She let out her breath and snapped back to the problem at hand. Would he notice the broken lock? “Hey, are those yours?” she asked, pointing at the dryer, then opening the door of the second one. It too was filled with wet clothes.

“Yeah.” Hiram was dressed in flannel pajama bottoms that hung low on his hips and a hooded gray sweatshirt, his hands in the single front pocket of the hoody. On his feet were huge slippers that barely covered what had to be size thirteen or fourteens.

“Didn’t you turn the dryers on?” she demanded.

“Yeah.”

“When?”

“I dunno. Couple of hours ago.” He was getting defensive, his lips, behind his scraggly beard, folding in on themselves.

“Well, your clothes are still wringing wet.”

“I used ‘low’ so my jeans wouldn’t shrink,” he said as if it were she who was the imbecile who didn’t know a thing about laundry protocol or procedure.

“Well, you’ve got about thirty minutes before the washers are finished with their cycles and when they are, I’m going to need both dryers.”

“Too bad, you’ll just have to wait.” He made a big deal of checking the sodden clothes. Like he really cared. From the looks of his outfit, this might have been the first time he’d used the laundry facilities since Christmas.

Hiram hit the start button again, the timer set for twenty minutes, the temperature once again on “low.”

She said, “That’s not going to work.”

He snorted, turned, and faced the storage cages.

Holy crap! Her heart was trip-hammering like mad.

What would she say when he accused her? Could she lie? From the corner of her eye she saw her laundry bag, the outline of the bolt cutters visible. She kicked the washer. The resulting clang rang throughout the basement.

Hiram spun as if a top on a string.

“Damned thing,” she said, shaking her head.

“What was that noise?”

“I don’t know but it’s been doing it ever since I loaded it.”

“The washer? Which one?”

She pointed to the one she’d kicked. “Every couple of minutes or so it does that banging noise. Can’t be good. You’re the super or the manager or whatever, maybe you could fix it.”

“It didn’t do it for me.”

“How do you know? Were you down here?” she asked, and saw by his eyes that he hadn’t been. Good. Her lie was safe. “Maybe you should get your toolbox.”

He nodded and edged toward the stairs. “Yeah, I will, but after you’re done with the washer, you, uh, might put a note on it that no one is to use it until I, um, get it fixed.”

“Good idea,” she said, and let out her breath as he, hands in the front pocket of his hoodie, started to climb the staircase. Every step seemed to groan in protest with his weight.