The Cleaner

1

Lugging her vacuum into the Glassers' home, Bonnie felt something at the nape of her neck—the merest tickle of trouble.

"Bonnie here, hello..." she called, stretching the word, eyes on the key in the lock.

Her customary greeting gave homeowners a chance to cover up or break off activity if they'd forgotten she was coming. On a typical summer day at the Glassers', Wyatt might release Reid from a headlock. Ava might scoop that slime she never tired of making from glue and borax into a Tupperware.

Not today. Today the kids were nowhere to be found.

The father, Rick, set down a cellphone and beer stein to relieve her of the heavy stainless-steel vacuum.

"I've got it—no, no." The tails of a flannel shirt bounced at his waist. "How are you this fine morning?"

Bonnie said she was well, thanks for asking. She hung her coat. "Where did you hide those kids?"

"Oh, they're afoot."

"I'm sure they are." Smiling, she noted a yeasty, bitter smell. "Doing some cooking?"

"Brewing." Rick raised his stein. "New IPA for Tramp Bar. Hops're fresh off the truck from Oregon, the good stuff."

He sipped, then offered Bonnie the stein as if a snort of alcohol during work hours was nothing.

She declined. "I'll get the sheets off the beds."

He took a second, longer pull. Bonnie didn't say a word or—she thought—let disapproval into her face, but he explained, "Hey, opening night's two months away. Gotta get my ducks in a row."

He winked conspiratorially. Last week, he'd asked her to put his empty bottles in the corner of the garage where—Bonnie knew, they both knew—his wife, Val, wouldn't see them while pulling into the garage.

Helping conceal Rick's drinking had always been part of the job—even before he undertook Tramp Bar, the combination brewpub-kids' trampoline park he was launching in October. Bonnie had no qualms about it. She was fairly sure he didn't know what Val kept at the bottom of her tampon bag either.

Now Bonnie headed upstairs to strip the beds, expecting to encounter rowdy kids. Hoping, even. The forty-minute drive over the Shawnee River from Franklin Falls, where Bonnie lived, was murder on her back, and the laughter of children was one of the few tonics she'd identified over the years.

Reaching the second floor, though, she heard none.

"Bonnie here, hello...?" she called at Wyatt's bedroom door.

Inside, bed squeaks and furtive whispers.

"One sec!" answered Wyatt, the oldest at eleven.

Bonnie waited with crossed wrists. A drawer slammed. Someone said, "Ow, stop!" Then the three Glasser children emerged, smallest to tallest, looking back over their shoulders into the room.

Whatever they were up to, Wyatt recovered quickly. "Thank you for sewing my baseball jacket. It zips perfect now."

Bonnie stopped short finding the bedspread corners and smiled. Most boys Wyatt's age slinked right by a cleaning woman old enough to be their grandmother.

"You're welcome," she said. "I was happy to mend it."

As she gathered his pillowcases and fitted and flat sheets, the kids reassembled in Reid's room. Reid was six. He still crawled into his parents' bed after nightmares and so slept in the room closest to the master.

Normally Bonnie took up all the bedding in one go, got everything into the wash before starting on showers. Now she left Wyatt's sheets in a heap and went to the Jack and Jill bathroom adjoining Reid's room. She turned the faucet on as though preparing to wipe the vanity.