by Elaine Viets
Bang! Bang! Bang!
Death was knocking on our door.
Josh and I didn’t know that. We saw someone almost as unwelcome as the Grim Reaper—Mrs. Crane, the condo commando. She looked harmless in her square-heeled white shoes and sundress, but she was the most feared woman at the Keelhouse Condo in Fort Lauderdale.
No one ever called Mrs. Crane by her first name. I never saw any sign of a Mr. Crane, not even a wedding photo. The woman was probably baptized Mrs.
“Who’s knocking?” Josh asked me. He looked guilt stricken.
I checked the front door peephole and whispered, “It’s Mrs. Crane.”
“Damn. What if she catches us?” my husband said. “She’ll know we’re doing something illegal.”
“You hide in there,” I said, pushing him through the doorway. “Whatever you do, don’t let her in. Take a shower or something.”
I waited to hear him snap the lock before I opened our front door.
Mrs. Crane was only five feet tall and built like a Humvee. It didn’t help that she was wearing bright yellow. The condo commando was a sturdy sixty-two years old. She rolled into our place without waiting for an invitation.
“Do you know water from your kitchen is ruining Shirley’s ceiling?” Mrs. Crane had flat yellow eyes like a lizard, and her orange hair looked like it was on fire.
“What water? Shirley didn’t call to say she was having a problem.”
“I told her I’d handle it,” Mrs. Crane said. “Shirley is too nice.” She smiled, a sight that sent shivers through the condo residents. “I know the rules. I’m on the board. My committee approves all condo changes and repairs.”
“Uh, right.” I agreed with her. I had no choice.
“And your condo is leaking water into Shirley’s kitchen ceiling,” she said.
“It can’t be us,” I said. “The dishwasher and washing machine are turned off. There’s no water in the sink. I’m not washing any pots.”
“I hear water running right now,” Mrs. Crane said. It was an accusation, not a statement.
“Josh is taking a shower.”
Mrs. Crane eyed the closed door. I was relieved that Josh had locked it.
The tanklike woman tried the doorknob, then abruptly marched into the kitchen and threw open our utility closet door. Water gushed out and puddled at her feet.
“Ah-hah!” she said, as if she’d found a naked man hiding in there. “Exactly what I thought. It’s your hot water heater.”
I was stunned. Another repair. Another debt. “I don’t understand,” I said. I stared at our hot water heater as if it had turned into an ogre. It was about to devour our last paycheck.
“Your water heater has a hole in it,” she said. “You need a new one. It’s rusted through. Happens all the time, especially in this climate.”
“Oh, no,” I said. “Not now. Josh and I were just leaving for Key Largo. It’s our first vacation in more than a year.”
“Looks like you’re not going,” Mrs. Crane said, her face pink with malicious pleasure.
“We’ll get a plumber,” I said.
“Won’t find one on a Saturday,” she said. “And if you do, you won’t get the permit to put in a new heater until Monday. Looks like your vacation is cancelled.”
“But—”
“And you’re responsible for the damage to Shirley’s ceiling. Her ceiling is bowed with water and the popcorn is falling off in clumps. Looks like a lot of damage to me. You’ll need a special contractor to respray the popcorn on that ceiling. You can’t do a decent patch job on popcorn, you know.”
I silently cursed the inventor of the popcorn ceiling. That spray-on substance made too many Florida ceilings look like they’d been daubed with cottage cheese.
“I’ll make sure Shirley sends you a bill for the repairs,” Mrs. Crane said.
She would too.
“How much do you think this will cost us?” I asked, hoping to hide my despair. Josh and I were already in debt thanks to the move to this new condo.
“You’re looking at a couple thousand dollars, unless the water shorted out Shirley’s kitchen lights. Then it will cost even more.”
Mrs. Crane sloshed wet footprints across our living room rug and left without a good-bye. The front door slammed shut.
Josh crept out of the locked room wrapped in his terry robe. He was damp and shivering. “There’s no hot water,” he said, his teeth chattering in the air conditioning.
“I know,” I said. “Mrs. Crane says our water heater died and leaked all over Shirley’s ceiling. We’re responsible for the damage it did to Shirley’s condo below us.”
“We’d better get a plumber to replace the old heater,” he said. “The Saturday rates will kill us. We’ll be eating peanut butter for months.”
“Mrs. Crane says we’ll need a permit from the city and we can’t get one until Monday.”
“To hell with her,” Josh said. “I’m not taking cold showers while she pokes her nose into our business. And I’m not missing our trip. Those vacation days don’t carry over into next year. I either go now or wait another whole year.”
“It took me months of negotiation to get the same days you did,” I said. “I had to work six extra Sundays. My vacation will be gone too.”
Josh was assistant manager at a Fort Lauderdale tourist hotel. That’s how he’d gotten a ridiculously low rate at the Key Largo resort. Otherwise, we couldn’t have afforded a vacation.
I called a plumber from the approved condo list. At double-time rates, Jackson agreed to install a new water heater. The plumber didn’t mention permits and neither did we. By noon, we had a shiny white water heater squatting in the utility closet. Jackson hauled out the dead heater and loaded it into his truck. I mopped up the water in the kitchen.
Josh and I were packed and ready to leave for our vacation.
That’s when we heard three more knocks.
“It’s her again,” I whispered into Josh’s ear.
“Don’t answer the door,” he whispered back, and dragged me into the bedroom. Unfortunately, it was only to talk about Mrs. Crane.
“We can’t keep her out,” I said. “She has a duplicate key. We had to give the association our house key at closing.”
“She can’t barge in any time she wants,” Josh said. “This is America.”
“Keelhouse Condo is another country,” I said. “The condo documents say her committee has the right to inspect any repair work. We signed a statement saying we’d read the documents and agreed to the conditions.”
“But she has to make an appointment,” Josh said. “It says that too.”
We could hear Mrs. Crane rattling the front doorknob.
“She ignores the rules she doesn’t like,” I said. “She walks in on everyone at the condo. She caught Mrs. Zimmerman in the shower and Mr. Driver without his false teeth.”
“I didn’t know Mr. Driver had false teeth,” Josh said.
“It used to be the best-kept secret in the condo.”
“The deadbolt is on,” Josh said. “She doesn’t have a key to that. She can’t spend the whole day on our doorstep.”
Mrs. Crane spent an hour, which was long enough. Every few minutes the woman would pound on the door and demand to come in. Then she’d rattle our doorknob. She was surprisingly strong for a woman in her sixties.
“Please go away,” I shouted through the door. In case there really had been a long-ago Mr. Crane I added, “Josh and I are newlyweds. We need some private time.”
“Did she used to sell vacuum cleaners?” Josh whispered when Mrs. Crane launched another assault on our front door.
“I think she was a telemarketer in another life,” I said. “She is persistent. She spies on everybody in this building. How did she miss the plumber lugging a hot water heater on the elevator?”
“I don’t care, but it’s about time we had some good luck,” Josh said.
The door handle rattled again. The deadbolt held.
By one o’clock, the sweltering Florida sun forced Mrs. Crane back into her condo on the fifth floor.
“Can we go now?” Josh asked.
“Let’s give her half an hour,” I said.
She was back in twenty minutes. This time, she didn’t try to gain entrance. An envelope was slipped under our front door.
“I think we got one of her famous warning notices,” I said.
Mrs. Crane was notorious for sending threatening letters on what looked liked condo association stationary. Actually, she made her own letterhead on her computer. This one said,
“You have thirty (30) days to repair your defective hot water heater and allow the condo committee to inspect said repairs in your unit, as per section 12 (b) of the Keelhouse Condo Association documents. You are also responsible for any repairs to Unit 6265, directly below you, that were caused by your defective water heater.
“If you do not comply, the association has the right to fine you one hundred dollars per day ($100) until you are in compliance. The Keelhouse Condo Association also has the right to repossess your condo unit upon nonpayment of fines.”
“She’s signed it, ‘“Sincerely,’” Josh said.
“Oh, I’m sure she’s sincere,” I said. “What time is it?”
“One thirty,” Josh said, nuzzling my neck. “We can be at the resort in Key Largo in an hour and a half. We have a king bed.”
“That sounds heavenly, but what if Mrs. Crane has staked out the elevator in the lobby? Or her spy, Clarence the security guard, is working this afternoon?”
“Clarence doesn’t on Saturdays,” Josh said, giving me another kiss. “The weekend guard doesn’t like her.”
“How do we keep her from doing a surprise inspection of our condo while we’re out of town?” I asked.
“We have a deadbolt, remember?” Josh said. “And we didn’t give the condo association that key. It’s only seven flights down the fire stairs. We can escape without Mrs. Crane finding us. How many suitcases did you pack?”
“Just one. My sandals and bikini don’t weigh much.”
We sneaked down the hot, dusty fire stairs to the parking garage without encountering Mrs. Crane or Clarence. We threw our bags into our ancient Toyota and were soon on the Florida Turnpike, bound for Key Largo.
“I didn’t think we’d ever get away,” I said and stretched. I could feel the tension ebbing the farther we fled Fort Lauderdale. “Do you think Mrs. Crane has any children?”
“I don’t think she had any life,” Josh said. “She doesn’t work. That committee is her only entertainment. She prowls the condo looking for trouble. She doesn’t go anywhere for the holidays and never has any guests. Shirley told us she made the Gonzales family put their parents in a motel at Christmas because she said their condo was over the occupancy limit when they had holiday guests.”
“She forced poor Mrs. Daniels give up her cat because pets are against the condo rules,” I said. “We even signed a petition saying we didn’t care if she had Pumpkin in her unit. That cat never bothered anyone.”
“Mrs. Crane said there could be no exceptions if the condo documents were going to be valid. I guess that’s legally true,” Josh said, “but everyone turned a blind eye to Mrs. Daniels’ cat. She was a sweet old lady.”
“I don’t think she died of a heart attack when they took her cat away,” I said. “I think she died of a broken heart. She had that cat fifteen years.”
“Too bad Mrs. Crane doesn’t have a heart to break,” Josh said. Then he snickered.
“What’s so funny?” I asked.
“Shirley told me about the blonde on the boat scandal. Mrs. Crane patrols the docks at night, looking for people who are illegally living aboard their boats. She stopped by the Jamiesons’ new thirty-foot sailboat and saw Jack with a blonde. She screamed that he was cheating on his wife. Turned out his wife had dyed her hair a new color.”
“That hasn’t stopped Mrs. Crane from her nightly rounds along the condo docks,” I said.
“Nothing stops her,” Josh agreed.
We dissed Mrs. Crane for another twenty miles before Josh turned to the subject that had been gnawing at us since that fatal knock on the door. “What are we going to do when we get back home?”
“We’re going to clean up the illegal mess, get as much of the evidence out of the condo as we can, then make an appointment to let Mrs. Crane in and inspect the utility closet,” I said.
“What about the hot water heater permit?” Josh asked.
“I’ll tell her that the plumber said he’d handle it. We’re using a condo-approved vendor, so Jackson will know how to deal with her. Besides, for what he charged for that new water heater, he should suffer a little too.”
“Can we really afford this condo?” Josh said.
We’d been asking ourselves that question for six months. Josh and I had been married for five years, since we’d graduated from college. Even with our two salaries, there was barely enough left for our regular Saturday date night. We still had student loans, car payments, and huge credit card bills. But when the housing market took a dive, it was cheaper to buy than to rent. My late Aunt Marie left me twenty thousand dollars, and that cinched it. We started looking for a bargain condo, one that cost less than our apartment.
We found a spectacular deal at Keelhouse Condo. The previous owner was having money problems and needed to sell his condo fast. Keelhouse was in the midst of a two-year renovation project, so Robert’s condo didn’t show well, as the real estate agent said.
Worse, Robert had painted the inside a flat gray—even the bathrooms. It was like walking into a basement—on the seventh floor. But I saw the possibilities from the moment we entered the door. The living room had eight-foot-tall windows with a stunning view of the ocean to the east and the Intracoastal Waterway below. The master bedroom had a big walk-in closet. The other bedroom would make a fine home office. I thought the place was perfect.
Josh wasn’t as sure. He said the rooms were so bright he couldn’t watch TV with the sun glaring inside, and it stayed light until after eight o’clock in the summer. Blackout curtains for the huge windows would cost a fortune.
Our real estate agent, Marcia, came up with a solution. “Do you need two walk-in closets?” she asked.
“Not really,” I said. “We only have one closet right now. We’d like a little more room, but we don’t need that much.”
“Then why don’t you take the dressing room that’s connected to the room you’re making into a home office and turn it into a media room?” Marcia suggested. She whipped out a tape measure and said, “Take out this double vanity and the wall mirror and the area is a good size— twelve feet by twenty. I don’t think this closet wall—” She rapped on it and got a hollow thud. “—is weight bearing. Remove it and you have a nice, windowless media room. If you ever sell the condo, it’s perfect as a baby’s bedroom or nanny’s room.”
“Works for me,” Josh said.
“The only problem,” Marcia said, “is that the condo board may not approve the changes.”
“If they know about them,” Josh said.
“I do know a reasonable contractor,” Marcia said. “My other clients love Larry. He’d never say a word.”
We met with the contractor before we closed the deal. Larry confirmed that he could do the job. “But I know that old lady, Mrs. Crane,” he said. “She will never give you permission.”
“Any way we can do it so she doesn’t find out?” I asked. “She’ll hear you tearing out the walls. That will be noisy.”
“We can make as much noise as we want on weekdays,” Larry said. “Until six o’clock at night, we could have a brass band playing in that condo and nobody could do a thing. If you hire me to do the painting and minor repairs, I can do your other project. It’s in my best interests to keep my mouth shut. I don’t want that old biddy on my back, either.”
“How do we remove the debris?” asked Josh.
“You can carry out most of it in your own packing boxes after you move in,” Larry said. “There’s a Dumpster in the guest parking lot for the condo construction. If you dump the broken wallboard, molding, and other junk at night, no one will know. Some of it I can cart out, like the mirror we’re taking off that wall, the closet doors, and the marble vanity. We can say you’re getting a new vanity. That’s considered redecoration and it’s legal.”
“That’s the truth,” I said, righteously. “We are getting a new sink.” We were relocating it to the second bathroom, instead of having it in the dressing room.
“What do you think?” Josh asked me.
“Let’s go for it.”
And so we did. We closed on our dream condo a month later. Robert the owner appeared at the closing, took our money, and promptly moved to Majorca.
Once we moved in, we understood why he left with no forwarding address. Robert had been a bad home handyman. He had repaired a broken chain inside the toilet tank with duct tape. When the kitchen ceiling started smoking, we realized Robert had also done his own wiring. That cost us another two thousand.
While Larry was working on the kitchen wiring, he took down Robert’s ugly gold ceiling fans in the living room and put in top hats—recessed lighting. It was illegal in most of this building, but it looked terrific. We were now five thousand over our moving budget, and that didn’t include the new couch or the sound system for Josh’s media room.
The debts were mounting. Maybe the curtains would have been cheaper, but it was too late. We loved the condo, especially at sunset. It was our dream home, except for Mrs. Crane, the nightmare on the fifth floor.
The work on the secret media room continued every weekday. Each time one of us left the condo, we carried out a box of debris and emptied it in a Dumpster somewhere along the nearby commercial strip.
It was surprising how much construction trash Larry tore out of the small room. It nearly filled our entire home office. Chunks of wallboard seemed to multiply if we left them alone overnight. Dust settled on everything. All our furniture was draped in plastic.
We were down to four boxes now, plus two eight-foot metal strips that went over the top of the former closet. Those were going to be difficult to sneak out. We couldn’t hide them in trash bags or boxes. They were too thick and heavy to bend.
* * * *
Our time in Key Largo was over too soon. We ate yellowtail snapper and real Key lime pie, which is yellow instead of lime colored. We took walks on the beach and admired the blue-green waters of the Gulf of Mexico. We played in the pool’s waterfall. We took a tour on the African Queen, the real boat from the old movie.
I’d brought four mysteries to read—my favorite kind of book—but barely got through one chapter. We remembered why we got married in the first place. I laughed at Josh’s jokes again, and he ran his fingers through my long, blonde hair. We spent a lot of time in bed.
Saturday, there was a knock on our hotel room door. The waiter delivered our breakfast of toast and eggs.
“So tell me,” I asked Josh. “Why is soggy toast and lukewarm eggs better than anything we make at home?”
“Because the hotel has better cooks?” he asked.
I tossed a pillow at him, and soon we were in a full-blown pillow fight, and that turned into something more interesting. Before we knew it, the hotel manager was on the phone, telling us it was two hours past checkout time.
I was glad it was raining when we left. We wouldn’t be missing any sun time by the pool. Josh and I had to return to the condo and face Mrs. Crane.
We drove through a gray, dreary rain to Keelhouse Condo. Our old car began bucking and rattling as we approached Fort Lauderdale. It chugged up the parking garage ramp and died in our space, the dashboard lit with warning lights. Smoke poured from under the hood.
“I think our car is shot,” Josh said.
More bills.
* * * *
If the car hadn’t died, I wonder if Mrs. Crane would still be alive. Another debt for car repairs was the last straw. Maybe the message we had waiting from Shirley downstairs would have made a difference. But we didn’t get a chance to hear it. We were still carrying in our suitcases when Mrs. Crane materialized on our doorstep, arms folded.
“Where did you get those top hats in your living room?” she asked.
“Huh?” Josh said.
Mrs. Crane stepped over our suitcases and walked into our condo, uninvited as usual. She pointed at our ceiling.
“Those are illegal,” she said.
“Uh, they were installed by the previous owner,” I lied.
Mrs. Crane sniffed. “How did Robert get a permit? Top hats are forbidden by the city codes in this section of the building.”
“You’ll have to ask him,” I said, my voice rising to a terrified squeak.
“I haven’t seen Robert recently,” she said.
“I think he’s moved to Majorca,” I said. That was the truth. There was little chance Mrs. Crane would track him down.
“And what about that room?” she said.
“What room?” I said, feeling the dread rising in my gut.
She threw open the door to our home office and pointed to the wreckage of the walk-in closet.”What are you doing in here? You don’t have permission from the condo association for a major change.”
“You didn’t have our permission to search our condo, either,” I said.
“I have the right in the condo documents,” she said. “You thought you could lock me out with a deadbolt, but you didn’t bother to lock your kitchen window. I opened it and walked right in.”
I could see her footsteps in the construction dust.
“Now I see why you wanted to keep me out,” Mrs. Crane said. “You will restore this dressing room to the way it was when you bought this place. At your expense. If it’s the last thing I do.”
It was. Josh picked up the long strip of metal and whacked her on the head. Her eyes got funny and she dropped on the floor on her back.
“Holy shit,” Josh said. “I didn’t mean to do that.”
We knelt beside her and felt for a pulse.
“I think she’s dead,” I said.
“No, no,” Josh said. “She can’t be dead.”
“Josh, she’s not breathing.”
“I guess I’ll call the police and turn myself in,” he said.
“No! You didn’t mean to kill her. There must be a way out of this.”
“It was an accident,” Josh said.
“Of course it was, but how do we prove that?”
“You read mysteries,” he said.
I did. I paced the apartment and looked at the afternoon sun on the water.
“The water!” I said. “She patrols the docks. What if she fell into the water? We’ll wait until late tonight. Security leaves at midnight. We’ll carry her out.”
“How? She’s heavy,” Josh said.
“We still have that big wardrobe box left over from the move,” I said. “And Larry left behind the dolly he uses to carry out heavy things.”
“Brilliant! We’ll put her in the box now,” he said.
“No, we can’t have the blood pool in the wrong place. That’s an important forensic clue that could work against us. Let her stay on the floor until we’re ready to move her.”
We threw an old sheet over Mrs. Crane, then spent the rest of the night pacing and unpacking our few things. We did a load of laundry. We checked e-mail and our phone messages. One was from Shirley downstairs.
“Listen, kids, don’t worry about my kitchen ceiling,” Shirley said. “I always hated popcorn and you’ve given me an excuse to get rid of it. My homeowner’s insurance will cover most of it. It was time for a change.”
“See,” I said. “Not everyone in Keelhouse is a jerk.”
I scrambled some eggs for dinner, but neither of us had any appetite.
It was three in the morning when we loaded Mrs. Crane into the wardrobe box and hauled her out in the dolly. She fit easily into the freight elevator. Josh wheeled the box to the edge of the dock. It was silent in the cool, moonless night. Little clouds of mist drifted across the water.
Josh tipped the box into the water and Mrs. Crane slid out with hardly a splash. Just a “blub,” and then she was gone.
We hauled the big wardrobe box over to the Dumpster, flattened it, and threw it on top. The Dumpster was almost full. Then we loaded up the dolly with the last boxes of debris. I carried out the two long metal strips. We dropped them on top of the wardrobe box, as quietly as possible. No lights came on in the nearby condos. Our neighbors never noticed.
Josh staggered off to bed. I cleaned up all the dust and the little bit of blood from Mrs. Crane.
The next morning, the construction Dumpster with the only evidence against us went off to the landfill.
Mrs. Crane did not show up for the board meeting Thursday night. Her unexcused absence was noted in the minutes. No one asked where she was. Everyone silently hoped she would never return. There were no inquiries and no missing person report. Her spot on the condo committee was filled by Shirley. The other condo residents were thrilled. Someone started a story that she’d gone for a round-the-world cruise, which was true, in a weird way.
Mrs. Crane’s body was never found. Josh and I suspected she’d drifted down the Intracoastal and out to sea. Her condo mortgage and fees were paid by monthly automatic withdrawals until her considerable bank account ran out nearly three years later. She was declared legally dead. The association took over her condo for nonpayment of fees and assessments.
We feel she would have wanted it that way.