Catharine Bramkamp - Real Estate Diva 03 - In Good Faith (3 page)

She regarded me. I stopped gazing around like gaping tourist at the Fairmont and paused to look at her.

“
Yes,” I hedged, “in a manner of speaking.” 

When Ben and I were up in Claim Jump last September, he was not only kidnapped, but was almost burned to death in a forest fire. It does not bear thinking about. I certainly didn’t want to discuss it.

She nodded. “I thought we’d eat in the kitchen.  Ben told me you don’t mind being casual.”

“He’s right.”  I followed her under the porch, through open French doors, into an enormous kitchen. The walls and back splash of the work area were covered with brilliant yellow and blue Spanish tiles. The floor was tiled with rose colored, terra cotta squares. A gleaming copper hood brooded over a five
-burner Wolf Range.  I don’t use stoves per se, but I’m great at identifying them.  I always list name brand appliances on my home sale flyers. 

“
Ben, you can help.”  Emily strode to a huge pot on the stove and pulled out corn husk wrapped tamales and piled them onto a platter.

The dinning table was built of wine cask staves. It would dwarf a normal size room but it barely made an impression in this cavernous kitchen. 

Ben carried the plate tamales along with a big bowl containing an avocado and pea salad to the table. He retrieved a bottle of wine from the refrigerator (Sub-Zero, did you have to ask?). The bottle was bare except for a white mailing label with
Pinot Gris
scrawled in ball point pen.

Ben poured the wine into narrow white wine glasses.  Huge, fat, burgundy glasses were already placed on the table for the main course.

“Try this. Cassandra is experimenting with whites this year.”

Most people are now familiar with Sonoma County wines.  You remember California beat out France in 1976 in a blind tasting, you can name the varietals, you understand the difference between red and white. But for those of you who want to move up to the advance class, un-labeled bottles
, shiners, are the next indicator of prestige.  When you pour wine from a slightly dirty bottle marked with nothing more than a strip of duct tape and
Pinot Gris, 2005
, scrawled in permanent marker, you have achieved the inside track.  That wine is likely to hail from a famous wine maker’s private reserve – a barrel of something he or she conjured up for fun and is only delivering to personal friends.  Delicious, but not for sale.  It’s all about who you know.

“
I understand you’re in real estate.”  Emily took a small sip of her white and finally took a bite of her salad, signaling that I, too, could start in.

I tried to eat slowly and daintily, but it was difficult. I don’t worry about how much I eat in front of Ben, Carrie’s admonishments aside. But here, with Ben’s grandmother a ringer for my own mother, God help me
; all the rules and restrictions of my childhood rose to the surface. I knew I had to slow down, be good, use the right fork, act like a lady. Why did I agree to this dinner?

“Yes that’s my career, even though it may sound like I get myself in awkward situations.”  I thought I’d go for the jugular; why not say it right away? I have put her precious grandchild in risky situations.

Emily banished her fork in my direction.
“But I’m sure finding a dead body in an empty house can happen to anyone.”

“
Certainly, happens all the time,” I assured her. I sipped my wine. God, it was delicious. Where did this come from again?

“
I’m sure that kind of thing is all behind you,” Emily said.  “You two certainly seem busy. I don’t see Ben as often as I want to.”

Ben grunted and poured the red wine, a Preston Zin. You can buy Preston
, I had a couple bottles in my cellar.

She rested her fork on the edge of her plate and eyed me. “In fact, he hasn’t been here much since July.”

Ben shifted and rose to serve the tamales.  He picked up each one with his fingers and placed them neatly onto our dinner plates. Emily did not flinch over Ben’s methods.

I met Emily’s gaze. “No, he hasn’t. He’s been with me.”

She nodded. 

“
Really?”  Ben balanced a plate of food, three tamales on each, and slipped it towards me. One of the tamales was in danger of sliding off the plate. I caught it with my fork.

“
Yes, honey.”  She turned to Ben and toasted him with the red wine.  “I always said you should find a nice girl and settle down.”

She glanced at me. I kept my expression neutral. This was between Ben and his grandmother. It was as if Ben was eighteen and arguing with a parent who didn’t want him to take off and join the P
eace Corps, but stay in town and take over Dad’s dry goods business.

Ben groaned
. “Grandma.”

“
I’m being realistic.  Ben, honey, three is too many; take one back.”  She deftly removed the still husk-wrapped tamale and tossed it back into the center bowl. 

“
Don’t you love the holiday tradition of serving tamales to guests?”  She asked me. “I get these downtown, hand made, of course.”

I nodded.

Dinner went well, I think. Once we moved past the conversation about Ben, and his lack of relationships, the flow of talk was easier for me.

To distract his grandmother, Ben talked about the Pinot Gris girl.  

“Cassandra flew home from Adelaide a couple of weeks ago. She is starting up her own winery here, in Dry Creek.”

“
There’s room here?”  Emily asked.

“
She has about ten acres she inherited from her parents, she’s building a small winery where that storage barn used to be.”

“
You’re helping her, aren’t you?” Emily said it more as fact than a real question.  This was interesting.

“
Yeah,” Ben admitted, immediately. “I’m a partner in the winery.”

Emily rolled her eyes and looked at me, then looked at Ben. 
“You aren’t in need of a partner for any new venture are you?”  She addressed me.

“
Not that I’m aware of.” I said piously.

“
Self actualized woman?”  Emily said.

“
Come on,” Ben protested. “I’ve always been there for Cassandra. What else was I supposed to do? We’ve been friends since the third grade, and when she inherited the vineyards, I suggested Australia for her MS,” he explained to me.

“
You help a lot.” I said.

“
Sometimes, it gets him in trouble.” Emily sipped her wine.

“
Yes, it does.” I felt, of course, that there was more to the Cassandra story, but it probably didn’t bear discussion over the dinner table in front of his grandmother. I’d find out more, later. This woman mattered. Whether this Cassandra mattered more than me was something I’d have to explore - very carefully.

Was he caring for his grandmother? Probably. I knew people who shared their homes with a parent, and it often worked well. It was not something that would work for me. My sister-in-law, Mary, once commented that my mother was always welcome in their house. I’m taking Mary at her word. I even wrote it down.  I’m thinking of asking Mary to sign it. I may even have the papers notarized.

Even through the house was magnificent and the location divine, why was the man living with his grandmother? Come on, in every
Glamour
magazine article you’ve ever read, the number one
don’t
sign, the worst thing a boy can do, is still live with his parents – eewww – very failure to launch.

So, as we wished Emily good night and crossed the courtyard to Ben
’s “apartment”, I asked the question, why live with Grandma?

“I haven’t found a relationship I want to ruin by building a new house,” was his answer.

“Dude, you’re over forty.”  I couldn’t help it. It popped out.

I have no discretion when it comes to my personal life.  I demonstrate great self-control and tact in business, which makes me think that we must only get a certain finite allotment of tact and diplomacy, and I use mine up selling homes.

He gave me an odd look that I couldn’t read at all.  “That may change.”

“Being over forty?”

“No, you smart ass,” he said with somewhat more affection.  “Living with Grandma.”

“Keep in touch on that.”

Calling Ben’s quarters an apartment was about the same level of misnomer as calling his grandmother’s gracious family compound a mere house. 

Ben lived on the first and second floor directly across the courtyard from the kitchen and, he assured me, his grandmother’s rooms. 

“We live more separately than it looks.” He explained.

“
I didn’t say anything.” We walked through French doors to his living room a huge library with scattered upholstered furniture. I stood at the shelves and squinted at all the hardback books. The room was filled, floor to ceiling with books. It felt like that  scene when Belle is given the Beast’s library. How marvelous.

“Yes, the pages are all cut
.” He commented.

I glanced over at him
. “You still surprise me.”

“I hope to always surprise you.”

His bedroom was large enough to easily accommodate a king size bed topped by a massive mission style headboard that could have been a carriage house door in a previous life. There was room for a stacked Japanese Tansu chest, two easy chairs, and an occasional table.  His bathroom was equally muscular with a walk in shower recently updated in glass tiles in clear green and blue. I could pretend I was underwater. I could hardly wait to try it out.

In his bed, the sex was as good, maybe better, than at my house
since there was more room in the bed. But I’m not quite ready to concede that point. I’m very happy with my own, cozy, queen size mattress.

***

Thus, based on that rather idyllic fifteen hours, I felt I could call him up on his only day off and ask for help. If he helped people the way his grandmother claimed, I was in good hands.

“Hi, what are you doing?”  I think I kept my voice from trembling. I didn’t want to spook him right away.

“Relaxing, are you at your open house?”

“Yes, 109 Silverpoint Circle.”

He paused.  “Really?”

Before I could explore that reaction, I jumped into the fray.  “And I found another body.”

His pause was very
, very long. Then a sharp intake of breath. “You what?”

“I found another body
.” I repeated.  I realized, as I said it, that I also covered the entire bathroom with green mouthwash. The police may have field day with that.

Reluctantly I stood, kicked off my shoes – didn’t want them to get more minty fresh than they already were  – and climbed back up the stairs, while Ben, on the other end of the phone, processed my comment about another corpse.

I didn’t blame him. It’s not often a person picks up the phone at 12:55 on Sunday afternoon and hears the announcement that there is a new, dead, body in his life. Ben was probably watching a football game or lounging in that fabulous library.

“I’m sorry, did I interrupt your game or anything?”  I opened the bathroom door
. The room was indeed covered in green sticky liquid.  The sound of sirens started up the hill.

“Whose?”
He asked very slowly. By his tone, he knew the answer already, but that didn’t make sense, I had recently taken this listing, and I wasn’t all that familiar with the client. “Body?”  He finished his thought.

I searched under the sink for paper towels, found them in a three pack, and began mopping up the floor.  The siren volume increased.

The body belonged to the now former Beverley Weiss one of the most terrifying people in town. And she had asked for me.

ASKED for ME. I should contribute at least one chapter to
How to Succeed in Real Estate
titled:
Referrals Gone Bad
. Brian Buffini, the premier guru of real estate relationship marketing aside, I may start cultivating strangers for clients, something along the lines of those afore mentioned innocent buyers of small, inexpensive condominiums. Cheap, easy, and except for lawsuits and arcane HOAs, relatively pain free.

My own referrals of late have wound up, well, late. 

While Ben breathed over the phone, I hurriedly swiped at every surface in the bathroom with damp paper towels and listened to the police approach at a disconcertedly rapid rate.

“Whose body did you discover?”
He finally repeated.  I mopped quickly, clutching the phone with one hand (I keep my headset in the car) and taking broad swipes with the other. I tossed sticky handful after sticky handful of paper towels into the chrome garbage can (very nice style) while I listened to Ben.

“Whose house are you at again?”  He repeated distractedly.

“Beverley Weiss’s house.” I answered honestly.

He took in another breath.