The Fixer Upper (5 page)

G
UTHRIE, GEORGIA, THE LITTLE TOWN WITH BIG IDEAS. POP
. 2,200. The roadside sign showed a stylized skyline featuring a clock tower and some towering trees. Becky slowed the Honda down to thirty-five miles an hour as the four-lane county road narrowed to two lanes at the approach to the edge of town.

“Wow. Only twenty-two hundred.” Becky glanced over at me. “Did you know it was this small?”

“No idea,” I said. “My father hasn’t been here in, like, forty years. I guess I’m surprised it’s this big, considering what he’s told me about the place.”

My flight down from D.C. had been unremarkable, and when I looked out the window of the plane and saw clear blue skies, sunshine, and green trees on the ground below, I decided to take it as a good omen.

The trees were one thing that surprised me about this part of middle Georgia. I’d lived in Atlanta for a short time after my parents’ divorce, and thereafter had been under the distinct impression that everything outside Atlanta was mostly red mud and tall Georgia pines.

There were plenty of pines down here, yes, but other trees too, many of them already budded out or in full leaf. I recognized oak trees and poplars, and as we got closer to the center of Guthrie, we began to see blooming azaleas along the side of the road, and bright patches of yellow daffodils.

“It’s actually kind of pretty,” I told Becky.

“What did you think?” she said with a laugh. “It was some kind of wasteland?”

“Honestly? Yes.”

The county road had segued into something called simply Boulevard, although it bore no resemblance to any of the boulevards I’d seen in other places. There were a few strip-mall shopping centers on either side of Boulevard. The businesses didn’t look exactly thriving; I saw a Bi-Lo grocery store in a shopping center alongside a dollar store, a tanning salon, and a car wash.

“Look,” I told Becky, pointing out the window. “An Ace hardware store. Thank God. Hopefully I can buy paint and stuff there.”

After a block or two of shopping centers, the commercial district petered out and we began to see houses—big ones, with rolling green lawns and huge magnolias and boxwood hedges. Oak trees marched along both sides of the street, their branches meeting overhead to form a leafy tunnel. The road changed names again, this time to Colquitt Street. Most of the houses were redbrick, mostly built in the early 1900s, I thought, although there were two or three that appeared to be older, even Victorian, and there were a smattering of large Craftsman bungalows. Maybe, I thought, with a glimmer of hope, Guthrie wasn’t as dinky as Lynda remembered.

“Is Birdsong on this street?” Becky asked, slowing down.

I checked the MapQuest directions I’d printed out back at home. “Nope. Looks like you go another couple of blocks into town, and then take a left onto Poplar. The house number is 375.”

The next street sign we spotted was for Mill Street.

“I guess that’s where the bedspread plant used to be,” I told Becky. “According to my dad, nearly everything in Guthrie used to revolve around the Dempsey bedspread mill. Everybody in his family worked there, and I think maybe his mother’s grandfather or uncle or somebody founded it. At one time, Dad said, the mill ran three shifts a day, seven days a week, and a couple thousand people worked there. The town must have been a lot bigger back then.”

“Is the mill still operating?” Becky asked.

“Dad said it closed for good in the eighties, but he thinks it had probably kinda started dying out as early as the seventies, after it was sold to some big conglomerate in New Jersey. His mother’s family was mostly long gone by then. Except for good old great-uncle Norbert.
He’s the one who left the house to my dad.”

As we passed Mill Street, a long, sharp, high-pitched whistle punctuated the otherwise quiet of the late afternoon.

“Holy crap!” Becky laughed. “What was that?”

I looked around. “No idea. Maybe a train?”

“We crossed some railroad tracks back at the city limits, but I haven’t seen any since then,” she said.

I looked at my watch. “It’s exactly five. Maybe that’s the town whistle for curfew. Dad said they roll up the streets pretty early in Guthrie.”

We both laughed at the notion of a five o’clock curfew.

“Here’s Poplar,” I said, spotting the white concrete street marker up ahead.

Becky made the turn.

Poplar seemed only slightly less prosperous a street than Colquitt. The lots were large and leafy, although somewhat narrower, with houses set closer to the street. An elderly woman bundled up in a bulky quilted jacket, knit scarf, and cap, despite what seemed to me the fairly mild sixty-degree weather, walked a biscuit-colored cocker spaniel along the sidewalk, pausing to let him lift a leg on a shrub. She turned and stared at the Honda, which was creeping rather suspiciously down the street. I gave her a friendly wave, which she returned, in a lukewarm version.

“This is 373,” Becky said, rolling to a stop at the curb. “And I see 377, there, with the picket fence out front, but I don’t see a 375.”

“Mitch said it was a huge house,” I told her, staring at the two houses, with a large, overgrown patch of trees and shrubs in between. The house on one side was a prim white Victorian clapboard affair, with a wide front porch and a row of upended rocking chairs. The house on the left was pale yellow brick, with arched second-floor windows that made it look perpetually surprised. In between the two houses was a veritable jungle, dominated by a hedge of six-foot camellia bushes near the curb, which in turn was punctuated by a hulking magnolia tree whose roots were pushing through the cracked concrete of the sidewalk.

“Number 375 can’t have just disappeared. Maybe there’s another Pop
lar Street, like maybe this is West Poplar and there’s an East Poplar.”

I leaned my head out the window of the car to call to the old lady, who was now studiously avoiding making eye contact with us. “Excuse me.”

She looked down at the dog, and nudged its butt with the toe of her rubber galosh.

“Ma’am?” I called again, afraid she might not have heard me.

She whirled around, fire in her rheumy blue eyes. The dog barked a short, sharp warning.

“What you want?” she demanded.

“Excuse me,” I said, giving her my friendly lobbyist smile. “I’m looking for number 375 Poplar Street.” I spoke in a deliberately slow, distinct voice.

“What’s your business?”

“Pardon?”

“What do you want on this street? What’s your business in Guthrie? I seen those Atlanta plates on your car.”

“Uh-oh,” Becky said under her breath. “I think we just found Guthrie’s version of Boo Radley.”

“Well, uh, I’m here to see about 375 Poplar Street. It, uh, belongs to my father,” I stammered. “And, uh, I’ve come down here to uh—”

“I knew it!” the old lady exclaimed, stepping closer to the car. “Knew it the minute I laid eyes on you. You’re Killebrew, all right. Ain’t ya?”

“Uh, yes, ma’am,” I said, smiling uncertainly. The way she said Killebrew made it sound more like a contagious disease than a name. “I’m Dempsey Killebrew.”

“Dempsey!” she shrieked, taking a step backward. “He’s got some nerve.”

The cocker yipped and lunged toward the Honda, snarling and hurling itself against the tires.

“Holy crap,” Becky said. “Boo Radley and Cujo on the same street.”

The old lady reluctantly reined in the cocker, and continued to glare daggers at me.

“Do you know this street?” I asked. I held up the folder of papers
Mitch had given me before I’d left Miami. “The house is called Birdsong. The lawyers gave us the address as 375 Poplar Street. But I don’t see—”

Before I could continue, the old lady wheeled around and marched rapidly away, crossing the street in midblock.

“Oooh-kaaay,” I said, watching her retreat. “That was kinda weird.”

“Hey, Demps,” Becky said. She’d opened her door and stepped out of the car. “Look here.”

She stood in the shade of the magnolia. With the toe of her shoe, she’d kicked away a patch of the dense carpet of pine needles and fallen leaves, revealing what looked like a cracked and crumbling concrete driveway leading into the overgrown lot.

I got out of the car and walked around to join my friend.

“Hey,” Becky said, pushing aside a low-hanging tree limb. “Demps, I think there’s a house back in here.”

I ducked under another branch draped with a luxurious fringe of kudzu. “You’re right. I see something pink.”

After another five minutes of ducking and batting away at vines, branches, and brambles, and cursing myself for not changing out of the high-heeled boots and Theory pants suit I’d worn on the flight down to Atlanta, we found a clearing in the underbrush.

Looming up before us was an enormous wreck—a tottering wedding cake of a house painted an improbable shade of Pepto-Bismol pink.

“I think we found your Birdsong,” Becky said.

“Bird droppings is more like it.”

I picked up a stout tree branch lying at my feet—not sure whether I would use it as a walking stick or a weapon—and walked closer to the house.

The concrete steps leading up to the front porch were as cracked as the driveway, and laced with more kudzu, which seemed to be making a determined advance against the house.

Now, standing at the edge of the porch, looking up, I could start to see that this was, indeed, the house that had once been Birdsong.

The grand columns that had marched across the front of the house were still here, but their faded pink paint was now blistered and peeling, and in places I could see where their plaster plinths had started to
crumble.

I poked my stick on the wooden planks of the porch, afraid they might suddenly give way beneath my feet, but, mercifully, they seemed solid.

Becky stood at the edge of the porch, looking distinctly uncomfortable.

I walked over to the front door. It was heavily carved, and painted a faded gray, with leaded-glass sidelights and a fanlight overhead. I found the doorbell, a cracked plastic button, and pushed it. I heard a shrill ringing inside.

I tried the doorknob, expecting nothing, but when it turned in my hand, I let out a surprised gasp.

“What?” Becky rushed to my side.

I pushed the door open, its hinges screaming a protest.

“Holy crap,” she whispered.

A
t first glance, the interior of Birdsong wasn’t much of an improvement over the exterior. The large room before me was the foyer, although that seemed too grand a word for this dump. A single bare lightbulb dangled from an extension cord that snaked its way up a wall with faded brocade-patterned wallpaper and into the center of an elaborate plaster ceiling medallion. The rest of the ceiling’s plaster either hung in clumps or lay in chunks on the floor of what had once been an elegant center entrance hall.

The floor itself was made of alternating diamonds of black and white marble, and it was littered with a bewildering assortment of random items—a wooden nail keg full of rakes and brooms, a plastic bucket full of faded plastic flowers, stacks of paperback romance novels, their once-vivid colored covers dulled to a uniform violet. There was even a large dressmaker’s dummy that wore a multilayered assortment of ratty sweaters, jackets, and scarves. Leaned against a corner was a huge bag of dog food.

“Holy crap is right,” I said, stepping gingerly over the threshold. My voice echoed in the high-ceilinged room. “The lawyers told Mitch that good old Uncle Norbert died back in September. When do you think the last time was that anybody lived here?”

Becky’s patrician nose quivered as she sniffed dramatically. “I don’t smell anything like a corpse.”

“How do you know what a corpse smells like?” I asked, leaning down to examine the label on the dog food bag. The colors on the label seemed bright and clear, and the price tag showed that it was from one of those big-box pet-supply stores.

“I was a candy striper one summer in high school,” she said smugly. “You learn these things.” She sniffed again and wrinkled her nose. “Mildew. Gross. Also dog doo.”

I looked down at the floor, and then at our feet, and laughed. “Check your shoes. I think you must have stepped in Cujo’s calling card.”

“Gross!” She darted out the front door and when she came back inside, she was cleaning her shoes with a wadded-up newspaper.

“I think somebody’s living here,” I told her in a quiet voice, pointing to a pair of worn tennis shoes that had been left in a corner. “One of those shoes is still damp.”

She shuddered. “Did the lawyers say anything about a tenant? Or maybe a caretaker?”

“Mitch didn’t say anything about either one,” I told her. “He just said I should go right to the lawyer’s office to pick up the key. The place was supposed to be locked up tight.”

Becky took a step toward the door. “Okay. I’ll admit it. I’m a scaredycat. Let’s just go. All right?”

I looked around the hallway. There were closed doors on either side, plus another partially ajar door that looked like it led toward the back of the house. Now that I was inside Birdsong, I wasn’t quite ready to leave yet.

“There’s nobody here,” I assured her. “I rang the doorbell.” I held up my stout stick. “Anyway, if any skeletons or beasties jump out of a closet, I’ll be ready. Come on. Let’s take a look around.”

“You first,” Becky said, tugging at the collar of her coat. “It’s freezing in here. I hope for your sake this place has heat.”

I put my hand on top of a radiator in the corner of the room. “Radiator isn’t working. But the place has to have fireplaces, right? Anyway, you saw those azaleas and daffodils blooming. It’s almost spring.”

“Last year we had an ice storm the last week of March,” Becky said, letting her teeth chatter for effect. “Don’t think that because you’re in Georgia we don’t have winter. It gets plenty cold down here.”

“And hot,” I reminded her. I pushed on the door on the right side of the room and stepped into another century.

A long mahogany table draped with a yellowing lace cloth sat squarely in the middle of the room, which, though covered in dust and cobwebs, managed to retain its elegant proportions.

Massive Chippendale dining chairs sat on each side of the table, their faded maroon needlepoint seat covers each adorned with a different flower. A floor-to-ceiling bay window dominated the right side of the room, and through its dust-streaked glass I could see that Birdsong’s side yard was just as overgrown as its front. Standing in the bay window was an Empire mahogany sideboard, its top covered with stacks of gilt-edged floral china. On the facing wall, a glass-fronted china cabinet seemed full to bursting with more china and dusty cut glass.

The oriental rug on the floor was threadbare in spots, but its jewel-like reds and blues made a splash of color in the dimly lit room.

“Spooky,” Becky said, drawing a fingertip through the dust on the top of the sideboard.

“Like everybody got up from some swell dinner party fifty years ago and just…disappeared,” I agreed, holding up one of the delicate porcelain plates.

“This is hand painted,” Becky said, picking up another plate and tracing the design of pink roses and forget-me-nots in the center of the dish. “My great-grandmother had a lot of this stuff in her house when she died. My mother’s supposedly saving it for when I get married.”

She sighed. “My mother never gives up hope.”

We put the plates back and moved across the hall to the door on the opposite side.

This time we found a formal parlor, in more or less the same condition as the dining room.

The parlor walls were covered in a faded floral-stripe wallpaper, which seemed to be molting from water-stained plaster walls. The fireplace had a surround of elaborate flower-printed tiles and a highly carved dark oak mantelpiece. Over the mantel hung a large oil portrait of a brooding woman in a sleek 1920s flapper-era bobbed haircut. The woman was dressed in a gold off-the-shoulder gown and wore a long strand of pearls and dangly pearl earrings.

“Think she’s a relative?” Becky asked.

“Maybe.” I shrugged. “Mitch hasn’t exactly been forthcoming with the Dempsey family genealogy. I think his father was pretty bitter after their divorce.”

“One thing we know,” Becky said. “At one time, they had some bucks.”

“They did,” I agreed, looking around the empty room. “Wonder what happened to all the furniture in here?”

She rubbed her arms to ward off the gloomy chill. “Maybe they burned it to stay warm.”

My cell phone rang, startling both of us. I plucked it from my shoulder bag and checked the caller ID anxiously. It had been two weeks since I’d been fired from my job, and I still hadn’t heard a word from Alex Hodder.

“Unknown caller,” I said, hesitating before punching the connect button.

“Hello?”

“Is this Dempsey Killebrew?”

“It is.”

“Good. Hello. This is Carter Berryhill.”

“Yesss,” I said cautiously.

“Of the law firm Berryhill and Berryhill? We represent the estate of Norbert Dempsey?”

“Oh yes,” I said. “I was just on my way over to see you.”

“So I gather,” he said. His accent was deeply Southern, with that faint aristocratic tinge and formal diction you hear in men of a certain age from a certain social strata. Alex Hodder had an accent like that.

“My informants tell me you’ve been by to see Birdsong?”

“How did you know that?”

He chuckled. “Oh, Miss Killebrew. You really don’t know the first thing about Guthrie, now do you?”

I walked over to the window and peered out, just in case Carter Berryhill happened to be standing in the side yard, peering in at us. All I saw was a tangle of bare branches and vines.

“Guess not,” I said. “As a matter of fact, my friend and I are in the house right now.”

“Really?” He didn’t sound pleased.

“The front door was unlocked,” I said. “I rang the doorbell, but there was no answer. Mr. Berryhill, has somebody been living in the house recently?”

There was a long silence on the other end of the line. “We can discuss that in my office, if that’s all right with you. Were you heading over here anytime soon?”

“We’ll leave right now,” I told him.

“Excellent. Would you do me a favor? Lock the door behind you? We don’t really have much of a crime rate in Guthrie, but you can never be too careful about these things.”

I agreed, he had me repeat the directions to his office, and we hung up.

Becky raised an inquiring eyebrow.

“Carter Berryhill. He’s the lawyer representing the estate. Mitch must have given him my phone number.”

“And he already knew you were here? This place gets spookier and spookier, Demps. Are you positive you’re up for living here and dealing with all…this?” She gestured at the decrepitude surrounding us.

“I’ll be fine. It’s just small-town stuff. Probably somebody in the neighborhood saw your car with the Atlanta license tags parked at the curb and called him to make sure we weren’t burglarizing the joint.”

“Hardly.” She sniffed again and tugged at one of the faded deep blue velvet drapery panels hanging from the window. “Scarlett should have made a ball gown from those things.”

I reached over to touch the velvet, which seemed to crumble under my fingertips. “This was expensive fabric, back in the day. In fact, everything I’ve seen, what’s left of it, looks like it was pretty costly.”

“Speaking of which,” Becky said. “This place is falling apart. I don’t see how you’re going to be able to do all this work by yourself. It’s not just a matter of a new paint job, you know.”

“I know,” I said ruefully. “Crumbling plaster, peeling wallpaper. God
knows about the heat or the wiring or the plumbing. And we haven’t even checked to see if the place has an actual kitchen or bathroom.”

“Did your dad give you an idea of how much of a budget you’d have? Does he have any idea of the shape this place is in?”

“Not yet,” I said. “But he will.”