Catharine Bramkamp - Real Estate Diva 04 - Trash Out

by Catharine Bramkamp

  I strolled out to the edge of the side parking area, took a deep breath and focused on the dusty grape vines. Behind me loomed the half filled storage room. Half the area was filled with cases, the other half held three stainless steel tanks and a tall U configuration of barrels. They all looked like they were more for show than storage. The red wine was fermenting in big plastic bins; I love the smell of fermenting wine. I lifted my nose to take in the yeasty smell, but nothing came to me. Maybe it was already finished.

  I heard a sound from behind me. Fred shuffled up.

  “Fred? You don’t look old enough for that name.”

  “I’m almost twenty-four.” He hunched his shoulders and buried his hands deeper into his front pockets. “Fred was my great uncle, I am the tribute to him. Do you know anyone named Fred in my generation?”

  I did not and said so.

  He kicked the earth. “Check it out. Normally you find this dirt up on the hill, but it’s here on the valley floor.” His face suddenly cleared and he looked more handsome, more engaged.

  “Does it have a name?” I knew there was a resurgence, or maybe just an acknowledgment in the first place of how the earth (dirt) influences the character of the grapes, what you can grow well, and what you can’t.

  “It’s best for Zin.” He leaned down and sifted the reddish gravely earth between his fingers. “It’s always been best for Zin, a truly American grape. Not hers though.”

  He dusted his hands and stood.

  Most of the vines had been stripped the week before, just a few wrinkled grapes, the rejected raisins, hung from the turning leaves. The harvest was right on schedule. Cassandra wasn’t able to pour for the Harvest Awards event, but it looked like she’d be able to manage a total of 800 guests in the next few weeks.

  “Not hers?”

  He gestured down the valley. “These are contracted to Wind Runner, like Cassandra’s family vineyard used to be, before she took it back.”

  “Is that a problem?” I knew it was one of the reasons Ben and Peter were interested in the wine.

  “No, we do it all the time, no big deal.”

  “You know a lot.”

  He nodded. “My family started here in the early seventies. Just like Cassandra’s. But we didn’t make it – phylloxera. And my parents found farming too stressful, so they sold to Gallo.”

  “Why are you here at a tasting room? I take it you went to Davis?”

  He nodded. “BS in oenology. As if that helped.”

  “Why aren’t you making wine?” I looked out at the valley. The floor was planted with grapes as far as the opposite mountains would allow.

  “No opportunity. I have my degree, but no one wants a wine maker named Fred, it’s not very romantic. I have, well, this is an opportunity I couldn’t pass up.”

  “You could change your name.” I suggested.

  He looked at me hopefully. “I don’t have the backing that Cassandra has.”

  “Backing?”

  “Yeah a couple of guys are bankrolling her. I’ve seen them come and go while she was finishing up the re-model. One was sort of drooling all over her, the other was upset about all the stuff in the gift store. She can get away with that kind of thing. I can’t.”

  “I see.”

  A flat bed truck rolled by hauling more beige plastic bins filled with grapes. The smell was sweet and pungent; fall.

  Fred’s eyes followed the truck. The truck ground to a halt. Fred abruptly left for the back of the winery without saying good-bye, not that I expected him to.

  Before I could get lonely and feel sorry for myself, Carrie rounded the corner, Cassandra hanging on her arm. Carrie is petite, Cassandra is willowy, I, apparently, am solid. The two of them together reminded me of how solid I was, and I didn’t really like the comparison.

  “This should be perfect. I just confirmed with the caterer.” Carrie bounced. “This will work out. I’m sure.” She smiled at Cassandra who was looking somewhere off into the middle distance. “I’m glad,” she said absently. “Can you excuse me?”

  “I thought she’d be more excited.” Carrie’s face fell and I wanted to punch Cassandra for being so insensitive. This was important, damn it!

  “You know, she dated Peter O’Reilly, the Third.” I said as a verbal punch.

  “No.” Carrie looked after Cassandra with considerably more interest. “How did they know each other?”

  “Ben said Peter was in grad school and she was an undergrad, they met at Davis. I don’t know the gory details, but he broke her heart, Ben comforted her and the rest,” I sighed “is not really all past history is it?”

  Carrie shuffled the notes in her monster planner (and I thought escrow created too much paper). “O’Reilly must be hanging around for a reason, do you think he’s invested in this project as well? He and Ben manage to tangle their women up pretty thoroughly don’t they? Are you sure you don’t secretly lust after Peter? That would make the circle complete.”

  “Bite your tongue.” I rolled my eyes at the very thought. Sure, I was feeling a little more generous towards Peter Klaussen O’Reilly the Third since he helped spring Ben out of jail (during a rather trying holiday season), but not enough to make a real change in attitude. No, I would not be dating him, or even double dating. I wondered if he and Cassandra had reconciled. Was he the drooler Fred mentioned? Or was Ben?

  Carrie dropped that subject and shifted the conversation back where it belonged: her. “I’m a little concerned with that back room commotion, those barrels are stacked awfully high and the wine cases don’t look stable at all. One tremor and it’s over for anyone sitting below.”

  “We’ll keep people in the front and out on the patio.” I said. The front patio and tasting room was the show place after all, and Cassandra admitted she spent most of the money on the tasting room and grounds. The machinery was either second hand or rented. Besides, one tremor this morning meant nothing. Tremors and earthquakes were delightfully random; there is no earthquake watch, no earthquake season. You just take the random acts of violence in stride and get on with the party.

  Carrie squinted at the renovated building. In stark contrast to the front presentation, the back of the building was pockmarked and festooned with peeling paint. Broken pallets littered the employee parking area taking up more spaces than necessary. The old winery had been painted blue, traces of the color still streaked the back walls and the garage doors that divided the crush pad from the warehouse. “I never appreciated how tidy Patrick keeps his own plant, it’s so clean and organized. Now I can appreciate the effort.”

  “Then this was a valuable comparison.” I said in my best schoolteacher voice.

  She grinned. “We’ll just string yellow caution tape around the back.”

  “Like that ever kept anyone out.”

  Chapter 4

  I take it back, I did have clients, but they were buyers, and buyers are difficult. Unless they wanted to buy my house. The Garcias did not want my house. They wanted a distressed property that could be had for a song. My house did not make their list since it was in perfect condition. And to that end, I had a list of seven REOs to review on their behalf. They didn’t need to see all of them; I knew what they were searching for; a complete, perfect house with the toilet still attached, yet in foreclosure, yet not too badly damaged, yet completely abandoned. The challenge with a bargain REO, bank owned property, is that a bargain always comes at a price.

  Compared to selling my own house and dealing with the subcontractors for the Main Street property in Claim Jump, an afternoon with bank-repossessed homes was practically uplifting.

  There is little to see in a bank owned home. The defaulted owners have long abandoned the property, and banks do not spend money on even the basics like a flyer, let alone paying for staging or even air conditioning in a desultory effort to increase the appeal of the property. Often the front lawns are left to seed.

  To a one, the houses I reviewed were closed and stifling hot. I quickly es
caped and made all my notes outside, moving along as efficiently as I could. Mr. Garcia will like the house on Heron, his wife will like the house on Gull, and they both may like the house on Sand. I make notes on my MLS print out. I drove to the fifth house, on Beach Street, one of the many Christopher, God Is Our Partner listings, and marched up to the door, reading the specs as I went. The sun was still high enough to be hot and it beat down on my bare head. I pulled off my sunglasses and pulled out my phone. It wasn’t until I was on top of the door that I realized there was no lock box.

  I stepped off the front stoop into the recently mowed grass to see if the lock box was attached to the lawn spigot. Nope. I peeked in the mailbox and moved aside the stack of flyers and envelopes but there was no key on the bottom. I double-checked the address. I returned to the lawn, cupped my hands around my eyes and peered into the front window. What I expected to see was an empty room with a few cable ends protruding from blank walls. What I found was a room decorated with an old plaid couch, a scarred early American style end table and five pizza boxes stacked neatly in the front foyer.

  I rattled the front door knob again. The house was locked up tight, but not because Bank of America wanted things safe and sound. I chewed my lip and glanced back into the mailbox. The mail was new: a recent edition of Parent’s magazine, the PG & E bill and flyers from the local pizza restaurant. The bills and magazine were addressed to the same name. I squinted at the information on my listing print-out, not the same name as the defaulted former mortgage holder.

  Well, what do you know?

  I called the Christopher’s office.

  “Hi, this is Allison Little with New Century, I am at Beach Street, one of your REO’s. Did you know the lock box is missing?”

  “No it’s not. All our bank owned properties have lock boxes.” The secretary or administrative assistant assured me haughtily as if I accused her of nefarious activity or even negligence.

  “I’m sure they do, but this one is missing, you may want to check.” I suggested evenly.

  She sighed elaborately. “I’m sure you’re wrong.” She hung up.

  I was not impressed with their customer service.

  I fumed about my treatment all the way back to the office, about a five-minute drive. I didn’t mean to broadcast my discovery, but I may have mentioned the listing and my treatment to Rosemary as soon as I walked into the office.

  “Really? A squatter in one of their REOs?” Rosemary twisted her copper and magnet bracelets happily.

  “Really? A squatter?” Katherine rounded the corner and joined happy Rosemary in the lobby. “Do you know if they’re paying rent, you know that makes a difference. And to whom? Do you know how much they’re paying?”

  “I would assume they pay rent to the bank, month to month while the house is being sold.” It was a big assumption. We all heard the rumors: there were too many re-possessed, foreclosed, abandon homes to keep track of, assuming you cared to keep track. And the banks did not care all that much. Some homes were deserted like unwanted pets. And some homes were managed by hired companies like Christopher and Christopher to manage and sell REOs (Real Estate Owned, it’s a bank term). It did not take much imagination or even effort for an enterprising middle person to claim full ownership of a property and rent out a house they didn’t own to an unsuspecting and desperate renter. But I was trying to take the high road. It was a fruitless effort; I like short cuts too much.

  “We must see.” Rosemary ducked back in her office and retrieved her late model Coach purse. “It matters to whom they pay the rent, does it not?”

  “Yes, we must do due diligence.” Katherine grabbed her computer and tucked it under her arm. “What’s the address?”

  I reluctantly gave it to them, it was pointless to hold back, Patricia could look it up in a second. And I realized it would be churlish not to give in. Not when they were both so pleased.

  Katherine scribbled the address on a sticky note, smacked it onto the screen of her phone and the two of them disappeared.

  “Where are those two going?” Inez clacked into the lobby, her high heels hard on the wood floor.

  “Checking on a house.” I said honestly.

  “Together?”

  I glanced at Patricia, who was uncharacteristically silent.

  “Yes.” I confirmed.

  “Good, it’s about time they found a project together.” Inez said.

  As she left, I glanced again at Patricia who was frowning at her email.

  We were three days out from the wintery opening party. Ben was deeply embroiled with his second project (the first being our new home and I hoped, still number one) and I was reduced to calling him and leaving messages, which, eventually he returned, but only when I was behind my noisy vacuum or carrying out yet another armload of books that my stager, Stacey, deemed unsightly. For some unfathomable reason she was dead certain that the sight of shelves and shelves of used, crumbly paperbacks would not help sell the house.

  I also emptied all the closets and aligned the hangers so they were two inches apart, just in case anyone looked.

  Ben came over Friday night after over-seeing the preparations for the winery opening.

  “Now I know for certain. I don’t want a huge massive wedding.” He sank into my favorite leather chair, flung his head back and closed his eyes.

  I studied him. He was fully capable of acting overbearing and bombastic. But he was really a softie. He was kind and solicitous to anything that seemed lost: small children, dogs, deer and miss Cassandra Caughnaught.

  “You look disturbed.” He did not open his eyes.

  I glanced down at my stance; I had unconsciously placed my hands on my hips as if gearing up for a confrontation when I wasn’t really gearing up for anything but a lovely night together.

  “Wine?”

  He groaned. “No wine, I may never drink again, God, the wine, the cleaning, the hysteria. She kept nattering on about how she had a complete handle on the situation, and everything was fine and under control. You should see the office, it’s packed with half entered forms, the report of wine premises operations isn’t even finished and we need that signed and submitted in order to do anything at all. She hasn’t returned her forms to the TTB. Her wine came in from the Hunter Valley, fills half the warehouse, we had to stack it too high, but she said it would be all right. I don’t even know if we can pour it tomorrow, it may still be in bottle shock. And we can’t sell a single damn bottle yet.”

  He rolled forward and rested his head in his hands. “God. Don’t take up wine making.”

  “I thought of something more pleasant and lady-like: lion taming, big game hunting.”

  “Good, that works for me.” He rolled his head in his hands massaging his neck muscles.

  “How’s the red?”

  “She said it was mostly in barrel, nothing is ready to taste. Remind me not to invest in another winery.”

  “Don’t invest in another winery.” I replied helpfully. “Come on, we’ll go to Giostra for dinner.”

  “You’re not cooking?”

  “I’m keeping the kitchen clean for the open house.” I replied sanctimoniously.

  He snorted, at least in his role as a wine investor he had not ended his day covered in dust, splinters or Gorilla glue, but he looked a little done in none the less.

  Ben’s moratorium on wine lasted until we entered the restaurant. Over bruschetta and my favorite Alfredo dish he caught me up.

  “Besides the wonderful you, who else is helping her?”

  He looked up from his angel hair pasta and a slow grin spread across his face. “O’Reilly is helping. That makes the two of us investing again in Cassandra, only now he wants her back.”

  “That’s a switch.”

  Ben nodded and twirled his pasta. “Cassandra seems to be focused on someone else though, she’s not giving Peter the time of day, even after he dropped two million on her.”

  I stopped spinning my pasta.

  He nodded.
“That’s how we got it all up and running. I just gave her some more to make sure all that paper work is filed. O’Reilly is bringing in one of his secretaries to help Cassandra. I’m not worried about the opening, but I don’t want her doing anything under the table during the wedding. That would be bad for Patrick.”

  “Two million?”

  He grinned. “See what we do for love?”

  I shook my head. I knew Ben was into this winery at least as much as O’Reilly. It only bothered me a little. If I were thin and wore flowing clothes, I could get men to invest millions of dollars into my vanity project. But to be honest, I didn’t need the money.

  He took another sip of wine. “Did I tell you that up until last year the vineyard was contracted out to Wind Runner Winery in Napa?”

  “I know that wine, they get something like $2,400 a bottle on auction. Patrick once bought a bottle.”

  Ben nodded. “I have too. It’s pretty damn awesome.”

  “Would you pay $2,400 for it?”

  “No, no more than $900.”

  “And have you?”

  He ignored my question. “Based on that, O’Reilly and I were pretty enthusiastic about the idea of Cassandra making her own Zin.” He regarded the wine in his glass. “The whites she made in Australia were marvelous.”

  I leaned back and sipped the considerably less expensive Barbara from Amador County. I was not going to argue with him about the white Hunter Valley wineI just drank at Cassandra’s and I wasn’t going to pursue the question of finances. I don’t ask what he does with his money and he doesn’t ask me what I do with mine, although he has accidentally seen my shoe collection.

  “The winery has everything. You’ve been there, the old Von Graffen winery never looked so good.”

  “It looked good.” I agreed. For an overblown, Disney-like version of a Greek Revival winery.

  He took a few more bites of pasta before continuing. I was happy to listen, the Garcia’s promised to check out the three listings I recommended tomorrow while I was at the winery opening. That they were independent was a point in their favor. I was feeling nice and mellow. O’Reilly was more heavily invested than Ben. Was anyone else bankrolling Cassandra?