The Case of the Lady in Apartment 308

Cover Page

Excerpt

Dear Reader

Title Page

Dear Reader

Dedication

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Copyright

To
Margaret Gosselin
who grew up in Peoria
and to
Bill Small
who “observed” Peoria gambling

T
he first of July in Peoria, Illinois, the weather was hot and dry. One of the citizens was thirty-seven-year-old Edgar Hollingsworth, who was well-made and tall enough. His hair was a light blond and his eyes were a surprisingly dark brown. His hair and eyes were an interesting combination, which women adored.

On the day in question, Ed climbed the newly mended stairs to the third floor of his apartment building. He carried a self-composed eviction sign to tape on the door of 308. Occupying that apartment was a recalcitrant, nonpaying woman who received government payments, plus.

Ed was disgruntled.

He’d inherited the renter when he bought the building. There had been no recorded payments since Elinor had paid double to get into the apartment. The rule was a month’s rent down plus another month’s rent in case the renter took off in the middle of an unpaid month.

That second payment was supposed to be a security payment. It was explained on the book that the “old
woman” would get it, in “a couple of weeks” or soon. There was no notation that she ever had.

The next rule was payments could be only three days late, then a late fee would be added. Under very rare circumstances, if it was necessary, the owner could give the renter a month to pay up.

By then, Elinor had already had five months’ free housing.

Well, Edgar was new to the business of renting, and he’d still had a susceptible heart. That heart was hardening.

Elinor hadn’t taken off; she just wouldn’t pay. She never answered the door. The locks had been changed…by her.

Ed couldn’t find the copies of those keys. If there was an emergency, the door would have to be broken down.

Ed hadn’t seen hide nor hair of her in all that time. She was either very clever or seldom there, for he’d not been able to contact her.

His unanswered reminders had finally been delivered by certified mail. There had been signed acceptances by a variety of signatures. That’s how Ed had found out she had two men living with her.

Two
men? At her age? Well, maybe they’d just been indigent friends.

At thirty-seven, Ed was still a young man and he thought “old” people were beyond such exercises.

Ed’s basic problem was that he was an honest man with a tender heart. He didn’t harbor even one Simon Legree gene.

He found it quite difficult to accept that honesty could be a problem. So after three notices of rent overdue, he was going to threaten to evict his recalcitrant tenant who, by this point, had not paid rent in an accumulated nine months. Ed ought to just padlock the door. But, being new at the renting business, he couldn’t yet do that to an old woman.

That day, Ed got to the apartment and hesitated about putting tape on the recently refurbished door. He paused to consider the door. It was a good one. He’d done a lot of work on the place even before he was eased out of his middle management job in a local manufacturing company.

He’d been one of the few who had seen that his release was inevitable. The company was top-heavy with salaried men…and a few women. It was the men who were let go first.

Letting the men go made the company seem gentle toward women. That looked good, but the reality was that the male salaries were higher.

Despite reassurances that the cuts had already been made, Ed had understood he would eventually be one of those encouraged to leave, to explore new horizons.

The knowledge had hit Ed when the company released his good friend Mark, a valuable man. Mark had made more than Ed. Ed knew that in the release
of the next bunch, Edgar Hollingsworth would be tapped. He wasn’t married. His departure from the company was inevitable.

Having witnessed the discards’ frantic scramble for other jobs, Ed knew it would take some doing before he could relocate…if he ever could. Even before his job was terminated, he had researched what he should do.

To get some workable cash, he had sold his dream car to a friend who’d envied him, and the price was right for both of them. To replace the car, Ed bought a station wagon that was solid, reliable and unnoticeable. It was brown.

He sold his condo with some pangs, and just after that, he bought two rental properties.

The compound’s scalloped and spiked, iron fence surrounded the languishing complex with a rusted iron bar gate, which opened onto the cracked, concrete apron of the wide driveway. A great oak’s spreading branches dominated the center of the courtyard. It was elegant.

In that complex was a painterly-painter. One who was wonderfully talented. Added were his wife and their strangely unique nubile offspring. There was an older couple who’d lived there since they’d retired on a pension that was smaller than they’d anticipated. There were three bachelors who invited the whole complex to their parties so that no one could complain
about the noise. And there was the now-jobless Edgar Hollingsworth.

The elegant compound had been built with care long ago. The apartments were connected around a stone-block paved courtyard. It was probably a white elephant and no good for anything. Ed had never seen anything so eye-filling. However, the twenties’ complex was elegantly unique. The view upriver was soothingly wonderful.

He’d chosen one of those apartments as his.

Before the stock market crash of the late twenties, in a time of artistic adventure, was when the sprawled, one-story complex had been built. There was every indication the riverside bluff area would be built up with posh homes.

That was delayed, first by the Depression, then World War II. The building of the area’s houses didn’t happen until after that war. The bluff project had developed into 1940’s postwar, box houses.

And since then, in the proliferation of houses around it, the predictable individualism of people had emerged. The houses had slowly been expanded and altered from the original boxes. Trees had been planted and the greenery had proliferated.

It had become an attractive area.

Ed Hollingsworth’s other purchase was the four-story apartment house. It had a sturdy brick facade and a rather borderline mess inside. It was less than a
mile away from the elegant compound. And there were undoubtedly shortcuts Ed could discover.

The apartment building was in an area that was neatly staunch. It was convenient to the surrounding area’s shopping and not far from the Illinois River. The brick building was worth the effort to smooth it out and tidy it up, after it had been reroofed.

Ed had paid to have the more complicated and needy roof repaired and the roofing replaced. That was a tough job. With his office’s downsizing, Ed was doing the renovation—since he now had so much free time.

Ed’s pragmatic father had taught his sons to fix things. With that background, Ed also had the energetically helpful branch library which could find how-to books from all over the country. Ed’s talent, for salvaging and rebuilding, was being expanded.

Ed’s primary problem was that he’d had too much fun as a bachelor. He was thirty-seven and still not married. He continued his contact with a wide expanse of friends, who worked days. However, he’d noticed that the single women weren’t crowding him with smiles and rubbings.

He was no longer financially alluring.

At the deadbeat Elinor’s apartment, the reluctant Ed began to press the cardboard notice against the door. The latch clicked softly and the door slowly opened.

The woman inside was surrounded by various scattered items. She was packing to sneak out? Was
this
Elinor? How surprising!

Ed stared and his lips parted. He looked very vulnerable.

The woman turned and glanced over her shoulder, somewhat disgruntled. Seeing the tall man looking so rivetingly at her, she gasped.

Ed had never laid eyes on Elinor. He’d been missing all—this—all this time? Had he seen her before then, he’d have been willing to pay her rent for her! And she’d already had two men living with her? No wonder.

He handed her the eviction notice in an automatic, nonnoticing manner.

She read it and handed it back. “You have the wrong apartment.”

In great surprise, Ed shook his head to deny being wrong as he asked, “Aren’t you Elinor?”

“No. Who are you!” She was positive and alert.

He backed out the door somewhat, in order to lessen the threat of himself. He asked, “Where’s Elinor?”

Standing straight, the woman shrugged as she watched Ed with some sober regard.

“I’m the rent collector, and Elinor is four months past her limit. Is she living here? Have
you
been living here? If you’re not Elinor, who are you?”

The mesmerizing woman again shrugged, but in a normal way that was absolutely fascinating. She replied,
“I’m Marcia Phillips. I’ve paid two months’ rent.”

“Let me guess. You’re subrenting from…Elinor Hopkins.”

“Yes. She’s paid ahead.”

“She has been living here for at least nine months and apparently hasn’t paid anything since the first month’s rent. She’s hornswoggled you for two months’ rent.”

The nubile woman looked at Ed. He saw as she first rejected, then gradually accepted that what he said was true. She frowned and considered him. Then she asked, “Was she…indigent?”

He avoided being entirely open and honest as he replied, “I’ve been handling the renovation of this building for four months. I’m responsible for collecting overdue rent and I’ve never laid eyes on her. She’s as slippery as an eel. Apparently, she bilks everybody, every time. And now, she’d done it to you.”

She guessed, “She was destitute?”

If the watching female was that softhearted, no wonder she’d been suckered in by Elinor. Ed explained with some impatience, “According to the house gossip, that woman sucked blood everywhere. She was on welfare. She got her clothes from Goodwill, she was a devoted user of the Salvation Army, and she had free meals from the Catholic church down the street. She was a clever, practiced deadbeat.”

Then he added in amazed disbelief, “She had two men living with her…and she was probably charging them, too.”

“They smoked the cigars.”

He shook his head. “It was probably Elinor.”

Marcia Phillips nodded with slow thoughtfulness.

“Unfortunately, she was also crooked.”

“If she hasn’t paid you in four months, you ought to have the money I gave her.”

Now what was he supposed to do?

The fascinating woman appeared to droop slightly. She looked around and out the window and through the doors of the apartment. “I don’t have any more money.”

“It’s not your fault.” What a sucker he was. Elinor had probably moved out—after she’d told this nubile woman how to fool the new rent taker.

Ed had never told any of the residents that he owned either place. He didn’t make that mistake now. He said, “I suppose you could work it out.”

“How?”

“What kind of job do you have?”

“None. Not yet. I paint.”

An artist? Great. His thought was sour. But as a painter, she really ought to be living up in the cheaper attic.

Disgruntled, he asked, “What do you paint?”

“Houses, barns, buildings, offices, whatever.”

“No people?”

She looked at him over her cheekbones and retorted, “Not yet.”

So she excelled in artistically depicting structures. She’d probably been in architecture but hadn’t graduated.

He didn’t need any paintings of anything. Especially not buildings. He’d never been drawn by drawings or paintings of structures. He leaned more to the pictures shown in
Playboy.
She could pose for that. She was really something.

She said, “Well, I guess I’d better pack up. Hope you can rent this place out. One good thing, I didn’t even begin to clean it up.”

That gave him an idea. “Are you any good at cleaning?”

“My mother taught Home Ec.”

“That clean, uh?”

“Yep.”

“You do anything besides painting? Or is your time comparatively free? I need somebody to clean up apartments. I’d pay you for that and we could forget one of the months’ rent. Both months if you’ll clean up this place, too .”

“I could, but you’d have to pay me enough to eat.”

“Since you know I’m desperate, you have me over a barrel. We’ll negotiate a deal.”

She smiled.

Her smile was a whammy clean through his body. His breathing altered and his cells shivered. Moving with some care, he put the returned eviction sign down
by the door. As he straightened, he put his hands into his pants pockets.

He told the ejected renter, “There’s another apartment down the hall that’s just been renovated. You could bunk in there for now. Maybe you’d want that one more than this one. It’s on the east so it’s cool nights, and the sun wakes you in the morning.”

“I’ll see.”

Her words made his hopes rise. She might not leave, after all.

He frowned at his thought. What difference did it make whether she lived in that building or not?

Well…

And he couldn’t think of any argument to support his vibrating interest.

She asked, “How many of the apartments are empty?”

He squinted, trying to decide whether or not he should lie. If she was going to live there and clean apartments, she’d find out anyway. He might just as well be honest. “About half.”

“Do you advertise?”

“Not yet. The place is run-down and I’m beginning to get it shaped up.”

She guessed, “Your dad a sailor?”

“How’d you know that?”

“Shape up. Shipshape.”

Ed grinned. “He was like that with us kids. Being organized all of our lives, we’re all doomed to be tidy.”

“What an irritation.” She smiled.

“Well, I guess from what you say about your mom, you’re probably a whole lot the way we are.”

“Yep.” She picked up a subtly elegant cloth Vera Bradley suitcase. “Which way?”

He grinned. “You’re gonna stay?”

“I’ll clean until I’m paid up. Then I’ll paint for cash.”

That wobbled him. He didn’t
want
any paintings. But then as they walked down the bare hallway, he figured he could buy some of her paintings and put them on the hall walls. He wouldn’t have to look at them. He’d do that.