Good Initiative, Bad Judgment

Valerie and Jamie finally park in front of their newest pride and joy, aka “their last hope at redemption”, a property they purchased at a county auction. Literally. It’s their last shot at salvation or else they really might just die. Dramatic but not, not true, they’re just really bad at being Millennials. (Or really good, depending on your perspective.)

“Oh, thank god, I can’t hold it in anymore. It’s gonna come out!” Jamie yells as she flings open the driver’s side door, not having the will to close it. Valerie watches her paw at her zipper while she runs/waddles in front of the car on her way to the house’s front door.

“Wait, I have the key,” Valerie hustles to get her seatbelt off but is too slow because she manages to see Jamie hop the fence. “I guess that works too. Maybe don’t chug a gallon of water before we leave the house…” she mutters under her breath. But the fence didn’t wiggle as Jamie jumped it so, yay.

Valerie steps out of the car to stretch her whole body. She should consider stretching more often. Perhaps straighten her posture. Just a suggestion. She looks around and decides it’s not that bad. The neighborhood isn’t horrible. Not a recent development but it doesn’t seem as if there’d be any colonial ghosts wandering about. Closest neighbors are about a quarter-mile either way. Not bad. Not bad at all.

Maybe this will finally work for them.

There are vines climbing up the front of the house adding a touch of class to the rust stains. Lovely orange foreclosure and city violation signs plastered on the door and windows. The windows panes and windows sills are intact, perfect. The gutters are in one piece and the fascia and soffits look solid.

Everything looks too good at this point so she’s nervous, nervous sweats kicking in. Thank you, Old Spice for mitigating that. She makes it to the front door, slides in the key in the lock, turns it, and—

“Uh oh.”

Nothing. It’s not working. Second time’s the charm. She pulls the key out, blows in the lock, Nintendo style, and tries again. Not even a wiggle.

“It’s not working?” Jamie comes out of nowhere, making Valerie jump a bit.

“No, no. No. Of course, it’s not working.” Valerie takes off her glasses and rubs her eyes as she gathers herself. “How the fuck are we supposed to flip this house if I can’t even get the key to work?”

Valerie’s about to cry. She isn’t even trying to hide it this time. Must be her period. Jamie leads her to sit on the little brick wall on the porch. It’s not that serious. There’s people that are dying right now and she’s basically crying over lost diamond earrings.

While Valerie is being dramatic, Jamie is getting shit done. She looks closely at the front door, noticing one lock and it’s not even a deadbolt. Easy-peasy. She gets into position, bounces lightly on the balls of her feet then makes sure her feet are snuggly stuffed in her slides.

“FBI, FREEZE!” She screams at the top of her lungs as she kicks the door. Jamie finally got to kick in a door. Maybe it is shaping up to be a good day after all. “Babecake, I did it! Hell yeah!” Jamie dusts off her front while cackling to herself.

Valerie gets off her ass and peeks into the house while Jamie massages her calf.

“Holy shit, you did it. You finally kicked in a door!” Your dad’s going to be so proud of you.”

“Is there another door I can kick in?” Jamie hobbles over all the junk in the living room to find more doors.

“Um, sure... There’s so much junk but it really doesn’t look that bad. We can clear it out and air it out to start getting inspections next week.” Valerie carefully walks over the trash, mattresses, and Black&Milds tips, looking at the walls, checking for plumb, checking for cracks, is this a CBS or wood? Is there water damage? The kitchen is small. Maybe they can knock that wall down and do an open farmhouse look. She tries to turn on a couple of lights and nothing. Good thing there’s a lot of daylight left.

Wait. It’s quiet. Too quiet. Where’s Jamie? Valerie looks in the first rooms but no luck.

She makes it to the last bedroom. There she is. This room is surprisingly clean. There’s a small futon with a coffee table in front of it but nothing else. Jamie is sat next to the table on the red carpet with her legs crossed and hunched over a little black book in her hands. Must be a good read because the last thing that bitch read were the blue Hardy Boys books in the fifth grade.

“What are you reading, butt face?” Valerie walks in and realizes it’s the master bedroom. There’s a decent-sized window letting the sunlight in the room. There’s a closet with double doors. She opens the closet and there’s a duffel bag on the floor.

Too fat and round to be a body. It also doesn’t smell like decomposing flesh. Thankfully. Shouldn’t be a corpse. Hopefully.

“Do you think the Zodiac Killer, like, ever ventured out of Northern California? Tried broadening his horizons elsewhere or…” Jamie goes on but Valerie’s not listening. Her voice becomes static in the background as she bends down and unzips the duffel bag.

Well. That’s nice.

Cash. Cash money. There’s money in the bag. Moolah. Di-ne-ro. Wads of cash. A dream come true.

“…Babecake?” Jamie’s voice finally tunes in. “Are you listening? I think I found the Zodiac Killer’s book!” Jamie shoves that little black book in Valerie’s face so she can see better but it really doesn’t work like that.

“You’re going to knock my glasses off.” Valerie readjusts her glasses as she swats the book out of her face. “Jamie! Look!” She grabs a couple of wads of cash to show Jamie.

Jamie tosses the book aside and pries the bands of cash from Valerie’s hands.

“Holy shit! Jackpot, baby!!!!”

They both do their touch-down celebration dances.

“Ayy, must be the mon-eyyy!”

“Shake yo’ money maker!”

Their dance moves are a good representation as to why they’re so friendless. Good thing they have each other.

Valerie is the first to stop dancing. Partly because the paper cut she gave herself while rubbing the bills all over her chest but mostly she was out of breath. She sits crisscross-applesauce on the floor, looking at the bag of money. She tries to figure out what they could do with the money while Jamie is trying to dougie behind her.

“Pookie?” she tries to get Jamie’s attention. “Honey, you can take a break now. The money’s not going anywhere.”

Jamie lays down next to her, “but you haven’t made it rain on me yet!” She starts trying to throw the money up to make it rain on herself but she’s failing miserably. She’s laughing too hard to have any sort of coordination.

“What are we going to do?” She faces Jamie.

“I don’t know. Buy Bitcoin? Pay off the friggin’ car? Get the dogs big ol’ steaks?”

“That’s it?” Valerie’s shoulders slump.

“What do you mean, ‘that’s it’?”

“Well, fuck. That seems so trivial. Nothing important.”

“It’s really not that much. It’s not 20 million. I mean, could it be 20 million?” The bag is pretty big but neither of them has ever seen that much cash. Even at the casino, they tend to hide the cash.

They both start counting.

“Babecake, this is taking too long.” Jamie shoves all the cash she has in the duffel bag and stands up. “Let’s just take it to the bank. They have cash counting machines. We’d be golden like chicken nuggets.”

Jamie starts heading out as Valerie speaks up, “are you crazy? We can’t take this to the bank!”

“Why not?! It’d be so much faster!”

“Exactly! It’d be a race to see who gets us faster, the FBI or the IRS! We can’t just deposit a bunch of cash without someone noticing! We don’t even know where it came from.”

They both stop because she’s right. The Feds would show up, right? The IRS too.

“Seriously. Look at this place.” She gestures around. “Everywhere but this room looks like a landfill. This is the only room that is clean. Is someone staying here? Is this someone’s makeshift security deposit box?”

Jamie drops the bag. A little disappointed. She really doesn’t like it when Valerie is right, but they’ve been together so long that she should really just get used to it.

“You right. It would also explain that Zodiac Killer book on the side table.”

Valerie looks around and sees the book on the floor. “What do you mean ‘zodiac killer’?” She grabs it and flips through the pages, noticing all the pages are filled but not English. Hell, not even words. Looks like distorted Wordsearch puzzles, “Oh. I see.”

“See? It’s the Zodiac Killer, told ya’.”

Well, she could be not wrong. Point for Jamie.

“The Zodiac Killer must be an old fart now but, whatever. Could be hiding out with his stash. In the suburbs of Florida, though?”

“This is the plan. If we figure out if this is someone’s life’s savings, we’re going to leave it here or leave a note for when they come back. If this is the piggy bank of a serial killer, we’re going to take the book to the FBI.”

“Um, each page has a digit in each corner. The only numbers on the pages. The rest is just gibberish. And the numbers don’t correspond to the page they’re on.”

“Wait. Wait!” Jamie grabs a few wads from the bag. “Each of these wads has a number written on them!”

“Ok, ok, ok, ok. Let’s figure this out. That’ll help us find out who this belongs to!”

Jamie unzips the bag all the way and dumps all the cash in a mountain on the coffee table. “Let’s do this!”

In hindsight, it was great initiative but very, very, very bad judgment. Who knows what they could’ve done differently.

The sun had set on them, making the moonlight their only source of light, other than their phones. Since they didn’t switch on the power, there was no air conditioning and in Florida, that’s considered torture. They decided to strip down to their underwear to avoid heatstroke. They were so close to an epiphany, they could practically taste it.

There they were: sweaty messes, in their panties, holding their phones and hunched over a little black book, surrounded by small piles of cash.

“Jamie, is this a rhombus or an oval?” She slides over the book, pointing out the shape in question.

“What’s a –”

“Hello!” A deep voice calls out.

They freeze.

“Sheriff’s Department.”

“What do we do?!” Valerie whisper yells at Jamie.

Jamie stands them up and grabs Valerie by the shoulders, bending down to look right in her eyes. “Don’t say anything. Don’t answer any questions. Plead the Fifth. I’m going to call my dad and he’ll bail us out. Don’t tell them anything.”

“What the fuck are you talking about!? I just wanted to know if I should get dressed because they’re gonna see my fat—”

“Freeze. Put your hands up!” they see a deputy pointing a gun and flashlight at them.

They both throw their hands up.

The deputy grabs the radio on his shoulder, “Rover to dispatch. I’m 10-20 at the vandalized vehicle. Send more deputies. I have two semi-nude females in poor condition inside the house counting a large quantity of bills. Suspected trap house.”

“The car got vandalized?!” Jamie asks a bit excited. They’re finally rid of it!

“’poor condition’? What’s that supposed to mean!?”

It looks like their last shot at salvation is off to a promising start.