Catharine Bramkamp - Real Estate Diva 04 - Trash Out (23 page)

“I have a new tenant.” Prue announced cheerfully.  She cut her chicken into tiny pieces and then failed to eat them.  Ah, that was her
diet
secret.  

I automatically looked around for Raul and Brick
,
but they had made good their promise
a few months ago
and had moved to the relative safety of San Francisco’s Castro
district
.

“Her name is Melissa
,
she stayed here before, in your apartment.
  It was
a
good place until Dick found her there.
”  Since Ben and I stayed in the apartment above the barn, Prue calls it “my apartment” even though I now had “my own house” just down the street. 

I scooped up my plate and spirited it off to the kitchen.  I didn’t even want to inflict the meat on the compost collection fermenting in a cut down gallon milk jug
by the sink
.  I dumped the
stuff
directly
into the garbage.

Prue picked up her own plate and scrapped the contents into the compost collection.

I pulled out
a
container of mint-chip ice cream
–
Cooper
brand
- and wondered if I had really thought
the move to Claim Jump all the way
through.
  How many dinners like this would I be asked to eat? 
One a week?
 
Two a week?
  Would I be known as Prue’s granddaughter rather than me, Allison Little?

“Anyway,
Dick
is somewhat of a challenge. He’s in jail now but not for long.
But that doesn’t explain where Melissa is
, she was
suppose
to call me and check in
.
Did you
happen to
see her downtown? 
No
,
of course not
,
you don’t even know what she looks like.
  Pretty girl.  She usually stays at the homes of her patients but she
currently
has
just
day jobs.”

“
You told me
she didn’t show up for those.”

Prue
glanced out the kitchen window
that
offers a clear view of the
guest house
.  “
First Debbie and now Melissa.  Could they be connected?  Why would someone kidnap Melissa?”

“Are we kidnapping nurses now?  Why would they be connected?”

“In mystery novels these things are always connected
,
” Prue declared darkly. 
“
Suzanne Chatterhill thinks someone did away with Debbie.”

“Only because someone conveniently did away with Lucky Masters
,
”  I
pointed out. 

I en
joyed spending the night in our almost finished house
. 
The hole had been
repaired,
I could place a throw rug at the foot of the stairs to hide the lighter stain on the flooring.
I should be perfectly content, but instead
I puzzled over this Melissa.
Debbie
must be hiding –
from the counter suit against the co-op housing. I was confident Debbie would appear at the last minute and triumphantly complete her
law suit
. 
I wondered what Tom Marten thought?

I woke determined to disc
over what Debbie was up to, but
the
Furies texted me
first thing in the morning
as if the
icing
coloring on the fourth rose to the right on the shower cake was a matter of life and death
. In between their texts, I answered Carrie’s call reminding me of the fitting in three hours and then
Ben
called
explaining he needed to help Cassandra
at the winery. 
How lovely to be so needed.

“Have you heard the latest?”  Sarah caught me just as I was
picking up
nails out of the front yard
before
driving
back down to the Bay Area.  The sky was blue and the air was calm, a perfect fall morning
.
  I
desperately wanted to stay and breath in the fresh air, sit
down and watch the sun float higher into the sky. B
ut I had
too much to finish up in River’s Bend.
And I hoped a few sub-contractors would appear today to finish up the
wainscoting
, the windows and refinish the now oddly colored patch job at the foot of the stairs. 

Sarah
leaned on the fence, the picture of small town life that only existed in our collective imaginations.

“No,” I
made a small pile of nails on the porch, in case they could be re-used
.  “Tell me the latest.”

“
Debbie Smith
is suing Hank and Hank’s Roadhouse.
” Sarah couldn’t stay
still,
she jiggled as she spoke,
dancing
on the balls of her feet.  “
She claims she tripped on his cracked sidewalk and hurt her knee and is suing him for negligence or something like that.”

“If we all sued for negligence we wouldn’t have any businesses left on Main Street.”

“I agree.
”  Sarah tightened her
pony tail
because it bounced with her every move. “
Everyone knows about the tree root
pushing up the sidewalk
in front of his place, even Debbie.”

“What
do people think about this new law suit?” 

“
I
t hasn’t helped her campaign to sue Lucky’s estate.”

I knew Sarah was a member of the
Brotherhood,
she inherited the position after her grandparents passed away.  “
Debbie
only has a few more days left on her extension. She complained once that her witnesses kept disappearing after they agreed to sign
. You know, they said sure, then probably reconsidered, it’s not good to call attention to yourself if you’re illegally growing pot
.” 

That sounded ominous and I said so.  “Oh, no,” Sarah
clarified
noticing my
expression
.  “Not like that,
all those former residents disappeared further up the mountain so s
he ha
d
to travel up to the Ridge or hunt around Rough and Ready or Downi
e
ville to find possible
former owners.
  Debbie called it tracking them down.
You know,
lots of the fire
victims
didn’t really own the property
that was destroyed
.”

“I am aware of that.” The
forest
fire
in question
had
not only destroyed
many
legitimate
homes, but
also
more than 20
squatters
. And these were
not
people
like the nice couple in the Christophers
’
REO
who paid for their utilities
.
These
squatters
devoted their lives to sticking it to the man.  What they didn’t count on was that the man also powered the fire department.  And if you choose to live down a narrow road in a shack
made
of
cast off lumber, sheetrock and blue tarp
, and if you don’t have a street sign,
you can hardly publically complain when the fire truck cannot reach you. 

“And now Debbie is
traipsing
up along the ridge looking for
the
former owners
of illegal
housing
?  Who is going to admit to
squatting
on
property
?
”

Sarah
flicked off a paint chip from the fence.  I flinched
.  “That’s why she can’t find enough
plaintiffs.
  The legitimate
homeowners
had insurance, and they are just rebuilding with that money.  They aren’t interested in suing.”

“That’s surprising
,
” I commented.

Sarah
bounced and focused for a minute on Main Street
. 
“Yes it is. I thought the lot of them would go for the money.”

“And they aren’t.”

“Debbie says
a number of them
think it will hurt the town infrastructure and won’t do it.”

“It will.” I mused.
I had hea
r
d that much from people deeply embedded into the system, like the Chief of Police and
Summer
.  Without Lucky’s legacy gifts, much of what was charming or even safe about Claim Jump would disappear.  And no one really wanted that.

I liked the
picture of self
righteous, litigious Debbie
,
wiry gray hair flying as she worked diligently to lure disinclined Ridge residents out of their tee pees and lean
-
tos and into the
County courthouse in Nevada City.  Sounded like a plan doomed from the beginning.
  They all lived up there for a reason, and if they had retreated there after the fire, that was an even better reason not to appear anywhere near a
state
official, police officer or a county jail.

“Is suing Hanks Roadhouse part of the plan as well?”  I couldn’t see how that would help her cause at all.  But maybe she was feeling desperate for attention, like Donna had mentioned.

“Hey Sarah, where do we keep the tape?”  Scott called from the stoop of
the
library.

“No, that’s just a bonus.” Sarah bounced a bit
at the fence, to warm up. Then she
bounced back up the street to the library. “It’s in the third drawer to the left.”

I
arrived at
the bridal shop
in San Rafael just in time.

“You are twitching
,
”
Carrie
observed as the dress designer cinched her dress another inch tighter.  Since she is petite and slender a full skirted princess dress complete with
a
real diamond tiara
(borrowed
, but
still)
, actually looked good on her
, even appropriate
.

“No,” I pressed a finger to my
eyelid
, just to make sure it wasn’t firing off like the inspector in the Pink Panther
films
.  “No, I am not twitching and you look lovely.”

Carried waved away the woman and stepped off the
viewing
platform
(really, there is no other word)
.  She sunk down
before me and looked
like the center of a flower petal, or a Cabbage Patch doll.

“If this is too hard, I understand.”  She took my cold hands in hers.  “Just say the word.
”

“If
your wedding is
difficult, how
am I supposed to face my own marriage?
Again?” 
I sounded
bleaker
than I
intended
.

She considered that.  “You’ll have to trust Ben, won’t you?”

“I trusted Mark.”  I pointed out.

“You did. He just wasn’t all that trustworthy.
  I could tell.
”

Mark
and I
met at
a
frat house
party
and bonded over
a
garbage can filled
to the brim with the appropriately named drink,
Red Death.  I fell for him hard. He was tall, slender, handsome
and looked like the perfect fraternity man
he was
.
He was a
great fraternity president, he
was great in bed,
he
was skilled at saying the right
words at the right time
. And he wanted me, ME!  Allison Little who, according to my mother and sisters-in-law, was doomed to be single and childless all her life. Oh sure, just
because
I didn’t get pregnant at
eighteen
like every other woman in my family, just because I managed to graduate from college (first
of the Singleton women
to do so, did I get a party?  I did not). 
I was convinced
Mark would save me from
all the censures of my family
.