Read Duncan's Diary for Free Online Page B

was about to embark. I personally believe that most people are capable of doing things that are horrible. They end up not doing them because of the time frame in which they have to talk themselves out of it.
    I was lucky enough in my childhood to have been forced to work in my dad’s rental property empire. He had purchased several houses in the communities surrounding DeSoto and had accumulated upward of 35 homes. Keep in mind, most of these were in the $50,000 range as a purchase price. Housing costs in that area are almost as depressed as you might imagine living there could be.
    I was the designated flunky on many projects, including roofing a house, installing a sewer line, hanging drywall, painting, siding, etc. In-between the open-hand slaps to the face and the balled-up fists to the head, I had at least learned a trade that might be able to help me in my current endeavors.
    Friday, April 4 th, I went home, picked up my black lab and drove my Volvo XC90 SUV the twisty route to Twain Harte. Traffic was a little heavy so the trip actually took me closer to four hours versus the normal three, but it was relatively uneventful. As I pulled into the driveway, my next-door neighbor Ron was out walking his dog Buddy for his evening shit. He waved hello. Ron and Darlene would be my biggest obstacle in my planned activities. I still remember when I first purchased the house and Ron introduced himself. He stated that he had keys to all the houses on the block; he and Darlene watched most of them for the owners. My first task as a new homeowner was to make a spare key and give it to Ron and Darlene.
    This actually turned out to be a lifesaver. One weekend in the middle of winter, I woke up early to let Delilah take her morning stroll. I ran outside in my usual bedclothes of running shorts and nothing else. Delilah paced back and forth looking for the perfect spot to make her mark. As I turned to go back inside and escape from the 20 degree frigid air, I realized I had locked the door behind me and could not reenter. After 10 minutes of attempting to break into any crack in the exterior, I ran across the lawn and beat on Darlene’s door. She reluctantly opened up after several minutes and, upon seeing me, reached over grabbed my spare house key, flung it in my direction, and closed the door. She most likely saved me from frostbite and breaking a window to reach the safety of warmth. I thanked them profusely later that morning and several times after.
    I did smartly have the upper apartment and the house keyed separately. So although Ron and Darlene had access to the main portion of the house, they did not have the ability to enter the apartment upstairs. They could only come and go in the rentable portion. Still, I would have to plan carefully not only the changes that I had in mind, but also how to mask them so they were as unnoticeable as possible.
    I pushed the button on the garage door opener, pulled into the garage, and let Delilah out of the back of the SUV. She hopped out of the car, full of pent-up energy from the four-hour drive. Immediately she lost her water intake from hours earlier and, then, went about reacquainting herself with her surroundings. The house was on two lots and had a semicircle drive that entered in one side of the parcel and then emptied out on the other. My neighbor Charlotte had just recently painted her house the same color (exactly, is that not freaky?) as mine. It was a bluish gray that had a wafting smoky effect. I actually shared the driveway with Charlotte. Our houses were originally built by sisters, and they were relatively close together.
    I closed the garage door after corralling Delilah and unpacked the few items that I had brought (I kept a second set of most things at the house). I walked up the stairs. It was a little cold in the house. It was still chilly there at night, and we kept the heat off to save on the energy bill. I turned on the heat and lights, put the overnight bag down,