A Night Like Any Other
Chapter 2

Copyright© 2014 by MysteryWriter

April 2

When April left the parking lot, after her latest near death experience, she drove straight to breakfast at a local mom and pop diner. She spent an hour over breakfast and a quick review of her present life. It was not at all what she had expected at her high school graduation.

After she graduated from Loyola in New Orleans with her Masters degree in nursing, she purchased a 1960 style concrete block people warehouse. She was familiar with the building, since she lived there while working at the clinic and attending classes ninety miles away. People called the ugly tourist trap a motel, until it was by passed by the new highway. When that happened, they called it a crime problem. Shortly after that designation became all too common, it went up for sale. Since she had recently made the commitment to stay with the Urgent Care Clinic, she bought it as an investment.

Her original intentions had been to move out and buy a house. Like a lot of things in here life, for one reason or another, it just never happened. She hated her time living in the warehouse, as a motel, so when she bought it, she turned two of the rooms into a small apartment for herself. One of the other things she did was to closed the leaky swimming pool, which lowered her insurance rates immediately.

Her people warehouse was located just far enough inland not to flood, when the average run of the mill tropical storm surges came along. It was still close enough to the Gulf to get the breeze and the smell of life that came from the Gulf. It was a great location for her, but not so much for tourist.

Since she and the manager had a falling out after a few months, April took a sudden change in direction. She began guiding the people warehouse toward an efficiency apartments concept. The move would allow her to employ a clerical type worker to act as manager. The first thing she had to do was clear all the short term room tenants. She had to do that before she could convert their rooms to longer term apartments.

After the changes had been underway for couple of months, the place was bringing in enough money to cover most of the cost of its operation and renovations. She had seen the shortfall in income drop to less than zero, even though it was under constant renovations. Even at the beginning of the changes, when there had been a couple of shortfall months, they had never been more than a thousand dollars. All in all, it had quickly become a pretty good investment. She was living rent free and accumulating equity.

She made the move to short term lease apartments one at a time, as the even shorter term residents left. She got rid of most of the former single room residents by just waiting for them to leave. The length of a motel room rental usually was a very short period of time. It was limited to the amount of time that an oil rig worker's family could spend away from home.

After a breakfast at Eddie's Breakfast house on old hwy90, it was only a short drive to her motel and home. When she entered the parking lot of her building. she saw that the kid's playground was empty, so she wanted to get into bed quickly, before they started to show up. As she drove deeper into the parking lot. she noticed that Viv's car wasn't in the space where she normally parked it. April knew that she had to check on her, before she went to bed. If Viv didn't show for work, the prospective tenant calls would be forwarded to her phone. Those calls about seeing the apartments would come all day on Saturdays. They would surely interfere with her sleep. April wasn't all that worried since Viv had proved to be reliable. She was more curious than anything else.

April parked her car in front of the office while picturing Viv in her mind. Viv was an attractive woman, not more than five years younger than April's forty eight years. She was attractive in an almost punk way. That in itself was strange for a woman her age, April thought. Even though she had tattoos and terrible taste in clothes, the worst thing had to be her barn red. The color was made popular by bad science fiction movies. April was also pretty sure Viv moonlighted as a hooker. She also thought that it was none of her business.

Night shift at an Urgent Care didn't exactly bring one into contact with the country club types. April first met Viv at the clinic. She treated Viv for a mild skin infection created by a tattoo needle. Fortunately it responded to a topical antibiotic so she never came for the follow up appointment.

Two weeksafter that meeting, Viv applied for the apartment manager's job. It took her several minutes to recognize April, but eventually did. It was the only thing she had going for her. She had hardly any references, but since there was no money for her to embezzle, it wasn't much of a problem.

April said, "Viv, I would say this to anyone applying for an apartment here, and I hope you will as well. We don't allow any illegal activities in the apartments. That includes things like drugs and prostitution. Do we understand each other?"

 
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