“So this is it,” Austin said, craning his neck to see down the road ahead. “I’ve been by this spot millions of times, and I never dreamed there was a mansion back in here.”
“This was a kind of lovers’ lane when I was in high school,” I said. “But you couldn’t drive back in very far, because they had it chained off. Don’t expect too much now. There’s still a lot of work to be done to the big house.”
He squeezed his eyes shut. “Tell me when we’re there. I don’t want to spoil the surprise.”
The Volvo breezed down the nice level road, and I was grateful for all the clearing the landscape designer and his crew had accomplished. I made the sharp turn, the meadow came into view, and I breathed a sigh of relief. Waves of Queen Anne’s lace; orange daylilies; scarlet, white and purple cosmos; black-eyed Susans; and other wildflowers I couldn’t name spread out before me. The sides of the meadow had been fenced with a simple white fence, and on the right side of the field, a sturdy brown mule munched on a bale of hay that was stacked under one of the water oaks.
“Very nice,” I murmured.
“What?” Austin demanded. “Are we there yet?”
“Not yet,” I said. “I’m just admiring the landscape. Thank goodness Will had the sense to let it mostly alone.”
He raised the fingers of one hand and peeked out. “Oh heaven!” he exclaimed. “Do you know what kind of arrangements I can make with all these little goodies?”
At the end of the meadow the green lawn had been resodded, rolled, and manicured to golf course perfection. A new boxwood hedge marked the transition from meadow to lawn, and the front of the house loomed ahead, its façade covered with a network of bright yellow scaffolding, where workers scraped away at the remains of the old paint.
“That’s it!” Austin said, his voice reverent. “Mulberry Hill. It’s divine, Keeley.”
“Not yet,” I said, smiling to myself. “But it will be.”
As we got closer to the house, another cluster of cars parked around to the side came into view. More trucks and vans, and a big old yellow Cadillac.
27
Austin jumped out of the Volvo before I’d even turned off the motor. He craned his neck and shaded his eyes with his hand to look up at the worker who was reframing the old balcony over the front portico.
“Divine,” he said. “Like out of a Hollywood movie. I keep expecting Scarlett O’Hara to come running out the door in a hoopskirt. It’s like Tara or something.”
Will strolled up just in time to hear Austin’s gushing.
“Better,” he said, sticking out his hand to shake Austin’s. “The O’Haras didn’t have Glorious Interiors on the payroll.”
“Austin,” I said, setting my tote bag on the ground. “This is our client, Will Mahoney. He suffers from flights of fancy and delusions of grandeur. But he’s loaded, so we try to overlook his lesser qualities. Will, this is Austin LeFleur. Austin is the most talented floral designer in Georgia, and he’s helping me out with the installation today.”
“Oh, Keeley,” Austin said. “Stop. You’re embarrassing me. I’m just a flower fluffer, that’s all.”
Will and Austin shook hands and checked each other out. I glanced around the construction site. “Hasn’t the truck gotten here yet?”
“Your driver called a little while ago,” Will said, gesturing to the cell phone clipped to his belt. “He’s running about thirty minutes late.”
“The story of my life,” I muttered. I hefted the tote bag back onto my shoulder. “Never mind. Let’s take a look at the pump house. Have you checked it out yet?”
“Waiting on you,” Will said. He turned toward the Volvo. “Does all this get taken inside?”
“Every bit of it,” I said. “Plus what’s on the truck.”
The three of us loaded ourselves down with boxes and bags, and we picked our way through piles of bricks, sand, and lumber, around to the back of the property.
The steady summertime rain had subsided just long enough to make the air as hot and sticky as a wet wool blanket, and a cloud of mosquitoes hovered around my face. My shirt was drenched by the time we made it to the pump house, and my face, where I’d missed applying the bug repellent, stung from numerous mosquito bites.
“Wow,” I said, getting my first look at the site in a week. “Unbelievable.”
The thick bramble of kudzu, wisteria, and poison ivy that had previously engulfed both the brick structure and the ground around it had been hacked away. A rustic patio of old brick skirted the little house, and a new tin roof gleamed in the sunlight. Will’s masons had built a new chimney of stacked rock taken from a creek on the property. Windows that had last week been broken and caked with grime had been stripped, reglazed, and painted, their frames a deep green-black to match the paint on the arched front door. A pair of ancient black cast-iron pots stood on either side of the door, planted with fragrant topiaries of rosemary.
“The pots?” I asked, turning to Will, who was watching me with barely suppressed anticipation.
“Kent Richardson, the landscape designer, found ’em out in one of the sheds,” Will said. “He says they were old boiling pots, used to do laundry. He planted them up and put them here. That’s okay, isn’t it?”
“They’re great. The perfect touch.”
I tucked a strand of hair behind my ear and shifted my load of gear and pushed the door open. Cool air floated out to greet us.
“Heaven,” I said, pushing the door wider to let Austin and Will inside. “If nothing else, you’ve got air conditioning.” I pulled my shirt away from my body to let the air cool me down.
“And fresh paint,” Austin said, inhaling deeply. “There’s nothing like the smell of fresh paint.”
Will felt on the wall for a light switch, and three old black pendant fixtures that had come out of a torn-down Atlanta saloon made the dim room come alive. He set the boxes down against the wall and walked around.
The pump house had originally been nothing more than a one-room brick hut, twelve feet wide by twenty feet long. With almost no time for an extensive remodeling, I’d come up with a plan to divide the long, high-ceilinged room into two areas. The front half would be Will’s living and dining areas, with a new double-sided stacked rock fireplace the focal point of the seating area, and the dividing wall between the living area and the only bedroom. We’d fitted a tiny galley kitchen in the left corner of the living area, and behind it, on the other side of the heart-pine dividing wall, was the bathroom and the bedroom. Because the area was so small, only two hundred and forty square feet, and dark, with only four smallish windows, we’d whitewashed the exposed brick walls, but left the brick floors their natural color. After the main house was ready, the pump house would be used as a guest house.
“Not bad,” Will said, looking up at the exposed heart-pine ceiling beams. He bent down and ran his hands over the slate hearth by the fireplace. “Not bad at all.”
I gave him a sharp look. “Not bad? It’s a friggin’ miracle. Your foreman should get some kind of combat pay and performance bonus for pulling this off this quickly.”
“He has,” Will said, straightening up and dusting his hands on the seat of his worn blue jeans. “Let’s see how the new bathroom looks.”
Even the new door to the sleeping area was old—a weathered cedar number we’d discovered in another of the sheds on the property. Cleaned up and fitted with a heavy black iron doorknob, it swung easily on its new hinges.
Sunlight filtered into the bedroom from the windows near the roofline, and the polished brick floors gleamed with a dull sheen. The three of us stepped inside the room. Will crossed over to another of the cedar doors set into the heart-pine dividing wall and opened it. We’d used more of the heart-pine boards for the bathroom walls.
The room was tiny, but efficient. One of the carpenters had built a primitive heart-pine vanity, with a hammered copper sink set into it. There was a commode, and a shower stall with glass block walls.
�
�Everything a guy could need,” Will said approvingly. He gave me an appreciative thump on the back. “You done good, Keeley.”
I nodded my own approval. “I just designed it, Will. Your guys did the work. And even three days past your impossible deadline, they did a fantastic job.”
“I could move right in,” Austin said.
“Me first,” Will said.
“Right. I guess we’ll go ahead and start unpacking the kitchen stuff while we wait on the truck. And Austin, if you’ll find a stepladder, you could start hanging the drapery rods.”
“Draperies?” Will frowned. “I thought this was gonna be pretty basic out here. Why do I need something as fancy as drapes?”
“Not really drapes,” I reassured him. “Just a little something for privacy. And to keep the morning sun out of your eyes. Wait until you see. I promise, you’ll like them.”
While Austin got started on the rods, I moved the boxes and bags of cooking equipment into place. With only three compact cabinets and three drawers, it didn’t take long to set everything up.
Will lounged against the wall near the refrigerator, watching me work. When I’d put the last fork and spoon away, he clapped his hands.
“Great. Want to see how the work’s coming on the big house?”
I glanced over at Austin, who was just screwing one of the black wrought-iron rod holders into the wall over one of the living room windows. “Go ahead,” he called out. “I’ve got this covered.”
The sounds of nail guns and power saws competed with tinny salsa music from a boombox perched on the back of a pickup truck and grew louder as we approached the back of the house. I was amazed at the progress here too. Concrete footings had been poured for the new wing, plywood subfloors had been laid, and yellow pine framing outlined the skeleton of the walls and the high pitched roof. Half a dozen men in hard hats clambered over the two-story addition.
“Where did you get these guys?” I asked.
Will grinned. “They’re all laid-off Loving Cup plant workers. Miss Nancy’s idea. She said, since I was, quote ‘spending so GD much money on my mansion, why didn’t I give some of the GD guys a chance to earn a decent paycheck.’ She called ’em all up and told ’em to get their GD asses out here. Said if they wanted to show me how hard they could work, this would be the way to do it.”
“That sounds exactly like Miss Nancy,” I said.
“Come around to the front,” Will said, taking my elbow to guide me through a labyrinth of scaffolding. “Careful. The guys are working so hard and so fast, trying to make up time lost because of the rain, they forget to look to see if anybody’s down below.”
A chunk of two-by-four went whizzing by my head, and I jumped to get out of the way. “GD! I see what you mean.”
At the front of the house I noticed for the first time that a newly laid set of brick steps flowed gracefully up to the porch, where the old rotted-out floorboards had been ripped out. New concrete-block underpinnings had been laid, and a mason was lying on his back, applying brick to the concrete veneer. Sturdy new framing was in place, and now the porch extended all the way around to the east and west sides of the house. Two men were busy nailing new floorboards to the support beams.
Will gestured toward the doorway. “That got here yesterday. The guys hung it just before you arrived.”
I’d bought the front door online, from an architectural salvage yard in Jackson, Mississippi. It was a nine-foot-tall solid cypress door that had come out of an old convent in Louisiana, and it even had the original ornate brass hinges and doorknobs.
Electricians were busy in the front parlors, snaking rolls of conduit through small holes in the plaster walls. We walked down the center hallway, and Will opened the door that had formerly opened into nothing. Now though, sunlight flooded the hallway, and we stepped out into the newly framed addition.
“Hey, Mr. Mahoney,” one of the carpenters called down.
Will looked up and waved. “Good work, Jerry. Keep it up and we’ll be roofing by the beginning of the month.”
“You’re dreaming,” I said. But we both knew I was impressed. He started climbing the temporary stairs to the second floor, and I followed behind.
“Speaking of deadlines,” I said, “how did your date go last week?”
Will reached the top step and stepped out onto the plywood planking for the second floor. He walked over to the outer wall and looked through one of the window openings. “Hmm?”
“Your date? With the future mistress of Mulberry Hill?”
“You mean Stephanie?” He didn’t turn around. “Fine. Great. Fantastic.”
I stood beside him and looked out the window. From here you could see the shiny new roof of the pump house, and a couple of other outbuildings that had been reroofed. Everything else was a carpet of green.
“Is she everything you expected?” I asked, digging for details.
“Better,” he said.
He was a virtual font of information. I decided to try another line of questioning.
“What did you two talk about? Was it awkward, like a blind date?”
“Not really,” he said, shrugging. “We talked about what people usually talk about. Her work. Mine. What we like to do in our spare time. What we’re reading. What we like to eat and drink. Like that.”
“Let me guess,” I said. “Stephanie drinks cosmopolitans.”
He turned to look at me and frowned. “Is that some kind of put-down? Anyway, how’d you know?”
“I worked as a cocktail waitress at the country club one summer after graduation,” I said. “Stephanie just looks like a cosmo drinker. Girly, kind of.”
“And what do you think I like to drink?”
“Easy,” I said. “Single malt Scotch. And Sam Adams beer.”
He raised an eyebrow in surprise. “How’d you do that?”
“The Scotch was just a good guess,” I admitted. “But I was with you when you bought Sam Adams. Remember?”
He looked puzzled. “No. When was that?”
“At the Minit Mart. The night we came out here and you showed me the house? And afterward, you stopped at the Minit Mart for a beer…” I felt my face start to burn at the memory of that night, and my discomfort had nothing to do with the hot Georgia sun beating down on our heads. “And we ran into Paige Plummer. She was going into the store just as you were getting into the car…”
He scratched his beard and looked over at me, all sweetness and innocence now. “Oh, that night. I remember some of it. I remember stopping at the Minit Mart. And I remember that Paige chick. Oh yeah. I remember kissing you. That was nice. Very nice.”
I turned my back toward him, hoping he wouldn’t see my flaming red cheeks. “But I’m damned if I remember the Sam Adams beer,” he said, chuckling.
28
A faint breeze ruffled the leaves on the limb of an oak tree that stretched toward the house, and I felt my sweat-dampened scalp tingle from the cool.
“Are you seeing her again?” I asked.
“Who, Paige? Why would I want to see her again?” He was being deliberately obtuse.
“I meant Stephanie, of course. Are you going out again?”
“Oh yeah. As a matter of fact, she’s coming out here for dinner Friday night.”
“Here? Isn’t that rushing things a little?”
“I’m not the big bad wolf. Her virtue won’t be under assault.”
“That’s not what I meant, and you know it. What I mean is, it’s already Monday. We don’t even have your furniture moved in. The paint’s just barely dry.”
“You’ll take care of all that,” Will said, patting my shoulder. “It’ll be great. And Stephanie’s dying to see the place. I took pictures to dinner, to show her. She’s a big history buff. Used to come over here for the Christmas Tour of Homes all the time.”
“You’re hardly tour ready,” I snapped, aggravated for reasons I couldn’t quite understand. “And do you even know how to cook?”
“I can
grill a steak and toss a salad,” he assured me. “And I’m great at uncorking wine.”
“Better learn how to mix a cosmopolitan,” I said.
Just then we heard the sound of tires on the drive, and a horn honking.
“That better be the truck with your furniture,” I told him, turning to go down the stairs. “Otherwise you’ll be dining off a card table.”
Austin already had the truck’s cargo doors open and was boosting himself inside by the time we made it out to the driveway.
Manny Ortiz, the driver who does a lot of the hauling and heavy lifting for Glorious Interiors, winced when he saw me. “Hey, Keeley,” he called, shoving his red and black Georgia Bulldogs cap to the back of his head. “Sorry to be late. We had another delivery to finish up. And I gotta get right back too. We got two whole-house moves scheduled, and I’m short a guy.”
“It’s all right,” I told him, peering inside the truck, which was jammed with furniture and boxes. “Is this everything?”
He handed me a clipboard with the list I’d faxed over to him. “Everything you asked for. Your aunt had me pick up some pictures from the framer on the way over. So that should do it.”
Will stood beside me and poked his own head inside the truck. He looked dubious. “Is all this stuff gonna fit in my little ol’ pump house?”
“Easily,” I said. “How’s your back?”
He held a hand to his spine and grimaced. “Achin’ already.”
I stepped aside and gestured toward the tailgate. “You’re the one with the impossible deadlines. I’d suggest you start with the rugs first. Let’s get them laid down, then bring in the bedroom stuff, and the living room sofa last.”
Manny grabbed the end of a rolled-up Oriental rug wrapped in brown paper, and he and Will hoisted it onto their shoulders and headed for the pump house. I took three smaller throw rugs, plus a runner, and handed them to Austin, and for myself, grabbed up the boxful of newly framed art, and a carton I knew contained bed linens.
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