Three Bedrooms, Two Baths, One Very Dead Corpse

by James, David

  “Of landing the largest sale of land in the last fifty years? You bet!”

  The implications were, for the first time, really sinking in.

  “Alex, you don’t think we’re getting in over our heads, do you?”

  “Us? Naaaw! There’s nothing we can’t handle.”

  “I know that, but the reality is that someone was willing to kill for some land. And after you’ve killed once, I’m sure it gets easier the more you do it. Or at least the punishment stays the same.”

  “And what do you mean by that, Amanda?”

  “Well, even if you’re found guilty of multiple murders, the State of California can only execute you once.”

  “You have point there, my dear.”

  “Yeah, and a scary one at that,” I replied.

  Alex and I agreed that we should spend a few hours attending to the business of selling houses, but it was clear that the both of us were more excited about unmasking a killer than putting a four-bedroom house into escrow. But the bills must be paid. So I went back to the office to get Alex’s cubicle ready, snagging him some hard-won office supplies and setting up his phone, and finally, submitting some paperwork to our escrow coordinator. Neither Alex nor I used our offices much when we lived in Michigan, but it came in handy when you needed somewhere to make a slew of long-distance calls. Alex, true to the way he commanded and controlled life like an orchestra conductor, had almost his entire business on his computer and cell phone. No fuss, no muss. The office was a place that he used merely to catch up on the latest news . . . inside information that he used for leverage, to alert clients to off-the-books deals, and to steer clear of troublesome sellers and buyers.

  You can tell a lot about a real-estate office just by walking through one. An office full of agents sitting behind desks working on computers is a bad sign. Chances are, they’re playing video games or surfing the Internet, or paying bills and balancing checkbooks. If it’s empty, that’s a good sign. That means most of the agents are busy showing properties or working out at the gym or getting their hair done. In any case, you’ve got a hardworking agent, or at least one who also spends time working on her looks—an undeniable asset in the mystical, magical art of selling houses. I used to poo-poo the idea that good-looking agents have a leg up in selling houses, but Alex convinced me otherwise. I wanted to think that personal traits, presentation skills, and your drive to succeed made all the difference. I used to believe in Santa Claus and the Easter Bunny too. But I’ve seen it with my own eyes. This doesn’t mean that just merely being a bimbo or himbo means you can drive money to the bank—selling real estate is hard work. But . . . looks are important. And the old adage is true: In order to be successful, you must project an image of success. That’s why the movers and shakers all drive expensive cars. Buyers and sellers reason that if a Realtor can afford to drive such cars, then he or she must sell a lot of homes, and consequently, make a lot of money in order to afford such an expensive car. In reality, it just means that some car company was willing to lend money to a person who just happens to sell homes.

  I was going through some files of Alex’s when I heard the familiar voice of Grant Smallwood.

  “You’re looking beautiful today,” came the raspy baritone.

  “Grant, don’t you ever get tired of making insincere compliments?”

  “Not really.”

  “But do they ever work on anybody?”

  “Sometimes they do. Hey, I heard that Alex is coming back.”

  “Present tense. He is back.”

  “Great, great. Hey, Amanda, have I ever told you that your ex-husband is hot?”

  “Only about one hundred times.”

  “Well, he is. I’ve fantasized about having sex with him a lot. And I mean a lot!”

  “Thank you, Grant. It’s nice to have confirmation that I have good taste in men . . . gay men, in particular.”

  “You do, you definitely do. I’ll bet he has a huge dick.”

  I raised my head slowly to stare in Grant’s face without saying a word. I mean, what could you say? It’s not like he was sexually harassing me. Grant was one of those people who never stopped talking, said things that could easily bring on a lawsuit, and was clearly fascinated with everything he had ever uttered.

  “Well, does he?” Grant continued.

  One last trait in Grant that I failed to list: He was one of those types who pestered you until you relented. Or, if you refused to respond, he’d continue having a conversation all by himself. You weren’t really necessary. That was the thing with narcissists: It’s all about them.

  Grant was not about to give up. “So you’re not going to tell me?”

  More filing.

  “You know who else in the office has a horse dick?”

  More filing.

  “David Kress. You want to know how I know? Well, when Miss Thing isn’t out showing houses, he’s prowling around the steam room at my gym, swinging his Louisville Slugger back and forth like it’s an elephant trunk. . . . It’s that big,” Grant exclaimed, holding his hands a good twelve inches apart, just in case I needed a visual aid. “That’s how he got that staph infection that had him in bed for a week. And a month before that, he got that urinary tract infection, which totally baffles me since I can’t figure out how an infection managed to swim all that way down a cock that long.”

  I paused before stuffing a bulging folder into its prescribed slot in the open file drawer.

  “Grant, is there a point to this rambling?”

  “No.”

  “Then off with you,” I said, swishing him away with empty folder, “before someone drops a house on you.”

  “Then you don’t want to tell me if your ex has a big dick?”

  “Grant, can’t you go smoke near a propane tank or something? I’ve got work to do.”

  “Okay, if you’re not going to tell me . . .” he trailed off, as if I was supposed to feel guilty about not divulging the exact measurements of my former husband’s penis.

  “That’s right, Grant. I am not.”

  “Your silence is my answer,” Grant added smugly.

  My cell phone rang as Grant walked away. It was Alex.

  “Hey,” I chirped into the receiver. “Grant and I were just talking about you.”

  “So do you have a knockout black dress?”

  “Alex, look who you’re talking to.”

  “I’m just asking.”

  “Of course I do. Several. Are you taking me somewhere special?” I guessed.

  “Absolutely.”

  “Where there are people and music?”

  “Right again.”

  “Heels or flats?”

  “Neither . . . hiking boots instead.”

  “What!? What kind of place is this?”

  “A funeral. I’ll pick you up at nine-thirty tomorrow morning.”

  CHAPTER 10

  Excuse Me, Is This Rattlesnake Taken?

  I had to admit that as we pulled up on the street that led to Eagle Canyon to park, I was actually looking forward to this memorial service. In fact, I was sporting a discreet, but definite smile on my face. Don’t misunderstand me, the fact that a prominent ecoactivist had been brutally murdered was sad—even sadder that this man had the temerity and lack of good graces to do it in one of my listings. But having been raised Catholic and having attended literally hundreds of Catholic funerals before I even reached the tender age of 12, I would have looked forward to a memorial service where bereaved family members immolated themselves in front of my eyes. Now it was a funeral in a canyon. At least it would be something new.

  Funerals, you see, is one area where the Catholic Church really shines. Even though time has dulled some of the terror they’ve perfected over the years, they still knew how to work the emotions of a vulnerable crowd. The main theme was horror, followed by retribution, guilt, pomp, and then finished off by artery-clogging food, which, in turn, lead to more deaths and more funerals—the Catholic cycle of life. From th
e kneeling bench in front of the open casket where you could pray over the deceased to the clouds of incense that they broke out at the right moment, they had it down pat.

  So as Alex and I made our way past the line of cars belonging to the attendees, I couldn’t help but feel exhilarated. This gig couldn’t make you feel any lower than a Catholic funeral. The bumper stickers affixed to the many cars that lined the street also gave me reason to smile: There was no doubt where these people stood, politically. DEFOLIATE THE BUSHES, said one. THERE’S A LOT OF DIRT UNDER EVERY BUSH, declared another. Following this one: A VILLAGE IN TEXAS IS MISSING ITS IDIOT. Clearly, Bush was not a favorite here. There were several LOVE YOUR MOTHER stickers with a picture of Earth, but the ones using sarcasm or double entendres really captured my heart. One ancient Volvo that looked as if it had been rolled in mud exclaimed, from left to right, VISUALIZE WORLD PEACE, VISUALIZE WHIRLED PEAS, VISUALIZE TURN SIGNALS. My favorite: WITCHES PARKING. ALL OTHERS WILL BE TOAD. I let out a brief but audible chuckle, causing several people making the trudge up into the canyon with us to shoot me a look so dirty, it would have to be scooped up in a plastic doggie poop bag and dumped into a trash can.

  I had hiked into Eagle Canyon before, and found its amazing beauty even more stunning because it existed only a few hundred yards from a Volvo dealership off Highway 111. As we neared the spot where the memorial service was being held, I looked around for chairs but saw none. Goddamnit, I thought, I’m wearing DKNY, for heaven’s sake. I did a quick scan of the area for a free rock to pull up and sit down upon, but all the good rocks were already taken.

  “A word of caution,” one woman who appeared to be entirely attired in white cheesecloth warned. “There’s a Crotalus atrox over there behind that rock,” she said, pointing with the cane she was resting her chin on.

  “What did she say?” Alex inquired.

  “Something about a girl named Alice,” I whispered.

  I trudged over toward the rock in question and came face-to-face with the first rattlesnake I had ever seen. I froze. Alex, who was only a foot or so behind me, froze also. The snake was coiled into a mass of aggression, its tail rattling like a maraca with Parkinson’s.

  “Good, Amanda. Stay still. Now, slowly back away, one foot at a time. Don’t turn around, just face the snake and slide your foot slowly backward, first one . . . good . . . now the other . . . now the other one again . . .

  As soon as I was safely out of range, I turned and walked in a daze back toward the bulk of the people. Feeling that it was my civic duty to inform everyone about the danger nearby, I made an announcement.

  “Attention, attention everyone.”

  A sea of heads turned.

  “There’s a deadly rattlesnake behind that rock over there,” I said, pointing.

  The look I got in return was not one of concern for safety of the attendees, but one of “who is this chick with the drama-queen problem?”

  Miffed, I went back toward the woman who almost sent me to my death.

  “Why didn’t you warn me there was a diamondback over there behind that rock?”

  “I did,” she answered casually. “In Latin.”

  “I don’t speak full Latin—just pig, ifway uoyay nowkay hatway Iway eanmay.”

  No reaction. I noticed that the top of the cane this woman continued to rest her chin on was carved into the head of a snake, fangs bared.

  “He wouldn’t have harmed you. He’s more afraid of you than you are of him,” Snake Lady informed me.

  “Don’t be too sure of that. I almost spoiled my dress—thank God I’m wearing Depends.”

  “Close to fifty percent of all bites are dry . . . no venom,” she continued like an irritating National Park Service employee.

  “Well, I didn’t want to test that theory.”

  “No theory . . . it’s a fact.”

  “I see.”

  “Anyway, we’re on his territory. He was here first. And his ancestors were here millions of years before us,” Snake Lady instructed me.

  Alex lightly grabbed my arm and led me away before I had a chance to retort. “We better go find a seat before the service begins.”

  Alex scanned the throngs who milled about, chatting, praying, lighting incense, smoking odd cigarettes, dancing to music that was not being played, while a circle of women sat on the ground, holding large drums snuggled in their laps. This memorial service was going to be a humdinger.

  Before long, there was a hush that fell over the crowd as an amazingly tall woman with hair almost as long and flowing as the clothes she wore floated to the front of the crowd—literally. The way she walked, there was no discernable gait, like she was mounted on rubber wheels cleverly hidden under her diaphanous gowns. This woman obviously lived in a bad neighborhood, since it seemed that she wore every piece of jewelry she ever owned at once in an attempt to foil thieves breaking into her house. Her weakness for bracelets was apparent, with dozens of them encircling her arms. When she raised her hands upward to the sky in a supplication, then out to the crowd, it sounded like a waiter with a trayful of silverware had fallen down a flight of stairs.

  “Welcome, welcome, namaste,” the woman said, pressing her palms together, bowing slightly. “We have come here to celebrate and remember a life, a life of devotion to serving the Earth Mother, the Giver of all Life. We will begin with a prayer, led by a spiritual leader you probably all know, Coyote Woman.”

  On cue, the drum section broke out into a cacophony of synchronized pounding so deafening, I thought it unwise to make so much noise in an active earthquake fault zone.

  “Oh good,” Alex whispered to me, “there’s going to be a sacrifice.”

  I smiled over at Alex. As Coyote Woman neared the front of the congregation, the drum beats retreated into a soft, repetitive thumping, giving Coyote some room to speak. Coyote bowed her head, then fell into a deep, reverential silence.

  “Oh great spirits of the Earth, Moon, and stars, we gather here to summon you to bless us, to give us strength, and to help us find those who have taken the life—but not the spirit—of Doc Winters.”

  At this proclamation, I couldn’t help but look around to see what reactions there were. Some heads nodded, some still had their eyes open, one puffed away on a joint, contentedly sending a stream of the smoke into the blue skies, and one woman, who sat to our left, seemed visibly upset—so much so, I could see her squirming with rage that made the packet of smoldering leaves she held in her hand shake violently.

  There couldn’t have been a more diverse group of people on the planet. While the majority of the people in attendance clearly belonged to the Poligrip-hippie group, they by no means owned the day. There were Gen-X environmentalists wearing itchy wool knit caps and tie-dye T-shirts, Range-Rover-driving Sierra Club members, and up front in dead center was an incredibly chic woman wearing what I guessed to be unimaginatively expensive clothes and shoes; from where I stood, I could see the glint on her finger of what could be no less than a ten-carat diamond. Diversity was the name of the game here.

  “Spirits of the East . . . West . . . North . . . and South, come down amongst us, let us feel your energy pass through us, and bind us together here today.”

  As most of the people around us bowed their heads in silence, I took a minute to study Coyote Woman. If you were going to be mystic, jewelry was the way to go. No doubt about it. Coyote Woman took a different tack than our emcee, however. Crystals were the operative word here. Lot and lots of crystals, hanging from neckchains, earlobes, attached to rings by tiny wires—the more, the better. Why a rock in crystal form was supposed to have mystical powers and a regular rock didn’t struck me as mere prejudice. Just like people, I thought. The attractive ones were made of the same substance as the more common species, but it was the good-looking ones that got all the attention. Life, whether you’re a rock or a person, is just unfair.

  With the exception of all the crystals she wore, very little about Coyote Woman suggested anything mystical.
In fact, she was rather plain. She looked like she could be anything from a Baptist minister’s wife to a cashier at Walmart. This is what made the crystals that she wore seem so hokey. She came across like a psychic Roseanne Barr—the two just didn’t go together. My prejudices demanded that she at least should look like a Coyote Woman. You know, seven-feet tall, weighing eighty-eight pounds, wearing a sari covered with mystical runes and symbols. She would speak as if from far away, which she was, living partly in this world, partly in a nether world of dead people and energy from wormholes in space caused by black holes. You know, the usual. This one had none of those characteristics. Forget the eighty-eight pounds . . . this Coyote Woman had a paunch. Too many jalapeño-jack cheese poppers at Applebee’s, I guessed.

  “Come upon us here, oh spirits of the desert, the mountains, and the valleys; come spirits of the tortoise, the serpents, lizards, ravens, hawks, owls, jackrabbits. . .”

  “If she leaves out the dung beetles, I’m leaving,” Alex slid out of the corner of his mouth, never taking his eyes off Coyote Woman. “They always get passed over.”

  “. . . come, send us the strength of the universe flowing through us, around us . . .”

  “AIIIEEEEHHHHHH!” The blood-curdling scream came from my left. The woman who sat with smoking leaves in her hands burst up from her seat like a harpy from hell, stormed up to Coyote Woman, and slapped her hard across the face while people looked on in horror.

  For what seemed like an eternity, no one moved or said a thing. Then, two men in the front row got up and quietly escorted the attacker out of the canyon, with no resistance being offer by the deranged woman.

  “Geez, this tops my grandfather’s funeral, where my psychotic grandmother tried to crawl into the coffin with her husband,” I whispered to Alex.

  “She was that distraught?”

  “No, she had just found out from a brother-in-law that her spouse had spent all their savings . . . left her penniless. She was trying to hit him, but she was short, so she had to hoist herself up on the edge of the casket to get a clear shot at him.”