Chapter 3
So Ty and I drive across Palmyrton to the Hillside Park neighborhood, a development of colonials and ranches built in the sixties and seventies. As we wind through the quiet streets, we see swing sets in every backyard and bright red and yellow Cozy Coupes in every driveway. Hillside was built for young families fifty years ago, and now it’s welcoming its third generation of toddlers.
I give wide berth to a young father trotting beside a little boy wobbling on training wheels, and we turn onto Alpine Way. Ty squints and points. “I think that must be Number 54.”
It’s impossible to see the house number as the rhododendrons planted when the house was new have now overgrown the small front porch. The basketball hoop in the driveway is rusty and netless. Unlike Number 52 and Number 56, the yard here has no toys, no cheery flags. “The Carnahans must be the original owners,” I say as I park behind a red SUV with “I heart Boxers” and “Palmyrton LAX” car magnets on the back door.
We pick our way up the uneven flagstone walkway and ring the bell.
The door opens immediately, as if the house’s occupants had been watching us come up the walk. A tall woman with short, cropped dark hair thrusts out her hand. “Hi. I’m Bec Carnahan.”
She shakes my hand vigorously with a grip that’s just shy of crushing. I introduce myself and Ty, and I notice his eyes widen as he too gets the killer shake.
“C’mon in and meet my parents.” Bec leads us into the foyer. Knee-length running shorts and Nikes set off her muscular legs. A Palmyrton Panthers Women’s lacrosse t-shirt covers her broad shoulders. She pauses between a bookcase crammed with hardcovers and a table adorned with Lladro figurines. “My mom is just clearing the dinner dishes. They eat early.” Then she raises her voice. “Mom? Are you ready?”
“Not quite, dear.”
Bec’s mouth purses in annoyance.
“You have a daughter at the high school playing lacrosse?” Ty asks to be conversational.
“No, I’m the girls varsity lacrosse coach. And I teach health and driver’s ed.”
“Ty and I both attended Palmyrton High School.” Bec looks to be in her mid-forties, so she would have graduated eight or nine years before me. I decide not to mention that I was captain of the high school chess team back in the day. “Ty played basketball for Palmyrton.”
“Five years ago,” he explains. “I think Ms. Kelly was lacrosse coach then.”
Bec sizes up Ty. “Yes, I used to teach and coach in Virginia. But with my parents’ health problems, I thought it would be best to be nearby. So my partner and I moved back to Palmyrton last year. I was lucky that the coaching position opened up when Kelly decided to stay home with her kids. I love coaching at my alma mater.”
Bec turns away from Ty and shouts again. “C’mon, Mom—are you done?”
“Almost,” a quavery voice drifts back.
Bec rolls her eyes. “I’m so sorry. I should’ve told you to come a little later. I always underestimate how much time it takes them to be ready for anything.”
“No problem.” I glance around the foyer. Framed photos cover every square inch of wall space. Just about every one seems to have been taken from the top of one mountain or another, with tiny people lost in vast landscapes. “Tell us a little about the house. Are your parents the original owners?”
“No, the second owners. They moved here in 1974, right before I was born. A lot of good childhood memories in this house, but I haven’t lived here since I graduated from the University of Maryland.”
From my position in the hall, I can see into the dining room, where heavy floral valances adorn the windows. The table is covered in lace, and the china cabinet brims with dishes and glassware. I spy silver candle sticks, cut glass decanters, silk flower arrangements. The house is clean, but jam-packed with the possessions of a lifetime. I hate to make snap judgments, but I’m pretty sure Bec and her partner aren’t going to want any of this.
“And when are your parents scheduled to move to Edgemere? It’s a popular development.”
“They were lucky to get one of the larger units. I have the movers scheduled in two weeks. My father can’t manage the stairs here any longer. And my mother can’t manage my father.” Bec takes a deep breath and bellows like she’s threatening a goalie who missed a block. “C’mon, Mom—the kitchen doesn’t have to be spotless.”
Ty winces. We both have had plenty of experience with older people struggling to leave their longtime homes. Getting Mrs. Carnahan riled up before she meets us won’t help our cause.
“Here I come,” a voice trills. A moment later, a petite woman with a stiff, platinum bouffant and bright coral lipstick enters the foyer. “Hello, hello! I’m Nancy Carnahan.” She takes my hand in both of hers and gives it a little squeeze. Her fingers are soft and cool and bedecked with rings.
She beams at Ty. “Aren’t you a handsome young man! I hope you’re not missing dinner at home to be here. Are you hungry, dear? I could make you a roast chicken sandwich.”
Ty smiles as Bec runs her fingers through her spiky hair. “No thank you, ma’am—I’m fine.”
“Come on, Mom. We need to show them around the house.” Bec puts a hand on the small of her mother’s back and urges her toward the living room.
Mrs. Carnahan seems spry enough although her shoulders are beginning to hunch. I’d guess she’s in her mid-seventies. “I wanted to straighten the house up a bit, but Bec insisted that you come today.” She glances anxiously over her shoulder as we all move into the living room.
“The house is as straight as it’s ever going to be given that you won’t throw anything away,” Bec grumbles.
We finally make it into the living room, and Ty and I exchange a quick glance. There’s a lot to sell, but not much money to be made. The rose and blue floral sofa and love seat, the blue velveteen wing chairs, the spindly end tables and coffee table are all clean and well cared for, but woefully out of fashion. Not old enough to be antiques, not outrageous enough to be kitschy, Mrs. Carnahan’s furniture is caught in unenviable netherworld. Maybe I can sell it to some recently arrived immigrants who haven’t yet discovered the joys of Ikea.
“I told the real estate agent that we are willing to sell the window treatments with the house. I had these custom made.” Mrs. Carnahan straightens a stiff fold of fabric. “Your father nearly fainted when he saw the bill, but look how well they’ve held up—thirty years! It pays to spend a little more for quality.”
I know damn well that Isabelle Trent will immediately pull down that dusty damask to let some sunshine into this room. I’ve heard her say a million times that the way to get top dollar for these older homes is to help Millennials envision their lives, not their grandparents’ lives, within the rooms.
Mrs. Carnahan takes Ty by the hand and leads him across the room to show him a ship in a bottle on the mantelpiece. Bec whispers in my ear. “Isabelle wants to stage the house. Bring in all modern furniture. She says if we show it like this, we’ll lose at least fifty thousand dollars on the sale.”
“Believe her. When I sold my condo, Isabelle started a biding war. But I did everything she told me to do. I even bought a hipster dog bed so buyers could imagine their designer Labradoodles living there.”
Bec thumbs herself in the chest. “I want follow Isabelle’s instructions. But I can’t convince my parents. We’ve been arguing for weeks.”
“Leave it to us. Parents and children have a hard time listening to each other.” Don’t I know that from experience! “Sometimes it’s easier to hear the truth from a stranger.”
Over the next half-hour, we continue the tour of the house: a kitchen that might hold some funky collectibles, four bedrooms of worthless seventies and eighties era furniture but a promising baseball card collection, a cute screen porch with wicker tables and chairs, a finished basement with a knotty pine rec room complete with wet bar and stools. We end in a small den where Mr. Carnahan watches the evening news at a deafening decibel level, his walker
parked beside his BarcaLounger. He glances at us with the same interest and irritation one might give to a buzzing fly.
Bec grabs the remote and mutes the TV during a commercial. “Dad, can you say hello to Audrey Nealon and Ty Griggs? They’re the estate sale organizers that Isabelle Trent told us about.”
Mr. Carnahan snaps his recliner into a sitting position and twists around to give us the stink eye. “This house is filled with valuable items. I’m not selling them at flea market prices.”
Nice to meet you too. Times like this, I really miss Jill. She could sweet talk Mussolini.
But Ty turns out to have a better approach. “I see you have some vintage games over there, sir. Might be some collectors’ items. Mind if I take a look?”
“Games? That’s worthless junk that Nancy won’t throw away. I’m talking about—”
Ty slides a yellow and red box out of a stack of board games on the bookshelf. “Ah—just what I suspected. This is the Dark Tower board game that came out in the eighties. Could bring two, three hundred bucks. We have a few game and toy collectors who come to all our sales.”
Suddenly, Mr. Carnahan is all ears. “If that game is worth money, just wait until you see my stamp collection! I’ve been collecting since I was ten tears old.”
Oh, lord—stamp collections are the worst! No one collects stamps anymore. Kids today don’t even know what snail mail is. And the few people who still maintain collections of rare postage stamps will barely give ten bucks for a big, unclassified collection because they’ll have to pore through thousands of common, worthless stamps to find one or two that might be valuable. But I’m not about to break that news to Mr. Carnahan. Not until after we have a signed contract, that is.
“I knew I was right to save those games,” Nancy Carnahan gushes. She looks fondly at her daughter. “You and Richard used to play marathon games of Monopoly out on the screen porch with the Williamson kids. We had to leave the board set up for days. Do you remember, dear?”
“Yeah, those were good times.” But Bec doesn’t look like she’s taking a happy trip down memory lane. In fact, she looks positively morose.
“I saved those games because I thought my grandchildren would play with them one day when they came to visit.”
“Mom! Please! Let’s not go there....again.”
But Nancy is not about to be hushed. “It’s not too late. My friend Glenna’s daughter met a nice young man on one of those internet sites...eHarmony, I think. They got married and pregnant within a year.”
I can feel Ty trying to catch my eye, but I keep my gaze focused out the window. La, la, la—maybe this will pass.
Mr. Carnahan slams his recliner back. “Oh, for God’s sake, Nancy—give it up. You know damn well Bec’s a lesbian.”
Bec crams the Dark Tower game back onto the shelf. “Richard was your only shot at a grandchild, Mom. And Richard is dead.”
Chapter 4
When I walk through the back door of my house, Ethel launches herself at me like a canine intercontinental ballistic missile.
“Oh, Ethel, I’m so sorry, sweetie. Look at the time, and you haven’t had your walk or your dinner.”
Sean appears in the kitchen doorway, spatula in hand. “Don’t believe a thing that dog tells you. She’s had her kibble, plus four meatballs, and we walked around the park and back.”
Ethel dances on her hind legs, and I bury my nose in her silky fur. It’s nice to know she misses me and not just her dinner. Then I disengage from doggy hugs and slip into Sean’s embrace. The steady sound of his heart thumping, the clean scent of his skin—this never gets old. We kiss, but just as things are getting interesting, the oven timer goes off.
Sean trots into the kitchen and I follow. “Sounds like you’ve been home for a while.”
“Yeah, the surveillance we had planned ended early when the target sold a brick of heroin right on his front porch. Stupid criminals make my workday much shorter. How was your day?” Sean puts a glass of red wine in my hand and returns to stirring something delicious on the stove. I put my feet up on a chair. It feels great to be home, even though the kitchen of the house we just bought is a little depressing. Someone in the Seventies thought dark walnut cabinets with dull brass trim would be a great idea. And the same design whiz probably selected the beige linoleum swirled with streaks of brown. No doubt it was marketed as “not showing the dirt.” That’s because the pattern itself looks like dirt. Clever camouflage.
“I signed a contract for a new job today,” I tell Sean as I watch him cook. “Ty and I will earn every penny of our fee at this house. There’s a lot of stuff to sort and price, but none of it looks to be very valuable. And we’ll have to start while the old couple are still living there because we have to negotiate with them about what stays and what goes. Their daughter doesn’t want any of it, and the mother is having a hard time accepting that.”
Sean frowns as he chops. “Is this job worth all that effort?”
“Mansions full of antiques like the Eskew house only come around occasionally. The Carnahan-type downsizers are my bread and butter. I just wish I didn’t have to have quite so much interaction with the old folks. But Ty is on a charm offensive. He’s got Mrs. C. promising to bake him treats and Mr. C. ready to offer him stock market investing advice.”
“That seems pretty useless for a twenty-three-year old basketball fanatic who lives with his grandmother.”
“Ty possesses great intellectual curiosity. I’m sure the guys he served time with at Rahway Sate wouldn’t expect him to be an expert in Tiffany glass and Fiestaware, but he is.”
Suddenly the smoke alarm goes off, the dog starts howling, and Sean lets out a stream of profanity that would shock the heroin dealer he just arrested. He pulls a large sauté pan off the burner. “This damn stove has two settings: incinerate and off. I can hardly wait until we remodel the kitchen.”
“The Carnahan job won’t bring in enough to finance the kitchen project. But it will pay for something I bought today.”
Sean’s brow furrows. He knows what a tightwad I am, so he can’t imagine what I could’ve bought that would require the profits from a whole job to pay off.
I set down my wine glass and slip my arms around Sean from behind. Laying my head on his back, I whisper, “I bought my wedding dress.”
Sean twists around, his face lit with pleasure. He knows how I hate to shop. My lack of wedding apparel has been worrying him, so I didn’t want to tell him about today’s trip in case it was unproductive. “Really? So the expedition to Manhattan was a success?”
I take a step backward and squint at him. “You knew I was going wedding dress shopping today?”
Sean scuffs a spot on the floor with one big foot. “Deirdre told me. She was really excited that you invited her to go along.”
The Coughlin sibling grapevine strikes again! I should realize by now that if one Coughlin knows, every Coughlin knows. “Deirdre’s the one who found the perfect dress. So that’s the last wedding item on my checklist.”
Sean kisses the top of my head. “I’m glad your list is getting shorter. Mine’s getting longer.”
Since the food and booze have been settled for weeks, he has to be referring to a problem that cropped up in hushed phone calls among Sean and his siblings last night. I still don’t know all the details. “The second cousin Father Francis Xavier boycott?”
Sean grimaces. “That old fraud. He drinks a pint of Glenfiddich a day, gambles in Atlantic City every chance he gets, travels to the Amalfi Coast for so-called spiritual retreats, and he has the nerve to say that attending the wedding of a divorced Catholic performed outside the church would be a violation of his priestly vows. I told my dad I don’t give two shits if Father Frank comes to our wedding or not.” Sean waves his chef’s knife sending a sliver of carrot sailing off the edge. Ethel catches it in midair. “But....”
But. There’s always a but with Sean’s family. “Your mother won’t go if Father Frank isn’t there.”
“So what are you going to do?” I feel myself getting irritated. Months ago we chose Pastor Jorge of the Church of Living Praise to perform our wedding because we both liked him and felt connected to him after he helped Ramon, a worker who accidentally got tangled up in a case of some missing money from one of my sales. Sean’s parents were upset that we weren’t getting married by a priest, but they seemed to come around when they met Pastor Jorge. I thought the ceremony was settled. Now, it’s up for discussion again.
“I’ll tell you what I’m not going to do.” Sean’s voice rises a decibel. “I’m not going to kowtow to Father Frank and his hypocritical demands that I get my first marriage annulled. My ex won’t do it. I won’t do it. That ship has sailed.”
I’m glad to hear that. Sean’s first marriage was a big Catholic church wedding with a cast of thousands that ended four tumultuous years later in a bitter divorce. But neither Sean nor his ex believes in the concept of annulment—erasing that first marriage as if it never happened. Sean’s unhappy first marriage is part of who he is, and part of why he’s so certain he’s much better prepared for marriage this time. “But without an annulment, there can be no wedding in a Catholic church by a priest. So what is there to discuss?”
“I’m not trying to persuade Father Frank. I’ll talk directly to Granda.”
Sean’s grandfather is a widower in his late eighties. He lives in a tiny house in a sketchy neighborhood in Kearny. I’ve only met him once at a Coughlin baptism, where he was too busy attacking Sean’s brother Terry (what kind of job is computer graphic artist?) and Sean’s sister Colleen (how can ye be married two years and not have any babies? Are ye swallowin’ them pills?) to take much notice of me. “You think you can persuade him?”
Treasure Borrowed and Blue (Palmyrton Estate Sale Mystery Series Book 4) Page 2