Traci Tyne Hilton - Mitzi Neuhaus 04 - Frozen Assets

by Traci Tyne Hilton

  “My idea is to wait for her to call you.” Alonzo set his pencil down.

  “That won’t help her.”

  “It won’t make anything worse, either, Mitzy”

  “I’ll go talk to her neighbor first thing tomorrow.”

  “The dead guy’s lover?” Alonzo laid his pencil on the notebook.

  “Yes.” Mitzy straightened the folds of her velvet curtains. She ran her fingers back and forth over the soft pile, watching the color change.

  “Seems like that could make things worse.”

  “If you aren’t going to make useful suggestions, I am going to keep ignoring you.”

  “Mitzy, stop and listen to yourself for just a minute, please. You are a Realtor. You sell houses. You do not solve murders.”

  “Yes, I do.”

  “Did. Once.”

  “Can do again. If I can help an innocent person avoid jail, don’t you think I should?” Mitzy grabbed her laptop from the couch and rested it on the back of the recliner. She began to search for the Google street view of Karina’s neighborhood.

  “Of course I think you should help an innocent person avoid jail, in theory, but I think you already did by giving her your brother’s number. Please let the professionals handle this.”

  “How about I just talk to this one neighbor and then let it rest?”

  “This isn’t a negotiation. I’m not going to counter. You know my opinion.” Alonzo crossed the room. He paused at the front door. “I’ve got to run back to my office. I won’t be long.” He let himself out, pulling the door shut with a bang.

  Mitzy listened to the sound of his truck revving up and pulling away. Alonzo didn’t want trouble. That was understandable. Karina didn’t want to go to jail, and the pull of her need was stronger than the desire to keep her husband’s life simple.

  Arnold’s lover lived across the street from the crime scene. She would know more about what was going on in Arnold’s life than anyone else.

  Tomorrow morning, Mitzy and Arnold’s lover were going to have a chat.

  ***

  The weather was mercifully clear the following morning, and the streets were almost dry. Mitzy threw the chains in the back seat of her Miata and headed back up to Concord Street. According to the forecast, she shouldn’t need the chains, but she’d hate to be stuck on the hill without them.

  She parked her little red car two houses down from the crime scene. The place was quiet now, but still cordoned off.

  Livia’s house across the street from the crime scene was also a custom 1970s home. The front had the modest appearance of an extra-long, split-level ranch, but it was built into the hillside, and Mitzy knew the back of the house was three stories tall with wrap-around decks and a view that stretched all the way to Lake Oswego. She estimated the value, given the upgraded windows and siding, to still be in the high seven-hundred-thousands. Not that it was for sale.

  Mitzy rang the doorbell.

  A tall woman with thick chestnut hair and a long nose opened the door. She was wrapped in an oversized wool cardigan and had a steaming mug in one hand. Her eyes were red and swollen. “Yes?” Her voice sounded raw, as though she was coming down with something or had been crying.

  “Livia?” Mitzy held out her hand. “I’m Mitzy Neuhaus, a friend of Karina English. Can we talk?”

  Livia lifted an eyebrow but opened the door wider. “What can I do for you?”

  “I was hoping we could talk about Arnold.”

  Livia nodded. “I expected as much. What can I say about him?” Livia opened the door the rest of the way and stepped aside to let Mitzy in.

  However unenthusiastic the welcome, Mitzy took it. She stamped her boots on the concrete steps to shake off the clinging slush and stepped inside. “I was hoping maybe you had seen something. Anything.”

  “Do you drink coffee?” Livia asked. “Because I think we could be here awhile.”

  “Always, thanks. I’m so sorry for your loss.”

  Livia led Mitzy into a vast marble kitchen with long, low windows that framed the view of the city. The cupboards were white-washed country chic, about ten years out of style, and the kitchen smelled like cold frying oil.

  “My loss? Arnold was hardly my loss. He had quit me months ago, but thank you. I admit this is really hard.”

  “Were you in love?” Mitzy took a stool at the kitchen island and sat down.

  “Maybe. I don’t know. I was certainly infatuated. Arnold was a charming man.”

  Mitzy nodded, but kept her opinion of his charms to herself.

  “I wanted to be in love, if that counts, but obviously he wasn’t. Classic narcissist, if you ask me. Only in love with himself.” Livia passed a tall mug of coffee to Mitzy.

  “Did he come by and see Karina often?” Mitzy poured cream from a small ceramic cow into her cup and then stirred, watching the cream swirl into the brown.

  “No, hardly at all, in fact.” Livia picked up the ceramic cow and then set it back down. Then she lifted the sugar bowl and moved it as well. She shook her hand a little and picked up her coffee mug. “I’m sorry.”

  “Don’t be sorry. Take your time.” Mitzy took a drink of her coffee. It was strong and rich with cream. Perfect. “Had he been by to see you recently?”

  “He hadn’t been by in a week. You know he was living downtown with Ulrike. He was mostly through with me.”

  “Mostly?”

  “Narcissist. He was through with me, but he came last week, just to check… to be sure I wasn’t through with him. I sent him back to his girlfriend. I don’t want to be the other woman.”

  Mitzy took another drink and withheld comment again.

  “I wasn’t the other woman, no matter what Karina may have said. We didn’t start seeing each other until after the divorce.”

  Clearly, Livia wanted to get her side of the story in, but was it true? And did it matter? It was the way the world seemed to work anymore. Grown adults moving on from lover to lover, leaving behind broken hearts. She silently thanked God that she wasn’t stuck in that world.

  “When he came by last week, did he mention wanting to talk to Karina? Or needing something at the house?”

  “No, he talked about himself, about the English Cottage business, and about some award he was up for, but he didn’t talk about Karina. I didn’t let him stay long.”

  Mitzy picked up her cup and swirled the coffee. “Do you think he would have gone over there for the same reason—to make sure he was still on her mind and to talk about himself?”

  “If he did, it was the first time, but I suppose he could have.”

  “Do you know what time he got there? Or what the estimated time of death was?”

  Livia shook her head. “I don’t know. It had to be pretty early, though.”

  A small flat-screen monitor hanging on the wall next to the pantry caught Mitzy’s eye. “Does that monitor connect to security cameras?”

  “No, just the Internet.” Livia picked up her coffee cup and moved to a small living room off the kitchen.

  Mitzy followed her. “Does Karina, or any of the neighbors, have a video security system?”

  “If Karina did, then she’d know that I didn’t have an affair with her husband while she was still married, wouldn’t she?” Livia sat down on an overstuffed sofa that faced a window that stared at the English house.

  The windows were dark, and there were no cars in the driveway. The only movement was the yellow police tape that fluttered in a light breeze.

  “You have great windows in this place. Haven’t you seen anything unusual in the neighborhood?”

  “Just the caravan.”

  “Caravan? What do you mean?”

  “An old RV was parked a few doors down for the last three days. But it was gone yesterday morning.”

  Mitzy sat on the edge of the matching overstuffed armchair. “Whose was it?”

  “I thought someone was visiting the gray house, where it was parked, but the day before yesterday, Enriq
ue, who does their yard, was fighting with the man who was staying in the caravan, so I don’t think they could have been guests.”

  “What were they fighting about?”

  “Got me. I was walking the dog. When I passed by they were fighting. I didn’t stop to listen.”

  “Tell me more about this RV anyway. You think they were strangers to the neighborhood?”

  “I’d never seen them before, and the caravan wasn’t in great condition.”

  “Was it broken down?”

  “No, it seemed to drive fine, but it was old and grimy. The one guy I saw wasn’t looking too sharp, either.”

  “Old and sick? Down on his luck? What do you mean not looking too sharp?”

  Livia took a long drink of coffee and looked over her shoulder to the back windows and their sweeping views of Portland. “How do I say this without sounding like a horrible person?” She smiled a wry little smile though her eyes stayed sad. “If I had to guess, I’d say he was a gypsy.”

  Mitzy nodded. She’d lived in Portland long enough to know who Livia meant. “Can you be a little more specific?”

  “He was about my height, narrow shoulders, brown hair. He had that kind of sallow color to him that olive-toned skin people get in the winter, like he’d be tan again as soon as it was summer. His hair was kind of shaggy, or stringy, and hung in his eyes. Other than that, I’m just guessing. His clothes looked a little like gypsy clothes, but I don’t know exactly what they were.”

  “And the caravan moved off before the murder?”

  “I guess that depends on when the murder happened. They were certainly gone by the time I got up.”

  “Had you ever seen the man or the RV before?”

  “We had a caravan come through a few years back. They stayed so long that eventually the cops had to come to get them to move on. They were gypsies. I know because everyone was talking about it. I think that was the first and only time I’d spoken with half of my neighbors.”

  “What did Arnold do about the gypsies that time?”

  “He’s the one who called the police.”

  “Is there any chance this was the same caravan?”

  “Who could say?” Livia said. “Old RVs all look the same, don’t they? Yellow like plastic that has been in the sun too long. Brown or green writing.”

  “There’s nothing you remember? Not one thing?” Mitzy chewed on her lip.

  “No, let me think. It had a name on the back of it. Sierra, or Shasta. You know, one of those mountain names, but I think it was just the name of the model. You know how they do those things.”

  Mitzy nodded. Perhaps having a home in Felony Flats would be good for something. She certainly knew where to find gypsies in her neighborhood. “You said that we would be here a while, but I feel like I’m still missing something. Am I not asking the right questions? What do I need to know?”

  “Ulrike. What would a young thing like her, far away from home, want with an old man like him?”

  “His money?”

  “She had a job before she met him. Stewardess or something. He’s just not rich enough to attract women like that anymore.” Livia stared out the front window, her eyes lingering on Karina’s house.

  “Had something happened to his business? I thought you said he was going to win an award.”

  “Awards don’t pay the rent. He builds homes. He builds five-hundred-square-foot homes with no parking in Southeast Portland and charges almost $300,000 for them even though no one in this town has a job. He’s not only broke, he’s stupid.”

  A dozen other broke builders came to Mitzy’s mind. Not stupid business people, but all broke. A part of Mitzy’s usually optimistic heart wondered if her industry would ever recover from the long recession. “Did Ulrike have a life insurance policy on him?”

  “Like a black widow kind of thing?” A small smile made its way onto Livia’s face. “Now, that would be something. That perfect body, those ice-cold features, traveling around the world, meeting losers like Arnold and then pushing them off rooftops.”

  Mitzy frowned. There was that. If a young lover was going to kill Arnold, she’d probably not lure him to the balcony of his ex-wife’s house and push him onto a fence. “If you don’t think she killed him, what do I have to know about her?”

  “Oh, I don’t know. I just don’t trust her. Maybe she had a lover who did it? Why not?”

  “Location, location, location,” Mitzy muttered. “It’s going to keep coming back to the balcony of the house. Whoever killed him was someone he was willing to climb up to the balcony with.”

  “Maybe he was going up to fix the roof for Karina with one of his builder friends and the builder did it.”

  “Because of Ulrike?”

  “Maybe the friend was in love with Ulrike.”

  “But Karina said she didn’t know why Arnold was there.”

  “That is a problem.” Livia stood up again. “I have to get ready for work. I’m so sorry that I couldn’t be more help, but I’m glad you’re there for Karina. She really doesn’t have anyone else in the world.”

  “Why?” Mitzy asked. “Why does a woman of privilege, well known in the community, have no one but her Realtor, who she has just met, to walk with her through this?”

  “That is a question you will have to ask her.” Livia looked at her watch. “If I had to guess, I’d say it was because she and Ulrike had more in common than just Arnold.”

  “Thank you for all of your help.” Mitzy shrugged into her winter coat. “Can I call you again if I need help with anything?”

  “Of course you can. Please do, in fact. I really would like to keep up with what’s happening. I might have been disgusted with him recently,” Livia choked back a sob, “but we did have a lovely romance while it lasted.”

  Mitzy drove home in a fog of depression. So many lives were upset by the loss of Arnold, but in truth, more lives had been wrecked while he was alive.

  4

  The next day, Mitzy puttered around her office. She wanted to have a word with Karina’s lawyer, but until Karina called again, she was going to try her best to keep in the background, digging for whatever helpful information she could find.

  Her office was cold and smelled like dust. She needed to hire a new assistant. She had gone more than a year doing it all herself, and it was miserable. She spent too much time on the computer and the phone, and too little time showing houses. She missed her old assistant Sabrina too much to hire just anyone to replace her. In fact, she still held on to the hope that Sabrina would get tired of school and come back to work for her. It hadn’t happened yet.

  The first phone message was from Mitzy’s mom. “Hey, hon, we’re just firming up our Christmas plans. You will be coming here this year, right?” Mitzy scrunched her mouth to the side. She and Alonzo hadn’t discussed it yet. Last year, Christmas had come so quickly after their wedding that they had just sort of fallen into going to his mom’s house. It had been loud but fun. The fair thing would be to spend this year with her parents, but she had to admit, she’d rather stay at Timberline Lodge. They hadn’t had a honeymoon, or even a weekend away, after their slapdash elopement.

  The next message was from a client. Could she show them one of the houses she had emailed? Of course she could. It was what she lived for. She called the young wife back and made plans to meet the couple at the empty house, another victim of foreclosure, right after lunch.

  The current asking price was only thirty dollars a square foot. It was almost a crime to buy it at that price. Mitzy printed a contract out, fairly sure that the couple would bite.

  ***

  The house had all of the earmarks of a bad breakup between the homeowner and the bank. All of the appliances were gone, down to the heat pump and bathroom fans. The doorknobs were gone and every spot that should have been a light fixture was a tangle of wires instead. Most telling, the house smelled badly of urine.

  But Bonnie and Dirk, the couple who met Mitzy at the house, were undaunt
ed. They were full of youthful enthusiasm and a sort of grim determination to get a deal.

  “If I rip the carpets out, the smell will go away,” Bonnie said. “If there is any damage to the floor boards underneath we can just put in some replacement patches. It’s really not so bad.”

  Dirk raised his eyebrow. “It is bad, but that doesn’t bother me. I’m not sure I like this neighborhood.” He looked out the front window to the innocent street full of picket fences and sidewalks. “Too many front porches.”

  “You may be my first client ever to complain that there are too many front porches.” Mitzy liked Bonnie and Dirk. They seemed to be able to tell the difference between things they could fix and things they couldn’t. “What worries me, to be honest, is the amount of money that you would have to put into this place. I know it’s priced to sell, but do you have the kind of cash to replace all of the missing fixtures? The heat pump alone could cost almost ten thousand dollars.

  Dirk shrugged. “If it turns out we can’t afford a heat pump, there are other alternatives.”

  “An electric furnace would cost more to run.” Mitzy said.

  “True, but we could get wall heaters in each room and only heat what we use until we’ve saved up enough again. We’re pretty handy.”

  Bonnie stood on the threshold to the kitchen. “We can get used appliances. The cupboards and counters are in really great condition.”

  Mitzy agreed, but not every client would have. The kitchen, including laminate counters, was original to the house, built in 2001. These days, most clients wanted to rip out any kitchen older than five years and not built with the most expensive materials.

  “Let me show you the bedrooms upstairs, and then we can talk more about the expense of putting this place back together.” Mitzy gave them a bright smile and led them up the stairs. They’d be crazy not to snatch it up, and she was pretty sure they knew it.

  “Four bedrooms and this open loft.” Mitzy stood in the center of a communal space.

  “Is it me, or does it smell worse up here?” Bonnie asked.

  “It smells a whole heck of a lot worse.” Dirk said.