Irene Brand_Yuletide_01 (8 page)

Henrietta stood with difficulty and said, “These sore knees are sure a bother to me, but I could be in worse shape.”

The next day after she walked to school with Brooke, Janice made arrangements for a bulldozer to come to her prop
erty on Wednesday. Encouraged by this quick response, she visited several contractors that Henrietta had mentioned asking them to give an estimate on needed repairs at Mountjoy. She couldn’t believe that none of the three contractors would even give her a tentative date when she might expect their help.

Disillusioned, she returned to the apartment, moped for a while, then tapped on Henrietta’s door.

“Come in.”

Henrietta was knitting an afghan. She smiled cheerily at Janice and put her knitting aside.

“Sit down. I need to rest my eyes. What’s troubling you?”

“I’ve been to three contractors and they’re all too busy to work for me.”

“Nonsense,” Henrietta snorted. “They continually harp about their lack of business. They need the work, but they’re afraid to work on your property.”

“Afraid! Because they think the house is haunted? Lance mentioned something about that.”

“The story spread around after John’s death that Mountjoy was haunted and most people won’t go near the place. Hard to believe, in this day and age, that sensible people still believe in ghosts.”

Henrietta struggled to her feet. “I’ll find a contractor for you, but we’ll have to go see him, for he doesn’t answer his phone regularly. Cecil Smith ain’t afraid of anything and he’s not superstitious.”

Henrietta walked into her bedroom and came back with her purse and car keys. “He’s not the best carpenter I know, but he does work hard, and he won’t rob you. That’s more than I can say for the other contractors.”

Janice insisted on driving, but Henrietta shook her head. “I drive better’n I give directions.”

With a few jumps and starts, Henrietta soon had the car on the highway east of town. She was a slow driver, but her tendency to roam over the center highway lines kept Janice on the edge of the seat. She was relieved when they turned off the highway onto a narrow road.

Cecil Smith lived five miles from Stanton in the most ramshackle place Janice had ever seen. Even the worst of the places where her parents had lived seemed like a mansion to Mr. Smith’s home. His appearance wasn’t much better.

He wore a faded red T-shirt tucked into a pair of ragged coveralls that hung loosely on his tall, lanky body. But he seemed clean, and keen blue eyes glowed from under his bristling gray brows. Long, scraggy hair hung over his shoulders and white whiskers covered his face, so it was difficult to tell where his hair stopped and the whiskers began. Smith hoisted himself from a rocking chair on his porch and came to meet them.

“Hiddee-do, Henrietta. What can I do for you?”

“I’ve brought my young friend, Janice Reid, to see you.”

“Reid, huh?” Cecil Smith said, peering at Janice with interest.

“She’s John’s niece and inherited Mountjoy.”

“Mr. Smith,” Janice said. “I need a contractor to look over the house and give me an estimate of how much it will cost to put it in living condition.”

He squinted at her curiously. “You’re aimin’ to live there?”

“Yes.”

“I’ve got a little job that’ll take me the rest of the day. I could meet you about six o’clock this evening, if that suits you.”

“That suits me fine. A bulldozer will clear the road this week, so you could probably start to work in a few days. I want to move in as soon as possible, so I can stop imposing on Henrietta.”

“Henrietta thrives on being imposed on, so don’t worry about that,” the contractor said. “I’ll do what I can do to help you, but from I’ve heard, that house ain’t worth fixin’ up.”

“That may be true,” Janice agreed. “That’s what I want you to tell me. If it isn’t, I’ll make other arrangements.”

As they drove back to town, Henrietta said, “There used to be some good pieces of furniture in that house.”

“They’re still there. If I can salvage enough for four rooms, so Brooke and I can move in, I’ll store everything else and work on it as I can.”

Was it stubbornness to insist on moving to Mountjoy when everyone seemed to think it was a bad idea?

H
enrietta drove at a snail’s pace, pointing out the homes of her friends. Janice answered when necessary, but the clock on the dashboard indicated that school had already been dismissed.

Finally, as discreetly as possible, she said, “Could we go a little faster? School is over for the day, and I’m worried about Brooke. I’ve told her not to walk home alone, but she might walk with a friend. If she comes home and neither one of us are there, she might be afraid.”

“Sorry, honey,” Henrietta said. “I start talking and I forget the time.” She tromped on the gas pedal and the car shot forward so rapidly that, in spite of the seat belt, Janice thought her head might go through the windshield. “We’ll go to the house first.”

When Brooke wasn’t at the apartment, Janice said, “I’ll walk over to school and probably meet her on the way.”

But she didn’t meet Brooke, and she was uneasy. What if something had happened to her sister? Would whoever wanted Janice out of Stanton stoop to harming Brooke?

When she turned the corner of the school, Lance and
Brooke were sitting on a concrete bench chatting amicably. Brooke jumped up gave Janice a hug. “I thought you’d forgotten me.”

Janice leaned over and kissed her sister’s forehead. “I’d never do that. Henrietta and I went out in the country and we were late getting back.”

“Mr. Gordon waited with me. I could have walked home by myself but he wouldn’t let me.”

Janice’s eyes met Lance’s blue ones and she murmured, “Thanks.” To Brooke, she said, “You can start walking alone later on, when you know the town and its people a little better.” Turning to Lance, she said, “I’m sorry if I delayed you.”

“I never leave until all the students are gone, except for the ones involved in sports. It’s the coaches’ responsibility to see that they’re protected.”

She took Brooke’s hand. “Let’s go.” To Lance, she said, “I’m meeting Cecil Smith at six o’clock. I couldn’t find any other contractor to even give me an estimate on the work at Mountjoy.” She rolled her eyes. “For reasons that you might guess.”

He nodded understandingly. “If you don’t mind, I’ll go with you. Smith is reliable enough, but he might be held up and be late in keeping his appointment.”

She looked directly at him, pleased, surprised and aggravated at the same time. “I don’t need a nursemaid,” she said.

“Look at it this way—I wouldn’t want Linda to be alone on your property.”

“I’ve imposed on you enough.”

“You’re not imposing. You haven’t asked me to do anything for you. I’ll pick you up at Henrietta’s around quarter to six.”

With a smile, Janice said, “Henrietta will be pleased. She’s fusses over Brooke and me like a mother hen with a dozen
chicks. She insisted that I must get the driveway cleared and stoned right away so she can drive to the house.”

“I’m glad she’s looking after you.”

“Truth to tell—I rather like it. I’ve never had any coddling in my life.”

In spite of Henrietta’s insistence that they eat with her, Janice prepared supper in the apartment. She’d bought a frozen lasagna at the grocery store, and while it baked, she made a salad. Deli cookies and ice cream would have to do for dessert. She wasn’t used to cooking for two yet. When she was ready to go to Mountjoy, she opened the door to the upstairs so Henrietta could monitor Brooke’s activities.

Cecil Smith was already waiting for them when they arrived. Lance parked behind the contractor’s truck, which was as ramshackle as his house. The truck was piled high with lumber, tools, gadgets, buckets, chains, several ladders and a lot of other stuff that Janice couldn’t identify.

“Cecil carries his office and workshop with him,” Lance said humorously. “Strange to say, he can find what he wants without any trouble.”

Lance shook hands with Smith. “Glad to see you, Cecil. It’s good you can help Janice.”

“I don’t know that I
can
help her, but I’ll take a look.”

“Let’s take your ladder,” Lance said. “The ceilings are ten feet high, and you may need a long ladder to see everything.”

Lance and Cecil carried the ladder and maneuvered their way through the brush and heavy tree foliage along the narrow path that Lance had cut on their previous visit. Janice carried two flashlights and a small case holding a conglomeration of tools.

“Shame this property has gone to rack and ruin,” Smith said. “It used to be a showplace.”

“I’d like to have it look like that again.”

“Big job for a young woman like you.”

“Maybe
too
big a job for me. Your assessment of the work that has to be done will determine my decision.”

“We crawled in the window when we were here Saturday,” Lance said.

“Did you look around for a key?” Cecil said. “It’s my experience that everybody leaves a key somewhere handy.”

A tall, lanky man, Cecil was able to run his hand across the top of the door frame. With a self-satisfied look, he picked up a key and waved it at them. He pulled open the decrepit screen door and turned the key in the lock. The door was stuck, but when Lance put his shoulder against the door, it squeaked open.

Cecil whistled while he sauntered around the first floor rooms. Janice recognized it as an off-key version of “She’ll be Coming Around the Mountain.” Lance and Janice followed for the most part in silence, although Lance occasionally asked a question or made a comment.

“Let’s take a look at the second floor,” Cecil said.

“Wonder if that key will work in the door to the stairway,” Lance said. “The door was locked when we were here a few days ago.”

Cecil handed the key to Lance, but as they approached the door, they saw that it stood ajar. Lance glanced quickly at Janice. “I know that door was locked. So that means somebody has been here since we were.”

Smith cackled with laughter. “What kind of somebody? The kind that walks on two feet or the kind that floats around in the air?”

Janice supposed that was Cecil’s idea of a joke, but she didn’t find it amusing. Hesitantly Lance pushed open the door and muttered, “What do you make of that?”

Cecil and Janice peered over his shoulder. “There ain’t any steps!” Cecil said. “Maybe the second story never was finished.”

Lance ran his hands over the walls. “There have been steps here, but they’ve been sawed away. Strange! Let’s bring the ladder so we can see what’s upstairs.”

They carried the ladder through the hall and propped it against the floor of the upper story.

“Are you going up?” Lance asked Janice.

“I’d like to.”

Lance looked at Cecil, who tested the ladder by placing both feet on the bottom rung. “It oughta be safe enough.”

“I’ll go first, Cecil, and you hold the ladder while Janice climbs. You come up last, if that’s all right.”

“Right as rain,” Cecil said.

The ladder stood at a forty-five-degree angle, so the climb wasn’t too difficult, but Janice welcomed Lance’s extended hand supporting her last two steps. When Cecil joined them, they started a tour of the four upstairs rooms that were separated by a wide hallway. One room was empty, but the others were fully furnished.

“So there were steps at one time,” Janice said and Lance nodded. She wondered at the concerned look on his face. “But what could have happened to the furniture in this room?”

“When Mr. Reid got sick,” Lance said, “they probably took the furniture from this room to make a bedroom downstairs. Henrietta can tell you, and she’ll probably clear up the mystery of the missing steps.”

The other three rooms had furnishings typical of the late nineteenth century. Each bed had a six-foot-high oak headboard with a footboard about two feet in height. Each room had a dresser and a table that matched the beds, and an armless high-backed wooden rocker. Small electric lamps stood
on the tables. Soiled, tattered paper covered the walls, and a few ragged rugs lay on the pine floors. Filthy bedspreads and quilts covered the beds. Every window was broken, and flimsy, dirty, torn curtains hung through the openings.

Cecil pointed to the many wasp and yellow jackets’ nests near the ceilings. “You’ll have to get rid of those pests before you can live here,” he said.

While Janice considered the value of the furniture, Cecil and Lance checked out the structure of the house.

“I don’t see any sign of leaks except where the rain blew in through broken windows,” Cecil said, pointing to brownish spots on the floors. “That’s what made the stains. The roof must still be in good shape.”

A massive cupboard almost covered the rear wall of the hallway. Lance peered inside. “It’s empty. Looks like this piece of furniture was built right here—it couldn’t have been brought up the stairs.” He pushed on the cupboard and couldn’t budge it. “Sure is heavy.”

“Let’s go downstairs to talk over what you can do,” Cecil said.

Lance went down the ladder first, because if Janice slipped, he wanted to be in a position to catch her. He’d learned that Janice resented help, so he couldn’t make an issue of assisting her.

Janice and Lance sat side by side on the deacon’s bench. Cecil pulled a ladder-back chair with a woven seat from the living room. He sniffed the air like a dog on a scent.

“There’s a funny smell in here,” he said. “I can’t place it.”

“I’ve been noticing it, too,” Lance said. “I didn’t notice it when we were here before. It smells like turpentine or ether.”

Janice had moved into a lot of smelly houses, so she wasn’t concerned with the odor. “What do you think of the house?”

Cecil pulled on his whiskers, hummed a little tune and
gazed at the ceiling. “It’ll take a lot of work to make this place the way it was a hundred years ago. But as far as I can determine, the structure is good, so termites must not be working on it. It’ll take a lot of money.”

“Which I don’t have,” Janice said. “How much will it cost to get the downstairs rooms in good shape so my sister and I can live here? The upstairs renovation will have to wait.”

Cecil studied the ceiling again and drummed his fingers on the arm of his chair. Lance winked at Janice, obviously amused by Cecil’s idiosyncrasies. Wasps, buzzing around the ceiling, accompanied the contractor’s humming.

“Lance,” Cecil said, after several minutes had passed, “you’ve had experience with a lot of construction at the school so speak up if you think I’m wrong. It’s my opinion that this house needs a good cleaning more’n anything else.” He appraised Janice with a keen glance. “You’ll have some expense to make the house fit to live in, but if you just do the downstairs, you can be comfortable without spending a lot of money.”

“I agree,” Lance said, “but Janice knows I have reservations about her living here. It’s too isolated.”

Cecil shrugged his skinny shoulders, peering at Lance under his shaggy brows. “That’s not for me to decide nor you neither, unless there’s something I don’t know.”

Lance colored slightly, admitting, “It isn’t any of my business.”

“I’ll give you an idea of what you’d have to do before you can move in,” Cecil continued. “First off, you’ve gotta replace all the broken windows to preserve the house. If you put new locks on the doors, that’ll give you protection from ordinary circumstances. You’d have to get rid of the curtains and the carpets. Later on, you might want to refinish the floors, but if
they’re clean, you can manage if you add some rugs, here and there.”

“You’ve encouraged me already, Mr. Smith. What else?”

“Your biggest expense will be getting the plumbin’ checked and repaired. After ten years of neglect, you could have damage to the pipes. The gas furnace is old, so you might be better off to replace it. You can get somebody from the county seat if the local guys won’t work here. And I’d get all of this brush cleaned off the place, not only so you can see out, but so you can tell if anybody is looking in.”

“Can you give a ballpark figure on how much this might cost her?” Lance asked.

Cecil gazed around the ceiling for a while, closed his eyes and whistled a tune. He took a ragged notebook and a pencil out of his shirt pocket. He chewed on the end of the pencil and scribbled down some figures.

“Not countin’ the curtains and rugs, and leavin’ the upstairs as is except the windows, and not painting the outside, I’d say she could get by with around ten thousand dollars. You got that much?” he asked.

Janice nodded. That sounded like a lot of money to her, but she’d expected it to be more. The certificate of deposit she’d set aside to renovate Mountjoy would be enough, with some left for the driveway. The money in her personal savings would take care of their living expenses until she finished working on the house. She’d papered and painted her apartment once, so she could do a lot of the work herself. But should she spend so much money on an old house that someone was determined she shouldn’t occupy? She’d never had to make a decision of such magnitude before, and it wasn’t easy.

Lance watched as Janice weighed her options. Her troubled eyes indicated uncertainty. Janice was too young to be
thrown suddenly into the guardianship of her sister, ownership of this property and a sizable amount of money. Little wonder she seemed bewildered, but he’d leave it to her lawyer and Henrietta to advise her.

“When could you start work?” she asked Cecil in a weary voice.

“Like I said—I’ve got a couple of jobs to finish, which will take me about a week. There’s some other work pending, but nothing I can’t postpone.” He whistled again and stared at the ceiling. “I could start a week from this coming Tuesday,” Cecil decided. “That’ll give you time to clear the road, so we can haul in the materials we need.”

“What do you think?” Janice asked, looking directly at Lance.

“If you’re determined to live here,” he said, trying to keep concern out of his voice, “Cecil’s suggestions seems reasonable to me.”

Janice stood and walked through the four downstairs rooms trying to envision the house with the improvements Cecil had suggested. Lance and Cecil watched her silently. When she returned to the hallway, she sat wearily on the bench beside Lance, and he wished he had the right to put his arm around her slumped shoulders.

“The only other alternative is to sell the property, and I don’t want to do that. Besides, I don’t think it will seem so scary when we get all of the underbrush cleared away and we can see to the highway. Could I be ready to move within a month?” she asked Cecil.