Walking a Fine Line: Day 10

Word Count: 60,023

Summary of Events:

Having the photos and descriptions of the jewellery, Joseph set out to check local pawnshops and jewellery stores for the missing pieces. He didn't find anything at first, but finally he ended up discovering one of the pieces at a pawnshop, which had been pawned just a few minutes before he arrived, enabling the pawnbroker to give him a thorough description of the man who'd pawned it. Since the man looked too different from Mr. Varley to be Mr. Varley in disguise, Joseph wondered if he was an associate and decided to stake out Mr. Varley's apartment building for a few days to see if the two men might meet, but was disappointed to get no results. Since Mr. Varley lived closer to Joseph's workplace than his own, Joseph decided to use a ladder belonging to workmen who were repainting the building to sneak into Mr. Varley's apartment and search it for evidence before Mr. Varley could arrive home, and was glad to find his entry eased by the fact that Mr. Varley didn't lock his window…

Excerpt of the Day:

As he eased through the window, Joseph felt a tug near his waist, as if something had caught. He stopped, pulled back, tried to ensure he was a bit higher, and then pushed through again. He felt a tug again, but it released before he could stop, so he carried on, hoping he hadn’t torn anything.

He wriggled his way inside carefully and looked down. A shot of dismay went through him as he realised one of the buttons that held his jacket closed had torn off. He looked at the sill, but it wasn’t there. He hoped he’d be able to find it on the ground when he left and could come up with a story to explain how it’d come off that wouldn’t make Ma too unhappy.

Time, however, was of the essence, so he immediately set about searching everywhere he could think might possibly be a hiding place for an expensive collection of jewellery, or stacks of money, or any other incriminating evidence.

Drawers were plentiful in the room, and Joseph did his best to search through each one without making a mess, feeling for jewellery or thick stacks of paper, or even guns or other things, as well as carefully looking between layers of garments or other items, depending on the drawer.

He looked under the bed, under the pillow, under the mattress, on the top shelf of the closet, in the kitchen cupboards, the medicine cabinet, and any other hiding place he could think of, but he found nothing, not even the hint of anything, and he felt stupid for getting excited at the one point about feeling something hard in a stack of clothes only to discover it was a button that was properly affixed to its garment.

No cups or glasses were hiding anything inside, nor were the bowls, there was no signs that pillows had been opened and sewn back shut, or anything, what was worse, Joseph was alarmed by the sound of approaching footsteps rather sooner than he’d hoped to be, prompting him to hurry back to the open window.

Swinging out quickly, Joseph reached his feet for the ladder, but one of them bumped the ladder, which started to tilt. Quickly Joseph stabbed out a foot to catch the ladder and managed to do so, gripping the windowsill tightly as he pulled the ladder back upright.

He carefully transferred himself over onto the ladder and then drew the window carefully shut before descending the ladder.

As he did so, however, the ladder shifted and started to fall again. Joseph was at a level where he couldn’t grab onto anything, so he put out his hand to break his fall, but the blow to the heel of his hand as it hit the ground sent a severe jolt of pain up his whole arm.

Turning onto his back, Joseph looked at the sky for a moment, his wrist throbbing in pain. He slowly got up and dragged the ladder carefully back to its hiding place with his good hand, which he was grateful was, in fact, his dominant hand, as the ladder had started falling — both times — so that his dominant side was further from the ground.