Night of the Living Deed (2 page)

I’d decided to open a guesthouse after my last job—bookkeeper at a lumberyard—hadn’t worked out. Mostly, it hadn’t worked out because my boss had a habit of forgetting his marriage vows when he walked over to my desk to discuss the company’s finances. Luckily, there had been multiple witnesses when he’d tried to put his hands in the back pockets of my jeans, so he didn’t press charges after I decked him. But I decided to sue, strictly on principle. And because the guy was a jerk.

We settled the case for an amount that had seemed like a lot of money, but once I’d done the math on paper, I realized it would last Melissa and me only about two years, and even then, only if we were very frugal in our lifestyle. The alimony from The Swine wasn’t much, and living in New Jersey, a state with some of the highest real-estate values—and property taxes—in the country, wasn’t going to be easy on “not much.”

So I’d decided the thing to do was to take the money and put it into something that could start me off in a business capable of sustaining us for years. And that was when I thought of a guesthouse.

I’d always wanted to own and run a guesthouse here in Harbor Haven, the town where I’d grown up. I liked the idea of people coming in and out, of helping them enjoy the area I loved so much, and of restoring and maintaining one of the majestic beach houses that all too often faced a wrecking ball these days. Developers are everywhere on the Jersey Shore, even in rough economic times. History was being wiped out in favor of expensive vacation condos, and I hoped I could save at least one beauty from extinction. Now, knee deep in it and feeling like I had taken on too much, I was still loving it.

The New Jersey Shore (“down the shore,” to us locals), contrary to the popular notion of the state, is absolutely gorgeous, and a wildly attractive vacation destination. Harbor Haven had not yet been discovered by teenagers and families with young children, which meant there were no thrill rides, no hideous souvenir shops and no boardwalk here. (All things I had sorely lamented as a teenager, but whose absences I now considered serious advantages.) The only thing I really missed was the saltwater taffy, but you could get that in nearby Point Pleasant.

In other words, the only tourists who came to Harbor Haven were quiet and wealthy. The perfect place to open a guesthouse . . . assuming I could get the shambles around me to look like a palace in the next few weeks. My real estate agent, Terry Wright, had told me people often booked their next summer vacations right after the previous season ended, especially in November and December. If I wanted to get color brochures and Internet advertising going before people started making their summer vacation plans—and I did—I’d really need to get cracking.

I hadn’t put down a drop cloth where Melissa was working because I was going to paint the rest of the wall after I’d made my repairs, and the wall-to-wall carpet in the living room was among the first things I’d decided to remove when I first saw the house. Giving Melissa woodwork to paint was going to be little help in the long term, but mostly it was a good way to keep her busy.

I went back to concentrating on the wall. If it were a modern wall, I could knock a hole in the drywall and look inside, then patch it back up, and by the time I was finished painting, nobody would ever know anything had happened. But not in this house. These walls were the original plaster, which afforded them a smooth, gorgeous effect (among many other features) I was planning to exploit for a higher per-night price. But repairing plaster is not easy, much more an art than a science, and the only people who really knew how to do it had died out at about the same time that drywall became popular. If I breached the wall by more than a small crack, I’d end up having to replace the whole wall, and that would be bad.

So, I steeled myself and let my father’s voice ring in my head. “Alison,” he’d say, “you know perfectly well that no contractor is going to care as much about doing it right as you will. So stop feeling sorry for yourself and just get it done.” Dad had taught me everything he knew about home improvement, which was a lot. Not exactly a general contractor but more of a handyman, he’d spent decades learning about what makes houses—especially old ones—work, and he’d taught me what he knew “so you’ll never have to rely on some man to do it.” He was never as proud as when I’d worked at HouseCenter and was teaching some guy how to install a lock or regrout a bathtub.

It hurt a little to think of Dad; it had been four years since he’d died, but you don’t stop missing someone you love—you just stop obsessing about it. When their memory comes flooding back, it still has the power to wound.

“Is this good, Mom?” Melissa roused me from my flash of depression to show me the completed baseboard. As I’d expected, there was a good slick coat of paint on about the first four inches of carpet away from the wall, and another one about four inches up above the molding (impressive, considering that it indicated multiple brush widths), but the baseboard itself was indeed freshly painted, and Melissa had done a nice, careful job for a nine-year-old.

“Very good, Liss,” I answered. I took a few steps over to examine the work more closely. “You have the touch.”

She beamed. Melissa is always looking for approval, and usually deserves it. “Would you do me a favor and go get the ball-peen hammer from the kitchen?” I asked her. I didn’t really need the hammer, but if I’d reached over and carefully removed the two brush hairs from the baseboard while Melissa was in the room, she’d have seen it as a failure and been upset.

“Sure.” She got up and ran into the kitchen. Nine-year-olds never walk; they either run like they’re being chased or shuffle like they’re being dragged. There is no modulated speed.

As I reached over to pull off the first brush hair, which luckily had fallen only partially on the wall (so I might leave no finger marks), I heard something heavy fall to the floor behind me. But Melissa was in the kitchen, in the other direction entirely.

I turned, but there was nothing disturbed. Well, old houses creak. Hopefully, this particular noise was not caused by something that would require skills beyond what I knew how to fix.

The first brush hair was easy, but the second one, now that I was under time pressure, would be more difficult. But I had tweezers in my shirt pocket (always be prepared), and lifted the hair gently even as Melissa called from the kitchen.

“I can’t reach the hammer!”

Now, it didn’t matter a bit whether I got the hammer, but that was odd, so I stood up and walked toward the kitchen.

“What do you mean, you can’t . . .”

I stopped short in the doorway. Melissa was standing in the center of the (mostly) empty kitchen, cabinet doors removed and countertops missing from their spots. That was normal in our current state of repair, so it didn’t bother me in the least.

But what did worry me was that every drawer in my roll-up toolbox was open, and every tool appeared to have been flung around the room. One backsaw was hanging precariously from a nail near the ceiling. Hammers, screwdrivers, wrenches and sockets pretty much covered every surface. If it’s possible for a construction site to look especially messy, that was what I was staring at now.
That
bothered me.

“It’s too high up,” Melissa said, pointing at it, sitting on top of the window molding.

“Melissa, what did you
do
?” I launched myself into the room and started picking up tools.

“Nothing! I thought
you
did it.”

Oh, please. “Why would I throw my tools around like this?”

“Why would
I
?” she asked.

“Come on, Liss. You know I didn’t leave the tools like this, and there’s nobody else in the house.” Although I had to admit, that hammer hanging from the window was awfully high for her to manage. Did she just fling it and get lucky?

“Well, I don’t know! This was how it looked when I walked in.” She stuck out her bottom lip in a gesture of defiance.

I forced her to look me in the eye. “Really?” I asked.

Melissa’s gaze never wavered, which was unusual. “Really,” she said.

Swell. Now I was beginning to believe her. “Well, then, how . . .”

I never managed to finish the question, since I was interrupted by a loud groan of wood and what sounded like hailstones hitting the floor in the hallway just off the living room. That was followed by a loud crash. I was out the kitchen door before Melissa could even turn her head, but she still ran faster than I did. We arrived in the living room at the same moment and stopped dead in our tracks.

The very wall I’d been agonizing over now had a gaping hole at least three feet tall, right down its center. My visions of retaining the period detail and integrity of the room had been literally destroyed. I wanted to cry.

“Why did you do
that
?” Melissa asked.

“These walls are real plaster.” Terry Wright, the unbearably upbeat real estate agent, had been especially proud of that fact when she’d shown me the house for the first time. “They don’t have that bland feel that wallboard gives you. This could be a real selling point for your bed and breakfast.”

“I’m not opening a bed and breakfast,” I’d told her, deciding not to comment on her suggestion that people would choose whether or not to vacation here because of the walls (I came around to the idea later). “I’m opening a guesthouse. I’m not going to serve food.”

“Oh,” Terry said, her usually unbreakable glee momentarily dampened. “Well, that will keep more of our restaurants busy, won’t it?” From zero to cheerful in less than three-point-two seconds, a new record. Terry, maybe five years older than I am, obviously took good care of herself and was at exactly her proper weight, with blonde hair and a beatific smile. It’s a wonder she didn’t work at Disney World.

The house was exactly what I had been looking for, but I couldn’t let Terry know that. It had a real sense of dignity, but without stuffiness: three of the seven bedrooms had wood-burning fireplaces, as did the living room; the ceilings were twelve feet high; the overall feeling was one of comfort and ease. It had been built as a residence, not a vacation home, so it was insulated, and Melissa and I could live here all year long.

I’d known something about the house before I’d started searching. The people who had lived here for years, the Preston family, had had a lot of kids, the oldest of whom I’d gone to school with. They’d moved on about a year and a half ago, and there’d been another owner since then. The house seemed to have held up reasonably well overall, but while it was obvious
some
recent work had been done, this was no in-move-in-condition house. I’d have a lot of work to do. Which was also what I wanted (I couldn’t afford a perfect house, and I would have missed the challenge), but I didn’t tell Terry that, either.

I put on a pensive face and stroked my chin a little. “Well, I don’t know . . .” I began.

Melissa, behind me, practically burst out of her skin. “Come
on
, Mom!” she bleated. “This is
exactly
what you’ve been talking about!” The girl had a lot to learn about negotiation.

I turned to look at her. “Not
exactly
,” I said, and made significant eye contact.

My daughter, enthusiastic but astute, nodded, looked around the room, and tilted her head. “Yeah,” she said. “The fireplace does look kind of crooked.”

Damn! It actually did. I hadn’t noticed that. Would I be able to repair it, or would it become “part of the charm of the place”?

“Oh, I don’t think so! I think it’s darling,” Terry said. Her voice, directed at Melissa, dripped condescension and syrupy child-speak. “It looks fine to me.”

“Is there any way to find out if the fireplace has been maintained properly?” I asked. Show doubt; maybe bring down the price a little.

“It’ll all come out in the home inspection, but I’ll check my file. I have two copies of everything on my computer,” Terry said. She was so organized I had to fight the urge to punch her.

“I’m not sure,” I said, back in my scorched-earth-negotiator mode. “I’m a little spooked by the fact that the house has been on the market for eleven months.”

Terry waved a hand to dismiss that fact, and her voice took on a false confidentiality. “Everything’s staying on the market for months these days,” she said. “It’s the economy.” Uh-huh. “I’m telling you, with seven bedrooms, four baths and that kitchen, this is
the
place for a bed and breakfast.”

I looked at Melissa, who rolled her eyes. Then she stared off into the distance, as if something really interesting were suspended from the ceiling. “Somebody died here,” she said in a faraway voice.

I sighed a little. Melissa does that kind of thing sometimes when she thinks she can put one over on a grown-up. She doesn’t like it when she’s talked to as if being a kid equals being stupid.

“Knock it off,” I hissed at her.