I Still Dream About You

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?”