“I can ask around.” Another idea had occurred to me, one that I didn’t want to share with my pleasant but naïve neighbors. “Listen, I’ll make some calls and get back to you, okay?”
“We really appreciate it,” Fred said.
I gave them a half wave and took off, my heart beating a little faster. If Fred and Sunshine couldn’t get a loan—and after nine refusals I was pretty sure they couldn’t—the owner might be looking for a real estate agent to list with. And I knew just the agent.
Chapter 12
As I drove to the office, I wondered how much Everett had heard about the grisly events at his listing. Deep down, I felt a wriggle of anxiety that he’d somehow been involved. In murder? I couldn’t bring myself to believe that. But I had a grim feeling others might see things differently.
I let myself in the front door. The lights were off. The canned music, a New Age soundtrack that Everett insisted inspired a buying mood, was stilled. I adjusted the thermostat to a temperature suitable for June, one of the coldest months of the year here in Arlinda. Then fingers walked down my spine, and I knew, despite the quiet, that I wasn’t alone.
Everett’s door was closed. I tapped lightly, then pushed it open. He was at his desk. He looked terrible. I wondered if he’d spent the night here, slumped over his blotter, shoulders rounded in defeat, looking stunned, like a possum freezing in the glare of oncoming headlights.
“Everett?”
He looked up. His eyes were bloodshot, and a day’s growth of beard coarsened his cheeks. I smelled booze, and sweat. A bottle of Jack Daniel’s lay on the floor next to his chair; it had tipped on its side, the liquor pooling into a dark stain on the carpet.
“I’ve lost her,” he said.
The hollowness in his voice sent shock waves through me. Gone was the rich, deep timbre of the consummate salesman, replaced by a raspy tenor, like a handsaw ripping through wood.
“Let me get you some coffee.” Or a shot of hemoglobin, I thought. He looked all in.
In the kitchenette, I started coffee brewing. When enough had dripped into the carafe for a single strong cup, I poured it into a mug and took it back to Everett’s office. He hadn’t moved an inch.
“Drink this,” I said. I set the mug in front of him and took a seat.
He stirred. His fingers closed around the ceramic handle, but he didn’t seem to have the will to bring the cup to his lips. “There’s been a—a death in the family,” he said.
“Marian Woods. Your ex-wife.”
His shoulders slumped. “So you heard.”
“I was there.”
He didn’t seem inclined to press for details. Before he could lapse into another silence, I said, “I suppose the police got in touch.”
“Yesterday. I stopped at the station to talk to the officer in charge.”
“Decker.”
“That’s right.” He rubbed a hand across his face. “He wanted to know about my tie.”
“Your tie?”
“The yellow one with the little surfers. I’ve misplaced it. I told him so.”
With a sickening jolt, I flashed on the strip of shiny yellow around the dead woman’s neck. “I remember you telling me you and Marian split because of your health.”
“That’s right.” He wouldn’t meet my eye.
“What was the real reason?” I couldn’t believe I was asking that question.
Neither could he, apparently. “I don’t see how that pertains to real estate,” he said with the ghost of his usual manner.
Suddenly the clues came together with the force of a thunderclap. The abrupt change in hairstyle. The humming. His voice, tinted with warmth, as he made reservations at one of the most exclusive restaurants in the county. “Oh, my God. You two were having a fling.”
“A fling? Certainly not.” He spoke with a pathetic dignity. “We were—seeing each other, yes.”
“She was married.”
“Separated. For almost a year. There was nothing illicit or sordid about it.”
“No?”
In the silence that followed, I wondered if he was choosing the right words to use when he fired me.
But finally he said, “I respected Marian’s wish to keep things low profile. But last week she told me she was done with secrecy. She said she’d be waiting for me up at the lake Sunday, but after I drove out there she called and said she couldn’t get away. Instead, we arranged to meet for dinner at the Sea View Grill Monday night to discuss things.”
“But she never made it.”
“No.” A spasm rippled across his face. “I waited almost two hours. She didn’t answer her phone. Finally, I went home. An officer called and said they’d made a positive identification.” The hand that held the cup shook slightly. “I’ve withdrawn the listing temporarily until they sort things out.”
He seemed strangely oblivious to anything worse than a withdrawn listing. I thought rapidly. “Uh, Everett? What was yesterday’s scene with Gordon Dettweiler all about?”
“Nothing to do with—this other business.” Irritation made him sit up straighter. “The man’s a self-aggrandizing blowhard. I snatched this location right out from under him years ago, and he’s always resented me for it. He ended up in a shoebox a mile out of town. No foot traffic to speak of and no off-street parking. He was elected to the board because it was a rising market and everyone was too busy making money to run against him. He sure as hell didn’t get my vote.”
I tried again. “So he was here on board business?”
“Sam, Sam, let it go. I suppose you could say it’s his job to check out every rumor of irregularity, no matter how far-fetched. Just a simple misunderstanding is all. Everything was going to be cleared up at dinner.”
Dinner? “Oh, jeez. It had to do with Marian.”
“I really don’t see how any of this is your business.”
“The police are looking for a killer.”
“I’ve cooperated with them to the fullest extent possible.”
He still didn’t get it. “Everett, has it occurred to you they might consider you a pretty good suspect?”
“What?”
“You heard me.”
“I just don’t believe what I’m hearing. To answer your question, no, it hasn’t occurred to me. Marian and I were on excellent terms. I’m a highly regarded member of this community. The mayor is one of my clients, for Christ’s sake.”
I shrugged. “I could be wrong.”
“I’m certain of it. Pardon me for speaking plainly, but you have a heightened sense of the macabre, Sam. Not that you’re not a good agent, but your penchant for sniffing out trouble is unparalleled, in my experience.”
I could hardly argue with that. Before I could think of what to say next, the front door opened, and purposeful booted steps came down the hall. I closed my eyes, hoping against hope. When I opened them, Mike Decker was framed in the doorway, accompanied by a second officer.
“Everett Sweet?” Decker said. “We’d like to ask you some questions regarding the death of Marian Woods.”
Everett ran a hand down his stubbled chin. “I spoke to an officer last night. There’s nothing more I can tell you.”
“Let us be the judge of that. Would you mind coming down to the station to make a statement?”
“This isn’t a convenient time.”
“I’d advise you to make it convenient.” Decker’s voice was still neutral, but I sensed a shift in his body language.
The tension was palpable. If the standoff lasted much longer, I thought I might scream, or confess to the crime myself.
“Fine,” Everett said. He pushed his chair back from the desk and stood up. “I’ll meet you there in ten minutes.”
“We’re happy to give you a lift.” Decker stood aside so that Everett could squeeze by.
“Should I call someone?” I asked him.
“Don’t be ridiculous. I’ll be back in an hour.” The three of them left. Their footsteps faded, then were cut off by the
gentle closing of the front door.
Chapter 13
I spent a few minutes straightening up Everett’s office, blotting the bourbon on the carpet with a couple of paper towels and screwing the cap down on the bottle. I stashed the liquor in the closet next to a bottle of Cabernet. Just for the heck of it, I tried the file drawers again. Locked.
I sat down in Everett’s chair. My boss liked everything at his fingertips. Maybe he kept the key on his ring. But maybe not. I let my gaze wander over his desk. Stapler, two-hole punch, Rolodex. Laptop and auxiliary keyboard, the ergonomic kind guaranteed to ward off carpal tunnel syndrome. There were a few personal touches as well: a framed photo of himself, ten years younger, receiving an award at some fancy banquet; a model red and white sixties Corvette with the top down; and a plastic surfer dude balanced on a longboard and strumming a ukulele.
I picked up the Corvette. Nothing inside, or taped underneath. I set it down and took up the surfer. His hips moved, his head bobbing to the music of the uke. There was a hollow space on the underside of his board. A key was held there by a little magnet.
I felt a momentary qualm. I shouldn’t be doing this. It was beyond nosy. Intrusive, definitely. Illegal, possibly.
I unlocked the drawer and pulled it open. The manila folder was right on top. I placed it on the desk, glancing around to make sure no one was peeking over my shoulder. Inside the folder were three sheets of paper. They were copies of emails sent to Marian Woods. The sender was Everett.
I skimmed over the first one. It covered some of the details related to placing her home on the market. Nothing odd caught my attention until I got to the third paragraph: “As you’re no doubt aware, the association has established a fixed commission of six percent for home sales in our county….”
My real estate education had consisted of a couple of online classes, but I’d passed the state exam handily enough, and Everett had trained me relentlessly until the standards and practices were drummed into my head. So I was ninety-nine percent certain that commissions were negotiable, never fixed. His email suggested otherwise. Why? It didn’t make sense.
I put that page aside and read through the next one. Here Everett advised his client not to mention a leaking water line under the house, telling her it was the buyer’s duty to discover defects through inspections. In the other—oh, no, no, no. This just couldn’t be true. In his email, Everett wrote, “Your neighbors’ concerns that a minority buyer could impact home values in the neighborhood are well considered and we’ll certainly take that into account when an offer is presented.”
I tucked the three sheets back into the folder. Agents could violate real estate law in a lot of ways, but these were three of the most egregious. No wonder Gordon Dettweiler had come storming into the office. If Everett had truly penned those lines, he’d be subject to every disciplinary action in the book.
As I was about to replace the folder in the drawer, I noticed a set of keys on a ring with a corkscrew–bottle opener combo. I thought a minute, then dropped them in my pocket. Then I replaced the folder and locked the drawer, putting the key back where I’d found it.
I leaned back in my boss’s chair, which was substantially more comfortable than mine. Everett Sweet lived and breathed real estate the way a goldfish does water. He might dress me down for changing the stereo presets or running the heat a few degrees warmer than his optimum temperature, but violate real estate law? He’d sooner commit murder.
My breath caught in my throat. Murder had been committed. Maybe I didn’t know my boss as well as I thought I did.
I returned to my desk and fired up the computer. No sense dwelling on crime, at least for the moment; I had a hot lead to pursue. I typed in Sunshine and Fred’s address, and, just as before with McMillan, came up with the property owner’s name. I grabbed a phone book and riffled through the residential listings. And there was the number. Easy as falling off a bicycle.
I had a hand on the phone when my conscience smote me. Sunshine and Fred had asked my advice in good faith. I didn’t have a lead—I had an obligation. Besides, I kind of liked them. They were young and clueless, but they kept the lawn mowed and didn’t grow dope as far as I could tell.
I dug around the bottom drawer of the desk until I found my old real estate textbook. I had the glimmerings of an idea, though as far as I could tell, there wasn’t anything in it for yours truly. I sighed as I thumbed my way through the dog-eared pages, resigning myself to the fact that in a field of sharks I was a guppy. If I didn’t toughen up, I’d never be Realtor of the Year. But maybe, just maybe, I could live with that.
Chapter 14
By half past eleven, Gail and I were on the 101 headed south to Grovedale in her mommy mobile. I’d filled her in on the morning’s startling events, which she passed off with a shrug.
“Everett always manages to land on his feet,” she said.
The six miles of highway between Arlinda and the county seat followed the eastern shore of Salmon Bay, curving in a slow arc so that we could see our destination on the horizon. It was low tide, and mud as spongy as pudding stretched west almost to the middle of the bay; just a narrow channel of water remained to allow the passage of fishing boats and kayakers. Flocks of sandpipers raced in frantic little circles around the flats, probing the mud for squiggly lunchtime goodies. Tall egrets with elegant white plumes stood like statuettes, bills poised to stab fingerling fish stranded in shallow pools by the receding tide. We passed a lumber mill, its yard stacked high with third-growth redwood logs. The giants of a century ago were long gone, hewn with reckless disregard to build California, or preserved in tiny pockets so that tourists could take photos, oohing and aahing over what once had been and never would be again.
We parked in Old Town, Grovedale’s historic waterfront, and walked to Pacific Title and Escrow on Second Street. Towering Victorians in pastel hues lined both sides of the street. The title company was housed in one of them, an Easter-green Queen Anne with white gingerbread trim. The former stately grounds now served as a parking lot, and it was full.
“Looks like everyone’s turned out,” Gail said.
“Maybe they’re serving doughnuts.” It didn’t hurt to hope.
We made our way to a big conference hall created by knocking three rooms into one. The high Victorian ceilings had been replaced with sound-deadening panels and track lighting, and carpet the color and texture of a putting green covered the floor. Folding tables were arranged in a horseshoe shape around a central dais. Most of the seats were taken, but a familiar figure waved us over to two empty chairs. It was Becky Daley, the Arlinda mortgage broker who’d somehow managed to secure the loan that propelled me and Max from a grim apartment with a lecherous landlord to our very own home.
“I wondered if you’d make it,” she said. She was turned out like a professional: royal blue linen jacket and skirt, pale yellow blouse, mushroom-colored nylons with nary a ladder, suede pumps with three-inch heels. Every golden hair was in place, and her lipstick hardly strayed outside the lines. She turned to scrutinize a couple of late arrivals, and I saw a long splotch of curdled milk down the back of her jacket.
“You look great,” I told her.
“I’m on the hunt for new clients. Brokers always send their greenest agents to these things, the ones who haven’t hooked up with their go-to mortgage guy. Like fish in a barrel. I just gotta reel ’em in.”
“Good plan. How’s the baby?”
“Adorable. Brilliant. At the top of his class in the Mommy and Me playgroup. You should’ve seen him teething on the wooden blocks the other day. All the other four-month-olds had letters. Xander went straight for the numbers. Just like his mama. How do you like being a homeowner?”
“Can’t complain,” I said. Actually, I was starting to wonder about Mr. Bradshaw. If Stacy’s ridiculous suggestion turned out to be true, a killer next door could have a serious impact on my home equity.
Gail elbowed me as the room fell quiet and a tall, fair-haired m
an took the podium. In the hush that fell over the assembly, I thought I heard a collective sigh of ecstasy. Glancing around, I realized almost ninety-eight percent of the audience was female, and some of them were drooling.
Becky hissed in my ear, “You know Russell Wellburn, Liberty Financial? Hot stuff. Broker of the Year last year. Mr. Charm. He just came back on the market.”
That would explain the packed room. I saw Wellburn’s quarter-page color ads in the Grovedale Dispatch every Sunday and we’d exchanged pleasantries once or twice on the weekly agents’ tour, but that was it. He was movie-star handsome, with thick sandy hair that seemed to shimmer under the fluorescent lights, and an adorably cleft chin. The intensity of his blue eyes was amplified by dark plastic frames. He was a blond, broad-shouldered Clark Kent, and all the women in the room were tilted forward in their chairs, breathlessly hoping he might rip his shirt open to reveal a skintight bodysuit and a red S across his broad chest. Come to think of it, I wouldn’t mind that, either. Not that Bernie was hard on the eyes—no siree.
Wellburn rustled some papers, then looked up. “Thank you all for coming today. Let’s get right to it, shall we?”
Several women sighed, and one fanned herself with a program.
“Recent legislation has led to the creation of a number of cutting-edge loan products,” he began. “Today we’ll go over those products feature by feature, so when your clients have questions you’ll be right there with the answers. Let me direct you to page two of the handout—”
I balanced my chin on my hand, the better to give the impression of intelligent comprehension. Then I closed my eyes. When I opened them, the meeting was breaking up. I looked around wildly and clutched Gail’s arm. “Did I miss it?”
“The lecture?”
“The buffet.”
“In the corner.” She pointed to where a line was forming.
“Let’s go.” I shook off the woolies and struggled to my feet.
“Not for me,” Gail said. “I brought my lunch. Trying to drop a couple pounds.”
A Killer Location Page 9
