Catharine Bramkamp - Real Estate Diva 04 - Trash Out Read online

  Trash Out

  A Real Estate Diva Mystery

  Catharine Bramkamp

  This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, some locations and incidents are products of the author’s fevered imagination.

  Any resemblances to actual events, local organization or person, living or dead, is entirely coincidental.

  It’s not about you.

  Cover design by Stacey Meinzen

  Acknowledgments

  Thank you to photographer Deanne Fitzmaurice who makes me look good.

  Thank you to Stacey Meinzen for a killer book cover.

  Thank you to Terry Darcy for reading it first.

  And Andrew Hutchins who is unfailingly supportive

  and to you, dear reader, for taking a chance on a new book.

  To Andrew - Always

  Chapter 1

  “I can’t believe you’re still wearing the SpongeBob Band-Aids.” Ben reached toward my leg to rip off the offending cover. “Come on, it wasn’t that bad.”

  “I fell through a hole in the floor.” I lightly slapped his hand away. “The bathroom-no-problem-everything-is-fine-go-ahead-and-shower floor.”

  I didn’t even want to climb the stairs to survey what Ben assured me, were extensive repairs. I stayed on the first floor. I quickly surveyed the front room careful not to allow my gaze to rest on any one thing. If Ben thought I wasn’t happy with any home feature, he would pounce and immediately inflict improvements.

  I thought we’d be done by now.

  “You know better than that.” He accurately read my expression. “You know I need to exorcise all the ghosts.”

  “Ghosts?” Panic gripped me, unreasonable, as there were no ghosts here. I checked with all the historians in the city, there were no ghosts in the former Lucky Masters Mansion, but that didn’t mean new ones couldn’t just appear. I’ve dealt with murderous children, murderous homeless professors, murder. But ghosts?

  Ben patted my arm and steered me out of the formal parlor to the front porch.

  “The ghosts of maintenance deferred, what did you think I meant?”

  “Oh, nothing.” I paused and surveyed what used to be a lawn, but over the last three months had turned into depressing patches of packed dirt and weeds; landscaping only appropriate for a vacant lot. Above us two men chatted, the occasional sound of a nail gun interrupted their conversation.

  Ben shook his head like a dog dislodging dust, debris and a few paint shards. Because of his habit of repeatedly running his dusty hands across his head, his hair turned more colors than mine.

  “Come on, you didn’t really fall all the way through the floor, the new insulation stopped the fall.”

  “And I am still grateful.” The cuts and bruises hadn’t quite healed completely from that adventure. I had hit a nail as my foot crashed through the floor and it still needed to be covered, despite Ben’s bogus medical analysis.

  “We have a problem.”

  “There are no problems, only opportunities.” He jumped down and plucked a handful of shingles leaning against the fence. I then noticed roof shingles had been tossed around the perimeter of the house like sales flyers.

  Ben glanced up at the roof, shook his head and calmly gathered up the shingles. I did not say what first came to mind, the subcontractors, the time, the energy, his insistence on perfection, yet allowing people to do their own work in the own time. Where was the dumpster? Where was the third person to haul away all the spent shingles as they were replaced? But I kept my opinions to myself. I’m learning to contribute only in strategic moments and this was not a contributing moment, what with more shingles on the ground than hammered into the roof.

  We actually faced a number of problems: The New Century office was under siege by foreclosures and short sales, I was about to sell my own house and I wasn’t sure I’d make a very cooperative client, my best friend was getting married, I wasn’t. There were a lot of problems.

  “Carrie needs a venue for the wedding.” I blurted out. I adored Carrie and considered her my best friend aside from Ben. But during a wedding, loyalties tend to shift. I was struggling with that, I suppose that was another problem.

  He paused, a shingle in his hand. “She didn’t reserve something last year?”

  “She wasn’t engaged this time last year.” I pointed out.

  He stacked the shingles neatly on the porch.

  Ben is a large man, broad shouldered, long limbed. He is larger than me by half, which I find hugely appealing (pun intended). He towers over my five eight-inch height, even when I wear heels (which brings me to Amazonian proportions, stature I use to my advantage, but he still is larger). Despite Ben’s height and presence, he is gentle with people and meticulous in his work. All great attributes, but could he hurry this particular project along?

  “Carrie has her heart set on a wine country wedding.” I had ruminated on the problem during the three-hour drive from River’s Bend, but still hadn’t come up with an interesting option.

  “Napa won’t have them.” He abandoned his neat pile, crossed his arms and leaned on the porch banister.

  “No, and increasingly, neither will some of the wineries in Sonoma.” The men laughed, the nail gun fired three more times, ah, progress.

  “There are so many permits to file and get approved, even for a small wedding,” he scraped his hands through his hair again, three more flecks of paint fell – yellow, the color of the master bedroom. “I talked to O’ Reilly today, we were discussing Cassandra, she’s having trouble with all the forms and requirements, it takes more than we thought to open a winery.”

  Cassandra. One of Ben’s projects, and possibly another one of my problems. Ben saves things: old doors, sheet metal, antique tools, a high school friend who fell on emotional hard times when her boyfriend, Peter Klaussen O’Reilly the III abruptly broke up with her. Ban saved Cassandra then, he was in the throes of saving her now. After three years in Australia, she was back in the States and opening a winery. Guess who is her biggest investor? I wished Ben would take a page from my friend Carrie’s book and just save feral cats. Or write anonymous checks to a museum. Oh wait, he does that too.

  “She’s not officially ready to open to the public, but we can hold a private affair.” He frowned and studied his hands. “The wines from Australia are in, so we can serve something.”

  I reached out and flicked away pieces of shingle from his hair and shoulders. Cassandra’s new winery, Prophesy Estates, was located on the valley floor in Dry Creek, just off East Side Road. When Ben promised to help, the plan was to renovate a barn on the site of her family’s property, something simple and if Ben was involved, tasteful. But Cassandra was an impatient woman, she convinced Ben to buy an established winery just down the road and she re-decorated THAT winery to her own extravagant taste. This was another subject I did not comment on. And Ben cooperated by not disclosing everything to me. Really, it was better this way.

  “She’d host a wedding? This early in the game?” I pulled out my phone and glanced at Ben. He nodded, I patted his arm and raised a cloud of dust. Four more shingles were attached to the roof above us.

  “Does she have enough space for about 500 people?” I hit Carrie’s name.

  “Tent the parking lot, sure.”

  It wasn’t my money, I reminded myself over and over. When I forgot, Carrie reminded me. So I considered the idea of asking for Cassandra’s last minute help legitimate payback. Cassandra owes Ben, and what better way to pay him back than by helping my good friend? My logic is always impeccable. To me.

  “Should we have Carrie check it out?”
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  Ben rubbed his chin. “Cassandra’s holding a big party for her grand opening in a couple weeks. And she mentioned needing more cash for barrels.”

  He rolled his eyes as if considering dates and barrels together took all his energy.

  “The wedding is only six weeks away,” I pointed out. “Carrie already sent the save the date cards, so the date is fixed, we just need a place.”

  “She’ll have to just go for it, she can’t change her mind, there isn’t much time. Is she willing to do that?”

  My phone buzzed. Carrie sent a capital lettered YES. “What other choices do we have?”

  “True, I’ll call Cassandra.” He frowned, a knot of tourists huddled by the fence transfixed by something or someone on the roof. A shout followed by a rain of shingles pouring off the roof and smacking onto the front walk way interrupted our conversation. Ben raced upstairs, phone clutched to his ear,

  The good news is that our new house sits right on the main street in downtown Claim Jump. On a good day, Claim Jump can claim it is, or was, the Queen of the Mines, a popular gold country sobriquet. But more often than not, the neighboring towns like Nevada City and Auburn, out-charm poor little Claim Jump. There are days when we can’t make a claim for anything. But the town works at it, the Avis to Nevada City’s Hertz. We try harder. And despite the second run status of what I consider my second home town, we get enough interest and tourists that our current gaggle of sub contractors play to a near constant audience of visitors. The summer crowd does not disappear in September, if anything more people venture up to enjoy the hot afternoons and warm evenings in the foothills.

  Because the house fronts Main Street (yes, the main street in Claim Jump is named Main Street, the founding fathers were more interested in mining for gold than creating an imaginative city structure), everyone in town is fully aware of what Ben and I are up to: from the wiring to the new master bathroom toilet. Which means that every job, from resurfacing the driveway to fixing that damn hole in the master bath, needed a permit.

  Even more good news is that while our subcontractors perform for the crowd, part of their performance piece involves some actual work, so a few of their antics actually result in real repairs. Plus, we get on the ground reporting by my grandmother, her friends Pat and Mike, even Summer who runs the theater across the street calls me to report on the progress. After a month’s worth of hourly and purported helpful progress reports I am ready to admit that maybe we have too much help.

  Even Tom Marten, the police chief and former close friend, apparently pauses on the sidewalk and comments on the roof project every morning on his way to the station. Maybe that’s good, maybe that’s why so many shingles were covering the front yard. I’d have to ask Tom.

  I parked in the back of the house that featured a luxurious two-car garage. Parking is very important in Claim Jump, you don’t move to a former gold rush town, circa 1870, and not treasure a practical and ahistorical post-World War One garage.

  Bolstered by Carrie’s agreement and Cassandra’s assurances that she’d be delighted to host a big wedding, I tackled my next problem: my grandmother’s decorating help.

  First thing Saturday morning, while Ben flogged the troops until moral improved, I trailed through Grandmother’s large home on Marsh Avenue. We paused before gilt framed portraits of stern black and white pioneers some of whom were related, many of whom were rescued from The Antique Affair in Auburn. She gestured to one particularly unattractive woman sporting a severe bun and a matching expression. I said no out loud.

  “Then maybe you’d like this wash stand with the porcelain jug and basin.” The item in question rocked on a spindly legged stand that built expressively to hold a wash basin and pitcher and did not have any other utility than that of a full-time basin stand. Perhaps it could be used for firewood.

  “This would look perfect in the front hall.” Prue slowly moved from room to room. I watched her carefully, ready to catch her should she stumble. To me, she looked as stable as the damn wash stand, but she insisted she was fine, her foot was completely healed and no, she was not over doing things by hiking down the hill every day to inspect our new house.

  “Okay,” Prue, she prefers Prue to the designation Grandma. “No water pitcher,” she thrust it into my hands. “You can use it in guest bath. How about taking the dining room table?”

  “Don’t you need the dining room table for dining?” I followed her deliberate progress into the dining room where the most expressive items of decor in the small room were three shrunken heads strung over the fireplace. They were donated by my uncle, who negotiates with cannibals to secure dive sites in New Guinea for very wealthy and foolish people. Perhaps one of those heads was an errant tourist?

  “I have the old one in the barn.” Prue explained.

  “That particular dining table is really a pool table covered by two sheets of plywood.” Plywood that was, by now, water soaked and warped.

  “It was very sturdy.” Prue pushed against the more authentic and rather attractive Queen Anne table. “This requires maintenance.”

  “Dusting?” I asked. She rolled her eyes.

  “Have you asked mom? Maybe she’d like some of this, if you want to get rid of it.”

  “I don’t want to get rid of it, I want to give it to you.”

  I patted her arm and quickly retreated from the dining room before the chairs (at the very least) could be foisted off on me.

  It wasn’t a very successful meeting. After forty-five minutes and a number of reassurances that I wasn’t rejecting her love, just rejecting the parlor love seat, the discomfort of which was legendary, I had to beg my grandmother to stop. There wasn’t a single piece of furniture in her house that I could use. I knew that going in, but Prue insisted on going through the motions.

  “Can I call Pat and Mike now?” I was still holding the pitcher under my arm as if it was a carnival prize.

  She waved her hand and slowly headed to the kitchen. “Fine, do what you want, it’s a shame to spend money on furniture when you have perfectly good things to use right here.”

  I stashed the pitcher in an upstairs hall, covered it with towel and called Pat and Mike.

  “Yes I know you decorated Prue’s house. No, I am not interested in authentic, I want comfort.”

  Mike, one half of my Grandmother’s best friends, paused and considered the idea of comfort.

  “Ben is a big man,” I opened another closet thinking I could grab linens for the guest room beds. I was assaulted by shelves dripping with lace edged pillow cases and scratchy hand crochet afghans. I hurriedly shut the door. “Think Mission, think Craftsman.”

  “We can probably do comfort. But you’ll never be on the annual house tour if you take that route,” he warned.

  “I’ll take that risk. Think super sized flat paneled television screens. Envision straight white guy.”

  “Did you make an appointment with Donna?”

  I glanced at my watch. “I’m meeting with her next.”

  “We’ll put something together,” he assured me, once he recovered from the shocking idea that furniture should be used, not just admired from afar.

  “Thank you.”

  At ten o’clock I ventured back to the house on Main Street. The roofers had moved to the back of the house and were now sliding spent shingles into the back yard. I picked up seven more as I walked through our desolate yard. At least it was a relatively small patch of dirt, most of the houses downtown sat on tiny lots, we did not have the large front lawns found in suburbia.

  On Pat and Mike’s recommendation, I had engaged a spiritual cleanser to come in and smudge the new place. Donna Berkowsky showed up at exactly ten. A woman in the throes of negotiating being a certain age, she wore her middle age figure and gunmetal gray curls with panache. She waved at Ben, now perched on the roof like an oversized gargoyle, (and with just as much attitude) and strolled into the house.

  She greeted me with a firm handshake and immediately dug
into her battered doctor’s bag and retrieved shells, a lighter and what looked like a handful of dried weeds. She handed me her card and began to stroll through the house, her head raised as if she was on high alert.

  I followed her. I had done what I could. I had cleaned out the house twice, the first time to clear it to sell, the second time as a buyer. I had pulled out the inexpensive plates, and orange and avocado colored casserole dishes from the depths of kitchen cupboards and donated the lot. I retrieved all the stainless steel forks and spoons from the kitchen drawers and pulled out tired coffee makers and mixing bowls and gave it all away to Hospice. I had delivered every quilt in the house to Summer who in turn hung them like art all along the brick theater walls claiming they helped insulate the place – as well they should. I even cleared out the bizarre baby doll heads from under the floor in the widow’s walk (no, I never learned who or why, I just wanted the creepy things out of my living space). All I needed to do was to eradicate any lingering malevolence from poor Penny Masters, her mother and possibly even Lucky Masters himself. Not even the members of the venerable Brotherhood of Cornish Men argued with me on that point.

  “Can you feel any bad energy in the house?” I dogged Donna’s heels as she drifted from room to room. At least most of the downstairs rooms were cleared of the building material debris. Dare I say it? Except for a lack of adequate furnishings, it was almost ready to be occupied by humans.

  “Negative vibrations,” Donna repeated. “You know, every electrical appliance in the place emits damaging energy.” She looked me up and down; I compulsively, and unconsciously clutched my phone. “But I don’t think you’re about to give that up,” she nodded to my precious phone. “Despite the EMFs. No, I understand we just want to clean the depression.” She paused. “Sadness, fear, and anger, definitely anger, you don’t want that in your house.”