Selling Murder House

Chapter 2 (Continued)

After all the guests had filtered out, I helped Sofia clean up the kitchen. The sandwiches were long gone, and the champagne had dried up long ago.

Sofia checked her watch.

"My babysitter's going to be around for another hour or so. Wanna grab a drink? Maybe some dinner?" Sofia offered.

She drove us to a chic little bar near the office, a place I knew as the go-to destination for after-work cocktails or lunch hour mimosas, but I'd never been. We met up with Taysha and Heather, who were apparently two to three drinks deep. I suddenly felt a lot better about those two glasses of champagne.

"Sooo, how'd it go?" Heather asked Sofia as we shuffled into their booth. "Oh, hey Mary!"

I smiled.

"It was great," Sofia said. "A great turnout, and some very aggressive potential buyers. I think I'll have at least two offers in my inbox in the next hour."

I felt a little awkward being there, but once the drinks and conversation started flowing, I was surprised by how fun these girls were. They mostly talked about work, venting about difficult clients, impossible list prices, that kind of thing, so I didn't do a whole lot of talking. I wasn't mad about it though, I liked listening to their stories, and I think the girls liked sharing them with someone who hadn't heard them all already.

"This one guy," Taysha said, then paused to sip her drink. "I was showing him this amazing property, right? And the whole time he's checking me out. I ignored it, you know, what can you do?"

The others nodded, and I nodded too. What else could you do? I shivered at the thought of being alone in a house with an obnoxious man, forced to pretend nothing's wrong in the hopes of getting a sale.

"So I'm showing him the bedroom, doing my best not to say anything that could possibly lead his mind in the wrong direction," Taysha continued. "And you know what this guy says? 'Do you come with the house?'"

She said the last part in her best deep, village-idiot voice she could muster, which had us all laughing and groaning at the same time.

"Ohhh, one of those guys," Heather said, knowingly.

"Yep. And this guy even had the nerve to ask me out to dinner afterward to," Taysha pulled up finger quotes, "'Discuss the property'"

The others groaned again.

"Jesus," I said. "I'm starting to understand why you guys never miss a happy hour."

The girls erupted into laughter, and I smiled. I was happy to have lifted the mood.

Later, we went our separate ways. Sofia offered to give me a ride, but I told her I'd walk home. She gave me a polite amount of hassle about it, but when I reminded her I'd be walking through Saddlebrook she let me go. Nothing bad ever happened in Saddlebrook.

Except I guess it had.

With a little liquid courage in me, I was determined to take another look at the Madsen House. The conversation with the girls had distracted me from what I'd overheard at the sunset showing, but now that the night was winding down, it was all I could think about. Maybe it was my natural morbid curiosity mixed with a bubbly champagne head.

I pulled my trench coat tight around my waste, and headed off into the night. Saddlebrook had streetlights, but they were few and far between. I walked from one little island of orange light to the next, passing through larger seas of darkness in between. I imagined myself from atop the houses on their hills, a girl dressed in black appearing and disappearing in the night. I couldn't tell whether I felt safer in the light or in the cover of darkness.

I felt a tickle at the back of my neck, and felt the impulse to check my back. There was no movement that I could see -- just the spots of light and seas of darkness I'd already put behind me. But I must have heard something, I thought, or was this just my mind playing tricks on me, like a little kid in a dark bedroom. I trudged on toward the next island of light.

Soon I came upon the side street, the street where the Madsen House sits like a king at the head of his table. I paused there, stood where that strange woman had stood just hours before. What had she seen? What had she felt?

All I could see was a dark house. And had I really expected anything else? Maybe I'd expected to see police vans, detectives and forensics crews, sweeping the house for any DNA or fingerprints or weapons. Or maybe I'd expected a seemingly empty house, with a flicker of movement in the window. Maybe I just thought, if I came there, and stood exactly where that woman had stood, that I would feel what she felt, that I would understand.

All I saw, though, was a dark old house. The only movement I saw was from my own drunken feet shifting in my heels on the sidewalk. I laughed.

When I started walking, I heard something. An engine humming, somewhere behind me. But I couldn't see any cars on the street.

I shook my head and walked, faster now. The sound could have been a million things, but from where I stood in such close proximity to the neighborhood murder house, plus everything that had happened that day, my mind was in a particularly paranoid place.

When I passed two more patches of light, I heard it again, quiet and distant, but abrupt in the quiet of the night. Maybe fear was heightening my senses. I whipped around fast, and caught motion, somewhere in the darkness, a discrete black car had shifted forward, and I'd just caught the end of it, a flash of tail lights before they went black again. My mind raced back to my car's break-in, that tickling little thought that it wasn't some random thief, that it was targeted . . .

It was enough for me to bolt. I ran as fast as I could and didn't look back.

When I got home (safe, and feeling foolish) and my racing heart began to settle, I curled up on the couch with Winnie and pulled my computer onto my lap. When I searched the neighborhood, a news story appeared on my screen, published just nine hours ago.

Additional Body Discovered in Saddlebrook Home

Updated 9 Hours Ago

Police discovered the body of Henry Madsen, 47 on Wednesday morning at his home in the historic Saddlebrook neighborhood, where four others were killed nearly two weeks prior. The deceased Mr. Madsen was previous regarded by investigators as a suspect in the murder case.

When asked about Mr. Madsen's status in the investigation, Commissioner Ronald Dover declined to comment, stating that the investigation is still ongoing, but that there are "currently no other suspects," and there is no threat to the area.

Also found at the home earlier this month were the bodies of Mr. Madsen's immediate family: Wife Eva Madsen, 45, daughter Elizabeth Madsen, 19, son Ethan Madsen, 17, and daughter Erica Madsen, 11.

If you have any information regarding the crime, please contact police.

My mind reeled at the death count. Even before they had found Henry Madsen just that day, three people, including children, had died in that house, had been murdered. An entire family had been wiped out. Everything about the case felt hushed, downplayed, hidden. The article didn't even include an image. In a wealthy neighborhood, where nothing bad ever happened, how was this not bigger news?

The report was infuriatingly brief, and I found my mind wandering, looking within itself for all the morbid details it craved, all the things left out of the article. Had he used a knife? A gun? A baseball bat? I flinched away from the violent images my rattled mind painted.

When I finally fell asleep that night, I dreamt about the Madsen House.