Dead in the Doorway

by Diane Kelly

  “We can’t thank you two enough.” I reached out to take the Hartleys’ hands in mine and gave them an appreciative squeeze. “Buck and I couldn’t have done this flip without you.”

  When I released her hand, Mrs. Hartley waved my words away. “That loan to you was the safest investment we ever made.”

  I raised my glass to propose a toast. “To our first successful house flip!”

  “Hear, hear!” the others called out in unison, clinking their glasses to mine. We all took a healthy sip of our wine.

  Buck set his glass back down on the table and addressed the Hartleys. “We’re planning to invest our profits in another property. Know of any current listings that might make a good flip house?”

  “Not at the moment,” Mrs. Hartley said. “But I’ll keep an eye out.”

  Mr. Hartley had another suggestion. “Have you considered the county tax auctions? Sometimes a buyer can snag a property for the taxes due plus a small markup. Of course, there’d be more competition for some of the properties than others. They post the listings online in advance. It’s something to consider.”

  It certainly was. I’d been pondering the idea myself since reading over the brochure in the county tax office. I turned to my cousin. “What do you think, Buck?”

  “Can’t hurt to take a look.”

  * * *

  My cousin and I reviewed the listings for the upcoming tax auction, and decided a few of them warranted a look-see. We drove to the first property and climbed out.

  Buck stared at the wood-frame single-story house that leaned precariously to one side while its chimney leaned to the other. Not a single window remained intact. “I was wrong. It can hurt to take a look.”

  I had to agree. The place was too far gone, too long neglected. Besides, many of the other houses along the street had been razed for entirely new construction. “Whoever bids on this house will have to tear it down and start from scratch.”

  “Building from the ground up? That’s more than we’re prepared to handle.”

  I had to agree again. It was one thing to fix up a house with good bones, to make minor repairs and cosmetic updates, but it was another thing entirely to design and build a house from scratch.

  We climbed back into Buck’s van and drove to the next house. This second property was no more enticing. So many additions had been added to the front, back, and sides of the original modest brick home that it looked like a mismatched, mishmashed maze or a Hollywood celebrity who’d had far too much plastic surgery.

  Buck groaned. “They couldn’t pay me to take this property off their hands.”

  There was only one more property on the tax foreclosure list that was in our price range. All we had was an address on north 1st Street, directly east of downtown on the other side of the Cumberland River, not far from the stadium where the Tennessee Titans played football.

  Buck’s lip quirked. “Isn’t than an industrial area?”

  “Far as I know,” I said. “But I suppose a few houses could be tucked away in there somewhere.”

  We arrived a few minutes later. Rather than a single-family residence, the place turned out to be a commercial property. The 1960s-era motel was single story and L-shaped, featuring scratched pink doors and seafoam-green stucco that was horribly pockmarked, as if someone had used it for target practice. What parts hadn’t been riddled by holes had been decorated in colorful graffiti using just as colorful language. Plastic tarps or plywood had replaced the glass in many of the windows.

  The windows that remained looked out from the twelve units onto the parking lot, where a small rectangular pool sat inside a crumbling brick wall. The entire thing was surrounded by light-duty chain-link fencing that was bent in several places. On the back left side, the fencing had been pulled back at the bottom, leaving a space big enough for a person to crawl through. We know it was big enough, because we crawled through it. After all, the NO TRESPASSING sign no longer read as such. It now featured a crude, spray-painted drawing of what was either a male member or a member of the squash family. Butternut, perhaps?

  We meandered across the lot to the cockeyed gate leading into the pool area. The swimming pool was cracked and empty, save for a puddle of green muck surrounding the clogged drain at the bottom. Ew! Something’s wiggling in the sludge! In fact, a lot of somethings were wiggling and wriggling about. I hope it’s tadpoles!

  The broken neon sign out front was in the shape of an acoustic guitar and identified the place as the Music City Motor Court. When the last visitors had checked out of the hotel was anyone’s guess, but from the abandoned look of the place it appeared no one had stayed here in years.

  Buck took a long look around the place. While I’d expected him to say no, instead he said, “Huh.”

  I’d had the same thought. Huh. “It’s not at all what we were looking for.”

  “No, it’s not,” he acknowledged.

  “But this is a prime location.”

  “Yes, it is.”

  The hotel was within easy walking distance of the pedestrian bridge that led to downtown Nashville and the restaurants, shops, and honky-tonks. The Country Music Hall of Fame, the Ryman Auditorium, and the Nashville Predators’ hockey rink were right there, too. The Gulch neighborhood on the other side of downtown had been the most recent area to pop, but with that territory nearly fully developed now, it was inevitable that things would start to move this way, right? If we were one of the first to build here, we could make a fortune.

  I shared my prediction with Buck. “This seedy motel could be a gold mine.”

  His head bobbed slowly, indicating he was interested but retained a healthy skepticism. “A little motel like this wouldn’t bring in much money, though. It would make more sense to tear it down and build something taller. ’Course, we’re not in a position to take on a major project like that.”

  I stared at the rundown property, trying to look past the rusty rooftop HVAC units, the faded curtains hanging askew behind the windows, and the cracked asphalt parking lot to its possibilities and potential. “What if we redesigned the place so that it wasn’t a motel anymore?”

  “What are you proposing? Something like the Loveless Cafe?”

  The famous local restaurant, known for its delicious biscuits, was surrounded by a motel-turned-retail marketplace. But given the demise of so many brick-and-mortar stores, shopping wasn’t what I had in mind here. I shared my vision with my cousin. “What if we reconfigured each unit into a studio apartment? Better yet, we could turn each pair of adjoining rooms into one-bedroom apartments or condominiums. One of the rooms would remain a large bedroom with a bath, and we’d turned the other into a combination kitchen and living space.”

  His index finger bounced as he counted the doors. “Six units in all, you mean.”

  “Exactly. The motel office could be remodeled into a laundry room and fitness center. All we’d have to do is add a few washers and dryers, along with a treadmill, an exercise bike, and a universal weight machine. Or we could put in some furniture and make it a clubhouse in case the residents wanted to entertain. We could clean and resurface the pool, add some potted plants and a picnic table, maybe a grill and a pergola. It would make a nice outdoor space with a great view of the river and downtown. People would pay a premium for the view and location.”

  His head bobbed again, though faster and more enthusiastically as he seemed to visualize my concept. “Rich folks who work downtown would fall over each other to buy ’em, I’d bet. But that’ll entail a whole lot of refurbishing. We made some nice bank on the Walsh house, but it’s not enough profit to cover six bathroom renovations and six brand-new kitchens.”

  “True.” And with both of us obligated to pay the mortgage on the house I lived in, we wouldn’t qualify for a loan large enough to pay for all the work. My parents would loan us the funds if we asked, but I refused to take money from them as a matter of principle. I wanted to succeed on my own. Borrowing from the Hartleys had been different. Though
they sometimes felt like a second set of parents to me, they were technically my bosses and business associates. Still, I didn’t want to borrow from them again, either. It would be taking advantage. Luckily, a clever idea came to me. “We could start by fixing up one unit for show, and finish the outdoor space. Then we could presale the other units, let the buyers pick their flooring, fixtures, cabinets, and countertops. Interior paint, too. We’d require a down payment of forty or fifty grand, enough to cover the costs of renovating the unit.”

  “What do you know?” Buck said. “You did learn a thing or two in business school.”

  My mind had taken off like an Olympian out of the starting block, and was running a mile a minute with ideas for the motel. But I was getting ahead of myself, wasn’t I? There was a good chance we wouldn’t be the highest bidder at the tax sale. Maybe one of the nearby businesses would want the property for expansion, or maybe the property had already been spotted by another real-estate investor with deeper pockets than me and Buck. Even so, I wasn’t ready to give up all hope. The small size of the property limited what could be built there. Maybe we’d get lucky.

  “It has promise,” Buck said, “but I’m still not sold. A multi-family property would come with a lot more headaches than a single-family home. I need some kind of sign that this is the right place.”

  We wandered to the closest window to get a look inside. When we still couldn’t see much inside the unlit space, Buck pulled a bandana from his pocket and ran it in circles over the glass, removing the caked-on dust. We stepped up side by side, shielding our eyes with our hands as we peered through the glass. A dresser missing most of its drawer pulls was pushed up against the left wall. A king-size bed with a thin floral spread and a concave mattress sat cockeyed atop a box spring. A small metal device with a coin slot stood on the bedside table.

  “What do you know.” Buck tapped his index finger on the glass. “There’s my sign right there.”

  “What is?”

  “The vibrating bed.”

  “How is that a sign?” I asked.

  “It means good vibes.”

  I shrugged. “That’s good enough for me.”

  CHAPTER 35

  KITTEN SMITTEN

  SAWDUST

  He watched from the top perch of his cat tree as Whitney climbed out of Emmalee’s car. Emmalee got out too, then reached for something in the backseat. Is that a pet carrier? Is there something inside?

  He was certainly curious now. He hopped down to the lower perches and then to the floor, waltzing over to wait at the door. A moment later, he heard the jinglejangle of keys, and the sound of the lock releasing.

  “Hi, boy!” Whitney strode inside, picked him up, and cuddled him to her chest, resting her chin on his head.

  While he normally lived for her affection, right now what he wanted most was to find out what was in that carrier Emmalee had just set on the floor. He planted a flat paw on Whitney’s chest and pushed back, giving her the stiff-arm treatment.

  “Okay, Sawdust. I can take a hint.” Whitney set him down on the floor.

  Twitching his whiskers and tail, he took a couple of tentative steps toward the carrier, which faced the other direction. He stopped and lifted his nose higher, flaring his nostrils. Is that another cat I scent?

  As he circled around to the side, which had vents cut into the top half, he saw the tip of a tiny ear sticking up. His cat’s heart rate was normally 180 beats per minute, but now it seemed to be ten times that, boom-boom-booming in his furry chest. Had Emmalee brought another cat home? Into his territory? How could Whitney have let this happen?

  He circled around to the front of the carrier and got his first full look at the itty-bitty kitten cowering in the back corner. He could tell from her scent that she was female. He could tell from her big eyes that she was scared. And he could tell from that warm, fuzzy feeling spreading through him that he’d just met his new best friend.

  Read on for an excerpt from

  MURDER WITH A VIEW—

  the next engaging title in Diane Kelly’s House Flipper series, available soon from St. Martin’s Paperbacks!

  CHAPTER 1

  AUCTION ACTION

  WHITNEY WHITAKER

  On a sunny day in mid-May, my cousin Buck and I walked into the Davidson County Courthouse with a spring in our steps, big ideas in our heads, and a certified check for ninety-five grand in my purse. We’d earned a nice profit on the recent sale of a Colonial we’d purchased and remodeled, and planned to plunk that profit down on another property and see if we could double or maybe even triple it. Flipping houses was a risky venture, real estate roulette. But we had nothing to lose unless you counted our money, our solid credit ratings, and our confidence in ourselves.

  The property we’d set our sights on was, ironically, not much to look at. The abandoned one-story motel dated back to the 1960s, when men with mutton-chop sideburns and women with bouffant hairdos pulled into the place in their Chevy Chevelles, Plymouth Barracudas, or Ford Fairlanes. Currently, the place sported sea-foam green stucco and scratched pink doors, along with plastic tarps and plywood. Years had passed since anyone had paid taxes on the place, slept in its beds, or swum in its now-cracked pool. But with my mental crystal ball, I could envision the twelve motel rooms turned into six one-bedroom condominiums with contemporary conveniences and a charming retro façade that incorporated the guitar-shaped neon sign in the parking lot. With the property’s prime location just across the Cumberland River from downtown Nashville, we could earn a huge gain—assuming we were the highest bidders at today’s tax auction.

  We checked in with the female clerk at a table outside the room where the auction would be held.

  “Name?” she asked, looking up at me and my cousin.

  “Whitney and Buck Whitaker.”

  She wrote our names down on a sheet of paper and held out a numbered paddle. “Here you go.”

  I eyed the paddle. Number 13. Call me superstitious, but I got a bad vibe. “Any chance we could get a paddle with a different number?”

  The woman eyed the line forming behind us and sent me a sour look. “No. Sorry.”

  Buck pushed me forward into the courtroom and muttered, “You get what you get and you don’t throw a fit.”

  “I wasn’t throwing a fit,” I said. “I just don’t want to be jinxed.”

  But jinxed we appeared to be. There, in the front row, sat Thaddeus Gentry III. Even from behind, I recognized his stocky physique and thick, wolf-like salt-and-pepper hair. Thad Gentry owned Gentry Real Estate Development, Inc., also known as GREED Incorporated. Gentry was a ruthless real estate developer who swooped down on older, unsuspecting neighborhoods and rebuilt them, running off long-term residents in the process. Rather than rehabbing rundown areas in modest and affordable ways that would allow residents to remain, he strategically purchased plots, razing old homes and building new, bigger, upscale houses in their stead. Older homes would end up sandwiched between his expensive new structures, which caused lot values to soar. The neighbors would find themselves unable to pay the increased property taxes on homes they’d lived in for decades. Gentry would buy them out when they were forced to put the homes they could no longer afford on the market.

  Not long ago, Gentry and I had butted heads when he’d purchased the house next door to the one in which I now lived. He’d attempted to have the adjacent property rezoned from residential to commercial, which would have caused the value of my house to plummet. He’d been suspected of bribing a member of the zoning commission, but had settled the matter to prevent the truth from coming to light. I’d somehow managed to beat him then, but could I beat him now? It was doubtful. Our funds were limited. Gentry’s, on the other hand, were limitless.

  I elbowed Buck in the ribs to get his attention and jerked my head to indicate Gentry. Rubbing his side, Buck followed my gaze and frowned. He knew why Gentry was here. For the same reason we were. To put in a bid on the Music City Motor Court. Although the land on
which the motel sat was a mere half acre in size, its prime location made it a potential gold mine.

  Buck and I slipped into the back row and put our heads together.

  “We can’t let Thad Gentry steal this chance from us!” I whispered.

  “How can we stop him?” Buck asked.

  I bit my lip and raised my palms.

  Buck’s eyes narrowed as he thought. “You think the Hartleys would make you another loan?”

  Marv and Wanda Hartley owned Home & Hearth Realty, the real estate company where I worked part-time as a property manager. They’d generously loaned me the funds to buy the Colonial that Buck and I had flipped. They’d give me another loan if I asked, but I’d really hoped the arrangement would be a one-time thing, that Buck and I would be able to buy another property on our own this time, without help. My parents would gladly loan me some money, too, as would Buck’s. But with me having reached the big 3-0 and Buck being on the backside of thirty, we were getting a little too old to run to mom and dad for help. We earned decent livings and could support ourselves, even save a little, but maybe we were trying to bite off more than we could chew here.

  Before I could respond, the courtroom doors opened and in walked Presley Pearson on a pair of four-inch heels. Designer, no doubt, though I’d be hard-pressed to identify any footwear brand not sold at Tractor Supply, where I purchased the steel-toed work boots I wore when making repairs at rental properties or helping out in the family carpentry business. Presley was smart and chic, with a short angular haircut that framed her dark-skinned face. Presley could be the solution to our problem—if she didn’t still hold a grudge against me. She and I had a checkered past. I’d bought my current home from her former boss, and she’d been rightfully upset that he hadn’t offered the house to her first. But by the time I’d learned she was interested in the property, the deal was done. Her boss was later found dead in the front flowerbed, so she’d dodged a proverbial bullet. Buck and I were stuck with the now unmarketable house.