The Story of Murray Perch

Have you ever been in the process of selling your house and living in it while it had a realtor’s lock box on the front door? I have. And it’s kind of scary.

I was living by myself in our house in Columbus, Ohio, because my husband, Pat, had already moved to California after getting a new job.

Pat and I knew we probably wouldn’t be able to sell the house before I moved in February, but we went ahead and listed it anyway, crossing our fingers.

Because I was living by myself, it was pretty easy to keep the house orderly and clean for even last-minute showings. If a realtor called to show the house, I could straighten things up and be out the door within ten minutes. (Unless, of course, I was still in bed when the agent called.)

Realtors had the code that would open the lock box that hung from our front door knob. Inside the box was a key to our house. This gave them easy access to our house when I was away from home. When realtors showed the house, they would always leave their business cards on our kitchen table.

Every time there was a card on our table when I got home from work, I would hide it in the kitchen cupboard where we stored our drinking glasses. I notified Pat and my mom about my hidden stash of business cards because I felt that if I were murdered while living there alone, these realtors should be considered prime suspects – they knew how to get into my home without having to break a window or door lock. I instructed Pat and my mom to tell the homicide detectives investigating my murder about the stash of cards. (In this way, I could potentially solve my own murder from the grave!)

Think about it. These agents knew the code to the lock box on the front door. What’s to prevent these people from using our house as their own? Visiting while I was at work? Maybe taking a nap on our couch? Eating a snack from our frig?

During the time we had the lock box and I was living by myself, I was always a little nervous coming home from work or returning home after an evening out. I would enter the kitchen from the garage and do a room-to-room search for hiding realtors, checking in closets and under beds. I don’t remember if I carried a bat or some other make-shift weapon with me, that probably would have made me even more nervous than I already was. Instead, I tried to act nonchalant, casual. To make the sneaky little agents think that I didn’t suspect their presence. And then, Boo! I would scare them. They’d run from the house, but not before dropping their murderous weapon and business card on our kitchen table.

Well, regardless of all my imagined scenarios, no psychopathic realty agents ever tried to kill me. And as far as I know, none of them entered by house to do anything other than to show it to potential buyers.

But this was the state of mind I was in when the phone rang at 4:00 am, waking me from a dead (though not murdered) sleep.

“Hello?” I answer groggily.

“Is Pat there?”

“Who’s calling?”

“I need to talk to Pat.”

“Who is this?”

“Murray Perch,” he answers. Who the hell is Murray Perch?

“He’s not here. Can I take a message?” I ask, knowing I have no intention of getting out of bed to find a pen and piece of paper.

“I know he’s there,” he replies. What?! Who is this guy? There’s no mistaking what I’ve got: a clear case of the heebie jeebies.

“It is four o’clock in the morning. Pat is not here. Do you want to leave a message?”

Whatever he says sounds like gibberish to my still-asleep ears. I interrupt his incoherent monologue by asking for his name again. “Murray Perch,” he answers.

“I’ll have him call you,” I say and then quickly hang up.

I start to wonder if the guy on the phone is a co-worker Pat had been having a problem with before he left Frigidaire and that maybe the guy didn’t know Pat no longer worked there.

I get up. I need to write down this guy’s name before I forget it. I need to put his name with the business cards in my kitchen cupboard right away – just in case I’m murdered yet tonight. He should definitely be considered one of the chief suspects. I write his name down, along with the time of the phone call – so the homicide detectives can look at my phone records – and stash it on top of the agents’ business cards.

Then I think to myself that this guy is crazy enough to be making phone calls at 4:00 am, maybe he’s crazy enough to be sitting in his car just outside our house! My heart, already racing, is doing double time as I hurry back up the stairs to the bedroom. I stand up on the bed so I can see over the headboard and out the curtained window. I look. There’s a van parked across the street but I can’t see beyond its blackened windows to see if it’s occupied. I close the curtains.

The phone rings again. My heart does a somersault. Am I whimpering? I don’t answer it. I think of the movie about the babysitter who receives scary phone calls only to hear from the telephone operator (Do we still have telephone operators?) that the calls are coming from the very house she’s in.

There’s no way I’m getting back to sleep.

But I eventually did fall asleep again and, miraculously, I wake up still alive.

I tell Pat about my night. He has no idea who the caller could be. (And no, I don’t think I ever asked for the guy’s number, or if I did, I wrote down the wrong digits because it wasn’t a good number when Pat tried called it.)

It’s days, weeks or months later, I can’t remember, when Pat learns that his cousin, Larry Roche, had tried to call him but had instead talked to me. At the time, Larry was working as a truck driver. When Pat asked why he had called our house in the middle of the night, Larry said he must’ve been confused about what time zone he was calling. (Larry lived in Pittsburgh which is in the same time zone as Columbus and as far as we knew, all the driving Larry did was in the eastern United States. His explanation did not pass muster.)

Now, over twenty years later, Pat can’t remember why Larry had been calling him out of the blue.

And that’s the story of Murray Perch. In the end, I was never in peril – not from any murdering realty agents or from the psychopathic Murray Perch. I lived to tell the tale. ✿