Um – It Smells Like There’s A Dead Body In There

That’s the voicemail that I received yesterday afternoon while we were out cutting down our Christmas trees out near Holly.

My intrepid resident maintenance man at my recently acquired apartment building called to tell me that a set of tenants had moved out unexpectedly and that the people across the hall were complaining about a really nasty smell coming from the unit.

He didn’t have a key and he didn’t really want to go inside it anyway.

Well as you can imagine a thousand thoughts ran through my head as I drove over there last evening (I wasn’t in any rush to get over there – if it really was a dead body is certainly wasn’t going anywhere).

My mind raced – who do I call? The police? The coroner? An exorcist? How much paperwork would there be? How much would it cost to clean up the mess, and most importantly – how the hell long would it take to get the unit re-rented?

To add to the drama, the tenants (of course) had not paid the electric bill and so the power in the unit had been shut off.

So I arrive at the building in the driving rain, get the keys, and head over to the unit.

I enter the building and as I stand in the hallway outside the unit I don’t smell anything more foul than greasy food cooking.

So armed with my maglite flashlight I knock then let myself into the unit.

What I saw inside in the pitch dark was absolutely shocking.

The place was clean and almost ready to re-rent as is.

No dead body. No smell. Nope. Not even much of a mess. The outgoing tenants had even borrowed the carpet shampoo machine that we keep at the building and had cleaned the carpet.

But no drama. And that’s the way that I like it. Vacancies I can deal with. Drama is another story. I’m going to have a chat with my maintenance person.