The Secret Society of Demolition Writers by Marc Parent Page B

SERVICE AT SIDE DOOR. There was an arrow pointing to the right.
    “Uh, no, sorry, I didn’t.”
    “I will see you over there. And could you move your truck to the driveway on the side as well?”
    It was a question but it wasn’t spoken as a question.
    “Sure.”
    The man abruptly closed the door. Brian walked back to his van, trying to hold back his anger. He reminded himself it was a job and, yes, after all, he was in the service industry. He moved the van to the driveway that went down the side of the house and widened in front of a three-car garage. He found the service door and headed toward it. As he walked he looked across the expansive backyard to the view of the open bay.
    The same man from the front door opened the service door before he got there.
    “Are you Mr. Robinette?” Brian asked, though he recognized him from photos on the backs of his books.
    “Yes, that is right. You are the safe man, I assume?”
    “Yes, sir.”
    Brian could see Robinette eying his van. He realized he had forgotten to attach the magnetic signs to the side panels. He worked out of his house—his garage, actually—and neighbors complained about having a commercial van parked there all the time. So he painted the van a pleasing pale blue and went with magnetic signage. The problem was he often forgot to put the signs on when he went out on a call.
    “Don’t you have any tools?” Robinette asked.
    “I like to look at the job first, then figure out what I need,” Brian replied.
    “Follow me then.”
    Robinette led him down a back hallway that led to a kitchen that looked as though it had been designed to serve a restaurant or maybe Noah’s Ark. He counted two of everything; ovens, stoves, sinks, even dishwashers. They then moved through a vast living room with three separate seating areas and a massive fireplace. Finally, they came to a library, a room smaller than the living room but not by much. Three of its walls were lined floor to ceiling with shelves. The books were bound in leather and the room smelled musty. There were none of the bright colors Brian saw on book jackets whenever he went into a bookstore. He didn’t see any of Robinette’s books on the shelves.
    In the center of one end of the room was a large mahogany desk with a computer screen on it. There was a stack of white paper with a bust of Sherlock Holmes as a paperweight. In front of the desk was a Persian rug of primarily maroon and ocher colors.
    Without a word Robinette used his foot to flip up the corner of the rug. He then kicked the fold back until the rug had been moved aside to reveal a small rectangular door set in the wood flooring. Brian estimated that it was two feet by one-and-a-half feet in size. It was old plywood and there was a finger hole for pulling it up and open. There were no hinges that Brian could see. Robinette reached down and pulled the door up. He then used both hands to lift the plywood out of the inset in the floor.
    The opening revealed another door a few inches below—the black steel facing of a safe with dusty gold filigree at the edges, a brass combination dial, and a hammered steel handle. Robinette crouched next to the opening and reached down and gave the steel handle a solid tug, as if to show Brian it was locked.
    “This is it,” he said. “Can you open it?”
    Brian crouched down across the opening from Robinette and looked at the box. He could see writing in gold script beneath the combo dial. He braced his hands on the floor and leaned down closer to read it. It looked like it said “Le Seuil” but he wasn’t sure. What he was sure of was that he didn’t recognize the safe or its manufacturer, let alone know how to pronounce its name. He gave the dial a turn just to see whether it was frozen, and it turned smoothly. That wasn’t the problem. He straightened up until he was kneeling on the floor next to the opening.
    “I don’t recognize the make offhand,” Brian said. “In a perfect world I’d have a