by James, David
I sat down at my computer and went online. In a few minutes, I had the list of agents who had entered the house between the time that I put the keybox on the front door and the time that I entered it this fateful morning. There were only two persons on the list: Cathy Paige and Ed Jensen. Not knowing who these agents were, I went on the Desert Area Multiple Listing Service and did an agent search. According to the MLS, Cathy worked for Dodge & Dodge Realty, headed by none other than the queen of Palm Springs real estate: Mary Dodge. This was an interesting turn of events. Ed worked for Desert, Inc. I noticed something else that raised my eyebrows. I printed out my results and took them outside to Detective Backer.
“Here you go, Detective, here’s your list of suspects.”
He took the list, read the names, and looked up at me.
“Just two names?”
“I’m surprised that there was even one.”
“How’s that?”
“Well, I only put the keybox on the door yesterday afternoon. Late. That’s not a lot of time for someone to locate the property on the Internet, see that the place is open for showing, and go get in a car and drive out and see it.”
Ken was formulating a question in his head. “But you had 2666 Boulder Drive on your Multiple Listing Service before that?”
“Yes, but only a day before. As soon as you have the signed paperwork in your hand for a listing, you have to put it in the MLS ASAP. If you don’t, you get fined by the board. It’s called a pocket listing.”
“And what’s so bad about a pocket listing?”
“It’s not in the best interests of a client. It means you’re holding back a house off the market because you are lining up a possible buyer of your own to make an offer on it.”
Ken was clearly getting into the intricacies of real estate. “And that’s bad, having a built-in buyer?”
“No, it’s good for the agent because he or she can handle both ends of the deal—seller and buyer—and earn both commissions. Three percent and three percent. Six percent total. Multiply that times, say, five hundred thousand or even a million dollars and you can see where it adds up.”
“Yeah, but it still sounds like a good deal for the agent and the buyer. You get a big commission and the seller gets an offer on his house. Everybody’s happy.”
“You forgot one thing. In a pocket listing, the seller’s house isn’t really on the open market. It’s really in a closed market of just one buyer. The buyer makes an offer, the seller is happy to get an instant offer, and the house is never out there in front of other buyers.”
Ken’s face lit up like he discovered the grand unification theory. “Buyers who, in a crazy market like this one is, might bid even more, starting a bidding war for the property, which could ultimately earn even more for the seller.”
I reached over to the detective and pressed my finger into his forehead.
“Congratulations, you just earned a gold star in real estate. That’s why the board and the MLS don’t allow pocket listings—it could be bad for the seller. Does this have any bearing on the case?”
“Pocket listings?” Ken answered. “None whatsoever. But it is fascinating to learn behind-the-scenes information like this.”
“Yeah, this is the kind of action-packed excitement that attracted me to the business.”
Becker took another look at the information I had printed for him and I could almost see a giant lightbulb appear over his head.
“Wait a minute! What’s today?”
“The twenty-fourth.”
“So this Cathy Paige showed your house to a client at seven-eighteen A.M. this morning?”
“That’s what caught my attention when I first saw it back in the house. I don’t know any agent who’s that much of a go-getter. Not even in this market. But even weirder, Ed Jensen came in before her at six-fifteen. That’s really suspicious. I guess that’s a weird statement coming from me, a possible murder suspect. And that’s what I am, right? A murder suspect?”
“Yes, everyone who had access to the victim is a suspect.”
“That’s funny,” I remarked. “I’ve never been a murder suspect before.”
“There’s a first time for everything.”
Eventually, the crime unit arrived at my house and set out to examine my car. A man and a woman went over it like two extraterrestrials examining an automobile for the first time, their latex-gloved hands floating over the surface of things, applying a little fingerprint dust here and putting small bits of things into plastic bag. What was next? A probe up the muffler of my car?
When they popped the hood of my car, the male examiner finally spoke. “There’s your problem,” he said, holding up a battery cable with a pen. “The wire’s been clipped clear through.”
Detective Becker, who up until now had said nothing, was intrigued.
“Bruce,” he said to the man holding my battery cable, “can you tell what kind of instrument was used to cut the cable?”
“Something sharp, like wire cutters. Definitely not garden shears or anything with blunt, heavy blades. The cut is pretty clean, there’s no crushing around the cut.”
“Thanks, Bruce. Amanda, do you lock your car at night?”
A long hesitation on my part. “Uh. . .” I had been busted.
“So whomever did this had no trouble popping the latch on your car hood.”
“Sorry.”
“Nothing to be sorry about. But let’s keep your car locked from now on. I wouldn’t want anything to happen to you,” Ken said, shooting a glance to me.
“Why, Ken,” I said, “you sound like you are beginning to care about me.”
“I care about you, and everyone else in this town. It’s my job, ma’am,” he replied, tipping an imaginary hat in my direction.
I couldn’t help it, but my eyes darted to Ken’s crotch again, at about the same time Ken looked up at me and caught me in the act.
He pointed up at his face with the end of his pen. “I’m up here, Amanda.”
Busted again.
“So what’s with the jackhammering in the house. You got mice?” No mention of the crotch.
“Oh, that? That’s Edwin.”
“Edwin?”
The way he asked, it sounded for a minute like he was disappointed that there was someone else in my life.
“My live-in contractor.”
“Oh.”
“You know how rare they are. This one’s a little crazy, but he’s good. So he’s living in the backyard, in a tent . . .”
“In a tent? A Bedouin?” This revelation produced a wry smile on the detective’s face. “Are you really that hard up for a contractor?”
I looked at Ken and asked, “Have you tried to do any remodeling lately?”
“Not really.”
“Well, let me tell you, they’re harder to find than a condom in a nunnery. You don’t look a gift horse in the mouth these days. You take what you can get. Plus, he doesn’t talk much.”
The detective whipped out his notebook again and began writing. “How long has Edwin worked for you?”
“Mr. Becker, you don’t think Edwin had anything to do with this whole mess, do you?”
“I have to check out every possibility. Could I speak to him?”
“Sure, though I doubt you’ll get much out of him. He keeps pretty much to himself.”
Ken Becker went off and questioned Edwin, asking him primarily if he had seen or heard anything during the night, but he came up short. Edwin slept deeply and soundly the night before. No sound of wire cutters or garden shears disturbed his slumber.
Another hour and the detective had wrapped up his investigation with me. I, naturally, hated to see him go. I wanted to talk more, to see what kind of music he listened to, what he liked to read, what he did on weekends, what he looked like naked. But I just let him walk away, get into this car, and drive away. And I just stood there. The man that got away. Physically, I was attracted to him, but was my mind telling me to cool it? Was it o
nce bitten, twice shy?
And there I was left standing there in my driveway, a recent divorcee, a murder suspect . . . with bad hair.
CHAPTER 5
The Hairdresser Is Always the First to Know
The bag of frozen peas I held on my head brought the egg-sized lump down to the size of a large, angry grape, but before I could go out in public again, I had to do something about my hair. It was so lopsided that I had to either walk around leaning heavily to the left, or I needed an emergency appointment with Roberto, hairdresser to the rich and annoying.
As luck would have it, one of his client’s Botox treatments had resulted in a severe case of temporary eyelid droop, so much so that Mrs. Dorn couldn’t keep her eyes open enough to drive downtown to get another layer of shellac applied to her hair (according to Roberto). You had to be careful what you said around Roberto.
An hour and a half later, I entered Roberto’s salon just as he was finishing up blow-drying a client’s hair. When he saw me, he actually screamed and dropped the dryer and comb, covering his mouth in horror.
“OH MY GOD! OH MY GOD! SOMEBODY BEAT YOU!”
“Roberto . . .”
“YOU HUSBAND! YOU TELL ME VERE HE IZ, I GO BEAT HIM UP!”
“It’s not what it looks like . . .” I tried again.
“OH JESS, YOU TRY AND PROTECT HIM, BUT YOU MUST NOT.”
“Remember, Roberto, my husband is gay. We’re divorced.”
“He is gay, yes. Oh good, then even I can beat him up,” Roberto said, punctuating the word beat with his rattail comb.
“I wouldn’t do that, Roberto. He’s got a fifth-degree black belt in Isshinryu karate. He could punch through your ribcage and come out the other side.”
“Really?” Roberto replied, raising his eyes in a suggestive manner. It was clear that Roberto liked things rough, if you know what I mean. “Ees he single? Do you think Alex would like Roberto?”
“Roberto!”
“So who do theze to you?”
“A cactus, my purse scissors, and the roof of a cop car—in that order.”
“I dunt understand.”
“I fell off my bike.”
“Your bike? It must be very tall bike!”
“Roberto, I’ll tell you all about it when you finish with your client.”
Roberto turned back to his client, whom he had plainly forgotten in all the excitement. “Yes, I finish you, Missus Houston, then I make you the next bee-you-ti-ful woman in the world.”
I headed back toward the receptionist and took a seat. Roberto was a man who loved drama and clearly admitted to it. He blamed it on being Brazilian, but I think somewhere deep in his DNA resided a protein that caused him to see drama where there was little, or to create it where there was none. When he finished with Mrs. Houston, he grabbed my hand and practically flung me into his chair.
“Okay, I figure out what to do and you talk.”
Roberto circled my head slowly, like a mongoose sizing up a cobra. Where to strike, where to strike first?
Roberto held out his hand. “Wait, before you start, I’m going to cut you short. But dun’t worry, I’ll give you some sleek, heavily layered zuper short trusses. You look joost like Sharon Stone!”
I looked at Roberto’s reflection in the mirror. “I’m not sure I want to resemble a woman made famous for ice-picking her victims to death . . . not right now.”
Roberto started cutting, then after 30 seconds of silence, he started laughing uncontrollably. Years of breathing hairspray fumes had made his brain a tad slow on the uptake.
“I geet it . . . Basic EEnstink . . . You are so funny!”
I watched as my dirty-blond hair started falling onto the floor in clumps, like my head had decided to call an early autumn. Roberto wound my hair around his fingers and snipped like a brain surgeon, let go, then attacked from new angles, his scissors launching another strike from behind. Snip, clip-clip. Snip.
So while I started the transformation from Amanda Thorne to Sharon Stone, I told my story to Roberto, who snipped away, listened intently, or covered his mouth in horror—depending on where I was in the story.
“I know who did theeze. Mary Dodge!” he proclaimed. Again, a stabbing motion with his rattail comb.
Roberto’s comment struck me with such force, I rose up in the chair a few inches and turned around to face him.
“That’s funny that you should mention her, Roberto. Someone from her firm was in my house just this morning, a short time before the murder.”
Roberto shrugged and raised his eyebrows as if to say, “You see!”
“C’mon, Roberto, spill it. What do you know . . . and how do you know it?”
“Everyone tell Roberto everything. De hairdresser ees the virst to know.”
“I see. So what do you know?”
Roberto took a deep breath, as if the story he was about to tell required large amounts of oxygen.
“Whell, whone of my clientz eez Helen Hatcher. People they call her The Hatchet, wheech I do not theenk is very nice, but anyway, Helen, she hate Mary Dodge. She sayz Mary she buys land up in the hills. It is a beeg secret. She sayz Mary ees probably going to put up a big house jhust for her so she can look down on us pions.”
“Pions?”
“Jes, pions!”
“Roberto, pions are subatomic particles. Maybe you mean peons?”
I got the rattail comb pointed at me for another correct answer. “Jess, pee-ons. Helen, she also sayz that Mary Dodge give lots of money to ecology so she can look like she love animals and the land, but all she want to do is meek money and she no care if she pave over evertheeng.”
“So Helen told you all this? Interesting. So I guess Mary is not a client of yours?”
“No, she drag her raccoon hair over to dat whore, Nikki Bertoli, who know how to color hair like she ees blind.”
A little professional jealousy.
“So Mary Dodge is buying up land around the Chino Cone, but no one knows about it?”
“Like I say, a beeg secret. She don’t want anybody to know theeze. She buy for herself and for others.”
Roberto continued to prattle on and on, telling me how he drives down to Oceanside, California, to pick up Marines from nearby Camp Pendleton. (“The treeck is to pay for zem, meals, drinks because zey get such sheetty pay.”) Then he launched into a one-sided conversation about some wealthy woman from Indian Wells who wanted Roberto to dye her snatch to match her Bichon Frise. Yes, her furburger.
As I listened to Roberto, it dawned on me how easy it was to get information from people. For the most part, it was like venereal disease: Most everyone was willing to pass it around without having the tiniest inkling that they were doing it. It was possible that I could do a little investigating and find the murderer myself, and show Palm Springs that I had nothing to do with Doc Winter’s death. Or get killed in the process, the other little voice in my head said. I hated that other little voice.
After an hour of snipping and clipping, followed by tales of what it took to pick up a horny Marine, I was done. And to be perfectly honest, it was terrific. Because I had cut portions of my hair so short to escape the cactus, Roberto cut my hair even shorter, gave it some highlights, and I was transformed into a mature, city sophisticate. I was getting tired of the longer hair, anyway. After all, I was in my forties now. It was time.
After leaving the salon, I made a stop at my real-estate firm and talked to my broker. I was expecting more scorn or outright avoidance, but all I got was a wave of sympathy. It felt nice. Everyone wanted to know, in the following order: (1) Was I scared when I came upon the body? (2) What did I do when I saw it? (3) That’s quite a lump on your head. (4) And gee, who did your hair? (I work in a very gay office.)
After all the hullabaloo died down, I went to my mailbox up near the reception desk to excavate the mountains of flyers and brochures that reproduced endlessly in my mail slot, hawking everything from overpriced architectural monstrosities to discounts on plastic
surgery (guaranteed to make you look your best and land more sales)—anything that could be even remotely attached to real estate. There was no shame when you became a Realtor—it was open season for junk mail.
At the front desk sat Margie Blackwell. Amidst the maelstrom of frantic calls from buyers and sellers, escrow officers seeking impossible information, and contractors squawking about not being paid, Margie was an island of calm in a stormy sea of crises that were mostly self-created or self-imagined. Margie had seen millions of dollars come and go, residents move into Palm Springs and later leave, condos go up and, occasionally, fall down. Nothing was going to unsettle her. Not earthquakes. Not floods. Not a plague of locusts or a rain of toads or a tidal wave of snakes. Margie, a sprite 38 years, sat at her post, year after year, wearing her trademark fishnet stockings and Minnie Mouse pumps, her red-painted nails flying over the keyboard of her computer, answering the telephone with the calm dexterity of a brain surgeon. But what really endeared her to me was the way she handled all the drama that accompanied her post as the nerve center of a very nervous profession. She was a virtuoso of the insincere. Clients who got arrogant or condescending with her on the phone would receive such an outpouring of sympathy, followed by a promise to “get right on it,” that the listener on the other end of the line wouldn’t know if he or she was being ridiculed or not. Years and years of practicing and refining her act had made her the Queen of Smarminess. She diffused anger and hostility with confusion, surliness with sickening kindness. I loved her.
I was shuffling through my mail, dumping the majority of it in the trash, when the phone rang on Margie’s desk.
“Apex Palm Springs. . . . Do I know about that house we have for sale over in Palm Springs?” Margie asked. “Could you narrow it down just a bit . . . We have quite a few houses for sale in Palm Springs . . . Uh-huh, so you don’t remember the street or the agent’s name . . . and no house number . . . It’s near a golf course. Sir, everything in Palm Springs is near a golf course . . . Sure. I’ll have that information for you in just a minute. Can I put you on hold for a minute?”
