Catharine Bramkamp - Real Estate Diva 02 - Time Is of the Essence

by Catharine Bramkamp

  I let out a breath.

  It was okay. We had the paper work. It was signed. I let out a huge sigh of relief. I even dutifully counted off “six,” just for Katherine.

  I called the Browns and left a message, then called Patricia on her own cells and instructed her to open escrow.

  Escrow – breath.

  Now I could concentrate on my grandmother’s problems.

  The library was one more block up the street. It was my other favorite summer hang out.

  The building was constructed from huge slabs of chiseled bricks, gray granite glittering with pyrite. The double doors were carved of solid oak, the kind you can’t get anymore. I was sure the doors were completely solid.

  I paused. To my left was a small park. It used to be open space, but now it was fenced in. Enormous, ancient Elm trees arched over head and shaded the entire park. It was as perfect a reading environment as anything I’ve ever experienced.

  Now of course, a bar close by would make it perfect.

  Wait, there were a number of bars down the hill. Oh, so it is perfect.

  I glanced at the operating hours – Tuesday through Saturday 11:00 to 4:00 PM. One of the many unintended consequences of Proposition 13; reduced library hours.

  I pushed open the door and climbed the main stairs, the ancient rubber treads kept my shoes steady on the worn linoleum.

  The main lobby was just as I left it an embarrassing number of years ago. I should get out more, maybe Prue was right.

  To my left was the children’s section, three walls of low bookcases and short tables and chairs positioned in the middle. Tall windows, two stories in height, framed the green elms in the park. The filtered light made the space look like a scene from CS Lewis or Wrinkle in Time. A child’s fantasy of what a library should be like.

  They should all be old – libraries not children.

  To my right housed a small fiction and non-fiction section. Again, this area was perfect. Tall bookshelves, so tall you needed to fetch the ladder that connected to a sliding rail to reach the very top shelf. The aisle between the bookshelves was just wide enough for a single person to enter. Children were not supposed to use the ladder – indeed children were not suppose to spend any time unaccompanied in those shelves.

  As a child, I was there every afternoon. Unaccompanied.

  It seemed that all the really good books were placed on the very top shelf. I think that’s always the case.

  “Hello,” I greeted the middle-aged woman sitting behind the front desk. How do I know she was middle aged? Well, she was dressed in a jumper coupled with a pink tee shirt. Her hair was neatly combed into small gray curls.

  Instead of a card file, she was surrounded by ancient computer monitors. I could hear the grinding of the CPU under her desk. Okay, some things should not be old. I apologize.

  “I’m looking for the City Council minutes.” I said.

  She looked at me as if I were twelve and attempting to check out an Erica Jong novel.

  “I don’t know if we have those here,” her voice was very soft.

  “Well, is the old librarian here?” I asked as quietly as I could.

  “Keep you voice down please, this is a library.” She automatically responded.

  I looked around, no child at the tables, there was no elderly man dozing over the New York Times. The library was as silent as Saturday afternoon at the office.

  “I think they’re suppose to be on file at the public library.” I whispered.

  “I’m sure they used to be, but I said, I don’t think they’re here now, at least I haven’t seen anything come through.” She whispered back.

  “How long have you been here?” I asked. Quietly.

  “About ten years.”

  “Is Mrs. Stevens here?” If anyone would know about the City Council minutes, Claire Stevens would. Mrs. Stevens was very focused on rules and doing the right thing. She busted me one year for my literature choices. She was so concerned about the adult mysteries I was checking out that she actually called Prue. Prue had to come all the way downtown (1/2 mile, but that’s how the locals think about distance: all the way downtown) and vouch for my preciousness and explain to Mrs. Stevens who my mother was.

  Oh, said Mrs. Stevens with an expression, that as a 12 year old, I did not understand at all.

  “Oh, well then. She can go ahead. At least this one looks lively.”

  “Yes, she is.” Prue patted my head. I simply clutched the mysteries to my chest – John D MacDonald, Anne Perry, Elizabeth George, Elizabeth Peters, Nevada Barr, Tom Clancy. I was an eclectic reader and Grandma didn’t limit me the way I was limited at home.

  “Why are you wasting you time reading?” My mother would stand in my room, hands on her slender hips. “No wonder you have a problem with your weight, you’re not moving around. You father is going out for nine holes, go out at join him, get some fresh air.”

  So I would make a big show of going out for fresh air, get into the cart with Dad, wave to my mother. And as soon as we were out of sight and on the way to the back nine, I’d fish out the emergency book from Dad’s bag and read happily for two hours while he played.

  “Claire passed away a couple years ago.” The librarian dropped her voice even lower and softer, it that was possible. I strained to hear her.

  “Mrs. Stevens is dead?” I said stupidly.

  “She was 85,” the woman pointed out.

  It took me a second to recover. “Can I look at where the city records are suppose to be kept?” I asked, nicely. This was not the DRE, this was a library, a friendly place, completely gutted by the vagrancies and broken promises born from years of inadequate funding.

  Which is why this Mrs. Stevens – her desk plate read - was alone at her post on this Wednesday afternoon. And that’s why all she could do was point the way downstairs to the basement (one of the few in California, but Claim Jump had been built by east coast transplants – oh and they also brought trees, something I haven’t quite figured out. Who leaves for the gold mines in California and says – Gold pan? Check. New Levi jeans? Check. Ready cash to spend foolishly on women? Check. Three Red Leaf Maple saplings? Check. I don’t even know if I want to meet the man who traveled all the way to the west coast clutching a leaf maple saplings and a dream. But the trees here do produce fabulous bright colors in the fall. The leaves were just now starting to turn from dusty summer to yellow, red and orange. But not quite yet, that will be October. This was still September).

  The basement is just as you’d expect if you spent your childhood poking around a 100 year old stone library building looking for books filled with language that would make your mother’s hair turn white.

  I took the metal stairs down to the basement level. My driving loafers were silent on the hard floor. The room was naturally cool. Light filtered through the grimy windows place above the ground level. I could see blades of grass and dandelions through the windows.

  The hall was narrow, made even more so by the tall precariously placed bookcases filled with old issues of National Geographic that people like my grandmother think are so valuable they insisted on donating decades worth to county libraries.

  “You can get everything on disk,” I once explained to Grandma.

  “Not the same,” she snapped back.

  Looking at the shelves with the yellow back issues marching along in chronological order, I sympathized with women like Mrs. Sevens who for years had to cheerfully take in the donations, then probably turn around and try to sell them during the Friends of the Library book sale, and get something they could really use – cash.

  I turned again. The records room, so identified by the spotted index card pinned above the doorway, was to my left.

  I was greeted by metal file cabinets. Things were stored the old fashion way.

  I dove in being very careful to not chip my manicure, which slowed my progress considerably.

  It took me a good two hours to peruse through the files. During that boring,
tedious time I vowed over and over, in a boring tedious manner, that I would never, ever take a real job and, god help everyone, file or organize files in any way. I usually file according to how I felt about a deal. Bad deals go to the back of the file drawer, good deals are filed in the front. Why would I re-visit something I didn’t like in the first place? And why, even if the last name of the client began with A, would I run by the file every time I looked for something that started with T, bringing up all those bad memories?

  The seventies were not a particularly good decade for recording keeping. A few months were missing. The council minutes were often written by hand. But there was enough to make me think the neglect was more benign than not. All the months in the eighties were well documented, typed, organized and color tabbed.

  The last of the nineties were… missing.

  I kept opening drawers and ticking over the files, but no matter how I counted, 1996 through 2000 just weren’t there.

  There was a file drawer dedicated to the General Plan.

  The last plan on file was for 1995. I thought I was wrong and searched up in Council Minutes, Misc. and Misc. (Actually, the file system was pretty similar to one I’d come up with myself. If the file held reasonably neutral history, it often ended up under Misc.)

  No. No current General Plan.

  If they wanted to annex all that developed land, it had to be in the General Plan. There were no minutes for the council from 2003 forward. Not even a couple pieces of scratch paper with some notes scrawled using an eye brow pencil. The question was, where were the minutes? And why wasn’t anyone concerned that they weren’t public? Or even here, in the files?

  I walked through the library, waved to Mrs. Stevens who was pulling books off a shelf and loading them into a moving box.

  I dialed the Christopher’s number. The phone rang while I stepped outside and softly closed the main doors behind me.

  “Peter. You answered your phone!”

  He did not respond to my outburst so I just continued. “I just got the paperwork and we’ll be in escrow this afternoon.”

  “Great,” Peter said smoothly. “And your people can move in before close of escrow, the Bixby’s are almost moved out.”

  “That was fast,” I said.

  “They told me they just want to move on.” Peter said.

  But according to Debbie Bixby, they had not secured the next place to “move on” to. That was odd, she didn’t strike me as all that clueless. What had her husband been keeping from good old Debbie?

  “Well thank you, I’ll let you know.”

  Never let anyone move in before escrow closes. Even your own clients.

  I walked by the little theater, brick, old, not as old as the oldest theater in the state, that resides in another town, but this one had hosted some notable Gold Country action, from Mark Twain and his famous quips to Lotta Crabtree and her famous spider dance.

  Sometimes I don’t know how it can get any better.

  The posters outside the theater advertised West Side Story starring Sarah Miller and Rob Malachesky. I poked my head into the lobby, just to check it out.

  “Allison?” Well, hell, I had already conjured up Danny Timmons, why not Summer who I passed by often enough on the way to and back from the river to give us a nodding acquaintance. Unlike our encounters at the river, this time my hair was in pretty good shape, and I was dressed in clean shorts and stylish walking shoes. I had showered.

  “Summer?” I responded.

  “I can’t believe it’s you.” Summer had gained weight, her hair was dyed heavy black and her eye liner was smeared in the summer heat. The lobby was cool, but her office may be warm in the sun. She looked pretty good, a little tired around the eyes, stress?

  She opened her arms and I stepped up to give her a hug.

  We weren’t that close, but it seems to be the thing to do.

  “I can’t believe I was just thinking of you,” I responded honestly. “How are you?”

  “Well I’m fine, I’m running this place now.”

  “I thought you were going to LA.”

  “I did, didn’t work,” she waved her hand dismissively.

  “Married? Children?” I asked politely.

  “No, you?”

  “No, I’m too busy working.”

  She looked at me as if she did not believe me. I smiled back. I don’t know, maybe Claim Jump isn’t the nice anonymous place I had hoped for. I did not like constantly running into my past, it was starting to make me feel itchy.

  “Real Estate right? I run into your grandmother during the season, she’s been lovely to us, a very consistent donor.”

  “You’re in charge of everything?”

  “Have to be, we’re a 501 (c)3 and we can’t afford much in the way of help.”

  “Yet, you stand.”

  She glanced around and frowned as she focused on something in the rafters above the snack table. “Just barely. It cost so much just to keep the place going.”

  “I’m sure it does. Didn’t the city used to fund some of the arts, at least two out of the five theater groups in town?”

  “No, that was cut about seven years ago. We thought we had the support of the city manager, but she was fired and we were never able to regain the support, now since the assistant is gone, the city said they had no money in the budget.”

  “So you had to close down?”

  She nodded, her eyes filling with tears at the memory even now.

  “We were even written up in the Sacramento Bee, people were driving up and staying in town to see the productions. We are so good for the City, we help generate the TOT, everything, but the Council wouldn’t listen.”

  “All this because of the manger? Or the attorney?”

  She shrugged. “I don’t know if it was the city attorney or the city manager. It doesn’t matter, we have a couple of grants, but you know the state of the arts currently.”

  I nodded.

  “If it weren’t for Lucky Masters, we wouldn’t have anything to show for this season. He saved us.”

  “Stepped in when the City wouldn’t?” I asked. Nice move, show up the City and the council members, gain grass roots support, then ask to annex the project into the City. Smart man.

  “Yes, he has been so generous.” She pulled absently at her hair and glanced at a strand as if reminding herself of the current color.

  “We’re down to two productions over the summer. Not what I used to have, but at least we’re still alive.”

  “And you have Lucky to thank.”

  “I just do what I can,” boomed a voice behind me.

  I whirled around and beheld. Santa Claus. Out of season.

  “Mr. Masters,” Summer chirped on cue. “How lovely to see you.”

  Really, Lucky Masters looks like St. Nick. I have never seen a developer who looks like Santa, but here he was, the white beard, the round, solid belly, the cheerful twinkling blue eyes. He wore a light linen jacket and carried a silver topped cane. He looked every inch the successful man, but not, disappointingly, as evil as I hoped. I was looking for Snidely Whiplash, or that tiny gangster character in Bugs Bunny. Lucky Masters was not going to cooperate with my stereotypes. Just once I’d like conformity; my villains to look like villains, my heroes to look like heroes. And I’d like to be a blushing ingénue. I thought of Ben, well, he was pretty close to the hero stereotype, but maybe that’s putting too much pressure on him.

  “Umm, Mr. Masters this is Allison Little, She’s in real estate.”

  Well, that was good enough, especially since it’s the Singleton name that is well known in town.

  I reached out and we exchanged firm handshakes. Nothing to hide, that’s our Lucky Masters.

  “Real estate,” he boomed. “I love Realtors! They know what’s going on in a town!”

  “Well not this one,” I admitted quickly. “I work in the Rivers Bend area in Sonoma County.” Lucky Masters filled the whole lobby with his booming presence. In fact, I felt
faint, as if he was sucking all the oxygen from the air.

  “Beautiful place, how is that CTS thing going?” He bellowed as if projecting to the back of the theater.

  “Not well,” I said, on safer footing. CTS stands for the infamous, in our area, California Tiger Salamander. The CTS is an endangered species, and has a long and really boring history coupled with long tedious survival rights fueled by long boring committee meetings. As far as “saving” the Tiger Salamander goes, I just have one question; in the zealous efforts to save the Tiger Salamander have we sacrificed good clean housing for humans? I’m not allowed to ask that question out loud. There are many people in Sonoma County who are not interested in opening that can of worms.

  Do Tiger Salamanders eat worms? I’m waiting for the Disney to release a musical featuring Singing Tiger Salamanders. Or maybe Pixar, since John Lassiter lives in our area

  “Damn environmentalists.” He swore cheerfully. “Well young lady, nice to meet you, good luck with business in Rivers Bend.”

  “Thank you.” I said faintly.

  “Mr. Masters.” Summer simpered her way into the conversation. “I would love to talk with you about the state of the theater. We may need a little work when the season is over.”

  “No problem. We’ll talk later. Ms. Little.” He made a gesture that in the old fashion days would be a tip of the hat, and marched out.

  “I expected him to be surrounded by an entourage.” I mused out loud.

  Summer rose quickly to his defense. “Usually he has a bunch of people around him, one of the former county supervisors, the city attorney, (but I don’t see him much any more), project managers, inspectors.”

  “He had inspectors in his entourage?” That was more than a little incredible. A developer may be close with the inspectors, but you didn’t walk about advertising the relationship. “Who is this guy?”

  “He’s just Lucky Masters. He’s always been here.” Just like the Library was always here, the theater was always here, the big elm and maple trees were always here. She shrugged as if to say, what is important is now and Lucy’s patronage.

  But that wasn’t really true, what was important was the past, and what it means for the future.