Death at a Fixer-Upper

by Sarah T. Hobart

  “That’s dedication.”

  “Breast is best,” she said. “Now, what can I do for you? Checking in on Fickle Court?”

  “Yeah. How do things look?”

  She pulled up my file on the computer. “Nothing but blue skies. Appraisal came in right at the contract price, so that’s perfect. We’re on track to sign papers Tuesday at Calville Title and Escrow, fund in the afternoon, close Wednesday morning. By noon you’ll be a homeowner.”

  A little uneasiness wriggled through my gut. “You think it’s a lock? I’ve heard horror stories about last-minute issues.”

  “All our ducks are in a row. I’d stake my reputation on it.”

  “Great. That’s just great. I can’t thank you enough.”

  “Don’t mention it. I appreciate the business. Anything else I can do for you?”

  “Actually, yes. Let’s say a client of mine wanted to buy a house in disrepair. He has some cash to put down. Can he just use conventional financing?”

  “That depends,” she said. “Does he plan to live there?”

  “I think so.”

  “How bad’s the house? Any structural issues?”

  “I’d say most definitely yes.”

  “A renovation loan might fit the bill, then. Did you mention that to him?”

  Since this was the first time I’d heard of such a thing, I shook my head.

  “Tell you what. Have him give me a call. I’ll be here until four today. Tomorrow I’ll be attending a continuing professional-education seminar from nine till three, then working from home after that. You can give him my cell.” She glanced at her watch. From under her desk, she produced a small insulated carryall. She unzipped the top and took out a picture of Xander, all exquisitely plump cheeks and downy hair, his little face wreathed in a toothless smile.

  “Inspiration,” Becky said. Next she took out what looked like two giant suction cups with a clear plastic line trailing from them and glanced at me. “Time for me to make some milk. Go on. You were saying?”

  I was out of my chair as if it’d been electrified. “Gotta go. Keep me posted.”

  “You bet. Ta-ta. Lock the door behind you, if you would.” She had the top two buttons of her blouse undone before I reached the safety of the porch landing.

  Back in the van, I glanced at my watch. I was late. Perfect. I hopped aboard and punched the gas, skidding to a stop in front of Home Sweet Home a minute later. Gail was waiting, a sandwich bag of ice pressed to her face. She opened the passenger door and climbed in.

  “Ith afther thoo,” she said.

  “Sorry.” I signaled and pulled into traffic. “I lost track of the time. How was the dentist?”

  She moved her jaw gingerly. “Rooth canal.”

  “Seriously? Ouch. You sure you’re up for this?”

  She nodded. “Wanna see the houth.” A bead of drool rolled down her chin, and she blotted it with a piece of tissue.

  Two minutes later, I was steering the bus between the big stone pillars. Gail braced herself against her seat, wincing a little as we bounced over the rutted driveway. Her eyes widened when we turned the last corner and the house came into view.

  “Holy craf,” she said, reaching into her purse and pulling out a camera.

  I parked in the gravel pullout again, looking for my client. No signs of life. Maybe he’d decided to wait for me out back.

  Gail snapped pictures while I started down the brick path, keys in hand. A gleam of white registered in my peripheral vision. I slowed my steps and saw it was a piece of paper caught in the brambles. I extended a hand toward it, but a capricious gust of wind sent it airborne, skidding along the path just out of reach. I blinked. There was another sheet of paper in the grass. As I stood in place, the wind brought a third one, tumbling it end over end and finally depositing it at my feet. I bent to retrieve it, then went rigid. It was spattered with red.

  My heart began to rattle in my chest. I straightened up slowly, looking around. Not ten feet away, a pair of brown leather shoes protruded from a clump of tangled foliage. I edged a little closer. The shoes were connected to brown socks, which, in turn, were attached to rumpled trousers. My eyes traveled up the length of the pants to a nylon jacket and pale blue shirtfront.

  “No,” I said. “Please.”

  Right on cue, Gail came skidding around the corner, camera in hand. Her mouth dropped open.

  “Fucsh,” she said. “Fusch, fusch, fusch.” Then she opened her mouth so wide I could see a wad of gauze wedged between her molars and cheek, and began screaming.

  The earsplitting din jolted me into action. I grabbed Gail’s shoulders and shook her. “Stop it!”

  She swallowed a second scream building up in her throat and hiccupped.

  Trembling a little, I edged toward the figure in the vines. He lay on his back, his arms outflung as if about to embrace me. One look at his head was enough. I didn’t look again. His body lay in a bower of crushed roses. Blood dripped from the leaves; he hadn’t been dead long. Chunks of cement were scattered among the vines. I pieced together the fragments like a puzzle and realized I was seeing the remains of a figurine. Automatically I looked up and, sure enough, one gargoyle was missing from its perch.

  My stomach roiled and I was considering finding a quiet spot to throw up when I caught sight of Gail’s face, her complexion pale as milk. Visions of Biddie’s collapse danced through my head.

  “Oh, jeez. You’d better sit down.” I pushed her over to a grassy spot about twenty feet from the body and she sat down hard, her legs limp as two strands of spaghetti. “Maybe you should put your head on your knees or something.”

  She waved me off. Another sheet of paper floated by, and she snatched it out of the air.

  “Ith a purthase conthract,” she said. “Wh-wh-who—?”

  I took the page from her and saw my name along the bottom margin. With a clunk I felt all the way down to my heels, the other shoe fell.

  “He’s my two o’clock,” I said.

  Chapter 7

  I called 911. Then we waited. The unsettling thought occurred to me that Merrit and her daughter might come home unexpectedly. I didn’t want a kid to see this.

  “Will you be okay for a minute?” I asked Gail.

  She nodded. I took off around the house, fumbling with the key at the back door until it opened. Where had I seen…? My brain seemed to have turned to oatmeal. I smacked the side of my head and things cleared. Linen closet. Second floor.

  I raced through the lower level and up the stairs. The closet was down the hall, at the foot of the second set of stairs. I yanked open the door and in my haste grabbed a full stack of moth-eaten wool blankets, exposing a square of mustard-yellow wall and releasing a cloud of dust that reeked of mouse.

  Something checked my hand as I closed the door. Loretta had looked in the closet an hour ago, with me hanging over her shoulder. Square marks in the dust told me the odd assortment of luggage had been moved about since then. I stood rooted to the spot for a moment. What would be the point of that?

  I shook my head and hurried back down to where Gail was waiting and arranged a blanket over my ex-client without looking too closely. Within minutes, an ambulance from Blue River Emergency arrived, bouncing up the driveway and pulling in next to my VW. The technicians hustled over to the still form in the vines. After a quick assessment, their sense of urgency seemed to dissipate. One EMT leaned against the hood of the ambulance and lit a cigarette, hastily extinguishing it when the Arlinda fire chief drove up in her pickup.

  I spent a few minutes talking to the chief and explaining who I was, why I was there, and who I thought the deceased was. I left the back door of the house unlocked and turned the keys over to the chief at her request. Then I loaded Gail into the VW and drove away. The county coroner’s wagon was turning into the lane as we pulled out.

  I stopped at the market and bought Gail a can of ginger ale before dropping her at her house, a little pink-and-white edifice in a subdivision wes
t of town. Then I drove to the Plaza and parked, leaning back against the seat and trying to make sense of the universe. My client was dead. Every part of me wanted to head home, put my feet up, try to forget what I’d seen.

  But life—and real estate—went on, and I had a job to do. I grabbed my bag and headed to my meeting with Louis Klinghoffer, attorney-at-law.

  Chapter 8

  The Jacobsen Storehouse was a century-old building looking out over the Plaza and housing an array of retail businesses, restaurants, and professional suites. I entered through the ground floor at the back of the building, choosing the stairs rather than the somewhat rickety-looking elevator with its decade-old inspection sticker, and toiled up three flights, breathing hard. The walls were unfinished brick, the mortar crumbling in places. The tops of the stair treads were warped with age and coated with gummy black stuff from the soles of countless shoes. My footsteps echoed like distant artillery as I climbed. The air in the stairwell was dense, smelling of old varnish and canned carrots; as I drew level with the third floor, a hint of sautéed garlic from the restaurant on the third floor joined the mix. I sucked it up and plodded up one more flight, vowing to get a treadmill or at least a greyhound before I hit forty.

  I found the Law Offices of Gussman, Saul, Nordberg & Klinghoffer to be singularly lacking in offices, but the two-room suite on the top floor of the Jacobsen Storehouse probably leased for more than twice my monthly rent. The front office served as a reception area, where a plump gray-haired woman in a gray coat and skirt greeted me and took my name, then retreated through a door that presumably led to Louis Klinghoffer, Esq. There was a murmur of voices. A minute later, she reappeared. “Come on back,” she said, waving me through the door.

  Louis Klinghoffer was seated behind a vast oak desk. I guessed him to be somewhere between seventy and eighty, maybe leaning toward the higher end. Age had shrunk his head like a withered apple, pushing it down into his shoulders to rest on a cushion of loose skin. He was bald and liver-spotted, with a beaky nose and a mouth that would have fallen in but for a pair of ill-fitting dentures. But his eyes, deep-set and curiously hooded, were shrewd.

  He rose to greet me and proffered a hand. “Miss Turner. A pleasure,” he said. He waited until I was seated in a padded armchair by his desk before taking his own seat. His eyes slid to the clock on the wall, and he made a tiny notation on a legal pad in front of him.

  “I appreciate your seeing me,” I said, glancing around at the sparsely furnished office with its banks of filing cabinets. The view from the window was of the flat roof of the post office, extending west toward the medical marijuana clinic. “If you don’t mind me asking, where are Gussman, Saul, and Nordberg?”

  “Dead. Dead. And dead,” he said with satisfaction. “I handled their estates.”

  “Oh. I see.” I focused on trying to sound brisk and professional when in truth I wasn’t sure I had any right to the information I was after. “I have a couple of questions about the Harrington estate. I understand you drew up the will.”

  “You’re quite correct.” He regarded me thoughtfully. “How long have you been a real estate agent, Miss Turner?”

  I reddened a little. “Six months.” Almost.

  “I see. Well, now. I’ve had a career that’s spanned most of five decades now, and I flatter myself that it’s been a successful one. Early on I was given some good advice, and I’m going to pass that on to you.”

  “And that is?”

  He leaned forward and tapped on the desk with a bony finger. “Always know who is paying you for the work you do.”

  “I don’t know what you mean.”

  “At some point, you will. I’d be happy to answer your questions to the best of my ability. I intend to bill the estate for my time, of course.”

  “Oh. Yes. Of course. The thing is, I’m representing a buyer who may want to purchase the estate for development. Lois Hartshorne says that can’t be done, according to the terms of the will. I assume you know Lois.”

  “Very well,” he said. “She and I are in the same bocce-ball league.”

  I extracted the copy of Edsel Harrington’s last will and testament from my bag and slid it across the desk. “I picked up a copy of the will. It’s the next-to-last paragraph, with all the Latin names. If you wouldn’t mind, er, explaining it to me?”

  The lawyer took a pair of reading glasses from his breast pocket, polished them briefly with a handkerchief, and balanced them on his nose. “Ah, yes,” he said. “The trust. This particular passage raises some very curious and distinctive points of law. But we won’t go into that. Suffice it to say that a testator may under certain circumstances desire to legally obligate his heirs to carry out specific actions after his death. One way to accomplish this is through what’s known as a precatory trust.”

  His dentures leaped alarmingly at all the consonants, and I automatically leaned forward in case I needed to make a basket catch. “A pre—what kind of trust?”

  “Let me explain more fully. Mr. Harrington was a man who loved growing things. He was altogether a unique and rare individual, restricted in his activities, alas, by his health. It was my privilege to be both his attorney and a personal friend for over thirty years before death claimed him, sadly before his time.”

  “I thought he was in his seventies,” I said without thinking.

  “Seventy-three. In his prime. But to die at home in one’s bed, we should all be so lucky. You’ve seen the estate, I presume.”

  “Yesterday.”

  “You might have observed that there are a number of distinctive and unusual trees as old as the house itself on the property. My client did not want them cut down after his death. It was a relatively simple matter to draw up a provision that creates what is in essence a conservation easement, though in the eyes of the law it is in actual fact an express trust. But make no mistake: the intent of the testator is clear, and the covenant shall indeed run with the land in perpetuity as a burden to future successors.”

  “I—could you—”

  He clucked his tongue. “In layperson’s terms, the trees can’t be cut down. Ever. It’s really quite clear.”

  I didn’t argue with that. “So there’s nothing that would prohibit a buyer from, say, subdividing the acreage?”

  “As long as the trees specified in this document remained unharmed.”

  “How will the heirs know whether or not that’s so?”

  “Ah. An excellent question. Please don’t make the mistake of assuring your clients that there would be no indemnity should they act against the provision of the trust. The legatee in this case has every intention of enforcing the clause and monitoring compliance.”

  “The Arlinda Botanical Society.”

  “That is correct.”

  Feeling my way cautiously, I said, “I met the tenant yesterday.”

  “Mrs. Brown.”

  I nodded. “I’m a little surprised she’s been allowed to continue living there.”

  “That was the decision of the legatee. As you’ve visited the property, you can understand that vandalism or squatters would almost certainly be a concern if the house were to stand vacant.”

  “So it wasn’t—well, out of concern for her and her daughter?”

  His voice was dry. “Sentiment is very seldom a part of the law, Miss Turner.”

  I could tell my time with him was running short. “It seems a little strange Mr. Harrington didn’t leave her something more…more tangible than rosebushes. After all, she’d taken care of him for years.”

  He sighed. “Miss Turner, please don’t think me a tiresome old man for giving you a last piece of advice, one that’s served me well over the years. Don’t take everything you hear—or are told—at face value, even if the source seems impeccable. Even sympathetic.”

  While I was mulling that over, he stood up and clutched my hand in his dry grip. “My apologies, but I have to cut this short. Good day.”

  “Yes—that is, good day to you, too.”
I gathered up the will and took my leave, wondering if, as a marketing tool, I should take up bocce ball and find my own probate attorney. Everyone died eventually.

  I had a nagging feeling, too, that in his dry way the lawyer had let slip something of value. I just wasn’t sure what.

  —

  After that, I was beyond done for the day. I trudged up the stairs to our apartment with a pounding headache and an uneasy stomach, emotionally and physically exhausted. I washed a couple of aspirin down with beer and settled myself on the couch with Harley on my lap, but when I tried to close my eyes I saw Raymond Carleton-Hughes, his head a bloody pulp, asleep for eternity in a bed of roses.

  What had Biddie said before she swooned on the stairs? Blood. Something about blood ruining the roses. My stomach progressed from rumbly to turbulent. These things weren’t real. Or were they?

  It didn’t really matter, because I had a job to do. I picked up the phone and dialed Richard Ravello. He answered on the fourth ring, sounding brusque and impatient. “Ravello.”

  “Mr. Ravello—er, Richard—this is Sam Turner.”

  Silence.

  “From Home Sweet Home Realty?”

  “Oh. Yes. You have news for me?”

  I was a little thrown off by his abruptness, so I rushed into speech. “Not on the offer, no. I haven’t heard anything yet. But I have some information about the property that might be helpful.” I explained the terms of the will as I understood them.

  “I appreciate your thoroughness,” he said.

  “You think it’ll affect your plans?”

  “Not at all. Like I told you, these things have a way of fixing themselves. Tell you what. We’ll offer to build a community playground for the kiddies out of those trees. Hell, we’ll even call it after the old guy. What was his name again?”

  “Harrington. Edsel Harrington.”

  “The Edsel Harrington Memorial Playground. No, too formal. Ed’s Place for Kids. Perfect. People love that shit. Anything else?”