Selling Murder House

Chapter 7

Stassi reached out the following day to set up a get-together over drinks, to discuss the "plan of attack." She was excited, I could hear the smile in her voice over the phone, and it made me nervous. On one hand, I was ecstatic to have nailed down the listing. The other hand, however, was trembling with nerves at the prospect of working one-on-one with Stassi.

Co-listings were notoriously troublesome within the Larson Group, and they were therefore incredibly rare, and only happened at the request of Leo or Lilian on very special circumstances. The agents at the Group were independent, type-A, my-way-or-the-highway types, and while they could get along fairly well over brunch and drinks, they didn't play well together when commissions were on the table. In all my time with the brokerage, I hadn't heard of a single instance of Stassi co-listing with another agent. Her standing in the company as a top-selling agent, along with her close relationship with Leo, made her essentially immune to the burden of a co-listing. It was practically unthinkable, but I had Stassi smiling and laughing into her phone, all enthusiasm and energy, as she discussed our upcoming listing together. It meant one thing: she had chosen this. She had wanted this. I was afraid to find out why.

We met at a swanky restaurant uptown. I found Stassi already at the table, looking way too comfortable in a skin-tight white leather pant suit and sapphire blue heels. Her hair was tied up in a sleek high ponytail, which she flipped over her shoulder as she leaned to sip on her cocktail.

Of all the agents at the Larson Group, Stassi was the fashion extremist. All the agents wore designer brands in-season and followed the latest runway trends, but Stassi was the one who wore the trends before they even caught on. She had friends in the fashion industry, I remember her saying, casually, in passing, and often had clothes sent to her before they appeared on the runway.

She greeted me with a bright white smile and a kiss on the cheek.

"Mary, you look lovely," she said.

I didn't -- my skirt was wrinkled from sitting in the shopping bag all week, and my eyes were puffy and dark from a bad night's sleep -- but I accepted the compliment and returned it. This was the standard greeting for Larson agents, I had learned. We begin the conversation by agreeing that we all look fabulous.

"So tell me," Stassi said, leaning in conspiratorially. "How'd you snag the Madsen House?"

"Oh, honestly, I just asked if he wanted to sell the house," I said.

Her eyes lit up.

"You know the Madsens?" she asked.

I laughed, confused by her line of questioning. This was not where I thought this conversation would go. The rumor that I had connections must have made its way around the office.

"No, not at all! I just knocked on the door and Paul Madsen answered. I gave him my card--"

The part about the business card was a white lie, but Stassi didn't need to know how unprepared I'd really been. It hardly mattered though, because she cut me off.

"Paul Madsen, okay, let me write that down," she said, and typed into her phone. "And what relation is he to . . . you know, the former residents?"

"He's Henry Madsen's cousin," I said.

Stassi frowned, as if the simple fact of the relation disappointed her. Bewildered, I shifted the conversation to the work ahead of us.

"There's something else you should know about the house," I said.

She was going to find out sooner or later. I figured it would be better to give her a fair warning. She raised an eyebrow. I took a long pull on my drink. It was strong.