No Hiding Behind the Potted Palms! A Dance with Danger Mystery #7 (48 page)

“Weird,” I decided. Most folks don’t
rush into a legal deal. This was an unusual sale. But then again,
this was an unusual situation. The owner was missing and her
relatives probably wanted to dump the property before the next
mortgage payment was due. That’s the thing about dead bodies. Some
killers like to be far, far away before the skeletons pop up out of
the ground. Others like to watch from the shadows.

Chapter Four --

“What’s the word, Sid?” The
following day, Ned leaned over his desk, punched a button on his
phone, and turned on his speaker function, so I could listen to the
inspection report. “Good news or bad?”

“Mostly good. Some bad. You
definitely need to replace the pipes. I reviewed the water bills
for the last six months. There’s been an increase in water use,
even though the house has been empty. Something has caused a leak
into the water line to the street. It’s actually hooked up through
the side yard into the basement. Could be a tree root. Could be the
water main just deteriorated so much, the tiny hole just kept
getting bigger and now it’s a constant flow.”

“Automatic sprinklers?” I suggested,
wondering if the water was going into the nearly foot-high
lawn.

“I checked. I couldn’t find any,”
Sid told us. “You definitely need to get the asbestos removed
professionally. The gas heater has several more years of use. The
electrical rewiring done about a decade ago was a professional job,
so it should be adequate. The new storm windows should help with
the heating and cooling costs. You have to remember this was
originally a seasonal cottage. When they updated the house, they
blew in dry cellulose, so the wall cavities are filled and it looks
like a decent effort with the exception of that sun porch. Overall,
you get that water leak fixed, add some insulation or close off the
porch, replace the pipes in the house, and this is a good
deal.”

“Thanks, Sid,” Ned said, signing
off. He turned to me. “Well, then. I guess I’ll go call your
boyfriend and give him the good news. I’ll see if he’s interested
in going through the house on Monday.”

“Good.” There was a big part of me
that was relieved Ned would do the negotiating. The more I could
limit my contact with Jasper, the happier I’d be.

Since we knew that Ned would close
on the house two days later, I headed out to pick up samples for
the renovation. If I did my job well enough, Jasper’s mother might
be happy to just let us put it all together for her. Then again, we
were talking about June Wintonberry.

I remembered her from my high school
days. Chic, athletic, very social, June was the kind of woman
admired and envied by the housewives and working women of Glendale.
At her best, she was a strong, some would say strong-willed, woman.
She was on the board of several non-profits before it was
considered cool. She was a well-ranked amateur golfer who competed
against men and women. Impeccably dressed, sporting enough gold
jewelry to light up any room, June was no pushover. But at her
worst, she was a royal pain in the ass. To a high school girl like
me, who worked at the Peach Blossom Dress Shop as a clerk and had
to schlep her armloads of rejects back to the racks, under the
verbal barrage of not offering the queen what she needed, I
suffered many an afternoon as I failed to find just the right
outfit for her royal highness. I could only imagine what a
nightmare it would be to work with her on the bungalow.

On my way home, I decided to stop by
the property and take measurements of the Glengarry Court yard,
front and back. I spent about an hour there, going over every inch
of land, trying to figure out what I absolutely had to do right
away and what could be put at the end of the priority list. I took
lots of photos and I did some sketches of the possible planting bed
configurations, the potential patio area in the back yard, and the
double-car parking area out front. Once I was done, I headed back
to the office to price out fence options and paver
choices.

Ned was in his office with his door
closed, a sure sign he was in negotiations. I grabbed myself a can
of diet Sprite from the office fridge and got back to my design
plan. I could feel my heartbeat quicken at the thought of Jasper
sitting in the chair opposite my brother, hashing out the details
of the purchase for that sweet little property. Maybe Jasper would
decide that he wasn’t interested after all. He’d go on his way and
I could stop thinking about him, instead of longing to know what it
would be like to have his hands on my skin, his demanding lips
pressing mine.

The buzzer rang on my desk phone.
Ned was summoning me to his office. Suddenly, I felt my hand go
cold and clammy as I reached for it, trembling. Get a grip on
yourself, I reminded myself. You’re a grown woman, long out of high
school. Act like you’re competent. At least today I was dressed
decently, in a pencil skirt, a colorful print top, and a pair of
sandals that offered a good peek at my impeccably manicured
toenails painted in Lustrous Pearl Pink. My fingernails had none of
the usual paint splatters to mar the matching nail polish they
sported. My brown hair was free from its usual elastic band,
hanging loosely on my shoulders. I was wearing sapphire studs and a
gold neck chain, and I had actually applied makeup before I left
for work. Very different from my usual renovation attire of
painted-covered jeans and tee shirts. I clean up nicely a couple of
times a month when I’m in between projects.

“Yes?”

“Suzanne, can you please step into
my office?” I noted that Ned was being very formal. That meant this
was all about business. Standing up, I smoothed out my skirt and
crossed the room as steadily as I could. I steeled myself as I
turned the knob, plastered a bright smile across my face, and
stepped forward.

“What can I do for you, Ned?” I said
in an overly-cheerful voice. I could see the back of an unfamiliar
head belonging to a man now sitting in the chair opposite my big
brother. Male. Brown hair. Dark suit. Not Jasper.

“Kyle, you remember my sister,
Suzanne,” I heard my brother say. The figure rose from the chair
and whirled around. Before I could say a word, I felt myself
enveloped by the arms of the human octopus, Kyle Hargrove, voted
most likely to cop a feel in high school. I could tell from the
hands that brushed my buttocks that old Kyle hadn’t changed a
bit.

“Suzy Q, still hot,” he laughed,
covering my mouth with his lips. His tongue tried to poke through
my clenched teeth. I pushed the bastard away and stepped
back.

“Kyle, do that again and you’ll be
singing soprano!”

“Still feisty!” he
chuckled.

“Seriously, put your hands on me
again and it’ll be the last thing you do before you hit the floor!”
I glared at the conniving bastard who had made my high school years
miserable.

“God, you’re still
gorgeous!”

“And you’re still an....”

“Kyle is interested in the Glengarry
Court property,” Ned said quickly, trying to interrupt the
hostilities.

“Why?” I snapped. “How did he even
know we had it?”

“Still sharp as a tack,” the creep
decided as he sat down again. He waved me into the chair beside
his, and I only sat down when I was sure I was out of reach. “I was
telling your brother I ran into Jasper last night and he told me
about the place.”

I looked at the weasel-like eyes
gleaming at me from the puffy face, sporting an extra ten pounds on
his 5’8” frame. Kyle hadn’t aged well, with his hair evaporating
rapidly as we spoke and skin that looked like he’d spent a few
years under a rock. He was dressed in a well-cut, expensive-looking
suit and he wore what appeared to be handmade Italian loafers on
his feet, but he couldn’t hide his inner vermin self. He was on the
hunt and I felt like his prey.

“So you’re trying to chump Jasper?”
I demanded. “Same old Kyle. Still a jerk.”

“Suzanne!” Ned was appalled. I
didn’t really care.

“Why don’t you go slither back down
your rat hole, Kyle. We’re not interested in doing business with a
creep like you.”

“Careful what you say to me, Suze,”
he hissed back at me. “I am a very important business man and I
have a lot of clout.”

“That may be so,” I shot back, “but
you just assaulted me and I have no problem making the public aware
of the fact that you think you’re entitled to grope respectable
women. Does your wife approve? Or is she too dumb to know you’re
chasing skirts?”

“I think we’ve gotten off to a bad
start here,” Ned decided. “Let’s just rewind a little
bit.”

“There’s no such thing as a good
start with Kyle,” I warned my brother. “He has no ethics, he has no
class, and he can’t be trusted!”

“You’re just pissed because I didn’t
marry Jane!” Jane Keffler was my best friend. She dated Kyle three
times before he slipped a little date rape drug into her strawberry
daiquiri at the Low Down and had his way with her. When she came to
the next morning, she was naked and abandoned on Pleasure Beach.
Outraged, tearful, she wanted to have him prosecuted. I took her to
the police station. A female police officer took her statement
before driving her to the emergency room. The next day, a package
arrived on Jane’s front door step. Her father opened it. There were
twenty photos of his naked daughter in various poses beside a
variety of naked male genetalia in all shapes, colors, and sizes.
The photos were accompanied by a note stating that if she didn’t
drop the assault charge, the naughty pictures would go public. Jane
took the next flight to Dallas, for an extended visit to her
Great-Aunt Linda’s. She never returned to her old self or her
hometown. I lost my best friend to this walking piece of
filth.

“Marry Jane?” I looked at this
three-headed monster and wanted to smack each cheek. “You raped her
because you wanted to marry her?”

“Rape? That was consensual sex!”
Kyle got right up to my face, so close I could smell coffee on his
breath.

“If you want to be more convincing,
don’t try to tongue me next time. I didn’t welcome your embrace
this morning, any more than Jane welcomed it ten years ago! You
don’t like to take no for an answer, Kyle, but you’d better learn
to take it. And if you ever touch me again, I’ll file assault
charges on you, and you won’t have any naked photos of me to
circulate!”

“Suzanne, why don’t you and I just
step out a moment?” Ned’s fingers gripped my elbow tightly as he
tried to steer me out of the office. I was still smoking when he
closed the door on the smirking Kyle. “What in God’s name got into
you? Even if you don’t like the guy, have a little
class!”

“You make a deal with that bastard
and I’ll quit this company. I will leave this town and I will never
come back!” I spat those fighting words out at my brother as he
recoiled. The look of alarm on his face was evident, but I didn’t
care. I meant every word I said.

“Look, why don’t you go cool off
somewhere. I’ll get rid of the guy, but I’ll do it without
alienating him. If he’s as big a creep as you say, we don’t want
him causing trouble for Dawkins Builders, Suze.”

“Fine, but he had better not ever
come near me again!”

“Did he really try to tongue you
just now?”

“And he put his hands on my ass!” I
snarled.

“Okay,” said my big brother. “I’ll
handle it. You take off. Go down to Pulkowski Plumbing and check
out their tubs, see if they’ll give us a good deal on a
soaker.”

I stomped back to my desk, grabbed
my purse, and headed out to the street to retrieve my car. I
couldn’t wait to get away from the lingering stench of Kyle
Hargrove. It seemed to follow me as I maneuvered through traffic
down the main drag. It only seemed to lift as I roared down Route
101, doing sixty in a fifty zone.

I parked my car in front of
Pulkowski’s showroom door and grabbed my brush to tame the wild mat
of “convertible hair”. As my smartphone buzzed, I threw the brush
back into my purse and answered it.

“Suze, it’s Jasper. I was wondering
if you were free for lunch.”

“What in God’s name did you tell
that creep last night?”

“Excuse me?” said the baffled male
voice at the other end of the line.

“Kyle Hargrove! He wants to buy the
bungalow!”

“I don’t understand. What are you
talking about?” Jasper seemed sincere, so I filled in the details,
right down to the groping hands and the pesky tongue.

“And the next time he does that, I’m
going to have his sorry ass thrown in jail!”

“Which is where it belongs if he
touches you again,” he reassured me. “But I didn’t tell him about
the property, Suzanne. I ran into him at the bar last night. That’s
true. But I was meeting Bob Perkins and Tom Dydek. I told them
about the property. Maybe he was listening to our conversation from
the next table.”

“Well, that sounds like the
stinker!” I decided. “He’s trying to make a deal with my
brother.”

“But I want to look at the
property.” Jasper sounded disappointed. “For my mother.”

“I told Ned that I would quit if he
even considered selling to that creep!” I was still fired up. The
more I thought about it, the madder I got.