you get some rest, come over for dinner. You remember Janice and Tom Evans—the newlyweds who just moved in over on Willow Trails?”
“Yeah, nice couple.”
“Well, I invited them over for dinner yesterday. We barbecued. I’ve got plenty of leftover chicken and ribs.”
“Umm, sounds great. Think I will take you up on that,” Lori decided, pressing the remote to raise her garage door.
After parking her car, Lori grabbed her luggage and entered her house through the connecting door that led into the kitchen. Leaving her rolling bag by the entryway, she went to the back window and opened the plantation blinds to let some light into the room. Turning around, she reached for her bag, but stopped dead in her tracks, unable to believe her eyes.
“My God. What happened here?” she hissed under her breath, though a scream was rising fast in her throat. The sight that greeted Lori was shocking, terrifying. Her heart thumped in fear as she eyed the scene in terror.
Swirls of bright blue paint were splattered over every surface of the room. The glass tabletop was smeared with a childish finger-paint scrawl, as were the granite kitchen countertops, the stainless-steel refrigerator and the center butcher-block island. Even the imported Italian wall tiles that Lori had paid entirely too much for, were emblazoned with jagged symbols and lines that made no sense at all. Thinking that the vandals might still be in the house, she quickly stepped back, eager to get out of the house before she became their next victim.
On her way out, Lori brushed her arm against the paint-splattered doorjamb, but saw nothing on her skin. Turning around, she stepped deeper into the room and slid a trembling finger over the blue graffiti on the front of the refrigerator, realizing that the vandals must have done their thing some time ago because all their trashy artwork was bone dry. Because of that, she doubted that anyone was still there.
More angry than frightened, she ran toward the front of the house, stuck her head into her champagne-and-sage-hued bedroom and gaped at the bright yellow stripes painted down the middle of her satin, queen-size bedspread. Lumps of the same color paint had dripped onto the carpet and dried into lumpy pools that looked like ugly egg yolks. Stepping around the mess, she peeked into her master bath and cursed out loud. “Damn, damn, damn!” The glass in her antique oval mirror had been shattered. Shards of glass littered the vanity and the floor.
From the bedroom, Lori hurried to inspect the rest of the house, including closets and jewelry boxes and found that, luckily, there was no more damage and no valuables missing. Infuriated, she punched 911 into her cell phone and screamed at the operator who answered.
“I need the police! Right away! My home has been vandalized!” she shouted, unable to control the adrenalin pushing her emotions into overdrive.
“My address?” Lori gulped down her fear and centered her thoughts, forcing herself to focus. “Fifty-two-seventy-one Falls Trail Drive.”
“The police are on the way. Are you hurt?” the operator wanted to know.
“No, I’m fine.”
“Are you still inside the house?”
“Yes.”
“Get out now.”
“I’ve looked through the house. No one is here.”
“Leave anyway. Go outside and wait for the police,” the take-charge operator ordered. “Did you walk in on the vandals?”
“No, I just returned from a three-day trip to Mexico,” Lori explained, exiting the bedroom. “I’m a flight attendant…I’m away a lot. Never had any trouble. I can’t believe this…” She stopped abruptly, glanced back at her ruined kitchen, and then yanked the front door open and hurried across her driveway toward Brittany, who was still outside preening her rose bushes.
“What’s the matter?” Brittany asked, seeing the terror on Lori’s face. “Trouble at Globus? Who’s on the phone?”
“The police.”
“What?”
“Right. You won’t believe this, Brit. Somebody vandalized my house. Everything…is covered…with…graffiti,” Lori sputtered as she described the scene.
“Shit! You gotta be kidding,” Brittany snapped. She threw her clippers to the ground and grabbed hold of Lori’s arm. “Nobody’s inside, right?”
“No, but it’s a mess in there. Did you hear anything last night? See any suspicious-looking people hanging around?” Lori wanted to know.
“No. Nothing. As I said, Janice and Tom came over for dinner. We had the outdoor speakers turned up pretty loud while we were on the patio. They left about ten. Must have happened after I went inside. I didn’t hear anything unusual.” Brittany glanced back at Lori’s house. “Did they kick in the back door? Break a window?”
“I don’t know…I didn’t look to see…” Lori stopped, turning around to focus on the black and white patrol car with whirling red and blue lights that swept up to the curb and jolted to a stop.
Pushing her cell phone into her uniform pocket, she approached the tall black man who unfolded his towering uniformed body from the squad car and hooked his thumbs into his holster belt. “Officer. Thanks for coming so quickly.” Lori rushed to welcome the policeman.
“Detective Clint Washington,” he told Lori, without extending his hand. He surveyed her house with inquisitive eyes, seemingly already on the case and primed for action. “What happened here?” he asked, listening as Lori described what she’d discovered on her return home.
“Let’s check it out,” he stated with calm authority, striding off. His long legs devoured Lori’s brick-paved walkway in five giant steps, leaving Lori and Brittany to tag along behind.
Once inside, they went into the bedroom, and then checked the master bath. “We do have a few good fingerprints, here on the edge of the basin,” he told Lori. “That’s encouraging. I’ll get the crime scene investigation team out here right away. You can go ahead and sweep up the broken glass, but don’t touch the paint smears, okay?”
Lori nodded in relief, hoping the prints might help the police catch whoever did this.
“Are you sure nothing of value was stolen?” Washington asked after he’d inspected the rest of the damage and determined that the vandals had cut the wires to Lori’s alarm box and broken a window in the dining room to get into the house.
“Certain. Nothing is missing, I checked everywhere I could think of,” Lori assured him. She watched him open a pad of forms and begin to fill one out.
“So this was for kicks?” Brittany snapped in disgust. “I can’t believe some damn sicko would do this just for fun.” Brittany directed her anger toward Detective Washington, whose shoulders leveled off at the top of the petite woman’s head. “That is some crazy shit, you know?” she blurted out.
Lori cut her eyes at her friend, warning her about her language. Back in the day, Brittany’s startling potty mouth might have been a ratings winner when she was playing a rebellious teenager on a television sitcom, but that kind of language was definitely out of place when dealing with the police.
