Eight
They stood in the driveway, holding their keys and John Franklin’s business cards, clearly unsure of how to proceed. All of them bore physical evidence of Bella Flora’s neglect.
“This is both better and worse than I was expecting,” Avery said.
“Yes,” Madeline agreed. “The good news is we could each walk away with over a million dollars.” She swiped at what looked like a bit of cobweb on her cheek and left a smear of dirt in its place. “The bad news is we have no idea what it would cost to pull it down or finish it.”
“Or how long it would take to do either of those things and then sell it,” Nicole said. A streak of dirt marred one bare shoulder.
Their smiles dimmed a bit as they considered the fact that no one was going to hand them even one dollar tomorrow.
Avery looked at her partners, knowing she must look equally smudged and wondering if their thoughts and feelings were as disjointed as hers. “My father’s former partner, Jeff Hardin, has been building in Tampa for the last fifty years,” she said. “He offered to come by this afternoon to take a look. Why don’t we ask him to give us a quote on demolition and some sort of ballpark of what it might take to get it in good enough shape to put on the market?”
“That sounds great,” Madeline said, skimming a nervous hand down the side of her white capris. “I don’t really see how we can make a decision without educating ourselves first.”
Nicole nodded, her green eyes veiled. “Sure. What time are you expecting him?
“Two o’clock.”
They agreed to meet back at the house and then, like boxers retreating to their respective corners, they dispersed. Nicole slid into the Jag, tied a scarf around her head, and drove off. Madeline locked her purse in the trunk of her car and with a wave of good-bye, took the path that led to the beach. Avery, who had no appetite and couldn’t think of anywhere she actually wanted to go, wandered out to the back of the house and plopped down on the seawall.
The day was warm and the sun high in the bright blue sky. Boats packed with people motored by at a sedate pace, picking up speed as they left the pass for open water. Gulls circled lazily overhead or dive-bombed for food; others had staked out the fishing pier waiting for man-made opportunities. When she was little she’d sometimes come with her parents to Pass-a-Grille for a day on the beach. They’d cart their things onto the sand and set up near the Don CeSar. There her mother would arrange herself artfully beneath a large striped beach umbrella and lose herself in the latest movie and design magazines, while she and her father designed and built elaborate sand castles with turrets and moats and carefully drizzled decoration. There’d been the occasional fancy Sunday brunch at the newly restored Don, as the locals called it, and once a whole weekend there with her parents. Avery closed her eyes, trying to view that weekend from an adult perspective, but all she could remember was how much her ten-year-old self had loved jumping in the big kidney-shaped pool, and her shouts of “look at me!” and “watch this!” that only her father had obeyed. Two years later her mother had left—unaccountably enough for Hollywood, where she’d ultimately become one of a handful of well-known interior designers to the stars.
After that it had been just her and her father and the Hardin family, who had done their best to include them in their ranks. She narrowed her gaze, straining to see the swell of Shell Key on the opposite side of the pass, where they’d come on the Hardins’ boat on those rare Saturdays when her dad and Jeff Hardin hadn’t been needed at some construction site or another. Avery sighed, remembering how they’d anchor off the island to swim and sunbathe and how she and her father would escape into their castle-building all the while trying not to be jealous of the completeness of the Hardin family.
Chase Hardin had been a whole other wrinkle—teasing her and calling her squirt and generally treating her like he did his younger sister despite the brief but painful crush Avery had developed for him as she’d entered her teens.
Over the years, her father had kept her posted. Sybil was married and living in D.C. Like Avery, Chase had started on an architectural degree, but then his mother had died and he’d left school to work with their dads after his father’s first heart attack. Chase had married and had two children. Three or four years ago he’d lost his wife to cancer. The last time Avery had seen him had been at her father’s funeral, where he’d pulled her aside to give her a gruff hug and then straightened her horribly wobbly spine by calling her “Squirt.”
Odd that Bella Flora had been sitting here, waiting, all that time. Rising from the seawall, she turned to study the house whose fate now lay partly in her hands. She considered the long run of window and glass, the solid stonework and fanciful wrought iron, the faded and pockmarked pink stucco with its chipped white trim. It was all that remained of what her father had left her, his legacy, though he had never intended it that way.
Avery let herself into the house and stood listening as it creaked and settled around her. The musty dampness still permeated the air and Avery recognized it for what it was; the smell of loneliness. Her footsteps echoed in the vast emptiness as she threw open doors and windows—those that would budge—to take advantage of the cross ventilation the house had been designed to capture. It took her full weight and a good bit of determination to unstick the exterior kitchen door, and when she’d finally wrestled it open, she was rewarded with a warm breeze on her cheek and a doorknob in her hand.
Avery opened her palm to inspect the egg-shaped knob, which was scuffed and scratched from decades of use, the brass aged to a deep patina. Setting it carefully on the kitchen counter, she went out to her car and rooted around in the trunk until she found her tool belt. On the way back into the house, she strapped it low on her hips and buckled it on the hole she’d notched in it. Not needing to look, she reached down for the Phillips screwdriver and used it to reattach the knob. She had just slipped the screwdriver back into its slot when she heard footsteps in the hallway followed by Jeff Hardin’s “Anybody home?”
Hurrying down the central hall, Avery bypassed Chase Hardin with a smile to walk into his father’s open arms, where she stayed for a few long comforting moments before turning to face her onetime crush. He was forty and it looked good on him. His dark hair was cropped close to his head, his shoulders were broad and well muscled, and his skin was tanned from a lifetime in the sun.
He looked her up and down. “Glad to see you got rid of that silly pink tool belt you used to wear.”
“I was seven,” she said. “Everything I owned was pink then. Besides, my father gave it to me. I’m not sure I even took it off in the bath.”
“Well, I recognize
that
tool belt,” Jeff Hardin said with his slow smile. “Your daddy never left home without it.”
Avery nodded at the truth of his statement; she could barely picture her father without it slung on his hips. Her mother had not been charmed by this and complained that he would have strapped it on over his tuxedo if she’d let him. Not that he’d been a fan of the formal affairs Dierdre dragged him to or the formal wear required to attend them.
Avery had spotted the expensive tuxedo balled up in the garbage shortly after her mother had deserted them. It hadn’t taken her father long to shed the physical reminders she’d left behind; the memories had proven much harder to dispel.
“So this is what was left of your father’s estate?” Jeff Hardin shook his head.
“Actually only a third of this,” Avery said. “I have two partners. They’ll be back any minute.”
“I told your dad those returns were too good to be true.” He shook his head again. “That Malcolm Dyer should be taken out and shot.”
“They’ll have to find him first,” Avery said. “And, frankly, I think shooting is way too good for him. I’d like to see him torn limb from limb and then staked out on an anthill in the hot sun to die.”
Chase gave her a look. “You’ve gotten awfully bloodthirsty.” He had his father’s smile but his bright blue eyes were shadowed.
“That man stole everything my father spent his life working for. And he left me with a third of a house that has definitely seen better days.” She looked at her father’s former partner. “Thanks so much for coming. Where do you want to start, up or down?”
“That’s up to Chase,” his father said. “Your dad and I always built new, and I can give you a ballpark on demolition. But Chase, here, he has a real passion for older homes. He’s done some right fine renovation and restoration work and can tell you what’s what a lot better than me.”
Avery barely suppressed a groan. Leaving Jeff to his own devices, she followed Chase upstairs as he began his inspection, making notes on his legal pad as he went.
In the master bedroom she stood in the corner where the balcony’s French doors met the longer window wall. “I figure this was probably a sleeping porch that was enclosed when they redid the master bedroom,” she said, interested to see if he’d agree. “And this dressing area with the ‘his’ and ‘hers’ closets were probably once a separate bedroom.”
He looked at her more closely but barely grunted, “Could be.”
“These windows all look original—which I guess is why they’re not closing properly. We found a bird’s nest over here”—she pointed to the twigs and grass that remained—“and I’m not looking forward to discovering what other animals might be in residence.”
Again no comment, just note taking.
“I noticed all the windows on the front of the house are replacements, but it looks like they never got to the back or the western side. I figure most of them will need to be reglazed.” She waited pointedly for a response.
“Won’t know till I look.” He shrugged and made more notes.
“I’m betting there are hardwoods under this shag.” She scrunched up her nose at both the smell and the color.
“Like I said, I won’t know until I look.” He barely looked at her; his tone was equally dismissive.
In the master bath, she took in the two wall-hung sinks with their tapered steel legs and flaking chrome fixtures. The steady drip had worn a stain in each rectangle of porcelain. Every possible surface had been tiled in some shade of green and every inch of what felt like miles of grout screamed for cleaning and resealing.
It was a mess, but she loved the look and feel of it. Almost the only true memories of time alone with her mother were of junking and trolling for treasure in the antique stores in the older parts of Tampa. Anything remotely Deco had pulled her like a magnet and apparently still did.
“Did you see this?” She pointed up toward the slightly arched ceiling at the faded pastel tones of a fanciful underwater scene that matched the etching on the shower door. “It looks hand painted, but it’s hard to see the detail. The polyurethane has really yellowed.”
He did stop writing long enough to look up. “Yep,” he said. “Could be.”
Her eyes slitted in irritation. Chase had never been overly effusive, but she couldn’t remember him displaying this much attitude. Then again, they hadn’t spent any real time around each other since they’d been kids, and they’d never been in anything resembling a professional relationship. Which struck her now as a very fortunate thing.
The noncommittal responses continued as they finished the upstairs bedrooms and baths. She followed him up into the attic uninvited and flicked on her own flashlight, their beams looked like lopsided headlights as they flashed against the walls and framework. By the time they’d inspected the back and front stairs and covered every inch of the first floor, he was barely even grunting and she was seething.
He was thorough, she’d give him that. He practically crawled up into both fireplaces, took his time analyzing the plumbing and the electrical, and explored the pipes of the original steam heat system as well as the more recently installed central air-conditioning. Then he walked the perimeter of the house, checking out what seemed like every inch of the foundation and running his hands, well, lovingly up the heavily stuccoed walls. But for all he said to her he might as well have been alone. In fact, it seemed pretty clear to Avery that he wished he was.
In the driveway, she found Nicole and Madeline already talking with Jeff Hardin. After the briefest of hellos, Chase went to pull a ladder off his truck, leaving Avery to trail after him as he carried it to the side of the house, put it in position, and climbed up on the barrel-tile roof to look at the damage above the master bedroom. He didn’t invite her to join him, nor did he offer any details about what he’d found when he came back down with several broken pieces of tile in one hand.
“How big an area are we looking at?” she asked impatiently and when he didn’t respond, “I’m assuming it’s just a patch job.”
No response.
“Can we match the original tiles?”
“Probably.” His tone was grudging, though she thought she detected a small flicker of surprise in his eyes.
“What is it with you?” she finally demanded as he set the tiles carefully out of the way and began to fold up the ladder. “I played on the same construction sites as a child that you did. And I have a BArch degree from USC hanging on my wall. Not to mention four years on
Hammer and Nail
. I doubt there’s anything you’re scribbling on that damned yellow pad that I’m incapable of understanding.”
“Is that right?” he asked as he settled the ladder under one arm. “I thought maybe that degree was mail order or something. Because all I ever saw you do on that show was point and gesture with the occasional flutter of your eyelashes and a sigh of admiration.”
He turned his back on her and carried the ladder to the truck, taking his time getting it positioned. By the time he’d ambled back to the rest of them, Avery’s jaw was clenched so tightly she doubted she could produce much more than a grunt herself. It was turning out be a monosyllabic kind of day.