“Oh . . . er . . . right,” he said, clearly remembering no such thing. He rose and pulled up a chair for me.
Turning to me, Jenny set her glass on the table. “After I left this morning, I realized that I’d forgotten my loom in my car. I came by to drop it off, and who opens the door but Matthew?”
I wondered briefly if that was just her excuse to see Matthew, but when I glanced at her, she looked sincere. “I’m glad you’re here and Matthew didn’t have to wait all by himself.”
“I only arrived a few minutes ago,” he said.
Jenny turned back to me. “Did you see anything you liked?” For a second my mind blanked. “Weren’t you out looking at houses?”
“Oh, right.” I nodded. “I was. Actually there’s one place I sort of liked and one I absolutely loved. But that one is listed for sale—not for rent—which makes it impossible.” I shrugged. “It’s really too bad because it’s absolutely gorgeous. I wouldn’t have had to do a thing . . . except get a whole lot of stock. It’s huge. The other one I saw is a little house almost identical to this one. It’s at the other end of Main Street.”
“Oh, I know the place you’re talking about. That used to be Mrs. McLeay’s house. She lived there her whole life, until she went into a respite-care facility about a year and a half ago. Now it belongs to an out-of-town nephew of hers.” She crinkled her nose. “But doesn’t that house need a ton of work?”
“It sure does, which is the main reason I’m hesitating. Most of the work would be cosmetic, mind you, but it would take a ton of plaster and paint. I doubt it would be difficult, just time-consuming—so I could probably do most of it myself.”
Matthew picked up the bottle, offering refills all around. “Speaking of plaster and paint, I can’t believe all the work you did on this house. It looks great. But where did my living room and dining room furniture go?” He looked a bit worried.
“It’s all upstairs in the third bedroom, including a really ugly green La-Z-Boy I had half a mind to throw out. As for the painting, don’t worry about it. I didn’t do that much.”
Jenny’s eyebrows jumped up. “What are you talking about, you didn’t do much? You did a lot. I remember how this place used to look.”
Just how often has Jenny been here? I wondered. Meanwhile, she was looking at Matthew apologetically. “Sorry, Matthew. No disrespect, but you have to admit, when it comes to housekeeping you’re the worst. What Della’s done is nothing short of a miracle.” She pointed a finger at him. “And just so you know, if it had been up to me, that ugly recliner would be landfill by now.” She turned back to face me. “He never notices when something needs fixing. The roof could leak, the walls could be falling down, and he’d have his nose stuck in one of his books, completely oblivious to the disaster around him.” She shook her head in mock exasperation. “A typical absentminded professor, that’s what he is.”
Matthew smiled at the description. “Now I can be an absentminded author.”
Jenny rolled her eyes, and out of nowhere she said, “You’re in love, aren’t you? I can see it in your aura. So tell me all about her. Who is she? How did you two meet?”
Matthew looked momentarily stunned, blood rushing to his face. “I’m not seeing anyone right now,” he said sharply.
She frowned. “What do you mean? You look—”
“Whatever you think you’re seeing, you’re reading it wrong.” His tone was meant to end the subject.
Jenny continued. Whether she was being obstinate or just oblivious, I wasn’t sure. “Well, then,” she said, grinning, “that’s a problem. What you need is a woman in your life. I know lots of nice women—clients at the store. I’ll set you up with one of them. Don’t worry. I’ll find you someone wonderful.” Her eyes were gleaming with excitement.
He was already shaking his head. “Thanks, but I can find my own dates, Jenny.”
“Give me one good reason why not.”
“At the moment, all I’m interested in is getting this book written.” He turned to me. “Jenny’s right about one thing. I had no idea how much work you put into this place. When you asked me if you could do a little painting, that’s what I expected. But you repainted the whole house. And you refinished the floors.” He sounded impressed. “Am I wrong or did you also paint the outside of the house?”
I waved away his concern. “Not the entire outside. Only the front door and the window casings.”
He rolled his eyes, and looked at Jenny. “‘Only,’ she says, as if she only worked a couple of hours.” He turned back to me. “You must have spent a small fortune in paint alone. Just tell me how much I owe you.”
“Oh, come on. I don’t want your money. I was happy to do it.” I looked around at the soft yellow walls. “You don’t think the place looks too feminine, do you?”
Jenny interrupted. “Don’t ask him anything about interior decorating. Do you really think he notices things like the color of the walls?”
“I did notice. Didn’t I just tell Della what a nice job she did?”
“Only because I pointed it out.”
I laughed. “I hate to tell you, Matthew, but I think I’m with Jenny on this one.”
He looked sheepish. “Still, I can see you did a lot of work. Tell you what. When you move, I’ll paint, fix, and do anything that needs doing in your new place. How’s that?”
“When you move,” he’d said. Obviously, he wanted me out—not that I could blame him. I’d want my living space back too if I were him. I put on a smile. “That’s an offer I’ll gladly accept. Thank you.”
Jenny set her glass down. “Well, I think I’ll call it a night. I have to get up early. Fran has a dentist appointment tomorrow morning, and I agreed to take over the store for a couple of hours.”
I glanced at my watch. It was only a few minutes after eight. “What time does the shop open?”
“At ten, but I do an hour or two of yoga first thing in the morning. It’s like meditation for me.”
An hour or two of yoga! I swallowed hard. Well, that settled it. I would never—in a million years—have a body like hers. Even on the off chance that I took up exercising, I wasn’t about to give up any of my favorite dishes—fried chicken, buttermilk biscuits, corn bread, pecan pie . . . The list was a long one.
“You should join me sometime,” she added. “You’d love it.”
Sure, I would. “I’m afraid I’m not into yoga. My joints are so stiff I can barely touch my toes.”
A horrified expression descended on her face. “That’s terrible. Maybe you could do Bikram yoga.”
“What’s that?”
Her eyes grew wide as if she could hardly believe her ears. “You mean you’ve never even heard of it? It’s yoga done in a hot and humid environment. It makes you sweat like a horse, but it also makes you lose a ton of weight. And the heat also increases flexibility. It’s really good for you.”
I could think of another, much more pleasurable way of getting hot and sweaty, which didn’t involve twisting my body into a pretzel. I decided to change the subject.
My eyes darted to Matthew. “Did you have dinner yet?”
“No, actually I haven’t. Jenny, why don’t you stay and have a bite with us? I’ll just go pick up some pizza or Chinese food.”
I jumped to my feet and headed for the fridge. “Don’t be silly. I’ll make something. How about—”
“You sit,” he ordered. I moved away from the fridge and sat. “Now, what would you ladies like? You can have anything you want.”
Unfortunately what I really wanted—a successful business and maybe a nice place to move into—was not on the menu.
Chapter 9
“Anything we wanted” meant exactly that: anything ranging from Chinese, to Italian, to Greek, to Japanese. And I was probably forgetting half a dozen other choices. Briar Hollow had only a couple of restaurants, wh
ich specialized in nothing but had menus offering dishes from every country in the world, none of which they had mastered. So when Matthew returned from picking up dinner, we sat down to dry nori rolls and soggy tempura, and the conversation wound its way back to the two properties I’d just seen.
Matthew slathered enough wasabi on his rolls for an atomic brain explosion. “So explain to me why you can’t get the space you really like?”
I watched, wide-eyed with morbid fascination, as he dipped the roll into soy sauce and then popped it into his mouth. He chewed, swallowed—and his eyes never even watered. The man must have been made of steel.
I said, “It’s for sale—not rent. Until I’ve sold my condo, I can’t even think about buying a property. And with the state of the economy, who knows how long that will take. Also, I’m just starting a new business, and it’s not exactly profitable yet.”
Jenny leaned toward Matthew. “What she’s saying is she’s like me, broke.”
“I understand.” I could see the wheels turning in his mind. “I think there might be a way around that.”
I helped myself to another roll, squeezing on the teensiest dollop of wasabi. “You wouldn’t say that if you saw my bank account.”
He ignored my comment, continuing patiently. “As bad as the real estate market is in Charlotte, it’s ten times worse in Briar Hollow.”
Across from me, Jenny was already nodding. “He’s right. Mrs. McLeay’s house has been empty ever since she moved out.” She tilted her head. “So, where is this gorgeous place you can’t afford?”
“It’s the empty store right past the watchmaker.” I went on to describe the shop and the two upstairs apartments in salivating detail.
Matthew put down his chopsticks. “I know the place you’re talking about. That’s been empty for a long time.” He turned to Jenny. “Wasn’t it some kind of women’s clothing store?”
“How can you not remember? It used to be Sally’s Salon. She went under—let’s see, oh—about two years ago.”
He shrugged. “It’s not like I ever shopped there.”
“Two years? And it’s been empty ever since?” I was surprised. “How come?”
Jenny pushed back her plate. “The shop part has been empty, but both apartments were rented until recently.”
Matthew said, “The owner probably wanted the apartments empty in case a buyer would want to occupy one.”
That made sense. My agent in Charlotte had told me much the same thing—that my condo would sell more easily untenanted. I said, “Two years is a long time for a store to be empty.”
“In this economy, people aren’t rushing out to start new businesses,” he said.
I grimaced. “Unless they’ve completely lost their minds—like me.”
Matthew leaned over and patted my hand. “I can’t think of anyone who’s more levelheaded than you. I have an idea. Why don’t you offer a lease-to-own deal? Who knows, in this economy sales are so hard to get that the seller might accept. You would have to pay a premium on top of the monthly rent, but at the end of the lease period, that amount would be credited against the purchase price.”
I leaned against the back of my chair, thinking. “What’s the catch?”
“The drawback is that if you decided not to buy, the premium you paid would be forfeited.”
I mulled the idea over. “A lease to own—it’s an interesting idea. I wonder why more people don’t think of that.”
“Sellers prefer a straight sale because they get their money right away. But when real estate markets go flat, an imperfect deal is better than no deal.”
I frowned. “I wonder how much rent I could get for my condo. It might be enough to cover the mortgage payments—” Another thought occurred to me. “But if my condo is tenanted, it will be even more difficult to sell.”
“That may be true.” Matthew helped himself to a few more nori rolls. “But that might be a good thing in the long run. The market is bound to turn around at some point, and when it does, your condo’s value will go back up.”
“What if the market drops even lower?”
He shook his head, dismissing my concern. “Then you simply keep it rented until things turn around.”
Jenny was studying me, a gleam of excitement in her eyes. “Are you thinking of making an offer?”
“I don’t know. A lease to own would eliminate the need for a down payment, but I don’t know that I can afford rent plus premium. It really depends on how much it would add up to.”
Jenny wagged a finger at Matthew. “You sneaky devil,” she said, laughing.
“Why? What did I do?”
She crossed her arms. “You don’t fool me one bit, Matthew Baker. You only want Della to buy that place instead of Mrs. McLeay’s old house so you won’t have to help her fix it up.”
Matthew burst out laughing. “Busted.” He winked at me. And for some odd reason my heart fluttered.
I forced myself to focus on how I could make this work—instead of losing myself in Matthew’s eyes. “You know what else is great about that place? I could live in one of the apartments and the rent from the other would help cover some of the expenses.”
For the next few minutes I calculated the potential income of the building, the probable costs, and the amount I would likely earn from my new business. “I think I could just squeak by. But I’d have to live in the smaller of the two apartments.”
Matthew plucked the last roll from the carton and dropped it on his plate. He looked at me in disbelief. “How can you even question it? That place sounds amazing. You have to give it a shot. If you don’t, I just might put an offer on it myself.”
“Trust me, I know it’s great. The problem is I’d be living dangerously close to the line. I have to find a way for the shop to make a lot more money. I’m afraid I’m in for some lean times ahead. I have no one to blame but myself. I knew, getting into this, that selling handwoven goods wasn’t exactly going to attract the hoards.”
Matthew crossed his arms and gave me his don’t-be-silly look. “Don’t you think you’re being hard on yourself? You’ve been open—what—two months?”
“Actually, only about a month. It took me a while to get set up.”
“You, of all people, should know it takes time for a business to get running. You can’t expect to make a million dollars the first year.”
I laughed. “A million dollars—as if a weaving shop could ever make that much.” I took a sip of wine and thought out loud. “There must be something I can do that will attract more customers. Maybe what I need is some other product that would tie in with weaving.”
Matthew leaned in. “Knowing you, Della, I have no doubt you’ll come up with something.” A moment later he pushed away his plate, and even though it wasn’t even ten o’clock, he pled fatigue and headed off to his room, leaving Jenny and me to do the dishes.
“Hey, how about lending us a hand here?” Jenny yelled as he went upstairs.
“He who provides the food doesn’t have to clean up,” he called back over the banister.
She planted her hands on her hips and shook her head. “Typical.”
I laughed. “You said it.” I turned on the hot water, squeezed in the liquid detergent and handed her a dishcloth. “I’ll wash. You dry.”
“Works for me.” She stacked the plates and brought them to the sink. “That man is so hardheaded—typical Taurus.” Funny, I’d known him for years and had never asked him his astrological sign. Jenny said, “I don’t understand why he won’t let me set him up with one of my friends.” She grew quiet. “It’s too bad it didn’t work out with him and Amanda. She was nice.”
If you like tall blondes with big smiles and even bigger boobs, I thought. But all I said was, “I didn’t know her very well, but she did seem nice.” I rinsed the suds off a plate, feeling guilty for being happy about Matthew a
nd Amanda’s breakup, an event that had probably caused him some pain. I handed the dish to Jenny.
She wiped it dry and set it on the counter. “I wonder who the other girl might be—the one he had feelings for. Do you have any idea?” I asked.
My eyes met hers, and all at once I wondered if it could be her. It would explain a lot, like the fact that Matthew was still unattached. Being close to Jenny’s ex, he would not have acted on those feelings. Also, just now, when Jenny had asked him about his mysterious love interest, Matthew had blushed. Maybe it was only my imagination, but I had the impression that he’d avoided her eyes. The more I thought about it, the more my theory made sense.
“I haven’t got a clue.”
Jenny picked up the stack of clean plates and put them away. “Whoever she is,” she said, turning to me, “it sounds like that relationship didn’t work out either.” She paused, dish towel in hand, and then said, “You know what I wish?”
“What?”
“I wish love didn’t have to be so complicated. Take Mike and me, for example. Do you know that he and I started dating when we were still in high school? He was my first boyfriend, my only boyfriend. We got married right after he graduated from the police academy. You would think that after a decade of marriage, a woman would know her husband.” She shrugged, looking miserable. “But just out of the blue one day, he tells me that he knows I’ve been cheating—believe me, I never, ever was unfaithful—and that he wants a divorce.” Tears hovered on her lashes. “Funny, isn’t it? I can read perfect strangers, but when it came to the person I thought I knew best, I read him all wrong.”
“Oh, Jenny, you still love him, don’t you?”
She blinked away the moisture in her eyes and gave me a brave smile. “I’m completely over him. As a matter of fact I wouldn’t have him back if he begged.” Something in her voice told me otherwise.
“Why was he so sure you were seeing someone else?”
“I don’t know. The reason he gave me doesn’t make any sense. I told you—didn’t I—that Greg Hanson went door-to-door to collect signatures for a petition against Jeremy’s project?” I shook my head, “Oh, well, Greg took it upon himself to stop Jeremy from developing that parcel of land. When he came by my place for my signature, Mike happened to drive by in his police cruiser at the very moment I was letting him in. When Mike came home later, he asked me if I’d seen anyone that day and I said that, no, I’d stayed in and hadn’t seen a soul. I wasn’t lying. It just clean slipped my mind that Hanson had dropped by. Mike served me with the divorce papers one week later. I can’t help but believe there was another reason. But whatever it might have been, I have no clue.” She sighed deeply. “After ten years of marriage. Go figure.”
Looming Murder Page 7
