoon and last until everyone left.