Sixth Grave on the Edge(22)

“Hey, Mr. Z. I have a list—”

The door slammed in my face before I could finish. Right in my face.

I stood there in a shock a solid minute before I tried again, knocking harder this time to let him know I was not going away.

He opened the door again, eyed me up and down, then started to slam the door.

I stuck my booted foot in it, preventing it from closing completely.

“I’m off,” he said, swinging the door wide. “Can’t you see I’m having dinner?”

I looked inside, and sure enough, there on the table sat a feast fit for a king. If that king was really fond of hot dogs and potato chips.

“I’m sorry to bother you, but I have a list of repairs that need to be made to various apartments in this building.”

“Oh, yeah?” he said, taking the list from me. He read it over, then crumpled it up in his hand and tossed it at me. “I can’t do any repairs without prior authorization. You have to go through the management company.”

The paper had hit me in the chest, and after I got over how amazingly rude he was being, I decided to file assault charges. I grabbed my chest and doubled over, moaning in agony as he looked on.

“Are you about finished?” he asked, completely unmoved. “My show is on.”

I hopped up to see over him. He was watching a rerun of Breaking Bad. At least he had good taste in television. “I love that show,” I said, trying to look past him to see which one it was. “I take Misery to their car wash all the time.”

“So, you’re okay? You didn’t get a paper cut, did you? Should I call an ambulance?”

“Okay, fine, be that way. Just tell me exactly what the procedure is to get repairs made.” I picked up the paper and smoothed it out on my stomach.

“I told you. You have to go through the property management company. I work for them now. They work for the owner.”

“I’m not sure you should be treating tenants like that.”

“Like what?” he asked, offended.

I leaned in to him. “Like slamming doors in their faces.”

“I’m off. I told you.”

“It doesn’t matter. These are tenants. These are people who make it possible for you to draw a paycheck. They deserve a little respect.”

“Listen, Charley. If you want respect, you gotta show some.”

“What?” I asked, my turn to be offended. “When have I ever been disrespectful to you?”

He squared his shoulders. “You’re loud. You throw parties. You invite strange people over at all hours. And you call me Mr. Whiskers behind my back. It makes me sound like a friggin’ cat.”

“I most certainly do not. I call you that to your face just as often as I do behind your back. And I haven’t had a party in months.”

He pressed his mouth together. “Look, no matter, you gotta go through the proper channels for me to fix anything on that list. But I gotta warn you. We have a new owner. I’m not sure what he will do with all that.” He pointed to my list.

“I’m not sure either.” I didn’t think about that. I needed working capital. I needed a sugar daddy. Or Reyes Farrow. Either way.

“Fine,” I said, folding my note and stuffing it in my pocket. “I’ll just go to the new owner directly.”

“You know him?” he asked, surprised. Of course he would think the new owner was a him. Reyes bought the building before transferring ownership over to me, a fact that still boggled my mind. Giving me an apartment complex was like giving a twelve-year-old a Fortune 500 company and saying, “Now, take good care of it.”

“I sure do, and I plan on giving him an earful of how I’ve been treated here today.”

“Yeah? And I’ll tell him about the ostrich.”

I gasped. “That was one time. And she pulled through it just fine.”

“Mm-hm. Can I finish my dinner now?”

“Yes.” I turned and stalked off to show him how angry I was. Ostrich, my ass. She was fine once the vet removed the Tupperware.

As I made my way to Reyes’s apartment, hoping he’d be home from work, I called out to Duff. Darn him. One minute I can’t get the man out of my hair, and the next he’s impossible to find. Like a ghost.

Laughing at my own sense of humor, I knocked on Reyes’s door. Someone had to laugh, and I was pretty much the only one who got me. It was a lonely life.

The door opened, and a seemingly annoyed Reyes stood on the other side. What’d I do now?

“Hey,” I said, about half a second before the door slammed in my face. What the—? I knocked again, this time pounding.

The door opened wide as he leaned against the frame and crossed his arms at his chest. He really liked that pose. I really liked that he liked that pose.