LITMIR.BIZ

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Victorian house, Scott. What did you expect? That he would try to make the place look art deco?”

      “I didn’t expect anything, that’s the point! I thought he was just going to leave and let me deal with fixing it up for the sale. You should have seen him this morning. He didn’t even feel comfortable hanging around here to talk. Now I’m supposed to believe that he spent the day here redecorating and cleaning?”

      “Are you going to show me the master bedroom or are you going to just stand here flipping out over a vase?”

      “Right, the master bedroom…let’s just hope he didn’t get rid of the bed, I’d really like to show you that….” But the flirtation lacked conviction. Oscar the redecorator had thrown Scott off his game.

      The door to the master bedroom was closed and for a second I entertained a disturbing thought. “You don’t suppose he’s in there, do you? Maybe he’s been sleeping the whole time we’ve been wandering around his house.”

      “Oscar assured me that he would be out of here by six at the latest.” He reached forward and opened the door to reveal a charming, if somewhat foul-smelling, room with delicate moldings and paned glass doors that were left open to reveal a pretty little deck—and there was Oscar…sitting on the bed…mouth wide-open…face tilted up toward the ceiling. It didn’t look like a natural position and he didn’t acknowledge us.

      He didn’t move at all.

      “Oscar?” There was a slight tremor in Scott’s voice.

      I crept toward him. “Hello?” I whispered, although I had an ugly suspicion that I could scream and not get a reaction out of Oscar. Something crinkled under my foot and I realized that I had just stepped on a bunch of antique photos. They had that lovely golden glow that always made me think of horse-drawn wagons and Ellis Island immigrants. But these photos weren’t of people, they were of rooms. I was tempted to take a moment to examine them more closely, but I knew that was just my natural inclination to put off the inevitable. “Oscar? I’m Sophie…can you hear me?” I got a little closer and very carefully checked for a pulse. Nothing.

      I pulled my hand away and stared at the two white prints the pressure of my fingers had left on the corpse’s flesh.

      “Scott, I think he’s dead.”

      “You think?” Scott asked.

      I looked down at Oscar’s lower half and realized his pants were wet with urine, which explained the smell. “He’s definitely dead.”

      I waited for Scott to respond and when he didn’t I turned to look at him.

      “Scott?”

      He held up a finger as if to indicate that he needed a minute, then ran to the attached bathroom where I could hear him promptly regurgitate whatever it was that he’d had for dinner.

      And now I was alone with a dead stranger. Hesitantly, I turned back to Oscar. I didn’t see any blood or sign that he had struggled with someone, although the expression on his face was anything but peaceful. He looked kind of horrified, like he had seen the grim reaper. My eyes traveled to his left hand. His fingers were curled around a piece of jewelry. I leaned over, not wanting to touch him again, and realized that the jewelry was actually an antique brooch with a cameo. Little goose bumps materialized all over my skin and I tried to suppress the anxiety building within me. I wished Scott would pull himself together and handle this. But I expected that would take a while. Scott liked to deal in fantasies and what-ifs. Death was one of those things that was just too real for him.

      I turned my back to the body. Actually, this was a little too real for me, too. With shaky hands, I gathered up the photos I had stepped on. One Victorian room after another…a bedroom, a dining room…this bedroom, this dining room. These were pictures of the house as it once was. The furniture had been different, obviously, but not the placement. Oscar had rearranged his furniture to fit the images in these pictures. Even the table setting was similar. Mechanically, I turned back around.

      “How did you die, Oscar?” I whispered. I reached over and tentatively touched the brooch in his hand. It was cold, colder than the dead hand holding it. The colorless depiction of the woman on the cameo was surely meant to be flattering, but to me her sharp chin and unseeing eyes appeared sinister. It was then that I became vaguely aware that I was frightened.

      At that moment Scott stumbled out of the bathroom and looked purposely at the floor. “So,” he said in a scratchy voice, “do you still want the house?”

      “Report this,” I said pointing to the phone on the nightstand closest to Scott. “Dial 911 and tell them we found a dead man.”

      Scott looked up at the phone, noted its proximity to the bed and then quickly looked away. “Didn’t I read that you discovered a body in Golden Gate Park a few years back?” he asked hopefully. “You have more experience with this kind of thing. Why don’t you call?”

      “Oh, for God’s sake, be a man, Scott,” I said, once again inching away from the body.

      “I am a man! I just happen to be a man who suffers from necrophobia.”

      “What?”

      “I have a fear of dead things. I’m working on overcoming it. Still, this,” he waved toward the bed without looking at it, “is a bit much for me to deal with.”

      “You weren’t necrophobic when we were married.”

      “Yes, I was, we just didn’t talk about it. Remember how upset I got when we went to that restaurant and they served us the fish with its head still on? That was a traumatic moment for me, Sophie.”

      “Wow, Scott. I didn’t realize. I’m so sorry you had to go through that. Now suck it up and call the police.” I stared at the floor. The urine was getting to me. The smell had been bad when we first entered the room, but now that I knew what it was and why it was there, it had become unbearable. I had to get out of the room.

      Scott swallowed hard and then pulled his cell phone out of his jacket pocket. “I’ll call from this.” He walked over to the bedroom door and motioned for me to exit with him, which I gladly did. I left the pictures where I had found them.

      As we walked down the stairs Scott dialed 911 and I used my cell phone to dial Anatoly’s number.

      “Hey there.” The lightness of Anatoly’s tone was jarring considering my circumstances. “I was just thinking about you. A minute ago I accepted another case and it turns out my new client is a huge fan of your books.” Anatoly was a P.I. and lately it seemed that everybody in San Francisco wanted his services. Businesses wanted to prove that their employees were stealing, wives wanted to prove that their husbands were cheating and so on and so forth. But right now all of those problems seemed paltry and inconsequential.

      “Anatoly, I’m in Ashbury Heights.” It was amazing how I could keep my voice smooth even as my hands shook. “A Realtor was just giving me a tour of this Victorian he’s representing and—”

      “Now? It’s almost nine o’clock.”

      “Yeah, I know it’s unusual, but that’s not why I’m calling. Listen, the owner’s here and he’s sort of…dead.”

      There was a moment of silence followed by a Russian curse. “You found another dead body.”

      “It would seem that way, yes.”

      “Are you safe?”

      “Yeah, I’m here with the real-estate agent and he’s calling 911.” Scott and I had now reached the bottom of the stairs and he was standing by the bay windows answering some dispatcher’s questions. “The owner was old so he probably died of natural causes. Still, could you come over? I mean, it’s not like I’ve never been through something like this, you know that and…well, you’d think it would get easier, but…”

      “Tell me how to get there and I’ll come over immediately.”

      I

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