Odors were the key. You could tell three-quarters of everything about a house by the way it smelled-condition, upkeep, what kind of people owned it, whether the roof leaked or the basement flooded. What you didn't want was that dead tomblike smell of a shut-up house, as if it were a funeral parlor, or anything that smelled of dry rot or chemicals or even paint. Cooking odors were anathema. Ditto the stink of animals. She'd listed one house-one of her few failures-in which an old lady had died surrounded by thirty-two cats that had pissed, crapped and sprayed on every surface available, including the ceilings. The only hope for that place was to burn it down.
Now, stepping into the Matzoobs', the first thing Kyra did was close the door behind her and take a good long lingering sniff. Then she exhaled and tried it again, alert to every nuance, her nose as keen as any connoisseur's. Not bad. Not bad at all. There was maybe the faintest whiff of cooking oil from some long-forgotten meal, a trace of dog or cat, mothballs maybe, but she couldn't be sure. It helped that the place was empty-when it first went on the market eight months ago the Matzoobs were still here, the halls, closets and bathrooms steeping in their own peculiar odor. And to call the odor “peculiar” wasn't being judgmental, not at all-it was merely descriptive. Every family, every house, had its own aroma, as unique and individual as a thumbprint.
The Matzoobs' was a rich ferment of smell, ranging from the perfume of the fresh-cut flowers Sheray Matzoob favored to the pungent stab of garlic and coriander Joe Matzoob had learned to use in his gourmet cooking classes and the festering sweat socks of Matzoob Jr., the basketball star. It was a homey smell, but too complicated to do anybody any good. And the furniture was a nightmare. Big cumbersome pieces finished in an almost ebony stain that seemed to drink up what little light penetrated the thick blanket-like curtains Sheray Matzoob had inherited from her mother. And the portraits-they were something else altogether. Big, crude, cheesy things that made the Matzoobs look like ghouls, with gold-tinted frames and paint so thick it might have been applied with a butter knife.
But now the place was empty, and that suited Kyra just fine. Once in a while you'd get a place that was so exquisitely furnished you'd ask the sellers to leave their things in place until the house was in escrow, but that was rare. Most people had no taste. No dream of it. Not a clue. And yet they all thought they had it-were smug about it even-and they'd walk right out the door because of an unfortunate lamp or a deep plush carpet in a shade they couldn't fathom. All things considered, Kyra preferred it this way-a neutral environment, stripped to the essentials: walls, floors, ceilings and appliances. A vacant house became hers in a way-it had been abandoned, deserted, left in her hands and hers alone, and sometimes the sellers were off in another state or country even-and she couldn't help feeling proprietorial about it. Sometimes, making the rounds of her houses-she had forty-six current listings, more than half of them unoccupied-she felt like the queen of some fanciful country, a land of high archways, open rooms and swimming pools that would have made an inland sea if stretched end-to-end across her domain.
There was a broom in the garage-practically the only thing left there, if you discounted the two trash cans and a box of heavy-duty garbage bags. Kyra swept the water from the front porch and then went into the bathroom in the master suite to freshen up her face before Sally Lieberman from Sunrise arrived with her buyers. The bathroom was dated, unfortunately, by its garish ceramic tiles, each with the miniature yellow, blue and green figure of a bird emblazoned on it, and by the tarnished faux-brass fixtures and cut-glass towel racks that gave the place the feel of the ladies' room in a Mexican restaurant. Ah, well, each to her taste, Kyra was thinking, and then she caught a good look at herself in the mirror.
It was a shock. She looked awful. Haggard, frowsy, desperate, like some stressed-out Tupperware hostess or something. The problem was her nose. Or, actually, it was Sacheverell and the night she'd spent, but all the grief and shock and exhaustion of the ordeal was right there, consolidated in her nose. The tip of it was red-bright red, naming-and when the tip of her nose was red it seemed to pull her whole face in on itself like some freakish vortex, The Amazing Lady with the Shrinking Face. Ever since she'd had her nose modified when she was fourteen, it had a tendency to embarrass her in times of stress. Whatever the doctor had done to it-remove a sliver of bone, snip a bit here and there-it was always just a shade paler than her cheeks, chin and brow, and it took on color more quickly. It always seemed to be sunburned, for one thing. And when she had a cold or flu or felt agitated or depressed or overwrought it blazed out from the center of her face like something you'd expect to find at the top of a Christmas tree.
You couldn't move property with a nose like that. But why dwell on it? She took out her compact and went to work.
Just as she was putting the finishing touches to her face she heard Sally Lieberman chiming from the front door, “We're here!”
Sally was mid-forties, dressed like she owned the store, worked out at the gym, a real professional. Kyra had closed six properties with her over the course of the past two years and she valued her input. The buyers, though, left something to be desired. They hung back at the door, looking sulky and hard-to-please. Sally introduced them as the Paulymans, Gerald and Sue. He was frazzle-haired and unshaven, in a pair of blue jeans gone pale with use, and she had pink and black beads braided into her hair. Kyra knew from experience not to judge from first appearances-she'd once had a woman in her seventies who dressed like a bag lady but wound up writing a check for a two-point-seven-mil estate in Cold Canyon-but they didn't look auspicious. Maybe they were musicians or TV writers, she thought, hoping for the best. They had to have something going for them or Sally wouldn't have brought them around.
“So what's with the wet spot on the porch?” the husband wanted to know, confronting her eyes, his voice nagging and hoarse.
You couldn't be evasive-evasive didn't work. Even the most complacent buyer would think you were trying to put something over on them, and a buyer like this would eat you alive. Kyra put on her smile. “A broken sprinkler head. I've already called the gardener about it.”
“That porch has a real pitch to it.”
“We offer a one-year buyer-protection policy on every house we list, gratis.”
“I can't believe this carpet,” the wife said.
“And look at this,” the husband whined, pushing past Kyra and into the living room, where he went down on his hands and knees to wet a finger and run it along the baseboard, “the paint is flaking.”
Kyra knew the type. They were looky-loos of the first stripe, abusive, angry, despicable people who'd make you show them two hundred houses and then go out and buy a trailer. Kyra gave them her spiel-deal of the century, room to spare, old-world craftsmanship, barely been lived in-handed them each a brochure with a glossy color photo of the house reproduced on the front and left them to wander at will.
By two, she had a headache. Nothing was moving, anywhere, there were no messages on her machine and only six people had showed up for the realtors' open house she'd catered herself on a new listing in West Hills-all that Chardonnay, Brie and Danish soda bread gone to waste, not to mention half a platter of California roll, ebi and salmon sushi. She spent the rest of the afternoon at the office, doing busywork, writing up ad copy and making phone calls, endless phone calls. Three extra-strength Excedrin couldn't begin to quell the throbbing in her temples, and every time she lifted a document from her desk she saw Sacheverell as a puppy chasing a wadded-up ball of paper as if it were a part of him that had gotten away. She called Delaney at five to see how Jordan was taking it-he was fine, Delaney told her, so absorbed in his Nintendo he wouldn't have known a dog from a chicken-and then she left work early to close up her houses and head home.