Jamie Brodie 02 - Hoarded to Death

scruffy goatee. He reminded me of Shaggy on the old Scooby-Doo cartoon.
    Wally wasn't putting forth the same effort that the other three were. He spent more time looking through the stuff he was loading into the bags. I thought that was a little odd. I mentioned it to Pete when we were momentarily alone in the guest room.
    Pete grinned. "Maybe he's a hoarder."
    "Oh my God. A hoarder who cleans other people's hoards? How ironic is that?"
    "Or maybe he's looking for coupons. Or just nosy."
    Eddie came in the room to gather two more bags at that point, so we switched the subject back to football.
    After a couple of hours, we'd cleared both bedrooms of periodicals. I hadn’t seen any boxes of books yet. They were probably under piles of clothes. There was still a huge hoard of other stuff in the room, and no one else had ventured back here yet. So we moved to the bathroom, then the closets. There wasn't much for us to toss there, so after another hour we ended up in the main room with everyone else.
    That's when we realized that the drama had begun, and Valerie was in the middle of it.
    We heard raised voices. We sneaked to the front door and glanced out. Val, Susannah, Mike the organizer, Dr. Hayman, and Jennifer were standing on the balcony outside the front door, arguing. Apparently they'd come across several bags of baby clothes. Why did Jennifer have baby clothes? She and Kevin were never pregnant. They’d never planned to have children.
    I jerked my head back out of sight. "I'm not getting involved in that."
    Pete shook his head. "No way. Let's find another roll of garbage bags and start loading them. We can stack them up in here and let the junk guys take them out."
    We were working our way toward the corner of the dining area, moving aside anything other than newspapers and magazines. No one from the TV crew had said anything to us since we started. Greg the cameraman was walking around, filming us working. He’d been outside for a while filming the drama, whatever it had been, but had joined us inside about thirty minutes ago. The junk truck guys were hauling bags away as fast as we could fill them, and filling some of their own also. At this rate, we'd have the place cleared of paper by the end of the first day.
    I scooped up a pile of magazines, and something moved. "Oh, shit."
    "What?" Pete came over to look.
    "Mice." I'd uncovered a nest. There weren't any baby mice in residence, but there was a good bit of mouse poop.
    Pete waved Mike the organizer over. The cameraman followed. "We've got mice. And mouse poop."
    "Oh, great. No surprise, though. Let me get the hazardous waste bags." Mike hurried off. The cameraman got in close for some better shots.
    We got the mouse poop cleaned up and were working on the magazine stacks again, when we heard yelling and crying.
    Pete looked at me. "Uh oh."
    Valerie came in at that point, muttering and shaking her head. I motioned her over. "What's going on?"
    Val was disgusted. "Well, it's taken us two fucking hours to figure this out, but apparently we have collected thousands of dollars’ worth of baby clothes because she always wanted to have kids, even though she told Kevin it was fine with her to not have any. So buying baby clothes makes her temporarily feel less bad for not having a baby."
    Pete groaned. I was stunned. "Kevin never wanted kids. Ever. How could she not know that?"
    " She did, but was hoping he'd change his mind someday." Val rolled her eyes. "So now she's all distressed about getting rid of the baby clothes because apparently that represents the final death of her dream of motherhood."
    "She's still young." Pete was in analyst mode. "It doesn't represent the death of her dream of motherhood, just of motherhood with Kevin. She's not hoping that somehow she and Kevin are going to get back together, is she?"
    I was incensed. "Is that why she's asked all of us to do this? Because she wants to re-establish a link with Kevin? Like, if she cleans up her house and we tell Kevin how well she's doing, he'll come back to her? That is never going to happen. She needs to know that."
    Pete laid a hand on my shoulder and said to Val, "We found a framed picture of Jennifer and Kevin's wedding in the bedroom. It looks like she has some very unrealistic expectations."
    " Hmph." Val snorted. "I'm getting very tired of Cleopatra’s shenanigans. I think the shrink needs to know about that picture." She stomped back to the front door and went outside. It was quiet for