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Fiction Short Story

Monopoly Game

by Sylvia Nickels

"What's 'bankrupt', Aunt Lucy?"

"Huh?" I looked up from running my fingers through the dry grass on my front lawn. "Oh, it's where you owe a lot of money. Then you have to sell anything valuable you own to pay it back. Why?"

"I just wondered." Jake turned over a crackly dead leaf. I stared at the blond cowlick on his bent head. No use asking again. He'd speak again when he was ready. We were looking for Jake's fingerbike, a new toy he'd acquired, easily found by a bare foot on a nocturnal bathroom excursion. At least Jake had been searching for it, too; now he was twirling a ring of heavy cardboard on his finger.

Jake and his mom, Melissa, ten years my junior, were living with me while she finished her nursing degree. "You can write during the day, can't you, Lucy, and watch Jake after school a couple of days, when I have late classes?"

Right. Some days I'm at my keyboard around the clock. Melissa thought we freelance writers tossed off a few pages, then played the rest of the day. In addition, she hadn't realized how many extra hours she would need for clinic training and library research. So here I was, a divorced forty-year-old aunt, who'd been thankful there were no children when her husband took off, raising a ten-year-old boy child. Jake could be sweet, but his clothes, games and toys, so many of them tiny like the fingerbike, littered almost every inch of my formerly neat home.

"Kelly said his mom and dad had to, like... 'declare bankrupt.'" Jake's belated answer to my question brought my thoughts back to the present. Kelly Booker was his buddy who lived across the street.

"Hmmmm. Really?" I didn't know the Bookers that well. I'd gone across to welcome them last year when they moved to the neighborhood due to his railway company job transfer. She showed off their antique furniture and he displayed his gold Krugerrands collection. They dressed nicely, had a new SUV in the driveway, and took a two-week California vacation immediately after the school year ended.

"What's this?" I picked up a small white cardboard square, about an inch on each side. Its center hole was covered with clear cellophane, the staple that had held it hanging loose.

"I found it by the playhouse." Jake said. "This, too, it's like the one Kelly gave me." He twirled the cardboard ring near my face. I grabbed it for a closer look. Its inner surface was printed all over with the railway logo.

"Looks like it had tape on it."

"Yeah, his dad has lots of it and pads and stuff from his work."

I guess boosting office supplies leaves more money to buy Krugerrands.

"Maybe you left your fingerbike in the playhouse. I don't think it's out here." I stood, straightening my protesting back, and stuck the little white square in my jeans pocket. "Why don't you look again? I'll see about some dinner for us. What would...?" My words trailed off as a city police cruiser rolled by and pulled in the driveway across the street. An officer emerged, went up the front walk and rang the Bookers' doorbell.

I heard a knock on my front door half an hour later as I tossed Jake's hot dog in a pot of boiling water. A gourmet cook, I'm not. It would be wasted on Jake anyway.

A policeman, about my age, stood on my porch. His face was rugged but rather nice-looking.

"Evening, Ma'am. I'm Detective Sergeant Ben Lucas. May I talk with you for a few minutes, please?"

"Sure, come on in. What is it?"

"It seems your neighbors across the street had a break-in last night. A valuable coin collection was stolen. Did you see or hear anything unusual last night?"

"Well, I was up late, till after two o'clock, writing. I heard a bump in back, around midnight. But I didn't hear it again. I figured it was a stray dog."

"Have you checked your backyard today?"

"No."

"Would you mind if I have a look?"

"Not at all. You can come through here. Watch the toys."

He followed me through the dining room, treading lightly for such a big man, hand on his baton so it didn't hit anything. Thoughtful, too. We stepped out on my back deck and he looked around. Jake came out of the playhouse, a tiny wooden A-frame that Dad had built for Melissa and me when we were kids. The door bumped behind him.

"That's what the sound I heard was like." I told Sergeant Lucas. "But Jake was in bed, and no other kid would have been out here in the playhouse at midnight."

His clear gray eyes traveled over the small building. "That door would be a tight squeeze for an adult."

"It sure is, I've tried it." I laughed.

Stepping off the deck, he walked to the playhouse. He looked inside, over the miniature window boxes of red and white petunias. The only furniture the tiny house boasted was a built-in table, covered in yellow linoleum, with a bench seat on two sides. Melissa and I had played endless games of Monopoly there, until one of us acquired Boardwalk and Park Place, and managed to bankrupt the other. The table top was hinged on one side. We kept the game board, the money, and all the little houses and hotels, in the storage space underneath.

Sergeant Lucas had dropped on one knee in front of the playhouse, peering through the door he held open. I walked over and reached inside, lifting the table top. The rusted hinges creaked a little. Craning my neck, I could just see that there was nothing in the space. I gave him a twisted little grin. "I just thought of it. But there's nothing there, not even Jake's fingerbike."

He smiled back. He got up and dusted off his uniform knees, then walked all around the playhouse. He stooped and picked up a stray petunia blossom. "Do you ever move it? How heavy is it?"

"Too heavy for me to move, but not for a man, I guess. Why?"

"See the crushed down grass? And this narrow line of faint yellow grass on this side? Like it had been moved and then put back, just off its original place."

"Moved and put back? Whatever for?"

"It sits on timbers so the floor won't rot, right?"

"Right." What was he getting at?

He unhooked the window box of petunias and set it on the ground several feet away. Then he walked around and did the same to the box on the opposite side. Grasping the little A-frame at its roofline he tilted it and laid it over on its side.

A number of blue folders were wedged between the four-by-fours which held the floor off the ground. Wide tape criss-crossed the timbers, securing the folders in their hiding place. But one small square of white cardboard had escaped. It lay on the grass with a staple on one side and a gleaming gold coin wedged in the center hole.

I pulled the matching white square from my pocket. "Jake found this around here earlier."

"I'd better get Mr. Booker over here, see if he can identify this lot, and a team to check it out." Sergeant Lucas said softly.

Jake and I sat on our deck and watched as an officer with a camera snapped pictures of the scene. Mr. Booker stood with Sergeant Lucas and claimed to have no knowledge of how his coins came to be under the playhouse. He kept taking his glasses off and wiping them with his handkerchief. His eyes darted toward the fingerprint officer, who was dusting every inch of the tape and any smooth wood surface with white powder.

"Aunt Lucy?"

I tousled his hair. "What, honey?"

"I thought Mr. Booker would be real happy that Sergeant Lucas found his gold coins. Didn't you?"

The End