Chapter 3: Setting Up House

The cover story Lee and Amanda decided to use for the Petrescus was that a new technical adviser was joining IFF, and since things were pretty quiet at work, they were helping him and his family move into their new home. It wasn't too far from the truth, although Anton Petrescu would be working for the Pentagon, not the Agency. The Petrescus would need a cover story to tell to their neighbors anyway, and the role of a "technical advisor" to a documentary film company fit well, especially since they were coming from California. It would seem natural to people that someone who had lived in California might have worked in the film industry.

"It's really nice that someone you're working with will be living close," Dotty said. "You might be friends outside of work, too. Maybe they can come over and play cards sometime. Do you suppose they play cards?"

"Maybe, Mother," Amanda said. "I haven't met them yet, so I don't know."

As Lee suspected, Amanda insisted on picking out items of furniture from the Agency's warehouse for the Petrescus' house. The Agency had some standard groupings of furniture to be used in suburban situations when they needed to set up a household or the appearance of a household in a hurry, but they had all been used many times and frequently consisted of eclectic pieces of furniture.

After the last time he and Amanda had used one such grouping, Amanda had donated a new set of kitchen curtains and rug to it as well as her mother's old stuffed buffalo head. The curtains and rug were important, she had insisted, because it didn't look right that the old set didn't match. The buffalo head was an accident because her mother thought she was putting together items for a rummage sale and donated it. Lee had actually become attached to the buffalo head before the end of the case. If the décor in their mock living room was a scream, the buffalo head was the exclamation point at the end of it.

This time, Amanda had insisted on picking out sets of items from different groupings to achieve more of a matching effect throughout the Petrescu house. The Requisitions Department complained about it, but Lee leaned on them and got them to go along with it. It might even be good to change items around between sets, he argued. Some of the pieces of furniture were more worn than others, and it would be more efficient to replace a set of worn stuff as a whole than piecemeal from different groupings.

Philip did look curious when they mentioned that the Petrescus had a daughter, but Lee asked about how the plans for the haunted house were coming and successfully distracted him.

"I drew a map of the haunted house," Philip said. "The garage isn't very big, so I think we'll have just two main rooms. We can have a short hallway leading in and another one leading out."

"Are you sure you'll have room for the hallways?" Lee asked.

"I measured it," Philip assured him. "It will work. The hallways will make the haunted house seem bigger, like we have more rooms, and we can use the first one to kind of set the stage."

"You won't be taking kids up in the loft, will you?" Amanda asked. "Remember that trap door!"

Lee remembered the loft and the trap door. The loft was kind of like a small attic above the garage. Lee knew from experience that it mostly contained Christmas decorations, old toys, and camping equipment. He'd once had to hide out there while most of his friends and co-workers believed that he was dead. For awhile, Amanda had let him stay in her house, but her mother and the boys had come back unexpectedly early from a trip. He'd had to move into the garage to hide from them, and he'd slept on a cot in the loft. A set of wooden stairs at the back of the garage led up to it, and there was a window that looked out onto the driveway.

While he was staying there, Amanda had warned Lee about the trap door. The stairway was a recent addition to the garage. Originally, the loft had a trap door with a ladder that led up to it. Amanda didn't think it was very safe, so Joe had the stairs built instead. Unfortunately, he never did get around to boarding up the old trap door. Even though the trap door seemed sturdy enough to support the weight of an adult standing on it, Amanda kept a small table over it so that no one could step on it and fall through by accident. She said that one of these days, she'd have it closed up, but money was often tight, and she was too busy to think much about it.

"We won't," Philip promised. "The haunted house will all be on the ground floor."

As the week went on, Dotty took the boys to the library, where Philip checked out books about how to set up a haunted house and Jamie checked out more books about electronics and some tapes of sound effects. He had some plans for rigging a lighting system for the garage and playing appropriate sounds to go with the displays they were going to set up. He spent a good part of the week tinkering at the workbench under the stairs to the loft in the garage.

One afternoon, after checking the alarm system that had just been installed in the Petrescus' new house, Lee took the boys down to the hardware store to get some supplies. They needed hooks and rope for hanging up the curtains, and Jamie bought a box of light bulbs in assorted colors, light sockets and brackets for mounting them on the ceiling beams in the garage, and some extension cords. When Lee went to get Jamie from the garage for dinner that evening, he saw flashes of different colors of light coming from the windows. He had to admit that it did look pretty eerie.

"I was just testing them to see what colors work the best," Jamie explained to Lee. "We'll have to have lights in the haunted house so that people can see, but they should be fairly dim, and it would be scarier if they were strange colors."

"That's a good idea," Lee said. "I can't wait to see what it looks like when it's done."

"If you take me to the electronics shop, I could do even better! I could get black lights and extension cords with switches on them so I can turn them on and off individually," Jamie said excitedly. "And some stuff for the sound effects. And maybe even a strobe light-!"

"Slow down," Lee said, laughing. "That sounds like a lot of stuff. I don't know if we'll have the money for everything. We can go to the store and see what things cost, okay?"

He wasn't sure if Jamie could pull off what he wanted to do or not, but he wanted to encourage his younger stepson in his interests.

Lee was happy that Jamie was eager to show off his creations to him. Of Amanda's two boys, Jamie had been the one who had really opposed Amanda's relationship with Lee. It had taken awhile for him to get used to Lee and for Lee to find some common ground with Jamie.

Philip was very much like Lee himself had been when he was young: action-oriented, always on the move, brash, out-spoken, a little hot-tempered, obvious interests in cars, sports, and girls. Jamie was different: quieter, more thoughtful. Philip blurted out everything, but It was sometimes difficult to read Jamie's moods. It was a mutual interest in photography that helped break the ice between them, and since then, Lee had taken pride in helping Jamie with various science projects. Jamie never ceased to amaze him with his creativity and technical knowledge.

"Actually, that's the kind of stuff that I want money for," Jamie said, talking about the lights, extension cords, and other electronics parts he wanted to buy. "Or maybe a ham radio. I haven't decided."

"I don't know how much you're going to earn off of the haunted house, and you'll have to share the earnings with whoever helps you," Lee cautioned. "It might be better not to count your chickens before they're hatched."

"I guess," Jamie said.

"Any idea what Philip wants money for?" Lee asked, probing for information.

Jamie snorted. "Kelly Sharp."

"Who?"

"She's in his history class. She's got a thing for guys who play football, and mom won't pay for him to buy equipment so he can join the team. She says that he already plays baseball, and she can't afford equipment for another sport."

Lee knew that Philip had expressed an interest in football when he'd suggested that he get involved in something to get his mind off of Linda. He also knew that Jamie was right that Amanda had restricted Philip to a single sport at school. It was partly because of the expense of buying extra equipment and partly because Philip wasn't the greatest student. The boy was smart, but he lacked patience and focus. Lee could relate. Amanda was afraid that adding extra sports would keep Philip from focusing on his schoolwork. She said that if he improved his grades this year, she might reconsider when he got into high school, provided that they could afford the equipment then.

Now, Lee knew that part of Philip's sagging history grade was due to him staring dreamily at some girl named Kelly instead of listening to his teacher. Lee wondered if Amanda knew.

Over dinner, they talked about going to the electronics shop. Philip wanted to go shopping for costumes and Halloween decorations, too. "I think I know what monsters we should have in the house, and I've got a list of things we need to buy-"

"Woah, hold it!" Lee said. "Not so fast. Have you talked about it with your friends yet?"

"Well, I told Mark and Andy about the haunted house, and Jamie said Tommy was interested."

"Tom," Jamie interrupted. "He likes people to call him Tom now."

"Why?" Amanda asked.

"He thinks he's too old to be called Tommy," Jamie explained. "He doesn't want to sound like a little kid."

"So, what did they all say?" Lee asked Philip.

"Mark and Andy want to help, but they have some things to do this weekend. They can come over on Tuesday after school to talk about it."

"That would be good because Tom says that he might be able to get some props from his aunt, and he's going to see her this weekend."

"His aunt?" Lee asked.

"Tommy-I mean, Tom's aunt works for the Arlington Community Theater," Amanda said.

"She might be able to loan him some costumes or something," Jamie said. "And he said that there's a skull and a cauldron in the prop room that he might be able to get."

"It would be nice if she's willing to lend them," Amanda said.

"Maybe you'd better see what your friends can contribute before you rush out and buy things," Lee said to Philip.

"But, they don't know what I want to do with the haunted house yet," Philip complained.

"And you don't know what they're willing to do with the haunted house yet," Lee said. "You've got a good start on the planning, but you have to see what your people can bring to it before you make the final decisions."

"Then, there's nothing to do over the weekend," Philip grumbled.

"Cheer up," Lee said, reaching over to give Philip's shoulder a squeeze. "There are weeks to Halloween. You'll be ready in plenty of time. Just take your time with it, and have fun thinking about the possibilities."

Deep down, Lee could relate to the way Philip was feeling. He always preferred the start of a mission to the planning beforehand, although he knew that proper planning was critical to success. The week kind of dragged for Lee workwise, and if he hadn't had the kids and their project to think about too, he would have been completely bored out of his skull.

Amanda thrived during the prep phase, getting the house ready for the Petrescus, who would be arriving on Wednesday at Dulles. She wanted the house looking homey and attractive as well as secure. She had some good ideas, too, about how the security system would function with children in the house and the things that a lively child might do to set it off by accident.

"Although she's not a young child," Amanda said. "She's old enough to be careful if things are explained to her properly."

Toward the end of the week, Amanda's energy seemed to wane. At first, Lee thought that she'd just been overdoing it in her enthusiasm to make the home welcoming for the Petrescus, but by the weekend, Amanda admitted that she'd been feeling sick.

"It's probably that virus that's been going around," Lee said sympathetically. "Billy told me that he had to replace a couple of guys on the Petrescus' security team because of it. You'd better take it easy this weekend. Dotty and I can keep an eye on the boys."

Amanda's illness was the fourth reason why things turned out the way they did.