now, but she couldn’t bring herself to give any away. She accepted little starts from friends and took satisfaction in watching the starts develop into mature, lovely plants. She had asked Gary if it bothered him—the over-crowding of plants in the house—but he showed no signs of irritation, so she continued on, starting more and more plants.
Knowing how cool the temperature was outdoors, Judith gave silent thanks for the home’s heat and yet another modern gadget—an automatic thermostat.
When it felt like time to shower and dress for her day’s work, Judith returned to her master bathroom upstairs. She quickly showered and slipped into old jeans, a tattered sweatshirt, thick wool socks, and worn, slip-on gardening shoes. While she dried her hair with a hand-held blow dryer, she fashioned a plan in her mind to attack the boxes in the garage and determine what might be deemed garbage. On Saturday or Sunday, she planned; Gary could help her take the garbage items to the dump. The nicer items would be tagged and sorted for her next garage sale. I’ll quit in time to get cleaned up and put on some make-up before Gary gets home. It was Friday and she was envisioning the weekend with her husband.
Judith went to the main floor, passing the formal dining room where the dark wood, antique dining furniture sat, rarely used. Oddly, it did not bother her that this was the dining room furniture her first husband had insisted they dine at every night, formally, with fine china place settings, polished silver, candlelight, and wine—always wine in elegant, crystal goblets. He had even demanded that Judith wear a formal dress for every dinner. Meals, thankfully, were pleasant with Gary. They ate in the nook just off the kitchen. Judith had set up a small, round, light pine table with two matching chairs in the bay window area. Lace curtains partially covered the bay window. In this small space, the couple chatted lightly with each other over deliberately informal meals. Occasionally, on special evenings, Judith carried snacks into the living room for the couple to enjoy while watching a rented movie.
Judith continued down to the bottom floor, passing through the recreation room and out the door into the garage.
The garage was stuffed full, floor to ceiling, with only a few pathways for walking between stacks of cardboard boxes, plastic storage bins, gardening products, tool boxes, buckets, baskets, furniture, camping gear: a pack-rat’s cache that had been multiplying since the Ridgways moved into the home. Judith shook her head and made a clucking sound with her tongue, hands resting on her hips. She wished she could park her car in the garage. When it wasn’t being driven, her 1992, mocha-colored Mercury Sable sat in the driveway next to Gary’s pick-up. However, she recognized the loftiness of her goal to get the garage cleared out for enough space to park a vehicle. She charged ahead with taking one cardboard box at a time, emptying the contents, and separating into piles what she determined to be either trash, garage sale merchandise, or fabulous treasures that she could wrap up and give as gifts for special occasions and holidays. People didn’t need to know how she acquired gift items. That was her secret.
Judith worked in silence, puffing quick breaths, pushing her glasses back up her nose with the back of her hand, bending, lifting; repeating the actions again and again, feeling no hunger for food. Her passion for garage sales was the only fuel she needed for hours.
Judith’s proclivity for spotting a bargain and stretching a dollar had brought her to the closest thing that could be called her working career: garage sale steward. She knew the business from shopper to seller. She and Gary had spent the majority of their weekends cruising garage sales and estate sales. They made special note of annual neighborhood garage sales they should remember for the next year. They regularly visited the “swap meet” up on Highway 99 between Seattle and Tacoma for bargains. When they felt like dressing it up a bit, they went to liquidation stores and searched for the ultimate prize in bargain hunting— new merchandise marked down to nearly free. Several years into the marriage, Gary had introduced Judith to a new twist in bargain hunting: “dumpster diving.” Her task was to stay in the truck and watch for people approaching the area while Gary inspected dumpsters behind stores, looking for discarded merchandise he could take home and sell or use around the house.
Indeed, Judith had the ability to spot items on sale that she could put to use at home or easily sell at her next garage sale. Sometimes she came home with large quantities of one item like bottles of shampoo. Another time she might bring home dozens of picture frames, some in disrepair, but that was fine because she would get Gary to fix them for her.
Judith examined articles of men’s clothing in a box that an acquaintance of the Ridgways had donated for her use in a garage sale. She held up a large pair of men’s jeans and gave them a sniff. Yeeuck! This is disgusting. Everything in this box smells like saltwater! Well, Wally did work as a fisherman, so it made sense to her that his things would smell of the ocean. Judith decided to categorize the contents of the whole box as trash. While she disliked parting with anything useful, she knew that customers would be repelled by the odors coming off this clothing. The next box she inspected was no better than the first. This time she found clothing that had been obviously worn by a large woman. A neighbor had dropped it off as a contribution to the next garage sale. Each piece of clothing she held up had distinct wear patterns in areas where an obese woman would likely have body parts rubbing, making the fabric thin, and, in some places, the thin fabric actually gave way to holes. Judith’s years of experience browsing garage sales taught her that signs of obesity such as this are a turn off to women shoppers. No. No. Garage sale shopping should be fun, and that is what she aimed to offer her customers. This box would also be added to the trash pile.
At approximately 3:00 p.m. Judith’s body froze in place as she heard a distinct sound. The sound that had given her a startle was the crunching sound of tires on gravel. A car had come off the main thoroughfare, traveled down the shared, private road, turned, and was coming in the Ridgway driveway. It stopped right in front of the garage where she was sifting through boxes. The engine shut off. She heard the muffled thud of two doors slamming.
She glanced at her wristwatch. It was too soon for Gary to be home from work.
Cars did not typically enter their driveway. Sure, they had Gary’s son from his second marriage over to visit sometimes on weekends. The two daughters from her first marriage occasionally came by. But unexpected visitors? No way. Solicitors avoided this area. The houses that shared the private road were all situated on one acre or more. With the houses spaced farther apart than typical neighborhoods, and with an abundance of trees and thick bushes blocking the view from one house to another, it wasn’t efficient for solicitors to call on this area.
Judith heard two people walk to the front door and ring the doorbell.
She bit her lower lip.
After a few moments she inhaled deeply, straightened up her back, and decided to go find out who was at her front door. She walked through the smaller garage door and entered the bottom floor of the house. She climbed up the short flight of stairs to the main floor foyer. She opened the heavy wood door and immediately realized she was looking up at the faces of a man and a woman—professional-looking people-who had already opened the screen door and were leaning in toward her. Who on earth are these people? They look so serious. Judith felt small looking up at the tall strangers.
The professional-looking people pressed identification toward her face and quickly introduced themselves as Detectives Sue Peters and Matt Haney. Judith frowned and mouthed the word detectives, but no sound came out. Detectives? Did they really say detectives? I must have heard them wrong.
Judith swallowed hard against her dry throat. Her eyes zigzagged back and forth between the man and the woman. Solemn faces stared back. Something was wrong. The strangers looked too serious.
Somehow the detectives and Judith had moved into the house and were heading for the living room. The detectives said they had some important questions to ask her and wondered if they could tape record their conversation. She said of course. Thoughts were racing in figure eight patterns like an airplane with no pilot inside her head. She could not understand why these authoritative people were in her house.
Something about the scene felt familiar and frightening to Judith. Her body initiated symptoms that she loathed. At the center of her core she began trembling. The trembling rumbled deep within and then began moving