Grace remained silent. Anything nice she said would be insincere, so she opted for waiting for Mosley to continue and, hopefully, make sense.
“Emma fell in early January. Broke her hip. She went on to a rehab facility from the hospital and from there to a nursing home. Pneumonia took her in the end.”
“I’m sorry for your loss,” Grace said, trying to mean it.
Mosley nodded. “I don’t know exactly when Winston moved in, but it was early on during her hospital stay. I stopped by one day to check on the place and found the boy here. It was a battle from then on to get him out. Emma was livid that he’d moved in without asking her. In fact, it’s the only time I remember her being vocally angry with Winston. Made no difference to him. Even Emma’s death… he seemed immune.” The lawyer’s rheumy eyes teared up.
Grace studied the domed ceiling and let him have a moment while he blew into a handkerchief and made other sounds she tried to block. The numbness which had enveloped her since her mother’s death only allowed her to process new irritations; sympathy for Emma Delaney’s lawyer was beyond her. When Mosley seemed to have recovered sufficiently, she said, “Okay, I get the picture. How long did you let him stay?”
“Let is not the right word. Despite Winston’s bad behavior, he’s family. I couldn’t have him arrested. But the day I discovered he’d ignored a bad leak in the bathroom off Emma’s bedroom, I started eviction proceedings.”
“No more Mr. Nice Guy, huh?” Grace said.
“You bet,” the pompadour jiggled with his vigorous nodding. “But by then, the floorboards and joists were compromised. Winston had the nerve to bring the eviction notice to my office. Threw it on my secretary's desk and said the house was his. Said Emma had given it to him and he had squatter’s rights. Can you imagine?”
Squatter’s rights? Grace didn’t like the sound of that. “Does he have any basis for a claim of adverse possession?” When Mosley didn’t answer, she added, “Has he paid the taxes on this place? Lived here with her knowledge long enough or have any other reason to believe he has a claim to ownership?”
Grace could practically see the lawyer’s thoughts rolling around under the liver spots on his scalp. She doubted there could be a successful challenge to the sale, but she didn’t share her opinion with Mosley. Instead, she left him in the hall and hoped he would move on to worrying about his malpractice premiums while she checked out the rest of the house. She wanted to see what else Winston Delaney had done while he was a squatter.
Mosley had said the kitchen was in the rear of the house. The odor of rotting food got stronger as she walked down the wide hallway. She opened the last door at the end of the hall and found a kitchen. Or a toxic waste dump; it was hard to tell. She slammed the door shut against the view and the smell.
“It’s not this bad upstairs,” Mosley said.
Grace jumped and made a mental note to keep an eye on him. He moved like a ninja. Or a ghost. He was certainly well past old enough to be dead, she thought irritably. He’d not only regained his composure but was invading her personal space. Again.
“You have to understand, m’dear. This is an old house, and it hasn’t been well cared for in the last fifty years. The sale notice did state maintenance had been neglected.”
“That’s hardly an adequate warning,” she said as she opened the door again.
The kitchen was beyond filthy. Trash and dirty dishes covered every surface and at some point in the last decade, the sink had been used as a garbage can. But it was the ‘artwork’ Mosley had warned about that made Grace gasp. Across the doors of the crooked, white metal cabinets, four large letters in shiny red paint spelled out a message:
M I N E
Chapter Five
Grace breathed through her mouth as she took in the scene. The fury captured in those four letters mesmerized her for a moment; then the smell got her moving.
On their way back to the front of the house, Mosley, who had wisely stayed silent through the kitchen viewing, followed close on her heels. As they passed doorways, he reeled off an inventory of rooms: butler’s pantry, lavatory, dining room, rear parlor and front parlor. When she didn’t slow down, he told her not to worry; she could see them all later. Grace was thinking more along the lines of going out the front door and not coming back.
She finally slowed in the entry hall and then stopped to take deep breaths as she looked around the elegant room and tried to picture it clean. And less stinky. Her eyes fell on what had to be a crude violation of the original architect’s design.
The staircase with its mahogany railings and ornate balusters had been built for stately comings and goings. Elegantly dressed women should float down the wide steps on the arms of their top-hatted escorts and be admired by those watching from the hall below. Unfortunately, that visual went awry near the second-floor landing where a doorway had been cut into the wall adjacent to the top three steps. "Where does that go?” she asked, pointing to the aberration.
As they climbed the stairs, Mosley told her the odd doorway was another of Emma’s remodeling projects. In its mid-twentieth century configuration, the house only had one toilet on the first floor and one on the second.
“Emma didn't want visitors coming into the second-floor area. She decided to install a door from the main bathroom onto the staircase and allow guests to use the facilities without coming onto the second floor. Your grandmother believed the doorway gave the hall character.”
“Are you serious? A person could break their neck. And, besides, it’s crooked.” Grace tilted her head to the right. "The door frame and the door are crooked.”
“Not really. It’s just the right side is a little wonky.”
“Wonky. Is that a legal term? The top of the door slants up on the right side! It’s got to be a half-foot higher than the left side.”
“Your grandmother always found someone with rock-bottom prices and usually got what she paid for, but you’ll see, the door opens and shuts fine.”
Grace opened the bathroom door but stayed where she was on the staircase. She wondered how many people had stumbled trying to step up off the stairs and through a doorway cut into the wall. Remove stupid door went to the top of her mental To Do list.
On the second floor, they walked through musty-smelling rooms, each of which was full of assorted junk, old clothes and rotting upholstery. Grace thought the place looked like the aftermath of a dumpster explosion. Layers of dust, grime and something else she couldn’t identify and didn't want to, gave testament to the lack of any housekeeping efforts since at least the first Bush administration.
Mosley kept up a running commentary of useless information. When he said Emma had loved floral patterns and was partial to lavender and rose sachets, Grace said she would have done better with a backhoe and a tanker load of bleach.
“It wasn’t always like this,” Mosley said, leaving Grace to wonder how well Emma Delaney’s attorney knew the bedroom wing of her house.
The largest room was the worst. “I suppose Winston is responsible for this, too?” Grace waved a hand at the mess but didn’t leave the relative safety of the doorway. The contents of the dresser and the closet had been emptied and spread around the room.
“Winston’s convinced your grandmother hid valuables in the house. He probably went through everything. I’m sure he waited until after she died though.”
“Oh, good. That makes it better.”
Mosley nodded in agreement, her sarcasm sailing past him. “You know young folks. Can’t wait for anything.” Grace gave Mosley a sharp look, but he appeared to be serious. “Your cousin is still a kid in many ways.”
Her cousin. Her grandmother. Mosley was on her last nerve. As he rejoined her in the hallway, he gestured to a tall pier mirror hanging near the top of the stairs. “This piece is a beauty, though, don’t you think?”
The mirror was beautiful, but Grace had to stifle a groan at the sight of herself and Mosley. She was a head taller, even allowing for his hair. Th
e layers of her dark, shoulder-length hair had frizzed in the humidity and she’d sweated through her makeup. Her blue eyes, ringed by smeared mascara, were huge and not in a good way. Only her linen slacks and jacket said she’d started the day with any sense of style, but they were wrinkled and muddy. It was quite possible the old lawyer in his retro golf clothes looked better than she did. Grace decided to blame the heat. The sooner the house tour was over and she was on her way, the better.
The third floor was smaller than the first two and only contained four blessedly empty rooms. On their way downstairs, they paused on the second floor in front of the bathroom which had lost its tub. The floor of the small room sloped from the doorway to a large gaping hole rimmed by jagged ends of floorboards and joists. The toilet and sink appeared to be clinging to the walls to avoid being sucked down to the floor below.
Mosley said, “About twenty years ago Emma decided she wanted a bathroom off her bedroom. She had a tub and sink hauled in from a salvage yard, read up on plumbing and tried to do it herself. When that didn’t work, and she’d opened half the walls looking for the water pipes, she had to hire a plumber, but I doubt she got a licensed one.”
“So there could have been an ongoing leak?”
“Wouldn’t surprise me. Winston’s carelessness and the standing water from the recent leak probably finished what the original slow leak started.”
When they were back in the large hall on the first floor, Mosley led her to the room he’d previously called the rear parlor.
“You didn’t get a good look in here earlier and I want you to understand it’s been this way for a long time. It’s not part of any recent damage, but I didn’t disclose it in the listing. The omission wasn’t intentional; I just didn’t get a shot of this room.”
The rear parlor, in its own way, was as bad as the front. It didn’t have a tub or a hole in the ceiling, but long strips of wallpaper hung from its ceiling and the bulging plaster walls had water stains.
"She wallpapered the ceiling!”
Mosley grinned as if they were discussing a precocious toddler. “Emma was addicted to those fixer-upper shows. She watched one on wallpaper and decided to redecorate. Of course, she wouldn’t pay to have a professional do it. She got a couple of neighborhood kids to come over and gave them each twenty dollars to try their hands at wallpapering.”
“On a ceiling.”
“Yes. It was a Victorian fashion, and she liked the idea. Of course, that was more than twenty years ago. Have to say it stayed up longer than I thought it would.”
The high ceiling looked like it was molting, shedding hideous lavender paisley-patterned skins in protest of its desecration. For the first time in weeks, Grace felt something other than grief or apathy. The careless and casual abuse of the once grand house made her mad.
Mosley seemed oblivious. “Well, we need to get to my office. I have some papers for you to sign.” He rocked back on his heels again, tugging his waistband.
She might have to kill him to get away from him, Grace thought.
“I’ll sign the papers tomorrow.” She knew she sounded petulant and she didn't care.
“Whatever you say.” He took a key from his pocket and handed it to her. “It’s all yours, anyway.”
Despite her anger and need to get away from the annoying man, Grace found herself trailing him to the front door. He wasn’t much, but when he left, she would be on her own and the house was creepy.
“You’ll want to have all the locks changed as soon as possible,” he said as he stepped onto the front porch. “Winston has a key, and he isn't the only one who does.” He stared at her for an uncomfortable moment before raising his hand in a brief wave. The solid thunk of the creaking front door gave his exit an extra note of drama.
Grace stood in the hall and looked around. She’d lost count of the rooms she’d seen and Mosley had said there were more in the basement, an area she didn’t even want to contemplate. It was too much. As soon as she was sure Mosley was gone, she locked the front door behind her and tried not to run to her car.
Chapter Six
Grace needed a hot shower, clean clothes and a strong drink - not necessarily in that order. She could taste the smell of garbage at the back of her throat.
When she’d planned this trip, spending a week at the historic Egret Hotel had seemed like a luxury she could ill afford. But the Egret was Mallard Bay’s only hotel, and Grace had felt she deserved a bit of luxury while she made the arrangements to renovate Delaney House. She would stay a week and then return to Washington and work, rack up billable hours during the week and commute to Mallard Bay on the weekend to see what changes her money had bought. Now that she’d seen Delaney House, the plan seemed naive and impractical.
The historic district of the village was laid out in a simple grid pattern. At its center sat The Egret, a stately Victorian-era building with a wide front porch lined with rocking chairs. Her single room turned out to have everything she needed: a bed, easy chair and a minibar with tiny bottles of decent Chablis. She sipped a glass of wine while using the entire selection of L’Occitane bath products.
Her clothes went into a sealed laundry bag for the hotel’s cleaners and she emptied and repacked her leather tote, repulsed by the worry that something from Delaney House might have fallen - or crawled - into the bag that contained her life’s necessities. By the time she had eaten the chicken and mushroom pie that was the evening special in the hotel’s pub, she was calmer. A second glass of Chablis back in her room coupled with a boring movie let her drift off into a dreamless sleep.
Toward morning, the peaceful oblivion ebbed, pushed away by increasingly chaotic dreams of unfinished tasks and unmet obligations.
Grace had given up on the idea of sleeping to a civilized hour when her mother’s cancer took its last downward turn. She’d found fighting for sleep more stressful than sleeplessness itself; the only remedy was to get up. Her mother’s advice for every adversity was: Move. Do something, even if it’s wrong, but keep moving. Now, Grace did all of her paperwork and bill paying before the sun came up. First financial chores, then news and emails from a shrinking circle of friends.
When the room service coffee fully kicked in, she turned to work email and voice messages. There weren’t many. Julia’s illness had claimed more personal time than usually allowed to non-equity staff at Farquar, Mitchum and Stoltzfus, Attorneys at Law. Only the protection of the firm’s managing partner had saved her job as she worked less and less in her mother’s final months.
It remained to be seen if she would stay employed when she returned to work, but not to her old schedule. Most weekends would belong to Delaney House. And even if she could return to the all-consuming schedule, she wouldn’t. Twelve years of seventy-hour workweeks had taken their toll: she was 37, exhausted and alone. She knew she should be careful. She needed her job, but she was discovering she didn’t care what happened when she returned to the office. Besides, David Farquar owed her.
The year before, Grace came up with a last minute Hail Mary play and saved their biggest client from a crippling damage suit. Her on again - off again romance with her boss ended for good about the time the case wrapped up, but even in their close daily work environment, they’d kept a good relationship. At least she hoped it was still good.
After answering a half-dozen emails and leaving voicemail instructions to the secretary she suspected was frantically lobbying Human Resources for a real boss, she closed her own laptop and opened her mother's MacBook.
Grace had avoided the laptop after Julia’s death. She couldn’t shake the idea that opening it and using Julia’s passwords would disperse the last of her mother’s essence into the universe. Eventually, she had no choice. She needed information from the Mac’s files to manage Julia’s estate and to close down the business her mother had built over the past thirty years. Grace was a silent partner in the small real estate and home renovation business, but without Julia, there was no one to run the company. Even
when she was finally free of Farquar, Mitchum and Stoltzfus, Grace knew she wouldn’t be able to fill Julia’s shoes. She didn’t want to.
Once she wrapped up the renovation and sale of the Delaney property, she’d add the profit to the money from Julia's life insurance and move on with the rest of her life, free from obligations to anyone other than herself. That was the plan which made it possible to put one foot in front of the other, close down her mother’s firm and get herself over the Bay Bridge to a musty mausoleum and its decrepit caretaker.
At the thought of Cyrus Mosley, the smell of Emma Delaney’s house came back and with it all of the new problems she faced as its owner.
The Mallard Bay Police Department was relegated to the rear of the building it shared with the municipal office and a small library. A bronze historical marker said the building was a former school. The mid-nineteenth century facade blended with the streetscape, but the interior had been gutted and reconfigured to maximize space.
When Grace found the Chief of Police manning the reception desk, she felt like she’d stepped back in time. Chief Lee McNamara even looked the part of a village constable. His genial smile and polite greeting softened the appraising once-over he gave her as she entered the station. She wasn’t surprised to learn he knew who she was.
The Chief delivered the good news that Winston Delaney had sobered up during the night and admitted to being in an upstairs bedroom at Delaney House and drinking until he passed out. The collapse of the floor in the bathroom woke him out of a stupor but did nothing to make him less drunk. He eventually made it downstairs to marvel at the sight of a 400-pound cast iron tub lying on its side. Before he could come up with an explanation that would leave him blameless, he heard cars pulling into the driveway and panicked. Desperate to hide, he crawled under the tub and pulled it down over himself, breaking a finger and knocking himself unconscious in the process. Chief McNamara tried, and failed, to relay this story to Grace without laughing.
Squatter's Rights Page 3