A Cure for Boredom

Chapter 2

Chapter 2Since they didn’t have to be at the theater until six on Saturday to get ready for the evening show, and because they wouldn’t begin work on the next show until after the theater reopened at the end of the following month, Dante didn’t have to worry about try-outs, or learning lines, or any of the other things putting on a show required. That meant he and Kade had the whole day for themselves.

Because they’d slept in, it began with a late breakfast, during which they avoided any talk about what Kade considered Dante’s off-the-wall idea about trying their hands at becoming robbers or burglars. He wasn’t certain which was which, but he intended to find out. Planning for every contingency was something he firmly believed in, whether it was coming up with the right makeup for the theater’s actors, or, in this case learning which carried the lighter sentence if they were caught. Being a realist, he wouldn’t discount the fact that could happen—if they went beyond planning into execution.

After breakfast, they did their usual Saturday morning chores, including laundry. By one everything was finished.

“Now, we can get started.” Dante turned on the laptop which sat on the desk in the corner of the living room.

Kade pulled up a chair next to him. “We can do research, but that’s it. We don’t put anything on there that even hints what we’re thinking about.”

Dante slanted him a look. “Don’t you think the research will clue someone in?”

Opening one of the desk drawers, Kade took out a notebook, and got a pen from the cup sitting on the corner of the desk. “We write down everything we learn. Quit frowning,” he added when Dante scowled at him. “We have to go about this as if someone was figuratively watching over our shoulders while we’re online.”

Dante nodded. “I suppose that makes sense.” He opened the browser, went into its menu, and changed the ‘History’ setting so that it would be cleared at the end of every session.

“The first thing we should find out is which has the lighter sentencing if we get caught, burglary or robbery,” Kade said.

Dante began searching. At one point he muttered, “We don’t steal drugs, for starters. Not that we would but if we did, we could spend the next twenty-four years in prison.”

“Yeah, we’ll pass on that,” Kade agreed as he wrote down the information on the various types of felony charges involved.

“Otherwise, it seems to be a toss-up on sentencing, so the only problem I can see is the fact we’d have to invest in burglary tools if we went that route.”

“By the time we did, and learned how to use them, we’d be in our forties,” Kade pointed out. “So we’ll stick to robbery. The question is, where and of what?”

“Not sure that makes sense,” Dante replied.

“Honestly, sometimes I wonder about you. What do we want to steal? Money? Jewelry? Gems? Lawn mowers?”

“Lawn mowers?”

Kade grinned. “Just throwing it out there. Anyway, if we go for the money there’s banks, busy stores, restaurants, you name it. Obviously jewelry and gems mean jewelry stores. I’m not sure we’d want to go after artwork. It would be hard to walk out of a gallery with a painting under one arm.”

Dante immediately began searching for information on art thefts. “This guy, well man or woman since they were never caught, did. It was a small painting and somehow they managed to cut it out of the frame without anyone being the wiser. Then, according to this, they must have rolled it up, stuck it under their jacket, and blithely walked past the museum guards to freedom.”

Kade shook his head. “That took chutzpah. Still, what could they do with it afterward? They could hardly sell it on the open market or even fence it. No, we’ll stick to cash or jewelry.”

“Robbing a bank is a federal crime.”

“So? We’re not planning on getting caught.”

Dante rolled his eyes. “I’m sure none of the robbers were, until it happened.”

“You have a point.” Kade leaned back, hands behind his head. “We’re going to have to plan everything down to the smallest detail. Do we want to try it here, or out of the city, for starters?” He realized as he spoke that he was acting as if this was real, not an exercise in ‘what if’.

Dante must have picked up on that because he smiled gleefully. “I’d say we go to a smaller city to test the waters. Somewhere that has several jewelry stores so we can make a choice on which one would suit us as a test case.”

Kade was relieved that Dante hadn’t suggested a bank. While it might have been exciting to try robbing one, that was for further down the line, when they knew what they were doing. “Find two or three cities within driving distance,” he suggested. “Then see what our options are.”

Nodding, Dante brought up a popular map site, zeroing in on Portland, which was where they lived. Then he expanded it to cover a hundred miles in every direction.

“There, there, and there,” Kade said a few moments later, writing down the names of the cities. “Pull in on that one.” He pointed.

Dante did, and then used the search function on the map to bring up stores. When Kade asked why he didn’t go specifically for jewelers, Dante replied, “If, and it’s probably unlikely, but if someone was able to track our searches, homing in on jewelers could be a dead giveaway that we might have something more in mind that looking for the perfect gift for Mother’s birthday.”

“Okay, that’s logical.”

Dante grinned. “I thought so.”

“Wiseass.”

“Me? Always.”

“No kidding,” Kade muttered as he located and wrote down the addresses of the jewelry stores. He did the same when they checked out the other cities. “Now we have to pay each one a visit. Not this second,” he said with a laugh when Dante shut down the laptop and got up.

“I know. I’m not a total i***t,” Dante replied. “First we have to eat lunch.”

“We are not going to do it at all until next month when the theater is closed.”

“But…but…” Dante feigned a pout.

“You’ll live,” Kade told him in amusement.

“If you say so.” As they headed to the kitchen, Dante said, “I’m really getting into this whole ‘can we pull it off’ idea. Not that we’ll try in reality…maybe…but figuring out what it would take to walk into a jewelry store and leave with a couple thousand dollars’ worth of goods…”

“And what to do with the loot once it’s in our hot little hands. We need to make a list,” Kade said. “What to look for, how to…”

It was Dante’s turn to end the conversation for the time being, which he did by telling Kade they would figure everything out in time. “Lunch and that movie we planned on seeing. We have two weeks until we go dark, and a whole month afterward. We don’t have to…”

“Figure everything out this second,” they said in unison, breaking into gales of laughter when they did.

Are we laughing because of that, or tension relief because I think we’re seriously considering doing this? Or something else? Kade had no idea, but whatever the reason, after the long spell of dealing with his grumpy lover, it was great to see him finally happy again. If committing a robbery is what it takes to stop him from being deadly bored, I’m all for it.

* * * *

For the two weeks, during the day because they had to be at the theater in the evenings, Dante and Kade did their homework. Not every hour of every day. They agreed that would be overkill to the nth degree.

Dante found learning what sorts of security measures stores used—especially jewelry and high-end shops—and how well hidden most of them were, fascinating.

“Cameras in light fixtures,” he explained to Kade when he found that bit of information. “Motion detectors on doors and windows, not that we need to worry about them. We’re not planning a burglary, just your ordinary, everyday heist.”

“We need to keep the clerks from setting off the silent alarms on the jewelry cases.” After scrolling through one site Kade’s mouth tightened in dismay. “It seems as if there are Wi-Fi panic buttons the clerks can keep in their pockets. That could be a problem.”

“Not if we plan it right. Check out the shop to see which showcase has the most expensive jewelry. Then it’ll be in and out as fast as possible. We will need to find somewhere close by where I can get rid of my makeup and what I’ll be wearing.”

Kade nodded. “Good thing you’ve done shows with quick changes. It’ll make it easier.”

“With the right costume, it will. We’ll figure out what that’ll be later, as well as how to handle my makeup.”

The one thing they had decided once they thought about it was that Dante, being an actor, would be the one committing the robbery.

“After all, you’re used to becoming someone else and pulling it off,” Kade said. “I’m not, and the two of us in there would give them twice the chance to nab one of us.” He sighed ruefully. “Probably me, because I’d be scared shitless.”

“The trick is to lose yourself in the character you’re playing. I become the old man in the show, up here,” Dante said, tapping his forehead. “It affects how I think and move and speak. Of course the makeup and costume helps pull it off, but still it’s mostly believing I am old.”

“Mind over matter,” Kade replied.

“Exactamundo.”

* * * *

If Saturday night had been the final performance of the current show, the cast and crew would have struck everything, which meant not only taking the set apart and putting the flats at the back of the scene shop for future use, but also storing the props and costumes, as well as clearing the dressing rooms of all personal belongings. As it was, since the show was only going into hiatus during renovations and would return when the theater reopened, they did a minor strike, leaving the set standing but otherwise putting everything else away for safe keeping. It still made for a late night, so it was well after two in the morning when Dante and Kade got home.

Therefore, they didn’t roll out of bed until shortly before noon on Sunday. After getting dressed and eating a very late breakfast, they took off to check out the first city on their list. An hour later, they found a parking lot, left the car, and began walking.

It was easy to eliminate the first store. It was a long, narrow room with the showcases aligned along one wall. Dante had to give the owner props because the most valuable jewelry was in the case farthest from the front door, and there was no rear door that they could see. Escaping after ‘convincing’ a clerk to give him what he wanted would require his racing the length of the room without anyone stepping in to stop him. “Highly improbable,” he said to Kade when they were back on the street, again.

The second shop was more to their liking in that the showcases were scattered around the room. Unfortunately, those holding the more valuable pieces were, again, at the back.

“I wonder if that’s always the case,” Kade said as they headed to the last store on their list.

“I’m betting it is. And in that store, I’d have to go past the long case right in front of the door. If today is any indication, that’s where customers congregate when they first come in, which could pose a problem if one of them decided to play the hero and try to stop me.”

Kade chuckled dryly. “If one of the clerks doesn’t beat them to it.”

The third store was the best as far as the layout was concerned—at least in this city. It was a large, open area with showcases along three walls, and nothing to impede a hasty exit other than a small seating area in the center of the room.

“Easy enough to get around,” Dante murmured to Kade as they walked from case to case, looking for the most expensive jewelry.

“Look up,” Kade whispered in reply. “Don’t be obvious about it.” He smiled when Dante subtly gave him the finger before apparently glancing casually at the ornate chandelier hanging over the seating area.

“I see what you mean.”

Small spotlights were inset in the ceiling, each one trained on a showcase. To the normal person, that’s all that they were, but Kade and Dante had done their homework so they knew what to look for—a tiny dark spot beside each one that Dante was willing to bet was the eye of a surveillance camera.

They continued working their way around the store, pausing at one counter to ask the clerk to show them some of the diamond necklaces.

“My mother’s birthday is coming up,” Dante told her. “She’ll be fifty and I want to give her something special.”

The clerk unlocked the case, taking out several trays. Dante spread his arms, resting his hands on the countertop as he studied them. As planned, when he did that, it ‘forced’ Kade to move to the end of the counter so that he could see them as well. This gave him a chance to check for a panic button behind the counter. As he told Dante a few minutes later, after they left the store, “There is one, within easy reach, and I’m betting it’s the same for all the showcases.”

“At least that means they aren’t using the WiFi ones,” Dante replied. “All I’d have to do is tell the clerk to keep their hands in view until I was gone.”

They returned to the car and headed home.

“That was fun,” Dante said with a grin once they were on the highway. “I felt like a character in a heist movie.”

“As long as you don’t let it go to your head. This is real, not a fantasy. Or it will be if we decide to pull off a robbery rather than merely planning how we could do it.”

“I know.” Dante patted Kade’s thigh. “You have to admit, either way it’s giving us something interesting to do for the next month.”

Kade smiled. “So you’re not going to be carping about being bored.”

“Not at all.”

* * * *

After the two young men left the store, Dirk turned to Maverick, lifted an eyebrow in question, and then nodded toward the front door of the shop. When they were outside, he said, “Did I see what I thought I did?”

“Yep. Unless I miss my guess, they were checking for what sort of security the store has.”

“New competition, maybe.”

Maverick tapped his lip. “Possibly. I got the feeling they’re brand new at the game.”

“Based on?”

“The guy with the black hair was nervous. He tried not to show it, but he was.”

Dirk pictured what they’d seen and agreed. “Though no one would have noticed if they didn’t know what the guys were doing.”

“I wonder if they’re going to carry through with it.”

“If they do it should make the news, whether or not they’re successful.” Dirk took his phone out as they talked. “Got you,” he said softly as he snapped several pictures of a car as it came toward and then past them.

“Ah, but did you get the plate number,” Maverick asked.

Dirk grinned. “I do know what I’m doing. Not that we’ll do anything with the photos, but it’ll be interesting to find out who they are, for yucks and grins.”

“We do not need to add anyone more to the team,” Maverick replied, shooting a calculating look at his lover and partner in crime.

“Now did I say that?” Dirk looked innocently at him.

“You don’t have to. I know you and how you think.”

Dirk grinned, flinging his arm around Maverick’s shoulders. “Shall we check out a few more places before we get dinner?”

“Nope. I’ve about had it with playing tourist. I don’t know whose bright idea it was that we take some vacation time for ourselves, but whoever it was—” he gave Dirk a sour look, “—I’m ready to head home in the morning. This whole tourist thing is damned boring.”

“I’m with you on that. Dinner, bed, and then a leisurely drive back to Seattle.”

“That works for me.”