Squatter's Rights

by Cheril Thomas

  Still smarting from her encounter with Corporal Banks, Grace tried not to laugh with him, but couldn’t keep a straight face.

  McNamara apologized for his officer’s behavior. “We all wear a lot of hats around here, Ms. Reagan,” he said. “Corporal Banks volunteers with the Mallard Bay Fire Department. We all do, but Aidan headed a team that handled a fire in a rental house a while back. There were casualties. Made him a bit overzealous. I’ll have a word with him.”

  Grace nodded and resolved to let go of her irritation. “Which of these papers can I get rid of?” she asked, handing McNamara the forms Banks had given her the night before.

  The Chief’s expression tightened as he looked at the documents. She didn’t exactly feel sorry for Banks, but she thought Lee McNamara might do more than just have a word with the corporal.

  “I’ll take care of these,” he said. “If you’re using a local contractor, they’ll know how to file for the permits you’ll need. If you need any help at all, give me a call, or call our Town Clerk, Jake Briard.” He handed her a business card. “Mallard Bay is a small place and we run a tight, but friendly operation for the town. I’m sorry your introduction to us was less than pleasant, but I promise you it will get better.”

  Grace decided to take the Chief at his word. It was a beautiful day, the kind that promised a fresh start. As she stepped out of the police station and into the warm September sunshine, she saw the main street ran down to a waterfront park. She was tempted to walk down the slight hill and take up residence on one of the benches lining the harbor bulkhead, but before she could act on impulse, her cell rang. Bryce Cutter. His crew would be at Delaney House in an hour. The sunny day quickly took a back seat to a dilapidated mansion. She had work to do.

  October 2, 1952

  Dear Mother,

  Do I have stories for you! Get a cup of tea and settle in. There’s no way to tell you all this on the telephone. Even if I had the privacy, the bill would be horrendous!

  First: Did I tell you Ford has ordered a brass plaque for the front gate? When it’s installed, one and all will be advised they are about to enter Delaney House, circa 1670. Can he get any more pretentious? I sure hope not. And this hulking great pile of bricks wasn’t built until 1720. But Ford says Lord Somebodyoranother had the land grant from 'the king’ (my husband talks like we have a king and refers to him all the time as if he was in the next room), anyway - Ford says since the land grant is dated 1670, we can use that date. I tell you, my husband is a tiresome person and irritating to boot. But he’s happy because his sign says our house is 280 years old and that’s ever so much better than being 230.

  Now that I’ve set the tone for the main act, here it is:

  Your daughter was cast in the role of photographer’s model. Yes, your glamorous dream for me came true. (Not the one where I marry a prince and move us all to Europe - the other glamorous dream.) My loving husband hired the famous Sidney Lassiter to photograph little ol’ me.

  Sidney went to prep school with Ford and has been piddling along as a portrait photographer for years. A few weeks ago, he was in the right place at the right time and photographed the new President when Ike and his entourage were hunting on Taylor’s Island! Time Magazine bought the pictures and now everybody around here with two cents wants their photograph taken by the Sidney Lassiter, Presidential Photographer. (Sid had new business cards made. He’s also taken to wearing ascots and uses extra oil in his hair.) Ford says Sid’s only making hay while the sun shines, but the two of them make me cringe when they get together and try to top each other with their name dropping and one-upping conversations.

  Well, nothing would do, but Ford had to have Sid photograph me wearing the most expensive pieces of his late mother’s jewelry collection. I wore her mink stole, too (a mite tatty, truth be told) and a new Dior dress. Ford insists on Dior, but I’ve discovered it’s because he thinks even the locals around this backwater place will recognize the name. Don’t I sound grand talking down about my neighbors and so-called friends? I’m afraid I’m becoming bitter.

  But that isn’t all. Oh, no. My husband wasn’t satisfied with a photographic record of his wife dressed up in designer silk and jewels. He’s sending the photographs to a portrait artist in New York who painted Ford’s mother wearing the same mink. Ford wanted me to wear the pearls and the ruby pendant, a large sapphire brooch, teardrop diamond earrings and a diamond cuff. Imagine! Tacky doesn’t begin to describe how I looked when I put it all on. Fifty thousand dollars’ worth of tacky, but tacky nonetheless. I told him just to lay the jewelry out on the rug and let Sidney shoot away if all he wanted was a display of Delaney wealth.

  We had words, as you may imagine, but I did finally win. I told him I’d wear exactly the same jewelry his mother did in her portrait. It was a risk because we don’t have the portrait (seems Ford’s father took it with him when he left for Europe and ‘lost’ it somewhere in one of his moves during the years he met, married and discarded his second wife and found his third.) Ford admitted Mother Delaney only wore the pearls, earrings, and gold cuff. And let’s not forget my rock of a wedding ring. I know Ford was disappointed, but he’ll be happy enough when the portrait is done. He’s determined to replace his mother’s portrait over the mantel in the front parlor with mine. He says she would be pleased, although he can’t know. He never knew her.

  Well, now I feel ashamed of myself seeing this all down in my own handwriting. Poor Ford. If all he wants is for me to be photographed wearing a mink and fabulous jewels, I ought not to complain. But - it’s not what I want! I know, I know, I know. I’ll try to do better.

  I did have some fun during the hours I had to pose. Mother, the man kept twisting me this way and that all afternoon! Anyway, at the end of the session, I told Sid that Ford wanted a set of photographs of me with Clancy. Now, the famous ‘Mr. Lassiter’ is a puffed up toad and he nearly exploded at the idea of being a pet photographer, but nonetheless, I prevailed. I took off my shoes and put the pearls around Clancy’s neck, and we cuddled on the rug in front of the fireplace. You should have seen Sid’s face! Now, the trick will be to get the pictures from him without Ford finding out I put his mother’s pearls on a dog. But I’ll worry about that tomorrow, as Scarlett would say!

  Plan a trip up here for the spring and you’ll see your daughter immortalized in a fabulous oil portrait. Come for any reason you like, but come see me. I am lonely and Ford says I can’t travel alone. I’m tired of arguing about it with him.

  Give my love to Nanny and Papa.

  Emma

  P.S. Is Nanny feeling better? Are you and Papa doing well? I should have asked right off. I should rewrite this. I sound awful. Well, you know me and love me, anyway!

  E.

  Chapter Seven

  Grace drove straight to Delaney House with a plan to photograph the property, inside and out, before the work crew arrived. She wanted to document the state of the house before signing any paperwork for Cyrus Mosley.

  She had another, less practical reason for photographing the house. Her mother had loved secret places. Treasure hunts were regular games when Grace was a child. The Arlington row house where she’d grown up had many nooks, odd corners and spots that were perfect ‘hidey holes’ as Julia called them. Grace had no desire to go through every dark corner of Delaney House, but she was hoping the camera’s viewfinder and the photographs would help her spot the areas where a young Julia might have left hidden treasures - and maybe a few answers. That Winston Delaney, or someone, had already ransacked the house made her task more difficult but not necessarily futile. She was looking for valuables of a different kind.

  She started with the short brick pillars, which sat on either side of the front porch. The one on the left had a tarnished bronze plaque that read: Delaney House - circa 1670. The house had Victorian hallmarks, but now that she studied it, she could see it had been built in stages, with the overwrought Victorian style taking predominance.

  From her tote, Grac
e took a notebook and pen. She listed the location and subject of the first photos and made a note to find out more about the house’s history. She’d need all the marketing material she could get when she put the renovated property on the market.

  After shooting the columns, she turned her phone’s camera to the house, her stomach clenching with each new view of peeling paint and missing slate roof tiles. The outside of the house made her apprehensive, but it took everything she had to step inside when she unlocked the front door. She’d steeled herself for the smell, but the sheer size of the house was intimidating. All she could think of as she walked through the rooms was the amount of work it would take to make the structure habitable.

  She was outside pondering the locked door to the basement when a purple van pulled into the drive and parked behind her BMW. Men and women in purple overalls emerged from the van, followed by the driver, a heavyset man with a mop of curly black hair. He carried a small white dog in the crook of his arm. The dog gave a welcoming yap as they reached her, and the man extended his free hand. “Henry Cutter, at your service.”

  Other than his coloring and warm brown eyes, Henry didn’t resemble his younger cousin. The overalls accentuated his rotund form and his weather-beaten face and rough hands testified to years of hard work. His firm handshake and the sight of workers unloading industrial-size cleaning equipment gave Grace a glimmer of hope. She doubted this group could handle Delaney House, but maybe they could send for reinforcements. After a quick walk through the downstairs, she led Henry out of the rank smelling house to a rickety, but mostly upright picnic table in the backyard.

  Cutter clipped a leash onto the dog’s collar and set it on the grass. “In answer to the question you’ve been too kind to ask, no, I don’t take Leo with me on every job. I’m dropping him off at the Humane Society as soon as we’re finished. No, no,” he laughed at her expression. “Sorry, that came out wrong.”

  “I hope so,” Grace said as she reached out to scratch Leo’s ears. The little dog looked like a cross between a Chihuahua and a soccer ball but had a ready smile and a thank-you lick for her hand.

  “I’ve been fostering him to get his diet regulated and teach him some household manners. He’s going to his forever home today with a great family who’s adopting him. It’s all good, right Leo?”

  Leo settled next to Grace’s foot, conveniently within reach of her hand. She continued to scratch his ears as she and Henry discussed the scope of work to be done in the house. When they’d agreed a thorough clean out was the first order of business, two overall-clad workers were dispatched to empty and sanitize the kitchen. Two others were instructed to take down and haul away the mildewed window coverings. The remaining crew was sent to start shoveling out the debris in the front parlor.

  “Masks and gloves, people!” Cutter called after the workers.

  “How about oxygen tanks?” one of them yelled, setting off a round of teasing by his coworkers.

  To Grace, Henry said, “Don’t worry, I’ve seen worse.”

  “Really? When?” Grace was genuinely curious. Her mother had flipped more than a dozen houses, but none as far gone as Delaney House.

  “Okay, this is pretty bad, but we can handle it.” He consulted his clipboard. “You’ll need to strip this place and do a lot of remedial work before you can even start renovations.”

  “I want to set up a work schedule and get things into place so I can return to DC next week. I have to go back to work.” If I still have a job, she added silently.

  “Okay. I can handle everything for you here.” Henry nodded approvingly as he made notes. “Cyrus told me the basics of the situation and, frankly, the grapevine filled in the holes. Delaney House is famous, you know.” He turned to look at the hulking structure and Grace followed his gaze, taking in the damaged roof and cracked attic windows. A broken downspout canted at an angle from the gutter, held on to the house only by a twist of ivy vines.

  “Does everyone refer to it as ‘Delaney House’?” she asked. “Seems rather grand.”

  “You probably don’t know, but a lot of the Town’s history is tied to this house and this land. Parts of the building have been here more than three hundred years.”

  She shook her head. “I did see the plaque out front, but I know next to nothing. My mother, Julia Reagan, was Emma Delaney’s daughter. She was raised here but had no interest in coming back. I haven’t been here since I was a baby and I don’t have any memory of it.”

  “You inherited it?”

  “No. I bought the place when it came on the market because …” she faltered, as she did every time she tried to explain why she’d bought her mother’s childhood home. And like every other time, she gave the easy explanation. “My mother dreamed of restoring the house.” She wanted to move off the topic. The fewer people who knew her personal story, the better. “I understand you and your cousin have a contracting business, too. Are you interested in bidding on the renovation work?”

  Henry hesitated before answering. The calendar app on his phone got a workout as he flipped through screens.

  “Bryce and I own this cleaning and estate management service, as well as a custom cabinetry and restoration company. Our regular clients take up most of our time, but we’ve been considering expanding. I’ll talk to Bryce about the construction, but I can definitely handle the clean out and basic chores over the next few days. If we feel we can’t do the renovations, we’ll give you recommendations. That’s all I can promise for the moment. Fair enough?”

  Grace thanked him but wondered if she should trust a recommendation from Mosley. Henry seemed kind and trustworthy and he hadn’t exactly jumped at the work. She decided it would have to be good enough.

  Henry said, “I need to run Leo over to his new parents. The crew has plenty to do until I get back. I could call Bryce and we could all have lunch and an informal conversation, if you want. No commitment, just talk. How does that sound? I promise not to wear the overalls.”

  She still had reservations, but Grace found herself smiling and nodding. It sounded like a plan.

  Chapter Eight

  “No need to get bids. We want the job,” Bryce Cutter said. “You won’t get a better price anywhere and we deliver our work on time.”

  Henry frowned. “I told Grace we’d just talk about the work today. We have a full calendar.”

  Now that she saw them together, Grace realized how the two men complemented each other. Handsome, charming Bryce was the salesman, the idea guy. Solid, serious Henry was the guarantee of a quality product. The cousins exchanged a look Grace couldn’t interpret.

  Bryce said, “See? This is how we work, Grace. Henry is the cautious one, and I run flat out. Good thing is, I follow through with the work. Every time. Right, Henry?”

  Henry still looked unhappy but agreed with his cousin. “Every time. He’ll be there at three a.m., but the work will get done.”

  Henry had selected a small restaurant only a few blocks away from Delaney House. Morsels Cafe offered tables in a side garden and Grace was grateful for the breeze that washed away the scent of decay. Tall potted hibiscus plants and a prolific trumpet vine provided splashes of bright color in the garden, which also had a view of the busy harbor. It would be easy to slip into vacation mode, if she could stop worrying about the broken, dirty house.

  Bryce and Henry plowed through burger platters while Grace picked at a crab salad. Even the Eastern Shore’s famous blue crab backfin and Bryce’s flirtatious teasing weren’t enough to distract her from the need to get the renovation work started.

  “Come on, now,” Bryce said when she asked how he would rank the order of basic repairs to the house. “That last joke of mine was funny.”

  Bryce was trying hard to entertain her, and she wanted to tell him she didn’t have time for it. Every minute she sat in the pretty garden eating and laughing was a minute longer she would be on the Eastern Shore. She wanted to find all the information Delaney House and its last occupants had to
give and then leave, shutting the door to this part of her life forever.

  “Relax, Grace, this is going to be an adventure,” Bryce said.

  “I think what Ms. Reagan is trying to tell us is she’s in a hurry and she wants to talk business,” Henry said.

  Again the men shared a look indicating more would be said when Grace wasn’t around to witness it.

  “Okay, I can do that,” Bryce said in a mild tone. Over the next half hour, he described first the basic repairs and then assured her Cutter Enterprises could modernize the house without sacrificing its architectural integrity. Both men stared at her when they heard she’d bought the property without seeing it.

  “That’s a real ‘good news’ ‘bad news’ event, huh?” Henry said. “A dream house that’s uninhabitable.”

  “Way to make it better,” Grace said and held her empty glass up for the waiter to see. The Bloody Mary she’d had was a rare lunch treat. She decided one more couldn’t hurt. “My mother was a real estate broker and she had a house-flipping business. She’d find properties that didn’t need a lot of work, offer all cash and a quick sale and do a basic reno. Most of the time, she flipped for a profit. Some were a wash and some lost money, but overall, she was pretty successful. I’ve been winding the business down since her death.”

  “Cyrus said you’re a lawyer. I guess that means you can’t hang around for the duration of the project?” Bryce finished his last fry and ignored Henry’s surprised expression. “We can do it, Grace. You aren’t thinking of bringing over your contractors from DC are you?”