seymoure

Her week had been consumed by so many minor and really worthwhile trivialities that she was almost angry about it. Worst of all, most of it entailed getting ready to do the thing she wanted most not to happen. She had been preparing for the closing of her school and loss of her beloved children.

There had not been a night of that week she had not cried herself to sleep.

Now she would help change things.

As she got out of her ratty little Pink Pinto, she saw the house. It was not a mansion. It was not so garish. It was a large manor house from the turn of the last century. That is not to say it wasn’t grand. To maintain such a house at this level it must have cost a fortune.

The place looked as it much have on the day it was opened. In the middle of the outer trouble, it looked like an oasis.

The doorbell was not a bell. It was a chime, a chime that played a tune that she knew was a song, a beautiful song, but she couldn’t recognize. In the dozen notes there was enough to know it was famous, but not enough to know which song it was.

The door was opened by an elderly man, in a dress suit and with a very formal manner.

“May I help you?” he greeted.

“Is Mr. Hart here?” she squeaked.

“Whom may I say asked?” he responded.

“Oh, he couldn’t know me,” was her embarrassed answer.

“May I give him a name,” he pushed lightly, “If he is in.”

“ I am Ms. Stephanie Dunham,” she offered, “I am his grandson, Bobby Foster’s teacher.”

He nodded and offered her a seat in the entry way, and then said, “I shall see Miss Dunham.”

He closed the door, watched her sit and made a stiff, military turn and marched out.

It was a shorter period of wait than it felt to her.

When the man returned he bowed and pointed they way he had come. “Will you follow me Ma’am?”

She stood and then the pair of them walked rapidly through the door.

What she saw was slightly stunning.

They entered a movie theater. Well, not a commercial one, but a movie theater nonetheless. There were theater seats, a projector’s booth at the rear and a screen that she passed upon entry.

The room was in the dark, except for the flickering string of light that lit the screen with the final scene of “The Maltese Falcon.”

Bogart was telling Mary Astor that he wasn’t going to take the fall for her. Then Ward Bond and the cops arrived and took her away.

Bogie picked up the bird and Bond asked what that was. “The Stuff that dreams are made of…” Bogart answered and the movie faded.”

The lights came up and she saw the legendary Cezanne Hart. The cat burglar, the figure that women would dream of when they heard of El Gato, sat before her. He sat because it was possible he could not stand.

Hart was larger than Sydney Greenstreet in the movie that has just finished. He was over 300 pounds, closer to 350, but it was hard to know with him sitting.

He held out his beefy hand, and she hoped he could see her through those Coke bottle glasses, as thick as she had ever seen.

He did stand, and she noticed that his left arm hung dead at his side. He noticed her looking at it. Disabled people can always see those who are aghast at their disabilities, but they try not to embarrass them. But, not always.

“I didn’t always get away without a scratch,” he smiled, “The worst was Monaco in 1981. I was caught with a bag full of the greatest jewelry you can imagine. It was Princess Grace’s 25^th Wedding Anniversary and there were a great many dignitaries around hoping to show the world that they were worthy of being in her company. I would never have robbed her, she was the definition of grace, not to make a joke. I was very sad when she had that accident the next year. She was a lovely woman.”

Stephanie was already enchanted with him as she took his hand. His voice was like velvet. It almost made her forget his physical…problems.

“What can I do for you?” he asked as he gestured for her to sit.

She hesitated for a breath.

“What can it hurt to tell me what you thought I could do before you saw me?”

She looked down for a second, sorry to have displayed such transparency. She laid out the entire situation, and then told him that she had hoped they could do something that would bleed the money to solve the problem from Filch.

“It would be the truest poetic justice,” she said, “But I have taken up too much of your time, I’m sorry.”

He held up his hand and stopped her from leaving.

“Cameron!” he raised his voice without it being a shout, “Bring the young lady a libation.”

The butler she knew came to the door and said, “What would m’lady wish?”

She had never done anything like this before, in someone’s house, and never to a butler, so she stumbled a bit and then said, “I would love some lemonade, if you have it?”

“I shall make some gladly,” Cameron said, bowed and was gone.

“I hope that is not a lot of trouble,” she told Hart.

“Absolutely the opposite,” he told her, “After having nothing other than my redundant tastes to look to, he is happy to stretch a bit. Now, I have a question.”

He was very concerned, but answered, “What can I do?”

“Are you just a teacher or can you still learn?”

“I take classes every summer break. I love to learn, why do you ask?”

“You can see that I am no longer worthy of the name ‘El Gato,’ I would die if I tried to do the stunts I did regularly in my reckless youth. But I know it all, and we could join together to create a new, one time only, first flight cat burlar.”

She stared back at him, without words.

Then she smiled, extended her hand and the shook. He chuckled.

“But first, Cameron, let’s watch ‘To Catch a Theif,’ eh?”

They laughed as the servant rushed to retrieve the film cans.

The next morning, at 4 am, the training began. It had to start early to give them a couple of hours work before she had to hurry off to teach. It began again at 5pm and ran until 11pm.

She learned everything.

Physically she became a circus acrobat. Working on the trapeze, walking a high wire, tumbling and so much more.

She learned to disarm any current kind of alarm, open any kind of safe and hack into any computer. Cameron was her computer teacher.

He had been a FBI “hostage” for his computer crimes for three years. He caught hackers for them. When he was released into the private sector he could have gone into Security for some firm, or take up his father’s profession. With Hart he was able to keep feet in both worlds.

Of course there were things that were going to be beyond Dunham at the moment, some alarms and some computer items were going to take consultation. For that they created a code that they could transmit back or forth to an earbud. The code was for whoever might intercept their communications.

But except for the rarest of times, she would be on her own. But, since most homes have the simplest of security systems they didn’t expect anything flashy. Flashy is expensive. Flashy usually comes as the result of a robbery, and since no one had ever robbed where they were going, paranoia wasn’t going to be the outfitter of the system.

Her targets were picked out.

The planning commission.

The school board offices.

And, the big one, the home, and therefore all the accounts and records of Abercrombie Filch.