Catharine Bramkamp - Real Estate Diva 05 - A 380 Degree View

by Catharine Bramkamp

  “That’s what we all said. But she claimed that someone was after her.”

  “I’m certain she is not that important.” I retorted.

  Raul snorted. See? Even the funny man with thousands of hours of video in his library agreed with me.

  “Tom Marten said she was just paranoid.” Prue said.

  “She’s seems healthy enough.” I said innocently.

  “I offered to set up cameras and video tape, but she refused.” He said sadly.

  At least the woman had some common sense.

  “It was so popular for a time, people watched the lives of other people.” Raul was lost for a moment in the hazy nostalgia of three years ago.

  “Why would anyone do that?” I asked.

  “Because it was new.” Raul looked as severe as someone who resembles a cartoon character can look.

  “When she won the council seat this fall, she seemed to calm down a bit, then again I wouldn’t really know, I tend to avoid her, she’s rather intense.” Raul brooded over the screen. “I recognized her when she first came. But now, now I’m not sure.”

  “Recognized her from where?”

  He shrugged. “Where else? The City. You know what happens in the Castro, stays in the Castro.”

  “That’s Las Vegas.”

  “The eighties were very interesting,” was his cryptic rejoinder.

  Since I’m not conversant with the ways of gay men in the Castro specifically, nor the eighties in general, I did not particularly have any reference point nor did I want to know more about what or why Debbie was hanging out in the Castro, shopping? The restaurants? I am more hopelessly bourgeois than I thought. I dropped it. I did wonder who bankrolled her sudden and wildly successful campaign against a local woman who knows where all the bodies are buried, so to speak.

  “If Lucky was bankrolling her campaign,” Prue read my mind. “He got a rude surprise, Debbie has been battling him ever since. She’s belligerent about everything just like that last lawyer the city hired, he was bad news.” Prue shook her head, dismissing all lawyers, as she tends to do.

  I knew more than I should about that last scenario and wasn’t interested in a replay of those painful events.

  “Oh, all right.” Summer glared at Pat. “I’ll find something else. Honestly, you people. Come on Debbie.” She stomped into the dining room. “Can I have this hutch?”

  “Be our guest.” Pat called back.

  Normally I would hire a Stager to take care of my listing. My favorite stager owns a warehouse filled with appropriate furniture guaranteed to make the house look desirable. But one seller didn’t have extra funds for such things and the other seller didn’t give a damn. There would probably be just enough original furniture left to make the house appear slightly a little less cavernous. I could imagine the front rooms decorated with my own furniture, mentally eliminating the heavy, gloomy Victorian original furniture and just seeing the big bay windows and high ceilings, but few buyers could visualize their life and their belongings in an empty house. A few chairs and tables scattered about help immensely.

  Once Summer took her stage props, she optimistically labeled another half dozen pieces with her own orange sticky notes, to be picked up later, and she and Debbie were ready to go.

  “We’ll come tomorrow to get the rest of the furniture.” She called over her shoulder, halfway across the street. I waved from the front door like June Cleaver and disappeared inside.

  Once the troops retreated, I was left to execute Plan B: the un-glamorous job of clearing out the closets. Penny instructed me to throw out anything that didn’t move, and if anything did move, call the exterminators. I had no problem tossing unwanted items, but I was careful about disturbing any small, animated residents.

  By the time I moved upstairs to the bedroom closets it was starting to get dark: five o’clock. I dragged a big garbage bag into the guest bedroom and began emptying out the tiny closet. I piled discarded clothes, blankets and quilts into the garbage bags: most was destined for Hospice, I would relinquish very little to the garbage. As Prue would say, there was still some good left in the stuff.

  I found a stash of five more of Penny’s beautiful quilts and immediately called Summer.

  She crossed the street seconds after I hung up.

  “You found more? Oh my God, those are exquisite, just look at her workmanship.”

  Summer put her hands on hips and shook her head. “I can’t believe he just hid them here, they should be appreciated, they should be used.”

  I folded them carefully, they were stiff and a bit awkward but that was due to the batting and all those stitches. Penny sewed the quilts by hand; Carrie showed me the tiny, more uneven, stitches. The batting was so thick it must have been a tremendous project to make so many tiny stitches on such a big quilt.

  “There are already a couple on the upstairs guests beds. Why don’t you take these for more fundraising or decoration?” I handed the heavy pile to Summer who almost dropped them.

  “Don’t you want one?” She offered.

  “I have one.” I reminded her.

  “That’s right. You know, Penny doesn’t give those away to just anyone.”

  “I’ll consider myself special.” I reassured her.

  In the typical Victorian, the master bedroom is located at the front of the house, overlooking the street. But that position is terrible feng shui, not to mention just noisy. So Lucky created a master bedroom across the back of the house, with a narrow porch attached that perched over the downstairs great room and overlooked the rest of the garden.

  I would have expected someone like Lucky to re-create the halls of Versailles in his bedroom, something along the lines of a kingly canopy over the large bed, long silk curtains held up by gilded cherubs clutching huge ostrich feathers in their tiny chubby fists. Something appropriate for his station in life.

  Nope, his bedroom was decorated in late Mission, a man with style after my own heart. The head and footboards for the bed were made of thick, straight slats. His king-size bed was too large for the stairs, it would need to be winched out through the large French doors off the porch, which I suspected was the way it had come in. Three big deep chairs, all accompanied by reading lamps, were scattered around the room. Filled bookshelves lined two of the walls. Chris and Pat’s yellow stickies fluttered from the bed, chairs and end tables. All of this would go.

  I automatically approached the bookshelves. No yellow or orange stickies here. Pat and Mike didn’t deal in books.

  I pulled out first editions of Tom Sawyer, Vanity Fair and Little Women. Not bad. Claim Jump hosted the most bookstores of any town in the state, someone would be able to sell these, or at least appreciate them. I hefted the Alcott volume. I appreciated it. I wondered if Penny would sell these to me, or trade against my commission. It wouldn’t be the first time I indulged in a trade of that nature.

  The three front rooms and two baths were either empty or tagged. One room still held a cleared desk, his office at home. But Lucky also kept an office in a building he owned in downtown. The same lawyer, Buster Parker, asked me to list the commercial building on Kentucky Street, apparently Penny didn’t want the rent from that either. Silly woman.

  Selling Luck’s commercial building was easy. I called Pat and Mike first, and they immediately gave me an offer. “This will be just delicious,” Pat crowed. “We’ve wanted this building since we first moved here. But Lucky outbid us. So we bought the place down the block, which turned out beautifully, make no mistake, but still, that was always such a great location, and already wired for internet and the like. Does the furniture come with it?”

  “Probably. Do you want me to call Penny?”

  “No, I will. We’ll draw up the paper work whenever you’re ready.”

  I was relieved they wanted it. Too many buildings already stood empty in Claim Jump’s downtown. That bothered me, as the unofficial Miss Chamber of Commerce of Claim Jump I don’t like to see empty buildings or faltering
businesses. We now had Lucky’s office, and the Library, plus this house that could not be used for commercial purposes. So many possibilities, so little time.

  In honor of the inaugural Lucky Master’s Personal Home Open House I dressed in my now familiar funeral ensemble, something I’d have to rectify soon. I didn’t care how casual Claim Jump was, I was personally opposed to wearing the same outfit to every event. In my funeral black and Louboutin high heel pumps, I was the picture of prosperity. My goal was to attract potential clients loaded with money to lavish on an old (sorry, antique) house, that for its part, would accommodate a large income by always needing repairs.

  The photos I posted on the web site showed the house to advantage, both enormous and elegant. Not many homes could claim to be located smack in the middle of town. Most homes in Claim Jump were “close to town” or “walking distance” which was a relative and often flexible term. I mentioned that the theater across the street offered a limited run of performances so prospective buyers wouldn’t think their front stoop would be overrun by rowdy patrons of the arts on a nightly basis. As usual, I had the web site, the flyers, the ads, the Facebook postings, everything that I knew would be effective.

  And I anticipated that the outcome of all my hard work would result in a Sunday afternoon spent alone. I wandered around the house for a good hour, alert to the creak of the front door hinge or the squeak of the loose board on the third porch step.

  It was already April 14th, I had been up here for three weeks. It felt like a lifetime. My shoes clacked back and forth on the hardwood lined second floor. Like Prue’s house, Lucky’s had one of those superfluous widow’s walks perched on the roof like a third layer on a cake made with a left over batter and an odd sized pan. But while Prue’s widow walk was reached by a pull down ladder, Lucky’s widow walk was equipped with stairs, albeit very narrow stairs. Ben and I had noticed them during the funeral, but that would have been presumptuous in the extreme to disappear and climb up to take in the view. But not today.

  I risked missing a guest and potential buyer, and cautiously steped up the narrow creaky stair. The tiny room was enclosed with dirty glass, but the floor was stable, a person could just fit a tiny table and chair up here. A person could pretend she was Louisa May Alcott writing in the attic.

  The bare branches of the huge maple tree in the front yard arched over the top of the roof creating a tree house effect. I was enchanted. I could see the front stoop from my perch. Debbie walked over to the theater and disappeared inside. Tourists paused at the fence, then moved on. I could see up and down Main Street. I could stay up here all day. But no, I must play Realtor today.

  I turned and took a step back to the narrow opening leading to the stairs. My foot caught on a floorboard and I almost sprawled down the stairs. I caught my balance and leaned over to push back the floorboard. It resisted. I pushed it again, there was something wedged under it.

  I glanced back out the window. So far, no one approached. I fully expected Debbie to march over here after her visit with Summer, doing the rounds, intent on due diligence.

  I tentatively pressed on the floorboard. The only time something interesting is found under the floorboards of an old house is when they are found between the pages of my favorite mystery novels. In real life, stuff under a floor ends up just being dusty and boring.

  I stepped on one end of the board to lift the opposite side enough to wedge my fingers under it, very carefully of course, no treasure is worth a trashed manicure.

  I pulled and board came up with a shriek of nails. I glanced outside again. Good, no one heard, although a haunted house is popular. I wasn’t up for a ghost story, and Lucky would have scared off ghosts a long time ago, unless they materialized monthly bearing rent checks.

  I pulled out a thick shopping bag. It was printed with a sewing needle and thread logo and an address in Sacramento. I would not be familiar with a fabric store of any ilk but the bag was nice. I opened it cautiously, old fabric? Pins and needles set to explode?

  At first it looked like a jumble of charred plastic. I gingerly pulled out the top item and immediately dropped it. It bounced grotesquely around the tiny room and rolled right to my foot. It was a charred baby doll head, burned beyond recognition.

  The whole bag was filled with mangled, melted baby doll heads.

  Chapter Twenty

  “Helloooo?”

  Debbie on cue. I glanced back down at the bag and decided quickly that discretion was the better part of valor and shoved the bag stuffed with the rouge burn victims back under the floor and stomped the floorboard back down.

  “Hi.” I called as I carefully staggered down the narrow stairs. “I’m up here, come on up.”

  I landed on the second floor just as Debbie emerged up the stairs: wild hair, followed closely by a full-blown nineteen seventies psychedelic green caftan. I did not know caftans were made anymore. She must have rescued it from the Hospice store in town.

  “So, how’s it going?” As if she somehow missed a horde of prospective buyers stomping through the bedrooms.

  I kept my eyes on her face and away from the widow’s walk stairs.

  “It’s going well, this is the first open house of course, it takes a while to get some traction.”

  She nodded to the stairs. “That’s going to give you some trouble.”

  “What?” I looked back at the stairs half expecting to see escaped baby doll heads bouncing down the stairs. No, all was quiet. Perhaps they just rolled around at night.

  “You don’t want people to climb up those stairs, it’s too narrow, probably not up to code. Do you have homeowners insurance?”

  “Penny does.” I reassured the lawyer. But I was happy to move her away from the stairs and the potential danger. I made a mental note to post a sign with a photo of the view with a warning to not use the stairs.

  “Good, we wouldn’t want anything to happen.”

  Anything more to happen, I thought. I gestured to the upstairs bedrooms but apparently Debbie had seen enough. She abruptly turned and banged downstairs, her clunky, probably comfortable shoes, made heavy thudding noises on the hardwood stairs. Like Herman Munster. He would fit nicely in this house, come to think of it.

  I took one last look at the narrow staries and followed Debbie down. I found her lecturing Scott and Sarah by the front door.

  “I like to keep an eye on everything that is going on.” Debbie crossed her arms under her low slung breats.

  “Of course you do.” Sarah smiled quite sweetly and I could actually see Debbie’s shoulders drop an inch or two. Wow, maybe I underestimated Sarah, I should stop assuming that just because a girl is pretty, she doesn’t have skills or guile.

  “Are you looking for a house as well?” Debbie squinted at Scott, who, after a month of exposure to the Brotherhood, was able to hold his ground.

  “Yes, I think I’ll settle here. You seem to like it.” He nodded at Debbie.

  Debbie sidestepped that loaded question. I looked out the front windows. What I needed were potential clients from out of town, not these uninterested locals staring at each other, taking up space.

  “This place will take a lot of work.” Debbie commented, as if her job here was to talk potential buyers out of considering the house.

  “Are you in the market?” Scott asked innocently.

  “Hell no, I’ve had it with these old houses - dangerous - I have a place in the co-housing up the street.”

  I knew that co-housing place. “And that of course is all up to code.” It had to be, they got government funding to finish the project. It was a lovely idea, a group of strangers all wearing sensible shoes, living cozily together and cooking dinner every night in the big communal kitchen. Shoot me.

  “Not only is it up to code, it’s sustainable housing.” She scowled and her shoulders hunched up again. She must have been Nurse Ratched in another life. “We are very green, we live responsibly.”

  “I’m sure you do.” I said soothingly. “Is
there anything I can tell you about the house?”

  I had created a brochure for the house with the help of Prue and the historical society, many of who were also members of the Brotherhood. If anyone had the goods on the house, they would. And if I really want to sell an old house, it must have history. I handed Debbie the brochure and she took it without much enthusiasm.

  “I suppose this place isn’t up to code at all.” She brightened at the thought and glanced around with a renewed vigor, ready to find violations, ready to file a new report.

  “It was built before the code was written.” I glanced at my watch. I wondered how Carrie was doing, and Prue. I needed to close up and get back to them.

  I shooed Scott and Sarah upstairs to look at the bedrooms and warned them not to hike up the stairs to the top of the house. Debbie planted herself in the hallway, her substantial butt precariously resting on a narrow antique hall table. An orange sticky note fluttered from the leg. Good, it wasn’t valuable.

  I was defeated. “So what does bring you to Claim Jump?” I glanced at my watch again, fifteen more minutes and I could legitimately close up the house and rescue what was left of my Sunday.

  “I moved up here to supposedly save my soul. I was really good at what I did, made a lot of money in the 80s, but it wasn’t working too well. I had health problems.”

  “What kind of law?” I asked tentatively. I did not know if I really wanted the answer.

  “Real estate law.”

  I stifled a groan. Real estate lawyers think every real estate agent they meet is a crook, a shyster and ready to debunk every client who signs a listing agreement. To real estate lawyers, Realtors are the enemy. I had a client/evil lawyer once berate me saying I was just out for the money and didn’t care about him or his family at all. I finally broke down and pointed out that I make one percent of the sale price and he was buying a condo and if I wanted money, I’d go into banking and bleed customers slowly through more traditional methods like torture and predatory interest rates.