Broomed For Success

by Morgana Best

  I didn’t like to say so aloud, but she was right. After the resident took up chatting to the lady next to her, I turned to Oleander and Athanasius. “She’s right about that house. The owner wants way too much for it. I suggested he at least paint it, but he said he wanted the buyer to put their own stamp on it.”

  “It sounds like the only stamp a buyer would want to put on it is the stamp of a bulldozer,” Athanasius said.

  I nodded sadly. To make matters worse, the owner had insisted he write the house’s descriptions for the ads I was running. He was a retired journalist, and the ads were lengthy descriptions rather than snappy sales pitches.

  Oleander patted my arm. “Don’t worry, Goldie. This is just the beginning. The journey of a thousand miles begins with the first step. Who was it who said that?”

  “Grasshopper?” I offered.

  “Confucius,” Athanasius said.

  Harriet Hemsworth stood up and clapped her hands loudly. “And now, Oleander’s birthday cake!”

  She hurried out of the room and returned less than a minute later with two nurses. They wheeled in a big trolley large enough to put two dead bodies side by side on it.

  A dread sense of misgiving hit me.

  A huge cardboard box sat over the trolley. I knew whatever it hid wasn’t going to be good.

  With a flourish, Harriet indicated the nurses should take off the box. Harriet made the announcement. “I designed this cake myself. It’s a special cake for Oleander, and as we all know, Oleander, Goldie, and Athanasius have solved the last three murders in this town.”

  While I pondered the relevance of murders to birthday cake, one of the residents muttered, “There have only ever been three murders in this town.”

  The nurses exchanged glances with each other before removing the box.

  Everybody gasped. Oleander clutched my arm so hard I was sure I would have bruises.

  The cake was in the shape of a body, although all the internal organs were no longer internal but were sitting on top of the body. There was a knife through an eye sitting on the forehead right next to the brains, and a knife through an all-too-realistic heart sitting on top of the chest.

  “It’s a cake in the shape of a dead body,” Harriet explained somewhat unnecessarily. “This cake body shows what happens when someone is murdered. You will notice the liver is yellow, because it has become jaundiced from poison.”

  “Goldie, that liver isn’t yellow! It’s orange,” Athanasius said urgently.

  I looked at Persnickle but too late. A deep, guttural sound escaped from his throat as he charged at the birthday cake. I lunged for his leash, but only succeeded in falling face forward on the ground, the tip of the leash slipping through my fingers.

  I covered my eyes with both hands. From my position on the cold, tiled floor, I opened my eyes to see Persnickle’s sharp teeth closing around the orange liver.

  “But it was a yellow liver,” Harriet said plaintively.

  Chapter 2

  I placed the open home sign out the front of Doug Greer’s fibro cottage on the outskirts of East Bucklebury. It was a sunny day, but I didn’t know if anyone would come to the open home. After all, Doug wanted a handsome sum for the house, probably double what it was worth.

  Despite how it looked, the house was in good structural condition although most likely needed a new roof. It also needed a good clean—more like fumigation—as well as painting inside and out, a new kitchen and a new bathroom. Doug said it could be sold as a renovator, but I had learnt long ago in my real estate career that most buyers couldn’t visualise potential, even in a bargain house.

  I walked up the cracked concrete path to stand on the circular steps and regarded the house with dismay. Pale blue flaking paint on the walls and darker blue flaking paint on the window frames. It was as if the painter had won a contest to find the two most hideous shades of blue imaginable. The colours, despite both being blue, somehow managed to clash.

  The bullnose veranda roof hung at a rather strange angle and was dotted with spots of rust. I had seen an aerial photograph of the house and the whole roof was a rust bucket.

  I opened the door which was the colour of a Dalmatian: white with lots of dark spots. The smell of nicotine and whiskey assaulted my nostrils. I took a deep breath and walked inside.

  The first room was a living room. It was the least offensive. An old brick fireplace had recently been cleaned out—Doug had finally given into my urgings—but there were burn marks all over the brick. I sighed and walked into the kitchen. “At least it’s clean,” I said aloud. The horrible mottled chocolate brown and forest green linoleum had been washed. I noticed what I thought was a brick holding the back door open, but on closer inspection I saw it was a loaf of stale bread. I shuddered and took a step backward.

  The kitchen walls had only one splashback, a rather hideous slab of yellow. I had no idea of the material, only that I was certain it was one which should not be used in wet areas. From a dirty, fly spot ridden curtain rod hung a transparent nylon curtain with a trim of brown on the bottom. I only hoped the colour was deliberate. I walked out of the kitchen to see if Doug had cleaned the bathroom.

  I was pleasantly surprised. It was missing the clutter I had seen on the previous inspection, although I felt I needed a HAZMAT suit just to be in the bathroom. It had the same bizarre see-through nylon blind as the kitchen—clearly Doug didn’t mind an audience—and was tiled to above head height. The walls above the tiles as well as the ceiling were painted in a bright navy blue.

  The hand basin edges appeared to have been made of some sort of plywood because they were disintegrating, and I had no idea of the original colour of the tiles on the walls. Right now, they were a mustard colour with tiles of red roses dotted at intervals. Some of the tiles were halfway off the walls. I imagined the mould was all that was holding them in place.

  There was no bath, but the shower screen was foul. The rest of the house belonged in a museum, but I figured the bathroom would be valuable to a covert government agency interested in culturing bacteria to make weapons of mass destruction.

  I shuddered and hurried out. I crossed to the back door, averting my eyes from the bread and walked into the back yard. Thankfully, Doug had mown the yard, which must have been a difficult task. It was a big yard and there were mounds all over it. I wondered if they were ant mounds. The roads to East Bucklebury sported signs warning of fire ants, but I had yet to see one.

  At the back of the yard was a ramshackle wooden building, which I imagined was once a chook shed, maybe one hundred years earlier. It had no roof, and piles of borer-ridden timber were lying all over the ground in front of it. I hated to think how many redback spiders it was harbouring. A few planks of wood lay dotted over the newly mown lawn. There was another outbuilding, but Doug said he had lost the key. That was probably a blessing. There was also another garden shed in a cheap galvanised iron style.

  I hurried back to the car to fetch my scented candles. I placed a vanilla and caramel scented candle in the living room and lit it, and lit a coffee and burnt sugar scented candle in the kitchen. I placed three jasmine, rose, and plum scented candles in the bathroom. As I was standing back admiring my handiwork and wondering if I should remove one of the candles from the bathroom and place it in one of the bedrooms, someone knocked on the door.

  “Yoo-hoo! Are you open for business?”

  No, I wasn’t. It was a full fifteen minutes until the advertised time for the inspection. I plastered a false smile on my face and walked to the door.

  “Oh, you’re new in town, aren’t you,” the woman said by way of greeting.

  “Yes, I’m Goldie Bloom. I’ve been in East Bucklebury for a while now. I used to be a real estate agent in Melbourne.”

  The woman scrunched up her nose. “Melbourne. It always rains there.”

  “It doesn’t always rain,” I began, but then I remembered the customer was always right. I added, “Yes, it rains most days. And it’s cold,” I a
dded for good measure. “Are you looking to buy a house?”

  She laughed. “No, I’m only here to snoop. I always wondered what this house looked like, but Doug’s such a crotchety person. His father was the same before him. The house doesn’t look much from the outside, so I wondered if it was any better on the inside?”

  There really was no suitable response. I smiled again and held the door open wider. “See for yourself.”

  My mind turned to the loaf of bread doorstopper. I decided to look for a brick, anything really, to use in its stead. I would have to act fast before other people arrived. I wondered if they would all be lookers and not potential buyers.

  I hurried into the back yard, at once thankful that Doug had already bought elsewhere and had moved his furniture out—it was on the same aesthetic level as his house — when I heard a bloodcurdling scream. I looked around me but could see no one. I had spotted a brick lying next to a bucket in the back yard, so I kicked it over with my foot to make sure there were no redback spiders under it. There was one, so I jumped away.

  “The bread will have to do,” I said to myself. I had almost reached the door when there was another scream. This time, I realised it was coming from the house.

  The woman ran towards me, her arms outstretched, her eyes as wide as saucers. “In there! In there!” she screamed.

  “Yes, I’m sorry about the bathroom,” I said. “I’m sure the owner is negotiable on the price, so the bathroom could be removed and a new bathroom put in.”

  The woman grabbed my arm and dragged me towards the house. “I’ve already seen the bathroom,” I said. “I don’t need to go in there again.”

  Her screams grew louder. “He’s dead! He’s dead!”

  I froze to the spot. My blood ran cold. Surely not? I had trouble breathing. For a moment I thought I would faint. The whole room spun.

  The woman grabbed my arm and shook me. “Call the police!”

  I absently wondered why the woman didn’t have a phone on her. Despite the woman’s urgings, I made my way slowly into the house.

  “In there!” she screeched, pointing to the bedroom.

  I clutched my stomach and urged and forced myself to move forward. The bedroom door was open. I stepped inside. There, lying face down, was a man.

  There was a bullet hole in his back.

  He was stone cold dead.

  Chapter 3

  “You can’t tell me you don’t know the name of the victim!”

  Detective Rick Power leant over me in his usual intimidating fashion, waves of his cheap aftershave hitting me in my face.

  “I don’t know his name,” I said again.

  Power made a strangled sound in the back of his throat. He folded his arms over his chest and glared at me.

  “I had never met him. I’d never seen him before, not even from a distance,” I said. I already had a low opinion of the detective, and now my opinion was even lower. Why would he think I knew the victim? I didn’t like his accusatory tone.

  Power jutted out his chin. He reminded me of an English bulldog, but not an attractive one. “You don’t mean to tell me you haven’t met the owner of this house?”

  Now I understood. “The murdered man isn’t the owner of the house. The owner of the house is Doug Greer.” I gestured around the house. “As you can see, this house isn’t furnished and the owner doesn’t live here.”

  “She has a point,” the other detective, John Walters, said.

  Power shot him a quelling look. “So you don’t know the victim?”

  I took a deep breath and let it out slowly. “That’s what I’ve been telling you. I had never seen him before. I saw him for the first time after the lady alerted me to the fact that his body was lying in the house.”

  Power pointed to the closest candle, the vanilla and caramel. “You don’t mean to tell me that you put these candles in the house but didn’t put one in the bedroom?”

  “I didn’t have enough candles for all the rooms,” I said, “and the bathroom needed three candles.”

  “Why would it need three candles?” he barked.

  Detective Walters tugged his sleeve. “Come and see.”

  They returned presently. Power did not mention the candles again. I continued. “I hadn’t even looked in the bedrooms. The lady who found the body came to the open home early and wanted to have a look around. While she was inside, I went outside to replace the door stopper.”

  “Why would you want to replace a door stopper?”

  I wished Power wouldn’t question me about every little thing. “Because the current one is a loaf of stale bread and I thought it might put buyers off.”

  Power walked over to look at the bread and came straight back. “I need the owner’s name, phone number, and address.”

  “As I already told you, his name is Doug Greer and I’d have to go back to the office to look up his phone number and new address.”

  “We will accompany you to your office when we’re done here,” Power said in a cold tone. “Wait here until we speak with that woman.”

  John Walters muttered something, but I couldn’t hear him.

  “Precisely. And, Ms Bloom, was the woman out of your sight at any time?”

  “Yes. Like I just said, I went into the back yard to look for a brick to replace the loaf of bread and then I heard her scream. I ran back inside.”

  Detective Walters stroked his chin and turned to Power. “I don’t think either of them are the perpetrators,” he said. “The vic looks like he’s been dead a while.”

  “We’ll know when the forensics team gets here,” Power said, effectively shutting down Walters. “Walters, take that woman outside and question her.”

  The woman was sitting on one of the few pieces of furniture left in the house, a wicker chair painted the most unpleasant shade of green with metal armrests. She was wringing her hands and looking entirely discomfited. I felt the same way.

  Power went back into the bedroom where the victim was still lying, presumably to speak with the uniformed officers. I walked out the front of the house to get some fresh air.

  Doug Greer’s car pulled up. Doug hurried down the footpath. “What’s happened? I heard sirens heading in the direction of my house so I thought I should take a look.”

  “Someone’s been murdered,” I said.

  “Murdered?” he echoed. “Who? How? When?”

  I held up both hands. “I don’t have a clue. All I know is that he’s a man. He was shot. A woman who came early for the open home discovered him.”

  “Did she show any interest in the house? Do you think the body will put her off buying it?”

  I stared at Doug in shock. Clearly, his priorities were somewhat skewed. “She said she wasn’t in the market for a house. She was just looking.”

  “Did anybody else come to the open home?”

  I shook my head. “The police would have scared them away. You know, Doug, we have to disclose the fact to any potential buyers that someone’s been murdered in the house.”

  His brow furrowed deeply. “What do you mean?”

  “I mean that under state law, we do have to tell all potential buyers that someone’s been murdered in the house. That will deter a lot of buyers, of course. Maybe you should reconsider the asking price.” By, like, halving it, I added silently.

  I expected Doug to be horrified by that, even though he didn’t seem to care that someone had been murdered in his house, but instead he rubbed his hands with glee. “I think that will be fine. Goldie, you kept telling me that the house had nothing going for it. Now it does! It will be a tourist attraction and it will sell quickly. You’ll see.”

  I’m sure my eyes glazed over at that point. What other career could I get into? Maybe I could go back to university and study to become a psychologist. Maybe a physiotherapist. No, I needed a career where I didn’t have to deal with people. I scratched my head and tried to think of one.

  “Goldie, did you hear what I said?”

  �
��No I didn’t, to be honest. What was it again?”

  A look of sympathy passed across Doug’s face. “It must be awful for you, finding the victim. And of course, you’ll be the main suspect.”

  “Me? Why would I be a suspect? The woman I told you about was the one who found the body.”

  “You were here getting the house ready for the open home. You had plenty of time to murder someone.”

  I stared at Doug. Was this a setup? Had he murdered the man and set me up? It certainly did fit.

  “Doug, I think you’re the likely suspect,” I countered. “Why would the police suspect me when you own the house? They’ll probably somehow tie the victim to you. He was murdered in your house, after all. Do you have any idea who he could be?”

  Doug scowled at me. “I haven’t even seen the body yet.”

  Detective Power’s stern tones rang out from the front door. “Ms Bloom, back inside. Now!”

  I hurried over to him and said, “That’s Doug Greer, the owner.”

  Power beckoned him over. To me, he said, “You and Mr Greer can accompany me.”

  He took Doug into the room with the victim. They weren’t in there long when Doug came out. His face was drained of all colour. That was saying something, since his face was normally the deeply tanned colour of someone who has spent their life in the Australian sun with no regard for sunscreen.

  I expected Detective Power to tell us not to speak with each other, but he disappeared back into the room. “Are you all right?” I asked Doug and then at once silently admonished myself for saying such a silly thing. Of course he wasn’t all right—he had just seen a dead body. I amended that to, “Did you know him?”

  “I think he was a friend of my father’s,” he said. “I can’t be sure. But I recognised the ring he was wearing. It was the same as the one my father had, same symbol and all. My father told me only members of the gang he was in had one.”

  “Where is your father now? Is he local?”

  Doug shook his head. “My father passed away recently and I inherited this house. I lived here for a while, but the rule about no coffee permitted in East Bucklebury made me want to get out, despite the fact I illegally brewed my own and the cops never caught me. I’m sure a lot of the residents around here do that.” He quirked one eyebrow and looked at me.