The Unknown Thief

    “Run!” Albert shouted as he jumped out of a gigantic window, glass shattered and little pieces flung everywhere. A shard of glass flew across the room and it scratched Susan across the face.

    “Oooooh, that’s definitely gonna leave a scar,” Jimmy yelled as he sprinted out the door.

2 Days Earlier

    An elderly man sat alone in his empty little house. The canary yellow paint has started to chip on the outside of the house. The old, wooden stairs creak every time someone steps on them. The shelves have layers upon layers of dust on them, sense no one has been around to clean them in such a long time. 

         Suddenly Albert heard a loud ringing noise, that must be my door dash Chick Fil A! he thought to himself excitedly. He jumped out of his chair and practically ran to the door. As he opened the door, he was surprised when he saw a strange man looking directly into his eyes. He was pretty tall maybe around 6’2 or so, he was bald, but he had a long, curly, dark brown beard. The man was wearing the Chick Fil A shirt but he was wearing a shiny, black leather jacket and matching black pants. 

    “That will be $9.50,” the strange man said in a very deep, monotone voice as he handed the bag of food to Albert.

    “Ok, here you go kind sir,” responded Albert, trying to keep things happy. Albert took the food and was about to go inside and enjoy his food, when the man stuck his foot in the door, and stopped it from closing.

        Albert was confused and asked, “is there something else you need?”

The strange man opened up his mouth as if he was about to say something, but before he got any words out his phone started buzzing and he scurried away. Albert stood there for a minute completely stunned about what had just happened. Eventually he closed the door and headed back into his house. They day dragged a long and Albert was still feeling so alone, since he hasn’t had any company over for 3 years, which is as long as his wife has been missing.

          Albert was bored out of his mind because he really hasn’t had anything to do around his house and he rarely goes anywhere. Although sometimes he still drives over to Costco because that was his wife, Susan’s favorite store. They used to go there every Saturday and eat all the samples, and buy more than they needed because Costco has everything. Things didn’t quite feel the same to Albert, shopping there alone. 

          Albert walked into the huge store and was immediately filled with memories “Hey Albert, haven’t seen you in so long! Where have you been?” One of the store employees asked.

          Albert glimpsed around the are to find who had just spoken, and then his jaw dropped it was little Jimmy, well he wasn’t so little anymore. He must be around 17 or 18, he has caramel colored hair, and blue piercing eyes, and he was wearing the regular costco uniform. 

          “Oh, hey Jimmy, I just haven’t gotten out of the house recently,” Albert replied, he didn’t want to mention anything about the fact that his wife was missing. 

          Albert started to find his way around the store, almost everything he saw reminded him of his wife. Soon he noticed that there weren’t any samples anywhere. 

          He went and found the nearest employee and asked, “hey are you guys not doing samples anymore?”

         The worker looked at him strangely, but then looked around herself to notice all the samples were gone, “oh, that’s weird, we just put the samples out this morning,” she seemed a little confused but then she just shrugged and walked away. Now Albert was confused because truth be told, he really only came to the store for the samples. He tried to keep them off his mind and just keep shopping for stuff around the store, but he couldn’t let it go, the samples meant so much to him and his wife. Eventually Albert left the store and headed back to his lonely house.

           That night he decided he was gonna find out what happened to all the samples, and find whoever stole them. He told himself that it would mean a lot to his wife, and it may even help him find her. Although the police did say that Susan had died, Albert refused to believe them. He worked really hard for the next two days to develop a plan to find the thief. He ended up with,

Step one: drive to Costco

Step two: ask people about the samples

Step three: go find thief

Step four: try to find Susan

He was pretty proud of himself for this plan, but now he was tired so he decide to start tomorrow. 

          It was early morning, around 7:00, Albert got into his car and drove to Costco, hoping that the culprit stole the sample early in the morning. To his dismay, when he arrived the only person there was Jimmy. Albert walked over to him, with hopes that he knew something about the missing samples.

           “Hey Jimmy, have you heard anything about the samples lately?” Albert asked.

           “Oh, hey Albert, you’re here early. No I haven’t it’s been a mystery for about a week, I think someone keeps stealing them.” Jimmy replied with a concerned look on his face. Albert started to pace back and forth, he was debating whether or not to ask Jimmy to join him on his quest, finally he reached his decision. 

          Albert turned and looked Jimmy straight in the eyes, “will you come with me to find the thief who has been stealing the samples?” He asked hopefully. 

          Jimmy didn’t say anything for a minute, Albert could tell he was thinking very hard about his decision. Finally Jimmy opened up his mouth and replied, “alright, let’s do it!” But he has a little bit of a nervous tone in his voice. “When should we begin?” He asked.

         Albert spun around, “how about right now,” and without another word he started to walk out of the building. Jimmy quickly hurried along behind him, very eagerly. They both got into Albert’s light blue car, and started the drive out to… well they didn’t really know. The only thing Albert could think to do was go to all the places his wife loved going because he thought she might also be trying to save the samples. 

          Jimmy and Albert had been driving for a while, when suddenly Susan’s favorite restaurant, Taco Bell was coming up on the left.

          “Hey there’s our first stop, my wife loved that place, maybe we’ll get some sort of hint as to where the samples have been taken,” he explained to Jimmy. So they headed into the Taco Bell parking lot, and walked into the building. To their dismay they didn’t find anything at first, at least nothing popped out to either of them right away.  But then out of the corner of Albert’s eye, he saw an empty Costco bag, it was just sitting on the top of an abandoned table.

          “Hey! Jimmy look!” Albert yelled excitedly, as he rushed over to the table to examine the bag. 

          “Ah man, there’s nothing in the bag, how do we know this means anything?” Jimmy asked, feeling sad now because he thought they hadn’t learned anything to help them find the thief.

          “Well young one, we know that someone that went to Costco drove all the way here, and no ordinary person would make the drive this far just for any random Taco Bell. So obviously Susan has been here.” Albert explained, in a calm voice. “We must be on the right track, Susan would do anything to help out her favorite store.”

         Jimmy looked at him in awe, his mouth was even hanging down a bit. “Sir, you really know your wife, that’s so romantic, I hope we can find her and the samples.” He said, as he patted Albert on the back gently.

        “Well we should just be getting on the road again I suppose, I think we should stop at all of her favorite places” Albert was saying to Jimmy as they were leaving Taco Bell. 

        Again they got into the car and drove a little ways before coming to a stop again,  it this time they stopped at a nice little park, on the edge of a small town, which she always liked to drive through because she thought it was so cute.

         “Hey look, that’s our next spot, my wife loved that little park” Albert explained, and he pulled the car over to the side of the road. They got out and walked over to that park, hoping to find another Costco bag. 

         Jimmy and Albert split up so they could search the area a little faster, since it was starting to get kind of late. “Hey I’ll go look over by the playground, maybe you could look in the field.”

         “Smart thinking Jimmy boy, look everywhere we really need to find one,” Albert replied as they started to drift away from each other.

         It didn’t take them long to find a bag, one was just sitting in the middle of the field, “Well they’ve definitely been here,” Albert confirmed as he held up a brown paper bag. They were nothing feeling happy as they headed back to the car, ready to search for their next destination. 

          As they day went on they must have been to at least 5 more places, finding a bag at each one of them. “I’ve finally run out of ideas, we’ve been to all her favorite places, there’s nowhere left to go” Albert confided to Jimmy in a very sad and disappointed voice.

        Jimmy sat there and thought for a moment, “well maybe we should just keep driving, and something will come to you,” he said with a satisfied tone. 

        Albert looked at him, and a smile crept across his face, “there I see it, the place she used to work, she would never go there unless she wanted to hide.”

        Jimmy yelled with joy at this news, “yay! Now we can finally get back the samples.”

        They finally pulled into the parking lot of the old abandoned building. They got out the car as quietly as they could, hoping to not scare the thief, that was hopefully inside. 

        Thankfully the door was unlocked, so they could get in without a hassle, “so now that we are inside, how do we know where to go?” Jimmy asked, with a concerned look on his face.

        “Well she use to work on the 8th floor, so I feel like we should check there first,” he said with a determined face. 

        The elevator was out of service, so they had to walk all the way up to the 8th floor. Finally, panting and exhausted, they reached the floor. They weren’t quite sure what to do at first, so they started to roam around, but then out of the corner of his eye, Albert saw a woman standing there. She was an average height, with gray hair, put up in a tight bun, she was wearing a blue sweater with whites, loose pants. It was Susan!

         “Susan! I can’t believe I finally found you!” Albert yelled, as he started running towards his wife.

          Susan turned around, she was caught off guard, “Albert? Is that you? It’s been so long, what are you doing here?” Albert was going to go in for a hug, but he was stopped by Susan’s hand. Albert stopped, he was confused, why doesn’t she seem happy? And where is the thief *gasp* and why does she have so many samples? “Susan, what’s going on?” He asked in a very tentative and concerned tone.

          She didn’t look very happy, but she didn’t seem like she had just fought a thief, “Well, what does it look like, I did what needed to be done,” she said very angrily, and she continued to work with her samples and equipment. 

         But what Albert didn’t understand was why, “Susan, why don’t you just come home with me and we can forget about all of this,” Albert suggested.

         Susan walked away from him, “Don’t you get it, I don’t want to come home, I’m staying here, I would suggest that you leave so I don’t have to make things worse.”

        “What do you mean make things worse?” Albert asked, now he was confused.

        “Just leave! I don’t want to hurt you,” Susan yelled.

Albert had totally forgotten about Jimmy who was still standing in the corner, “hey, I know you guys are on good terms right now, but we need to get those samples back,” 

         Albert looked back and forth between the two of them, he sighed and finally said, “yea sorry Susan, but we’re gonna need to take back the samples,” Albert said and he started walking over to Susan. 

        He was not ready for Susan to be ready to defend herself, she pulled out a lid from a container she was storing some samples. “Susan, what are you doing”

        “I told you I don’t want to hurt you,” Susan said again. But neither of the. Noticed that Jimmy had set up a small bomb, that shouldn’t really hurt anyone, just make a little wind storm. “Uhhh Albert you ready to go?” Jimmy yelled worriedly.

         “Run!” Albert shouted as he jumped out of a gigantic window, glass shattered and little pieces flung everywhere. A shard of glass flew across the room and it scratched Susan across the face.

    “Oooooh, that’s definitely gonna leave a scar,” Jimmy yelled as he sprinted out the door.

          A few days past, and eventually everything went back to normal, Costco’s business was thriving, and Albert got a new job working there, and all was well.