Brent looked up from the files and smiled. “It looks to me like they didn’t comply with the Davis Stirling Act,” Brent told her. “They need to personally serve you with notice of the board’s decision to foreclose. This proof of service says they served you by substituted service at your office.”
“I’m never at the office. I work out of home.”
“That’s what substituted service means. If they can’t find you at your home or place of business, they can serve an adult there who appears to be in charge. But the Act requires that they personally serve you.”
“What do I do?”
“Well, I think it’s too late to serve you now, but they may try to do it after we raise the issue. Just be aware.”
“I won’t answer the front door, and I’ll go in and out through the garage by car.”
“That will probably work. But, remember, if we win this case, it’s just going to delay the inevitable. You’ll have to pay the HOA assessments and fees.”
“I know. I just need some time.”
Time was a precious commodity to Nancy. She needed to close a couple of escrows, and needed to do it fast. In addition to the assessments, there would be legal fees for the HOA and now for her new attorney, Brent Marks.
Brent’s secretary, Melinda, an attractive 20 something, brought in the retainer agreement for Nancy to sign. She was what some people may call a “dumb blonde,” equipped with stunning blue eyes, but, besides being a little ditzy, she was anything but dumb.
“I’m so happy that I found you, Brent,” said Nancy. “I know that you’ll put an end to this nightmare.”
“It’s not going to be easy, Nancy, but I’ll do my best.”
“I know you will.”
Nancy smiled with hope as she signed the agreement, and then reached into her purse for her checkbook.
“This is the best $5,000 I ever spent,” she said, as she wrote out the check.
* * *
Back at Orange Grove, Barbara Densmore was staying up late as usual, going over the HOA books. Something about them was just not right. There seemed to be thousands of dollars unaccounted for, and she wanted to prepare as much as she could for her meeting with Frances Templeton, who was also the HOA’s treasurer. Barbara had developed a nasty cough over the course of the day, and the cough syrup she had been taking was not helping at all. I must have caught some kind of flu, she thought, and it was getting to the point where she felt she needed a doctor. She was achy all over and feverish. As she picked up the phone to call the doctor, it became difficult to breathe and she gasped for breath.
“Call 911 immediately,” her physician advised. “I’ll meet you at the Cottage Hospital emergency room.”
Barbara hung up and did as she was instructed. She was in a panic, her heart was racing, and she was coughing up a white foam, mixed with blood.
Barbara, her body surging with adrenalin, shot up from her seat and headed for the door. The room was spinning as she gasped for air and lost her balance. She reached out to try to catch the top of a chair as she fell to the floor.
CHAPTER FIVE
Barbara Densmore was pronounced dead on arrival at Cottage Hospital. The cause of death was cited as respiratory failure. Barbara’s health, in general, had always been good, and her sudden death came as a shock to Dr. Theodore Brown, her regular doctor, who was puzzled, and could not determine what had caused her body to shut down. From the symptoms she exhibited, he suspected it may be some kind of poisoning. He collected samples of the bloody foam discharge, as well as blood and urine samples and sent them to the lab for a toxicology test.
* * *
Frances Templeton knocked on Barbara Densmore’s door at precisely 8:30 p.m. for her meeting with Barbara. When Barbara didn’t answer, Frances called her cell phone, but it went straight to her voice mail.
“Barbara, are you in there?” called Frances, as she pounded the door.
“Is everything alright?”
Keith Michel, Barbara’s next door neighbor, heard the racket, peeled open his non-conforming blue curtain, peered out his window and saw Frances on Barbara’s front porch, frantically knocking. Let the bitch pound on the door until her knuckles bleed, he thought, and went back to smoking the rest of his roach while he endured his textbook assignment. A part time student and a full time surfer, Keith was one of four guys who roomed together as tenants in the four bedroom townhouse. He hated the HOA just as much as the next guy, no – even more – but the pounding on the door in his hypersensitive state seemed like it was slamming around in his head and reverberating down his spinal cord. He opened the door to put an end to the noise.
“She’s not there, Frances.”
The surfer. He and his blue curtains have got to go, thought Frances, looking at the super tanned blonde idiot.
“Oh? And how do you know that?”
“The ambulance came for her about an hour ago,” said Keith, the wisp of a smile curling from the sides of his chapped lips. Keith didn’t like Frances. He didn’t like her beady little dark brown eyes. He didn’t like her sneaky, faux-feminine mannerisms. And he didn’t like her sticking her nose in his business.
“Ambulance?”
“Ask me, she needed a meat wagon.”
“Whatever do you mean?”
“She was lifeless, dude. Like a bag o’ sand.”
“Where did they take her?”
“Who do I look like, 4-1-1?” snickered Keith.
Frances turned her back on Keith without answering and slinked off to her own place, making a mental note to call the HOA attorneys on the rude little addict. Maybe even the police. Well, maybe not.
CHAPTER SIX
Dr. Ignacio Perez raised his tired eyes from the microscope, grabbed the stale baloney sandwich from the plate next to the scope and took a bite, with one eye still on the slide.
“Doc, got another live one for ya.”
Perez looked up and saw Gabriel Mendez, his assistant, roll in a covered gurney. Mendez was grinning.
“How many times do I have to tell you, Gabriel? This is a place of business. Please respect it.”
“I’m not the one eating a sandwich and looking at an HIV sample at the same time,” quipped Mendez.
“Gabriel, please!”
“Sorry doc. You got a new stiff.”
“Do you think you could stop referring to them as ‘stiffs’? These were real people, with real lives.”
“Doc, you know me.”
“Yeah, yeah, the master of bad jokes.”
Gabriel had the annoying habit of trying to make a dumb funny out of every phrase. This didn’t make him very popular on the fifth floor, where he used to work, with the aged. The last straw was when Gabriel punned whether he should wheel one of his old senile patients back into his room or down to the morgue. That earned Gabriel a new assignment as assistant to the medical examiner.
Perez stood up, walked over to the body, and peeled back the sheet. He recognized the face right away.
“It’s Barbara Densmore,” said Perez, as he grabbed the chart at the end of the gurney and flipped through it.
“Who?”
“Barbara Densmore, the head of the Orange Grove Homeowner’s Association.”
“Huh? An HOA Nazi? No wonder they suspect foul play.”
As a resident of Orange Grove, Dr. Perez knew that Densmore was not well liked, but murder?
“Says here that Doctor Brown suspected poisoning. Gabriel, can you please call upstairs for the tox report results?”
“Yeah, sure.”
CHAPTER SEVEN
Brent checked and double checked the statute. Civil Code section 1367 clearly said that the decision of the HOA to foreclose had to be made by the HOA’s Board, and it had to be personally served on the defendant for the foreclosure to be proper. The case of Diamond v. Superior Court required strict compliance with the statute. He would file a complaint for declaratory relief and a motion to enjoin the foreclosure sale.
This wa
s just the type of case that Brent loved. Since he now had the luxury of not having to take any case that walked through the door just to make ends meet, he could concentrate on these David and Goliath cases. Homeowners’ Associations gave little people who had little lives a false sense of importance, as well as a real sense of power, over their neighbors. Their boards were almost always composed of people who enjoyed butting into other people’s business, and the HOA badge gave them the right to be the neighborhood’s policemen. The deed restrictions, or CC&R’s as they were known in legal circles, were used by the HOA members to describe a number of serious offenses, such as the wrong color curtains, or an inappropriate and non-conforming landscape. A planned community was definitely no place for anyone to exercise any type of personal freedom over their own property.
Brent’s father was an immigrant from Spain. When Brent had taken an ear full of teasing at school because of his last name, Jose Marquez had changed the name to Marks, to avoid the stereotypes that he felt were cast on the family by people who thought they were Mexican. Brent could have passed for Mexican himself, with his dark brown hair, but he was much taller than most Mexicans. Thanks to his dad though, he was fluent in Spanish, which had helped him in the old days when Spanish speaking people made up a majority of his clients.
Although Nancy’s case was important, Brent thought that it would be relatively simple. He would file the complaint, make a motion for preliminary injunction, and then refer Nancy to a lender or, if there was no way for her to obtain a loan, to a bankruptcy attorney, to file a chapter 13 plan to take care of the back assessments. The Association also sought foreclosure based on thousands of dollars of attorney’s fees they had heaped on top of the assessments. The Diamond v. Superior Court case had changed all the foreclosure rules. It was no longer a free for all.
CHAPTER EIGHT
Dr. Perez looked up from the toxicology report, took off his glasses and rubbed his tired eyes. He suspected poisoning from the symptoms Barbara had reported to Dr. Brown but, unfortunately, the report did not reveal the identity of the toxin. From the fluid in her lungs and lesions in the trachea, Perez suspected that it could be ricin, a deadly toxin that produced death relatively quickly and was difficult to detect. Since ricin poisoning was almost never accidental, he called the police immediately. If it was ricin, the best way to identify it was to find the poison at the scene.
* * *
Homicide Detective Roland Tomassi set down the phone and looked at the clock. One hour to go in his shift and he had to go to the morgue and look at another stiff on a slab. What a job. He turned off the lights and left the office. He was the last one. The night shift sucks, he thought, as he exited the building. Maybe this will be quick and I can go home early. Tomassi ruffled his short, sandy brown hair forward with his hands and straightened his old tie, then shut off the lights and closed the door.
Tomassi wandered in to the morgue and saw Dr. Perez exactly as he pictured he would; leaning over a dead body with a sandwich in his hand. Perez looked up at him over the shoulder.
“Hello Detective.”
“Hi Doc. What’ve you got?”
“45 year old female, cause of death suspected is poisoning, but the toxicology report is coming up negative.”
Tomassi’s forehead wrinkled. “Then why do you suspect poisoning?”
“She was foaming blood right before she died, had an excessive amount of fluid in her lungs, lesions on the trachea and no indication of any other adverse pathology. I suspect it was ricin.”
“Ricin?”
“That’s why I called you over immediately. You’ve got to search her home right away to see if you can locate any traces of ricin.”
“If that’s the case, why didn’t you just do this on the phone?”
“Impossible.”
“Why not?”
“Because then you wouldn’t know the victim.”
As they both looked at Barbara’s body, the realization of what his job was all about came back to Tomassi.
“To know is to care, right?” he said to the doctor.
“Isn’t that why we do what we do?”
Perez was right. The homicide shift was a crappy job, which entailed going to the worst places and seeing the worst things humanity had to offer. But Tomassi had signed on to make a difference. He made a mental note to remember this moment, as he looked at the lifeless, pale face of Barbara Densmore.
“Thanks Doc, for reminding me. Did she have any friends?”
“No, that’s it. Everyone hated her.”
“Why?”
“She was president of the local homeowners’ association.”
* * *
When Detective Tomassi pulled his unmarked white Dodge Charger into Barbara Densmore’s driveway, he noticed a light in one of the windows.
That’s odd, he thought, as he exited the car, and flipped the latch of his holster, putting his left hand on the butt of his service revolver. Tomassi was a leftie, something the guys always teased him about.
As he reached for the doorknob, he was surprised to find it was unlocked. He drew his gun and cautiously entered.
“Police!” he shouted.
“I’m here!” called out the voice of a woman.
Finding the source of the light to be a bedroom, which looked like it doubled as an office, Tomassi gingerly approached the door and instructed the occupant, “Put your hands in the air!” He walked, gun first, into the room.
Frances Templeton did as instructed, shaking nervously as Tomassi slowly approached, with the gun trained on her.
“Now I want you to interlock your fingers behind your head.”
Frances complied, in a palsy. Tomassi quickly slapped handcuffs on her and patted her down.
“What’s going on?” she asked.
“Who are you? A relative?”
“No, I’m a neighbor. Barbara and I work together. She gave me her key.”
“How long have you been here?”
“Just a few minutes. I came to get the books.”
“What books?”
“The homeowner’s association books. I’m their treasurer and I heard that Barbara was in the hospital. We need the books to prepare for a meeting."
Tomassi unlocked the handcuffs. “Have a seat. A deputy is coming and he will take your information and a statement. I’ll take the books for now, and we’ll return them in a few days.
“They’re on the desk. Am I free to go?”
“Yes, as soon as the deputy is finished taking your statement. Oh, may I have the key please?”
“Of course, but why?”
“This is a crime scene Ms.?”
“Templeton. Frances Templeton. A crime scene?”
“Yes, Ms. Templeton. Ms. Densmore died under suspicious circumstances and we have to investigate. I’m sorry for the precautions, but nobody was supposed to be here.”
“I understand,” said Frances, but the expression on her face could not hide the fact that she was annoyed.
Two deputies arrived, along with the forensics team. The deputies secured the area and took Templeton’s statement as the three member forensics team combed the townhome for traces of ricin or any other suspicious chemical agents.
Finally the deputies released Frances. “That’s it, ma’am. You’re free to go,” said Deputy Williams, with a smile, clicking his pen to “off” and slipping it and his book into his pocket.
“Just like that? Without an apology?”
“Ma’am, we’re just doing our job.”
“And what if I want to file a complaint?”
“You’ll need to talk to the Detective for that, ma’am. Our job is finished.”
Determined not to let it go, Frances set out to find Tomassi, with the two deputies on her tail.
“Wait a minute, ma’am,” said Williams, as he moved in front of her and held out his arm. “This is a crime scene. Stay here with my partner. We’ll get him for you.”
Tomassi approached Frances wi
th a frown on his face that looked as if he had just taken a bite of a lemon peels .
“What can I do for you, Ms. Templeton?”
“Well, first you can apologize.”
“For what?”
“For scaring the wits out of me and treating me like a common criminal.”
“Ms. Templeton, do you live here?”
“No, but…”
“Here’s how I see it, and feel free to jump in anytime you think I have something wrong. I’m the first officer on a potential homicide scene. The victim lived alone. I park my car, exit and noticed that the lights are on. I approach, enter, and find the residence occupied. For my safety, and the integrity of my investigation, I detain the occupant and, upon determining she is not a threat to my safety, release her from detention and release her completely after questioning her as a potential witness. Do I have it about right?”
“Well yes, but…”
“Then I will continue to do my job, which is to investigate this crime scene. Thank you, Ms. Templeton, you are free to go.”
Frances stared into space as if she had been hypnotized, then snapped out of it as Tomassi turned his back on her.
“And if I have a complaint?”
“You’re free to make it to my CO, said Tomassi, turning around. Here’s my card,” he said, holding it out to her. “Call the station and ask for Captain Brooks.”
* * *
The forensic crew worked into the night, sweeping, fingerprinting, and looking for anything that could be used as evidence to explain the mysterious death of Barbara Densmore. Finally, the team finished, packed up and started to leave.
“We’re outta here,” said Denny Bingman, the leader of the team.
“What did you get?” asked Tomassi.
“Nothing. Except maybe this package we found in one of the kitchen drawers.” Bingman held up a small gold flower food package.