by Noel Hynd
He was further intrigued when he came to the second floor landing. There had been a bathroom on the first floor. There was a second bathroom, plus a half on the second floor. The porcelain was aged in all three baths and would have to be torn out, and the half bathroom would have to be expanded. The walls were filthy. And the cats must have had the run of one of the four bedrooms, because he still caught a strong whiff of something unpleasant coming from somewhere.
But again, this was cosmetics.
Bill put his hand on the doorknob to the fourth bedroom and couldn’t make it move. It was as if there were some force on the other side holding it. Bill Moore was startled for a moment, because the knob almost seemed to have a life of its own. It pulled back against his hand. He was certain. And again, Bill cocked his head. It was almost as if he could hear someone murmuring in a low disquieting voice. Not that he could make out the words. He stood still. Yes, indeed! He had heard something! Was he experiencing some strange current of sound? Was there a radio on somewhere? Perhaps in a neighbor’s house. He was tuned into something that sounded like the low rumble of an electronic voice in a distant room. He listened for another two seconds, his hand still upon the stubborn doorknob. Yes, again! He was certain that he was hearing a…
“Trouble with the door?” Essie asked, appearing merrily next to him. “It happens with the weather. We get a Santa Ana blowing this time of the year. Even with the dry wind, there’s just enough humidity, and sooner or later the doors and drawers start sticking. It’s part of the price Californians pay for all the sunshine.”
Essie put a hand on the knob, pressed it downward and then, with decades of experience selling homes jerked the knob and twisted it. She gave the door a sharp uppercut shot with her knee. The knob released.
“There!” she snorted.
The door opened onto a corner bedroom, square on one side, rounded on the other. The chamber was badly dilapidated, but otherwise it was a splendid little room.
Rebecca followed her husband and poked her head in.
“This is so cozy,” she said. “The kids will fight over it.”
For a moment, a noxious odor overtook them, something acrid and sour. They all noticed it, and Bill thought that this had been the source of the cat stench that he had noticed throughout the second floor. But before anyone could remark upon it, it was gone, as if opening the door upon a closed room had caused it to dissipate.
They all walked into the room. There was a grand turret on the side of the old house, and this was the second floor room contained therein. Bill and Rebecca both reacted the same way: The strange construction made the room distinctive.
“Tell me again. How many children?” Essie asked, ignoring the smell.
“Two,” Bill said. “So far.”
His wife blushed.
“We have a boy named Patrick who’s seven, and a girl Karen, who’s five.”
“That’s lovely,” said Essie. “I have a daughter who lives in the East with her husband. Went to the University of Pennsylvania, and then married a dentist. Stayed East. I only see her twice a year.” She grinned. “But that’s also when I get my dental checkup.”
“That’s too bad,” Rebecca said, “that you don’t see your daughter more often.”
“She has her own life,” Essie said with a shrug. “She’s happy. And the dental work is not bad.”
“Grand children?” Rebecca asked.
“Two. I’d bore you with the pictures, but they’re downstairs in my purse.” Bill walked around the empty room.
“You could make this a playroom,” Essie said, noting Bill’s interest and shifting back to commerce. “With four upstairs bedrooms, you could keep the master for yourselves, give the kids two on the side, and keep this as a playroom. Or a study for you, Mr. Moore.”
“Either could be done,” Bill said. “There’s a wall here that could be taken out, too, and moved. There’s a way this whole floor could be reconstructed easily.” He eyed the walls, putting a hand to one. “If we wanted to, that is,” he added.
“Structurally, this is a very sound house,” Essie said. “Last big earthquake? Not a crack in the plaster anywhere.”
“I’m impressed,” Bill Moore said. “I have to admit. There are possibilities here.”
Essie agreed. So did Rebecca.
She and Mrs. Moore left the room. Bill left last, turning to look behind him as he left. No voice anymore. He tried the doorknob and it was no longer resistant to his touch.
Odd. He left the door open and followed the women.
Essie led them upstairs to the attic, a hot unfinished chamber with one small window and several exposed beams from the roof.
“This could be converted…” Rebecca found herself thinking. “Bill could put in a skylight, enlarge the window. Give it a southern exposure, redo the floor…”
“No! Don’t!” A contrary thought came to her as forceful as a voice. So forceful that she looked around. Mildly rattled, she left the room in a hurry.
She was still thinking when Essie led them back down the attic steps. They walked all the way back to the ground floor, Bill trailing the women.
At one point on the steps leading down from the second floor, Bill thought he heard something, too. That funny murmur again.
… Ignorant fool. Why do they come here? Why don’t they leave me be?
He was disturbed by it. He stopped short again to listen. But he still couldn’t place the direction from which it had come. And after two or three seconds, he continued down the stairs, convinced that whatever he heard or thought he heard was his imagination. And it made no difference, anyway. Someone somewhere had a radio or television on.
Fool!
Esther led them to the only part of the first floor that they hadn’t seen, a section under the turret room of the second floor.
First they visited the dining room. The floor was a wreck. Clawed and scratched. But the old boards were sound beneath the damage. Bill looked at them carefully. An architect’s trained eye saw that the damage and the dirt were superficial. Beneath that was something solid. And then there was a den, adjacent to the living room. Mrs. Dickinson probably hadn’t used that room too much. It didn’t show much wear.
Then they arrived back in the living room. For some reason, Essie’s notebook had fallen on the floor from the table. And she couldn’t find her red-framed reading glasses.
“I know I put them down here,” she was saying. “I’m absolutely certain of it. Or at least I think I did.”
She gathered the notebook from the floor. It looked like it had tipped off the table and landed hard. She searched her pockets and her purse and still no glasses.
“Did either of you see my reading specs?” she asked.
Both of the Moores shrugged.
“Do either of you remember my wearing them? Usually I need them to read.”
“Do you have another pair?” Bill asked. She did. There was a second pair in her purse. Or maybe, Essie confessed, it had been her first pair.
“Sometimes I think I’d lose my head, too,” she offered in a rare moment of candor, “if it weren’t attached. It is attached, isn’t it?”
The Moores smiled.
“When you get to my age,” Essie continued, “the memory plays tricks sometimes. I guess I never had the red-framed pair here at all.” In any case, they weren’t there now. And there was more business to discuss.
“What’s the neighborhood like?” Bill asked.
“It’s lovely,” Essie answered quickly, although to those selling houses, any house they were in was in a lovely neighborhood.
“It seems nice,” Rebecca said. “From what we saw of it.”
“It used to be somewhat shabby, I won’t lie to you,” Mrs. Lewisohn explained. “But a lot of young professional people moved in the last ten years. Bought a lot of these old houses for a song, came in and spruced them up. So it’s definitely a neighborhood that’s up-and-coming.”
“Even ten years later?”
Bill pressed. “It’s still ‘up and coming’?”
“I don’t think the values have peaked yet. I think they’ll go up steadily,” Esther Lewisohn said. “Even with the big recession we’re coming out of thank God. Take this house for an example. It’s the blight of the block. As soon as someone buys it and fixes it, everything on the block improves, including this house. Someone wins twice by playing Mr. and Mrs. Fix It.”
Bill went to a window and peered out to the west. He saw nothing that would have made a liar out of his broker. Not here, anyway. The next home was Victorian, complete with turrets and curlicues and a splendid porch with a restored antique glider.
The property was perfectly kept. And in the neighbors’ backyard, on deep green well-watered grass behind a wooden fence, was a child’s bicycle.
“Who are the neighbors?” Rebecca asked.
There was a family named Alvarez who lived in that house to the west, Essie said. She didn’t know much about them, other than that both parents worked.
The next house in the other direction belonged to a childless couple named Kauffman. When the Moores went to the easterly windows they saw another Queen Anne, also immaculately kept. And the owners weren’t broke. There was a long sleek white Jaguar — the car, not the cat — sitting in the driveway.
“Where are your children?” Essie asked. “Are they with you on this visit?”
“No. They’re with their grandmother back East,” Bill said. “Westport, Connecticut. They’ll be joining us just as soon as we find a home.”
“You mean you haven’t already?” Essie intoned with a smile and a raised eyebrow. “I can see what you’re thinking.”
“Tell me about the schools,” Rebecca asked.
“The elementary schools in this district are excellent,” she said. “People try to move into this neighborhood just so they can use the schools.”
Rebecca nodded. Idly she wondered if any broker in the history of the world ever conceded that a school district was terrible, and that residents tried to move out just to avoid the schools.
“Let’s take a look outside,” Bill suggested. He took his wife’s hand.
“Of course,” Mrs. Lewisohn said.
Essie led them through the kitchen to a back door. They left the house and found themselves first on an old-fashioned stone patio and then upon an unkempt lawn that cried out for both a landscaper and a gardener. But again, it also cried out with potential.
The house was on a quarter of an acre, a generous plot for that area. Bill spent most of the tour looking at the foundations and the conditions of the woodwork on the side of the house. He was impressed with the sturdiness of the old dwelling. Whoever had put this place up had done the job solidly and professionally. Bill Moore wondered if the same builder, circa 1910 he guessed, had put up the whole block.
“Now I’ll show you something unusual,” Essie finally said. “I’m taking a chance here because this bothers some people. But it doesn’t bother me, and I hope it doesn’t bother both of you.”
She led them to the high brick wall that enclosed the rear garden. There was an old bench against it. “See if we can stand on the bench,” Essie said. “See if it will hold us.”
Bill did the testing, climbing on the bench and bouncing. He pronounced it safe.
“Now look over the wall and tell me what you see,” Essie requested.
Bill offered a hand again to his wife, who climbed up with him. Together, not knowing what to expect, they gazed at the adjoining acreage.
They saw nothing but lawn until they let their line of vision wander farther. And then their eyes settled upon an armada of tombstones and granite markers, some appearing quite grand and ornate from a distance. Bill and Rebecca were looking at the backside of a cemetery.
“We’re adjacent to a graveyard?” Rebecca asked. “Is that what you mean?”
“San Angelo Cemetery,” Essie said. “It doesn’t bother you, does it?” She paused and answered her own question. “It shouldn’t.”
Rebecca didn’t answer, suppressing a little shiver that she couldn’t explain.
“The near territory is vacant,” Bill observed. “It looks like all the burial plots are farther on.”
“That’s correct. What you see is the rear of the cemetery,” Essie said without looking. “I’ll tell you what that means for YOU.”
“You don’t have to,” Bill said, warming to the circumstances. “It means no noise, no loud parties, and no new houses.”
Esther Lewisohn smiled. She could not have phrased it any better herself. “I think of it as a rather cozy situation,” she said. “But it gets even better. There can be no new graves back there, even though you see empty space.”
“Why is that?” Rebecca asked.
“By local statute,” Essie said. “The zoning laws in this section of Los Angeles were changed shortly after World War Two. Nothing new goes into San Angelo.”
Quirky, the Moores decided, but it worked to their advantage. Essie raised an eyebrow.
“Now, if I’m not rushing you along,” she said, “let’s go back inside.”
The Moores followed. Essie called a powwow in the living room.
“I want you young people to listen to me for a moment,” Essie said next. “You’d be doing yourself a favor to look at this property carefully. The estate is anxious to close the deal. The price is seven hundred fifty thousand but that’s very soft.” She frowned slightly. “As I said, Mr. Nickels is handling the estate. Ted Nickels. Not one of my favorite people. The less he gets his three percent of, the more it pleases me, even if it comes off my commission, too.”
Rebecca wandered off for a moment. She took a second look at the kitchen. She liked it. The room was big and spacious, with more glorious old wooden cabinets than she would know what to do with.
“Just how soft is the price?” Rebecca heard her husband ask.
“Squishy soft,” Esther said triumphantly. “Downright mushy.”
“Okay, Essie. Just tell me. The tops I can go is maybe seven hundred twenty thousand. Seven forty if we really push it. How ‘squishy soft’ is Ted Nickels?”
“I think, if you came in for seven twenty, he’d start to salivate,” she said. “But being a lawyer…” Here she grimaced again, “He’d be obliged to dicker. I’d tell him you were firm, but might if I talked to you get you to go up a little.”
“What’s a little?”
“Seven forty. I think for seven forty you could take this. Then go to the crooks at the bank and build an extra twenty thousand dollars into your mortgage loan to use for fix up. And I think you’d be in business.”
Outside there was a friendly sound of a breeze. Then something passed over the sun. There was a creeping shadow for a second, and then the brightness returned.
“Anything else about the property I should know about?” Bill asked. “Or the location?” Essie pursed her lips.
“I don’t think so,” she said.
“Seven forty, huh?” Bill asked. He looked at his wife. “Wow! That’s a pile of dough. Becca and I will have to talk about it.”
“Don’t talk too long,” Essie warned. “Century 21 is showing 2136 Topango this afternoon. I wouldn’t want them to sell your future home out from under you.”
“I won’t be rushed into a decision, Essie,” Bill said.
“I’m just warning you, dear,” Essie said. “I wouldn’t want you to be disappointed.”
“Of course not,” Rebecca said. She took her husband’s hand and gave it a squeeze. After a moment, the squeeze was reciprocated.
Chapter 5
That evening at dusk, Bill and Rebecca Moore set out in their car and toured their prospective neighborhood. They started to like it just a little more. It was a highly atmospheric section of Los Angeles, quiet and detached from the hubbub of downtown LA and its commercial center, or even Beverly Hills and Hollywood.
The area was an island of quiet and serenity. Immediately surrounding them were several blocks o
f old houses with tall leafy trees along the streets. At one point, Bill and Rebecca stopped their car, parked it, got out and did the strangest of all Los Angeles activities. They walked. They felt the cool breezes of evening caressing their faces. Here and there was a whiff of jasmine, even out of season.
“You know,” Bill said as they walked, “in its way, it’s fascinating. If you focus on the houses, and phase out the cars, certain blocks haven’t changed much since the 1920s.”
She agreed. She had noticed the same thing.
“I like it,” Rebecca said. “You know I like it.”
“I like it, too,” he said. “I wonder if it’s snowing back East yet.”
“In July, right?”
“It gets cold in New England,” he said with a straight face. They both laughed. They went back to their car. For a moment they both sat, entertaining similar thoughts. “I wonder how badly we can lowball the estate,” he said.
“I don’t want to be greedy,” she said.
“It’s not a matter of greed. It’s a matter of making a shrewd business deal. For us.” He paused. Then, “First, do we want the house?” They searched each other’s eyes.
“I think we’ve already made that decision,” she said.
“Okay. Let’s get really gross,” he said. “Let’s offer seven hundred flat.”
“You’re disgusting,” she said. They both laughed. Then…
“Well?” he asked.
“I’m your supportive wife,” Rebecca said.” Go for it.”
Bill phoned Esther Lewisohn the next morning. The Moores entered a bid for $700,000 for the house at 2136 Topango Gardens. Mrs. Lewisohn gagged, choked, and for a few seconds tried to talk him into some higher numbers.
But Bill Moore was hearing none of it. He hung up the phone and congratulated himself on his keen way of doing business.
Essie called back an hour later to say that the offer had been declined. Ted Nickels would negotiate, she said, but he didn’t want to be insulted.
“What’s that mean?” Bill asked.
“It’s Ted’s pidgin legalese for, ‘Make a better offer, you’re close,’” Essie said. “He’s a cheap son of a gun, you know. But he will be anxious to close the deal.”