Catharine Bramkamp - Real Estate Diva 02 - Time Is of the Essence

by Catharine Bramkamp

  8,

  It was a bad night. The air was hot and lifeless. No breeze disturbed the curtains, so I wasn’t worried about fire, but still the atmosphere felt too calm and too heavy. And where was Ben? Did he hitch a ride out of town? And leave his truck?

  I tortured myself all night with what ifs. I suppose I deserved it.

  I was grateful for the morning, even though I greeted the new day looking like death warmed over.

  “You look terrible.” Grandma confirmed. “I’d say something about your boyfriend, but I see it’s unnecessary.”

  “He’s not my boyfriend.” I growled, heading for the coffee.

  “Yes he is,” Grandma contradicted me.

  “Listen to this.” She quickly changed the subject, because she didn’t get this old without some survival skills. “The paper reports that they think poor Shawn Jacobson set the fire, the authorities are looking for him.”

  “Who’s Shawn Jacobson?” I chose the misshapen brown mug. It suited my mood.

  “He’s one of our special guys. You know, we used to call them retarded about a thousand years ago.”

  “Before my time.” I sat with her at the table. My computer rested at the other end. I felt no compulsion to open it.

  “He’s not so bad.” Prue mused. “Used to pick up trash along Main Street. He went through a phase where he started little camp fires in the parking lot over Kentucky, behind the Safeway.”

  “That would make him a good suspect.”

  Grandma focused on the paper. “I don’t think it’s him, but it’s the best the police can do.”

  “Which isn’t very good.”

  My phone was within reach. I automatically picked it up. Three missed calls. I checked the numbers – none from Ben.

  But one call from Tony, my inspector. Good, he did the work. Now, as long as he didn’t find something terrible, or in the Brown’s case, imperfect, we will finally have closure. I was very ready to be finished with the Browns. Even when they were not actively bothering me, I couldn’t get them out of my head.

  It was too early to call back Tony, and he’d call again if there were imperfections in the house, I could count in it.

  I fondled the phone and sipped my coffee. Okay, I’ll get her out of bed.

  Carrie actually answered, even knowing it was me.

  “Does Patrick just walk away when you’ve had a fight?” I got up, and moved to the front parlor.

  “No, that’s cowardly. He stays and I stay. Why? What’s going on?”

  “Ben just disappeared.”

  “Like that woman for the house you have in escrow.”

  “I hadn’t thought about it as the same thing at all.” What was it about both those incidents? Would Ben just walk away, and why can’t they find Debbie Bixby? Even thought she didn’t need to sign, and even though I didn’t really care, It would probably be a good thing to find her.

  “Here’s what I do know.” I filled her in.

  “So you were like Boudicca.” Carrie concluded after I described my grandmother’s situation.

  “What?” I listened to the phone more closely, this was the first time she wasn’t coming in very clearly.

  “You know, Boudicca, she led an army of British natives against the Romans. Very powerful.”

  “Powerful.” I repeated. I closed my eyes briefly and tried to visualize Carrie in that sexy red dress she wore when she first commandeered Patrick’s attention. I tried to see her commanding a band of desperate natives fighting against the Romans.

  “I’m not much for the part,” Carrie said.

  “No, you’re right, the role of bad-ass warrior queen looks better on me.”

  “She lost you know.”

  “I thought that might have been the case.”

  I returned to the kitchen and set the phone down.

  “Grandma, do you think Tiffany ratted you out? She seemed pretty chummy with Mathew, maybe there’s a connection.”

  Grandma rubbed her forehead. Her tee shirt advertised a past Twelfth Night celebration. They think of everything up here.

  “No, she wouldn’t.”

  “How do you know?”

  Grandma gazed out the kitchen window for a second, gathering her thoughts. “The Singleton women weren’t the only ones cursed.”

  “What?”

  “Get me more coffee please.” She handed over her mug. I filled her cup and mine and sat down across from her.

  Prue took another sip of her drink and leaned back. “Tiffany is my granddaughter. Steve’s child.” Prue just blurted it out. I was grateful. Like quickly ripping off the Sponge Bob Band-Aid.

  I swallowed. “Are you sure?”

  “As sure as we were in those days.”

  “Have a DNA test.” I said it like it mattered. It didn’t.

  Grandma shook her head. “No need, I could see it, although Tiffany looks more like a Ridge child than anything else.”

  “I’m sorry.” Wow, a long lost cousin. How odd, did I see any family resemblance? Did it matter now?

  “Why did Uncle Steve give her up?”

  “He had his life, she had her marriage. He couldn’t very well drag a child into the jungle. The baby was better off with her parents. So Gretchen and Gary just took her on as their own. Gary was wonderful about it.”

  “Really?”

  “And Tiffany was happy enough.”

  “And Uncle Steve just walked away.” I could feel my blood pressure rise at the very thought. I had always idolized Uncle Steve; he was the cool interesting uncle. How could he just walk away from his child like that? I don’t care what the times were, there were standards of decency that were universal.

  I took another sip of my drink and almost choked.

  “Oh, he didn’t honey.” Grandma explained between my coughing.

  “He visited often – the caring friend role. He never told Tiffany, so she wouldn’t be conflicted between her Dad and Steve. Steve worked as hard as he could to make sure they were comfortable. He even paid for her schooling, sent her to college – but she only managed to make it through a semester, then she dropped out and came home.”

  “She does seem a little lost.” Perhaps because her parents were never really found, always searching for something, always the artists as if that title licensed a person to act in a perpetually adolescent manner. And in a way, so was my Uncle Steve, the adventurer. He never “settled down” an attitude with its own consequences. Although he indulged in adolescent behavior, he never indulged in the behavior of adult hood, not the way my mother practiced it. I had always admired that about him.

  I do it myself when I think about it. No kids, not even a cat. I had a career and an enviable collection of shoes.

  Was that enough? Oh, we’re not talking about me.

  And Tiffany? She was lost in the extreme. She was lost in a can’t-drive-downtown-to-buy-groceries- without-a-map kind of lost. But I didn’t say that to Grandma. This was after all, another grandchild. My cousin.

  “There are so many pieces of your generation who are lost,” Grandma pointed out.

  Where was Ben? It we got “involved” would that be the end of the adventure? Would that mean my imaginary trips, the ones I keep meaning to take and my idealized life of luxury that doesn’t really look like luxury but I can spin it any way I want, and my freedom which boils down to one lonely night following another, would be at an end? I wasn’t sure. And I am always sure.

  “Oh Allison.” Raul burst through the kitchen door. He gripped what was left of his hair, two tufts in each clenched fist.

  “Allison I did a terrible thing! I would never hurt you, but they offered so much! Is that coffee fresh?”

  “What?”

  “Help yourself.” Grandma and I said simultaneously.

  He busied himself with the coffee and the mugs. “Those photos of you and the pretty, pretty boy.”

  “Mathew, yes.” There aren’t that many pretty, pretty boys in Claim Jump, it was an easy guess.
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br />   “I was paid so much, and of course I can offer a few dollars, after expenses of course, to your generous grandmother. For some of the back rent.”

  “Since 1976.” Grandma muttered, but not unkindly.

  “But it was so much.” Raul repeated.

  “What? I don’t understand.” My mind had just been involved in a completely different world, one in which I have to explain to Ben that I don’t cook, I do eat more ice cream than I should and I don’t exercise. Carrie’s efforts aside, I didn’t think a personal trainer would bring us closer together. I would more inclined to beat the personal trainer senseless with five-pound dumbbells, as soon as I could lift them. I wondered if Ben would visit me in Jail.

  I worked hard to come back to the present and concentrate on the agitated man before me.

  Raul paced around the kitchen, eyeing the kitchen utensils on the wall and giving them a wide berth. He alternatively grabbed what was left of his hair and then dragged his hands down his face.

  “I sold the footage of you and that boy to the former supervisor and he deleted it all! It is the most I’ve made for nothing!” Raul explained, sort of. He took a sip of coffee.

  I still didn’t understand, but I was beginning to. “And who paid you to put up the pictures of the Pretty Pretty boy on the Internet in the first place?” I asked.

  “I usually don’t ask.” Raul admitted. “I often am paid for keeping things off my sites, like the traffic photos down Marsh Avenue. Those turned out to be very lucrative once Lucky Masters saw them. But this! The boy wanted the photos posted, so I did, and the photos went viral! Not even my best work! So many sites! Even the Sacramento Bee. I usually charge extra for that. But then the money to remove all the photos! That was too much to resist. But there could be some I missed. Oh Allison, you may be famous on You Tube.”

  “Like I need that.” I said dryly. I never did discover exactly where Raul hailed from. I could even chalk up his come and go accent and strange syntax to a bout of bad drugs in the seventies. None-the-less, it was a little difficult to follow the course of his randomly accessed brain, and this isn’t even one of the stranger conversations we’ve held.

  Maybe one has to be high to really understand Raul. Because trying to understand him on a mug and a half of coffee wasn’t going well.

  “But why do I care if there are pictures of me having dinner with a man? Did you make me look fat?”

  Raul gave me a condescending look. “Of course not.”

  “Then what do I care?” What if Ben saw them? What if that is why Ben is up here? Oh crap, that would look incriminating enough, me with two men, or more if the film is cropped just right.

  “Not any man.” Raul emphasized. “Mathew Fantle. I have also pictures of him with Supervisor Schmidt at many parades – the leather ones are particularly good. I have made much money not posting their photo together. And now Schmidt paid me more to take the ones with you off and I had to find the old photos and put them back on.”

  “Who hired you to take photos of Mathew with a woman in the first place?” It was beginning to dawn on me, just a little.

  Prue groaned.

  “No, no, you are not just any woman.” Raul pointed out. “You are the granddaughter of Prue, eating with the City Attorney. Very bad for you. Very helpful for the developers. Those are the photos Matthew wanted on. But Schmidt wanted them off.” Raul absently rubbed his hands together. This clearly was a profitable dilemma.

  “And very helpful for his accusation that I stole city money.” Prue put in. “Now the attorney can use those photos to claim there was no bias, that you approved of him.”

  “Me?” I squeaked. “Approve? Oh my God, Mathew is the City Attorney?” It was so horrible and I was so horrible that I didn’t move, didn’t touch anything or anyone. That slime ball. You know the phase, suddenly brilliantly awake? That was me, all the stupor that had built up over the night, not allowing me to rest, exited my body in a rush. Mathew was the City Attorney, the part time, not from here, City Attorney.

  “He never ever said. Oh Grandma, I’m so sorry.”

  Prue waved away my apology. “Don’t worry about it honey. It could happen to anyone.”

  At least I hadn’t slept with him, although that seems unlikely in any case.

  I jumped up from my chair and raced to the coffee and filled my cup. What do I do? I looked around the kitchen, as if random bins of strange recycling projects would inspire me. My phone buzzed and jumped on the wood table. I snatched it up.

  It was Joan. Okay, I could talk with Joan. I can hold it together.

  “Hi Joan.” I walked back to the front of the house for privacy. Raul could apologize to Grandma without me. I still didn’t know what kind of trouble I was in. Where was Ben?

  “So we presented the offer, thank you for letting us use Inez. She’s lovely by the way. And they accepted! We’re in business!”

  “I thought you were in a condo.”

  “Very funny and your timing is way off,” Joan paused. “What’s the matter?”

  “How can you tell there’s something the matter?” Traffic outside was light today, not many people left up on the hill. Was the fire really out? I thought I read something about a fire is never really out. But was that in a novel or a newspaper?

  “I’m an old friend, it’s my job.” She pointed out.

  I shook my head and decided to take a pass on blurting out my troubles to another long suffering friend. My situation with Ben was becoming a committee discussion topic. And I didn’t want to escalate the situation with endless discussion. And this thing with Matthew was beyond the pale and I had no solution. I did not even have enough of an idea of what I needed to do to ask the question about what I should do. Katherine would say I was giving my problems too much energy. And I suppose, with the energy I needed to give to other things, she was right.

  And she wasn’t even here to enjoy watching me take her advice.

  “What do you like about Norton?” I asked instead. I found Norton to be self-righteous, pompous and a pain in the ass, which is why I forced Joan on him in the first place. And look what happened.

  “He understands me.” Joan said without much thought. “He gets my jokes, he understands my references. I like that we’re the same age, we have popular culture in common. I’ve been dating younger men for too long. I forgot how nice it is to share common history.”

  Ben and I had a few things in common, maybe more than we knew. For example, he understood my jokes and my cartoon references even though he claimed he never watched television.

  If someone claims they never watch television, do not believe them. Everyone watches television.

  “So tell me about the fire.” Joan switched subjects.

  “It’s under control.” I assure her and myself.

  “Sounds like that’s the only thing that is under control.” Joan commented.

  “Oh, you’re so smart.”

  “I am now. I’m taking a risk. You should too.”

  We said goodbye. I stared at my blank phone. Taking a risk. Someone needed to take a risk and make a bold move. And that someone was me.

  “Okay, I’ll go get the evidence.”

  “What?” Grandma called from the kitchen.

  I walked into the room. “I’ll get the evidence, I’ll drive up to Matthew’s and get whatever it is that he bought from Raul or whatever we need to get things off the Internet. Something, I’ll get something.”

  “You don’t even know where he lives.” Prue protested.

  “I took it all off the Internet.” Raul protested.

  “He must have copies. Everyone keeps copies. And while I’m at it, I’ll see if he’s keeping past minutes on the General Plan ‘safe’.”

  “That would help.” Grandma agreed reluctantly. “But you can’t go up the hill.”

  “No, the fire is out. There are only a few hot spots, Danny told me.” I lied. “He’s probably already back at work putting together Lucky Master’s dream proje
ct as we speak. I won’t be long – especially if Matthew is home.” I delivered my speech with my usual confidence and the tone I use when reassuring clients. It always works on my clients. I could tell my grandmother was not as easily convinced.

  I was reasonably sure the illegal homes of both Jimmy and Mathew were well below the hot spot line. They survived the first fires so traveling back up there t wouldn’t be risky at all.

  “He either has them on disc or in his hard drive. Either way, I’ll get it.”

  “What good will that do?” Prue asked.

  “If you have problems with the City, or the City Attorney, these will help, especially if you need a Supervisor on your side, or anyone else we find in photos or documents.” As if my grandmother needed a refresher course in blackmail. She did not. But someone had to gather evidence, documents, CDs, files. I was their woman.

  Prue considered that for a moment. Her face relaxed, her grip loosened on her mug. “I hadn’t thought of that.”

  “This from a woman who grows pot in her greenhouse.”

  “Allison! “ Raul protested immediately. “Your grandmother would never…”

  Prue held up a hand. “Forget it Raul, she already knows.”

  “Oh,” he deflated and backed away. Just a bit.

  “Do you have copies?” I asked him.

  “Of course, I just take down what’s on the Internet. I don’t erase my own files.”

  “That’s what I thought.” I looked at my grandmother as if to say, see? Everyone keeps copies. “Make a set for Grandma,” I instructed him. “Just in case.”

  “I’ll go up with you.” Prue said. “This is my fault.”

  “No, it is too dangerous for you, ” Raul said. “You stay here, I’ll protect you.”

  “But it is dangerous for Allison.” My grandmother’s eyes actually began to tear. “Allison, if anything happened to you… ”

  I didn’t give her a chance to finish.

  “Nothing will happen to me. Nothing ever happens to me.” I said it more bravado than I felt. Especially since that was an old situation for me. Nothing used to happen to me, now I seemed to attract trouble like one of Rosemary’s special, super, costly magnets she wears to balance her field of energy and on occasion, wipe out the hard drive on her lap top. Was there a reflector magnet? Can I give myself a negative charge and repel trouble instead of attract it?