Houseboat

by Paul Shadinger

  “Good morning. May I speak to Don Green?” I responded.

  “Yes, sir, whom may I say is calling, please?” I gave her my name, and she put me on hold. While waiting, I found myself forced to listen to a syrupy arrangement of some sixties tune, which due to drug references in the lyrics when it was new, received play time only on FM stations. Now that the tune was so old, they decided to add some violins, and they were using it for elevator music. Oh fuck, it’s probably because I’m getting old I’m so grouchy.

  Green came on the line with a high-pitched, very nasal, fast-paced voice with a lot of whine in it. “Don Green here, how may I help you?” The entire sentence was said as one word.

  “Good Morning Mr. Green, my name is Preston, Matthew Preston. I’m calling you in regards to Slim Rockingham. It was my friend and I that found Mr. Rockingham the other day at his houseboat …”

  Green interrupted. “Good God man, that must’ve been a real shocker!”

  I paused a moment, a bit startled at his interruption. “Yes, it was ... um … unexpected. Anyway, the reason I’m calling is in regards to the houseboat …”

  Again Green interrupted me before I could finish, “I’m sorry, Mr. Reston. Until the courts have settled Mr. Rockingham’s estate, we can’t sell anything.” He paused, and I could tell he was thinking about his next statement. Finally, he continued, “And frankly, if I might say, it seems a bit disrespectful for you to call about it so quickly after the poor man’s demise.”

  I took a breath to calm myself, and replied, “It’s Preston, Mr. Green, not Reston, and I’m not interested in buying the houseboat. It’s already mine! I won it in a poker game a few weeks ago. Mr. Rockingham’s attorney has the title assigning interest in the houseboat to me. The reason I was at the houseboat the other day was to take possession. I called because I understand that last night, you spoke with Detective Davenport with the Seattle Police Department. He mentioned that you might have something to do with Slim’s estate.”

  “Yes, I phoned Detective Davenport. Are you an associate of his?”

  I was getting exasperated with this clown, “No, I’m just interested in clearing up the houseboat title, and making sure it isn’t accidently included in his estate.”

  “Well, sir, I’m sure you’re aware I can’t discuss any details of Mr. Rockingham’s estate.” For a moment I recalled he was not Slim’s attorney. I knew who his attorney was, so what was with this client privilege shit? However, I held my tongue, and he continued, “As far as your claim regarding the houseboat,” He paused as he decided on his next words, “I haven’t heard anything about a change in ownership of the houseboat. I also don’t believe Mr. Rockingham’s stepsister, Miss Audrey Bottomsley, is aware of any changes either.

  “Miss Bottomsley—Miss Audrey Bottomsley by the way, is, excuse me, and was his stepsister. I believe they shared the same father through his first marriage. I represent Miss Bottomsley, and I’m sure Mr. Rockingham’s attorney would have notified me about any change of ownership. Mr. Rockingham’s attorney and I often have discussions regarding the affairs of Mr. Rockingham and Miss Bottomsley. I can’t believe I wouldn’t have heard anything about all of this.” His last comment was spoken with a little dig, which I choose to ignore.

  Knowing how attorneys bill their clients for phone calls among themselves, I could imagine they talked often, very often. This jerk was getting under my skin. And attorneys wonder why the general population has such a low opinion of them. “Sir, are you insinuating I’m somehow not telling you the truth?” I asked.

  “Oh no, Mr. Priestly. I’m only saying it’s strange that until now, I haven’t heard anything about a transfer of ownership. I, of course, will have to examine any documents that bear on this matter to make sure that they’re in proper order. If they are, we’ll submit them when we’re settling all of Mr. Rockingham’s estate. At this time, from everything you’ve told me, I’d have to say you have nothing I wish, or need, to consider. If you have an attorney, perhaps you should have him call me. I don’t suppose you have an attorney?”

  I decided to let the last question drop. If this jerk wants to play the attorney game, I’ll turn my wolves loose on him. I was positive they’d have him for brunch. I tried to be as polite as I could, “First off Mr. Green, my name is Preston! Matt Preston! And since you are not representing Slim Rockingham’s estate, I fail to understand why you need to see anything between Mr. Rockingham and myself. Client privilege and all that, you know.

  “But since you feel you need to know, it was my understanding all the arrangements of the transfer were done between Mr. Rockingham, his attorney, myself, and my agent. And since they completed the transfer before his demise, again, I don’t understand why you need to see any documents from the transfer. I don’t see why any of us have the need to consult with you regarding the transfer of ownership. It is in fact, a done deal.

  “Secondly, when I spoke with Jennifer Rockingham this morning, she seemed to feel that, as soon as the police finish their investigation, there would be no problems with me taking possession of the houseboat. I’ll check with my attorneys, but the impression they gave me is that the houseboat is already mine. It became mine the day they filed the papers. Perhaps you’re the one who needs to check it out further!”

  His voice seemed to jump up an octave and he stuttered because he was trying to speak so fast. “J ... J ... J ... Jennifer Rockingham? I’m not aware of a Jennifer Rockingham. Who is this person?”

  I wondered how he could not have known about the daughter. I informed him. “She told me she was Slim’s daughter.” I paused a moment remembering the sound of her voice and everything she’d told me. Then I continued, “She told me that shortly after she was born Mr. Rockingham left her and her mother, and then he obtained a divorce from Mrs. Rockingham. Jennifer Rockingham told me she’d received her schooling overseas, and until recently she didn’t have much of a relationship with her father.”

  I paused again, and then went for a dig, “Since you seem to have such an enormous concern, I’d think you might want to talk with Miss Rockingham, or at least her attorney.” After my well-placed dig, I went on to mention that I was sure I wasn’t as competent as my attorneys were, and at that point, I dropped the name of my wolf’s prestigious firm. Then I continued, saying I was under the impression Miss Rockingham had a claim on old Elmo’s estate. I thought about adding that a daughter would sure ace out his client; after all, isn’t a blood relationship stronger than one through marriage? But I felt I’d already done a good job screwing up his day.

  I asked him if there was a will, but I never received an answer. One thing, though, after the mere mention of the name of my attorney’s firm, I noticed ol’ Donny boy’s tone with me improved a great deal. He seemed to remember my name now and there was some actual respect in his voice. He told me Miss Bottomsley had told him there would be no problems since she was the only heir. Green agreed with me that he needed to look into the matter some more. We finished the call with him assuring me he’d call me back after he’d contacted my attorney.

  Once again, I found myself hunkered down in my favorite chair staring out across the lake. I was aware of the smile on my lips. When ol’ Slim had played poker with all of us, who’d have thought he had two such strange women roaming around in his life? It started me wondering how many strange people someone might find in my life.

  BJ climbed up on my lap and settled in, knowing I was going to be sitting in my chair for a while pondering everything that was going on. The more I thought about it, the odder it seemed that if Slim had both a stepsister and a daughter, one of them had to have known something about the other. I could understand why the daughter might not know about the stepsister due to the fact that she was estranged from her father for so long, and since she was out of the country most of the time. Nevertheless, it didn’t seem logical that Slim would never mention to his stepsister anything about a d
aughter. If Slim was half as proud of his daughter as it would seem, I’d bet he had said something to somebody along the way. So if Bottomsley knew, that would go a long way to explaining why Bottomsley wanted to wrap up this estate thing before anyone knew there was a daughter involved. During our phone call, Ms. Rockingham mentioned she was only in the States by accident. I was willing to make a wager that Bottomsley was not aware that Jennifer was currently visiting the States.

  As I lay sprawled in my chair, I wondered what my next move was. And along with that thought, I wondered why I even wanted to get involved. I mean, I had proof that the houseboat was mine and after that, it really wasn’t any of my business. But when I closed my eyes, I could hear Jennifer’s voice. I am such a pig—here I was fantasizing over a woman just because of her voice. She really did have a great voice.

  From Jennifer, my mind wandered to Bottomsley. How could I go about finding information about this Bottomsley dame, and what I felt was even more important, what did that woman really knew about things?

  The mind boggles.

  CHAPTER 13

  Whenever I have a serious decision or a difficult problem that needs time to consider, I head off to my secret hideout. I felt my current problems qualified a visit to my sanctuary. Considering my last three phone calls, it seemed a good time to retreat. The modern term for my refuge is a man cave, but my place of solitude isn’t a cave, so I’m going to stick with variations of hideout.

  I undoubtedly have a lot more weaknesses than just two, but the two I’m most aware of are my tendencies to date tall blonde haired women and my love of automobiles. If I have to explain my feelings about tall blondes, then I doubt if we have much in common, and maybe you won’t find any of my musings of interest.

  As far as automobiles go, I am a car whore! I admit it, I love cars. I don’t go to automobile auctions because I would come home with every car I found the least bit interesting and I’d be broke. If it has four tires and burns gasoline, I am in love.

  I was lucky enough to grow up in the days when gas was cheap and plentiful, and ten miles to the gallon was more than acceptable. I remember one weekend during my senior year in high school and it was Friday evening. I had $1.00 in my pocket and that dollar bill bought enough gas to see me through the entire weekend. That buck bought me four gallons of gas. That was enough gas for my Friday and Saturday night dates, plus some extra to go cruising, and I still had enough for the ride to school come Monday morning.

  Another thing, cars had real balls back in the day! Best of all, they looked and sounded that way. My love affair with cars began when, at the tender age of thirteen and a half, I started to drive on the back county roads of Whidbey Island (which is located in the Puget Sound), during the winter months. My family had a summer home on the island and often on Friday evenings during the winter, dad and I’d go over to the cabin and return either Saturday afternoon or on Sunday. Mom did not care for the cabin!

  During the wintertime, since there weren’t many people on the island, dad didn’t have a problem with me taking whatever vehicle we were in and driving around. Pop’s company had a Jeep pickup with a three-speed stick shift on the floor and I basically learned to drive in that vehicle. I drove that puppy all over the south end of Whidbey and by the time I was sixteen, I was totally proficient at driving.

  Over the years, I’ve had more than my fair share of great cars, and lately I’ve been fortunate enough to buy and keep some of these works of art. I have a running subscription to Hemmings Motor News, and faithfully look through each issue at the different older cars up for sale.

  Luckily, one of the properties I inherited from my father was a five-story turn of the last century building. Over the years, someone had installed an old lift in the back of the building accessible only from the rear alley. The lift went from the alley to the top floor with no stops in between. I’ve leased out, or more correctly, Scott has leased out all of the bottom floors, but I’ve retained the top floor serviced by the lift. This is my hideout, and where I keep my collection.

  Currently there are nine pieces of “art” stored there. On rare occasions I take out and drive some of these, on the very nicest of days. Two of them are Corvettes. One is a 1963 split-window coupe, and the other is a 1966 roadster with a 327 cubic-inch motor that produces 350 horsepower. I admit to being a kid at heart, and on some warm summer evenings it’s like being seventeen again. Put the top down on the ’66 and with the wind licking at your hair and only the deep rumble of the exhaust to keep you company, that must be what heaven is like.

  Also among my group of cars is a super rare 1960 Pontiac Bonneville convertible. What makes it so rare is it has the biggest motor they put into a stock Pontiac that year, along with a 4-speed, floor mounted transmission. The car was so fast you had an absolute guarantee that it could pass anything on the road—except a gas station.

  I also have other vintage cars. These include a 1967 Austin-Healey 3000 with less than 20,000 miles on it that I found rotting away in a garage in Ohio and a ‘56 Mercedes gull-wing that I purchased in damaged condition. I had it shipped to Mercedes in Germany and they totally rebuilt…it for a small fortune.

  There’s also my prized 1930 V-16 Cadillac Madame X Convertible Coupe, complete with the Cadillac build sheet, V-windshield, and factory chrome wheels. I ended up paying way too much money for that car. Another true work of art is a 1937 Cord Model 812 Phaeton. My latest addition is a new F355 Ferrari, which I still haven’t decided if I like very much. No, I’m not bragging about my collection. I’ve just been lucky in life, and I’m happy that I can purchase and preserve these cars.

  At my apartment, I keep Faithful along with an ‘87 El Dorado convertible. All the stock motors in the Eldorados were pieces of shit, and somewhere around sixty thousand miles the motor dies. When my motor died, I had a mechanic pull out the old one, and replaced it with a newer Northstar 5.2 liter. Now that I’ve done that, I realize I can never sell the car, because of the stupid emission laws it was illegal to switch out the motor. I know I’m probably wrong, but I still believe that I can keep any car running better and cleaner with proper tune-ups etc., than the current batch of junk with all of their emission controls and crap. I also know our government totally disagrees with my opinion.

  My other vice has to do with MGB’s. Over the years, I purchased a bunch of ‘64 through ‘67 MGB’s in various states of disrepair when and wherever I could find one. I say a bunch, because I have many parts, and some of the cars I bought were rusted-out bodies, or frames which I used for parts. Some I paid less than $200 for and others a little too much. I really don’t know how many cars I could assemble if you could find all the extra pieces they might need. Sad to say, only one of them is actually running.

  A few years ago, a firm in England purchased the dies to stamp out extra MGB parts, so it’s now possible to purchase exact parts for them, and they fit like a glove. When you need a part though, they are rather expensive.

  Arthur is my main man at the garage. Actually, Art is the only person at the shop. He’s a gentleman in his early seventies who supplements his income by working on my toys on a part-time basis. Some day we hope to restore more of the MGs.

  Art was once a mechanic and part-time driver of various types of old racecars. He has trophies to show for his efforts, and an incredible wealth of stories. But the best thing about Art is his ability to fix an automobile. He views them as I do; relics of a passing era. Each day they become more like the horse-drawn wagons they replaced. Cars now have no soul. We both feel that today’s cars all resemble each other, and worst of all, they only give you a few color choices to pick from, all of them very bland.

  I know, step off the soapbox. I keep telling myself someday I should grow up, and rid myself of my toys, but I’m not quite ready to grow up. Maybe when I’m a little older!

  I stopped by, chatted a while with Art, and we discussed Slim and the problems relate
d to it all. He agreed that both of Slim’s females sounded like their toothpicks didn’t completely pierce completely their respective olives.

  One of the new pieces had arrived for the MGs, and Art was going to show me how he planned to install it. After around an hour of crawling under and around the car I heard the grinding of the inside elevator. When it came wheezing to a Scott stepped off. BJ sat up, gave him a half-hearted bark, and then lay down again in Art’s favorite chair.

  Scott stood for a moment and said, “Thanks for returning my call this morning!”

  I’d dropped the ball. “Oops! Sorry ‘bout that, something came up and it slipped my mind. What did you need to see me about?”

  Scott came over and handed me a piece of paper. It looked like some sort of official notice from the City of Seattle about an upcoming change of zoning. Nothing seemed to make sense until I reached the exact address of the change. It was the marina where the houseboat was moored.

  I asked Scott what it all meant. “It means that not only are they going to put you out of the marina, but they might evict every houseboat. The city has wanted to shut down all the houseboats for a long time. By the way, look at the name on the notice.”

  Thank God, I was still sitting on the ground. When I saw that the name on the letter was addressed to David Wheeler, I probably would have fallen to the floor. I’d no idea that Wheel owned the damn marina! I looked up at Scott, and it seemed that he could read my mind. “Yes, it looks as if our ol’ ‘Wheel’ is the owner of the marina.”

  “Have you tried to call him and see if he’ll give me a stay of execution?”

  Scott laughed, and replied, “No, I just got the copy of that notice yesterday at my office and that’s why I was trying to get ahold of you. I thought you might want to talk to him yourself since you’re the new owner. However, this notice could mean he might be in trouble, too. Now, what was so important you couldn’t call me back?”