Hoarded to Death (A Jamie Brodie Mystery)

by Perry, Meg

  I looked up the word. “Ha! It means ‘a peripatetic monk.’”

  Liz made a face. “Remind me what peripatetic means?”

  “Itinerant.”

  “Huh. Is Clinton trying to tell us he’s a traveling monk?”

  “Nah. He’s probably just on a single subject kick.” But with Clinton, you never knew.

  After two days of phone tag with multiple people in human resources, I got approval from UCLA to appear on Clean My Hoard, as long as I didn’t use my last name and didn’t indicate my affiliation with the university. That was fine with me. All I planned to do was show up, say a few sentences on camera, and do some heavy lifting. I called Raven to let her know I had the final approval, and she passed the good news on to Jennifer. To my amazement, Valerie had also agreed to participate.

  On Thursday, Jennifer called. She wanted to meet with Pete and me before the taping of the show. Pete thought that was a good idea, so we invited her to come over on Sunday.

  Jennifer didn't look much different from how I remembered her. Maybe a little thinner. She was tall for a woman, around 5'10", with strawberry blonde hair that she wore in a long braid down her back and greenish eyes. It took me aback to realize that she reminded me of Abby, Kevin’s current girlfriend. I guess Kevin had a type, at least physically. Jennifer was wearing tortoiseshell glasses, and she looked really cute. But she was nervous as a cat, drumming her fingers on the arms of the chair and looking around the living room, anywhere but at us.

  Pete got her a Coke then sat on the sofa beside me. She glanced at us, then laughed a little. "I can't believe you two are a couple. Talk about coincidences."

  I shrugged. "We prefer to think of it as serendipity."

  She nodded and set down her Coke. "You have to be wondering why I'm dragging you into this mess."

  "The question did occur to me, yeah."

  More drumming of fingers. "I'm sick of my life. I’m still living in the apartment that Kevin and I had. No one that I work with knows how I live. I've been to all my girlfriends' houses, but I can't invite them over. I know they wonder why and they're starting to act weird about it. But I can't let any of them know what a mess I am. And then this year, we got a new teacher. A really nice guy. And he's interested in me, and we've been out a couple of times, but I haven't let him come over yet." She looked up at us; she'd been staring at her knees. "I'm so embarrassed. I can't let this go on. I have to get a life back. And this guy is perfect for me, and I can't let him slip away because I'm too messed up to even clean my own house."

  "Jennifer." Pete's voice was gentle. "You know he might find out about it if he sees it on TV."

  "Yeah, but by the time the show airs the apartment will be clean and I'll be in therapy and I can have him over before that so he can see the place is clean."

  I wasn’t so sure a guy would react well to that. "If you think he's really the right guy, can't you ask him to get involved in helping you?"

  "I could if we'd been dating a couple of months, but it's only been three weeks." She looked at me, biting her lip. "I think he really likes me, and he might be okay with it, but I want to get my ducks in a row before I tell him about it. Or anyone else." Her shoulders sagged. "My greatest hope is that none of my girlfriends watch the show."

  "So why sign up for the show? Why not just clean the place yourself?"

  "Because they pay for all the therapy and everything. And I can't afford that on my own. I need to learn how to tell people about it, and on my terms, instead of just having them discover it."

  "Okay. Makes sense." Pete narrowed his eyes a little. "So why did you want to meet with us today?"

  "Ah." Jennifer perked up a little. "About five years ago, my teacher's aide died. Her name was Lucille Steinwart. I called her Miss Lucille.” Jennifer smiled in remembrance. “She didn’t have any family. She was an old lady, and she had a ton of books stored in her house, and she left them all to me. This was before the apartment got so bad. It was just really messy then. I got a couple of friends to help me and we moved all the boxes of books into my spare bedroom. I never got a chance to go through them. Miss Lucille told me that there were some valuable things in the boxes, some first editions and signed stuff and a couple of other extremely rare items that I could probably sell and make a lot of money off of. I think the first editions are mostly mystery writers. Lucille was really into mysteries. That's another reason that I want to get the apartment cleaned up, so I can find out what's in those boxes and sell anything that’s valuable. Then I can pay off part of the credit card debt that I've built up with all my spending."

  Rare books. I was intrigued. "Did Lucille give you any specifics about what might be in the boxes?"

  "No. And you know how it is, I meant to go through them as soon as we moved them into the apartment, but I just never got around to it..." Her voice trailed off for a minute, then she looked back at me. "I don't know anyone that knows anything about rare books, at least no one that I really trust. And I figured that the best person to ask might be you. Maybe you could look at what's in the boxes as we clean stuff out, and see what I should try to sell and what I should just donate to a library."

  "Sure. I'm not an expert on rare books, but I might be able to tell you enough for at least sorting purposes."

  "Oh, that would be great." Jennifer brightened considerably. "I appreciate that so much."

  We chatted a bit more. I could tell Pete was trying to probe a little, to see if Jennifer was really up to the big clean. She said all the right things, though, and her emotional state seemed to match.

  Maybe this would work.

  October

  The taping of the show was scheduled for three weeks after we saw Jennifer. One evening the week before taping, I drove over to Studio City and the psychologist on the show, Dr. Lena Hayman, interviewed me on camera. She asked me a lot of questions about how I felt about Jennifer, what my prior experiences with her had been like, what my impressions were. We talked for over an hour. I had no idea how much of it they’d use, but my guess was about 45 seconds.

  We were scheduled to begin the clean the following weekend. That Friday evening, my sister-in-law Valerie drove up from Oceanside to join us. Pete let her in and they hugged, then she gave me a bigger hug. I said, "I still can't believe you agreed to do this."

  "Me either." Val dropped onto the sofa and accepted the bottle of water Pete brought to her. "And neither can Jeff. Actually, what we can't believe more is that Kevin went for this."

  "I know. I figured, when I got the message about the show, that I didn't have to worry about saying yes because Kev would never agree to it. But then he did."

  Val shook her head. "What did he say to you?"

  "Something along the lines of, 'she's sick and if this makes her better it will be good for society.'" I shrugged. "He had time to change his mind, but he didn't."

  Val took a swig of water. "I have to say, now I'm curious to see the place."

  "Yeah, me too. Did you see it when Kev moved out?"

  "No, but Jeff came up here to help him move. You were there, right, Pete?"

  "Yeah. It was bad, but it didn't smell or anything. But I don't know if that was because of Kevin or because she wasn't letting garbage pile up yet."

  I winced. "You think she's letting garbage pile up now?"

  "God. I hope not."

  Val said, "It could be a fire hazard, if the place is so cluttered you can't walk through it."

  "True." I leaned forward on the love seat. "Well, we'll find out in the morning. Do you want to go get settled in the guest room?"

  "Sure." We stood up, and I picked up Val's bag. We walked upstairs, and I deposited the bag on the guest bed. Val turned and looked at me, and patted my cheek. "You look good, kiddo. I think living with Pete agrees with you."

  I laughed. "Yeah, it does."

  She leaned forward and whispered. “Have you decided yet whether you’re going to stay?”

  “Not for certain. But I’m definitel
y leaning toward staying.” Probably. Maybe.

  "Good. That’s good." She smiled and started to unpack her things.

  In the morning we got up and headed for Culver City at about 5:00 so we could stop for muffins at a bakery on the way and get to the apartment by 5:30. I was familiar with this part of town to some extent, but hadn't been on Jennifer's street before. Her building was one of the old apartment complexes that was grand in its heyday, but was now just old and crumbling. The pool was in pretty good shape, but the chairs around it were beat up. We went up the outer stairs to the second floor. Jennifer's apartment was right on the end, next to the street. We knocked on the door, and it was opened by Raven.

  "Hi. Let me come out there." She stepped outside and closed the door. "I don't want you all to see inside until we do it with the cameras, so we get your authentic first reactions."

  "How bad is it?" Val asked.

  Raven shrugged. "I've seen worse. But it's pretty bad." She lit a cigarette, and blew the stream of smoke away from us. I stepped back, and Raven looked at me questioningly.

  "I have asthma. Sorry."

  "Oh! I didn't know." Raven quickly put out the cigarette. "I'm the one that's sorry. No smoking around you." She smiled. "Okay. Jennifer is not here right now; she's at Dr. Hayman’s office and they'll be here in about 45 minutes. We've got the camera crew in there now; they're doing their opening shots of the rooms. As soon as they've got everything they need, we'll take you all in with the cameras and get your reactions. Then Jennifer and Dr. Hayman will be here, and we'll let you talk about it with her. How does that sound?"

  Val and I looked at each other and shrugged. "Fine, I guess. That's your standard procedure, right?"

  "Yep. This situation is a little different because we don't have a lot of room to maneuver here, being on the second floor and having this balcony here. We have the manager's permission to use the parking lot for the dumpster trucks today and tomorrow." She turned as the door opened. "Oh, good, here's Mike."

  I recognized Mike, although I didn't remember his last name. He was one of the regular organizers that worked with the show. He shook our hands, then turned to Raven. "We're just waiting on one more, right?"

  "Right." Raven checked her clipboard. "Susannah Ridgeway. One of Jennifer's childhood friends." She looked at me. "Have you met her?"

  "Not that I remember. Unless she was in the wedding."

  "Okay, that doesn't matter. Oh good, here she is now."

  Susannah Ridgeway had come a long way from Julian, California. She looked like she had just stepped out of a glossy corporate annual report. Designer suit, hose and heels, hair cut in a short wedge, perfect makeup and tasteful jewelry. She certainly wasn’t planning on doing any cleaning or carrying. We introduced ourselves. She cocked her head at me. "So you're Kevin's brother."

  "Yep."

  She nodded. "I only met Kevin once. He was...imposing."

  "Yeah, Kevin can be kind of intimidating. Were you at their wedding?"

  "No. I was in Europe at the time." She pursed her lips. "Actually, I haven't really kept up with Jennifer. We exchange Christmas cards. I knew she was divorced but I had no idea that she'd come to...this." She waved her hand at the apartment.

  "Yeah. It was one of the reasons for the divorce."

  "I would think so." Susannah turned up her nose a bit and looked at her watch. "Okay, I have a meeting in three hours. Can we get started?"

  A meeting on Saturday morning? What was Susannah even here for?

  "Absolutely." Raven opened the door. "Mike, you do the honors. I'm going to get out of the way."

  Mike stepped back into the house. To say he squeezed through would be more accurate. The door didn't open all the way. God knows what was behind it, I thought. And we were about to find out.

  We all squeezed in after Mike. The apartment was dark. The drapes were drawn, and there was stuff piled up in front of the windows to the ceiling. There was stuff piled up everywhere to the ceiling. There was a faint smell, not of garbage, but of old mustiness. It was kind of like the smell in the home of an old person. Like a nursing home without the urine overlay. There were cobwebs in the corners, big ones. There was no way that anyone would be able to reach the corners to clean them.

  The camera stayed in front of us as we looked around, mouths agape, at the mountains of stuff. Then Val said, "Oh. My. God." And I sneezed.

  Seeing it on TV did nothing to prepare me for the scene in front of me. It's like they say about the aftermath of natural disasters: seeing it on TV is nothing like seeing it in real life. Well, this was an unnatural disaster. There were a lot of things in bags. There were some boxes. There were slumping stacks of magazines and newspapers. There were cases of canned food.

  I couldn't see any furniture. "Where's the furniture?"

  Pete shook his head. "Buried."

  There was a very narrow path along the edge of the mess, which allowed us to squeeze through to the kitchen. The kitchen was stacked with what looked like supplies - canned food, paper towels, and more magazines and newspapers. There weren't any dirty dishes, but there were dozens of plastic cups from places like McDonalds and 7-11. There were a couple of garbage bags, closed, which looked like they contained fast food wrappers. The stove was covered and the sink was full; there was no way Jennifer could cook or wash dishes. The microwave was full of magazines. The refrigerator was hard to open because of the multiple rolls of paper towels stacked in front of it. When we did get the door open, the odor rushed out. Val quickly shut the door again. "Oh shit. That's nasty."

  Susannah made a gagging sound. "What was that?"

  Val waved her hand in front of her face, fanning away the fumes. "It looked like old takeout containers."

  Now we needed to get out of the kitchen. We inched through the narrow path back to the master bedroom. It was full of clothes, mostly in bags, either shopping bags or garbage bags. There were clothes piled on every available surface, up to the ceiling in the corners, and there were cobwebs in the corners again. There were magazines and newspapers in here, too. What was it with the magazines and newspapers?

  Jennifer had a twin bed shoved against the back wall, and the path ended there. The bed was piled with clothes and blankets. I didn’t see how she'd been sleeping there. Val looked around. "Where's the bathroom?"

  "This way." The cameraman pointed. We had to climb over a couple of small piles of clothes to get to the door; there wasn't a path here anymore.

  The floor of the bathroom was piled with more paper towels, magazines, and newspapers. There were also plastic drink cups in here. There was a narrow path in front of the sink and toilet, leading to the tub. The toilet was clean, thank God. There were clothes hanging from the shower head; it looked like Jennifer must only take baths. The bathtub was clean, but there were a couple dozen bottles of shampoo and conditioner lining its edges, and a few sitting inside the tub itself.

  We'd been pretty quiet. The cameraman said, "You all aren't saying much."

  Val opened her mouth, then closed it again. I said, "I think we're stunned. You know, I've watched the hoarding shows a lot, and I thought I was prepared for whatever was going on here, but seeing it in person is a whole different experience."

  Susannah said grimly, "I would never have thought that Jennifer would be one to do this. She never seemed that type to me. Whatever that type is."

  "But how well did you really know her?" Val scratched her forehead and looked around again. "We were related to her, and we had no idea. When she and Kevin were around I always tried to draw her out, but she never would say more than a few words."

  "I was in England for almost the whole time they were married. I didn't really know her at all." I shrugged. "When Raven told me Jennifer was going by Graham now, I thought maybe that was a good sign, that she'd taken back her maiden name and now she was going to get her act together. Maybe she'll be successful here. Maybe we can really help her do this."

  Val looked at me skeptically. Susannah
sighed dramatically. The cameraman signaled Mike, who rubbed his hands together. “Great stuff, guys. Great stuff. Let’s step outside until Jennifer and Dr. Hayman get here.”

  We went back out to the Jeep to wait for Jennifer to arrive. Pete had another muffin. I sipped my Coke; the smell from the refrigerator had killed my appetite. Val paced a little, then scooted into the cargo area with us. Susannah immediately started talking on her phone. Raven went to the other side of the parking lot to smoke and talk to her assistant and the cameraman.

  In about 15 minutes, Jennifer and Dr. Hayman, the psychologist, arrived. Dr. Hayman was pleasant but harried looking, a moderately heavy set lady with a faded red dye job, dressed in a long skirt and what looked like a man's sweater hanging down over it. Pete and Val introduced themselves, and she thanked us for coming. Jennifer looked stressed. She was sticking close to Dr. Hayman.

  There was a few minutes of general milling around, then Stan the Junk Man and his minions arrived. Stan was a local entrepreneur, with junkyards, recycling centers, and self-storage units all over LA and Orange Counties. I'd seen hoarding shows where the junk trucks actually had the word "JUNK" prominently displayed on them; that seemed to me to be the icing on the humiliation cake for the hoarder. Stan's trucks were decorated with the logo of his self-storage business. So if any of Jennifer's neighbors got nosy, it would just look like she was moving a bunch of stuff to storage.

  Finally, Raven called us all to attention. We gathered at the foot of the staircase leading to Jennifer's apartment. Raven said, "Okay, what we want to do now is to get some footage of the friends and family talking to Jennifer about the hoard and their reactions to it. Then we'll get started with the clean. So, Susannah, Jamie, Pete and Val, if you'd come up with Jennifer and Dr. Hayman and the cameraman will get you positioned."

  We trooped up the steps and back into the apartment. Greg, the cameraman, aligned us in a semicircle near the door, then said, "Okay, rolling."