The Home Tour

We had driven all day and came to the first house on the tour. I had purchased tickets for myself and my friend, Audrey, over the internet for a Celebrity Home Tour. Since we were both in the interior design business, we were more than a little excited at the opportunity to see first hand how some of the houses were decorated. It was a long drive, but we finally arrived at the first house listed on the tour itinerary. The tour was to meet at the first house and then a chartered bus would pick us all up for the remainder of the tour. We arrived a little earlier than we planned and no one else had gotten there yet, so we parked and walked towards the house. The gate was open so we walked through to an immaculate front yard that sloped up towards the house. The walkway that led to the front door was broken up by a small set of cobblestone steps. It was simply, but nicely landscaped with delicate bushes all along the front of the house and a few scattered large elm trees in the front with lush, deep green grass. We saw that the front door was open, so we cautiously walked in. The house was as beautiful as ou would expect a celebrity house to be with rich shades of deep gold and beige. This one was a huge 2-story with over 10,000 square feet.

We wanted to change our clothes to freshen up a bit after our long drive and didn’t think it would be a problem for us to use one of the bathrooms upstairs just to change in as long as we didn’t disturb anything. I went out to the car to get the small travel bag which contained a change of clothes for each of us to take inside. As I walked back in the door, I saw Audrey at the top of the stairs so I headed in that same direction when I suddenly heard voices coming from the kitchen. I wondered if other oeple on the tour had arrived untill I heard the voices become raised and angered. I suddenly felt panicky, like we shouldn’t be there. I set down the bag and quickly caught up to Audrey and told her we needed to get out of there now. My intuition was strongly pushing me to leave. In my hurried state, I forgot to pick up the b ag as we all but rand down the friveway towards the gate. As we were rushing down the drivway, we saw three cars that weren’t there when we arrived and they were parked in such a way that they half blocked the long driveway to the house. We quickly walked past them, but didn’t notice anyone inside. Wehen we got to the car, I told Audrey about leaving the bag and that we would come back to get it when we were sure peopld from the tour would be there. We decided to go ahead and check into our hotel room just to kill some time. We planned on staying overnight, since the tour would take up the biggest part of the day and it was a three hour drive to get back home. After unpacking we thought it was time to go back to get our bag and join the rest of the tour. Whebn we got back to the house that we earlier escaped from, we found a crowd at the entrance gate and a security guard that wasn’t letting anyone through. We walked up to the guard and explained to him why we were there and that we just wanted to get oiur travel bag. He told us that the crowd behind us was part of our tour and they were waiting to get in. He said he would let us go up to the house and he radioed another security guard to watch for us and to go in and get our bag