Catharine Bramkamp - Real Estate Diva 04 - Trash Out

by Catharine Bramkamp

  I was resplendent as I rustled into the office steeling myself for the comments and asides that Patricia, Rosemary and Katherine were famous for. Rosemary almost smacked me against the receptionist desk in her hurry to get out.

  “Do you have the number for Chris Conner?” She was so breathless, she barely got the words out.

  “Of course,” I didn’t say why.

  “Call her, the Christophers found out about the house, they are on their way. We want this in the paper.”

  Editorial coverage is so much more effective than advertisement. I dutifully found the number. While I waited for Chris Conner to pick up, I glanced at Patricia who looked increasingly gaunt every time I saw her. She didn’t look up at me.

  “Chris?” Oh yes, the damn fax. I moved to my in box. “There is an incident you may be interested in, on the corner of Beach and Sea Side. Of course it’s exclusive. I know you don’t have time, neither do they.”

  I glanced at my in box as Chris signed off. It was empty. I checked the fax machine. A dozen papers littered the floor. I scooped them up and distributed them into the correct In boxes as I searched for mine. It was of course, the last one.

  I signed it and punched in the fax number.

  “Patricia, what were all the faxes doing on the floor?”

  “Oh, sorry about that.”

  The fax beeped and sucked in the paper. I didn’t dare leave it until the transaction was complete. As I hurried out, Patricia whispered, “I let the listing slide a day too long, the Christopher’s caught it.”

  “They were bound to find out eventually, it was only a matter of time. I wasn’t able to stand the suspense anyway,” I assured her.

  Like a traffic accident, I didn’t want to watch, but I wanted to peek. I glanced at my watch. I had some time, just enough. I jumped in my car and sped to the scene of the crime so to speak.

  I arrived in time to see the bewildered couple in question, along with their three children, assembled on the sidewalk in front of the house. They blinked in the morning light. One child wore Elmo slippers, another clutched her mother’s hand. Paul and Pam Christopher, dressed to enjoy 18 holes of golf, raged around the family yelling and waving their arms. The Christopher’s were infuriated, as well they should be, and it only got worse when the paper and the TV news vans pulled up, ready for quotes and video.

  “Trespassers!” Paul Christopher howled. “How dare you take advantage of an abandoned house! Trespassers, I will have you arrested!”

  Katherine videoed the process with her phone. I couldn’t tell who was yelling at whom but that was possibly immaterial, the point was, the family was found out. The story could go either way. Katherine obviously was there to make sure it went her way.

  “A sacred trust!” Rosemary bellowed into the TV mike. “We are charged to care for the property of another group, Bank of America in this case, and sell that property to the best of our ability. This property was neglected, and ignored to such an extent that the Christophers either knew nothing about the squatters or they were illegally pocketing their rent.”

  “You can’t prove that!” Paul Christopher howled. “They are vile trespassers. Is there no decency left in the world!”

  One little girl started to cry.

  Paul Christopher, who looks much younger on his brochure, web site and billboards, grabbed the mike from Rosemary and began to berate the trespassing family. The youngest girl clutched a stuffed teddy bear that was probably purchased for this event and sniffed dramatically. It was a nice touch.

  Paul Christopher claimed that heads would roll; someone would get to the bottom of this. Which they would, but it would be his karma that the bottom of the story would rise to the top of the news.

  “This would make a great reality show.” Chris Connor strolled up and stood next to me.

  “I thought you weren’t covering the story?”

  She shrugged, “I’m not, it’s their turn. “ She nodded to the film crew. A young man behind the main camera operator held up his cell, replicating the video work.

  “Great way to go viral,” Chris continued. “This is gold. Wait till it hits You Tube.” Just as she mouthed “close up”, the young man finally focused on the little girl with the bear and moved in. Paul Christopher could not block him as he was still on camera defending his actions with the charge of willful neglect.

  The young camera operator moved in and asked a question. The little girl, with her huge brown eyes and beribboned pigtails (another nice touch) answered with just the right amount of bewilderment and pathos. She’d be a hit. Or many hits. Satisfied, the young man backed off and left the real reporting to the news camera team as he furiously worked to upstage his own company by posting the video and the story as we stood in the street.

  “I’m sure they trashed the place.” Peter Christopher began warming up for his upcoming justification circuit. “Thousands of dollars in damages!”

  “Well, let’s just take a look,” Rosemary bellowed. The young man hopped along, phone at the ready. The camera crew obligingly followed mostly because Katherine took up a position at the back end of the parade and shooed them forward.

  There was nothing the Christophers could do. It was magnificent. I couldn’t have done better myself.

  The two event tents billowed and sucked in air like another Christo project: Wedding Wrap. The caterers from San Francisco were already hustling back and forth carrying covered dishes and serving platters. Three vans from the florist parked to one side, the women carried armloads of low floral arrangements and dozens of three feet tall glass vases barely containing a riot of fuchsias and red roses.

  I dodged both a low arrangement and a tall vase. I peeked into one of the tents. Three workers finished stringing the tiny lights along every ridge in the tent. I knew from seven different text streams that a minute after Carrie and Patrick finished their vows, the tent sides would roll up to reveal the perfect reception space.

  A motorcycle roared behind me. I glanced at my watch. Two hours to go. Two huge bikers dressed in leather vests and chaps hurried by, their boots raised puffs of dust as they strode to the patio.

  I watched them for a second. Okay, that’s it. Unless they were Patrick’s rich eccentric uncles, they were about to be forcibly removed from the scene.

  “Hey!” I yelled.

  The second one paused. He called to his partner and they both stopped. I bustled up as fast as my scarlet stiletto heels would allow.

  “Weren’t you just in Claim Jump? And last night you were hovering around The Barn.” I accused. I planted my feet firmly and tried to make sure my ankles didn’t wobble, I was as tall as he, but alas, did not out-weigh him.

  He turned to me and pulled off his aviator style sunglasses.

  “What the hell are you doing here?” I repeated belligerently.

  “Protecting the bride,” he said succinctly.

  “Yes, from the bride’s parents, but what were you doing in the foothills?”

  He looked puzzled. “I’m just doing my job. Mr. Sullivan hired me,” he nodded to the other man. “Us, to watch the bride. Make sure she was safe.”

  I narrowed my eyes. “Safe from what?”

  “There you are!” Patrick bounded up and grabbed the man’s arm. “Good, I have something for you to handle.” Patrick quickly kissed me on the cheek and moved the immovable objects away me, the irresistible force. I watched Patrick gesture toward the back of the silent winery. Safe? Carrie’s parents weren’t in evidence at all. Safe from what, or from whom?

  I moved to the office where Carrie was holding court.

  “Good, you’re here. We were worried,” Kathleen snapped, her neon pink tulle dress did not compliment her skin tone. The dress puckered along the seams and the back hem was lower than the front. Had she lost weight?

  “I am late,” I answered mildly. “Sorry.”

  “Allison, does this make me look fat?” Carrie wrung her hands. She wore a tiny strapless bra and the first of a half doz
en stiff slips needed to make her dress stand out like a pup tent.

  “We reviewed this, you look like a fairy princess.” I glared at the Furies. What had they been saying to the vulnerable bride? And why did she need to be kept safe? I kept her safe. That was my job.

  I stepped deftly out of Claire’s way as she rushed to the flowers draped on Cassandra’s desk. I kept my mouth shut, no disclosures, no slip-ups.

  The Furies hovered around the bride. They tied Carrie up into the rest of the tulle underskirts and finally dropped the wedding dress over her head careful not to snag the dress on her huge engagement ring. Claire patted the big fluffy dress. Kathleen picked up the flowers then set down the flowers.

  “How about a walk?” Carrie suggested.

  “No!” Kathleen paused and readjusted her tone. “We don’t want the guests to see you before your final walk down the aisle.”

  “Brides are supposed to be a surprise.” Claire‘s gray hair looked much more elegant swept up in a high bun. They both wore long ruby earrings, which could be real; the stones cast red points of light across the office. Like specks of blood. I bit my lip.

  “Okay, no walk. What are we going to do for forty-five minutes? We didn’t need to come so early you know,” Carrie complained.

  “I’ll get some food,” I volunteered. “I bet you haven’t eaten.”

  Her eyes were too huge for her face, she really had lost weight, even with the constant tucking and fussing by the bridal shop owner, the dress bodice was about an inch too loose. It was lovely, no one would notice, but the woman had not been eating. And Carrie did eat. She wouldn’t be my friend if she didn’t.

  “I’ll find you something round,” I promised, and abandoned her to the anxious administrations of her sister’s-in-law to be.

  The musicians set up in the far corner of the patio, well under the olive trees. A few guests greeted one another. The first waiter appeared carrying a tray of flutes filled with sparkling wine. Patrick’s parents stood by the main tent chatting quietly, every few seconds his mother glanced around, then focused again on her spouse. I made my way to the food staging area, there must be something I could snatch for the guest of honor.

  I had just found two stray corn muffins when Patrick leaped over. “Allison!” He grabbed my arm and the muffins almost slid off the tiny plate, I switched hands.

  “They’re for Carrie, she’s starving.”

  “Are my sisters with her?”

  “They won’t let her out of their sight.”

  He relaxed and dropped his hand.

  I studied him. Like his sisters, he had lost weight, not a lot, but his cheek bones were more defined, his skin was paler than usual. He also had a haunted look about him that did not bode well.

  “You’re having second thoughts!” I accused him. “Listen, Carrie Eliot is the best thing that could ever happen to you, and you know it.”

  He did not disagree but barked out an ironic almost paranoid laugh. I did not join him. He glanced around, then pulled me (with considerable effort and strain) off to a far corner of the patio.

  “Did you ever watch slasher movies when you were a kid? You know the kind with a crazy person who attacks badly behaved teens?”

  I stared at him. How did he know? My brothers liked to hold me down and make me watch Halloween over and over; I was terrified, they thought it was funny.

  He read my expression correctly. “Remember that movie, I Know What You Did Last Summer?”

  I nodded but honestly, I did not want to explore the similarities of a slasher flick to the wedding of the century, or love, or brides. My stomached clenched, tiny pricks of sweat started from the back of my neck to my waist. Shit, Kimberly Sullivan was his sister.

  He read my expression and sagged, just a little.

  “Okay, okay. I’ll tell you but you must swear not to tell Carrie. Not until it’s all over.”

  All over? I did not trust myself to make any kind of encouraging comment. Especially when I now had two secrets to keep from the bride.

  Patrick focused on the road behind us. “I have another sister. Her name is Kimberly. She was great, my favorite. When we were kids, she took it on herself to protect me from Claire and Kathleen. She was the first to get married.” He took a breath. “Except the groom never showed up.”

  I could relate. I waited, balancing the muffins, resisting taking one myself. There was more to this story, just from his body language, just from the fact that this is the first I’ve heard of an extra sister. She wasn’t even invited to the shower, it must have ended rather badly.

  “Did she die?”

  He shook his head, was that regret in his eyes? “We should not have left her alone that night, but what could we do? She insisted she was fine, and she had always been strong, resourceful.” He relaxed a bit. “She was great at hiding me. When Kathleen and Claire were on a tear, Kim would find the perfect place to hide and we could play or read all afternoon – Kathleen and Claire never could figure out where we had gone.”

  “What happened that night?” I prodded gently. Carrie was waiting for her muffins, but I had to know.

  Patrick rubbed the back of his neck and ran his index finger around the inside of his tuxedo collar. “She checked into the honeymoon suite at the Fairmont alone claiming she didn’t want to waste it.” He paused and looked up at the clear blue sky. “We thought she was handling it well. We didn’t know, you know some time you can’t see it coming.”

  “Sometimes you can’t anticipate what another person will do,” I said gently. Banging and shouting from the reception tent wafted towards us. More guests arrived, the crunch of cars, doors slammed. People greeted one another. We still had time.

  “She must have spent the whole night hunting him down. I never did figure out how she managed to find him, and I have never figured out why the idiot stayed in the city. We discovered Kim has quite a talent for hunting people down. She found him at a North Beach bar, romancing yet another woman. On their wedding night for God’s sake. And, well, she broke his beer bottle on the bar and he was so surprised she was able to cut him up pretty effectively before he could defend himself and well before she was pulled away. It was quite the scene. Many reporters, many cops.” He took a deep breath and rubbed his eyes as if the memory was still terribly recent.

  “And many attorneys.”

  “Our attorney lives in city, he was right there on the scene, at least his people were. We paid. She had no history, no signs, not even as a child. We never knew. I guess sometimes you can’t know. For a while we’d bring her home, but she doesn’t stay in one place for very long.”

  Patrick dropped his head in his hands. “So you see? Carrie’s parents were nothing, easy. This has haunted us since Kimberly’s horrible wedding.”

  “She’s the forth child.”

  He nodded. “She’s just trying to save us. We know that, Kathleen, Claire and I, deep down she really cares about us, really loves us, but her methods . . .”

  “Are unorthodox.” I wondered what had happened to Kathleen and Claire. Had they come close to marriage, only to have their crazy sister appear like the madwoman in the attic and ruin it all? Were they worried it was genetic?

  I knew about harboring murderous scenarios over former fiancées, I would have cheerfully killed mine given the chance and a sharp object.

  “To state the obvious, I take it she’s at large again?”

  “Yes,” Patrick admitted. “She waited for a new shift at the hospital, and checked herself out. She’s on the loose. And this isn’t the first time. She’s really good at this.”

  “How is she getting around?’

  He shrugged. “Friends? Enemies? Homeless shelters, your United Way dollars at work. I don’t know, she’s clever and lovely and articulate, everything necessary get an easy hand out.”

  “What happened to him, the runaway groom?”

  “I don’t know. We were relieved he didn’t file a lawsuit. But the circumstances being what they we
re, it wouldn’t have looked good for him anyway. We paid for his plastic surgery, after that, he faded away. We placed Kim in an institute in San Francisco.”

  Patrick studied me very seriously. “Do you think Carrie will bolt? If I tell her, will she bolt?”

  “Are you kidding me? You saved her from her horrible parents, you are kind, handsome, her total package. Trust me when I tell you she will never leave, let alone bolt. She will take care of you, she will stand by your side. She will personify every bad country western song in circulation. She is completely in love with you.”

  He sagged in relief at my words. “Thank you. I sometimes fight so hard to get an answer, I forget to ask the question. I didn’t want to ask her the wrong question.”

  And he certainly didn’t want to hear the wrong answer.

  “I don’t blame you. Now, what are you doing to find your sister?”

  “We have notices out, but it’s hard to be both effective and avoid triggering a wave of unwanted publicity.” He suddenly grinned. “Frankly, I don’t think of our family as all that important, or even that interesting. But with twenty four hour news cycles, anything will do, and Kimberly is photogenic and can sound pretty coherent during a five minute interview.”

  “I know local politicians like that,” I mused. “But it all unravels during the sixth minute.”

  He nodded. “The big guy who has been following you is a body guard for hire. He’s there to protect Carrie. I told her it was to guard against her parents.”

  “But not really.”

  “No,” he gazed at the crowd. “And it’s not over until we find her.”

  I did not ask the obvious question, had Kimberly killed Cassandra? Because no one knew. No one had the answers. I took my leave of Patrick and delivered the muffins to the ravenous bride, who swallowed them down in seconds, then entertained herself with a minute-by-minute count down. Out loud. If the Furies weren’t already frayed around the edges, Carrie’s count – one through sixty, threatened to unravel them completely.