Thirty-Three Tiles

Thirty-three tiles.  There were thirty-three tiles in the bathroom, but she had to make sure, she had counted four times already and kept getting thirty-three.  But she was sure she was wrong.  She dropped to her knees, crouched down, and started once again by the right corner near the door.           It would not make sense that there were thirty-three tiles.  When she had the bathroom refloored three years ago, she had asked for a specific number, she could not remember what it was now, but she knew it was not thirty-three. 
         The window was open a crack and she could feel a bite in the air. 
         Stopping, she closed her eyes, and in her head she tried to replay everything that had happened.  She tried to see everything that had gone wrong.
         She should have known that the contractor would not install the correct number of tiles, that he would mess up on the measurements...that he would make a copy of the key to her house. 
         It was strange because he entered through the front door but left through the window. 
         Her eyes snapped open.  The window, with its white trim and powder blue curtains, sat there almost as if it were staring back at her.
         The contractor had left through that window. 
         Before he had climbed out, he tossed what he had stolen from the back bedroom out and into the rose bushes. Then he left, carrying the bundle to his truck, and he drove away.
         Rising slowly, her knees quivered, and once fully on her feet, she turned to look at herself in the mirror.  Her face seemed frozen, her gray eyes empty, her mouth tight, her lips cracked and dry.  The crow's feet seemed to have appeared overnight – that same night the contractor came and stole what had been most dear.  Her wheat blonde hair hung limply on each side of her face and cheek bones that once gave her lift, now seemed to drag her down. 
         Behind her, in the mirror's reflection, she could see a drawing hanging above the toilet, framed and carefully hung.  It was a drawing of the sun casting rays upon a fruitful garden and the family dog that had been around in the early days.  She could not remember if the drawing was designed for the bathroom or if the bathroom had been designed around the drawing.  She thought the latter, but it did not make sense to her anymore.  Why was it in the bathroom? Why was it not in her office or in the back room from which the contractor stole. 
         The contractor had never formally been accused of the crime.  There was no evidence to point to him.  Nobody believed that the contractor could do such a thing, not with all the service he had done in the neighborhood over the last two decades.  She kept telling people that he had a key.  Everyone else aggressively defended him.  The contractor had simply forgotten to hand over the key when he was finished with his work.  Afterall, he could be a forgetful man, he had done it in the past once or twice.  But she knew that her neighbors were wrong.  She knew the police were wrong and the lawyers and the judges.  They were all wrong.  It was the contractor who had broken into her home and who had abducted her daughter.   
         She turned on the faucet and watched as the water first came spitting out before it flowed at full strength.  Groaning, she wetted her hands. 
         Suddenly, she could hear the television going, it was coming from the back room. 
         Her neck stiffened and the muscles in her back constricted.
         The television should not be on. 
         A gasp escaped her lips as she plunged her hand into her pocket and fished out her phone.  “Yes.  He's here in the house...right now.”
         “Who?” the policeman stated.
         “The contractor,” she whispered, closing the bathroom door softly and locking it. 
         “You saw him?”
         “I hear him.”
         “You hear him?” The policeman's tone changed.
         Her eyebrows furrowed.  “Yes.”
         The poplar tree outside the window rustled in the wind and again she could feel that bite snap up against her skin. 
         “There are only thirty-three tiles. I only count thirty-three.” She hung up. 
         The towels, she noticed, the ones that were supposed to match the curtains, were hanging from the rail next to the sink unevenly.  They were not supposed to be hanging like that, that was not in the original design, it did not look good.  She refolded them but still found them to be uneven.  She refolded them again.  She thought about getting a measuring tape.  But she realized she did not own her own measuring tape, she had always borrowed it from the contractor. 
         A small dog began to yap somewhere out in the neighborhood.  The dog was always yapping.  Yap. Yap. Yap. 
         Her daughter would always complain that it kept her up at night.
         Yap.
         She bit her lower lip, debating whether or not she should shut the window.  Slowly, she approached it, but instead of closing it, she thrust it wide open.  Hastily, she climbed over the sill and quickly lost her balance, tumbling into the rose bush below. 
         Thorns cut into her skin. 
         As she stood up, she shook the thorns from her shirt.
         Once firmly on her feet, she twisted around and peered into the window to make sure that the tiles were still there.  They were. 
         A sigh of relief began to escape her lips but it suddenly caught in her throat when she spied the contractor's truck reflecting in the window.  Swallowing the sigh, she examined the truck in the reflection.  Its exterior was blood red, its yellow block lettering popped out unnaturally, and there was a dent near the rear fendor.  That dent was made by her the day after her daughter went missing.  She had rammed her car into his truck.  She made that dent. 
         The thorns grabbed at her ankles. 
         She stepped out onto the tract of dirt that hugged the side of her house.  Nothing grew there anymore.  The landscaper had promised her that the plants would thrive, but they all died after the first frost.   
         She crept forward, her hip brushing against the brick wall.
         Yap. Yap. That little dog! She looked out towards the street.  No longer could she see the truck, but she assumed that it was hidden behind the poplar tree. 
         Suddenly, she remembered the tiles.  She had meant to check them again before she left the rose bush.  She had wanted to see if she would get a different number from outside the house than she would from inside the house.  The tiles were evidence that the contractor was inside her house.  He was inside, probably sneering at the fact that the bathroom was done wrong. 
         Gulping, she decided to keep going. She knew that if she went back, she would not be able to go forward, and she would only get thirty-three tiles. 
         The dirt felt funny beneath her feet as she made her way along the side of her house.  She had thought about putting sod down, but after the broken promise made by her landscaper, she did not trust him to do the job.  It did not help that he had been recommended to her by the contractor.  So dirt circled all of her house except for the one, lone rose bush that grew beneath the bathroom window. 
         She turned the corner. 
         Just a few paces ahead was the window that looked into the back bedroom.  Even from where she was standing she could hear the television blaring. 
         She inched forward, crouching further and further down onto her haunches as she neared the window until she was all the way down onto her knees. 
         Listening carefully, she could hear the local news anchor talking about salmonella in peanut butter found at the local supermarket.  She made a note of that.  Her daughter loved peanut butter.  She would not want her daughter getting sick.
         Slowly, she peeked over the window sill and into the room.
         The contractor was sitting at the end of her daughter's bed, watching the news report, tossing a broken tile from palm to palm. 
         She gasped and pulled out her cell phone to call the police. “He's here...in my house.”
         “Who?” The policeman asked, his voice flat.
         “The contractor!” She urged. 
         “The contractor?”
         It felt as if a fist were worming up her esophogus.  “Yes.  I see him.”
         “You see him?”
         “He stole one of the tiles!”
         “Someone will be on their way.” The policeman told her.
         She hung up.
         There was no way she could confront the contractor on her own, so she decided to wait for the police to show up.  Plopping onto the ground beneath the window, she dug her hands into the dirt, the tips of her fingernails turning black. 
         Taking a deep breath, she decided to peek once more through the window, and when she did, her heart dropped down to her stomach.  The contractor was still there, tossing the broken tile back and forth, but next to him was her daughter holding a jar of peanut butter. 
         Her daughter's golden tresses framed her roundish face, her icy blue eyes were fixed on the television screen as she scooped handfuls of peanut butter into her mouth. 
         Yap. Yap.
         The little dog was now in the yard. 
         “Go away!” She whispered to the dog, watching her daughter cover her ears. 
         Another breath of wind sliced through the air. 
         She shivered.  She wanted to go back inside where it was warm. 
         Slowly and deliberately, she dropped to her knees once again and crawled back, using the dirt as a pathway back to the rose bush.  Stopping just short of the bush, she glanced once more to the street, but the poplar tree impeded her view.  She could not see the truck.     
         The little dog nipped at her heels as she stood up. 
         Where was the truck?
         She slithered through the bathroom window, thinking that from inside she might get a better view of the street and of the truck. 
         Quickly, she scanned the floor.  All the tiles appeared to be there. 
         She needed to be sure.  One, two, three...
         There was a sharp knock on the bathroom door. 
         “Who's there?” She stammered.
         “The police!”
         Her cheeks suddenly flushed red.  The police? She glanced toward the window and saw a police cruiser on the street in the same place she swore she had seen the truck. 
         Quietly, she unlocked and opened the door. 
         The policeman stood on the other side of the threshold, giving her a hardened stare. 
         “Why are you looking at me?” She demanded, feeling indignant.  “The contractor is in the back bedroom! He is watching television.”
         The corners of the policeman's lips flickered into a barely percepitable frown. 
         “What?”
         “No one is back there.”
         “But I hear-” She stopped.  She did not hear anything.  The television was not on.  “You must have turned the TV off.”
         The policeman shook his head.  “There is no television in that room.”
         “My daughter.” Her voice felt wet as she cast her eyes downward, focusing on the tiles. 
         “The house is empty,” the policeman said calmly.           
         He smelled of peanut butter. 
         “But I did find this.” The policeman held out a broken tile.
         Her eyes widened.  “There were thirty-three tiles in this room.” Again, she dropped to her knees and began to painstakingly count the tiles.