“Everything all right?” he asked, putting the calculator down. “You look like you got some bad news just now.”
My hands wouldn’t stop shaking. I clasped them in my lap, willing them to be still.
“My past seems to be catching up with me,” I said finally.
“Past?” he looked amused. “What kind of past can a young gal like you have? What’d you do—rob a bank or something?”
I bit my lower lip until I tasted blood.
“Hey now,” Bobby said, startled. “I was just kiddin’. I didn’t mean nothing by it.”
“It’s all right,” I said, struggling to gain control of my racing emotions. I nodded toward the clipboard. “What do you think? Do you have more bad news for me?”
He tapped the paper with his mechanical pencil. “You serious about what you said before? About doing a lot of the work yourself? You ever done any home improvement before?”
“I’m dead serious,” I said. “And no, I’ve never done any manual labor before. You’ll have to show me how. But I’m a hard worker, and I’ve been told I’m a quick study.”
“The roof’s the big-ticket item,” Bobby said, eyeing the figures on the page. “That roof is slate,” he added, pointing his finger toward the ceiling. “Some of the tiles are broken, some of ’em are missing. I’m gonna have to peel ’em all off, replace the old tarpaper with one of the new impervious neoprene skins, then put all the slates back. I’ll need to see about getting a source to replace the damaged slate tiles. Probably have to be special ordered. I won’t lie to you. It’s gonna cost.”
“Can’t we just patch it up—”
“No, ma’am,” he said firmly. “No patches. No shortcuts. That roof—you need it done right. Or you sacrifice the integrity of the whole structure. Ain’t no use spending money on plaster or wiring or anything else if you don’t do the roof just right. You see what I’m saying?”
“I’m beginning to,” I told him. I took another long sip of coffee.
“All right then,” he said, nodding contentedly. “Now you’re talking.”
“What else? Besides the roof?” I asked. “You’ve already told me about the wiring. What about the plumbing? The water pressure in the house is pathetic. Please don’t tell me we need all new pipes.”
“Naw,” Bobby said. He got up and went over to the sink, turning on the faucet. “You got solid-copper commercial-grade pipe in this house. That pipe will be good long after you and me are both dead and in the grave.”
He picked up a drinking glass from the drain board and filled it with water. “See that nasty rust in the water, when you first turn on the faucet? The problem is, the old line to the street is cast iron. It’s rusting from the inside, you probably only got a half inch clearance inside a two-inch water line. We’re gonna have to dig up the front yard. It’ll mess up Mr. Norbert’s lawn, for sure, but once we replace that cast-iron mess with new pipe, we’ll get rid of the rust, and your water pressure will be fine.”
“No kidding? It’s just the line running to the street? You’re sure?” I hadn’t had a lot of good news lately, so I was grasping at straws here.
“Oh yeah, the plumbing ain’t no problem,” Bobby said.
“What about this kitchen?” I asked, gesturing around at the dingy cupboards and outdated appliances. “What’s it gonna cost to bring this thing into the twenty-first century?”
Bobby got up and walked over to the sink. He ran his hand over the deep porcelain sink, opened and closed a cupboard door, and said, “Ain’t no doubt about it. This kitchen’s got some age on it. So, you could just rip everything out. Go over to the Home Depot in Macon, get you some shiny new cabinets, one of them new farmhouse sinks, order up some granite countertops and some stainless-steel appliances.”
This was exactly the plan that had been forming in my mind. In my suitcase upstairs, I had a file folder devoted exclusively to pictures of fabulous kitchens, which I’d ripped out of magazines over the years. My favorite one—my dream kitchen—was a Tuscan farmhouse kitchen, with tumbled-marble backsplashes, fumed oak cabinets, an enormous imported blood red Aga cookstove, and a glass-doored Traulsen refrigerator. That kitchen had ancient, exposed hand-hewn ceiling beams, and a separate butler’s pantry. According to the magazine, the kitchen belonged to a software entrepreneur who’d sold his company at the age of thirty, and retired to a quail-hunting lodge in Thomasville, Georgia. Of course, that kitchen had probably come in at a neat quarter of a million dollars. At least.
It wouldn’t be possible, or even desirable, to reproduce a kitchen like that at Birdsong. But the one thing this kitchen did have in common with that dream kitchen was space.
This dreary old dud was big. It had high—although water-stained—ceilings, and a bank of windows that looked out on Birdsong’s weed-infested backyard. It too had a butler’s pantry. Of course, its glass-paned cupboard doors were coated in multiple layers of chipped and peeling paint, and somebody had chosen to wallpaper it in imitation redbrick Con-Tact paper, but it was, nevertheless, a butler’s pantry.
“New cabinets—let’s say just stock cabinets, not custom; stainless-steel appliances; granite; new flooring; the whole shebang. What would that run—ballpark?” I asked Bobby.
His fingers raced over the calculator keys, and he winced when he saw the final tally. “Yeah. That’s what I thought. Minimum? If we did all the demo of the old kitchen ourselves—maybe find floor-model appliances—you save a little money that way. We’re talking thirty thousand. And that’s assuming we don’t move any of the water lines or mess with the floor plan.”
“Oh.” Mentally, I put the kitchen file folder in the far recesses of my mind.
“Yeah,” Bobby said. “Kitchens eat up a lot of money. Still, we could make this here kitchen real nice without spending anywhere near that much money.”
I was about to ask him what he had in mind when the cell phone in my pocket started ringing.
I grabbed the phone and looked at the display readout. unknown caller, it said.
“Excuse me, Bobby,” I said, jumping up and running out of the room. I took the stairs three at a time, and on the third ring, and the top step, I flipped the phone open.
“Hello?” I said breathlessly.
“Dempsey?” It was Alex. Thank God.
20
“Dempsey?”
“Alex!” I said. “You got my message.”
“Where the hell are you?” he asked.
“I’m in Georgia. A little town south of Atlanta, called Guthrie.”
“Listen,” he said urgently. “I don’t have much time. Are you all right?”
“I’ve been better,” I said. “How about you? I’ve been calling and calling. I even went to your house…the night…everything happened. Did Trish tell you I came by?”
“No. She never mentioned it. Trish and I…well, anyway, that’s not why I’m calling. I got your message. What’s going on?”
“This reporter from the Washington Post showed up here—at the house where I’m staying. Her name was Shalani Byers. And she had a photographer with her.”
“When was this?”
“Today, just now.”
“You didn’t let her in the house, right?”
“No. I kept asking her to leave, but she was pretty insistent. Alex, she claims she has a source on the grand jury—”
“Bullshit!” Alex said angrily. “That’s how these shits operate. They come up with a lot of innuendo and speculation, to trick you into saying things you don’t mean.”
“She said the grand jury has seen the statements for my company-issued AmEx card, Alex. And she claims it shows a four-thousand-dollar charge for that wakeboard instructor I booked for—”
“Never mind that,” Alex said quickly. “I can’t discuss any of this stuff right now. In fact, Dempsey, it would be a good idea if you didn’t call my cell phone again.”
“Wait,” I said panicking. “Look, this woman says the charges on my card were billed fr
om a company called Pleasure Chest. Alex, she also said there was a sixteen-hundred-dollar charge for the same company, for that massage therapist you asked me to have sent up to Licata’s hotel room that night at the—”
“Dempsey! For Christ’s sake,” Alex barked. “I told you I cannot discuss this. Look, if that reporter comes back, send her away. Don’t say anything to her, do you hear?”
“I didn’t,” I said. “I haven’t, but—”
“Take care, Dempsey,” he said. “I’ll be in touch again. All right?”
He hung up. I flipped the phone closed, then opened it again. I punched the button on the phone’s display screen for calls received. unknown caller it said. No number was listed. Even if I wanted to, I couldn’t call Alex Hodder back.
21
Out in the kitchen, Bobby was bent over the kitchen table, rapidly sketching on a sheet of blue-lined notebook paper.
“Everything okay?” he asked, not looking up from his drawing.
“Not so much,” I said. I’d been waiting for weeks to hear from Alex, certain he would clear up the matter of my firing, hoping he would assure me that everything was going to be all right. From the moment I’d met him, I’d known that Alex Hodder was a man who was capable of fixing anything that went wrong with my life.
Okay, now I’d heard from Alex. A telephone conversation that lasted a little over a minute had left my future as clear as mud. My stomach churned and my mouth was dry.
I stood beside Bobby and looked down at the sketch. “What’s this?”
“Just an idea I had,” he said. “For your kitchen.”
“Forget it,” I said. “After the roof and the wiring and the paint, there won’t be enough money left over to do anything to this kitchen.” I sank down onto a kitchen chair and stared blankly into my cup of cold coffee, where the creamer made a small milky cloud.
“Sure there is,” Bobby said, patting my hand reassuringly. “There’s a lot we can do in here, with just a little bit of money.”
“And dynamite,’ I said bleakly.
“No, now, look here,” he said, placing a cabinet door on the table.
“What’s this supposed to be?” I asked.
He took the edge of his penknife and scraped at the goopy paint on the door. Underneath the dingy white paint, I could see a rainbow of paint layers, bright yellow, pale pink, even a soft aqua. When he’d scraped a nickel-size patch of paint away, I could see bare wood.
“See that,” he said, scratching at the paint with his index finger. “Ain’t that pretty?”
“Wood,” I said. “I guess so.”
“That there’s pine,” Bobby said. “Good old heart pine. And every single one of these cabinet doors is the same way. Solid pine. None of that pressboard junk or veneer you get these days. The drawers are solid pine too. The boxes and the drawer fronts.”
“And?”
Bobby grinned. He reached over and gently squeezed my right forearm. “How do you feel about working up some muscles?”
“What are you proposing?”
“Sweat equity,” he said. “We take off every single one of these cabinet doors and pull out the drawers. I’ll strip the boxes, you strip the doors. When we’re done, you’re gonna have cabinets a lot prettier—a lot better—than any of that pricey junk over to the Home Depot.”
“Strip how?”
“Could do chemicals, but I’m thinking a heat gun’s gonna be cheaper. And quicker,” he said.
I looked down at his sketch, which was a simple schematic drawing of the kitchen. “But these doors here”—I tapped the drawing—“look like they have glass panes in them.”
“That’s right,” he said smugly. “I seen it in my wife’s magazines she brings home from the beauty parlor. Glass-front cabinets, that’s what your high-end kitchens have these days.”
“Expensive,” I reminded him. “And not in my budget.”
“Sure it is,” he said, lifting a glass-paned cabinet door from the chair beside him.
“Is that one of the cupboard doors from the butler’s pantry?”
“Sure is,” he said. “They’re the exact same size as the ones in this here kitchen. I’m thinking we swap out some of the glass-pane ones for the solid ones. Don’t need all those cupboard doors in the butler’s pantry anyway. Shelves are all right in there. We strip these down, they’re gonna be pretty as a picture.”
He smiled shyly. “What do you think?”
I shrugged. “You’ve got an island drawn in the middle right where this table is. That’s gonna cost.”
“That I can build,” Bobby said. “Down in your basement? Over by the furnace, somebody left a big ol’ pile of lumber, all stacked pretty as you please, up off the floor so it never got wet or warped. Probably left over from building that shed you got out back. Anyway, it’s good solid two-by-fours and four-by-fours. I can glue up some of ’em, put ’em on my lathe, and turn you some table legs look just like what I’ve drawn here.”
“I like it,” I admitted finally. “What’s that hanging from chains above the island?”
“That’s a pot rack,” Bobby said. “You got an old apple-picking ladder out in that shed. We hang that from some of that chain and put some iron hooks on it, it’ll work as good as store bought.”
“It all looks great,” I said. “But what do we do about countertops? That yellow Formica has got to go.”
“No two ways about it,” Bobby agreed.
“I guess I could shop around, see if I can come up with something that looks as good as granite, but is cheaper.” I looked with distaste at the floor, with its cracked green linoleum tiles. “What do we do about this floor?”
Bobby was in his midsixties, but he dropped easily to his hands and knees and gently pried up one of the tiles just under the table. Again, with the tip of his knife, he scraped at the thick black mastic.
“Huh,” he muttered. “This ain’t good.” He scrambled to his feet, and without another word walked out the door. When he came back a moment later, he had what looked like a heavy-duty black hair dryer in his hands. Snaking the thick black cord over to an outlet by the sink, he plugged it in.
“What’s that?” I asked.
“Heat gun I was telling you about,” Bobby said. He held up the tip and I could see the glowing red coils. He aimed the gun a few inches from the black mastic, and after a moment, reached into the pocket of his work pants and brought out a sharp-edged scraper. When the black goo began to bubble, he worked the edge of the scraper across it. He grabbed the discarded green tile and wiped the molten mastic on it.
“Look here,” he said proudly.
I got down on my own hands and knees to get a look. “It’s wood,” I said, meeting his grin with one of my own. “Like all the rest of the floors.”
“Heart pine,” Bobby agreed. “All we gotta do is pull up these old tiles and scrape up that mastic. You can’t buy floors this good anymore.”
I sat back and looked around the kitchen with new appreciation. “This could be nice,” I said finally. “Much better, anyway, than what’s here now.”
“You bet,” Bobby said. He stood up and walked over to the sink. “This old sink, it’s pretty grimy.” He glanced around, and whispered, “Ella Kate, she’s a nice lady, but I don’t think housework was ever her strong suit.”
“You know Ella Kate?” I don’t know why I was surprised. Guthrie was so small it made Mayberry look like a metropolis.
“Oh, sure,” Bobby said. “I been knowing Ella Kate, and Mr. Norbert too, for a good long time. Norbert, he was pretty tight with a dollar, but when he got up in years and couldn’t get around too much, he’d hire me to do little jobs around the place.”
“What can we do about the sink?” I asked.
“Elbow grease,” Bobby said. “Get it cleaned up and polished, it’ll look as good as those farmhouse sinks in the magazines. Same with these old faucets. They’re nickel plated,” he continued. “That’s the thing about Birdsong. The Dempseys, your peopl
e, they had plenty of money back in the day, and they didn’t mind spending it. Everything in this house—it may be old, but it’s first-rate.”
“I guess,” I said. “Everything but me.”
Bobby gave me a quizzical look.
“Never mind me,” I said. “I’m just having a little pity party for myself.”
Bobby picked up his clipboard and handed it to me. His precise block letters covered most of the page, everything itemized. I looked down at the bottom line and smiled. His estimate—for everything, labor and materials—came in right at $78,000.
“When can you start?” I asked.
“How’s tomorrow?”
“Fine,” I said. I kicked at the loosened floor tile with the toe of my sneaker. “Can you leave that heat gun with me tonight? I’ve got some aggression I need to work out.”
I walked Bobby out to the porch. And when I opened the door, was greeted with the smell of fresh paint.
Jimmy Maynard, my new friend from the hardware store, stood on the porch, brandishing a can of paint in one hand and a brush in the other. The day was sunny, but although temperatures were still only in the high sixties he was again dressed for a day on the golf greens, in blue madras Bermudas and a hot pink golf shirt. He’d painted a three-foot-wide swath of rich green paint on Birdsong’s faded pink siding.
“Bobby Livesey!” Jimmy said, putting the paint can down and wiping his hands with a handkerchief he pulled from his back pocket. “You coming to the rescue of Miss Dempsey Killebrew here?”
“Looks like it,” Bobby said, pumping Jimmy’s hand. “Did Dempsey line you up to do the house painting? I didn’t know you’d gotten out of real estate.”
“Oh no, I’m still messing with real estate,” Jimmy said. “Too old to change my stripes now, you know.”
The two men laughed over their shared joke, and Bobby took his leave, promising that he would arrive bright and early in the morning.
Jimmy Maynard nonchalantly opened another can of paint and started brushing a lighter shade of green on the other side of the door.
The Fixer Upper Page 13
