Catharine Bramkamp - Real Estate Diva 05 - A 380 Degree View (25 page)

“Go there and call me when you find her.” Tom instructed.

“If I find her.”

“Allison.” He warned.

“I’m going, we’re going right now.” I clicked off, snatched up my own purse and I headed out the kitchen door, Ben right behind me.

“Allison.”

I stepped out the kitchen door, heading for his truck.  “What?”             

“Do you want to wear shoes to this event?”

I glanced at my bare feet and at the boots. Crap. I wasted valuable time finding a pair of shoes appropriate for hunting down my grandmother. I finally stepped into Ben’s truck when the phone buzzed.

“I’m not there yet.” I immediately protested.

“Allison.” Tom’s voice had completely changed.  I stopped suspended between the truck seat and the ground and remained completely still and completely silent. His voice indicated the news was bad, I could feel it even over the dodgy reception. I held my breath for his next sentence, the one that will be about death, broken dreams and despair.

“Yes?” I tensed. I eased my leg back off the seat and stood in the driveway, phone pressed tightly to my ear.

“The hospital just called.  Someone found Raul. He had no ID on him, and the hospital administration is anxious about payments. I would usually call Prue since I know Raul is staying with her, but since you can’t get hold of her… ” He trailed off.

“How is he?”  Raul? Crazy Raul, hurt?  “Was it a car accident? He doesn’t pay attention like he should, especially when he’s filming.”

“No.” Tom interrupted. “It wasn’t a car accident.”  He paused again.  “When he wakes up I hope he can identify his assailants.”

I didn’t know which way to turn.  “Do you want me to go to the hospital right now?”

“Go to the library first, call me.” He instructed.

Shaken, I slowly climbed into the cab.

“What?”  Ben leaned over and looked at me quizzically.  “Allison, talk to me, what happened?  Did they find your grandmother?”

I closed my eyes.  “No, not grandma and Carrie. Raul.  Ben, someone beat up Raul!”

He threw the truck into drive and sped out the driveway.  We drove down the street for exactly four seconds before I screamed.  “Stop, stop, that’s Carrie.”

Ben twisted the steering wheel and the back the truck swung too far to the left, he righted it and we bounced up onto the sidewalk inches from my friend.

“Where were you!” I yelled out the window. “Where is my grandmother!”

Carrie didn’t wait for a formal invitation.  She yanked the back door of the cab and climbed in. 

“Library. Ben, drive to the library.”

Carrie dropped her head in her hands.  “They called an emergency meeting before we left, so we detoured over to the library.  Prue went in and before I could follow, that Suzanne slammed the doors and locked them.  Prue had the car keys, my phone, everything, in her bag.”

Carrie snuffled.  “Don’t yell at me! I had no idea.  All the senior citizens I know are tired, they are never up for this kind of strenuous activity.”

“Welcome to Claim Jump home of the enterprising octogenarian.” I felt churlish towards the whole lot of them.  “So now we storm the Library. Why would they lock you out?”

Carrie rubbed her hands. It was a more a rhetorical question anyway.

A dozen cars were parked on the street in front of the library, some members parked in the theater parking across the street.

We found them all in the library with Miss Scarlet and a candlestick. Actually it was Sarah who stood guard at the front door. I banged my fist on the original wavy glass, threatening to break it. Sarah open the door and I pushed her aside like a cardboard paper doll.  Scott stood at the librarian’s desk, not wielding a candlestick, but rather punching numbers into his cell. He stopped when I crested the stairs. 

“She’s here.” He confirmed.

“So I heard.”

“You’re late.” Prue was a little too cheerful for the circumstances.  She limped from the right of the library where the chronicles of the Brotherhood were housed.

“We didn’t mean any harm.” Mary Beth, owlish in her black-rimmed glasses protested.

“We just asked her to attend an emergency meeting.” Maria nodded, her grey curls shaking violently with the effort.

“Yes, a meeting.” Suzanne favored Ben and me with a wide grin.  One could even call it a shit-eating grin.

“Oh for God’s sake.”  I put my hands on my hips and glared at every one of them in turn.  “What the hell did you think you’d accomplish?”

“Prue doesn’t know anything.” Suzanne’s expression abruptly changed from satisfied to sour. Then just as quickly, as if she had delivered a pep talk to herself, she veered right back on track. “You must help us.”

I was amazed at her temerity. Did she not have children to temper her and tell her what to do?  Did she not have a disinterested neice to put her away into some nice – far away - rest home?  There was an opening down in Auburn.

“And kidnapping my grandmother is suppose to make me feel more favorably disposed towards your project?”

“She was here for a emergency meeting, we needed to vote.”

“You locked Carrie out.”

“A secret vote.”  Suzanne quickly amended. “Members only.”

I rubbed my eyes. Thank godness they weren’t very good at this.  Prue seemed okay. She was pale, she was tired and her foot probably hurt.  But she was in one piece.

I flipped my phone open and scrolled down to the police office line.

“Who are you calling?” Suzanne lurched towards the phone, but I was too fast, I stepped aside and held the phone over my head as the number was dialed.

“Tom Marten, please.”

“The cops? You called the cops?  No one calls the cops.”  Marlene rolled her eyes as if calling the authorities was a sign of great weakness and lack of resourcefulness.

“I found her.” I igored the protests from the criminal wanna bes.

“Good.” It wasn’t difficult to visualize him checking off at least one thing on his long to-do list. “In one piece?”

“Yes.” I breathed out.

“Ask him if this will make the police blotter. Everyone reads that.”  Marlene suggested

“The Blotter only reports the 911 calls.”  Mary Beth pointed out.  “Did you call 911?”  She looked at me hopefully, but I shook my head. Her face fell.

“But kidnapping is a crime right?” Suzanne Chatterhill immediately thought of an alternative. “That should make the paper.  Allison, call the paper.” 

During this exchange, Ben happily wandered around the building. I forgot he hadn’t visited the library before.

“And what is this room?”  He pointed to one of the many tiny office spaces behind the main reception desk.

“The archive room.”  Suzanne abandoned me to give an interested outsider the tour. “Here is where we index newspaper articles and columns from the Gold Rush, so if you want to know what your great aunt Ethel was doing up here, you can look it up here.  Back then the paper actually reported the news.”

I did not comment that the
doings of Gold Hill Garden Club was only news because they were the only subscribers to the paper. 

“We need a Cornish Day parade.”  Maria popped off.

“Grass Valley has Cornish Christmas.” I held my phone and kept my thumb hovering over Tom’s name, just in case.

“Not good enough, that event is limited to choirs and pasties, we want more dignity than that!”  Suzanne, abandoned her tour and Ben and instead dropped into a chair. The criminal life can be a hard one.

“I told you she wouldn’t help,” Prue said smugly.

“
How about a commemorative bench?”  Scott suggested. “I’ll pay … donate the bench and the plaque.”

“You people are impossible.” I reached for Prue intending to hustle her out.

“Where are the quilts?”  Scott asked suddenly.

Prue followed Scott’s gaze. “Suzanne, where are the quilts?”

“Summer has three at the theater. Penny has many of course. I have one.”  Suzanne ticked off the numbers on her short fingers.

“I have one.” Maria volunteered.

“I have one.” Mary Beth chimed in.  Great, Penny would take them all out. The question was, on purpose?

“Get rid of them.” I instructed them tersely.

“We will not, those are works of art.” Suzanne stood and smoothed her skirt. But she wasn’t in a position to complain, what with possible accusations of kidnapping and extortion and all. I may file a police report. I may not.  Hadn’t yet made up my mind.  And Suzanne knew it.

“Donate them?”  Another member suggested.

“No.” Immolate the homeless, Penny had already thought of that, no, let’s keep everybody safe.

“The garbage.” I instructed.  “Keep them away from flames, send them to a landfill, any landfill.”

I felt like I was speaking to a pre-school group and just announced the demise of the Tooth Fairy, not that I’d ever be that stupid.  The kidnappers all looked at me, eyes round, expressions: suspicious.

“The quilts are filled with flammable material.” I explained patiently.

“How flammable?” Suzanne demanded, determined not to part with her hard won prize.

“A burning cigarette would ignite it in under thirty seconds.” It was cruel but I felt I needed to spell it out.

A collective gasp.  They rose and took off as fast as budding octogenarians can move.

Prue limped to me, Ben caught her arm, and she leaned heavily on him.

“Who’s going to get them from Summer?”

“I will.” I volunteered.  “Ben will take you to the hospital.”

“But I’m fine,” she immediately protested.  “They didn’t hurt me, just held me for a meeting.”

Great, death by committee.  Carrie rifled through Prue’s purse and pulled out her phone. “I’m surprised they didn’t have rubber hoses and cattle prods with them.” 

“Not for you. Raul is in the hospital and you apparently are as good as next to kin, plus the hospital would very much like to see your Visa to cover his expenses.”

Prue’s eyes were wide. It was a popular look this afternoon.  “What happened?”

“He was beat up.”  Ben said succinctly. 

Chapter Twenty-Three

              Summer was easy to find. Her theater office overlooked most of Main Street, the church and Lucky’s house. In fact, it seemed to loom over Summer’s space, always there, reminding her of what she owed to the man. I admired my sale sign in front.  The single flyer taped inside the otherwise empty flyer box seemed to work well. Apparently flyers were a waste of time up here, only kids and tourists like to take them, but people do want to know information about the house, if only to pass it along at the beauty shop.  Worked for me. I had scheduled another open house this Sunday, I may hold a spontaneous open house tomorrow, Saturday, you never know, the tourists might be thawing.

What did Summer owe the man?

Summer’s desk was covered with so many small scraps of paper it looked like a recycling bin had overturned. But she was probably one of those people who knew exactly where every unlikely piece of paper resided and what it said.

I stood in the office door until she noticed me.

“Why were Lucky and Penny such supporters of your theater?”  I asked.

“Out of the goodness of his heart?”  She offered hopefully.

“No, Lucky did nothing from the goodness of his heart, don’t be naive.”  No matter how long a person lives in a small town, the reality of human nature always rears its ugly head and asserts itself. 

“Nothing.” She shrugged elaborately.  “He just liked to support the arts.” She nervously shuffled the files and papers around the surface of the desk.

“Summer, did you ever sleep with Lucky?”

“If that’s what it would take, then yes I would have, but it never came up. I’m too close in age to Penny.  He even commented about it.”

“What about the quilts?”  I leaned back and regarded the purple and yellow example hanging over the empty refreshment table. My eyes traveled up to the spotlights hanging dangerously close to the fabric.  Did she know?  Did she care?

“What about them?”

“Did Penny ever want to take them back?”

“No, I told her the winners of the quilts donated them back to the theater.  It was a small fib, but better than telling her Lucky wouldn’t allow the quilts out of the building.”

              “And that promise?”

“Was worth 10,000 dollars for the theater.” She admitted.

“And with Lucky gone?”

She made a desperate gesture to the thick piles of paper.  “Maybe I’ll just sell them again.  Double my money you know?” 

“I know. But you may not want to sell them at all.”

“Why?”  Summer looked at me warily. So she didn’t know, that was probably better for Summer.

“We are pretty sure the quilts are flammable.”

“Like his houses?” Summer made the leap without much help from me.

I nodded.

She made a quick decision.  “They are fine where they are, this is a brick building.”

“You’d take that risk?”

“It won’t be the first.” She said with determination.

I arrived home just as the Marsh Avenue entourage brought Raul through the front door. The hospital had cheerfully released him in light of his lack of insurance and assurances that his wounds, for the most part, were superficial. Prue tucked him into a cozy bed on Carrie’s floor and warmed him with a pile of relatively inflamable blankets. Brick followed every move she made until she couldn’t stand it anymore and shooed him downstairs.

I found Brick pacing the floor examining the fragile chairs and rearranging every pillow as he passed. 

“Who makes these things?  Look at the workmanship. Honestly. Is this a real antique?”  He flipped the chair over and studied the underside.  “I thought not. How could Prue allow this in her house?”

I approached Brick cautiously.

“It seems like Raul will recover. Do you know why those men would beat him up?”

Brick glowered, as if I just flunked the rope climb in gym, which I would have, had they had made girls do such a thing. 

“It’s like Laramie, Wyoming up here. I kept telling him we should move to the Castro but he likes it here. He loves your grandmother.”

“Every gay man loves Prue.” I replied. 

Brick’s expression changed as if it just dawned on him what he said.   I didn’t need to say much else.  I just stood in the cold parlor. Wait for it. 

Brick regarded me, his mouth opened in a good imitation of
The Scream
.

“What did I just say?”  He demanded.

“You didn’t say all that much and I’m not an expert, we established that last summer.  But I think you just came out.”

“It’s about time.”  Prue bustled into the parlor.  “He’s awake and asking for you. You should move him to the city or LA where he can make films. He’s wasted here.”

“You can visit us anytime.” I reassured Brick.

Prue nodded. “And you can stay in the main house. I’m toying with the idea of getting paying tenants in the guest house.”

“You aren’t zoned …” I started, and then shut up. What real difference did it make?

It did not take long for Tom to ferret out the Neanderthals who hurt Raul. He stopped by to personally update us.

“They were two subcontractors, regulars of the Mine Shaft.  Last night they were bragging out loud about how they were paid to beat up a fag.”

Tom shuddered in disgust and I liked him even better for it.

“It was a hate crime, can you arrest them for that?”

“Sure.  And I did. They couldn’t make bail because they spent it all on drinks for every patron at the Mine Shaft who was not a fag.”

“Everyone.”

“Every single one.” He confirmed.  “Since I am not interested in feeding those clowns on my dime, I sent them down to Sacramento.  Besides, once word got out, a few people called the office and made it very clear that there are enough Mine Shaft regulars who are unhappy about last night’s event to make it  rather unsafe for those boys.  Had to transfer them for their own good.”

“Glad to hear it.”  I said.

“I thought you’d like that detail.”  he finally smiled.

“This last month has been pretty awful for you.”

“My wife says I’m having nightmares again, although I don’t remember them in the morning.  The cleanup after that last fire wasn’t pretty.  I was the one who found Danny and Jimmy.” 

I groaned on his behalf.

He shook his head as if to clear the memory.

“Who did you marry anyway?” I asked apropos of nothing.

“Becky Fitzpatrick.”

“Don’t know her.  She must not have hung out at the river.”

“She did not.” He confirmed with a smile. He scratched his head and started down the hall to leave.  “Who knew that working in this town would be so crazy?”

“It wasn’t crazy when I came up here as a teenager. Nothing happened here when I was young.”   

“Maybe we just weren’t paying attention.” He was right. There must have been controversy during Lucky’s building: traffic concerns; city council member bribes; missing council meeting minutes. But we had been young. 

“Do you think it has anything to do with what’s going on now?”

“Everything has everything to do with something but I just don’t know what.”

There were no answers for that. We simply said good-bye and expressed our fervent wish to not have to speak again in the near future. I was tired of police, beatings, explosions, fire. My stay was supposed to be restful! 

Speaking of aggravting, I encounted Ben in the front hall. “So, are you attracted to Police Chief Tom Marten?”  He asked.

“Are you are attracted to Penny Masters?”  Since we had estinguished our burning bed, the heat between us had correspondingly dampened.  I suppose that was normal, but it still worried me. Was he ready to drop me because I wasn’t moving on the house?

“I’m not tired of you, but this has been distracting.” He admitted. “And all this Claim Jump activity is far more stressful than I anticipated.”

“That is part of the charm, always delivering more than you expect.” 

“So I’m learning.” hhe said dryly.

I looked at him.  “Tom Marten and I have history. But that’s all, just history. I am only in love with you.”

He regarded me thoughtfully.  “You aren’t looking for houses in Rivers Bend are you?”

“How can you tell?”

“Are you kidding? I use to get a barrage of suggestions, links, pages, web sites, then they dwindled, understandably enough, and now, nothing.”   

I took a breath; my heart started beating double time, as if I had one too many hazel nut cappuccinos with (now) skim milk.

“Al-I-Son!” Raul’s voice floated down from the second floor. In another book, it would be creepy, but I knew him and that he could call me was a good sign. I dashed up the stairs to see him.

Raul’s face was swollen. His nose looked like it had been moved to the left, just a bit. He suffered from cracked ribs and was bruised all over.  I turned down the opportunity to admire his bruises and stitches.   

“You know Allison, I make lots of money keeping things off the Internet.”  I stopped from pointing out that none it his earnings helped with rent; this was not the time.

“This time someone was not willing to pay.” I concluded.

“Her father paid.” Raul closed his eyes; deep purple bruises made him look vulnerable and fragile. “That poor girl, the ex-wife of that Danny, the boy who was calling you all the time last summer?” 

“Mattie?”

“Ah, she has a name! She looks like a cowgirl?”

“That’s the ex-wife.”

“She was coming out of Penny’s house as I as going in. Very mad that girl. I stayed off the path and out of her way.”

“And you walked in with your extortion demands hot on the heels of Mattie’s demands. That’s great, it’s a wonder the woman didn’t shoot you right there.”

He nodded. “But she’s not a good shot, she didn’t practice with Lucky at the gun range, hated it. Brick wants to move, I think that would be good. Maybe this is enough Claim Jump for us.”

But I would miss the funny man with the indescribable accent.  

“Allison!” Pat stood in the hall and bellowed my name. “You have to come now!”