But for now, I cleared out the accumulated messages and started on my sandwich. I’d picked up a copy of the Caerphilly Clarion while I was out and I opened it to - well, not my favorite section, but the section with which I’d grown most familiar: the real estate section.
Slim pickings as usual.
“Damn, and here I was going to see if I could whisk you away to the steak house for lunch.”
I looked up to see Jack in the doorway.
“Thanks,” I said. “But I’m trying to stick pretty close to the office except for really important things. Like going to visit any houses for sale or rent.”
“I’m house-hunting myself,” he said.
“Isn’t everyone?”
“Everyone at the Pines, anyway,” he said with a shudder. “Anything interesting?”
“Nothing Michael and I didn’t already see this weekend,” I said, handing him the paper.
“You didn’t like the ‘luxurious lakeside retreat’?”
“You mean the million-dollar starter castle on the handkerchief lot?” I said. “A little steep for our budget.”
“Especially since they’re asking two million for it,” Jack agreed. “The ‘dynamite fixer-upper’ was a holdover from last week, too. What’s wrong with it?”
“They had a serious house fire,” I said.
“Needs a whole lot of fixing up?”
“Needs bulldozing, if you ask me,” I said. “It’s a charred shell - no way you could ever make it habitable. You’d need to bulldoze the ruins, haul away the rubble, and build a new house.”
“You’re not interested in building?”
“Maybe, if we could find a reasonable lot,” I said. “We’re not interested in paying the cost of a house for a lot that would still need thousands of dollars of demolition work before we could even begin building.”
“Check,” he said. “Hey, this one’s new - ‘unique rambler in woodland setting’ - sounds promising.”
“Yeah, belongs to a friend of Michael’s,” I said with a sigh. “We got a chance to see it before it went on the market. Could have made an offer if we wanted to. Beautiful lot. Beautiful house. Just one problem.”
“Price too big?”
“House too small.”
“I don’t care how small it is, it has to be bigger than the motel room I’m sharing. See - three bedrooms.”
“Trust me, it’s too small. The owner’s only three and a half feet tall. He had it built to scale. Five-and-a-half-foot ceilings.”
“You’re kidding, right?”
I shook my head.
“So why’s he selling?”
“He got married. His wife’s almost my height; she’s tired of crouching.”
“Now I know you’re kidding,” he said. “Trying to keep everyone else from jumping on the place, right?”
“Go see for yourself.”
“I will. Mind if I borrow this to make a copy?”
“Keep it. Nothing I can use,” I said. “Listen, what do you know about Ted’s house?”
“I know he found someplace to rent outside town,” Jack said.
“You never saw it?”
“No - have you?”
“Yes,” I said. “I went over to see if I could find any work papers or files that the police hadn’t taken.”
“Was it a dive?” he asked. “I figure, as quickly as he found it, it must have been a real dive.”
“Not really,” I said. “Was there any talk about his finding a place to live? Resentment, jealousy?”
“Not that I remember,” he said. “Of course, I bet a lot of people probably thought what 1 did - that there must be something really wrong with it if he found it so quickly. He was only at the Pines maybe a month. Even when he was there, he didn’t really socialize much with the rest of us, so it’s not as if he invited people over for a housewarming party or anything. I don’t think most people even knew where he’d moved.”
“A couple of people did,” I said. “A couple of staffers showed up there while I was doing my search. I think they wanted to see if they could snag the place before someone else did.”
“You’re not really thinking that one of them killed Ted so they could get his house, are you?”
“Why not?” I asked. “I know at least three quarters of our staff are still living at the Pines or bunking with friends or maybe driving an hour or more to get to work. And here Ted snags a place in the country after a few weeks?”