On January 26, Osman Abdullahi was gunned down by D.C. Police after an altercation inside his unlicensed group home. The home, located at 830 7th Street NE, had no heat, very little food, and no supervision. Abdullahi wasn't taking his medication at the time. The home's manager Mark Spence has a long history with troubled group homes. We published a cover story on Spence's activities and Abdullahi this week.

Within a few days of the incident, Spence effectively shutdown his group home. The lights were turned off. The doors were locked. A mysterious notice to "correct" or "vacate" was placed on the door.

The Department of Consumer and Regulatory Affairs told me they have no record of posting such a notice on the door of 830 7th Street NE. The notice cited overcrowding as an issue. Spence had 30 days to correct the overcrowding problem or face some kind of fine or eviction. I saw the notice. The notice did not have DCRA letterhead or a name and phone number of an inspector who made the determination.

I asked Spence about the note. He told me the building's owner could have posted it. He added that he had cleared everyone out of the building. This is a clear violation of landlord-tenant regs. No one stopped Mr. Spence from ignoring the law.

The Office of the D.C. Long-Term Care Ombudsman Program has had frequent encounters with Spence’s work, dating to 1999, according to Jerry Kasunic, the office’s current director.

Today, Kasunic met with the Department of Mental Health. He had one question for the department: Where did the residents of 830 7th Street NE go?

The department's answer: We don't know.

Kasunic sounded frustrated on the phone. "I don't know where they went," he says. "I want to make sure they have support services that they need whether its medical, psychiatric, any kind of coaching and counseling."

Kasunic had just gotten back from his meeting with DMH officials. He says he hopes to have information on the residents within a week or two.

"The longer the people are without the proper support systems the better the chance that someone is going to relapse and end up in an ER room or a psych unit," Kasunic says. "They need the proper case management."

If Spence was a licensed provider, the residents of 830 7th Street would have been given a 21-day notice of eviction, counseling before the 21-day notice, and a proper transfer to another facility or group home.

Instead, the residents were just dumped. “No one is stepping up to the plate to find these people,” Kasunic says.

The incident happened shortly before 11 a.m. While there was some back and forth over whether the home was a group home, it is a rooming house that does include people who are mentally ill. One former resident I interviewed said that he had been referred to the house by a psych facility. "This is supposed to be a community residential facility," said the former resident of his one-time 7th Street home.

Tonight, the home was empty except for two residents. The former resident was on the scene as well. He talked about the man who had been shot and killed by police. He knew him as "Osmond." Police released his name a few hours ago. His name is Osman A. Abdullahi. He was 36. The former resident said that Osman could be delusional, that he talked often about people out to get him. Some of Osman's enemies were from Alaska. "I would say he was schizophrenic," said the resident. "He talked about people coming to get him."

A month ago, he says, he saw Osman laying on his bed. "He had a butcher knife under [the] covers," he recalled. "He was worried about his roommates. He said the roommates were talking in their sleep about him."

This morning, Osman, attacked one of his roommates, a senior citizen, someone the two current residents referred to only as "Lewis." Grant Osborne, 57, a resident at the 7th Street home, says he woke up this morning to Osman standing in the doorway with a knife. He was fuming about his same old problem: People were out to get him. They were coming for him. Osborne didn't understand. The shades were drawn.

Osborne remembers the police breaking down the door. He heard the police ask Osman multiple times to drop his weapon. He says he heard one shot.

Osborne is speaking from his stoop. He is dressed in sweat pants, a sweat shirt and jacket. He is wearing a knitcap. It is 6:15 p.m. Soon two members of the Department of Mental Health's mobile crisis unit show up at the stoop. They offer to talk to Osborne and another resident. They want to talk inside where it is supposedly warm.

When they open the door to 730 8th Street, it is immediately apparent that inside will not work. There is blood in the foyer. It has pooled and congealed in spots. In one area, there is a small squiggle of bloody flesh.

Blood splatter or blood smears are on the lower right corner of the wall. Mobile Crisis calls it in. They want to see about getting this cleaned up. "There's still blood on the floor," one tells the authorities. "Nobody's here except for the people that live here."

"There is blood in the hallway," she tells the police during a second call. "This is a biohazard." It is 6:45 p.m. Police say they are done with the crime scene. It isn't their job to clean up the blood. A police cruiser soon passes by. And then another.

The carpet is drenched with blood and fluids. It's not quite a carpet. It looks like the foam layer that comes with the carpet. The foam is duct taped to the floor and stairs. In the kitchen, the sink is stopped up. The garbage disposal switch does nothing. Also, Osborne says one of the bathrooms is "messed up."

The former resident says he had to move because his bedroom had a mold problem. The former resident eventually leaves. He says he is headed for a niece's house in Maryland. He carries with him a loaded down garbage bag. If anyone needs him, he says, he will be at a local psych facility in the morning.

It is freezing inside 830 7th Street. Osborne says sometimes the heat comes on. Sometimes it's just cold. Upstairs there is a blood stain in the hall.

There is no one there to supervise the men. There is no one there to make sure the heat works, to clean up all the blood on the floor. Mobile Crisis makes a call to the proprietor–Mark Spence of an organization called "Hope Finders." Mobile Crisis has to leave a message.The men say they haven't seen him in a while.

I later reach Spence. He says that he has yet to visit his property since the shooting death of Osmond. "I wasn't down there," he says. "I know all about it. I really don't have any comment."

Osborne says he has been living at 830 7th Street for no more than a year. When he first arrived, he says, "everything was brand new." He doesn't know how many group homes or rooming houses he's lived in. There was one in Baltimore. There was a stay at the Psychiatric Institute of Washington. Now, there is uncertainty.

The two employees from Mobile Crisis do not think it is a good idea for Osborne to stay at 830 7th Street. They bring up the blood.

Osborne is prepared to leave, he says. He agrees to get in their van and find other shelter options. He tells one of the employees that he left all of his clothes and belongings in his first-floor room. But that he doesn't care. The employee assures him that he can get more clothes. All he carries with him to the van is a small, half-filled plastic bag. His nose is running. His sweat pants have seen better days. But his tan work boots look new. Osborne takes a seat in the far back corner of the van.

Osborne just stares out the window and takes in the car's heat.

There is one resident left at 830 7th Street NE. He tells mobile crisis that he doesn't want to go with them in their van. There is not much else mobile crisis can do. The resident quietly closes the door, walks back across the blood, and on inside.

But this was before the first really cold spell. After that, I think folks realized they didn't want to come here and face the security, the closed bridges, the no-camping on the Mall, and the cold weather. I've talked to many residents who don't want to deal with it. Why would out-of-towners get suckered into paying thousands of dollars only to get a glimpse of Obama (maybe) and attend some state-sponsored prom?

Reality has set in. The Post writes:

"Since word spread of get-rich-quick glory, homeowners flocked to online sites, flooding the market with hundreds of properties seeking upward of $10,000 for the week. But supply has far outpaced demand, said real estate agents and creators of Web sites devoted to brokering deals. This week, with the holidays over, demand has picked up slightly, the brokers said, but most people are not likely to find renters.

'I'm blown away by how little demand there is,' said Tania Odabashian, vice president at Corporate Apartment Specialists in Northern Virginia"

What's the next thing to go bust? I bet it's the inaugural balls. There are far too many of them. Stay tuned for that story.

way too cold from cole montgomery on Vimeo.

Nice to see Cole rocking the Target hoodie.

Fisher writes:

"Crawford's business operations are a jumble of contradictions. He sets out to build affordable housing for Washingtonians who've never owned anything in their lives, yet his grand plans often include pushing families out of homes they've had for decades. He promises poor people he will make homeowners of them, yet far too many of the units he's built end up in the hands of people who have political, personal or financial connections to him."

Crawford has his good and bad side. We chronicled Crawford's amazing b.s. to Kelsey Gardens residents. We also touted his redevelopment East of the River. But he's getting hosed now for all those false promises to residents.

Let me just say it: It is not shocking that residents either don't come back to their redeveloped apartments or are simply not allowed. Poor residents who want to return to their newly gentrified digs suddenly have had to contend with all kinds of new barriers: 1) A suddenly rigorous credit check; 2) the demand that they enroll in some budgeting class or computer class; 3) they are not informed that the building is ready for them to return. And who is responsible for most of these false promises across the city?

When it comes to making false promises to poor residents no one has done a better job in the past than the D.C. Housing Authority. Crawford is a nothing compared to the city government's representatives. Arthur Capper is a good example.

Arthur Capper is just one of the city's land grabs. It always starts the same with a city official coming to the housing project's rec center and making a pitch: "What would you like to see in your new community?"

The official gets community input. The residents get excited. Then they get booted. Only a handful ever make it back.

Five years ago, I called DCHA and asked them for a list of all its residents who've moved to make way for development. The agency threw up all kinds of roadblocks. But one thing they admitted, they didn't keep track of those displaced residents.

These are the same residents they've made all kinds of promises too. And they simply lost them.

"I've taken this bus heading south during rush hour and not during rush hour, and it's always a pain. They don't come very regularly, and they make so many stops (often every block) that it's practically faster to walk. I've started taking them for work during rush hour, and it's terrible – it takes about half an hour to go from 14th and Euclid St NW, roughly, to 14th and F. That's less than 2 miles. I could roll down the hill faster."

There has to be better bus lines. There has to be worse bus lines. I really dig the 16th Street-to-Silver Spring bus. The 42 isn't bad either. I've heard from sources over the years that the buses that run along MLK Ave SE are terrible after school lets out.

What are your bus horror stories?

The phone calls, the e-mails, the anonymous comments on this very blog—they have all been heard, read, and registered by the execs at Room & Board, the furniture store that, despite it all, is still planning to move into 1840 14th St. NW.

But for all of the 'hood's lovers of diners and comedy clubs and local business owners, who are almost certainly not moving into 1840 14th St. NW, Room & Board is making promises. The company promises to be a good neighbor, hire people on salary with good bennies (rather than on commission), and restore the building into the showplace it once was.

In two phone calls, one from a PR rep who did not want to be named and one conference call with that rep, Chief Financial Officer Mark Miller, and Communications Director Jill Linville, the Room & Board folks confirmed they are deep into their D.C. plans and had been looking for the right spot for about two years.

Miller, who has been the most involved in the process, says the company considered sites in Tysons Corner, Rockville, Bethesda, Chevy Chase, Georgetown, and "about 25 other locations," including the old Central Union Mission building at 14th and R, before settling on the former Church of the Rapture at 14th and T.

Places outside of D.C. were quickly ruled out. "We see ourselves as more of an urban retailer than a suburban one," says Miller. "One of the ways we operate is we are not interested in making a big presence about ourselves or to change the flavor of the neighborhood or impose our theme on it. We'll make it fit in within the neighborhood." One draw: Bob Gold + Mitchell Williams, another furniture chain on the higher end of affordable, has a store down the street, at 1526 14th St. NW.

Miller notes that delivery trucks will not be in and out. The 14th and T store will be showroom-only. A separate site will be developed in the 'burbs as a warehouse and delivery hub.

The D.C. store, which will open in 2010, will be the 10th Room & Board, which started in Minneapolis. The ninth store is opening in Atlanta in '09.

Plans for the building/eyesore include restoring it to resemble its former life as a Model T factory and showroom, Miller says. The company hired well-known local architects, Eric Colbert & Associates, to do the job.

Diner/Tryst/Open City owner Constantine Stavropoulos has all but given up the dream on 14th and T, although he notes Room & Board's bid could still fall through. The deal is under a 60-day due-diligence period, which will be up Dec. 21, according to Miller. "There's still a part of me that hopes Room & Board will not come to this location," he says. As reality closes in, people have been calling "every other day" about other spots for the type of restaurant/comedy club/yoga/dance/indie movie combo Stavropoulos and his principal partner, John Xereas of DC-Improv and Riot Act, had planned. "We do have a good team together. If it falls through here, we'll go somewhere else, but I'd still like to see it happen on 14th Street."

He's considered the Central Union Mission building, although he says the owner may have other plans for that spot.

For those looking to make a buck off their (probably) Ikea-optimized Northwest townhouse during inauguration week, there's now an alternative to anonymous/sketchy negotiations made over Craigslist. D.C. area native and "mortgage guy" Andre Butters and a few of his friends have launched www.inauguralhomes.com. "We're like a match.com for people coming in and out of the city," Butters explains.

The site, a place "where area residents can list their properties for rent and visitors to the Nation's Capital can find lodging during Inauguration week,"  differs from similar online classifieds services in that it requires users ante up some personal info and a credit card in order to register– theoretically making the whole inviting-complete-strangers-to-live-in-your-house-thing a little less irrational.

"We're the safest way to go right now," says Butters, who points out that, despite the fees charged, 24.95 to list a dwelling and 9.95 to send "10 rental inquiries," both renters (40 have signed up in the last two days) and residents have been eager to use the service.

Considering this either sarcastic or psychotic anonymous, inaugural rental post found on Craigslist and seen below, Butters and friends —by creating a listing system that offers up some kind of accountability– may have stumbled upon a cash cow.

"You asked for change and elected "the one". Now, we are asking for your change – change WE believe in. For all hardcore fans who want to see the skinny guy, Obamamama and their offspring move into new premises, we will be offering our beautiful 2 car garage as night quarters. We will even put an air mattress, two blankets and two buckets in for your bathroom needs. Two people max. Only three miles to the Capitol, excellent bus lines. No windows, no heat, but hey – it´s the chance to see your new Jesus! Only $ 200 per night if you stay a minimum of four nights. We need $ 500 as a deposit, cash only please. You will not be allowed in the house because we want to make sure nothing is missing after your leave. We will give a ten percent discount if you agree to do a proper cleaning of the garage, the roaches and bugs can be a nuisance. We will only rent to people who come with references!"

Traffic Advisory for the Fannie Mae 2008 Walk for the Homeless National Walkathon

The Fannie Mae 2008 Walk for the Homeless National Walkathon will be held on Saturday, November 22, 2008. To facilitate this event, vehicular traffic restrictions must be imposed on all the noted streets downtown, Washington, DC between the hours of 7:00 am and 12:00 pm on the day of the walk. To avoid delays, motorists should avoid the route of the walk and streets that intersect.

The walk will go as follows:

• The participants will start at the Mall near Jefferson Drive, N.W.
• then, the participants will take south on 4th Street, N.W.;
• turn right on Independence Avenue, S.W.;
• left on 15th Street, SW continuing south as it becomes Raoul Wallenberg Place, S.W.;
• Around the Tidal Basin over Inlet Bridge;
• Stay left on Ohio Drive;
• Follow Ohio Drive to West Basin Drive and turn right at intersection of West Basin Drive and Independence Avenue, S.W.;
• Bear left to continue on Independence Avenue to 15th Street, S.W.;
• North on 15th Street, S.W.;
• East on Jefferson Drive crossing 14th Street, N.W.;
• Finishing back on the Mall at 4th Street, S.W.

The Metropolitan Police Department always advises drivers to pay attention when operating any motor vehicle. Motorists are also urged to exercise caution when traveling in the area of any special events due to potential heavy pedestrian traffic. Unexpected changes are always possible in such closures based upon unanticipated or prevailing conditions.

Preregistration for the event costs $15 for "youth" (25 and younger) and $25 for adults. More details here.

• Lt. James A. Cullen posted on the MDP-4D listserv that the 17 year old who was shot while near the 700 block of Decatur St. NW was treated and released from the hospital. Cullen also said that a "white Lexus sedan" may have been involved in the incident. According to Linda Brown, MPD Commander of the Fourth District, police are responding with gusto to the most recent shooting on Kennedy St. (which City Paper missed): "Our attention is continually focused in the 600-700 blocks of Jefferson, Kennedy and Longfellow.  We have executed several search warrants in this target area in the last few days in an effort to bring this gun violence to an end."
• Looking to rent out your place for inauguration but worried about getting busted for violating housing regulations? Fear not! According to The Washington Post Mayor Adrian M. Fenty decided yesterday to suspend "requirements for property inspections...from Jan. 13 through 27," as well as various other obstacles to renting out one's futon in Brightwood Park. (*Ahem* We have wireless Internet, folks! And the place is clean! *Ahem*) The last obstacle is the landlord. (Don't hold your breath for Fenty to suspend other pointless laws, the kind that do nothing to curb the behaviors they criminalize and generate less money than is required to enforce them.)
• Twilight, the vampire movie every chick wants to see, opens tonight. Critics have mixed opinions. Moviegoers should prepare themselves for violent hordes of XX's, ranging from 13 to 30 years of age, all of them screaming for the blood of Robert Pattinson. Check out Washington City Paper's showtimes for other movie listings.
• Prince of Petworth has a question for you.
• Calling all nerds: New FreakAngels, new Marriedtothesea, and new Penny-Arcade. Check them out now.

Prince of Petworth spotted some more storefront closings in Columbia Heights: Carvel and Cinnabon have closed. The two shops were located in the Tivoli. Isn't that now three storefronts that have failed in the renovated theater space?

Is Target to blame? Or is this simply that both shops were just sucky? They always seemed to have long lines but maybe this was because the service wasn't all that great. Is the great Columbia Heights renaissance over?

I feel foolish for even posing that question. I'm sure it isn't.

I'm not sure this has anything to do with Schwartzman's premise that Mount Pleasant is suffering a downturn because the neighborhood is a) too close to the Columbia Heights big boxes; b) filled with rabid NIMBYs; c) saddled with recovering from that massive apartment fire d) filled with opposing views of residents who either want a Red Derby or a McDonald's.

Mount P certainly has suffered. It has become way more known for fighting over music than having cool places to eat or shop. The best hangout is still the Raven (which is totally fine) and Heller's and Haydee's.There are very few reasons for residents outside of the neighborhood to come visit and spend their money.

In fact, there are very few reasons for Mount P residents to shop on the main drag. There is no doubt that the Target and the shops/restaurants around the Target are drawing residents from Mount P. I see that every weekend. It's this great migration across 16th.

So what do you think needs to happen in Mount Pleasant?

Commenters have beeen tearing it up over at 14th and T: The Good News, Bad News Edition, many of them in support of Diner/Tryst/Open City owner Constantine Stavropoulos and comedy club impresario John Xereas, who had hoped—with the help of Dave Chappelle and others—to develop local businesses inside the former Church of the Reformer. That plan now looks even more like a dream deferred to Minneapolis-based furniture outfit Room & Board.

Blame the "big-box mentality" if you like, but here's what really happened, according to Wayne Dickson, who, as principal partner at Blake Dickson Real Estate Services, represents the owners of the building: "Whoever writes the first check gets the space. That's the beginning and the end of the story....They [the local business owners] didn't have the money and had no assurance they could get the money."

Dickson is not unsympathetic to Stavropoulos and John X. He was the one who helped Stavropoulos move into Woodley Park in what is now Open City. They're friends and he says he has high esteem for both men. But that doesn't mean Four Points, his clients and the owners of the building, are making a bad decision.

"Think of yourself in their position," he says. "They have a building that's been vacant for three years and has a significant debt service every month....You've got this company coming in saying, 'Here is a check' and you've got other interested parties saying, 'Give me 60 to 90 days and let me see if I can get the money.' Let's say you give them 90 days and in the meantime, Room & Board walks. Heads roll over something like that. People lose their jobs."

Stavropoulos and Co. will have to find another space and Dickson says he's happy to help them do that. He has one spot already in mind, the former home of the Central Union Mission at 14th and R. But Stavropoulos has poured a good deal of energy into getting people on board with the project at 14th and T—"He really worked hard. He walked the streets talking to people," says Dickson, who has lived within three blocks of 14th and T for 25 years.

But Room & Board is coming. The chief financial officers is in town today lining things up. He and Dickson met with Councilmember Jack Evans today, partially based on the anti-chain reaction from the neighborhood. Evans' position, according to Dickson, is that government has no part in the sale of the building.

Dickson is quick to defend Room & Board. It's "not some giant big-box store," he says. It has seven stores nationwide, the closest being in SoHo in NYC. "It's going to have a tremendous regional draw to this neighborhood and I think that is a win-win."

The store, he says, will likely open about two years from now. An architect has already been hired.

(City Paper photograph by Pilar Vergara)

I started thinking about Frank Winstead. The man is running for his ANC post again. Will this be the end of his anti-ping-pong-street-life crusade? Will voters elect someone else?

I called Winstead this morning. He didn't answer. I left a message!

Arlene Reba, 74, stood outside Nest, a new consignment shop on Wisconsin Avenue NW in Tenleytown, and peered in. The place was closed, but Reba caught a glimpse of an employee inside the store. The employee ducked out of sight and waited for Reba to leave.

Reba, it turns out, had a history with the people running Nest. The man behind Nest is John Coon, an entrepreneur who specializes in opening and closing consignment shops. Coon ran the recently shuttered Washington Consignment in Cleveland Park and operated another store by the same name on Wisconsin Avenue before closing it more than a year ago. Another Coon consignment store on Nicholson Lane in Rockville closed in August.

Per his travels in the second-hand-sales biz, Coon has attracted a coterie of regulars, with Reba among them. At Washington Consignment in Cleveland Park, Reba was “a friend of the store,” according to Coon. But the two have had a falling-out since Washington Consignment began going under. Reba lost trust in the store, where she knew all of the employees and had done business for several years. Others who claim they should have been paid and weren’t or were paid too little too late echo her concerns.

The Cleveland Park store closed Sept. 28. “We went insolvent,” says Coon, who sometimes lists himself as the store owner but is in actuality the president of a board of a directors of a company that owns the store, he says.

“It was a victim of the economy,” says Coon of his latest closed store. He needed out of an expensive Connecticut Avenue lease, and when he realized he was not taking in enough money to cover expenses—including paying his consigners—he decided to have a big sale, close up shop, and sell the store’s Web site and e-mail list to a new corporation, which owns Nest.

At Nest, he has combined all of his endeavors, making it one-stop shopping for cleaning services, painting, interior design, home-staging, and event- and wedding-planning. He turned an old rug store that, he says, “everyone told me had been going out of business for 20 years” into a brightly colored gallery of other people’s furnishings, complete with a parrot named Pedro.

The sale of the Web site and the proceeds from the new store are helping him to pay his old consigners, he says. But some of his old consigners feel they are getting a bad deal. Among those who’ve come forward, Reba was owed the most.

Reba, a retired teacher and travel broker who finds items at estate sales and the like and then consigns them, was offered store credit in lieu of a check from Washington Consignment for more than $2,000. She took it, she says, “because I figured if they closed, I would have nothing.” She picked out a 1920s-era Chinese emperor’s robe, a Japanese wedding coat, and a few small statues. “All of it had to be carried out,” she says.

Reba felt her account had not been zeroed-out; Coon says it was and then some. When Reba went in again a few days later, she spied a bronze panther someone had recently brought in. “I loved it,” she says of the small sculpture by artist Loet Vanderveen. She owned another work of his, a bishop sitting in a rocking chair, “and I had never seen another piece by him” before the panther showed up.

She says that because she felt the store still owed her and that she would rather have had the money than robes and wedding coats and statues, she would agree only to pay half of the more than $650 the store was asking for the sculpture. She wrote a check, which was cashed; she provided a copy to Washington City Paper. Coon’s take is that Reba took the panther after being paid in full, had to be tracked down before she paid for half of it, and that by not paying the other half what she actually did “amounts to shoplifting.” Reba, upon hearing this, secured on Monday a cashier’s check for the rest of the asking price and handed it to Coon at Nest. Both say she wished him well and then walked out.

Coon’s exchanges with Linda Miller have not gone nearly as well.

Miller has written several angry posts on the popular Cleveland Park Listserv claiming Washington Consignment has owed her $600 since 2006. On the store’s last day, Miller wrote:

I just came from there and was dismissed by the owner with a surly, ‘Oh. it’s you’ I’ve been reading about you (what I’ve written as a customer(s) who up to now has been stolen from, since we are not being paid, (Way to go CP List Serv!!!!!) He then ran out…and said he would be back in 20 minutes. His take is that my $600 payment was 2 yrs ago ago and he has to research it. I told him my attorney would be calling him and he said, ‘I’d much rather deal with him rather than you”.

Coon says of Miller: “Linda Miller is a nut.” He confirms he told her he would rather deal with her lawyer but takes issue with the rest of her account. He was already leaving, he says.

Miller says: “I think he is the crazy one because he doesn’t pay. What kind of businessman is this? He comes across like some kind of pillar of the community and he’s not paying people.…I want my $600.”

The deal at Washington Consignment and at all of Coon’s stores has been this: When your items sell, you get half of the sale price and the store keeps half. Anything that doesn’t sell within 90 days must be picked up within one week. Anything that is not picked up within that week becomes the property of the store.

Both Miller and Coon say Miller turned over “hundreds” of items to Washington Consignment. Miller says these included an antique desk, plates, a table runner, burgundy pillows, a throw, Italian pottery, art, a table, and various other furniture and accessories from several homes she is trying to either sell or rent.

Coon says she was allowed to pick up unsold items after the one-week window. Miller says the store broke some of these items. Coon says it’s possible “a couple of figurines” were damaged. Miller says, “That’s a lie. I’m not into figurines.”

Coon’s records show she was issued two checks, for just under $600, and that the bookkeeper went so far as to give her the number of the checks. Although he said he would research her account, he has not checked to see if Miller cashed the checks.

“It was so long ago,” he says. “We don’t have these bank accounts anymore.…I would have no problem dealing with her in a rational, reasonable way, but when she’s trashing us and then saying she’s going to sue me…it burns me that I have to dig back into this.”

Another consigner, Deena Gorland, has been in touch with Miller through the Listserv and sympathizes with her. Gorland, a photographer, consigned only one item, a statue of a Tibetan Buddha that belonged to her ex-husband. “I wanted to get rid of the bad karma,” she says.

The store employee who took the item wrote it was “the real deal” in a record of the transaction. Those same records show it sold for more than $200 in February and that Gorland was issued a check on Oct. 8 for $101.25, eight months after the sale. Coon says the check was delayed because “we must have missed over her.” The check was mailed this week, he says.

“He doesn’t owe me a lot of money, like he owes Linda. It’s the principle of the thing,” says Gorland. “I run my own business…and I’ll say I’m going to get you these prints, and you pay 50 percent up front and the balance when you receive them. I run my business in an honest way. I do not shimmy-shank people.”

Gorland was angry enough to file a complaint with the Better Business Bureau. The BBB, according to its Web site, opened a file on Washington Consignment in March 2007 and, after receiving five complaints within 12 months, issued an “unsatisfactory record.”

Coon says the rating is misleading. “There were late payments, some of them toward the end, and there was one [complaint to the BBB] where we never got the letter about it. If you don’t respond to the BBB, they just assume you’re the bad guy,” he says. The BBB report does show that Washington Consignment resolved all but one of the five complaints, listing it as a “contract dispute.”

Another consigner, Eleanor Oliver, says she had a running complaint with Washington Consignment that was settled after she heard they were going out of business and posted her thoughts on the Listserv. “I’ve had no further problem since then,” she says, “but it took going public to get the money out of them.” She was owed between $150 and $200.

With Stephen Geoffray, the stakes were higher. He sent Washington Consignment a fine dining table that sold within a month for about $2,900, he says. When informed the store was closing, he was asked to accept two payments, one in July and one in August. He declined and made several more calls requesting full payment.

“After my nephew stopped in, I was told I could expect about $400, which I received...,” he wrote in an e-mail. “I received a letter dated Sept with a check for about $57.00 saying that…I would be paid in full but no specific terms.”

Coon says the letter stated he would receive monthly payments, but does understand Geoffray’s frustrations.

The bottom line, says Coon, is that “I was part of a business that failed.…We made a decision to let it go, but it was never an option that people would not get paid.”

(City Paper photographs by Darrow Montgomery)