Death at a Fixer-Upper (7 page)

I called 911. Then we waited. The unsettling thought occurred to me that Merrit and her daughter might come home unexpectedly. I didn't want a kid to see this.

“Will you be okay for a minute?” I asked Gail.

She nodded. I took off around the house, fumbling with the key at the back door until it opened. Where had I seen…? My brain seemed to have turned to oatmeal. I smacked the side of my head and things cleared. Linen closet. Second floor.

I raced through the lower level and up the stairs. The closet was down the hall, at the foot of the second set of stairs. I yanked open the door and in my haste grabbed a full stack of moth-eaten wool blankets, exposing a square of mustard-yellow wall and releasing a cloud of dust that reeked of mouse.

Something checked my hand as I closed the door. Loretta had looked in the closet an hour ago, with me hanging over her shoulder. Square marks in the dust told me the odd assortment of luggage had been moved about since then. I stood rooted to the spot for a moment. What would be the point of that?

I shook my head and hurried back down to where Gail was waiting and arranged a blanket over my ex-client without looking too closely. Within minutes, an ambulance from Blue River Emergency arrived, bouncing up the driveway and pulling in next to my VW. The technicians hustled over to the still form in the vines. After a quick assessment, their sense of urgency seemed to dissipate. One EMT leaned against the hood of the ambulance and lit a cigarette, hastily extinguishing it when the Arlinda fire chief drove up in her pickup.

I spent a few minutes talking to the chief and explaining who I was, why I was there, and who I thought the deceased was. I left the back door of the house unlocked and turned the keys over to the chief at her request. Then I loaded Gail into the VW and drove away. The county coroner's wagon was turning into the lane as we pulled out.

I stopped at the market and bought Gail a can of ginger ale before dropping her at her house, a little pink-and-white edifice in a subdivision west of town. Then I drove to the Plaza and parked, leaning back against the seat and trying to make sense of the universe. My client was dead. Every part of me wanted to head home, put my feet up, try to forget what I'd seen.

But life—and real estate—went on, and I had a job to do. I grabbed my bag and headed to my meeting with Louis Klinghoffer, attorney-at-law.

The Jacobsen Storehouse was a century-old building looking out over the Plaza and housing an array of retail businesses, restaurants, and professional suites. I entered through the ground floor at the back of the building, choosing the stairs rather than the somewhat rickety-looking elevator with its decade-old inspection sticker, and toiled up three flights, breathing hard. The walls were unfinished brick, the mortar crumbling in places. The tops of the stair treads were warped with age and coated with gummy black stuff from the soles of countless shoes. My footsteps echoed like distant artillery as I climbed. The air in the stairwell was dense, smelling of old varnish and canned carrots; as I drew level with the third floor, a hint of sautéed garlic from the restaurant on the third floor joined the mix. I sucked it up and plodded up one more flight, vowing to get a treadmill or at least a greyhound before I hit forty.

I found the Law Offices of Gussman, Saul, Nordberg & Klinghoffer to be singularly lacking in offices, but the two-room suite on the top floor of the Jacobsen Storehouse probably leased for more than twice my monthly rent. The front office served as a reception area, where a plump gray-haired woman in a gray coat and skirt greeted me and took my name, then retreated through a door that presumably led to Louis Klinghoffer, Esq. There was a murmur of voices. A minute later, she reappeared. “Come on back,” she said, waving me through the door.

Louis Klinghoffer was seated behind a vast oak desk. I guessed him to be somewhere between seventy and eighty, maybe leaning toward the higher end. Age had shrunk his head like a withered apple, pushing it down into his shoulders to rest on a cushion of loose skin. He was bald and liver-spotted, with a beaky nose and a mouth that would have fallen in but for a pair of ill-fitting dentures. But his eyes, deep-set and curiously hooded, were shrewd.

He rose to greet me and proffered a hand. “Miss Turner. A pleasure,” he said. He waited until I was seated in a padded armchair by his desk before taking his own seat. His eyes slid to the clock on the wall, and he made a tiny notation on a legal pad in front of him.

“I appreciate your seeing me,” I said, glancing around at the sparsely furnished office with its banks of filing cabinets. The view from the window was of the flat roof of the post office, extending west toward the medical marijuana clinic. “If you don't mind me asking, where are Gussman, Saul, and Nordberg?”

“Dead. Dead. And dead,” he said with satisfaction. “I handled their estates.”

“Oh. I see.” I focused on trying to sound brisk and professional when in truth I wasn't sure I had any right to the information I was after. “I have a couple of questions about the Harrington estate. I understand you drew up the will.”

“You're quite correct.” He regarded me thoughtfully. “How long have you been a real estate agent, Miss Turner?”

I reddened a little. “Six months.” Almost.

“I see. Well, now. I've had a career that's spanned most of five decades now, and I flatter myself that it's been a successful one. Early on I was given some good advice, and I'm going to pass that on to you.”

“And that is?”

He leaned forward and tapped on the desk with a bony finger. “Always know who is paying you for the work you do.”

“I don't know what you mean.”

“At some point, you will. I'd be happy to answer your questions to the best of my ability. I intend to bill the estate for my time, of course.”

“Oh. Yes. Of course. The thing is, I'm representing a buyer who may want to purchase the estate for development. Lois Hartshorne says that can't be done, according to the terms of the will. I assume you know Lois.”

“Very well,” he said. “She and I are in the same bocce-ball league.”

I extracted the copy of Edsel Harrington's last will and testament from my bag and slid it across the desk. “I picked up a copy of the will. It's the next-to-last paragraph, with all the Latin names. If you wouldn't mind, er, explaining it to me?”

The lawyer took a pair of reading glasses from his breast pocket, polished them briefly with a handkerchief, and balanced them on his nose. “Ah, yes,” he said. “The trust. This particular passage raises some very curious and distinctive points of law. But we won't go into that. Suffice it to say that a testator may under certain circumstances desire to legally obligate his heirs to carry out specific actions after his death. One way to accomplish this is through what's known as a precatory trust.”

His dentures leaped alarmingly at all the consonants, and I automatically leaned forward in case I needed to make a basket catch. “A pre—what kind of trust?”

“Let me explain more fully. Mr. Harrington was a man who loved growing things. He was altogether a unique and rare individual, restricted in his activities, alas, by his health. It was my privilege to be both his attorney and a personal friend for over thirty years before death claimed him, sadly before his time.”

“I thought he was in his seventies,” I said without thinking.

“Seventy-three. In his prime. But to die at home in one's bed, we should all be so lucky. You've seen the estate, I presume.”

“Yesterday.”

“You might have observed that there are a number of distinctive and unusual trees as old as the house itself on the property. My client did not want them cut down after his death. It was a relatively simple matter to draw up a provision that creates what is in essence a conservation easement, though in the eyes of the law it is in actual fact an express trust. But make no mistake: the intent of the testator is clear, and the covenant shall indeed run with the land in perpetuity as a burden to future successors.”

“I—could you—”

He clucked his tongue. “In layperson's terms, the trees can't be cut down. Ever. It's really quite clear.”

I didn't argue with that. “So there's nothing that would prohibit a buyer from, say, subdividing the acreage?”

“As long as the trees specified in this document remained unharmed.”

“How will the heirs know whether or not that's so?”

“Ah. An excellent question. Please don't make the mistake of assuring your clients that there would be no indemnity should they act against the provision of the trust. The legatee in this case has every intention of enforcing the clause and monitoring compliance.”

“The Arlinda Botanical Society.”

“That is correct.”

Feeling my way cautiously, I said, “I met the tenant yesterday.”

“Mrs. Brown.”

I nodded. “I'm a little surprised she's been allowed to continue living there.”

“That was the decision of the legatee. As you've visited the property, you can understand that vandalism or squatters would almost certainly be a concern if the house were to stand vacant.”

“So it wasn't—well, out of concern for her and her daughter?”

His voice was dry. “Sentiment is very seldom a part of the law, Miss Turner.”

I could tell my time with him was running short. “It seems a little strange Mr. Harrington didn't leave her something more…more tangible than rosebushes. After all, she'd taken care of him for years.”

He sighed. “Miss Turner, please don't think me a tiresome old man for giving you a last piece of advice, one that's served me well over the years. Don't take everything you hear—or are told—at face value, even if the source seems impeccable. Even sympathetic.”

While I was mulling that over, he stood up and clutched my hand in his dry grip. “My apologies, but I have to cut this short. Good day.”

“Yes—that is, good day to you, too.” I gathered up the will and took my leave, wondering if, as a marketing tool, I should take up bocce ball and find my own probate attorney. Everyone died eventually.

I had a nagging feeling, too, that in his dry way the lawyer had let slip something of value. I just wasn't sure what.

After that, I was beyond done for the day. I trudged up the stairs to our apartment with a pounding headache and an uneasy stomach, emotionally and physically exhausted. I washed a couple of aspirin down with beer and settled myself on the couch with Harley on my lap, but when I tried to close my eyes I saw Raymond Carleton-Hughes, his head a bloody pulp, asleep for eternity in a bed of roses.

What had Biddie said before she swooned on the stairs? Blood. Something about blood ruining the roses. My stomach progressed from rumbly to turbulent. These things weren't real. Or were they?

It didn't really matter, because I had a job to do. I picked up the phone and dialed Richard Ravello. He answered on the fourth ring, sounding brusque and impatient. “Ravello.”

“Mr. Ravello—er, Richard—this is Sam Turner.”

Silence.

“From Home Sweet Home Realty?”

“Oh. Yes. You have news for me?”

I was a little thrown off by his abruptness, so I rushed into speech. “Not on the offer, no. I haven't heard anything yet. But I have some information about the property that might be helpful.” I explained the terms of the will as I understood them.

“I appreciate your thoroughness,” he said.

“You think it'll affect your plans?”

“Not at all. Like I told you, these things have a way of fixing themselves. Tell you what. We'll offer to build a community playground for the kiddies out of those trees. Hell, we'll even call it after the old guy. What was his name again?”

“Harrington. Edsel Harrington.”

“The Edsel Harrington Memorial Playground. No, too formal. Ed's Place for Kids. Perfect. People love that shit. Anything else?”

I wondered if I should tell him there'd been a gruesome death on the property. Probably that could wait. “Nope. That's it.”

“Keep up the great work. I'll be in touch.” He hung up.

I slumped on the couch, hating my job.

A door slammed, and footsteps thundered up the stairs. Harley launched himself from my lap as Max burst through the door, then slipped between his feet and raced down the stairwell. Max dropped his pack on the floor and went after him. A minute later he was back, with a squirming bundle of irate cat under his arm.

“Sorry, dude,” he said, dumping Harley on the floor. “Maybe you can go outside at our new place.”

“Maybe,” I said. “I wouldn't want him catching birds.”

“He could wear a little bell.” He stared at me. “Are you okay?”

“Yeah. Just one of those days.” My guard was down, battered by the horrors of the past few hours. “Um. Listen. Your father's in town.”

He was silent. I checked his body language, trying to gauge his reaction.

“You've talked to him?” he said at last.

“No. I—” I'd have felt like a fool telling my son I chased his father up the street as he rode a city bus.

Max picked up his backpack and set it on a chair. “You want me to make dinner?”

“That's all right. I grabbed a couple of cans of chili at the store. Just heat and serve. My specialty.”

“I have some homework to knock out.” He moved toward his room.

“Max.”

Long pause. “I'd like to see him.”

There were so many things I wanted to say. In the end, all I said was “I'll set it up.”

He nodded and went into his room, shutting the door. Something else nagged at my memory, but I couldn't for the life of me remember what it was.

By the time I was up and about the next morning, Max had left for school. I shuffled about in a somnambulant state, gnawing on something brown and crusty from the cupboard before I splashed some water on my face and headed in to the office.

The old man was on the back porch reading a paperback book when I arrived. I nodded, then went inside and put on a pot of coffee. When it was done brewing, I filled a mug and stepped out onto the back deck. “You want coffee?”

He looked up. “Yes, ma'am. That would hit the spot.”

“Black okay?”

“Two sugars, if you got 'em.”

“Sure.” I set the mug in front of him and returned to the kitchen, where I sloshed some liquid caffeine into a cup for myself, adding plenty of questionable milk from the mini-fridge. I grabbed a handful of sugar packets and made my way back outside, handing him two while I emptied three into my own cup, jostling the contents a little to blend everything. I tasted it and added a fourth. My morning needed a jump start.

He set the book on his pack and used a pen from his shirt pocket to stir sugar into his coffee. He took a sip and gave a deep sigh. “What's your name, young lady?” he said.

“Sam. Sam Turner.”

“Well, Sam Turner, you make a decent cup of coffee.”

“Guess it's my one skill in the kitchen.”

He held out a hand. “Curly Jorgensen.”

“Curly?”

“On account of my hair, though you wouldn't know to see it now.”

We shook. His palm was rough and dry, his grip firm. His eyes were clear as a mountain lake; the skin stretched over his face was a collection of fine lines and sun spots, like a road map of his travels. I glanced at the book he'd been reading, which was a dog-eared copy of McMurtry's
Lonesome Dove.

Curly followed my glance and smiled. “Always been a sucker for a good western.”

“Same here.” I drained my cup. “Well. I guess I'll get back to work.”

He waved, and I slipped inside. By the time I'd finished my coffee and rinsed my mug under the tap, he was gone.

I made busywork until what I judged was a decent hour to call Lois Hartshorne. Her voicemail picked up, and I listened to her gruff admonition to leave a message. The words “or else” were unspoken but implied.

“This is Sam Turner, Home Sweet Home,” I began. “I, uh, just wanted to follow up on my offers. Offer, I mean. About that…never mind, I'll try you later. Or call me.”

I hung up and groaned. Could I have sounded like more of an idiot? I was fairly certain my client's death retracted his offer, but Everett Sweet's voice seemed to echo in my ears: “Verify, verify, verify.” Maybe I needed to dust off my old real estate textbooks and refresh my memory.

I put in a call to Loretta Sacchi and left another message. Apparently, no one wanted to talk to me today. I dusted the foliage of my plastic plant and raided the mini-fridge for edibles. Pickings were slim.

The
Grovedale Dispatch
had been stuffed through the front-door mail slot and was lying on the floor, all rolled up and pristine. I pulled off the rubber band and hijacked the Entertainment section to do the crossword, knowing that would irritate my employer no end. The cover story caught my eye, a half-page feature on the Kinetic Sculpture Race.

Memory prodded me. Max's form! It was still languishing in my bag—yesterday's events had put it right out of my head. What if I was too late? My son would never forgive me.

I grabbed my bag and went out the back, locking the door behind me and using the short drive to brush up on my charm, such as it was.

SmithBuilt Construction was a sprawling structure of cedar shingles and glass on Salmon Bay Boulevard, with a roof made up almost entirely of solar panels angled toward the south. The western edge of the property was defined by the rusted rails of the old Union Pacific/Northwest line, which crossed two lanes and rolled across a plain of withered grass before plunging into the tangled brush of the Arlinda Waste Treatment Plant and Wildlife Sanctuary. I caught a glimpse of the sludge ponds behind the building. The air was richly scented with eau de Porta-Potty magnified a thousand times.

I entered an open lobby that was filled with light and space. The walls were finished in rough weathered planks, interspersed with plate-glass windows of inconsistent sizes. Instead of the usual carpet, the floor was stained concrete inlaid with a spiral pattern of aquamarine tiles. A staircase curved up to the second floor. I took a closer look and saw that the balusters were formed from twisted rebar, with driftwood as the handrail. I'd gone to high school with Fletcher Smith, and was impressed in spite of myself by the indisputable mark of success stamped all over his headquarters. He hadn't seemed all that bright to me, to tell the truth.

A handful of people toiled right out in the open, no cubicles in sight. I made my way toward the nearest desk, occupied by an older man with a crown of gray curls on his head. He looked up inquiringly. “May I help you?”

I held out the waiver. “Can I leave this with you?”

He felt around his head and from his mop of hair extracted a pair of reading glasses. Slipping them on, he peered at the form. “Oh, I see. The race. This is our first year as sponsors. Is this your son?”

“Yes. It's his first year, too.”

He handed it back to me. “It might be best to take this right to Fletcher. His office is at the top of the stairs.”

I thanked him and made my way to the second story. The railing was a little hard to grip, truth be told, and I didn't want to think what might happen if someone tried to slide down it. Not that I would ever do that myself, of course.

The stairs deposited me onto a wide-open landing. A woman was seated at a workstation just off to the left, tapping away at a keyboard.

“Fletcher Smith's office?” I said.

“Door on your right,” she said. “But he's out. Maybe I can help you.” Her tone was flat, her eyes still on the computer screen.

“You know when he'll be back?”

“He didn't say.” She rattled off a line of typing, then looked up. “You want to write him a note?” She had the wholesome good looks of a 4-H heifer at the county fair: glossy dark hair worn shoulder length, straight white teeth, rosy cheeks, good posture. She wore a teal polo shirt with “SmithBuilt” stitched over the right breast.

Just then the first story began to hum with sudden industry. A man had entered the lower lobby through a side door, breezing between workstations like a warm front before a storm. He started up the stairs, then paused with his hand on the rail.

“Don't tell me,” he said, leveling a finger at me. “Sam. Sam Turner, as I live and breathe.” He bounded up the last few steps and enveloped me in a big squeeze before I could dodge out of reach. Releasing me, he turned to the woman at the desk. “Sam was my physics lab partner at Arlinda High a few long years back. Have you two met? Betsy Sullivan, my right-hand man.”

“Project manager,” she amended. We shook hands perfunctorily, but her eyes stayed on Fletcher.

“You were a peach,” he said to me. “It would have really messed up my senior year if I'd had to take physics a third time. Remember that day we split a molecule?”

“Measured, not split.” I rolled my eyes.

He grinned. He still had the boyish good looks I remembered from high school: dark hair only a little thin on top, light blue eyes, that friendly smile that even now made my heart flutter a tad. Like all the girls, I'd been smitten with Fletcher in high school, sucked into the gravitational pull of his soulful gaze as we studied Archimedes' principle, though I'd never held out any real hope. Okay, so maybe I'd secretly looked into a boob job, but that was just a passing phase.

“You see why I depended on her?” he said to Betsy. She gave him a frosty little smile.

I offered the waiver to Fletcher. “It's nice to see you. I promised my son I'd deliver this, but I—I forgot. Am I too late?”

“What's this?” His eyes lit up. “Max is your son? Great kid, from what I hear. Hard worker. You must be so proud of him.”

“I'm giddy. It's okay, then?”

He waved a hand. “Totally fine. The lawyers insisted we have these on file, but between you and me I'm not sure they're even legally binding.”

“That's great. Whew! Have you seen what they're working on? Max won't tell me a thing.”

“I'm sworn to secrecy. But come on. Let me show you around.”

“I really don't—”

“I'm not letting you leave without the ten-cent tour. Betsy, grab us a couple of coffees, would you?”

The look she gave him would have felled a more sensitive man, but he was already ushering me toward his office. “I'm fine,” I said hastily.

She lowered her head and began typing again, stabbing the keys so viciously the keyboard jumped on the desktop. Fletcher propelled me through a wide doorway into a cavernous space with a solid wall of windows facing south. I took a quick look around. High angled ceilings, clean white walls, a double-sized desk covered in blueprints. There was an open door to the left of the desk, through which I caught a glimpse of the executive toilet. Centered in the room was a small freestanding table displaying a bright green sledgehammer with gold lettering etched into its head.

“Exhibit A,” he said, patting the display. “The Green Hammer Award for Innovation in Building Design. We brought this baby home from the industry trade show in Sacramento last year. Shows the world just because you choose to work in a small town doesn't mean you can't compete with the big boys.”

“No kidding. Congratulations.” I picked up the hammer for a closer look. It must have weighed at least four pounds; the wooden handle was about a foot and a half long. “How'd you end up as a race sponsor, by the way?”

“Josh Boyle is one of the subcontractors we use for metal fabrication. He did that stair railing, as a matter of fact. When he mentioned he was putting a team together, I offered to foot the expenses.”

“That was generous.”

“Yes and no,” he said. “Everyone wants to be a part of the race in some capacity. It's funky, crazy, unique. Pure Arlinda. People come from all over the country to watch. You couldn't ask for a better marketing platform.”

“Ah.”

He beamed at me. “Hey, I'm also running a business here.” His glance turned appraising. “I'm surprised you're not part of the team. Looks like you're in pretty good shape.”

Oh, my God, was I blushing? “Thanks,” I said, trying not to assess his body in turn.

His smile widened as he tugged me toward the window. “Take a look at this.”

The view stretched from the brackish ponds of the wildlife sanctuary to the gleaming water of Salmon Bay and the horizon beyond. Below me, I saw the SmithBuilt equipment yard and its collection of earthmoving machinery, enclosed by a chain-link fence topped with coiled razor wire. As I gazed across the marsh, a bird of prey wheeled into view, hovering over the grasslands like a helicopter before plunging down and out of sight.

“Pretty frickin' awesome, isn't it?” Fletcher was right at my side, his shoulder touching mine.

“Amazing. This building, too. For some reason I thought you just built subdivisions and shopping centers.”

“We still do,” he said. “But there's a green revolution happening in the industry, Sam, and we're at the forefront of it. It's not just about energy efficiency and the bottom line anymore. It's resource efficiency. Buying local. Reducing our carbon footprint. You know how much we spend to heat this place?”

I shook my head.

“Zip. Passive solar does sixty percent of the job. Our solar array does the rest. Most days our electric meter runs backward and we're building a credit for when the clouds roll in. We constructed our exterior walls offsite, pre-wired and pre-insulated. LED lighting, zero VOC finishes, the works. We salvaged boards from the old Halvorsen barn after it collapsed a few years back and used those for a nice, rustic look on the interior walls. That cut our need for drywall and other new materials in half. One of my staff members did the mosaic in the lobby with fragments of bathroom tile she picked up at the scrap yard. And check this out.” He gave my sleeve a friendly tug and pointed down, indicating a long ell that extended the length of the building south. “See those shingles? You'd swear they were solid wood, right?”

“I guess.”

“Sure you would. But they're not. They're a composite made from fifty-percent post-consumer recycled materials.”

I didn't want to spoil the moment by pointing out that several shingles had fallen off, so I made some murmurs of approbation and he nodded.

“Cutting-edge stuff. We used repurposed or recycled wherever possible. The initial cost is higher, but when a leading developer like us does it others follow, and that puts pressure on the manufacturer to bring the price down. It's one of the ways we demonstrate that global and community health is more important to us than the bottom line.”

I'd tried to maintain an expression of intelligent comprehension throughout his spiel but gave up after a tic started in my left eye. “You kinda lost me at VOC or thereabouts, but I'm impressed. Very worthy.”

He grinned. “Sorry. Volatile organic compounds. I feel so passionately about these things I tend to get carried away.”

“You've come a long way since high school.” Especially for a guy who almost flunked physics
twice.

“My dad taught me the value of hard work and of giving back to the community. He gave me my first job fixing up used appliances at his store. I'm dedicating my next project to him. Take a look at this.” He cupped a hand under my elbow and steered me to a brightly lit corner, where I saw a mock-up of what looked like an entire village laid out on a worktable. It measured at least four feet square.