Fatal Friends, Deadly Neighbors Read Online Free PDF Page A

opinions about the faults of his new employer. Once again, he was fired.
    It was only his first job in Utah, and Susan tried to believe it was just a wrong fit, and that Josh would soon find another position.
    While Susan stayed on with Fidelity, Josh decided that he’d be better off working for himself and chose a career in real estate, where he thought he had what it took to be a success. Using money that Susan had managed to save for opening a beauty parlor in their home, Josh bought signs, lockboxes, and other paraphernalia Realtors need. The housing market was going great at the time. People were remodeling and flipping houses, and buyers were actually bidding against one another for homes, standing in line to make the best offer.
    Josh sold a few houses, and he was enthusiastic about his success. He wanted Susan to get her real estate license, too, and join him in his business. As she usually did, she agreed to do that and got her license. She also went to work for Wells Fargo to ensure that they would have a steady, predictable income and medical insurance.
    At Josh’s suggestion, they took out life insurance policies—five hundred thousand dollars on each of their lives. If one of them should pass away, the other would have resources to pay for child care and other expenses.
    Susan was pregnant again, and very happy about it. She called her mother in mid-2006 and impishly told Judy, “Seven. Lucky seven! Guess what’s happening?”
    Judy had six grandchildren at the time, and she quickly figured out that Susan and Josh were going to present her and Chuck with a seventh one.
    Susan gave birth to Braden Timothy Powell on January 2, 2007. That was the second time that she and Josh had lost out on an income tax exemption by days, but it didn’t matter. Charlie had dark hair and blue eyes, and it looked like Braden would be blond like his mother, with the same blue eyes that both she and Josh had.
    One of Susan’s friends would comment later that Josh’s eyes had been as blue as Charlie’s, but they began to change. Sometimes they were almost black.
    Again Susan and Josh were happy with their new baby. Both the little boys seemed very intelligent and they were ahead of most babies in talking, walking, and showing other signs of maturation. Josh was often mean and demanding in the way he treated Susan, but he showed affection for his sons.
    With his few house sales accomplished, Josh had dreams of glory about becoming one of the most successful Realtors in the Salt Lake City area. Without much planning, he bought a huge ad in the DEX Yellow Pages for ten thousand dollars, assuring Susan that it would bring a flock of house hunters to them. When she demurred, he explained that he didn’t have to pay for the ad for a few months, not until after his ad was actually published. Josh figured he could well afford the ten thousand dollars by then.
    When the new edition of the DEX directory came out, however, Josh was livid. Some of the phone numbers for his business were wrong, and he hated the pictures that appeared in the ad. He was right to be upset; house hunters who called the wrong numbers wouldn’t reach him, and probably wouldn’t bother trying to find his office. The directory printers had made a major error.
    Josh went to Chuck Cox and asked him what he should do.
    “I told him the first thing he should do was to be sure he had the phone directory company’s admission of their mistake in writing so he would have proof,” Chuck said. “That letter would be ‘gold,’ I said.”
    With the wrong phone numbers in print, Chuck felt that Josh would be off the hook for the money he owed on the ad. He knew Josh couldn’t afford such an expensive ad in the first place for what was only a fledgling company. Josh got a letter from the customer service manager, who was fired. The company started the collection process and Josh buckled.
    “He didn’t take my advice,” Chuck recalls. “He filed for bankruptcy