Songbird Cottage

by Barbara Cool Lee

  "Nope. It's a bare piece of undeveloped, overgrown land, covered in blackberries and thistles as far as you can see, with nothing on it but a boarded-up old barn."

  "Get serious."

  "I am. I think there's one straggly old apple tree marking the property line. And you'll probably find some poison oak if you're not careful where you walk."

  "You're not going to tell me what it is, are you?"

  "I'm serious. That is the description I got from the seller."

  "What's the list price?" she asked.

  He told her. It was an appropriate price for a bare piece of land with an old barn on it. About as much as a mansion would cost in some parts of the country, but in this real estate market, for something with at least a glimpse of the Pacific Ocean, it was dirt cheap.

  He pulled the Jeep to a stop in the road.

  "We have to walk from here," he said.

  She crossed her arms in front of her. "You dragged me out here to walk through a field of thistles to look at a boarded-up barn? Why? I don't get it."

  He got out, then came around to her side of the car and opened the door. "Because I need your help."

  "With what? I don't understand. You're not making any sense."

  He took a deep breath. "I'm not playing games, Robin. I really do need your help in figuring out how to handle this."

  "Handle what? Why are you acting so mysterious?"

  He held out his hand and she got out. He opened the back door and lifted Alonzo out to come along with them. She always felt a little lump in her throat when she saw this big man tenderly lift his arthritic old German Shepherd in and out of the car, so she looked away down the road.

  "If it's a long walk, shouldn't he wait in the car?" she asked.

  "It's not that far. And he likes to be with his pack," Dylan said. "So we'll walk slowly."

  He shut the car door.

  "You're just going to park in the middle of the street?" she asked.

  "Nowhere else to park. There's only the farmer at the end of the road, like I said. So we should be fine here for a while."

  He walked through some weeds while she stood, leaning against the car, and watched him.

  "Hmm," he said thoughtfully. He was staring at a power pole.

  "What?" she called out to him.

  "I wondered about the power. It's here, running underground from this pole up toward the barn."

  He turned back toward her. "There's no power pole visible up there, but I want to dig around on that end to see if there's an underground line connected to this." Then he muttered, "I think it was around the 1960s when they started running underground lines."

  "You know the oddest things," she said.

  "I've dealt with enough old wiring in beach houses to remember that," he said.

  "So why does it matter?" she asked. "What difference does it make what year underground wiring became a thing?"

  He shrugged. "Might be interesting to know if there's electricity hooked up to the barn. And it might pin down when it was built."

  "Okay," she said slowly, though she didn't see anything interesting about it.

  He walked over to a gate a few feet away. It blocked an opening wide enough for a car to drive through. But there seemed to be no road leading up to it, as if time had filled the driveway with bushes and weeds, and years of rain had washed away any gravel or paving that might have marked the path. The gate was locked with a chain lock, and appeared about to rust off its hinges.

  He took out a key and unlocked it, unwinding the chain and then wrapping it around the fence post. The rusted chain protested loudly as he wound it, and when he finished, his hands were reddish with the rust. He slapped them on his jeans to clean them.

  Then he walked back to where she still leaned against the Jeep, obviously noticing the skeptical look she was giving him.

  "I'm not trying to be funny, Robin. I'm being cryptic on purpose because I want you to see this place with fresh eyes." He opened the back door of the Jeep. He took off his jacket and threw it in the back seat, then pulled out a canvas tool bag. "I don't want to influence your opinion."

  "How mysterious." She looked at him more closely, and realized that the impression she'd had that he was joking around was wrong. "You're excited about it," she said. "Whatever you found, it's not a joke."

  "It's definitely not a joke."

  "But why can't you just tell me?"

  "Because if I'm right, I need a second opinion to confirm it. And if I'm wrong, I'd rather not have the whole town think I've lost my mind. I trust your judgment, and I need you to see this and come to your own conclusion."

  He carried the tool bag with him and went toward the now-open gate. "And if I'm wrong, you can laugh at me. Fair enough?"

  "Oh, well," she said, following him. "If I get the chance to make fun of you, I'm all in. Lead the way."

  At the gate she could see there was the remnants of a path, marked with deep gullies from long-ago rainstorms, and it would be impossible for anything with four wheels to navigate it. "This is going to make it hard to sell the property," she said. "To get a permit to build, there needs to be fire truck access. The excavation cost is going to be ridiculous. I'm not sure most buyers will think it's worth it."

  He was doing that cryptic smile thing again.

  "Okay," she said. "You've piqued my curiosity. Show me the property."

  He looked down at her feet. "Seriously, Robin? Don't you own any practical shoes?"

  She looked down at her feet, where her favorite camel tan ballet flats were already covered in dust. "Don't you like them?"

  "I promised years ago not to tell you how gorgeous your legs are, so I'll withhold comment."

  "That is a comment."

  "Then let's get going."

  "Okay. But if I ruin my Repettos on this walk, you're paying for lunch."

  "Deal," he said.

  He held her hand and helped her jump over the first of the gullies.

  Alonzo pushed through the bushes along the side, avoiding the gully. When he appeared on the other side of the bushes he was covered in leaves and dust. Dylan leaned down to brush his fur clean, and then they headed single file up the little hill.

  It wasn't far.

  Soon they came out into just what Dylan had described: a fairly level field, overgrown with weeds, with a tiny dilapidated barn sitting in the middle. Off to their left, the field sloped very gently downward, and there were occasional live oaks and clumps of blackberries studding the meadow.

  At the bottom of the slope, beautifully tended fields swept away from them, with neatly mounded rows of green alternating with rich black soil. There seemed to be nothing beyond the fields but sky, which probably meant that the fields ended in a cliff at the ocean's edge.

  But the sea wasn't visible from this spot. Just the endless blue of the sky, and the striped and furrowed fields of strawberries beyond this dry, abandoned patch of land.

  And its abandoned old barn.

  Alonzo sat down in a bare spot in the weeds and put his head on his paws. "Ready for a nap, old fellow?" Dylan asked. He gave him a pat on the head, then turned to Robin.

  "So where does the property end?" Robin asked.

  "Somewhere over there," he said, waving toward the lower part of the meadow. "I'm not sure where the actual line is, and as I said, the owner doesn't know."

  "Who's the owner?"

  "Not sure. I was hired by the Thackerys to sell it."

  "Oh. So probably an estate sale." Thackery & Son were a law firm in the village. They handled a lot of probate cases, which meant this was just what it appeared to be—an abandoned old piece of land someone had long forgotten about.

  "Still not getting the point, Dylan," she said aloud.

  "I hacked a path over to it yesterday afternoon," Dylan said, leading the way to the little barn.

  Chapter Three

  When they got to it, Robin could see the barn was all wood. The main siding was vertical boards with narrow band
s at each seam, built of natural wood that appeared to be real redwood.

  "Board-and-batten siding," Dylan said.

  "Seems a shame to waste such beautiful wood on a barn," she said. "Pine would have done just as well."

  "Pine wouldn't have lasted the way this has." He reached up to the wall. His hand, fingers spread, didn't cover the width of one board. "At least a foot wide," he said. "And from the straightness of the boards, they must be at least two inches thick. Not a warp in them."

  She came closer to examine them. The wood had aged, and was a medium gray, but with the ruddy undertone and clear grain that betrayed the high quality of the original redwood boards.

  "Not only good wood, but look at the craftsmanship," he said. The boards were dead-level, and each single board ran the entire height of the little barn. "About ten feet tall?" she asked, looking at the whole wall.

  "Something like that," he said. "This is the short side. Let's walk around."

  They walked through the weeds all the way around. On the side away from the ocean, she saw the peaked roofline soaring up, maybe two stories high. Way up toward the top, there was a round pole sticking out of the side of the barn, extending out about six feet from the building. "Maybe for hauling hay up to the second story?" Robin asked.

  Dylan shrugged. "Who knows?"

  They continued all the way around until they came to the side facing down hill. On this side the field of weeds was waist high, of crisp dry grass that crunched when they stepped on it.

  "They should get someone out here to mow this down," Robin said. "It'll be a fire hazard until we get the first rains of the season."

  Robin saw bits of red under her feet. "It's a brick," she said, pushing aside the grass and bending down to get a closer look. She swept away the dirt with her hand and saw it wasn't just one brick, but a whole bunch of them, laid down to form a path.

  Dylan scuffed at the dirt with his work boots, and more bricks came into view. "It's all like this," he said. He walked out about ten feet from the barn and scuffed some more. "I think it ends about here. So it's a patio." He paced it off, stopping to kick at the ground every couple of feet. "Must be about twenty feet long and ten feet out from the building," he called out when he got to the other end of the barn.

  "You mean a parking area or something. Barns don't have patios."

  "No," he said. "They don't."

  She kept pushing at the dirt with her toe, scuffing her Repettos.

  "Let me do that," he said, and came over to scrape his heavy boots back and forth in the spot.

  "It's herringbone," she said as she watched the bricks come into view from beneath the weeds and dirt. The pattern was intricate, woven of interlocking bricks, and was made up of both red and tan colored pavers.

  "Herringbone has to be laid out with a ruler and level," Dylan said. "It's not something you slap down quickly."

  She reached down and brushed away more dirt. "This isn't normal herringbone," she said softly. She felt a chill, like this was familiar, somehow. Where had she seen this before?

  There was speedwell blooming where one brick had cracked, and she picked one of the tiny daisy-like flowers. She noticed that the tan and red bricks weren't used randomly, but formed a pattern.

  She stood up, still holding the little flower. She pushed away more dirt with her foot, and saw the pattern of tan formed a star against the red background.

  "Someone spent time on this," she muttered.

  "I think someone spent a lot of time getting this right," he said.

  He went over to the side of the barn, and she could see there were several places where heavy plywood panels had been screwed into the beautiful siding, like one would to board up windows and doors.

  "Exactly," he said when he noticed her looking. "I wondered what it was covering."

  This side of the barn, like the back, was tall in the middle and shorter on the sides, like a child's drawing of a house. In the center, the height must be close to eighteen feet, and even at that height, the board-and-batten was perfect. The center board rose from the ground up to the center peak of the roof in a single board, straight as the original tree trunk must have been.

  She turned to face out into the field, toward where the sea must be. The air here was clean and fresh, and the breeze coming off the water made her shiver in her silk shirt.

  She turned back to the barn.

  Dylan pulled at one of the plywood panels, and she saw that it was only leaning against the building. "I took this one off yesterday to see what was underneath," he said.

  He pulled it away and set it on the ground.

  Robin dropped the flower.

  "It's a window," she said, rather pointlessly.

  "So it is," he said.

  Now she understood what all the grins, little smiles, and cryptic comments were about.

  She walked over to stand in front of the window, still half-covered by a second piece of plywood.

  The sun shone on the window glass, setting the mouth-blown ripples in the pane to reflecting in rainbows across the dried weeds at their feet.

  The little diamond-shaped panes of glass, barely four inches wide, were held in place by strips of gray leading.

  "This is old, right?" he asked. "Not just a reproduction or something?"

  She couldn't speak. It wasn't just old. It was familiar. "It's impossible," she said, pulling herself back from the conflicting thoughts swirling in her head.

  "Let's see the whole thing," he said, unscrewing the second plywood panel and then pulling it all the way off.

  She took a step back.

  The board-and-batten siding was perfect, level and straight. And the herringboned bricks at their feet were perfect, formed with a remarkable attention to detail.

  But the window was crooked.

  Not crooked like it had been done shabbily. Exactly the opposite.

  Crooked. As if someone, a person with the same remarkable sense of artistry and craftsmanship it had taken to imagine and execute the rest of the design, had deliberately created a real window, with glass blown by an artist, and framing fitted as finely as a Hepplewhite sideboard, and elaborate iron hinges to swing the casement open and closed. But all of this in a shape like something drawn by Dr. Seuss: lopsided and jaunty, making anyone who saw it burst out laughing at the ridiculous, elfin quality of it.

  And to top it off, it wasn't just a remarkably strange, wood-framed window fitted into the beautiful redwood siding. The heavy wood frame was painted in a lovely shade of turquoise that again gave her a vague sense of déjà vu, like the bricks had. Why?

  She took another step back, across the carefully herringboned brick patio that she now realized was not a driveway, or a walkway, or a utilitarian passage. But a patio. A sitting area. A lovely little place for someone who lived in a charming, turquoise-trimmed redwood cottage to come to when they wanted to sit in the sunshine and drink their tea and watch the rainbow reflections on their little handmade windows.

  This wasn't a barn. It was a house. And she felt a shiver up her spine when she realized what kind of a house it just might be.

  "You have got to be kidding me, Dylan."

  There was that grin again, but this time she shared it, this time she understood it.

  She looked at the side of the building, with its one little window exposed. The plywood panels covered a large opening in the center of the wall, and then another, smaller opening that seemed to match the window already uncovered.

  He started to remove the big panel, using a hammer he pulled out of the tool bag he'd brought along. He worked carefully, clearly not wanting to damage the siding.

  She walked back to the edge of the patio, and then turned to look at the little building again.

  "That's a twelve-twelve roof pitch," she said. Pointy, again like a child's drawing.

  "Odd for a barn," he said, then grunted as the nails holding one of the plywood panels gave way and he pulled at it.

  "And I've never seen a bar
n with a chimney," she said, noticing the column of red brick that rose out of the center of the roofline. "But the roof is tar paper," she added.

  "Asphalt paper, I think," he said. "That's how it's held up for so long."

  "But it's not tile," she said. "That's the point." If what they both believed was true, the roof should have been made of colorfully glazed barrel tiles. Nearly every one of the Pajaro Bay cottages had those tiles. There were a couple of shingled Stockdales, but most were tiled with Robles tiles. It was part of the trademarked design.

  "Maybe it isn't finished," he said.

  He had the big panel off. He came over to stand by her, then must have noticed her expression. "You okay?" he asked.

  She brushed away the tears in her eyes. "I'm fine. I just—I'm speechless."

  "Do you think…?" he started to ask, but she held up her hand, feeling oddly superstitious about saying the words aloud.

  "Don't say it," she said. "Not yet. I can't imagine how…."

  Neither one of them finished the sentence. How could this be a Stockdale?

  Under the panel Dylan had removed was a Dutch door with a rounded top.

  Of course there was. A Stockdale would never have a normal, utilitarian front door. This door had heavy iron hardware, handmade and showing the marks of the blacksmith's hammer.

  He pulled at the handle, and the door swung outward with a groan of the rusty hinges. It stuck about halfway open, blocked by the heavy dirt that had built up in front of it. It took him a couple of minutes to clear the ground and then pull hard at it until it came all the way open.

  After he got the door open, he went back around the building. He came back with Alonzo, encouraging the old dog with soft words until he made it all the way to the patio. There Alonzo lay down in the spot they'd cleared on the bricks to continue his nap. "You wait for us here," he said to the dog, who twitched one ear in response.

  Robin hadn't moved, but just found herself standing stock-still, staring at the dark entrance to the cottage. She wasn't sure she wanted to see what was inside, but she couldn't begin to explain to Dylan why.

  He took a couple of flashlights out of his tool bag and handed her one. "I came prepared," he said with a grin. "I didn't go in yesterday. Want to be first to see what's inside?"