The Flip (An Angel Hill novel)

by C. Dennis Moore

  “What’s wrong with it?”

  “It’s in no-man’s land. It should be close to the bedrooms, not out in a hall away from them. We could move it, I guess. We could make that smaller bedroom into a master bathroom, but then we’d be losing a bedroom, and that would be taking value away from the house.”

  “We don’t want that.”

  “No, we don’t. Unless,” Mike said, going back into the kitchen and looking around.

  “Unless what?”

  “Unless there’s a basement. We could make that into the master suite. Put a bathroom down there, we’d get a shit-ton back on the investment.”

  “Is this it?” Brian asked, opening a door in the wall that separated the kitchen from the smaller of the two bedrooms.

  There was a small landing and a flight of wooden stairs leading down to the right.

  Brian poked his head in, then drew it back, wincing, and said, “Smells like dog shit down there.”

  Mike leaned in and looked down. He shook off the smell and looked for a light switch, which he found just inside the door, but of course nothing happened when they flipped it. They braved the dark anyway and went down to the dirt floor.

  “Shit,” Mike said. “Well, it has a basement, that’s good. But it’s unfinished, and to finish it would cost a small fortune.”

  “Would it be worth it on the return?” Brian asked. “I mean, if we spend the money, would we get more back in value?”

  “Absolutely,” Mike said. “But we’re talking a lot more work than anything I was planning.”

  “Is this a business or a hobby?” Brian asked.

  “This could be one hell of a master suite,” he admitted.

  There were no windows. The place felt more root cellar than basement. The stench of damp mold hung thick in the air.

  “Yeah,” Mike said, “lot of work. We’d make a ton back, though.”

  “So we gonna do this?” Brian asked.

  They went back upstairs and looked out the back porch to the small, overgrown back yard.

  “What do you think?” Mike said. “You up for it?”

  Brian looked around, envisioning what could be, and said, “I think we should do it. You think the others’ll get onboard?”

  “Keith was wrapped up from the start,” Mike said. “And I think if you’re in, Steven’ll be in.”

  “So we’re doing it, then,” Brian said.

  “Looks like it.”

  “We putting down an offer, or what happens next?”

  “Next we form a corporation,” Mike said. “That way we sign the papers as a business, not just one of us signing with money from all four. We’ll have equal say for equal money. Then we put in an offer and see what happens.”

  “That sounds complicated. You know how to do all of that?”

  “I don’t,” Mike said, “but a lawyer will.”

  “This is already sounding expensive.”

  “Just keep telling yourself you have to spend money to make money. And we can make a lot here.”

  “We better,” Brian said, “but no pressure.”

  Mike rolled his eyes and they went out to the front yard again to talk to Lynette.

  It only took another week before their final meeting with the realtor where all four of them gathered outside the house to sign the papers as the Angel Hill Improvement Co., a name they all took two days to agree on. Keith wanted to call it Angel Hill Style, but the others insisted he’d already tarnished the very idea of that name. Brian thought their names should be the name of the company, Thompson, Miller, See and Larison, but everyone wanted their name first. It looked like the idea was going to fall apart before they even got it off the ground.

  Mike suggested they start big right off the bat and call it the Northern Missouri Investment Company, because, he said, he wanted to see the business expand outside of Angel Hill and cover more parts of the state. But Brian argued people would think they were an investment firm.

  “We are,” Mike said, “we’re investing in the improvement of Angel Hill, and beyond once we get there.”

  “Not the same thing,” Brian said.

  “So why not the Angel Hill Improvement Co?” Steven offered. “That’s more to the point.”

  “That’s not bad,” Keith said.

  “Hey now,” Steven replied.

  Mike and Brian looked at each other, then Mike shrugged and said, “Let’s sleep on it. If anyone has any better ideas we’ll present them tomorrow and make a decision from there.”

  No one had a better idea, so The Angel Hill Improvement Co. it was. They formed a corporation, had the house inspected, and secured the financing. Steven had given them his portion of the money, then the company got a loan for the remainder, using the house as collateral. They would each pay one-third of the mortgage for as long as it took before they could sell the house.

  Seven days after Mike and Brian had taken their tour, they met outside where The Angel Hill Improvement Co. took ownership of the house on Irving.

  Lynette handed the keys to Mike who stood outside, looking up at their new purchase and thinking of the company name.

  We’d better make good on that one, he thought.

  Keith and Brian were gone in minutes, both promising to text Mike later. Steven said he’d like to see inside it since he hadn’t yet. Mike said sure and they went to the door.

  He struggled with the lock a little, but couldn’t seem to get it open. He looked back at the street and saw Lynette was just putting the for sale sign in the back of her car.

  He yelled for her and she looked up, shading her eyes and waiting.

  “I can’t get the lock open,” he said.

  “Just jiggle it!” she called back, then waved her hand in the air to show how she meant.

  He tried it, but still couldn’t open the lock. He turned around again and said, “It’s not working. Do you know how to get it open?”

  She didn’t move for a second, and just when Mike thought she was going to ignore him and get in her car, she came around and walked up to the door.

  “You just need to jiggle it a little like this,” she said, taking the key from him and working it into the lock. She jiggled it just like she’d demonstrated for him to do, then turned it and the lock clicked open.

  “Easy as anything,” she said, “but you can always change it to something easier if you like.” She pulled the key from the lock and the door opened on its own, swinging inward and a gust of wind whipped around them, hitting the storm door, which shoved Lynette, knocking her forward and her foot crossed the threshold but she caught herself on the door frame and stepped out again, then moved aside so Mike and Steven could get inside.

  “Enjoy,” she said, slipping the key back into Mike’s hand before he got inside, then she backed away from the door and the next time Mike looked back, her car was already gone.

  He stood on the porch another second, looking at the view, trying to decide if this would be a selling point. Across the street, the park spread out before them, offering plenty of green with no buildings blocking the view or the sun. He watched a girl with long black hair pulled into a pony tail playing with her dog, a large black lab. She threw a Frisbee and the dog chased it and brought back over and over, while at the other side of the park a man and, Mike assumed, his son walked toward the river, fishing poles at their sides. Another man walked by across the street with his face in a book. On a bench directly in front of the house, at the southern tip of the park, Mike saw a man sitting, looking back at him.

  There’s no way you know he’s watching, he thought. He’s way too far to make out. He was over a block away, Mike could barely make out the bench itself, let alone tell where the man sitting there was looking.

  But the chill up his spine told him he was dead right, the man was watching him. Maybe not him, but the house for sure.

  Let him stare, he thought. He wishes he had a prime piece of real estate. We’re gonna make some good money off this thing when it’s all don
e. And as long as there’s not always some weirdo perched on the bench right in front of it, they shouldn’t have any problem selling it.

  The library wasn’t far, past the park and across the Slant, and the college was only a few blocks north. The Slant had everything a person could need in Angel Hill, and it ran practically right by the house. Close enough for everything to be right there, but far enough to keep the traffic and noise from being a problem.

  “What’s this go to?” he heard Steven ask from inside the house.

  Mike turned inside and closed the door behind him. He wanted to get that lock changed, for sure. He didn’t want to stand outside jiggling the damn thing like a fool every time he needed to get inside. Plus, the other guys would need keys, too. Might as well start with a fresh lock while they were at it.

  That dusty smell was gone. Someone must have come in and given the place a once-over, he thought. Maybe the realtor? It wasn’t a clean smell, really more the absence of any smell, he realized.

  “What’s what go to?” he asked, finding Steven in the kitchen. “Oh, basement,” he said. “Not much down there.”

  Steven hit the switch and the basement light came on.

  “You had the power turned on?”

  “Yeah,” Mike said, “Yesterday.”

  They went down and Mike was amazed.

  “This is not what I remember,” he said.

  “What’s different?”

  “Well, we didn’t see all this space when we were down here. In fact, I thought it was just a small little root cellar.” He stomped on the concrete floor and thought for sure it had been a dirt floor last time.

  “This floor won’t do for a master suite,” Mike said. “We’ll have to do something about that.”

  “The whole basement’s going to have to be done,” Steven said.

  “Yeah, Brian and I talked about that. Speaking of, we all need to get together and decide on the design, budget, and everything else. We’re gonna have to hire a contractor to take care of everything. You know anyone?”

  Steven shook his head.

  The basement looked nothing at all how Mike remembered it. For one, his initial impression had been one large basement under the house, completely unfinished with no windows or anything, but now seeing it in the light, he saw the basement was split into three rooms, one of them containing the connections for the washer and dryer, and there were, in fact, three windows down here, two on the east side of the house and one on the west.

  “Man, we missed all of this,” he said. “The magic of electricity, huh? I wonder if the people before left anything here?”

  “Like a suitcase full of money?”

  “That would be nice.”

  “I’ll check in here,” Steven said, and went into one of the other rooms. A light came on. “No forgotten money,” he said. Then, a second later, “Just this.”

  Mike went into the room to see and found Steven holding a large sheet of paper. Through the back, Mike could see the outline of something drawn on the front.

  “What is it?” he asked. “Treasure map?”

  “Just a picture,” Steven said. “Signed and dated, 2009.”

  “Of?”

  “Not really sure. It looks sort of like the house, but like a clock.” He tilted the paper sideways, hoping that would make the image more clear. “Or a face?” He tilted it back when it didn’t help. He shrugged, handing it over to Mike to see. “It’s kind of cool, though. I think I’ll keep it.”

  Mike studied it, said, “Have at it,” then turned to inspect the rest of the basement.

  Steven didn’t want to fold it, so he rolled it instead and carried it loosely in his hand as he followed.

  “We got big plans for this,” Mike said. “I can’t wait to get started.”

  “I wonder who they were,” Steven said.

  “Who?”

  “The people here before. I wonder why they moved.”

  “I hope it wasn’t something like the foundation was bad.”

  “The inspector didn’t find anything, remember?”

  “Right,” Mike said. “So that’s all good. Who knows, then.”

  “Crap. I have to be at work in an hour.”

  “Gotta go home and change first?”

  “Yeah. When do you want to get everyone together and decide on stuff?”

  “As soon as we can,” Mike said. “We have to get moving. We own it now, but every month that goes by is another mortgage payment we don’t want to make, so we have to get to work and sell it.”

  “I’m off tomorrow,” Steven said.

  “Cool, I’ll call the others and see when they’re free.”

  Steven went upstairs and Mike heard him walk across the floor and out the front door. Being a manager, Mike was a scheduler and an organizer. Instead of leaving, he stuck around, making notes into his phone about things he could see immediately that would need to be taken care of. The kitchen needed a complete remodel. The bathroom, as he and Brian had discussed, was out of the question as it was. They could eliminate that smaller bedroom and make it into a bigger bathroom, then convert the basement to a livable space to make up for the bedroom, and use that old bathroom space to expand the kitchen.

  And this was all just for starters. It would be a lot of work, but with everything Mike had in mind, they were going to make enough money off this flip, and make enough of an impression to the community, to put them in a good place as a new company.

  He made some notes on possible paint colors and the kind of countertops he thought they should look at, then he inspected all the windows, wondering if they should think about replacing them with something more energy efficient. Speaking of, he decided, before taking off, to look at the furnace and hot water heater, too.

  Back down to the basement, he took pictures of the furnace and water heater, then snapped a few more shots of the rooms down here to show Brian with a note about what they missed, then went back upstairs and took a few more shots of each of the rooms.

  He wanted to get some before pictures, then take the afters when they were done and put them on a company website. Then he pocketed his phone, and closed and locked the door behind him. He tried the lock again to see if he could jiggle it just right. It took a minute and his frustration was starting to rise when it finally popped and the door opened. He closed and locked it again, then went toward his car. He noticed the man on the bench was still there in the park. And Mike was pretty sure the man was still staring at the house.

  On the drive home, Steven wound up calling in to work that night. To call in sick at Wal-Mart, he had to dial an automated number and follow a series of prompts, what is the last four of his social, what is his store number, is this an absence, for what day? Then he had to be transferred to the store itself where he would ask the operator to speak with his manager, whom he would tell, “I won’t be in tonight.”

  Steven rarely missed work, so he had days to kill before he would be coached, and while it was probably a bad idea calling in only an hour before he was supposed to clock in, there was something in his gut that told him tonight wasn’t a night to be at work. It wasn’t that he was expecting anything bad to happen there, he just felt himself already too distracted to be able to focus. He’d be watching the time all night, he would be irritable and do a bad job. He could feel it eating away at him already.

  Today was a big day. To be stuck at work for the next nine hours--eight of them on the clock plus his hour lunch--in a freezing cooler, trying to find T-bones or corned beef or explaining to someone, again, the difference in fat content between the 80/20 and the 90/10, no, I’m sorry I can’t cut you a smaller steak; we don’t cut here, it comes out of a box.

  He enjoyed his job, but, man, the customers…!

  Jeremy, the manager of his department, didn’t sound happy, but Steven shrugged and decided not to worry about it. He had been there long enough for them to know he was a model employee. Sometimes a body just needs a day off from work.

  H
e hung up, then plugged his phone into the FM adapter and listened to Letters to Cleo’s Aurora Gory Alice album on the way home. This had always been a favorite, but he hadn’t listened to it in a while. Something told him this would be good driving music today, and whatever voice it had been had been right. He wondered why he didn’t listen to it more often, then decided he would start.

  The drive home turned out to take longer than usual and after ten minutes of turning and doubling back he realized it was because he was stalling. There was something in the back of his mind keeping him in the car, zoned out and driving round in circles through his neighborhood, even though he couldn’t say what it was.

  He glanced at the picture, which had unrolled itself, on his passenger seat and by the time Kay Hanley came in on “Get On With It”, Steven had an idea why he was still here.

  The tone of the song was melancholy and Hanley’s voice was full of longing and sorrow and when she said the line about not catching someone’s name, Steven looked again at the picture, trying to decipher the scribbled signature at the bottom.

  It was a woman’s handwriting. Illegible as it was, he could see that much. Well, okay, he couldn’t see it, but he had a feeling, that was the more precise description. He had a feeling, an intuition, that a woman had drawn this picture.

  He wondered who she had been. He assumed she had lived in the house they had bought. Why had she moved? How long ago? Had she drawn other pictures, or just the one?

  Was she a famous artist? A struggling artist? A starving artist?

  He loved the picture, even if he couldn’t tell exactly what it was supposed to be. Or maybe it wasn’t the picture, maybe it was just that feeling. He sensed a sadness in the picture, and something in that connected with Steven, even if he couldn’t say why. He wasn’t a sad person. In fact, his life was pretty awesome. Yes, he lived with his parents and his younger sister still, but he didn’t have a problem with it, and didn’t care if anyone else did. Hell, Brian still lived with his parents. Or had, he reminded himself, until a couple of weeks ago.