I Still Dream About You

Congratulations All Around

OF COURSE, MAGGIE WISHED SHE HADN’T GIVEN ALL HER CLOTHES away, but as she found out, that wasn’t the half of it. After the meeting with Mrs. Dalton, she’d had to run back downtown to reopen her bank account and get a replacement credit card, so she could go shopping and buy food and all new toothpaste, soaps, shampoos, and underwear. And the phone company charged her an arm and a leg to turn her phone back on.

She had wanted to make sure that everything was in order before she told Ethel and Brenda the good news about Crestview. She didn’t want to get their hopes up until she was sure she really had the listing, but she had been so preoccupied with buying new clothes that she had completely forgotten that yesterday was November 4, the day of the presidential election. This morning, when she was driving to work and heard the results on the radio, she knew Brenda would be thrilled that her candidate had won.

When she got to the office, Brenda was not at work yet, but Ethel said, “Well, I just hope he can do better than the last one, though I doubt it.” Then Ethel went on her usual rant about politicians, which lasted about five minutes longer than the Hollywood rant. Maggie stood there and waited patiently until Ethel was finished and then, as casually as possible, handed her the signed papers.

“What’s this?” asked Ethel.

“Oh, just a contract to sell Crestview.”

Ethel’s mouth flew open. “What? When did this happen?”

Maggie hoped it wouldn’t sound like bragging, but she couldn’t resist. “When I called a friend and stole the listing from Babs Bingington.”

“You did?”

“I did!”

“I can’t believe it! YEE HAW! This calls for a celebration.” Ethel then proceeded to take out the bottle of bourbon she kept in her desk and her purple plastic collapsible cup and poured herself a drink. “Hot damn, here’s to you, Maggie!” she said as she slugged it down.

A few minutes later, Brenda came straggling in looking exhausted but very happy. Maggie stood up and hugged her. “Oh, Brenda, how wonderful, I’m so happy for you. Your man won.”

“Thank you. You just can’t know what this means, coming from where we were to this, and in my lifetime? Oh, you just can’t know.”

“No, but I can imagine.”

Maggie waited until she couldn’t stand it another second and then said, “And Brenda, I have even more good news. We have a new ‘over the mountain’ listing.”

Brenda looked at her in disbelief. “No.”

“Yes! Not only a listing, but a listing I stole from Babs.”

Brenda screamed, “Girl… you didn’t!”

“I did!”

“She did!” said Ethel and poured herself another drink. Even though she was a Presbyterian, she added, “Up yours, Babs.”

After Maggie finished giving Brenda all the details, she said, “And guess what else?”

“What?”

“I have the keys!”

“You don’t!”

“I do. Let’s go. Ethel, if anyone calls, just tell them that we’re at our new listing.”

“Sounds good to me,” said Ethel.

BRENDA COULDN’T STOP talking all the way across town. “I can’t believe you got the listing away from the Beast.” She repeated this over and over, and she was still saying it as they went up the driveway to Crestview. The truth was, Maggie could hardly believe it herself. After all the years of dreaming about this house, she was about to go inside for the very first time.

So many homes that had looked fantastic on the outside had been such a disappointment once you got inside. She just hoped this wouldn’t be one of them. Maggie’s heart was pounding as she put the key in the lock, and she held her breath as she opened the big front door and they stepped into the entrance hall. The house had an almost sweet smell of wood smoke and did not have the stale musty odor of most of the older homes she had been in. They switched on the hall light and saw a black-and-white marble floor leading past a grand staircase and all the way down a long hall to the kitchen. And what a staircase! Just as Mrs. Roberts had said so many years ago, the stairs that curved gracefully all the way up to the second floor were made of the most perfect marble Maggie had ever seen. “Wow,” said Brenda. To the right of the hall was a large living room with four large French doors that opened into a sunroom. On the left was a formal dining room and a library. Maggie almost burst into tears. The inside of the house looked exactly as she had expected. No, in fact, even more beautiful than she had imagined, were that at all possible.

Angus Crocker had clearly spared no expense in building this home. Every doorknob was made of the finest cut-glass crystal. Even today, every window casement, every hinge, every lock was in perfect working order. As they walked through, Brenda said, “They sure don’t make them like they used to, do they?”

As they turned on lights and pulled open drapes, Maggie was so pleased to see that, unlike a lot of the other larger homes, which could be cold and foreboding, with big, drafty rooms, the rooms here were perfectly proportioned, and the honey-colored wood-paneled walls gave the house a warm, homey feeling. She hadn’t expected that.

When they walked through the large leaded glass doors off the back of the house and onto the huge stone terrace overlooking the entire city, Brenda said, “Lord, have mercy, how can you put a price on that view? Can you imagine sitting up here at night?”

“Yes, I can.” Maggie had imagined it many times.

Brenda turned and said, “Oh, don’t you wish Hazel was here with us?”

“Always,” said Maggie.

The kitchen was a large old-fashioned eat-in kitchen with long stainless steel counters and ribbed glass cabinets to the ceiling. Off the kitchen were the servants’ quarters, with back stairs leading up to the bedrooms on the second and third floors. As a real estate agent, Maggie knew that the older kitchen and white marble bathrooms throughout the house might seem dated to some, but she already felt herself dreading the thought of anyone changing a thing. She wouldn’t. To her, it was exactly right. To her, being in this house was like going back in time. There was something almost magical about it. She felt like she was walking around in a wonderful old English movie. She didn’t have to worry about staging this house. As far as she was concerned, it was perfect.

Since Crestview had never been for sale, and there were no existing statistics on it, she and Brenda were also measuring and counting the rooms as they went, and so far, including the servants’ quarters, they had counted five bathrooms, a living room, a library, a dining room, and six bedrooms. Maggie was falling more in love room by room; the rugs, the wallpaper, the simple but sturdy elegant furniture, the understated colors, the floral chintz sofas, everything so lovely and tasteful. Even the books on the shelves were tasteful; they hadn’t been bought by the pound by some decorator just for show-these were books that had been read. When they finished with the bedrooms on the third floor, just as they were about to go back downstairs, Brenda noticed something down at the end of the hall and walked over and saw a narrow set of dark wooden stairs. She looked for a light switch on the wall, but there wasn’t one.

“What’s up here-an attic?”

“I don’t know, but there might be bats,” Maggie said. “Let’s just wait and get the home inspector to go up there tomorrow.”

“Don’t you want to see the whole house?”

“Of course, but I don’t want to get bitten by a bat either.”

“You won’t; come on, just follow me.” Brenda pulled a flashlight out of her purse and started up the narrow stairs.

“Brenda, let’s just wait.”

But Brenda wanted to see everything. “Oh, come on… don’t be a chicken.”

“All right, but if we’re attacked by bats and get rabies, it will be all your fault.” At the top of the stairs was a large wooden door. Brenda tried to open it, but to Maggie’s relief, it was locked. “Come on, Brenda, let’s go back down.”

But Brenda handed Maggie the flashlight and said, “Hold this…”

“Oh, Lord.” Maggie stood there and held the flashlight while Brenda tried all the keys Mrs. Dalton had given her. When none fit, Maggie was glad. But then Brenda pulled a screwdriver out of her purse and started jiggling it up and down in the lock.

“Don’t ruin the door, Brenda, let’s just wait.”

But Brenda, determined to get in, said, “Stand back,” and banged the door as hard as she could with her right hip, and they heard something snap with a loud crack.

Maggie said, “What was that?”

Brenda stood perfectly still for a moment, then said, “I don’t know… I just hope to God it wasn’t my hip. I don’t want to have to spend my money on a new hip.”

“Oh, no. Does it hurt?”

Brenda waited another moment. “No, I’m all right.” Then she hauled off and hit the door again, with her other hip. This time, the nails in the rusty lock gave way and the door opened with a loud screech, just wide enough so that Brenda was able to stick her arm inside. She felt around for a light switch but couldn’t find one, so she took the flashlight from Maggie and said, “Stay here.”

Maggie was not happy about being in the dark and said, “Brenda, I wish you wouldn’t go in there,” but Brenda had already pushed herself inside. She flashed her light all around the room and saw a large window with floor-to-ceiling curtains. She walked over and pulled the cord, and the curtains, rod and all, fell to the floor in a dusty heap with a loud thud.

“Uh-oh,” said Brenda.

Maggie called from the hall, “What was that? Are you all right?”

“Yes, I’m fine. It’s just a curtain.” After some of the dust settled, Brenda looked around. The room seemed almost empty, except for an easy chair, a small table placed by the window, and two huge steamer trunks standing over in the corner. She flashed her light up at the beams in the ceiling and in all the corners and then called out to Maggie, “No bats. Come on in.”

Maggie stepped in and looked around and was pleasantly surprised. “This is a nice-sized room.” She walked over to the window and gazed down into the gardens. “Oh wow, you can see the whole yard from here. I’d fix this room up as an office, wouldn’t you? Wouldn’t you call this a bonus room?”

Brenda didn’t answer; she was in the corner, inspecting the steamer trunks. “Look at the size of these things. They’re as tall as I am. Imagine trying to check these at the airport. Hey, look, they still have an address on them.” Brenda took out a tiny feather duster from her purse and dusted the trunks off to see what was written on the large faded yellow tags.

DELIVER TO:

Mr. Edward Crocker

c/o Crestview

1800 Crest Road, atop Red Mountain

Birmingham, Alabama

SENT FROM:

Miss Edwina Crocker

1785 Whitehall

London, England S.W.

PLEASE HOLD FOR ARRIVAL

June 2, 1946

Maggie walked over. “Oh, for gosh sakes, I wonder if there’s anything in them?”

“I’m about to find out,” Brenda said, pulling out the screwdriver again. “You said Mrs. Dalton didn’t want any of this stuff; if we find anything of value, we could always sell it and give the money to charity, couldn’t we?”

“Well… yes, I guess so, but I really don’t think we should open things until we ask her.”

“Oh, don’t worry about it; she won’t care.” Brenda then proceeded to snap open all four locks and pulled the trunks apart. One trunk was packed full of ladies’ evening gowns, and the other was full of men’s formal clothes.

“Oh heck, it’s just a bunch of old clothes,” said Brenda.

But Maggie was delighted and pulled a gown out of the lady’s trunk. “Oh my goodness, these are just beautiful! I think most of these are originals from Paris!” Brenda held one up. Sadly, they were too small to fit either one of them. Maggie then opened up one of the small drawers on the side and found a pair of black beaded evening slippers with a purse to match. “Oh wow. If Mrs. Dalton doesn’t want them, these will be great period costumes for the theater.”

“Great,” Brenda said, “but before you start giving anything away, let’s see if there’s anything else in here.” While Maggie continued to examine the gowns, Brenda was busy pulling aside each one of the men’s suits. Suddenly, she jumped back and said, “Woooooo…!”

Maggie looked over. “What? Did you find something?”

Brenda did not answer, but stood there with her eyes wide, pointing. “Woooooo,” she said again.

“What is it?” Maggie walked over and looked where Brenda was pointing. At that same moment, a ray of golden sun shot through the window and lit up the inside of the trunk like a spotlight. What Maggie saw then nearly scared her to death. Hanging neatly on a hanger, among the men’s evening clothes, was a man’s skeleton, completely dressed in a formal Scottish kilt and a plaid sash, with one bony hand still stuck in the pocket of a black velvet jacket.

Maggie grabbed Brenda’s arm. “Good God, is it real? That can’t be a real skeleton, can it?”

“I don’t know, but I’m about to find out. Stand back.” Brenda leaned in a little closer and poked it with the screwdriver, and what she hit was definitely hard bone. She dropped her purse and yelled, “Hell, yes, it’s real… Let’s get out of here!”

And the two of them sounded like a herd of buffalo, running back down the narrow stairs. When they finally got to the first floor and caught their breath and could speak again, Maggie said, “I have to sit down.”

“I thought I was going to have a heart attack.” Brenda, still breathing heavily, held out her hand. “Look at me, I’ve got the willies-I’m shaking all over. I need a cookie or a piece of cake or something or I might pass out. My emergency chocolate is upstairs in my purse. Will you go get it?”

Maggie looked at her. “Me? No, I’m not going back up there! What emergency chocolate?”

“Never mind,” Brenda said and flopped down on the sofa and started fanning herself with a pillow. Maggie collapsed in the chair across from her and said, “I told you we shouldn’t have gone up there. I don’t know why you don’t listen to me.”

“How was I supposed to know there was a dead man up there?”

“We should have just left those trunks alone then-” Maggie stopped in mid-sentence and put her hands over her mouth. “Oh my God.”

“ ‘Oh my God’ is right,” said Brenda. “That thing was looking right at me.”

“No, Brenda. I mean really, oh my God.”

“What?”

Then Maggie uttered the dreaded word: “Disclosure!”

Brenda stopped fanning herself. Suddenly, all their dreams of a big fat commission began to fade away. Both having been in real estate as long as they had, they knew from past experience that people were very reluctant to buy a house where a dead body had been found. And certainly not at anywhere near the asking price.

“Well. There goes my TV,” Brenda wailed.

Maggie was shaking her head. “I just can’t believe it. Why did it have to be this house?”

“What are we going to do now?” asked Brenda.

“I don’t know…” she sighed. “I guess the first thing we have to do is call the police. Oh, I hate for us to get involved in something like this. You know it’s going to wind up in the papers,” Maggie said, opening her purse. “And who would send a dead body to someone anyway?”

“You’re asking me? I don’t know.”

“And what was it doing in a trunk in the first place?” she asked, looking for her phone.

Brenda said, “Maybe he was a stowaway.”

“A stowaway?”

“Yeah. Maybe somebody forgot to open up the trunk on the other end and let him out.”

Maggie was still digging around in her purse. “Where’s my phone… oh, here it is. Brenda, would you call? I’m too nervous to talk. And, Brenda, try not to give the police our names, if at all possible.”

“Okay, I’ll try.” Brenda reluctantly took the phone. “But what should I say?”

“Just say that we’re two real estate agents who happened to be rummaging through some old trunks and… No, don’t say that; they’ll think we were trying to steal things… Don’t tell them you pried them open with a screwdriver. No, wait! You can’t do that; they’ll see they’ve been tampered with… Oh God, I guess we have to tell the truth. We don’t want to be brought up on charges.” Maggie put her face in her hands. “Oh no, now we’re going to be involved in an investigation. They’re probably going to take our fingerprints and everything. But I guess it’s too late. It can’t be helped now. Go ahead and call. And then I guess we should call Mrs. Dalton and tell her.”

Brenda was just about to dial the police, but then she stopped. “Hold on a minute! Before we call anybody, let’s just think about this. Nobody knows we found that dead man but you and me, right?”

“Yes. So?”

“So, maybe we don’t have to call the police.”

“Of course we do. We have to report it.”

“Why?”

“Because you have to report a dead body!”

“Why? It’s not like it’s a recent death or something.”

“Because they’re dead, that’s why.”

“Okay, but it’s not like Judy Spears’s listing, when she found that woman in the freezer. That woman still had a full body; Judy said she was still wearing earrings and a longline girdle. Her husband had murdered her with a pickax.”

Maggie winced. “Don’t tell me the details… what’s your point?”

“My point is that hers was a full dead body, and ours is just bones.”

“Well, full body or not, ours is still a person. It doesn’t matter. We have to call the police. Lord… I didn’t think of that. We don’t know how that man died; we might wind up in the middle of a murder investigation.”

“That’s right. And don’t forget, after Judy disclosed that she found that murdered woman in the freezer in the basement, the house never did sell. They wound up tearing it down and putting up a Jiffy Lube shop.”

“I know all that, Brenda, but as licensed agents, we have to disclose.”

“Why? It’s not like we took a Hippocratic oath. You don’t want this house to be torn down just because of a few old bones.”

“No, of course not, but I don’t want to get arrested for tampering with evidence either or wind up being accessories after the fact, and if anyone found out we didn’t disclose, it would be considered unethical. We could both lose our licenses.”

Brenda said, “Listen, don’t you think Babs Bingington has done worse things? You think marrying men to get their listings and stealing clients right and left is not unethical? She still has her license. Besides, a skeleton is not a serious health threat to the buyer, it’s not mold or asbestos or a weak foundation, it’s just a few old bones, and once removed from the premises, it won’t hurt anybody.”

“Maybe not, but if somebody were to…” Maggie suddenly stopped and looked at Brenda. “What do you mean, ‘once removed’?”

“Just what I said.”

“Brenda, what’s the matter with you? You can’t just remove a dead body from the premises. It’s not like a set of dishes or a painting. We have a moral and legal obligation to find out who he is, or was anyway, not to mention a Christian obligation to notify the family and make sure he has a proper burial.”

“We will… but it doesn’t have to be right this minute, does it? We have to think about the office. We need this sale to keep going, and that man’s been waiting to be buried since 1946, so waiting until we close escrow and I get my TV won’t bother him. He’s dead in a trunk. What does he care?”

Maggie could see that Brenda might have a point.

“Think about it while I’m gone,” Brenda said as she stood up to leave.

“Where are you going?”

“To get my purse. Dead body or not, I need my candy.”

After Brenda left, Maggie realized that it was something to think about, all right. She had put off her jumping-in-the-river plans in order to try to sell Crestview and save it from Babs and the bulldozers. Maggie was tempted, but as usual, she was still torn about what she should do. She had to think about her reputation; after all, she was an ex-Miss Alabama.

A few minutes later, Brenda came back downstairs with her purse, eating a Hershey bar, and said, “Well… have you thought about it?”

Maggie looked at her. “When you said remove it, just what exactly did you have in mind?”

“Simple. We remove it from the trunk.”

“We? I’m not touching it. I’d be scared to touch it. You don’t know what he died of. He could have had the black plague or something.”

“Oh, all right. If you’re so scared, Robbie has a drawer full of surgical gloves; I’ll go get you a pair. Okay?”

“Well… if,” said Maggie, “and this is just a hypothetical if… but if we were to remove it, we would have to do it at night.”

“Why?”

“Because you can’t move something like that in broad daylight.”

“Okay. Then let’s just move the whole trunk.”

“What? You and I can’t carry that trunk; it weighs a ton. And we certainly don’t want an accomplice.”

“You’re right; they always squeal in the end,” Brenda said. “We’ll just take it out of the trunk, wrap it in a blanket, and move it ourselves. We can do it.”

“But it just sounds… so illegal. I just don’t think I can.”

Brenda looked at her. “Wrecking ball?”

It was a persuasive argument. Maggie said, “All right… let’s just say that if we were to remove it, where we would move it to?”

Brenda thought for a moment. “How about your place?”

“My place! Where?”

“What about under your bed?”

“Brenda, do you really think I’m going to sleep with a skeleton under my bed? Besides, people are coming in and out all the time to show the unit, and Lupe cleans under the bed every week.”

“Hey, I know: we can put him in storage. Robbie and I have a storage bin over at Vestavia Mini-Storage, and she never goes in there; it’s mostly my stuff.”

“Are you sure she never goes in there?”

“Yes, I’m sure.”

“Okay, say we do sell the house, what then? How are we going to explain how he… it… got all the way to Vestavia Mini-Storage… that he walked?”

“No. We get someone to bring the trunks over to storage, and then after the house sells, we put him back and say we just opened the trunks and found him.”

“Yes, but why did we take the trunks to storage in the first place?”

“Simple. We were clearing the house out for showings. Nobody’s going to question that.”

“No, I guess not,” Maggie said, beginning to be persuaded; she had stored things when she had been staging houses before. “But before we decide to do anything, I need to make a call first.”

Brenda handed her the phone, and Maggie dialed and closed her eyes while she waited, preparing herself.

“Hello, Mrs. Dalton, it’s Maggie Fortenberry. I’m so sorry to bother you, but my partner, Brenda, and I are over at the house, and it appears we don’t have all the keys… and I was wondering… do you happen to have a key to the attic?”

“The attic?” asked Mrs. Dalton.

“Yes, ma’am, on the fourth floor… up the little flight of stairs?”

There was a long silence.

“Oh! I know what you’re talking about. No, I’m sorry, I don’t have a key. We were never allowed up there. Mother said those stairs were off-limits to us, and back then, what Mother said went.”

“Ah… well, do you know who might have a key?”

“I don’t.”

“I see. So, you don’t know what’s up there?”

“No, I’m sorry, dear, I have no idea. As I said, when I was a child, what Mother said went. Not like how it is now; back then, when Mother said, ‘Eat your vegetables,’ you ate your vegetables.”

“Well, no problem, but thank you anyway.”

Maggie hung up and felt a little better. The last living resident of the house had no idea there was a dead man up in a trunk in the attic. That was some good news. The bad news was that if they were going to move it, they had to do it tonight. In her excitement over selling Crestview, she had called and made an appointment with the building inspector to come first thing in the morning, and now that Brenda had knocked the door open, he was sure to go in and look around. This was one of those times she was going to have to make a decision and pray it was the right one.