Death at a Fixer-Upper

by Sarah T. Hobart

  He disappeared, and I gave myself a mini-lecture as I turned back to lock the door. My client was right. Money always trumped sentiment.

  I paused with the key in my hand. I’d locked the deadbolt before we went upstairs. Or had I? The door had opened easily when Richard turned the knob. I shrugged as I made sure both locks were securely fastened. Probably I’d made a mistake. It wouldn’t be the first time.

  I found Richard outside the library window trying to pick his way through the tangle of blackberries and roses. He’d removed his jacket and held it, folded, over his arm. I couldn’t help noticing a gusset had been sewn into the seat of his trousers.

  “This is a goddamned jungle,” he said, struggling to extricate himself from the vines and spilling his coffee in the process.

  “Let’s try a little farther along,” I suggested.

  Muttering under his breath, he followed me another quarter turn around the house. On the west side, we found a gap in the wall of green. He handed me his jacket and plunged in while I admired the scenery. A length of rubber garden hose was intertwined in the vines, and the weathered legs of a wooden ladder protruded from a clump of shrubs.

  Richard tromped back, panting with effort. “Foundation’s in good shape,” he said grudgingly, as if conceding a point. “Post and pier, no signs of dry rot or insects. A pity. Sometimes we give an old house a nudge with a bulldozer and down she goes. But that won’t work here.”

  “Built to last,” I said.

  He gave me a level look. “Maybe the Fire Department wants to do a practice burn here. Give the volunteers some hands-on training.”

  I didn’t have a response for that, so I handed him his jacket, hoping he wasn’t psychic. I’d had my fill of Richard Ravello.

  “Let’s write up that offer, shall we?” he said.

  My dark thoughts vanished. “Really? I mean, of course. I thought you needed to check in with your firm.”

  “Already got the green light. We’re putting in a full price bid.”

  My heart skipped a beat or two. “Should we head back to my office?”

  He shook his head. “I spend most of my days behind a desk. This is fine, right here. You have a contract with you?”

  “Here in my bag.” We seated ourselves on the front steps. Two offers in two days! Maybe I was on the path to superagent status after all.

  We worked our way through the purchase contract line by line. “I assume you have a lender your company usually works with?” I said when we got to the section on financing.

  For the briefest of moments, his expression was blank. Then his face cleared. “Yes, of course. The Redding First Mercantile. We’ll put thirty percent down, the balance not to exceed eight percent, with a balloon payment in three years.”

  My pen hovered over the page. I didn’t want to admit I wasn’t sure how to write that up, so in the end I checked off a box that said, “Other financing,” and wrote in exactly what he’d said. When we’d worked our way through all twelve pages, he shook my hand.

  “A pleasure working with you, Sam,” he said. “You’ll keep me posted?”

  “Absolutely. And I need to get you a copy of this.”

  He handed me a business card. “My email’s at the bottom.”

  “Let me walk you out,” I said, tucking the card in my pocket.

  “No need.” He turned on his heel and started down the driveway.

  I stared after him, then looked back at the house. I’d thought I loved my job. Now I wasn’t so sure.

  My gaze fastened on the arched window that looked out from the tower. Something had moved.

  I blinked and rubbed my eyes. Had I imagined it? Certainly everything was still as a graveyard now. I smacked my forehead, chiding myself for that turn of phrase. But I could have sworn there’d been a flicker of motion behind the broken panes, a shift from deep black to gray and back. An unpleasant little thrill traveled down my frame. Maybe I couldn’t afford to scoff at the notion that something otherworldly lived on inside the house, something that didn’t walk only at night….

  A hand fell on my shoulder and I jumped about a foot and half, then whirled around. Loretta Sacchi stood there.

  “Boo,” she said. “Sorry. Ghost-hunter humor. Did I startle you?”

  “No,” I said, though in truth I’d come close to wetting my pants. “I was just, er, lost in thought. Where’s your car? I can help carry some of your equipment.”

  She patted a nylon bag at her side, suspended from her shoulder by a wide strap. “Everything I need for today is in here. If the results are promising, I’ll haul out the big guns.” She was dressed for action in mock-safari: formfitting bush jacket of beige gabardine with matching slacks, soft black knit shirt, a pale violet silk scarf around her neck. My eyes traveled down to her shoes: black pumps with three-inch stiletto heels that weren’t in keeping with the rest of her rough-and-ready outfit. She followed my glance and laughed.

  “Hard to get a city girl out of her heels,” she said. “I almost turned an ankle coming up the drive.”

  “You could have parked here at the house.”

  “I wanted to take some baseline readings from the street.” She reached into her bag and produced a device that looked like a cross between a remote control and a vibrator. The device hummed in her hands, and a row of small LED lights flashed on and off.

  “What’s that?” I said.

  “Multifunctional field transponder. It’s a little custom job we fabricated for initial screenings. It’s not the most accurate tool in our arsenal, but it measures electromagnetic fields and changes in temperature and has a built-in video recorder. Plus it’s lightweight and compact, and goes with any outfit.” She flashed a smile at me.

  “And the little lights?”

  “EMF readings. Nothing off the charts at this point. Let’s go inside.”

  I still had the keys in my pocket, so I led her around to the back door and opened it, standing aside to let her pass through. She did a slow scan of the kitchen. “Kitschier than I expected. When was the place built?”

  I stole a glance at my notes. “Eighteen eighty-one. Most of the living over the last twenty years has been done on the ground floor.”

  “Then let’s head upstairs.” She swept down the hall with me on her tail, holding the transponder before her like a scepter. I felt a nervous giggle welling up in my chest and quashed it firmly, wondering if I had another blank purchase contract stashed away in the bus. Maybe the spirits had been kindly toward Loretta’s company and it could afford to pay cash.

  We ascended the stairs tread by tread. Loretta’s eyes were glued to her device; surely, if yesterday’s episode was any indication, it would sound the alarm. But it didn’t. I breathed a sigh of relief. It was only Biddie’s low blood sugar after all.

  We were moving in slow motion down the hall when Loretta came to an abrupt halt. “I’m reading a five-degree shift in the ambient air temperature. Where does this hall lead?”

  “To a couple of bedrooms and a linen closet.”

  “Let’s take a look.” She moved slowly through both bedrooms, her eyes pinned to her device, and shook her head. The closet seemed to excite her interest, though I couldn’t see why. A few makeshift shelves spanning the back wall held various unsavory bed linens; the floor underneath was jammed with old-fashioned leather satchels and round-shouldered travel bags. I switched on the light, a single dusty bulb. The walls were grayish-white, with the lumpy texture of lathe-and-plaster construction.

  She shook her head. “This isn’t it. We need to go up. Are there stairs to the tower room?”

  “They’re blocked off with tape.”

  “Show me.”

  We retraced our steps until we arrived at the tower stairs. The device in Loretta’s hands beeped, and a series of lights flashed on and off.

  “We need to see what’s up there,” she said. “Any problem with that?”

  I took a quick peek around for a hidden camera. All clear. “None at all. I
’d better go first, though.”

  I’d slipped under the tape before remembering some of the history Merrit Brown had shared with me. “I suppose you know the original Harrington died up here. A suicide.”

  “Marvelous,” she said, her eyes as bright as a child’s on Christmas morning.

  I tested the first tread. It was slick with moisture but stable enough, as was the second. Floral wallpaper hung in mildewed strips from the walls; a tendril of it brushed my cheek, and I recoiled. A light socket, devoid of bulb, hung from a chain above my head. Gaining confidence, I stepped firmly on the third tread. The wood splintered under my foot and I jumped back, heart pounding.

  There was a crash of breaking china from the first story. Loretta’s eyes grew big.

  “This is the real deal,” she said. “We’ve disturbed something, and now it’s trying to warn us off.”

  “Maybe there’s someone down there.”

  She shook her head. “When you’ve been doing this is long as I have, you know how to read the signs.” She looked up the stairwell. “We’ll have to pass on the third floor for today. A pity. But we can still collect plenty of data.”

  For the next thirty minutes she went from room to room, taking readings and muttering to herself. The bulk of our time was spent in the two unused rooms downstairs, one of which was a library crammed to the ceiling with the spines of clothbound books, the other an old-fashioned sitting room. Both had fireplaces with massive oak hearths and brass andirons. After I tired of looking around, I shifted from foot to foot, surreptitiously checking my watch. My neck was stiff, and my bladder was full beyond the safety margin.

  Finally Loretta announced, “I think I have what I need. Go ahead and lock up. I’ll be outside.”

  I rejoined her in front of the house, where she was talking on a cell phone. She ended the call as I approached. “Thank you for your patience,” she said, shaking my hand. “These initial visits can be a bit tedious for the layperson.”

  “No problem. I suppose we should head back to the office to write up the offer.”

  “Whoa. Not so fast. I need to extrapolate the data and run it by my partners. It’s an attractive proposition, but let’s not be hasty.” She smiled. “You seem like a competent agent, but you can’t tell me every showing leads to an offer.”

  I felt a little nonplussed. “Of course not. I didn’t mean to presume. It’s just that there’s been a lot of buzz about this property. Three offers are in already.”

  She waved off the other offers. “Ms. Turner, my experience in this business has taught me that if it’s meant to be the Fates have a way of clearing a path. I’ll be in touch.” She nodded briskly and started down the driveway, staggering a little on the rough terrain.

  I stared after her, hoping I hadn’t put her off by being overeager. Then I glanced at my watch. I had an hour to kill before the next showing, and I needed to deliver Richard Ravello’s offer to Hartshorne & Associates and find a bathroom, not necessarily in that order. I started down the lane at a jog to retrieve my car, figuring I’d catch up to Loretta tottering along on her heels, but I never passed her.

  Chapter 6

  Hartshorne & Associates was the middle suite in a newly constructed commercial building off Bertoli Lane, across the street from Foggy Mist Hydroponics. The building was two stories of moss-green stucco trimmed in dark red, with a square of newly rolled sod laid in front to break up a sea of pavement. A few dispirited shrubs protruded through hillocks of mulch, so recently planted they still sported the tags from the nursery. A dermatologist took up the entire upper floor, while Muy Buena Mexican Cantina and a low-cost spay-and-neuter clinic occupied the units on either side of the realty office.

  I pushed open a glass door and entered a dimly lit work space crowded with desks. The carpet was a tightly looped Berber in a neutral gray, outgassing wafts of formaldehyde that mingled with the scents of cat urine and corn chips fried in hot lard. The walls were painted pale yellow and hung with oversized prints of Monopoly deeds: Park Place, Pennsylvania Avenue, Marvin Gardens. As a kid, I’d always claimed the little Scottie as my game piece and tried to buy up the railroads, picturing a life as carefree as a hobo’s. Funny how things turn out.

  A woman looked up from a desk in the back. “Can I help you?”

  “I’m looking for Lois Hartshorne.”

  “You found her. What can I do for you?”

  I passed two desks on the way to Lois’s, complete with phones and computers but lacking any marks of personality, like photographs or children’s drawings. Lois Hartshorne was a big raw-boned woman nearing sixty, with iron-gray hair permed into whimsical ringlets that were incongruous with her square jaw and hard eyes. She wore a pastel peach suit that did nothing to soften her impression as a former prison matron turned real estate agent. Her sentences were delivered in a low baritone without inflection, so that even the questions came out as statements.

  I introduced myself and waited for her to shower me with abuse, as she had on the phone, but she seemed to have forgotten all that. She accepted the Ravello offer without comment, extracted a file from a stack on her desk, and dropped the offer inside. She glanced at me, apparently surprised I was still standing there. “Something else?”

  Relief that she tolerated my presence made me garrulous. “Where are all your associates today?”

  “I’m currently associate-free. Why? Thinking of making a change?” She looked right through me with her gimlet eyes.

  “You never know. Maybe.” Through the walls I could hear strains of marimba music, punctuated by the yowls of tomcats going under anesthesia.

  “Think about it. I wouldn’t advise any new agent to start their careers at Home Sweet Home.”

  I remembered Gail’s juicy tidbit of gossip. “I guess you know Everett Sweet.”

  She made a hoarse sound in her throat I decided was a laugh. “You could say that. I was at Home Sweet Home a couple of years before working my way up to this palatial spread.” She made a sweeping gesture with her arm, jostling a can of cola so that a few drops sloshed on her desk.

  I looked around. “You have a nice place here.”

  “Just finished last month. Acoustics are terrible and the Wi-Fi is spotty.”

  I gathered my courage. “Listen, uh, I’m wondering how things look in regards to the Harrington estate. For my clients, that is.”

  She gave me a look like I was a nincompoop. “You know I can’t tell you that. Violation of my fiduciary responsibility.”

  “Of course. Of course. I just wondered if I should advise my clients to strengthen their offers. To be competitive with the one that came in earlier. That would benefit your seller, right?”

  “Nice try,” she said, apparently enjoying herself in a humorless way.

  I heard the distant sound of a blender starting up; then the smoke detector on the ceiling above Lois’s desk began to beep frantically.

  “Goddamn margaritas,” she said. “I told Manuel not to run two blenders at once, but does he listen?” She jumped up and pounded on the wall, rattling the Monopoly prints. Nothing happened.

  “Be right back,” she said, and trotted out the front door.

  I leaned forward. My good angel told me to wait quietly and touch nothing. My bad angel offered me a Snickers bar to open the folder where she’d placed my offer and have a little look-see. It was no contest. I riffled through the papers, spotting the first offer I’d submitted, then a third, written by—well, well. Lois Hartshorne herself. Things were starting to make sense. Lois would double her commission if hers was the winning bid.

  Rapidly I scanned the first page of the contract. Full price offer, seller to carry first deed of trust with $200,000 down, interest rate—

  The blender noise stopped. I tapped the stack of papers on the desk to square the corners, then started to tuck the offer back in the folder. A thought occurred to me and I pulled it out again, scanning the tiny print for the name of the purchaser. A door opened and I heard the scuff o
f shoes against concrete. Almost humming with panic, I stuffed the papers back into the folder and dropped it on Lois’s desk just as she came huffing through the door. She pulled a chair from an empty desk and balanced on it precariously, reaching up to smack the beeping smoke detector. It gave a squawk, then was silent.

  Her eyes narrowed, sweeping over me before traveling to her desktop, then back to me. “Anything else I can do for you?”

  “Not unless you want to give me some advice on these offers.”

  “You want advice?” she said as she climbed down heavily. “Don’t get involved with someone you work with.”

  —

  I left Hartshorne & Associates in a hurry, fearful that Lois might notice something out of place on her desk and come after me, grinding me into pulp on the pavement. As I trotted through the parking lot, the aroma of corn tortillas sizzling in hot fat tickled my nostrils. I wondered if I had time for a basket of chips and one of those aforementioned margaritas before the next showing.

  Instead, I climbed into the VW and started the engine. It was time to check in on real estate matters a bit closer to home.

  A few minutes later, I pulled up opposite the pale blue Victorian that housed North Coast Podiatry and Arlinda Mortgage. Becky Daley’s office was located to the right of the big wooden foot and up a short flight of stairs. She was on the phone, talking with animation about the Federal Reserve. Today she was the consummate businesswoman, blond hair carefully styled, a touch of blusher on her cheeks, dressed in a navy blue power suit. She’d given birth to a strapping baby boy a few months back and I’d seen her on two hours’ sleep with spit-up on her shoulder, so this was a different look.

  I settled into a padded office chair, glancing around. Something was missing. I stole a peek under the desk.

  She hung up. “Rob’s doing the dad thing today. It’s our new routine. Mondays, Wednesdays, and Fridays Xander comes to the office with me. Tuesdays and Thursdays he stays home with Daddy and they do guy stuff. I have a freezer full of breast milk banked ahead, thanks to this little wonder.” She patted a breast pump that was positioned on her desk between the computer monitor and electric stapler. “This is the Cadillac of pumps. Twelve volts with battery backup, six-amp motor, dual action. State of the art. Makes me feel like a pedigreed Holstein.”