Selling Murder House

Chapter 8

It was early evening when I returned to Saddlebrook, and I discovered much too late that it was Halloween. For the first time I could recall, the neighborhood was alive. Witches and wizards and spider-men milled the streets in unlikely groups, and tiny, excited voices filled the air. Porch lights were on, shining like little light houses, beckoning the monsters up their long walks, luring them in with promises of treats.

The Madsen House was dark, its porch light off, the universal signal to trick-or-treaters: no candy here. As if it needed a signal to keep kids away.

I knocked on the door and waited for Paul to answer.

"Trick or treat," I said when the door swung open.

"Come on in," Paul said, a little flatly, but he offered me a little smile as he stepped back to let me in.

He'd gotten a head start. The floors were lined with drop cloths, the furniture was covered, and the edges were neatly taped.

"You've been busy," I said, impressed.

Paul looked much the way he had the first time we met, wearing an old t-shirt and baggy sweatpants. Maybe I was influenced by the first impression, but he looked more comfortable, more like himself in this attire.

We got to work, starting in the higher-traffic areas and working our way in. It was quickly apparent that we'd be needing several coats of paint to fully cover the pink. I was sweating before we finished the first wall in the entryway.

I bumped into a plastic container and I edged in the bottom corner of the second wall, causing a stack of picture frames to clatter to the floor.

"Oh my gosh, I'm so sorry," I said, setting my paintbrush down and reaching to collect the frames. I inspected them as I picked them up, to check for broken glass, but none had cracked. Looking at the pictures, I realized they'd formerly hung on the walls, that they'd been taken down to paint, stacked haphazardly in a box and pushed to the center of the room.

The one I held was a photo of, I guessed, the Henry Madsens. A handsome middle-aged man with thick hair and tanned skin stood holding the waist of a petite woman with a chic Peter Pan haircut. Their children, a college-age girl with long brown hair, a gangly teenage boy with acne, and a young girl wearing a frilly pink dress stood in front of them. They were a beautiful family.

Paul was beside me then, helping me re-stack the picture frames. I handed him the photograph, a little sheepishly.

"No problem," he said. "I honestly have no idea what I'm going to do with all these pictures."

"Were you . . . close? With your cousin?" I asked.

"No," Paul said, darkly. He straightened to return to the wall we'd abandoned, then continued, "Henry and I were never close. None of the cousins were, growing up. But that was by design, I think."

"How do you mean?" I asked.

I forced myself to keep my eyes on the wall as I painted. I found myself wanting to read Paul's face as he spoke.

"Well, my grandmother, I told you she was an eccentric woman," he said. "Do you want the long story or the abridged version?"

I smiled. "I think we're going to be here a while," I said.

He nodded. "In that case, I'm having a beer. You want one?"

"Sure," I said.

He left and came back with two bottles, and handed me one. I took a sip. There was a silence while we both dipped our paint rollers, then Paul spoke.

"My grandmother, Margaret Madsen -- she went by Maggie -- is kind of an urban legend in our family," Paul said. "A legend, I think, because nobody really knows who she was before she met my grandfather. She was poor, I think, though she'd never admit to it.

"She was a fairly well-known children's book author in her time, made quite a bit of money on her own, a kind of empire. I can't say I've read her work, I don't think I totally fit the demographic. You might've seen her books in the office?"

I remembered the bookshelves in the office, full of pink and purple book spines. I nodded.

"Anyway, she made a lot of money, and when she married my grandfather she owned a fortune. She had the house designed exactly to her liking, based on some old dollhouse she'd always wanted as a child but was too poor to have, or so family legend goes. I think she wanted everything she'd never had.

"So she spent a lot of money on the home, but as she got older, she became more and more paranoid about the family's wealth. She didn't even want to give her own kids their trust funds," he said.

He paused to take a sip of his beer, which reminded me to drink my own.

"But when my grandfather died, she really tightened the pursestrings. She said that when she died, she'd be giving away her fortune to one of her grandchildren, and only one. That's when the Sunday tea parties started."

I put down my paint roller.

"Why only one? If she had so much, why not spread the wealth?" I asked, incredulous.

Paul raised his arms, an exaggerated shrug, and I knew I was preaching to the choir.

"What I think," Paul said, his voice low. "I think more than anything in the world, more than money, more than the life-size-fucking dollhouse of her dreams, all old Maggie Madsen wanted was power and control. And she got it. In the last years of her life, she had me and all my cousins flocking to her house every year to have some joke of an afternoon tea, to dance and sing and play music for her . . . like little court jesters."

He trailed off, disgusted.

"To compete?" I asked. "For the inheritance?"

Paul nodded.

"Jesus," I said.

We'd finished the foyer and through the hallway, so we made our way into the sitting room. We worked in silence. I didn't dare ask another question, feeling the weight of his story between us. But then Paul was speaking again.

"Want to know the worst part?"

I said nothing. Did I want to know?

"All my life, my cousins all thought I'd be the one she would leave everything to," he said.

"Really?" I said. A chill crept up my spine. He sounded . . . angry.

"I was the baby," Paul explained. "Maggie loved babies. She used to call me 'Paul my Doll,' well into my teens. It was humiliating, of course, but it did give me confidence in the inheritance. I think I kind of.. Threw my life away because of it. I kind of just lived my life as if... any day I might become an estate owner with a massive fortune."

Another silence fell as we worked. I was on my second beer. I told myself I shouldn't prod, shouldn't pry, but when Paul offered nothing more, I caved to my curiosity.

"So what happened?" I asked.

"Hmm?" Paul said, as if he'd forgotten what we were talking about, as if he'd forgotten I was even there.

"How did Henry end up . . ." I started, not sure how to phrase it.

"The favorite grandchild?" Paul offered with a rye smile. "Henry was the only one to step up when Maggie fell ill. Him and Eva moved in here and nursed her up until she died."

The silence fell again, and this time, neither of us felt like breaking it.