Geraldine Murphy walked into the Pawn Shop in Chester and pulled the photo out of its manila envelope. The pawnbroker was sitting behind the counter scrolling lazily through his phone. He didn’t look up. “Excuse me,” she said, “I am trying to find my guitar. It was stolen from my house last Tuesday.” She showed him the photo. ”This is it, right here.”
He yawned, appeared to be suffering from acute lethargy. “I’ll go take a look in the back.” He blew out a sigh, put his phone away and lifted himself from his stool.
“It’s a Taylor AD-22,” she added, handing him the photo, “It has one cracked tuning peg and a black leather strap. That’s me playing it at The Dew Drop Inn over in Logan.”
Late Tuesday evening, when Geraldine got home from work, she’d found the front door of her apartment slightly ajar. She stuck her head into the dark room. “Hello? Anybody in here? Hello?”
She called the sheriff’s office. “I want to report a robbery,” she said.
“Are you hurt, ma’am?” asked the deputy. “Do you need medical assistance?”
“No, I am not hurt, I’ve been robbed.”
“When did the incident occur?”
“I don’t know exactly — I wasn’t home. Sometime today, though. The lock on the front door was forced open and my guitar is missing.”
“Ma’am, just so you know, when someone enters a private residence and takes something, it is called burglary. Robbery is when someone takes something from a person by force.”
Geraldine hesitated. “Um…okay. But I didn’t call looking for a vocabulary lesson here, officer – I need to find my guitar, that’s all.”
After questioning Geraldine, the deputy poked around her apartment and wrote up a report. About ten minutes later, he left, saying, “We’ll be in touch as soon as we have anything.” He sounded less than optimistic.
On Saturday, Geraldine spent her day off driving around to music stores and pawn shops in the Greenville area. At the end of the day, she’d walked into the Chester Pawn Shop.
“I don’t know what’s come in,” the pawn broker said. “Give me a minute, though, and I’ll have a look.” He shuffled off to the back room, looking remarkably sloth-like. After a long while, he brought out a guitar, a Taylor AD-22 with one cracked tuning peg and a black leather strap. “This it?” he yawned.
Geraldine showed him her ID and a receipt as proof that it was, in fact, hers.
“Says here on the tag, it was pawned by a Raymond White, with an address in Logan. You know him?”
“Nope. But I have a guess.”
Monday morning, on her way out to her day job at The Fotomat, she bumped into her neighbor Billy Ray, at the bottom of the stairs. “How’s it goin’, Geraldine?” he mumbled, head down.
She told him about her stolen guitar. “I found it, though, and I am getting it back today. The sheriff’s looking for the thief.”
She noticed Billy Ray was wearing brand new yellow high top sneakers, expensive looking, which seemed odd, as he was unemployed and was always complaining about being broke. “Hey – looks like you got some cool new shoes there,” she said. “Where’d you get those? Man! They look fancy — are they Air Jordans?
“These? Oh … yeah … no … I’ve had these old things for a while … I just don’t wear ‘em much,” he stuttered. That didn’t bear even the slightest resemblance to the truth, as far as Geraldine was concerned.
She stared at him. “Well, they sure do look brand new to me. Must have set you back two or three hundred dollars.” Billy Ray, who was not burdened with an over abundance of education, blinked a couple times, shook his head, fidgeted with his jacket zipper.
“How’s the job-hunting coming along? Any luck yet?” she asked.
“I’m still out there looking every day,” he lied. “Well, gotta go,” he said. “See ya.” He scuttled off down the sidewalk before she could say anything more.
A-1 Safe and Lock was coming first thing in the morning. Her apartment would probably be the only one in all of Greenville with a double deadbolt lock on the door, but she was taking no chances. Billy Ray White and his cousins were lazy, ignorant weasels who never paid for anything if they could steal it. Billy Ray was as dumb as a bag of hammers and the absolute worst liar on the planet. Geraldine knew it was only a matter of time until he acquired a stylish orange jumpsuit to match his new yellow shoes. Cool.
Geraldine is a great character. I love how she handled her business!
Good job. I loke the characters and how you jumped around the timeline of the story.