Death at a Fixer-Upper (10 page)

“Why not?”

She spread out her hands. “It's like I told you. Bad luck. Karma. Folks looking for a fast profit won't find it here. Just trouble.”

For a brief moment, I detected an undercurrent of bitterness in her voice. Then she shrugged and turned her attention back to the rake. “Here's the funny thing about this rake. It moved itself.”

It took a moment before the import of her words hit me. “It moved itself?”

“From the rack over yonder to here inside the door. I thought maybe you or one of the other agents borrowed it.”

I shook my head. “Why would they? I know I didn't. Lily?”

“She says not.”

I knocked it around for a moment until an unpleasant idea sent a chill down my back. “Maybe the last time you used it you put it back here.”

“Could be.”

I looked the rake up and down. It was your basic garden rake for breaking up clods of dirt, rusty teeth that might have been blue once, wooden handle polished from years of use. “You mind if I check something?”

“Be my guest.”

I hesitated before reaching for the rake, wondering about fingerprints. Then I chided myself for watching too many police procedurals. I picked up the rake, feeling its heft in my hands. It was well constructed. Made in America, or at least Canada.

“You wanna take that inside?” Merrit seemed to be reading my mind, which gave me an uncomfortable shivery feeling.

“Yeah.” I followed her to the back door and we mounted the stairs. Lily was at the kitchen table, knocking back sugar cookies and lemonade with gusto. She watched our progress with her caramel eyes but said nothing. Oliver the pug gave me a woof from his doggy bed, and I flinched.

Merrit spoke sharply to him and took a seat across from her daughter. “You just go on and help yourself,” she said. “Mind those stairs. They're not fit to be walked on.”

I carried the rake past the old man's bedroom and slipped through the door to the front hall. The sour smell of time and decay hovered like a cloud at the foot of the main staircase, forcing me back a step. Muttering to myself, I lowered my head and began to climb. The second story was draped in shadow. The few rays of feeble light that filtered through the ivy-clad windows showed nothing more than swirling dust motes disturbed by my intrusion. I reached the second story and hesitated, thinking hard. Then I turned toward the tower stairs and started up.

The treads groaned under my feet and the wooden railing sagged away from me, coated in velvety mildew. I stepped over the decayed boards I'd noted yesterday, using the rake handle to test the remaining wood. My heart was thumping by the time I gained the top.

The dust that lay thickly on the upper landing was marked with footprints. I wondered if the authorities had come up here to take a look, just as I was. Or—who? I pushed that question aside. Rainwater had intruded freely through the damaged roof, running down the walls and stripping the floral paper more effectively than a hot iron. Where pools had collected on the plank flooring, the wood was soft and fibrous. Dull black mold colonized the sloping walls of the room; in spots, the plaster had fallen away, leaving the lath exposed like bare bones. I shook my head. Maybe Ravello was right and the house was beyond repair.

Stepping carefully around the glass shards scattered on the floor, I moved over to the arched window. It opened down the middle, the arch bisected vertically to form two hinged halves with a latch in the center, and appeared to have been painted shut years ago. Though the glass was broken out, the wooden framework—mullions?—that held each pane was intact.

I was turning away with a sigh of relief when I saw the faintest of dark lines. I took a closer look. Someone had run something very thin and sharp, like a razor blade, between the two moving halves. I tried the latch. There was a second of resistance, then the window popped open.

“Hell,” I said.

The sill was littered with glass fragments, but there was a bare spot in the center; maybe someone had rested his hand there, just as I was about to do. I picked up the rake and worked it through the window opening. Far below, I could see Aster Lane and the dark shoulders of the yews by the front gate. I leaned out cautiously, keeping one hand on the sill. Not eight feet down, where the eaves met the base of the tower, I spotted a small flat landing, weathered by exposure but with a pale rectangle of lighter wood. Surely the gargoyle had stood there, keeping watch over the long driveway.

I leaned out as far as I dared. The teeth of the rake were still several feet short of the spot. I tried planting my feet and using both hands. This bought me about a foot and a half, maybe four or five inches shy of the mark.

A wave of acrophobia washed over me. I pulled myself inside, scrabbling for a grip on the sill. I'd had enough. I closed the window and latched it, then turned on my heel and left, making my way carefully down the stairs.

Lily was gone and Merrit was seated at the kitchen table when I returned. Her arms were folded in front of her, cradling her head. She looked up, momentarily disoriented. Then her expression cleared. “Find what you were looking for?”

“I'm not sure.” It didn't feel right to air my suspicions—if, indeed, they were suspicions and not just my vivid imagination—and possibly upset her. Instead, I leaned the rake next to the door and prepared to move on.

“I made some tea if you have time to set a minute,” she said.

Her manner was shy, almost diffident, and I caught a glimpse of deep loneliness and isolation. I wasn't a tea drinker and was itching to be gone, but instead of making an excuse I sat down at the table and allowed her to pour me a mug of dark fluid. Somehow Merrit was intricately tied to the undercurrents and history that surrounded this house. I wondered how much she knew and what, in her longing for company, she might tell me.

She placed the teapot on a homemade pot holder, the kind kids weave at camp from loops of bright-colored stretchy stuff, and pushed a plate of sugar cookies at me. We sipped in silence for a moment. Finally she said, “You from around here?”

“Born and raised.” I told her a little about my family. When that shallow font of information seemed about to dry up, I asked, “How about you?”

She shook her head. “Portland. I still have family up that way.”

“Would you ever go back there?”

“In a heartbeat.”

“So why don't you?”

Her face set. “I'd be going empty-handed. No job, no savings, no roof over our heads. My sister has four kids under the age of twelve she looks after. Her man holds down two jobs to keep them all together. But they'd gladly open their home to me and Lily. I just can't ask them to. You don't do that to family. Not when they've stood by you.”

“Stood by you how?”

She helped herself to a sugar cookie and broke it in half. “I just mean in general.” Her eyes stayed fixed on the crumbs that were scattered on her plate.

Acting on instincts I didn't understand, I pushed on. “What brought you to Arlinda, then?”

“My husband was offered a job as a scaler with one of the logging companies. He'd been out of work a year and we couldn't pass it up. Lily was three then. We didn't know a soul here, but the work was steady.” She paused, then said, “He passed when Lily was five.”

I felt chilled all of a sudden. Lily had spoken with that same detachment. “That must have been terrible.”

“Yes.” Her eyes had turned remote; her fingers clutched her tea like a life preserver. A tremor traveled down her arm, creating a crescendo of tiny waves in her cup. I waited.

She looked up. “I forgot to ask if you take lemon with your tea.”

“This is fine.”

We lapsed into another silence. I sipped from my cup, painfully aware of my limited gift for small talk. Finally I said, “You mentioned a great-nephew.”

“Vito Price. Eddie always used to talk about how he showed up here one day and stayed on maybe a couple of weeks. He left one night and didn't return. This was maybe fifteen years ago. Eddie was real hurt.”

“He never heard from him again?”

“Not a word. He told me the police even stopped by asking for him, but Eddie didn't know his whereabouts. Hadn't even left a note.”

“How'd you come to be Eddie's caregiver?”

“I was on a contract with IHSS. The county outreach program. Eddie was one of my regulars. After I'd been stopping by for about a year, he asked me to live in. Said it would be more convenient that way. He paid me a base wage, less than the county paid, but with room and board. I helped him with his personal care and did the shopping and cooking, even helped him in the garden. It was the company he valued, I think.”

“You must have gotten pretty close.”

She rubbed her knuckles. “He was my employer.”

“Is that all?” Again, something compelled me to push beyond politeness.

A shadow rippled behind her pale eyes. “The lawyer say something?”

I took a sip of tea, waiting. The silence stretched on.

At last she stirred. “He'd asked me to marry him.”

Whoa. “I didn't know that.”

“I said yes. So go ahead.”

“Go ahead and what?”

“Tell me that I was taking advantage. That I was a gold digger preying on a weak old man.”

“I'm not judging you.”

“That'd make you the first. Don't believe for a second I haven't heard what's been said. Or what they tell my daughter right to her face. How do you think that makes me feel?” Her gray face was suffused with pink. I put a hand on her arm and she jerked it away.

“I'm sorry,” I said.

“Don't be. But I'll tell you this: I was fond of the old man. One day out of the blue he brought up marriage, and I was floored. Then I thought, Why not? We enjoyed each other's company. He was a good man. Respectful. A little set in his ways, but a gentleman. He put a roof over our heads and taught us to love flowers. That's a sounder footing for a good marriage than most.”

“He must have really cared about you,” I said gently.

“I know he did. And he loved Lily. I would have done my damnedest to make him happy.”

“But then he died.”

“Yes,” she said. “Then he died.”

Back at the apartment, I shed my real estate clothes and took another tepid shower thanks to Bob Hancock. Probably I should be grateful. His evil machinations with our water heater were the only thing keeping me from self-combusting.

I plumped myself down on the couch. Tea with Merrit had left me unsettled, as uncertain of my next step as if I were back on the tower stairs. I had pushed harder than I meant to in order to learn—what? Nothing that would help my clients negotiate a purchase. And that was my job.

I tried my two living clients one more time. No answer. I didn't bother to leave messages. Instead, I leaned back against the cushions to think things over. My eyes closed.

I was in a grassy field, surrounded by flowers. I looked closer. They were roses: reds and pinks and corals and yellows. I could even smell their rich perfume, somehow more intense than anything I'd ever smelled in a waking state. I reached out to pluck an especially perfect deep red bud, its petals just starting to unfurl. There was a stab of pain, and a drop of blood from my finger landed on the green leaves. The rose began to wail, a shrill ringing that vibrated against my eardrums.

Reluctantly, I opened my eyes. Harley was play-biting my finger. And the phone was ringing. I picked it up. “Huh?”

“Sam, I'm glad I caught you.” It was Becky.

For some reason her brisk manner gave me a sense of foreboding. “What's wrong?” I struggled to sit up, shaking off the vestiges of my peculiar dream.

“Wrong? Nothing at all. I just need to go over a few details regarding your file.”

“But we're still signing Tuesday, right?”

“Ye-e-s-s…Probably. We just have a little opportunity to address.”

“You mean there's a problem?”

“We don't call them problems. Only opportunities to serve you better.”

I gripped my phone. “Becky, are you feeling okay?”

She tittered. “Never better. I just came back from my Continuing Professional Education seminar at the Holiday Inn, and I tell you, Sam, I'm inspired.”

“What was the topic?”

“Reinventing Customer Service and Capitalizing on Opportunities in a Schizophrenic Lending Climate. Really good stuff. And the buffet lunch was to die for.”

“About my loan—”

“Hold on.” She rattled some papers around. “Ah. Here we go. It's a trifle, really. A matter of semantics.”

“I have no idea what you're talking about.”

She giggled again. “You haven't given me a chance to explain. You see, the underwriter identified the subject property as a duplex. Two rentable units of roughly equal size. That let us use a percentage of the projected income from the second unit to help you qualify. You follow me?”

“I think so.”

“Wonderful. Well, to make a long story short, before he could sign off on the paperwork that underwriter took an unexpected leave of absence, and a new one was assigned to your file.”

Little exclamation points formed over my head. “Why would he take off right in the middle of a transaction?”

“I guess you could say he didn't have a choice.”

“You mean he was fired?”

“No, no. Not at all.”

“Suspended?”

“It wasn't actually put like that.”

“How was it put?”

“ ‘Under investigation,' ” she said. “But don't you worry—the new underwriter's a real go-getter and it's full steam ahead. Only this gal, she had a different interpretation of the appraisal. She said the property's clearly a single residence with a mother-in-law unit.”

“Sounds the same to me.”

“Doesn't it? But the bottom line is she says we can't use projected rents.”

“Becky, I'm out of my apartment in ten days. I've burned my bridges with my landlord. Max and I will be living on the streets.”

“It's not going to come to that. At least, I don't think so. There's always what we call a work-around. All we need to do is increase your down a few percentage points.”

“My down? As in down payment? How much?”

More paper rustling. “Forty-seven hundred.”

My breath caught in my throat. “I don't have that.”

“But you can get it, right?”

“How?”

“Rob a bank?” She snorted. “Lender humor. All you have to do is borrow the money from a relative. Of course, we'll call it gift money.”

“I really don't want to do that. What about my commission? Can I draw against it?”

“Nope. Classic catch-22. You don't earn your commission till the sale closes—and it won't close without the cash. What's wrong with siphoning off a little dough from your relatives? People do it all the time.”

Maybe so. But not me. Something in my nature had rebelled against asking my family for help, even though it meant living perilously close to the bone. Maybe I didn't want to become a cliché, the single mom who'd married young and impulsively, raising a child on her own and living paycheck to scanty paycheck. I bit my lip. There didn't seem to be any way around it.

“Okay, I suppose I could—”

“Fantastic. Listen, I have a call holding on the other line. Let's keep our Tuesday signing on the books and I'll send you the paperwork on the gift funds. You'll need a letter and such. Get it all back to me pronto and you're in like Flynn.” A click told me she was gone.

I wanted to put my head down and weep. What had happened to Becky at that seminar? Maybe they'd slipped something into the water.

But that was immaterial. Somehow I had to come up with the extra money.

I evaluated my situation—a canceled showing, a dead client, two other clients who'd gone incommunicado, the disturbing news on my loan—and found myself wishing I could talk to Everett. There was a core of warmth under his Hawaiian-shirted exterior and a bag of cookies in his file cabinet. I looked at the clock. It was close to four, and I knew he liked to get a jump on his weekend. Still, couldn't hurt to check the office. I grabbed my keys and headed out.

Ten minutes later, I stepped through the front door of Home Sweet Home. The place seemed deserted. I poked my head in Everett's office. Empty, but I noted a few signs of life: his computer screen was lit up and there was a half-full—or possibly half-empty—glass of red wine next to the keyboard.

I moved down the hall. The door to the bathroom was closed, and I thought I heard a humming sound coming from behind it. Light fixture on the fritz? Overflowing plumbing?

“Everett?” I called.

The humming stopped. A minute later, Everett Sweet opened the door. He was knotting a tie and making a mess of it. I gaped at his outfit. I'd never seen him in a tie, much less a three-piece suit, woven of some sort of dense wool so coarse and prickly-looking I imagined freshly shorn sheep had breathed a collective sigh of relief at getting rid of it. The suit's blocky lines were distinctly unflattering to his rounded figure. Beads of sweat had formed along his brow and, as I watched, one trickled down his face.

“Whoa! This is a different look for you,” I said. “Going to a memorial service or something?”

“Quite the contrary,” he said. “I have a date.”

A
date
? Everett? My boss? Until I learned the gimlet-eyed Lois Hartshorne had once been his blushing bride, I hadn't given much thought to Ev's personal life, figuring that, like many successful businessmen, he was married to his work. Now the unwelcome image of my portly broker twerking on the dance floor with some hot babe or putting the moves on one of the grandmas from his Real Estate Investing for Seniors class gave me a little squishy feeling. Ugh, no, gross, not going there.

“That's nice,” I said. “Who, uh, who—”

“Her name's Bethanie Sue. We met online. She sounds wonderful. Widowed ten years, financially stable, likes to travel. A stunner, too—she posted some pictures. We really connected.” He'd worked his tie into a Gordian knot and swore under his breath. “I have a bow tie in my desk, second drawer down. Just clips on. Mind grabbing it for me?”

“Not on your life. Here.” I stepped closer and jerked the knot loose, smoothing the ends of the silk to flatten them.

“You know how to tie a tie?”

“One of my many hidden talents.” I looped the shiny material expertly and threaded the fat end through the loop, tugging everything neatly into place. “There you go.”

He adjusted the lapels of the matching wool jacket and presented himself for my inspection. “How do I look?”

“Lose the vest. It makes you look like a snake-oil salesman.”

“But isn't that what we do, when you really get down to it?” he murmured. He removed the jacket and unbuttoned the vest, tossing it over the back of a chair. I toyed with the idea of telling him his toupee looked like electrified badger hair but decided I liked my job.

“Where are you taking her?” I said instead.

“Fisherman's Club. Very exclusive. You think I should offer to pay, or do all the ladies expect to go Dutch these days?”

“You should offer. If she arm-wrestles you for the bill, you can always renegotiate.”

“That's what I thought.” He used a piece of toilet paper to blot the sweat from his face. “I'm a little nervous, to tell the truth.”

“How long's it been since you've been on a date?”

“Six—no, seven years. I lost my wife ten years ago.”

“I'm so sorry.”

“To divorce, not death. I should have specified. Phyllis said I was emotionally unavailable. Still haven't figured out what that means.”

“I thought her name was Lois.”

“Lois was my third wife. We couldn't combine work and marriage. Then there was Marian.”

“Marian?”

“My second wife. A tiger. My doctor said divorce or angioplasty. What a woman.”

I covered my ears. “Please don't tell me any more.” In my head I was counting wives. Had I missed one?

He peered at me. “You have something on your mind?”

“It's the Harrington estate. Some crazy stuff has been going down. I'm getting a bad feeling about it. And there's some other things—”

“Let me stop you right there. You'll be fine.”

What, no heart-to-heart? No cookies? “It's just that I'm putting in all this work talking to people,” I said. “I'm starting to feel like there'll be no paycheck to show for it.”

“Who are you talking to?”

“Well, the probate attorney for starters, the listing agent, the Building Department, the chairman of the Historical Preservation Committee—”

He held up his hand. “Hold on. That's the kind of research your clients should be doing, not you.”

“Why? I'm happy to do it.”

“Because if they take action based on information you gathered, whose fault is it when things go to hell?” He cocked a finger at me.

“Isn't that a little paranoid? I'm just being helpful.”

“You want to tell that to a judge? Paranoia's your best friend in this industry. For every ten years you put in, you can expect to get sued at least once, probably more.”

I made up my mind on the spot to bow out after a nine-year career. “I don't want to be sued. That would really mess with my self-esteem.”

“It's not personal. The point is, it doesn't pay to know too much. You need to put a brake on your very natural inquisitiveness, that's all.”

“What about due diligence?”

“What about it?”

“Lois Hartshorne told me—”

I faltered to a stop as a vein throbbed in Everett's forehead.

“Maybe I'll have a word with Lois,” he said.

“No, really, that's not necessary.” Inwardly I groaned at the thought of my broker getting on the phone with his ex. I'd look like a bumbling amateur.

“She has no business advising you.”

“Point taken. Uh, thanks. Guess I'll be going.” I started to edge toward the door.

“You wrote an offer on the place, if memory serves.”

“Two offers.”

“Anything happening with those?” He produced an industrial-sized bottle of men's cologne and splashed some on his neck. An odor of burning tires filled the room.

“Haven't heard on the second offer. The first client…well, I kind of lost him.”

“Buyer's remorse?”

“Falling gargoyle. A freak accident.” Probably.

He snapped his fingers. “Right. Heard about that. It's just as I always say: nine out of ten buyers are going to let you down.”

“I didn't realize you meant by
death
!”

“Death, disloyalty—doesn't matter. Cut your losses and move on.”

“How?”

The word came out a little more forlorn-sounding than I'd intended. Everett's face took on a kindly expression.

“Sam,” he said. “I look at my job as a mama bird teaching her fledglings how to leave the nest. I've watched you stretch your wings, and you're poised for flight. You've got great instincts when it comes to people. Trust them, and you'll be soaring.”

More like crashing to the ground, in my opinion, but he hadn't asked.

“Well, thanks again. I mean it. Gotta go.”

“How's your home purchase shaping up?”

I opened my mouth, then closed it. “Fine. Smooth as silk.”

“That's what I like to hear. Best of luck with your transaction.”

“Same to you.”

The minute the words were out, I could have sunk through the floor. But Everett didn't seem to notice. He was back at the mirror, humming again.