Hoarded to Death (A Jamie Brodie Mystery) (2 page)

Raven sat back in her chair. "See, that's the kind of thing we can use on the show. That sort of background information helps flesh out Jennifer's story."

"But that's all I know. I was living in England that entire time. I didn't see any of it while it was happening. All I know is what Kevin told me."

Raven looked intrigued. "Jennifer didn't give us Kevin's name to contact. But he'd be the ideal participant. Do you think he would?"

"Oh,
hell
no." I laughed. "Suffice it to say he'd hang up on you too."

"Ah. Too bad."

"Doesn't she have any friends?"

"She did give us one name. Someone that she grew up with, as I understand it. But so far that's the only person that has agreed to participate." Raven gave me a we're-counting-on-you kind of look. "We could really use your help."

Shit
. She had me, and she knew it. “I have some conditions.”

“Such as?”

“My last name cannot be used on the air at all.”

“That’s no problem.”

“I also have to talk to my partner and okay it with the university. What's your deadline?”

"Well, obviously we'd like to know as soon as possible. But the deadline is next Monday, by 8:00 a.m." She handed me her business card. "You can call or text." She stood up, and we shook hands again. "Thank you for considering this. I know Jennifer would be very grateful for your help."

I wasn't so sure about that.

I called to see if my supervisor, Dr. Loomis, was in her office. She was, so I headed up there.

Dr. Loomis was also a tiny woman, but I’d never seen her in black. She seemed to have an endless supply of tailored pastel suits. She wore her gray hair in a bun, so she looked the part of the stodgy old-school librarian. In reality, old-school was the last term I’d use to describe her. She was as tech savvy as any of us and read PC Magazine for fun. I loved working for her.

I explained the situation to Dr. Loomis. She was intrigued. “How interesting. I’ve never known anyone with a hoarding problem.”

“What do you think about me appearing on the show?”

“It’s fine with me. I agree that it’s a good idea not to use your last name. But you’d better check with HR to make sure they have no objection.”

That would have to wait until morning. It was 5:00, and HR didn’t stick around after five. I said goodnight to Dr. Loomis, went back to my office to gather my stuff, and headed for the bus stop and home.

Pete’s home, that is.

Maybe mine too? I really needed to make a decision.

I really hated making relationship decisions.

Pete’s schedule was more flexible than mine, and he didn’t have any late afternoon classes. So he usually beat me home and had dinner nearly ready, and tonight was no exception. He was a good cook, and tonight he’d made a salmon pasta salad. I changed into sweats and a t-shirt, and we ate on the small front patio of the townhouse. There was a nice screen of privacy hedge between us and 17
Street. We could hear traffic but couldn’t see any.

While we ate, I told Pete about my visit from Raven. He was also surprised that she had listed my name.

“I really think she was kind of desperate. Apparently her family has refused to participate.”

“Huh. From what I remember of them, that’s not a shock.”

I looked at Pete in surprise. “Hey, that’s right. You were partners with Kevin while all that was going on.” Pete was an ex-cop. He and Kevin were partners during Kevin’s first six years with LAPD. They were still best friends.

“Oh, yeah. I lived through that divorce right with Kev. It’s been a long time, but I bet I knew Jennifer better than you did.”

“Well, then, you should be on the show too.”

Pete looked horrified. “Oh, hell no. No way.”

“Why not? You don’t have to be interviewed, you can just be one of the people who helps. And wouldn’t it be interesting to study what goes on between Jennifer and the psychologist in person instead of just what they edit to show on screen?”

He glared at me. “You just don’t want to go by yourself.”

“You’re right, I don’t. But it’s going to take a whole weekend – wouldn’t you rather spend it together?” I had him. “And you’ll probably get some great anecdotes to use in your classes. And Val might be there.” Although I doubted it. “It’ll be fun.”

“No, it won’t. But you’re right about getting material for lectures.” Pete sighed. “Okay. But if anything goes wrong, I’m holding you personally responsible.”

“Hey, what could go wrong?”

Ha.

The next couple of days were hectic. Our two-hour reference shift was the closest thing to downtime that Liz and I had, and we were able to analyze Clinton’s visits. He seemed to be working on a theme. The word of the day on Tuesday had been
orphrey
, “a band of elaborate embroidery decorating the front of certain ecclesiastical vestments.” On Wednesday, the word was
cucullate
, a botanical term meaning “having the shape of a cowl.”

On Thursday, when Clinton approached the desk, we were ready for him. We both sat back in our chairs, with our palms pressed together in a position of prayer.

Clinton tipped his head slightly to the side. He seemed to be suppressing a smile. “The word of the day is
gyrovague
.” He stepped back and bowed, then winked at us and walked away.

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 definitely 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.