Too Good to Be True Read Online Free PDF

hit the door. No go. He tried again, stepped back, then walked to a window, cupped his hands around his eyes and peered in.
    This all looked very suspicious to me. Sure enough, the man tried to open the window. Again, no luck. Perhaps, yes, I’d watched too many episodes of Law & Order, friend to single women everywhere, but this seemed pretty cut-and-dried. A crime was in progress at the vacant house next door. Surely this wasn’t good. What if the burglar came over here? In his two years on earth, Angus had yet to be put to the test of home protection. Ripping up shoes and rolls of toilet paper, that he had mastered. Protect me from an average-size male? Not too sure. And was the burglar average? He looked pretty brawny to me. Pretty solid.
    I let the usual stream of horrific images slide through my head and acknowledged the slim odds of their actually happening. The man, who was currently trying another window, was probably not a murderer looking for a place to stash a body. He probably didn’t have a million dollars’ worth of heroin in his car. And I hoped quite fervently that he had no plans to chain an average-size woman in the pit in his cellar and wait for her to lose enough weight so he could use her skin to whip up a new dress, like that guy in Silence of the Lambs.
    The burglar tried the door a second time. Okay, pal, I thought. Enough is enough. Time to call the authorities. Even if he wasn’t a murderer, he clearly was looking for a house to burgle. Was that a verb? Burgle? It sounded funny. Granted, yes, I’d had two gin and tonics tonight (or was it three?), and drinking wasn’t really a strong suit of mine, but still. No matter how I broke it down, the activity next door looked pretty damn criminal. The man disappeared around the back of the house again, still, I assumed, searching for a point of entry. What the heck. Time to put my tax dollars to use and call the cops.
    “911, please state your emergency.”
    “Hi, how are you?” I asked.
    “Do you have an emergency, ma’am?”
    “Oh, well, you know, I’m not sure,” I answered, squinting one eye shut to see the burglar better. No such luck; he’d disappeared around the far corner of the house. “I think the house next door to me is being robbed. I’m at 34 Maple Street, Peterston. Grace Emerson.”
    “One moment, please.” I heard the squawk of a radio in the background. “We have a cruiser in your area, ma’am,” she said after a moment. “We’ll dispatch a unit right now. What exactly can you see?”
    “Um, right now, nothing. But he was…casing the joint, you know?” I said, wincing. Casing the joint? Who was I, Tony Soprano? “What I mean is, he’s walking around, trying the doors and windows. No one lives there, you know.”
    “Thank you, ma’am. The police should be there any moment. Would you like us to stay on the line?” she asked.
    “No, that’s okay,” I said, not wanting to seem too much of a wuss. “Thank you.” I hung up, feeling vaguely heroic. A regular neighborhood watch, I was.
    I couldn’t see the man anymore from the kitchen, so I slipped into the dining room (oops, a little dizzy…maybe that was three G&Ts). Peeking out the window, I saw nothing irregular at the moment. And I didn’t hear sirens, either. Where were those cops? Maybe I should’ve stayed on the line. What if the burglar realized there’s nothing to steal over there, but then took a look over here? I had plenty of nice things. That sofa set me back almost two grand. My computer was state-of-the-art. And last birthday, Mom and Dad had given me that fabulous plasma screen TV.
    I looked around. Sure, it was dumb, but I’d feel safer if I was…well, not armed, but something. I didn’t own a handgun, God knew…not the type. I glanced at my knife block. Nah. That seemed a little over the top, even for me. Granted, I had two Springfield rifles in the attic, not to mention a bayonet, along with all my other Civil War gear, but we