Breaking-In, CH 06 (Patreon)

Helen Krobek is away visiting her Grandson. She mentioned it when I returned from my morning run. She will spend the night at her Daughter’s home. Once Alex and Emil have left, I find, is the best time for it. This being Friday, it is also when the Alcabus are not home. Every Fridays they treat themselves to an outing. Helen mentioned that during our conversation.

She is a reliable source of information on the neighborhood. I am the only person she doesn’t know much real about, and only because I know what she does, and only let her know what I want her to know. It is all superficially true, so it satisfied her insatiable curiosity.

Anthonio Alcabu’s psychology practice is successful. By itself, it lets him afford the house payment and utilities. From praising their S-Class and Q8, I found out those are paid for from Jenifer’s business. She sells handmade jewelry. Has quite a successful business of it, he informs me with pride. Even gives me her card, should I want to impress Alex with a gift.

The online store is real. Alex got me access to it when I asked. This is not something worth bothering Asyr with. She makes enough sales to explain the daily carrier trucks. She needs supplies and to send out the items she makes.

But there is a discrepancy between what her online store brings in and what her bank account show. Alex already had those on hand.

She is hiding something, and tonight I will find out what.

“Don’t get caught,” Alex says, as he pauses and kisses my cheek. “I’m not set up yet to break you out of prison.”

I pull him to me, his box vibrating pleasantly. “You’re not offering to come with me?”

He rolls his eyes. “I really don’t care what the neighbors get up to in their houses.”

“A monster could be hiding there,” I reply, tracing a stray lightning bolt to the box containing disappointment. “You shouldn’t simply accept who they are.”

He smiles, and that box goes dead silent in favor of others, far more pleasurable ones. “Any monsters here are of the white-collar type, and if they turn out to be a problem, I doubt it’ll take us more than five minutes to teach them the error of their ways.” His hands run down my back, squeezes my ass, pushing me against him. He’s hard. Boxes react to this, but I silence them. The fact I enjoy what they offer isn’t a reason to let my control go.

“So if I find out there’s a monster in that house, I can call you to help?”

“This is Phoenix. We really should let the police handle that.”

Disappointment again, but I nod. This is the role I’ve agreed to play. “I shouldn’t be too long.”

“I’ll have a hot bath ready for you.”

“That isn’t necessary, Alex. This isn’t going to be exerting.”

He chuckles as he walks away without explaining.

I gather the tools I’ll need, and exits to the backyard. The Alcabus are on the right of Alex’s house. We share a fence. It’s tall, but getting over it is simple enough. They have a motion sensor by the door that covers the back. It is from Amazon. The site marks it as upper midrange in quality, but I question anything that comes from a company whose goal is to sell as much of everything as possible. Still, the information tells me how to reach the house without triggering the alarm.

Ultrasound motion detectors need the disruption in their sound waves to be reflected to them to know there is something moving within their field. The disruptor hang around my neck generates the negative of the wave used, canceling it out. I have to avoid sudden motions, but I have time and privacy.

I lower myself on their side of the fence, then follow it around the property until I reach the house and the door. No point in putting myself in the direct patch of the detector.

The lock is mechanical. I put latex gloves on and get to work. It takes me forty-five seconds to unlock it. Inside, the alarm beeps its warning to put the deactivation code. I plug the bypass in the USB port, and ten seconds later, it gives me the code.

I now have the run of the house.

It is similar to Alex’s house in that it has six bedrooms, but they do not have a cellar, which Alex uses for his computer system. Two are bedrooms, one is Anthonio Albuca’s home office, one if a home gym, one storage for Jennifer’s supplies and merchandise, and the other her workshop.

One bedroom is the master. The attached bathroom has been redone, enlarged, taking space away from the second bedroom, which is of guests. The room has an air of disuse hinting no one has spent the night in some time. I will have to ask Helen when she returns how often they entertain.

While at its core, jewelry-making is nothing more than a mechanical skill involving assembling components together, and I recognize the tools used. The artistic aspect is in a different direction than my own, so I can’t judge the quality of the work. Going by the quality of the components, the end pieces should warrant the prices listed on her site.

But this does not explain how her accounts claim a larger income than her store does sales.

Using one business to camouflage income from another is an old tradition within criminal elements. And the Alcabu being white collar does not keep them from being such. I simply have to find where what is used to explain the extra income is stored and what it is.

The ground floor has the living room, the kitchen, dining room, the family room, laundry and mudroom off the garage, just like Alex’s house. The garage is also a three-car garage, but the space for the third car has been turned into another workshop, once housing power tools. Whoever of the two uses them had good taste in tools. I owned many of the same brands.

The kitchen is stocked with normal items, food, cutlery dishes. There are enough cleaners under the sink I could kill half the neighborhood with them, but I haven’t seen the chemistry equipment needed to convert them.

I stand in the dining room. The display cases have china in them with plaques indicating where they came from. A search on my phone tells me each piece is worth at a minimum ten thousand dollars. Is this another way they are hiding their ill-gotten money? A family heirloom?

Researching both sides of their family will be required to find out, but I don’t expect they matter for my current search. Somewhere in this house must be whatever illegal items are being passed through Jenifer’s online store that will justify the discrepancy. But where? This is basically a copy of Alex’s house, expect that they enlarged the master bathroom.

I still all the boxes.

Is that all they did?

Alex did not bother hiding the cellar, since he doesn’t have company and, until me and Emil, lived alone. I got over each room again, this time checking the walls for a camouflaged door.

I pause in the living room, by the window as headlights from a car turn into Johnathan Wagler’s driveway. I’m about to return to my search when someone exits from the passenger’s side. A woman.

Helen had implied Johnathan only bring women home on Wednesday. Something she missed? A detail she didn’t consider worth noting? I don’t believe anyone here can convince her to keep a piece of information to herself if she thinks it’s worth sharing.

An effort on Johnathan for her not to know? Helen is absent at this time.

The woman also doesn’t match the description she gave of those women, or the once I observed him bring home last Wednesday. I don’t see much of her in the time the car door is open to provide light, but I see that her dress is loose and rumpled. She also wears a jacket that is too large for her.

Someone he is helping out? I watch them head inside. There is no closeness that indicates friendship in how they stand. 

I return to searching for a hidden door.

I don’t find one, so no cellar.

I do the same on the second floor, and the cabinet in the home gym that houses the hand weights, as well as towel and floor mats, can be moved. The lock is simply a lever inside the cabinet, hidden by water bottles. It moves out of the way easily enough even Jennifer’s slight frame can do it. Heavy duty hinges hold it on the wall, which allowed it to not leave marks on the floor.

The space doesn’t contain drugs, or weapons, or any number of other illegal items, as I expected. It contains a bed, a camera, a computer and stacks of blank DVDs. There is a label maker in Jennifer’s workroom that would be capable of making labels for them. A cabinet hold lube, sex toys, but no condoms.

With the number of sexually transmitted disease roaming out there, is there a market for movies of people having unprotected sex?

I check the computer; it isn’t connected to anything other than the power and camera. I place a jammer next to it and turn it on. It isn’t password protected. They count on the room being sufficiently hidden not to need it.

Most of the files are video files. The computer had editing software. The files go back eleven years. Looking through some, I see Jennifer and Anthonio engaged in a variety of sexual acts. Him taking her; her taking him, positions from mundane to adventurous, but nothing there that would require hiding what they are doing.

Other than to limit the social backlash.

The accounting software lists sales going back to when the files started. The recent numbers could account for the discrepancies. I’d need to do a more thorough investigation of them to confirm it.

But is it worthwhile?

Disappointment again. Silencing the box his harder this time.

I look through more of the video files, hoping for something to…

What am I looking for?

Why am I looking for something that isn’t there?

Over the last two years, other men and women appear in the recording, sometimes with either of Anthonio or Jennifer, sometimes not.

I find the box driving this and silence it. Why is it the one containing addiction? 

I put everything back in place. They are not doing anything that needs to be acted on here. I don’t understand their need to hide it, but that does not make it wrong.

I reset the alarm, exit, make it over the fence and into the house, trying to understand exactly what happened. I did not go there looking for something to act on… did I?

Addiction can be subtle. It can trick the person addicted into justifying maybe of their actions that will lead to the addiction being fulfilled. But I know my addictions, my needs. I have to know them to control them.

“How did it go?” Alex greets me.

“They sell recording them themselves having sex. That’s where the extra money is from. It’s send out with the parcels from her story to avoid leaving an internet trace.”

“Really? How illegal is it to record yourself having sex and selling that?”

I shrug.

“Are you okay?” Alex takes my hand and pulls at me. “Come on, I’ll have the bath ready.”

“I don’t—” He smiles and his box eclipses whatever else is going on with me.

“You’re rough with my as I like it. Let me pamper you a little.”

The smile I give him is because of his box, how me makes me feel.

Emil glances up from his laptop at us as we walk by his room. He may have been suspended from school until Monday, but I explained that I won’t let him slack on his studies because of that.

He complained. Pointed out that was exactly why he didn’t need to go to school. He still doesn’t understand that the social learning it provides is as important, if not more, than the academic one.

The bath is a jacuzzi, and it is large enough I fit in it comfortably. The water is hot, almost uncomfortably so, but it makes Alex’s touch register more acutely as he washes me. It does not excite me, and he does nothing to attempt to get me to react. 

Sex happens on my terms, and he accepts it. This is simply him washing my body, then lying against me in the hot water, with my arms over his chest.

The boxes hum something that resonates through all of them. I can’t identify the result, and I don’t feel like searching for it right now. After the disappointment of not finding anything worthwhile at the Alcabus, this… this is nice.