Ten Beach Road (8 page)

“Look out!”

The bird dipped so low over their heads that Nicole could feel the air its wings displaced as it flew past them, just missed John Franklin, and shot out the open front door. Inhaling in surprise, the smell that assaulted Nicole’s nose made her want to bail out with the bird.

She took another breath because there was no alternative and drew in a lungful of heavy air that smelled like a bathing suit that had been rolled up wet, stuffed in a suitcase, and then forgotten.

“Oh, my God!” Madeline pinched her nose shut with her fingers. Her brown eyes were large with panic.

Nicole cleared her throat. Avery did the same beside her. The Realtor stepped into the center of the foyer, which was large and square, and somehow managed to breathe normally. “It’s been closed up for quite a while,” was his only concession to the stench. “Let me open a couple of windows and let some fresh air in.”

None of them answered, but Madeline and Avery were wearing the same kicked-in-the-gut look that Nicole felt on her own face. They hadn’t made it past the foyer and already it was clear that the old lady had a lot more wrong with her than blotchy skin.

Above them hung a rusted iron chandelier choked with dust and trailing cobwebs. Beneath their feet the wood floors were scratched and scuffed and stained with lighter spots where furniture must have once stood. A wooden staircase angled up to the second floor, gap-toothed with missing spindles, its surface chipped and peeling. The once-white walls were speckled with yellow age spots and amoeba-shaped stains.

John Franklin took a spot beneath the chandelier and began pointing out the home’s features as if they weren’t all gasping for breath while trying not to breathe, and beginning to feel like even bigger victims than they’d been when they arrived.

According to their “tour guide,” the central hallway stretching to the back of the house was a classic Mediterranean Revival feature as were the wide arched openings that ran along both sides. It all sounded quite lovely except that the whole place smelled like that rolled-up bathing suit—dank and sodden. Despite the open front door, the large fixed glass on the landing, and the vast number of uncovered windows, the bright sunlight outside seemed no match for the accumulated layers of dirt and grime.

Madeline, the hausfrau in the white capris, ran a hand over a squared knob of the banister and came away with a palm full of dust and grit, which she stared at woefully.

“What a shame,” Avery, whom she’d mentally christened the little blonde with the big bust, said. “I don’t know how anyone, even Malcolm Dyer, could neglect a house like this.”

Nicole wondered if Malcolm had ever actually set foot here or had simply purchased it to add to his investment portfolio. He’d started buying up estates and properties shortly after he’d made his first million—a milestone they’d celebrated together and of which Nicole had been exceedingly proud. For children who’d been evicted from as many places as they had, owning anything was huge. Owning homes as large and larger than this had been a validation of just how far her little brother had managed to come.

“Yes, it’s a fine old home,” the Realtor said as if their surprise had been of joy. “And as you’ll see a large portion of it has been renovated. It just needs a little tender loving care.”

“More like hospitalization,” Nicole said. “Or a team of paramedics.”

Relentlessly positive, John Franklin led them through the downstairs with its large rectangular rooms and ceilings beamed with Florida cypress, pointing out the architectural details with great delight. They toured the formal living room with fireplace, the study/library, the salon, the formal dining room, a lounge with an elaborately tiled bar, Moorish decor, and torn leather banquettes, then speed-walked through a kitchen that had clearly been modernized in a blaze of Formica—sometime in the 1970s.

He gestured toward an open-air loggia that stretched between the kitchen and the waterfront salon. The French doors that spanned the back of the house would have undoubtedly provided a fabulous view if they hadn’t been quite so caked with grime and salt. Nicole tried to make out the detached garage and pool and beyond that the narrow pass, where the bay and Gulf met, but it was like being inside a somewhat murky aquarium; everything outside the glass was vague and out of focus.

Franklin continued his monologue as he led them through another archway and up the back stairs, but Nicole was too numb to process anything besides the fact that this house was in no condition to be listed for sale. Her partners’ faces reflected the same mixture of horror and disappointment.

Upstairs was more of the same. They found the escaped birds’ nest in a corner of the master bedroom just beneath one of many grime-stained windows that were either missing panes or didn’t quite close. The room had been enlarged at some point, and with its dressing area and master bath filled with funky green tile and ancient fixtures, it took up the whole west side of the upper floor. But the plaster had fallen off a sodden section of the ceiling, where shards of daylight and blue sky could be seen, and lay in clumps on the floor, which was covered in a moldy pile of green shag carpet undoubtedly installed at the same time as the kitchen.

They saw three more bedrooms and two more funkilytiled bathrooms as Franklin expounded on the damned Florida cypress, the tile and woodwork, the stone accents, the house’s symmetry and generous proportions. The 1920s hardware, dull and scratched though it was, might have been the crown jewels. At least in his eyes the broken windowpanes, dripping sinks, flaking chrome, and peeling wallpapers, along with the other countless signs of age and neglect, simply didn’t exist.

“They just don’t build houses like this anymore,” John Franklin said as he led them back into the master bedroom. “Not at any price.”

“You’ve got to be kidding.” Nicole crossed her arms and looked the Realtor in the eye. She’d spent close to a year hiding her fear and desperation. Now she felt as if she’d crawled on her belly through the scorching sands of some desert only to discover that the oasis shimmering in the distance was a pile of camel dung.

“It does have great bones,” Avery Lawford said. “And I can see they’ve tried to renovate within the original footprint of the house, but . . .”

“Maybe it just needs a facelift to get it ready for sale?” Madeline asked hopefully.

Nicole snorted. “This house needs serious reconstructive surgery.” She could feel her anger mounting. She didn’t even have enough money for a Lifestyle Lift. Not for herself, and not for this house. Full-blown plastic surgery was out of the question.

“If we put up a sign and sold it ‘as is’ what could we get for it?” she asked.

Franklin shook his head. “I wouldn’t do it. You’d get maybe a million, which would be like giving it away.”

They looked at each other. A million sounded like a lot until you deducted the sales commission and divided it in thirds. She might end up with enough to spend the summer in the Hamptons trolling for clients, but only if it sold quickly, like in the next twenty-four hours.

“Come on,” Franklin said. “Let me show you why you don’t want to do that. You have a significant ace up your sleeve. I really should have started there.”

He put a key into a deadbolt lock on one of the master bedroom’s French doors, manhandled it open, then led them out onto the balcony. A peeling wrought-iron stair wound down to the patio below, but no one looked straight down. They all looked out over the barrel roof of the loggia, past the cracked and empty pool and out over the seawall, their gazes inexorably drawn to the house’s true reason for being.

“Wow.”

“Oh, my . . .”

“Good God!”

They stared in wonder out over the very tip of the tip of the barrier island and watched the bay and Gulf meet head-on in a choppy dance of whitecaps and sea swell. The water slapped into itself, swirling and eddying. They were surrounded by water on three sides, the house at their back. To the west a jetty angled out toward the shipping channels and, presumably, the distant shores of Mexico. On the east lay Boca Ciega Bay. But in front of them in this slim comma of water, the vastness of the Gulf funneled into the more intimate confines of the bay. Beyond the pass, small mounds of land poked haphazardly out of the water, seemingly uninhabited but for the birds using them as landing strips.

It was an intensely personal experience. Like having all of nature—sky and sea and everything that lived in either—performing for your own enjoyment.

“Now
this
,” Nicole said, “is worth serious money. But the house . . .” She didn’t even turn to look at it. “Maybe we should just knock it down.” Her hands fisted at her sides. Given all she’d been through, all she’d lost, she could probably pull the place down with her bare hands and call it therapy.

The little blonde tensed beside her and Madeline gave a small gasp of surprise as Nicole turned from the view to meet John Franklin’s eye. “There can’t be many pieces of property available with a better view or situation.”

“Well, no, there aren’t,” he conceded. “But you can’t just raze a home of this significance. It’s on the National Register as a designated property.”

“So we’re not allowed by law to demolish it?” Avery asked with what Nicole thought sounded like relief.

The Realtor looked distinctly uncomfortable. His ears turned a bright red. “I don’t see how, in good conscience, you could do that.”

“Conscience aside,” Madeline asked, her tone tentative, “could we?”

There was a protracted silence while Franklin apparently tried to come up with a stronger argument. Finally, he sighed and shifted his weight on the cane. “Unfortunately, we don’t actually have the power to prohibit that.” He brightened. “But there are some powerful tax and financial incentives to restore rather than tear down. And you gain an exemption from the FEMA fifty percent rule, which would allow you to put as much money as you wanted into the restoration.”

Nicole thought about just how much she could afford to put into this house. That amount was zero. “But we could tear it down and just list the lot?” Nicole asked, thinking at the moment she was, in fact, desperate enough to rip the structure apart with her bare hands.

“Well, you’d have to come before the preservation board and we, um, I mean
they
would most likely impose a ninety-day waiting period in which you would be asked to hear reasons for choosing to restore or renovate. I think the community would do everything it could to stop the loss of such a significant property.”

“Such as?” Nicole pressed.

Franklin removed a white handkerchief and mopped his brow while Avery and Madeline looked on. In the end he didn’t answer her question, but said, “Even in this economy there is a market for well-restored, or even renovated, historic homes. I have a Realtor in my office who specializes in that and has a list of potential clients across the country. I believe that’s how we originally found Mr. Dyer.”

“Gee, and look how well that turned out,” Nicole said.

John Franklin cleared his throat; the wattle of extra skin that surrounded it shook. “Shall we?” Despite the cane and his age, he motioned them down the circular stair that led to the back courtyard, then followed carefully behind. He must have realized walking back through the house might send them running for the wrecking ball.

The exterior damage was worse back where the house met the elements head-on. Chunks of pale pink stucco and pieces of red roof tiles lay dashed against the concrete pool deck and surrounding bricked courtyard.

A drainpipe hung down the corner of the east wing and tapped rhythmically against the dented and chipped stucco, the tune dictated by the breeze. But it was harder to focus on the signs of neglect when you were surrounded by water that sparkled so brilliantly under such a cloudless blue sky.

“We’ve had sales of several renovated Mediterranean Revivals in the last year, none of them anywhere close to your property in size or relevance. And every one of them sold for several million dollars.”

Clearly, John Franklin was not yet ready to roll over and play dead. Nor had he forgotten how to sell. “You’ve got one hundred fifty feet of prime waterfront, far more than any of the others.”

“So how much do you think we could get just for the land?” Nicole asked. She felt like a dog with a bone in its mouth; one she couldn’t quite bring herself to drop or bury.

“Probably about three million,” Franklin conceded, turning his hound-dog eyes on the three of them. “But as an active member of the Gulf Beaches Historical Society and president of the preservation board, I have to say it would be criminal.”

There was a silence broken only by the caw of a seagull and the high whine of a wave runner speeding along the seawall’s edge. They were all smiling over the three million, their collective relief palpable. Nicole could taste it; her share would go a long way toward getting her life back on track in every way possible.

Franklin led them around the west side of the house and pointed out the path that led to the jetty, with its concrete fishing pier, and also forked to the beach, which really did stretch as far as the eye could see. Just a few steps from the front of their property, a sidewalk began. It was separated from the beach it paralleled by a barrier of sea oat–topped sand dunes.

At the Cadillac, Franklin stopped and reached in his pocket to pull out three keys, which he pressed into their palms. “Don’t be fooled by the dirt and grime,” he said, making eye contact with each of them in turn. “You need to wait out the summer anyway—nothing significant will sell until fall. And you’ll get far more if you use that time to finish the house properly. A well-done renovation in harmony with the house would allow us to ask for and get a full five million.”

He had their complete attention then and he knew it. John Franklin might be in his eighties, but he not only still knew how to sell, he knew how to make an exit. He handed them each his card and left them standing on the driveway, his stooped shoulders squared and his spine so straight Nicole wondered if the cane had been some sort of a prop rather than a necessity.