Page 11 of Devil in the Details

Or was he just good at hiding his origins?

“My name is Evan Matthews. I was calling about the property you just listed on Piñon Drive.”

Well, that was fast. Then again, she knew plenty of people practically camped on Zillow and Redfin and the other real estate sites, just waiting to pounce if an especially juicy property popped up.

“What did you need to know?” she asked as she unbent her legs and set her feet on the floor. The rug was a friendly blend of soft with just the slightest bit of scratchiness, proof that it was real wool and not that polypropylene stuff.

“I represent a firm called the Aegis Group,” Ethan Matthews replied. “We invest in properties in California, Nevada, Oregon, and Washington State. Is that neighborhood zoned for vacation rentals?”

Like Las Vegas didn’t already have enough hotels, Airbnbs, timeshares, and everything else. Still, a lot of those tended to be smaller places, condos or townhouses with only one or two bedrooms, and she could see how bigger families traveling together might want a rental that allowed them to spread out a little.

And because she’d checked on the zoning in the area and knew there was no HOA, she was able to answer the man’s question easily enough.

“Yes, it is,” she said. Whatever her personal feelings about big investors coming in and snapping up houses for rentals when they might have gone to couples and families just starting out, she knew she was representing Caleb here and couldn’t let her opinions get in the way.

Which meant she needed to get him the best price for the house in the fastest timeframe.

“Excellent,” Evan replied. “Everything looked good online, but I’d still like to view the property in person. Can we set something up for Monday morning?”

Good thing she carried her calendar in her head, which meant she knew her earliest appointment wasn’t until three that day. “Absolutely,” she said. “What time works best for you?”

“Ten o’clock?”

“Sounds good,” she said. “Do you want to meet at my office or at the property?”

She assumed he’d rather meet at the house, since it sounded as though he was only interested in that one. If she had a bunch of homes to show a client, then it made more sense for her to play chauffeur rather than have them try to caravan from place to place, but that didn’t seem to be the case here.

Ethan confirmed that notion by saying, “At the house is fine. I’ll see you there on Monday.”

“Looking forward to it,” she replied.

They ended the call after that exchange, and she paused to put the appointment in the calendar on her phone before she returned it to the coffee table. For a moment, she wondered if she should tell Caleb she already had a showing scheduled, and then she decided it was probably better to wait and see if her Monday morning appointment bore any fruit. Yes, Evan Matthews had sounded motivated on the phone, but he might get to the house and decide the layout wasn’t right for an Airbnb, or there weren’t enough bedrooms, or the fireplace was too much of a liability for a property that would be rented by a succession of vacationers.

Or maybe something else she hadn’t even thought of yet. Over the years, she’d seen a bewildering variety of reasons as to why a certain buyer decided in the end that a house just wasn’t for them.

If all went well, though, then Ethan Matthews would decide the Piñon Drive property was the perfect investment for his company, and they could go from there. The nice thing about transactions like this was that they were almost always cash offers, meaning Caleb could have that money in his hands in as little as two weeks.

She’d keep all this to herself for now, though. He trusted her to handle the transaction, and that meant she didn’t need to go to him until she had a firm offer on the table.

In the meantime, she figured she might as well do what she could to enjoy the rest of her weekend.

With that thought in mind, she picked up her remote and turned the TV’s sound back on.

Although Caleb had discussed the poker tournament at the Desert Paradise casino with Delia, he still hadn’t officially signed up. He’d told himself that was because he wanted to keep his options open until the last minute, but he knew deep down it was also because he’d thought it might be a good idea to get her opinion on the subject.

She’d been decidedly lukewarm, but because she hadn’t come right out and told him it was a horrible idea and that he was an idiot for even entertaining the notion, he figured that was enough of a green light for him to proceed.

Which was why he drove over to the casino early on Sunday afternoon, since sign-ups closed at five and he couldn’t put it off much longer without missing out entirely. Maybe he could have come in the morning, but because temperatures had inched up to the mid-eighties, he’d wanted a late morning swim in the pool.

His new pool, with its gleaming tile and the palm trees off to one side providing just enough shade that the sun felt comfortable rather than hot. It was a good swim, and when he got out, he’d been gladder than ever that he’d decided to pull up stakes and make this place his home. Sure, the house where he’d grown up in Greencastle, Indiana, had a pool, but they couldn’t use it for more than five or six months out of the year.

Come to think of it, he was the only one who’d ever even swam in the damn thing. His father probably would have thought it too undignified to be seen outdoors in swim trunks — even if the property had been surrounded by hedges and tall trees, and it was almost impossible to even get a glimpse of the pool — and his mother had been far too concerned about preserving her skin and her hair to risk exposing them to the sun’s cruel rays.

Not for the first time, he found himself very, very happy that he hadn’t tried to pick up his life in Greencastle and instead had come to Las Vegas. His miraculous return could have been explained away, he supposed, but much better to be very far away from Indiana winters and his equally icy mother.

The Desert Paradise — like his new home — had a definite mid-century vibe, one that had been freshened somewhat with new landscaping and paint, even though he guessed the actual contours of the place hadn’t changed much since it was built in the early 1960s.

He pulled into a space near the lobby entrance, noting that the parking lot only looked about half full. On a Sunday afternoon like this, he would have expected to see more cars, and he guessed that the casino was holding the tournament to draw more gamblers in…as well as enough spectators to fill up the place.

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