Michael R Collings (21 page)

“Anyway, it looks like the entire wall slumps from corner to corner. I think its separated from the roof by an inch or two in the middle, just above Suze’s window.”

He laughed bitterly.

“I’m surprised the window hasn’t cracked. Yet.”

Catherine remained silent. For a long time.

Then she touched Willard’s hand. He didn’t move.

“Is there anything we can do about it right now?”

He shook his head. “We’ll have to call the city engineer’s office to have them send someone out, but that can’t happen until the soil is a lot dryer than it is. Without more rain, or at least nothing like the last four days, maybe three weeks, a month.”

“Is there any danger?”

“I suppose not. Like Maxwell said, the place has lasted nearly thirty years. The roof isn’t bowing anywhere, so it’s supported all right. I think. We’ll just have to see what the city inspector says when he comes.”

She nodded.

Outside, the clouds began to break up, signaling the official end of the worst storm in a decade. If they had looked carefully, the might even have seen some blue sky peeking through.

They didn’t look.

From the
Tamarind Valley Times,
30 October 1991:

LOCAL BUSINESSMAN SOUGHT

ON CHARGES OF FRAUD

Charges of real estate fraud and criminal negligence were formally brought against Andrew “Ace” McCall, sole owner of Ace-High Construction and McCall/Sidney Realty in Tamarind Valley early this morning.

State Real Estate Board investigators have provided evidence that McCall was personally involved in several schemes to defraud contractors, suppliers, and buyers of recently constructed homes in two subdivisions in the Valley.

Sunset Hills, located in the far eastern end of the Valley, and Charter Oaks, the newer of the two, located just west of the 101 Freeway, have both been under investigation for several months, although no actions have been taken against McCall until today. Charges range from using substandard materials to willfully subverting the local and state building codes, potentially endangering residents in both subdivisions.

A warrant was issued for McCall, although when contacted, the police indicated that he has not been located.

No clues have been found in relation to a second case apparently involving McCall, the mysterious disappearance two years ago of his former senior partner in Ace-High Construction and McCall/Sidney Realty, Bryan Sidney.

Sidney was last seen exactly two years ago today. No traces of him have been found to date. McCall was considered a subject of interest in the case but due to a lack of any substantive evidence no charges were ever filed.

If found guilty of the fraud and negligence charges as specified, McCall could face….

From the
Cactus Spine
(Newsletter of the Bureau of Land Management, Reno District), 24 December 1997:

GOOD TO SEE YOU GO—

(NOT REALLY!)

Farewell and best wishes to one of the stalwarts here at the Reno District. After forty-five years of government service, over thirty of them with the BLM, Abraham Morris—known affectionately as “Abe,” “The Old Man,” “That Old Fart,” and “Hey, You” (among other names, mostly unprintable)—has finally decided to call it quits, hang up his compass and canteen, and re-join the human race. Most people call it “retiring.” Abe calls it “recovering his lost humanity.”

Abe first joined the BLM in 1962 after serving in the Army and later in the Forest Service. During his more than three decades with us, he has worked throughout the Western States. His retirements goals include....

Abraham Morris, February 1998-November 2005

The Joys of Retirement

1
.

From the first moment he saw it outlined on the crest of the low hill, Abraham Morris knew that the house on Oleander was a perfect investment for him. He might be old, he thought ruefully as the realtor’s sleek car nosed into the driveway, they might figure him to be too decrepit to work for the federal government any longer, but he wasn’t senile. He had always had a nose for such things. He knew a good deal when he saw one.

Nothing happened to change his mind until after he had finished a walk-through of the house and the sorely neglected backyard. On the whole, he liked what he saw, liked especially the potential in the way the place was set on the property, the sense of roominess and openness. It kind of reminded him of Nevada…only green. Yes, there was a lot a good green thumb could do in the yard, and the house was larger than he had figured on getting for his money.

By the time he had finished with the showing, his mind was almost made up.

The realtor had three locks to check before leaving, so while she was finishing, Abe walked a short way down the front sidewalk, primarily to get a better view of the lot as a whole.

“That’s a death-house!”

His head jerked around sharply at the hoarsely whispered sound. For a moment, it was as if the voice had come from thin air, a disembodied sound that echoed strangely across the open yards. Then, squinting against the bright light, he finally spotted an woman next door, huddling in the shadow of a garage bearing the number 1042 in cracked wood cutouts desperately in need of a new paint job. She was staring directly at him.

He glanced over his shoulder. The realtor had just completed locking up and emerged from the shadow beneath the eaves of 1066 into the sunlight to join him.

“It’s a murder house,” the woman continued as if there had been no seconds-long interruption.

Abe could make out no details of her face—it was little more than a pale oval in the shadows. She was a large woman, almost grossly large, although that sense might have been due largely to the play of light and dark across her figure. He had the sense as well that she was old, perhaps ancient. In other times she might have passed for a witch, or at least a hag, given the vehemence—and distinct if perverse pleasure—that echoed through her voice.

She did not speak again right away but simply hunched there, seemingly oblivious to the look of pained annoyance that flitted across the realtor’s face in the split second it took for her to take in the scene, cross the remaining yards of sidewalk, slip her arm into Abraham’s and ease him back toward the car.

“People die in that house,” the old woman called after him from the shadows. He realized with an odd pang that had never seen her face clearly. Her cracked, warbling voice was eerily strained, as if she simultaneously wanted to yell out a warning and was afraid to raise her voice above a raspy whisper.

“They die.”

He glanced over his shoulder once more, just in time to catch a muted shimmer of yellow polyester pants as she disappeared around the corner of her garage.

At the car, he turned to face the realtor—a pretty young thing named Rebecca Cantwell, who was pretty enough and young enough that she should have been at home caring for her man and her little ones, not strutting around showing houses to old farts like himself. Not for the first time, Abraham Morris admitted to himself that he was indeed getting old. Everything he believed in and valued and knew to be inviolable and unalterable was shifting like sands beneath his feet. And lately the tide had been going out faster and faster. The reality of mortality struck him at that moment, as it had so often and so unexpectedly in the four years since Matty had died—struck him full in the face and for a moment he was blinded and made breathless by its power.

“Mr. Morris?” Rebecca asked, “are you all right? Do you want to sit down?”

“No, I’m fine.” He paused for a second to catch his breath. “Is it true?”

“Is what true, Mr. Morris?”

He was mildly amused to notice that she was lying to him...well, to be generous, not precisely lying, since she hadn’t exactly answered him, but she sure as hell didn’t want to talk about something.

Toying with him was perhaps closer. As if he wouldn’t notice when she turned the snow-job machine on full tilt.

“What that old woman was talking about,” he said patiently.
Old
indeed. Who knew, he might even have a decade or two on her. He couldn’t really tell, not with her hidden in the shadows like that.

“About this being a ‘death-house.’”

There was a long silence as Rebecca Cantwell rummaged through her purse for her car keys. Abe thought the movement curiously stereotyped, verging on deliberate. She’s stalling, he thought. Why?

The young realtor glanced up and saw him staring at her. She flushed embarrassedly and jerked the key ring out of the depths of her large bag.

“Uh...well,” she said, slipping the key into the door lock, “Uh, to be frank, Mr. Morris....”

Uh-oh, Abe thought. Here it comes. Beware realtors when they decide to “be frank.” He waited, not giving the woman any clues as to how she should proceed to save a once-sure sale that might suddenly be in jeopardy.

“There was...uh...some...unpleasantness here a couple of months ago.”

He opened his car door and slid in. He waited patiently while Rebecca fumbled with ignition and finally started the car. His glance was firm and his face unexpressive.

“The previous owner...a businessman here in the valley, respected, really an exceptional man. Uh, his stepson went...well, Mr. Morris, to be blunt, the kid flipped out completely.”

Behind the unmoving muscles of his face, Abe grinned at Cantwell’s lapse into slang.

Lost his marbles
, his generation might have said, or
wigged out
,
blew his gaskets
. But the result would be the same, whatever you called it.

“The boy killed his stepfather?” he asked gently. “In the house?”

Cantwell looked momentarily surprised. “Yes, in the master bedroom. And his mother afterward. With a knife.”

Abe winced. That was a bit more than he had anticipated. “How old was he?”

“Fourteen or fifteen, I don’t remember exactly.” Her face was now pale, as if she were the senior citizen who needed to sit down and catch her breath before she fainted.

“What happened to him?”

“He’s dead, too.”

Abraham raised one eye brow quizzically.

“Not here,” the woman rushed to add. “Not in the house. He tried to get away in his stepfather’s car. It went off the road a couple of miles from here. There was…an explosion.”

Abe nodded. Then he turned slightly away from where the woman leaned against the door of her powder-blue Cadillac Eldorado, and he studied the house again. Not that the deaths made any difference, of course, not to him at least. It was a shame that things like that happened. The boy was probably on drugs or drunk and just couldn’t handle life. He had heard of such things before, although never quite this tragically. Three people dead. He shifted his position.

The house.

In spite of what might have happened inside a couple of months ago, the house was still a good buy. The inside had been completely renovated: new carpeting in every room; new hardwood doors hung in each room; new paint throughout.

He squinted against the bright sunlight. The mildly angled roof sloped down from each side of a central gable, giving the house a deceptive profile. It looked smaller, closer to the ground than it really was; the fourteen-foot, open-beam cathedral ceiling in the living room had surprised him, as had the fact there were five bedrooms. The place just didn’t look that large. From where he sat, he could see the crisp lines of white-rocked shingles. The roof was in good shape, he decided, and the exterior had recently been repainted as well.

The plants close to the house itself were all young—obviously newly planted. They weren’t doing all that well, but a spot of good fertilizer would fix that. Most of them would probably come out, anyway, since Abraham Morris had very definite ideas as to what was appropriate and not appropriate for front yards and flower beds. Roses, irises, gladiolus, geraniums—that sort of thing. Old fashioned cut flowers like Mattie so much enjoyed. He glanced disapprovingly at the straggling junipers and juvenile jade plants that promised nothing but unending, unchanging, year-round green.

Boring.

He noted with somewhat greater pleasure that the lawn had been re-sodded as well. Vaguely, Abraham wondered what the house must have looked like at the time of the...incident. From all he could see, everything replaceable had been replaced.

But, taken all in all, the place was obviously a good buy. It was perhaps a bit larger than he had originally intended, but that would mean all the more room for the two most important things in his life now that Mattie was gone: his grandchildren, and his collections—definitely in that order. And there was a lot of room for gardening, both in the front and in the deep back yard.

All in all, he repeated, a good buy.

Sold, he said to himself.

He turned to face the realtor, catching the flicker of uncertainty in her eyes—uncertainty coupled with a hungry eagerness to make a sale that he couldn’t miss.

“Well let’s get going,” he said brusquely. “Don’t you have anything else,” he added, knowing full well that any further showings would serve primarily to give him leverage when it came time to bargain for the house on Oleander.

The engine roared as the car backed out of the driveway and negotiated the turn. As they pulled away Abe glanced in the rearview mirror and caught a final glimpse of the house,
his
house, as he had already started to think of it.

Now for the fun part, he mused silently. Just how hard will this realtor lady bargain to get rid of a
death house
?

It was going to be entertaining finding out. And then his new life would begin. A new life in a new place, with a new house. He figured he had ten or fifteen good years in front of him.

Even though escrow on the house closed a little over a month and a half later and he moved in two weeks after that, he never saw the woman in yellow again.

Abraham Morris had developed diabetes just after his forty-ninth birthday.

“A mild case,” Dr. Sideko said as unconcernedly as if he had been diagnosing a hangnail or an ingrown body hair. “Should be no trouble at all controlling it.”