French Vanilla & Felonies

by Erin Huss

  "You know I'm not one to complain." She looked over my shoulder at Joyce for backup, but Joyce remained silent. "It's every day. Morning, noon, and night. It's…" She leaned in closer. "It's unnatural," she whispered.

  "Unnatural?" I whispered back.

  She nodded. "Unnatural." She reached into her pocket and pulled out a saltine cracker, took a small bite, and then handed the rest to Harold. He grabbed it with his claw and attacked it with his beak, sending crumbs down Silvia's chest and into the wrinkled cleavage peeking out from her nightie.

  I looked back at Joyce, who was now doing a crossword puzzle. "Can you elaborate on what is so unnatural?" I asked Silvia, keeping my eyes away from Harold, who was now picking the cracker crumbs out of her cleavage.

  "No!" She closed her eyes and placed her hand over her chest, forcing Harold back to his spot on her shoulder. "Come with me right now. You can hear for yourself what we have to put up with. Because Joyce refuses to see for herself." She clapped her hands together. "Come, come."

  I turned around and mouthed What do I do? to Joyce.

  She shrugged. "I'd follow her if I were you. But be careful. Harold bites."

  Harold bites?

  Silvia's silk robe rustled behind her as she walked through the complex, her heels clacking against the wet pavement. Harold perched himself backwards to better keep a tiny eye on me.

  We passed the pool and arrived in the third courtyard. It was my first time in the banned area. It mirrored the first, except for the detective standing in front of Apartment 21. I scanned the area in search of a spider web, spider, something eight-legged…nada. Instead, my eyes landed on the black door again. Apartment 40. From here, I could see the Forty was sprayed in red, dripping paint. I squinted, trying to read the weathered note taped above the doorknob.

  Management never…

  Silvia snapped her fingers in front of my face. "Concentrate, new apartment manager." She flipped her bleached hair and trotted forward. I caught one more glance back. The Forty looked as if could be the title to a horror movie, a really gory one. Goose bumps prickled down my arms and up my neck.

  "Apartment Manager!" Silvia yelled.

  I jumped, so lost in thought I forgot about Silvia.

  "Apartment Manager, hurry up!"

  Happy residents. Happy Patrick. Employed Cambria. Happy residents. Happy Patrick. Employed Cambria…

  I took the stairs up to Silvia's apartment. She stood at the door with her arms crossed, foot drumming, face frozen in shock. She pointed down to my feet. "Those have to be removed before you may enter my home, always."

  "Of course," I obliged, and yanked off Amy's stilettos. My feet sprang back to life. Feeling slowly returned to my toes as they sank into the plush tan carpet. It felt heavenly. It smelled heavenly—fresh lilacs and vanilla. Cool air wafted from the air conditioner stuck in the window. The apartment looked staged for an open house. The furniture firm and untouched, vacuum lines perfectly spaced along the carpet. A bookshelf containing framed photos of a beautiful brunette posing in a garden, posing in a swimsuit at the beach, standing with Muhammad Ali, and another of her with an actor I recognized, but I couldn't remember his name. I guessed the woman in the pictures was Silvia, with her original face on.

  She placed Harold on his perch next to the couch and snapped around to face me. "Well?" she asked.

  It's like she was speaking in code. "Well…"

  "Listen."

  I took another step in, eyeing Harold. I heard muffled voices. I followed them down the hall into the bedroom, where the sound became painfully clear—and was followed by a repeated thumping against the wall.

  Oh, please, no.

  "Can you hear that?" she shouted over the husky moans coming from the other side of the wall. Two oil paintings hung above the bed and swayed with each thrust, threatening to swing off the nails holding them to the wall. "Do you see how disturbing this is?"

  I saw. I heard. I agreed. I found myself nodding my head along with the rhythmic humping.

  "Go talk to them. Maybe they'll listen to you. It has to stop, or I'll move! I'll do it. I hear you already lost one resident today. Can you really afford to lose me as well?"

  The sexing couple was now screaming. It was awkward. "I will make a note and speak with them later when they aren't so…busy."

  Boom!

  One of the paintings swung off the nail and landed on the bed. "That means they're done. You can talk to them now. Go. Go." She clapped her hands together.

  "Right, OK. I'll go do that." Is this really happening?

  I grabbed my shoes on the way out and took the four-step journey to the neighboring apartment. I stared at the door, thinking of all the things I would rather do than speak to strangers about their loud, unnatural sex life.

  I raised my hand and knocked twice. The door creaked open, and an old, old woman poked her head out, her short, thinning gray hair pointing in every direction.

  You have got to be kidding me.

  I forced my mouth to move. "Um…I'm the new apartment manager…and…um…hi."

  The woman opened the door wider, allowing me a full glimpse of the white sheet wrapped around her sagging unmentionables. "Hey, hon, look. It's the new apartment manager," she yelled to the old man sitting in a recliner wearing nothing but boxer shorts, smoking a cigar. "Say hi," she scolded. The man raised his hand, not taking his eyes off the fishing show he was watching. "I'm Clare, and that's Bill. I was about to bake you some welcome-to-the-neighborhood cookies except I got a little distracted." She smiled—Oh hell, where are her teeth?

  I looked at the floor. "That's actually why I'm here. Your bed backs up to your neighbor's bedroom, and if you could keep that in mind, that would be great." I hoped she understood my point, because saying sex in front of a toothless grandma required more maturity than I currently possessed.

  "Hon, your snoring is bothering the neighbors again!" she yelled to Bill.

  "Oh, it's not the snoring," I quickly added and leaned in closer. "Do you have a large headboard?"

  Next thing I knew, I was standing at the foot of her bed—a wooden bedframe with four tall posts that nearly touched the popcorn ceiling. She readjusted her sheet. "See. It's just average size."

  That's what she said.

  "It's not the size, more so the sound when it crashes against the wall," was my roundabout explanation. Grandma stared at me. I gave the foot of the bed a hard shove with my thigh, causing the headboard to slam into the wall. I then gave it three more steady shoves to drive the point home.

  Grandma made an O with her wrinkled lips. "I can fix that." She grabbed a throw pillow from the chair next to the bed and shoved it behind the headboard. I gave it another hard thrust. The pillow kept it from ramming the wall.

  "That seems to work. Now if you could, you know, try to keep it…quiet…that would be helpful."

  "I'll try my best," she said with a contrite smile, readjusting her sheet again.

  CHAPTER SIX

  Tenant agrees to observe a speed limit of no more than five MPH while driving in the carports.

  That night, I lay in bed with the Frozen blanket pulled up to my nose. Lilly sprawled out next to me, deep in REM cycle, while I stared up at the stiff peaks and bumps of the ceiling. Cars zoomed down the busy road, their headlights flashing across the popcorn as they passed one after the other in a constant rhythm. Sirens wailed, feet pattered along the sidewalk, and the occasional drunken outburst followed by a scuffle commenced outside my window—hence why 80% of LA's renters said to run away from this place.

  My body yearned for slumber, but my mind wasn't about to surrender. It had more important things to do, like repeating everything from Kenneth to the gun to the zip ties to the pregnancy test to the detective to nearly naked Grandma Clare to Chase to the black door to being third choice. Every detail, every smell, every possible theory played out in my mind like a never-ending bad movie.

  The thing was, nothing about the crime made sense! Granted,
I wasn't a detective, but to my amateur sleuth mind—nothing about the crime made sense! For one, it rained. It rarely rains in California. So when it does, the oil rests on the surface, causing a foamy, slippery, grimy residue. The bottom of Kenneth's shoes were white. If he'd gone for a run or even walked across the driveway, his shoes would have a scuff, a pebble wedged between the grooves, a thin film of grime! Unless his killer replaced his shoes before dumping him. Which seemed unlikely. The more plausible scenario was that the murder took place in Kenneth's apartment or thereabouts. The killer would then have had to lug the body to the dumpster—unseen—just before dawn. In the rain. On wet, slippery asphalt. And it's not like Kenneth was in stellar physical shape either.

  Also, who goes through a great deal of effort to conceal a dead body under trash bags but then carelessly dumps a backpack filled with incriminating evidence along with a DNA sample right beside it?

  And what did any of this have to do with a spider web?

  And who the hell was pregnant?

  These sorts of thing happened on television, not in my reality.

  Could I bring Lilly to live in a community where someone had just been murdered?

  I wrestled with this question.

  The truth was, murder aside, the apartment was located in a much better area than my current apartment. Case in point, my neighbor was currently getting high right outside my door.

  Of course, there's a hefty difference between smoking pot and killing someone.

  I thought about what Joyce had said. Based on the contents of the backpack, the likely scenario was that Kenneth was robbed. The killer snuck in behind a car or jumped the fence then snooped around for valuables left in vehicles. Found nothing of interest, went inside the third courtyard, ran into Kenneth who was up, stretching, preparing for his trot. He saw the killer and called Joyce to let her know someone was trespassing? Or maybe Kenneth attempted to apprehend the criminal while on the phone, and the killer panicked? Either way, the end result was murder. And the person responsible was—hopefully—long gone (or better yet, arrested). The place was now on the police's radar. It wouldn't be safe to return to the very spot he (or she) dumped all his evidence.

  Right?

  If only I could shake this feeling that something heavy was lurking around the corner, waiting for me to get comfortable before revealing its ugly head. Was this feeling intuition or paranoia, though? It had always been difficult for me to differentiate the two. I had a habit of sprinting to the absolute worst possible conclusion then sticking to it, unable to let go even if I wanted to, hostage to an exaggerated mind and the continual what-ifs. Some would call this a fatal flaw—and those "some" would be every guy I'd ever dated.

  Sometime around dawn, I convinced myself I was being overdramatic—again—and quitting my job would be nothing but a wasted opportunity to better our circumstances. Everything was going to be fine because I couldn't afford for it to turn out any other way. Therefore, dwelling on the possibilities was a useless endeavor.

  Instead, I spent most of the sleeping hours scouring the help wanted ads (for backup) and watching instructional YouTube videos on how to escape a hostage situation (specifically using zip ties). I then checked the news to see if any armed robberies had been covered. Nothing. Only gang shootings, stabbings, and hit-and-runs had been highlighted on the Los Angeles Times website. Plus a news story of a woman who released a jar of bed bugs into her apartment manager's office as revenge. That's when my mind slipped back into the pessimistic realm of thinking, so I turned off the computer and took a swig of Benadryl.

  The next morning, after a few deep breaths, I rolled out of bed and dressed in the recommended jeans, along with one of my many solid-colored Mossimo V-necks. With newfound determination, I was ready to apartment manage like no woman had ever apartment managed before.

  I arrived (on time) for the next few days, eager to learn as much as Joyce was willing to teach me. Which wasn't much. More stories. More ice cream. More secondhand smoke with the occasional job talk thrown in, like when Joyce said "be friendly, but don't make friends" and "do for one as you would do for all." Which may have been Yoda quotes, but I took what I could get.

  On Thursday Kenneth's sister, Scarlet Fisk, arrived to collect her brother's things. Scarlet had gray hair, a straight nose, and eyes like a Basset Hound. Based on the picture in Kenneth's file, she was the female version of her brother.

  There'd been no news about the investigation since the detectives returned the apartment keys Tuesday morning—and even then it was "here you go, thanks."

  I was eager to grill Scarlet for information, but it seemed a teensy bit insensitive to blurt out "Sorry for your loss. Do you know how he died? Has an arrest been made? A suspect named? Did your brother have any known enemies? Secretly interact with the mob? Gangs? Mexican Mafia? Trade on the black market?"

  Instead, I stood there while Joyce and Scarlet chatted, and waited for the subject to come up naturally.

  But it never did.

  The two talked about the weather, retirement, the economy, how expensive California is. When Scarlet muttered, "I still can't believe Kenneth is gone." I decided to take that as my cue to blurt out:

  "Sorry for your loss. Do you know how he died? Has an arrest been made? A suspect named? Did your brother have any known enemies?" I left out the Mexican Mafia, mob, and black market until, you know, it came up naturally.

  Scarlet blinked a few times. "No," she said slowly. "They haven't said anything to me about an arrest or a suspect. Kenneth was quiet but a very nice man. He didn't have any enemies that I knew of."

  "Does spider web mean anything to you?" When I Googled 'alternate meaning of spider web' I was shown several variants—none of which made sense in the situation.

  Scarlet's eyes went from me to Joyce and back again. "It means that a spider was there?"

  Joyce rammed her bony elbow into my rib—a not so subtle hint to shut up.

  Easy for her to say (or…er…nudge). She was moving out. I was moving in.

  "Did the police say anything was missing from his apartment?" I asked, while rubbing my rib.

  "The door was locked, and there was no sign of forced entry or of a struggle," Scarlet said. "If I notice anything missing I'm supposed to let them know."

  "Did they tell you how he was killed?" This question evoked another elbow to the ribs from Joyce.

  "He's still at the coroner's office and—"

  "Never mind all this," Joyce interrupted, giving me a sideways glare. "Scarlet, dear, you let me know if you need any help."

  Scarlet took Joyce by the hand. "I will. Thank you so much for your kindness." She gave me a quick wave good-bye before leaving.

  As soon as the door closed, Joyce shook her bent forefinger at me. "There's no need to interrogate the poor woman. Her brother was just murdered."

  OK. I felt bad. I could have been more tactful in my questioning, but still, "I need to know what happened."

  "No, you don't. You're not a detective. You're not investigating the case. You're an apartment manager. You take care of your residents. Stay out of their personal business. Let the police do their job," Joyce said, still waving her finger around. "Got it?"

  "Got it," I replied, reluctantly.

  "Good." She dropped her hand and shuffled back to her spot at the kitchen table and lit another cigarette (her sixth one today). She puffed out a circle of smoke with practiced precision and heaved a sigh of relief, as she often did when reunited with nicotine.

  "Let's get back to work." She patted the seat beside her. "I was just about to explain to you the difference between a thirty-day notice and an eviction. But first, have I told you about our new place?"

  And this is how the remainder of our training went.

  I suspected retirement was more difficult than Joyce was letting on. She had devoted twenty-five years of her life to the care of the property and the residents who had lived there. Her avoiding all things pertaining to the actual job was a
defense mechanism, or so I thought. A way for her to deal with Kenneth's murder and the finality of retirement. Because of this, I was sensitive and didn't press the issue. I was a fast learner and confident in my BSing abilities. Once she taught me about rent collection, I'd let Google cover the rest.

  I imagined her emotions would surface on her last day. I imagined a lot of well-wishes from the residents, maybe some thank-you cards, gift baskets, tears, hugs, maybe a crochet blanket from naked Grandma Clare. In my head I was going to have to shoo her off the property. Force her to leave.

  That was not the case.

  When I arrived Friday morning, Bob was at the helm of their Oldsmobile, donning a driver's cap with his gloved hands resting at ten and two. Joyce sat in the passenger seat, the seat belt strapped over her shoulder and a houseplant in her lap.

  "But…but…Joyce," I stammered, shocked. The plan was for her to stay until closing. How was she going to get a proper send-off if she wasn't even there? It was rent day, and I didn't have a clue how to even do rent. Plus there was the not-so-small-task of dealing with Kenneth Fisk. I had no idea what to do once Scarlet turned in the keys and paperwork. "Well," I continued, finding the words to properly express my appreciation. "I first want to say thank you so much for everything, and I promise—"

  "You're welcome," she interrupted, reaching for the door and pulling it closed. Bob slammed on the gas, rubber burned, and the car smoked and screeched before disappearing down the driveway.

  Joyce was gone.

  Kind of fast.

  CHAPTER SEVEN

  Tenant acknowledges that Landlord is neither a physician nor a psychologist and is not qualified to give medical advice at any time, nor does he or she want to.

  "OK, fine. Where's Joyce then? Because she'd never do this to me," the resident from Apartment 3 asked, cupping the edge of the counter, her knuckles turning white.