From Death Revokes the Offer

The conceit to these stories is that I speak directly to you.
The first thing you should know about me is that I do not cut my own hair with nail scissors. Please. Robert would kill me if I even considered touching my hair with my own two hands.
I'm also not a doctor and I never know exactly why a body is dead. I only know that when you find a dead body in the kitchen, it makes it that much more difficult to sell the house, what with all the hysteria about full disclosure nowadays.
Difficult, but not impossible.
I am not a national park ranger. I do not do this in between caring for adorable children or difficult teens. In fact, I completely forgot to have children. I'm sure the word children was written on some long ago to-do list along with items like white wedding at the Marin Country Club and lose 50 pounds by Christmas penciled in just below that.  
And I am not a sheriff for a small town in the Deep South.
I also know that some people will look to the author and say, "Oh, is that YOU?" Of course it's not her. I have twice the listings she does and better hair. I already own that Dooney & Bourke purple crocodile embossed bag she craves but can't afford. So I'm here to tell you, I am myself. For some people like my best friend, Carrie, that is enough. For others like my long-suffering broker on record, it's too much.
"Can't you just tone it down a little?" Inez asks on a weekly basis.
Nope is my answer.
Sometimes I think I should get a little dog. But I worry that it won't really go with the bag.
So, the body in the kitchen. You are probably wondering about that, like is it some kind of metaphor? No, it was Mr. Mortimer Maximilian Smith. He had two interesting first names to make up for the third and by the time I discovered him, he was dead on the floor of his rather pedestrian -- in my opinion -- home in southern Marin.
I wasn't really supposed to be there at all. I don't usually sell homes in Marin. My beat is the River's Bend area of Sonoma County, but my mother knew Mr. Smith from her exercise class. He told her that he wanted to sell his house quickly and needed someone he could trust.
I can appreciate his concern. Especially since, according to my mother, Mr. Smith's children don't exude trustworthiness (although she later admitted that she had not, in fact, met any of the Smith children, so you can see we began this project based strictly on cold hard facts).  But since the children had apparently announced last week that they thought it was better for dad to move out of his huge home and into a more suitable location, Dad, in response to this new threat to his lifestyle, needed to counter fairly quickly.
I love old children. Suitable location? That meant some community far enough away from said children so they weren't obligated to weekly visits. From the sounds of it, the children were probably considering one of the active senior communities currently proliferating across the country.
And I love Baby Boomers. An Active Senior Community? Retirement home. I can hardly wait to see how Boomers manage to spin death. In Mr. Smith's case, he already knows.
Here's another fact: the children weren't planning to sell the house; that was Mr. Smith's idea. And it made no sense at all.
Enter me, Allison Little -- a Little Goes a Long Way -- with New Century Realty. I had a dead man on the Spanish tile floor, survivors who did not want to sell, and the police on the phone. Or was it the fire department? Whomever. I was personally hoping I was calling within the county limits, but there is no guarantee.  I could be talking to some nice young thing in Sacramento or L.A., or Bangladesh.
"There's a dead body in the kitchen," I calmly announced.
"How dead?"
"Very. Can someone come out and, you know, get him?"