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

by Catharine Bramkamp

  I don’t like lawyers, and I did not think associating with Debbie was going to change my mind.

  “Are you still practicing?” I did not want to antagonize her, these lawyers can blow at any minute. One little crack in the sidewalk or evidence of suspicious behavior hidden in the attic, and it’s lawsuit city.

  “I work on our garden. It’s organic.” She added unnecessarily.

  “That must be more relaxing that litigation.”

  “Yes.” She gnawed at a fingernail. Scott and Sarah banged down the stairs, circled us and headed to the kitchen.

  “You do know to tell people they can’t turn this into a bed and breakfast. We have too many bed and breakfasts, you know there is a new ordinance.” She said it with great pride so I could guess who was the author.

  “People can’t convert, maybe you should put that on the flyer?” She was quite helpful and clearly did not understand sales. I smiled and said nothing.

  Debbie found another errant fingernail to tortue. “Isn’t your grandmother running a bed and breakfast?” She was good. Her tone stayed conversational, and she looked me straight in the eye. I did not blink.

  “I assume that by bed and breakfast you mean paying guests?”

  “Of course.” She went for another nail.

  “I can assure you that my grandmother’s guests do not pay a penny.” Extortion, trade and the occasional distribution of controlled substances do not count.

  Debbie dropped her hands. I waited. She waited.

  “You never married did you?” I was willing to fire a direct hit just to get her out of the house. She was not going to be my friend. I had nothing to lose.

  She shook her head.

  Of course not. Maybe there was a nice woman she could meet. I don’t know why that was important, but recently I have found the tumbling and polishing of a relationship had worn down some of my own sharp edges, or maybe that was just the result of regular sex. Maybe both. My mental message to Ms Smith; lighten up and cut your hair. But I did not express that thought out loud, she may sue for wrongful beauty advice.

  Scott and Sarah returned. “Thank you, I always wanted to see this house. Grandpa talked about it all the time. He worked on the plumbing for extra money.”

  “Ah ha.” Debbie brightened up considerably at that news, amateur plumbing, non-union, payments under the table, no permits. “I better be going, there is so much do.” And with that, she launched out the door and down the front steps.

  “She’s spending too much time with Summer.” Sarah noted.

  “We ordered pizza.” Carrie announced as I let myself into the kitchen.

  “How are you doing?”

  She shrugged keeping her expression netural. She glanced around the kitchen as if looking for hidden cameras, as well she should.

  “I should be going.” She finally said. “Patrick is back home. I should be with him.”

  “What about your parents?”

  That broke her. “I don’t know!” She wailed and ran to the front parlor. A good escape from possible calls from those very parents we are all so concerned about, but not a very effective escape from me. I followed her.

  “It isn’t that difficult is it?” I thought of Scott and Sarah, the perfect couple, probably because they were young.

  “Easy for you to say.” Carrie stood off in the far corner of the parlor. This room hadn’t seen this much action since the seventies.

  “Not really.” I countered.

  “We know what I want.” Carrie deftly turned the tables on me. “What do you want?”

  Not fair, she knew my favorite subject was me, but this time I was having none of that. I resisted the urge to make it all about me again and turned the tables again. “What do you want?”

  “I want to marry Patrick.”

  I was relieved there was a name at the end of that sentence. If she had said, I just want to get married, I would have been even more depressed than I already was.

  “Then don’t let your parents come between you and your happiness.” It was at once a simple solution and a complicated answer.

  “Did you read that in some horrible inspirational blog?”

  “No, I think it’s embroidered on a pillow, somewhere around here.” I cast around the parlor littered with antique chairs and tiny pointless pillows - many of them gifts from my mother who didn’t bother to understand what her own mother would enjoy. Every year I suggest books (books and more books) but Mom thinks books are educational and thus not very festive, so she never gives books as holiday gift. Plus reading interferes with a person’s golf game.

  I give my mother books on golf. But we are discussing Carrie.

  “What did Patrick say before he left?” I asked, fluffing a tiny pillow that read Eat Dessert First.

  “He loves me.” She pouted.

  “See? Even after blurting out your past, he still loves you.” I picked up another pillow, read it, and tossed it on a narrow love seat.

  She ignored me, as if her past, because it was now so public, was no longer an issue. “His mother will insist on sending them an invitation because it’s the right thing to do and Patrick will not tell her all the sordid details to protect me because he says it isn’t anyone’s business. But then how will she understand why I hate them so much? And I know they’ll say something, something about how damaged I am, how lucky I am, how they are so pleased I can afford to support them in the manner they’d like to be accustomed.” She trailed off, the fight abruptly drained from her.

  She picked up a pillow Well Behaved Women Rarely Make History. I found that for Prue myself. “That’s really what’s bothering me.” She squeezed the pillow, and then let it fall back to the needlepoint chair seat.

  “That they will spend the next thirty years at your back door with their hands out?”

  “I thought it was the past, that when I ran away, it would all be over. I mean, who does that to a child?” She demanded, but did not, fortunately, wait for an answer. “But I know what really will drive me crazy is their constant begging, constant asking.” She rubbed her eyes. “Patrick is so easy to find.”

  “I don’t have a creative answer right now.” I admitted.

  She nodded. “You usually need about 24 hours to come up with a miracle.”

  A minute later, Pat banged on the kitchen door then let himself in. “So, did you hear?” He flopped down in the kitchen chair, one of the few floppable pieces of furniture in the house. I think at one point in the seventies, my grandfather staged a rebellion against fussy Victorian furniture and purchased kitchen chairs that were designed in the audacious service of comfort. Of course, they don’t match any other furniture in the house – no one cared.

  “I was down at the bank yesterday and you will never guess what happened!”

  “Go ahead.” I set down a glass of wine for him and kept an ear out for the pizza delivery, what an indulgence, I would have picked up.

  “The infamous Lizzie Miller, with her horrible boy friend in tow, marched down to the bank with one of Lucky’s lawyers.”

  “Was Sarah there?” I asked.

  “Sarah was sort of hovering. Buster Porter and Lizzie opened the safety deposit box and you should have heard her! Shrieked so loudly it could have shattered the windows.”

  “Was it a good shriek or a bad shriek?” I asked tentatively. I did not meet Prue’s eyes.

  “Both. Lizzie was angry that so much stock was just left in a safe deposit box. She was angry that she could have used this kind of assets when she was young. She spent a good ten minutes wailing about how the Millers had been terrible parents, withholding assets withholding love, the usual.”

  “What was in the safe deposit box?” Prue asked innocently.

  “It was crammed with stock certificates, worth about $300,000 or so. Buster could only estimate. And a couple of life insurance policies that the lawyer insisted Lizzie split with Sarah. Oh, and Lizzie signed over the house to Sarah. Right there, Sarah seemed rather prepare
d.” He looked specifically at me. I smiled and said nothing.

  Ben interrupted us. He slumped in the kitchen, shoulders hunched, head down. He looked more dejected than Summer in her best funk.

  “Where have you been?”

  “Bar.”

  “Tom Marten doesn’t mean anything to me.” I quickly protested. The rumors started at bars around here will follow you forever if you’re not careful and quick on your feet.

  He smiled wanly and dropped heavily into his chair. “This is not about you.”

  How is that possible?

  He dragged his hands through his thick hair. “I was just down at Hank’s Roadhouse, place was packed.”

  Of course it was, it always is.

  He rested his elbows on the kitchen table. “It seems most of the gun club members head over to the Roadhouse after they’ve spent the afternoon target shooting.”

  I slid into the chair next to him. I still had no idea what disturbed him, but I was relieved it wasn’t about our so-called engagement or me.

  “They are all torn up about it.” Ben said simply. “No one knows who did it, who fired the first shot, who fired the last. They are sick about being part of something so ugly. They never knew, why should they? Who would do such a thing? Who would allow innocent men to kill?”

  “A whole group of elderly genealogists?”

  He refused to take my bait. “But they don’t have specific arguments with the gun club members, quite the contrary. So why?”

  I placed my hand over his. There wasn’t a single person in Claim Jump, including my own grandmother, who had not, in some week or another, loudly complained about Lucky, publicly threaten to kill Lucky, wanted to kill Lucky, expressed out loud how easy it would be to kill Lucky, and how much pleasure they would derive in Lucky’s untimely demise. More than enough Claim Jump citizens exchanged stories about the various ways a person could kill Lucky and get away with it. The number of potential suspects was staggering, the field was crowded with possible culprits.

  And here were the murderers: innocent. Someone drove Lucky to the shooting range. Someone dragged Lucky’s body behind the targets. Someone hoped for the best.

  “Just listening to them broke my heart. People are so sweet up here.” He mused. “And innocent.”

  “Not that innocent.”

  Scott walked Sarah to her house and after making sure she really was okay, and not just saying she was okay. He wandered back downtown in the fading afternoon light. He liked the Sunday evening feel of the town, the shops were closed, the bars quiet. He was growing quite fond of Claim Jump. The ladies of the Brotherhood were relaxing a bit, especially after their first meeting under “new management” as he was introduced at the meeting, and the members were particularly pleased with his offer to allow them full run of the place until he decided what to do.

  “Yoga Studio?”

  “No.”

  He had left the ladies alone during their meeting and spent the time walking around. He walked back towards the grammar school, three long indiscriminate blocks to the right of Lucky Master’s house, then two blocks to the left just before the big walled schoolyard. Gold Way stretched across the back of the school, a dead-end street on both ends, he entered in the middle. The street was the perfect location for a kid to play ball out on the street or build things in the driveway. No wonder his dad remembered it so fondly.

  The trees were valiantly displaying flowers and new leaves under the heavy wet. In the summer, he imagined the towering elms would be leafy, verdant green. He admired big, he understood his dad’s propensity for large, which is why Dubai was just a good fit for dad. Big, bigger, best. Dad understood the Shah, Dad understood elaborate. Yet, he never stopped talking about this street and this town.

  Scott stood in the chilly air and took measure of the houses. He knew the one his dad spent summers in had been long sold to another couple, and they kept it up fairly well. The fence needed painting, but everyone’s white picket fence needed painting. Must be that time of year.

  The house to the right belonged to Mrs. Legson. Scott actually remembered her, nice old lady. She was always an old lady. By now she must be a thousand years old, if she was still alive.

  The house on the other side of his grandparents’ was painted with bright colors; the fan carving over the door was painted red, the gingerbread trim, yellow and the main house was colored purple, fading now, but probably pretty spectacular when fresh. Faded Tibetan prayer flags waved from the front porch.

  The house next to the colorful house was painted a simple green and white, it looked reproachful in its simplicity as if to say, look at those gaudy colors over there. Just look at that hippie house! Look how they show off and make a scene when the rest of us are so sensible..

  Scott sympathized with the plain house, but he liked the gaudy house too. Didn’t matter, none were for sale.

  Why wasn’t Sarah involved with some nice local boy? It was the first question that popped out of his mouth the first night they spent together. Way to go Scott.

  “A nice local boy?” She snuggled next to him and pulled the bright colored quilt she brought from home over them more closely. It was heavy and marvelously warm.

  “There were a couple of boys, when I was in high school of course, but my grandparents did not approve of me dating, probably because of my mother. She dated seriously, like it was a contact sport. That and other activities.” She trailed off.

  “So in contrast, you’re a paragon of moral rectitude.”

  She frowned. “Maybe. I really didn’t have the friends to do bad things with. You know, you need friends to really behave badly. And once I started caring full time for grandpa and grandma I didn’t have time at all. So there you go.”

  She was matter of fact about it, but it still made him wince to think about all those good years, all that wild fun, lost.

  “And I’m the first.” He confirmed unnecessarily.

  It had been simultaneously an honor and horrible. She had not really elaborated the situation until it was too late. Of course, he hadn’t pointed out how long it had been for him since his last encounter either. To be honest, his last sex had not exactly been a prelude to a relationship, or to cement a relationship, or to consummate a relationship or, never mind.

  With Sarah it did feel like the beginning of something, maybe something big.

  He rolled on his back and stared at the Northern Queen ceiling. Allison said she might have a lead on a house on Gold Way.

  He pulled Sarah closer, her slender body fitted against his as if she were made for just that purpose. “So, how are you feeling, now that your grandparents are gone?”

  “Honestly?” She rested her head on his bare chest.

  He rolled his eyes, “Well sure, honestly.” What was left but honesty?

  “I feel free.”

  Chapter Twenty-One

  That night, I curled up with my own good man. We snuggled down under Penny’s heavy quilt and felt comfortably insulated from the cold and rain whipping outside the tiny windows of the apartment. At least it stopped snowing.

  “Isn’t this fun? Just you and me.” I pulled up the quilt over our heads careful not to disturbe the candles on the head board.

  “Do you like it that way? Just you and me? I mean, is that enough?” Ben’s face was carefully composed.

  It was the closest comment he had ventured to make about my hospital stay. I blinked. He reached over my head and pulled the candle closer to see me. The power was restored, but we had discovered the romance of candlelight the night before and I could use all the romance I could muster.

  “Yes.” The word was heavy in my mouth and heavy in my heart. Was two enough? I never doubted it until last month.

  He nodded. “I think we can make it enough.” He gently stroked my lips. “You, of course, are more than enough.”

  He pulled me close and I flung my arm around him brushing the candle.

  The candle tipped over and hit the edge of the
quilt, tented up around our heads.

  “Crap.” I automatically pushed the quilt down and patted the scorched marks. It was so lovely. Tt was a shame to mar it. While I patted, I considered ways to mend it, would Penny take it back and help repair it? Could I pay her to do it?

  My efforts and plans did not affect the quilt in any way. Instead of behaving like a good, thickly sewed cotton quilt, the scorch mark bolted down to the center of the quilt and burst into flames as if fueled by a stream of lighter fluid. I yelped and threw the whole thing to the bare floor. The weight of the quilt should have smothered the fire, but it started to blaze up like eucalyptus branches on a bonfire (you only do that once, then you learn). I pulled off the wool blanket from the bed and threw it and myself on the flames, I couldn’t think of any other way. I was so involved that I forgot about Ben who had, in this tiny nanosecond, found the fire extinguisher. He pushed me off the rapidly heating wool blanket and covered the whole mess with foam.

  “My God.” I panted. “Was that thing possessed?”

  Ben pulled on his jeans. Still barefoot he quickly dragged the sodden, foam-covered quilt down the stairs, the stuffing falling out to the walkway outside, oblivious to the rain and cold.

  He paused and sniffed the air. I found an umbrella and followed. I was as lightly dressed as he was, but I didn’t care, the rain felt good. Immolation was not something I aspire to.

  Ben leaned over and pulled out a handful of stuffing from the inside of the quilt.

  “I’ve smelled this before.” He ground the stuffing between his fingers. I couldn’t see things very well, but the stuff in his hands had a glow of its own.

  “Is that.” I tentatively touched the material, now taking on rainwater and swelling in Ben’s hand.

  “I think it’s the insulation. The famous or rather infamous insulation.” He dropped the stuff and dusted his hands.

  “She stuffed this quilt with the illegal insulation Lucky used on all his homes?”

  “I bet not just this one.” Ben contemplated the soggy mess.