Three Bedrooms, Two Baths, One Very Dead Corpse

by James, David

  “I thought you’d never ask.”

  I plied Regina with cocktails for an hour or so until she said it was time for her afternoon nap. No matinee today for her. I loved Regina dearly, but if I kept this pace of endless cocktail hours, I would have to drive my liver over to the Betty Ford clinic.

  I worked for a few hours from what I laughingly called my home office, returning calls and prepping some mailings to drum up new business. I had dinner, watched two back-to-back episodes of The Golden Girls, then got ready for our burglary.

  Breaking into a real-estate office sounds like a daunting task, but actually, it’s quite easy for two reasons: First, there are so many agents coming and going at all hours of the day and night, firms never leave their security systems on. Second, they’re cheap, so the locks on the doors are never very good.

  When we arrived at Mary Dodge’s office, the parking lot was empty and the office was desolate, lit dimly by the dull glow of fluorescent lights. Alex, using nothing more than a stiff piece of thin plastic, had the back door open in less than ten seconds. The rest would be easy.

  We stood in the hallway, watching the security system control for a good two minutes just to be sure it wasn’t going to go off silently. After a few minutes had passed in silence, we both breathed a sigh of relief and headed down the hall to Mary’s office. Her office door was locked, but Alex had that opened in even less time. Alex went right to her to desk, opened the top right-hand drawer, and fished around inside for a few seconds, triumphantly producing a set of keys. Each key was labeled as to its purpose—after all, Mary was a Realtor. You got in the habit of labeling every key for those agents who were so stupid, they could be confused by a door having more than one lock. Don’t laugh. Over the years, I’ve handled hundreds of phone calls from agents who had no idea which way to turn a key in a lock to throw a bolt into the strike frame.

  We decided to find out what was in the boxes that Mary was so concerned about us seeing. Like magic, the set of keys quickly opened the closet door and we went inside, turning on the light and closing the door after us.

  “This is so exciting! I want to see what Mary is trying to hide,” I said, as Alex deftly slid his open sesame piece of plastic under the taped lid that held the box closed.

  I was breathing harder, hoping to find some dirty secret that would lay bare the secret to Mary’s success. Bullets? Aztec mummy heads? Decorated ceremonial knives used to slit the throats of rival agents? Alex reached inside the box and lifted out a rectangular object rolled up in brown shipping paper. He slowly unrolled the object until it sat there in the palm of Alex’s hand.

  It was a statue of Saint Joseph—one of the oldest superstitions associated with selling homes. And Mary believed in them enough to have boxes of them in her office. And while we both made fun of them, wielding them like swords against each other, I secretly wondered if they were just partly the reason for Mary’s phenomenal success. Or was poison a more effective business plan must-have?

  “Okay, enough fun. Let’s go look over some of Mary’s contracts. What I want to know is how much Marvin is paying for those lots up in the Cone. I get the feeling he bought them on the cheap.”

  “Cheap? Why would someone sell a lot up there for cheap? They’re irreplaceable.”

  “They are now. But when Marvin was scooping them up, people were probably dumping them at rock-bottom prices. I’m sure they were convinced that their land would never be worth anything more than a place for jackrabbits to take a shit.”

  “Good thinking, Alex. That’s why Marvin and Mary are the only reasonable suspects.”

  “Mary was quick to mention Ed Jensen. We don’t know his story . . . yet.”

  “I’ll make a note of it. Investigate Ed.”

  “Good,” Alex agreed, making his way for the door, which, oddly, didn’t budge.

  “What’s wrong?”

  “The door seems to be stuck.”

  “Stuck? We just opened it. . . . How could it be stuck?”

  “Well, Miss-Know-It-All, it seems to be locked from the outside.”

  “And I take it we’re on the inside?”

  “Correct, Amanda.”

  “Okay, well, just use your magical piece of plastic and let’s get out of here.”

  Alex pointed to the door lock, which was covered by a heavy metal pry-proof plate.

  It didn’t look good. “Now, who the fuck would put a tamper-proof strike plate on the inside of a closet?”

  As we mulled this over, Alex looked around the room for an answer that would presumably be printed on the wall.

  “I see why,” he suggested. “Look . . . there . . . on that one wall,” he said, pointing to a faint outline on the far wall. “This used to be an entrance hall of some sort, so this was an exterior door, or it was an entrance door from a hallway when this was a suite.”

  “Oh shit! So how are we going to get out?”

  “Break the door down, I guess.”

  “Oh great, and have Mary come in tomorrow morning and see a broken door to a closet that we just happened to see the day before with all kinds of cloak-and-dagger drama.”

  “You have a better idea, Miss Thorne?”

  “Uh,” I struggled, trying to think of something while looking up at the ceiling. “I’ve got it! The drop ceiling!”

  “You think you’re going to climb over the top? I’ll bet that the walls here go all the way up to the roof.”

  “Well, let’s see if they do. Here, give me a lift up.”

  Alex joined his hands together. I put my right foot into his hands and he hoisted me up rather quickly. So quickly, in fact, that my hand went right through the ceiling tile and broke it in half, showering us with a flurry of what was probably asbestos flakes.

  I peered above the drop acoustic ceiling and saw that we were extremely lucky. For some odd reason, the walls of the closet only went to the drop ceiling, so I crawled out toward the hallway beyond and to freedom. As I was lifting the ceiling tile in the hallway to make my escape, I could hear the metal ties that connected the metal gridwork to the ceiling popping around me like firecrackers. Seconds later, the whole of the drop ceiling structure collapsed, leaving me stranded, doubled over the closet door—half in, half out.

  “Are you okay?” Alex shouted into my shoes.

  “I’m fine. I think I have a permanent crease in my abs, though . . . I wonder if I can do this in two more places, then I won’t have to do crunches ever again.”

  “Can you drop down without hurting yourself?”

  “I think so. . . . Let me turn around and I’ll drop down feetfirst. I guess I should have gone that way to begin with.” I managed to squeeze out of my constricted abdomen. Like turning a full-sized octopus around inside a paper cup, I managed to turn over on my ass and point my feet downward for the fall, which happened faster than I thought.

  “OW, GODDAMNIT!” I shrieked as my feet hit a coffee mug that had been knocked off the desk when the ceiling crashed down below me. “FUCK! FUCK-FUCK-FUCK-FUCK-FUCKKKK!”

  Above my whimpers, came Alex’s calm voice from the other side of the door.

  “I take it that didn’t go well?”

  “Shhhhhiiiiittttttt! I think I broke my foot.”

  More calm voice. “Uh, Amanda . . . could you open the door so that I could help you?”

  “Sure, I’ll just . . . OW!” I turned the doorknob and Alex poked his head out like a turtle, testing the area for predators.

  “Here, let me look at your foot. Which is the one that hurts?”

  “THEY BOTH HURT.”

  “Okay, Amanda, we need to keep our voices down. We’ve just broken into the office of a murderess, we’ve destroyed the ceiling beyond repair tonight, and we’ve got nothing to show for it beyond knowing that Mary Dodge buries cheap, plastic statues of Saint Joseph made in China in front of million-dollar homes in order to sell them.”

  I had a moment of calm myself. “So what’s your point?”

  “I forgot
. . . Oh yes, we need to keep our voices down. So both your feet hurt . . . which one hurts the most?”

  “The right one.”

  He gingerly removed my tennis shoe and ran his hands slowly over my foot. God, that felt good!

  “It’s definitely swollen. Can you move it . . . twist it around?”

  “Yes, now let me go. I’m ready to dance Swan Lake.”

  I don’t know why, but I started laughing. Then Alex started laughing. Then I pointed at the shattered acoustic ceiling tiles that lay strewn around the office. It was clear that it was ludicrous that we would even try and clean up the mess. It was crazy. I mean, what were we thinking? It reminded me of the time Alex and I smoked some pot and stole the baby Jesus from a Nativity scene and replaced him with a Pee Wee Herman doll. Alex helped me limp slowly out of the office.

  “Wait, what about the files?” I reminded Alex.

  “What files?”

  “The files. When you break into an office late at night, you have to steal some files—everyone does,” I said with all seriousness on my face, then burst into laughter again, which caused Alex to start another laughing jag.

  “We better get you home and get some ice on that foot of yours.”

  “Look, Alex, I was kidding about the files at first, but maybe we should take a look. If Mary’s spearheading a big project to buy up land in the Chino Cone, she’s got to have a project file on it.”

  “But what about your ankle?”

  “It’s okay for now. Help me look through her office.”

  I hopped, hobbled, and twisted down the hall to Mary Dodge’s office.

  “Wait a minute,” Alex blurted out as I was about to open a drawer in Mary’s imposing desk. “The file’s probably out here in the files near Cathy Paige’s desk; after all, Cathy was her right-hand woman.”

  “Good thinking,” I added, as I hopped back toward Alex. We turned on a lamp and shined it toward the file cabinets, then began rifling though them.

  “Oh my God, Mary has files on agents from other offices.”

  “Recruiting?”

  “No, shit-list files.”

  “Noooo!” Alex said, slowly and incredulously.

  “Yes . . . newspaper and magazine articles, police reports, DUIs, Department of Real Estate Disciplinary Actions . . . She’s using these for blackmail! Ho-ho-ho, what do we have here? Amanda, slash Alex Thorne!”

  “A file on us?”

  “You bet.”

  “What’s it say, what’s it say?” Alex whined as I plowed through the file.

  “Shit! Nothing juicy. Just printouts of our more spectacular listings. The Markham house, the Bette Davis house . . . wait a minute here . . . printouts of both your house and mine . . . the listings from the Multiple Listing Service . . . with pictures of our homes, inside and out, before our renovations . . . they’re all paper-clipped together with the words personal home written on the topmost page. Oh, Alex, this is getting creepy. From these, she can piece together the layouts of the rooms in our homes. This chick is really nuts.”

  “Okay, okay, we can take care of ourselves, Amanda, can’t we? Now, let’s find the Chino Cone file, make some copies, and get out of here. How’s the foot?”

  “Still hurts. It’s swelling.”

  “Then let’s get out of here now,” Alex said, concerned.

  “No, no, I’m all right for now. Let’s finish what we started.”

  “Hey, hey, hey, look what I found,” Alex claimed cheerfully, waving an overstuffed folder in the air. “Chino Cone. I’ll go make some copies of the documents; you stay here and keep looking for more juicy stuff.”

  I was fascinated that Mary was so obsessed with her competition that she bothered to collect all these files. Then it dawned on me: These might be personnel files, information gathered on prospective future employees, to find the good ones and weed out the bad. Nah, I thought. I was giving Mary too much credit. It was like Martha Stewart. You don’t have that many people hating you unless at least some of the vicious stories you hear about that person are true. Although the story of Martha running over baby chickens in anger because the farm-fresh eggs she bought for her show were fertilized and accidentally hatched—that’s probably made up. Probably.

  Alex was running off a stack of copies from the sound of it. He returned a few minutes later with a folder absolutely bulging with paper.

  “I got it all. Maps, letters, newspaper articles . . . all right here,” he said, patting the folder affectionately. “Off we go.”

  Alex lent me a shoulder and we lurched like drunken sailors toward the door. We made it to the car, threw the folders inside, and were about to get inside when a brilliant beam of light flashed in our faces. From the look on the policeman’s face, I could tell this was going to be a long night.

  The next morning, when Detective Becker saw to our release from the police station, we strode out into the brilliant sunlight. Well, strode isn’t quite the right word. Hobbled is more like it. My foot still throbbed, despite the fact that I had an ice pack on it for the remainder of the evening, supplied by Palm Springs’ finest.

  As Alex and I sat in the car, the motor off, replaying everything that happened in the last few hours, we started laughing again. God, it felt good—even better than his muscular, but soft hand when it caressed my foot after the accident. To laugh with someone who knows you almost as well as you do yourself. Sharing a laugh—it’s not just a term.

  “Boy, we’re lucky that Becker has the hots for me. Otherwise, we might still be in there,” I said, thumbing toward the police building.

  My comment produced the most profound effect I could imagine: Alex looked like I had just slapped him across the face. Seeing my concern for his reaction, he brightened up immediately, chasing the clouds away from his expression.

  “Amanda, I’m happy for you. I really am.”

  “Alex, we’ve had one date. One. It’s not like we’re getting married tomorrow. I like him, but it’s waaaay too early to tell. How about you?”

  “No one special. Just looking around,” he said, smiling. Smiling with a tiny sadness showing in an almost imperceptible downturn in the corner of his smile.

  I reached over and kissed his cheek. “You’ll find someone.”

  Alex rolled his eyes.

  “Oh, c’mon, Alex. With your charm, wit, and dashing good looks, you could have any man you want.”

  “That’s the problem. I don’t want just anyone. I want someone like you: someone extraordinary. Someone who gets my all my jokes, cries at the same things—someone who . . .”

  “. . . can finish your sentences for you?” I jumped in.

  Alex let out a sigh. “Yes.”

  “Let’s get off this topic,” I interjected, fearing that if we went down this path any further, we’d both end in tears. I switched gears. “I can’t believe that Mary Dodge didn’t press charges.”

  “Oh, I can. Now that she knows that we know what she knows, she wouldn’t dare, you know?”

  “Would you run that by me again? You lost me somewhere after the fifty-yard line.”

  “We have the goods on her; from knowing about her shit-list files to our grand-slam Chino Cone file, we now have our own shit list on her. And she knows it.”

  “Well put. So should we go over to my place and go over our documents with a fine-tooth comb?”

  “Let’s. But one request,” Alex uttered.

  “Yes?”

  “Could we go to my place? The last time I was over at your place, I ended up with a half-inch nail in the sole of my shoe.”

  “You got it.”

  As we sat at the counter in Alex’s kitchen, me poring over the documents and Alex making blueberry pancakes, it hit me what was going on up there in the Chino Cone—a lot more than anyone guessed.

  Not only was Mary Dodge fucking over the city, but Ed Jensen was fucking her and Marvin Sultan over. Ed, it seems, was buying up lots that hopscotched across Marvin’s assemblage, like rotten teeth in
a supermodel’s mouth. He was deliberately buying up, at highly inflated prices, lots in between the ones Mary was snapping up for Marvin, preventing him from having an uninterrupted development that he could bulldoze to his heart’s content.

  Alex looked up from his grill for a moment. “You mean someone else is as cutthroat as Mary? I’m surprised that he isn’t dead because of it.”

  I thought for a moment. “You know, Alex, that was really brilliant what you just said about him not being dead.”

  “What’s so brilliant about it?”

  “Maybe it isn’t Mary Dodge who’s behind all this.”

  “You think Ed is our man?”

  “He could be. Think about it for a moment. Suppose he has the same idea as Mary Dodge and Marvin. And a client like Marvin. So he murders Doc to pin the thing on the two of them. And if it works and they end up in jail, then he buys up what’s left at fire-sale prices.”

  “Yeah, but your theory falls down when you consider that it wouldn’t take long for the cops to figure out that he’s in it up to his neck too.”

  “Good point, but you have to admit, it’s possible that Ed is our culprit. If he pins Doc’s murder on Mary and Marvin, he stands to clean up.”

  Alex held up his spatula like he was taking an oath. “I’ll admit it, your theory could prove to be correct.”

  “Well, this seemed to be such a simple thing. The killer was Mary Dodge. Then it was Mary Dodge and Marvin Sultan. Now it could be Ed Jensen,” I said, looking out to the tiny patch of lawn beyond Alex’s pool. “I guess we’re not doing such a great job as detectives. We were born to sell homes.”

  Alex gave me a look of puzzlement. “What do you mean we’re not doing such a great job? We’ve uncovered information that Detective Becker is probably just drooling to get his hands on. And we’re about to uncover more.”

  “A visit to Ed? How about noon tomorrow?

  “You bet.”

  “You read my mind,” I said.

  “That’s what makes us such a great team.”

  “I knew you were going to say that.” I added.

  CHAPTER 18