Chapter 1
Hasbrouck House, Newburgh, New York—issued April 19, 1933
This was the first stamp issued under Franklin Delano Roosevelt.
The Hasbrouck House is the location where General George Washington ordered the cessation of hostilities with Great Britain on 1783, ending the American Revolution.
August 2, 2001, 1:35 p.m.—Oroville, California
It was an unbearably hot day, one of those days when you sweat just sitting in the shade. The greenish-brown grass stood motionless in the dry heat of the sweltering afternoon sun. Stan Larson did not want to get out of his air-conditioned car although he knew he must. He hated summer because on days like this, his glasses were always slipping down over the beads of perspiration that covered his nose. So Stan delayed getting out of the car, brooding in silence, staring at the house. Where was the old woman? She was usually standing by the front door by now, hands on her hips.
The deferred maintenance of the outside grounds gave the house an unlived in appearance. Reluctantly, he reached toward the ignition key and turned off the engine. Opening the car door, he was greeted by the waiting heat, and almost immediately he had to push his glasses back up on his nose. “Damn tenants!” he mumbled under his breath as he shut the car door. His mood was not getting any better.
The path to the house was about thirty yards and most of it in the bright sunlight missing the shade of massive oak trees around the yard. He would have walked in the shade except the grass was filled with rice fleas (seeds with little barbs that stick to clothes) and foxtails (dart like seed quills) that would cling and work into socks and pants. He could see the heat radiating from the long cement walkway as he headed toward the porch. Stan glanced at the foxtails and rice fleas and then down at his pant legs. He resigned himself to the walkway and looked again toward the porch. Where could she be? She knew I was coming today…
By the time he reached the door, his shirt was wet, and his glasses had slipped down once more. Still no old woman. Where the hell could she be? Stan banged loudly on the door, tapping his foot impatiently. He stepped back off the porch and stood with his hands on his hips and looked around shaking his head. She knew I would be coming today as always to collect the rent. Maybe she had forgotten. But I’ll be damned if I’m going to drive all the way out here for nothing.
He headed toward the back door of the house. Yellowed blinds covered the windows, obscuring his view as he tried to peer inside. Grasshoppers jumped around his feet as he tried to skirt the foxtails. He bent over to pull a burr from his socks and noticed that one of the blinds was broken, providing a small opening. He cupped his hands around his eyes and pressed his face close to the window.
Stan could see someone sitting in a high-backed chair facing away from him. He knocked loudly on the window and hollered. “Heidi? Heidi! Open the door!” Still no response.
“Damn tenants!” Stan said again, this time a bit more loudly. He continued to move toward the back door.
Stan Larson was a man of property. He had made a good living down south in the Los Angeles area as a real estate broker and had amassed quite a few properties. There was definitely money to be made in real estate, especially when he could collect on both sides of the deal. Stan was known for holding offers until he could line up his own clients and then tailoring the offers to cut the other agent out. But his best moneymaker was pocket listings, which he would hold until he had a client or snaked one. To Stan, business was business. If he cut someone out of a deal, he was the better businessman.
Traffic and housing laws pushed Stan north to Oroville in the early 1970s. He was tired of renting to people he didn’t like. At least in the northern part of the state, the rental pool was more to his preference. He owned several rental homes and spent most of his time checking on his no-good tenants. Now in his seventies, still tall and thin, he had developed a slight bend to his posture as he walked and his personality had not improved with age. While it was not really the good life he had hoped for, it was a comfortable living.
Stan did not tolerate late rental payments and was prepared to personally collect, if necessary. On more than one occasion, he had been known to demand cash even if this meant escorting the tenant to the bank to get the money. He was certainly not going to let an old woman get out of paying her rent by ignoring him.
Heidi Miller had lived in the house for the past five years and had never been late on the rent. Whenever Stan came to check on the property, she had met him on the porch, hands on her hips, greeting him with her thick German accent. Stan realized he knew very little about her.
He’d never seen any family around, just Heidi. And their small talk about the weather and the property had only yielded one bit of personal information—she was a Holocaust survivor. He’d shown a bit of extra kindness after learning this. “And this is how she repays me!” Stan grumbled.
As Stan approached the back porch, he felt another foxtail pricking through his sock. “Damn it!” he mumbled again, reaching into his pocket for the keys. “These people never quit trying to take advantage of my good nature.” He marched toward the front door, leaving a trail of grasshoppers behind him.
Stan pulled on the handle of the screen door, causing it to open with a loud pop as the rusty springs gave way. “Heidi? It’s Stan Larson,” he yelled. “I’m coming in!” He flipped the keys on his keychain and inserted the correct one into the lock. Though Stan had quite a collection of keys, he also had an uncanny ability to know the right key for every lock. “Your rent is late!”
Stan jiggled the key in the old lock until it turned. Then he pushed his glasses back up on his nose as he pushed the door open slightly. Immediately, an unmistakable stench caused him to recoil back onto the porch. Stan wiped the sweat from his forehead with the sleeve of his shirt and stepped into the house.
Heidi Miller was dead, and she had been that way for some time. She was sitting on her overstuffed red chair facing the front door and seemed to stare back at Stan with large dilated eyes. Her grayish white arms lay limp on the armrests of the chair. The lower part of her forearms, where they touched the chair, had a strange purplish hue where gravity had pooled the blood. It gave her arms an unworldly look. Stan took a good look to be sure and then rushed out of the house into the fresh, hot air.
His time in Los Angeles had prepared him for this type of situation. This was not the first time he had found a dead tenant—and it would probably not be the last. He took out his handkerchief and held it tightly over his nose and mouth as he went into the house again, letting the screen door slam behind him. Stan looked around at the sparse furnishings. Other than a stack of newspapers by the chair, there was little else in the room. Heidi obviously was not one to keep mementos.
Stan did not care to waste time with pity. The rent had not been paid, and now it looked as if he would lose the rent altogether unless he found some cash or anything of value he could sell.
The well-kept house reminded him of his grandmother’s home. She had come from the old country, like Heidi. In a small bookcase, there were some worn books in German, and over the small mantle were a couple of beer steins. He could not help thinking that, if not for the smell of death, the stale air would probably smell like his grandmother too. Funny, but this was the first time he had entered this house in five years, and it was almost familiar.
Stan entered the bedroom and strode toward the nightstand. For some reason, people often kept their valuables near their beds; however, this time he was disappointed. Continuing through the other rooms,