Ladies' Night (20 page)

“I’ve filed a report with the sheriff’s department, but there’s no telling how long they’ve been gone. I know the wife, well, I guess she was his wife, I don’t really know, but she did mention at one point that they had family in Alabama.”

He looked down at the shivering bundle of fur in Grace’s arms. “I was gonna take her to the animal shelter. Later on. But if you’d take her, that’d be a whole lot better.” He reached out and scratched under the dog’s chin, and she wriggled in delight. “She’s kinda cute, in a homely sort of way.”

Grace looked down at the dog and sighed. “She seems like a sweetheart. But I’m living with my mom, above the bar. And if you know Rochelle, you know she doesn’t believe in having inside pets.”

“And my wife has got three big ol’ tomcats, and they don’t like dogs any more than I do,” Arthur said. He took the dog from Grace’s arms, opened the bedroom door, and set her back inside before firmly closing the door.

The dog’s plaintive whines tore at Grace’s heart.

Arthur knew how to deal with such a thing. He stalked out to the living room and began loading his wheelbarrow with more trash.

Grace wanted not to hear the dog’s cries. “How long do you think it’ll take to get this place cleaned up?” she asked.

“Who knows? However much time it takes, it’s more than I can spare,” Arthur said. “We usually spend the summer up in North Carolina. Fixing to leave next week, until this happened.”

“I have an idea,” Grace said slowly. “It’s kind of crazy.”

“Crazier than me letting these folks do me out of three months’ back rent?” Arthur asked.

She took a deep breath. “What would you think of letting me fix the place up for you?”

“Why would you want to do something like that?” Arthur asked, his eyes narrow with suspicion.

“I’m an interior designer, and I write a blog about home design and home improvement,” Grace said. She gestured at the dank room they were standing in. “This little house actually has good bones. It’s small, but it could be terrific. I could make it terrific. And I could photograph it and write about the process. If you’d let me.”

She was already writing the blog posts in her mind, picturing the rooms, stripped of their filth, the cottage returned to its old Florida vernacular architecture. Let J’Aimee try to copy that!

Arthur shook another cigarette out of the pack in his breast pocket. “I don’t know…”

“Okay,” Grace said easily. “As I said, it was just an idea.”

He lit the cigarette and inhaled. The smoke smell was actually an improvement. “What would you charge for something like that?”

“Uh, nothing,” Grace said. And then she hurriedly backed up. “That is, you’d need to pay for the materials.” She did a 360-degree turn around the room. “Paint, new light fixtures.”

“Carpet, for sure,” he added.

Grace stubbed her toe into the shag carpet. “What’s under here, do you know?”

“Wood floors, best I remember,” he said. “God knows what kinda shape they’re in. We’ve had carpet down, ever since I can remember.”

“Best-case scenario, rip up this carpet and refinish the wood floors,” Grace said. “It’s way cheaper than buying new carpet, and if you put down a good finish, your next tenants shouldn’t be able to ruin it.”

She walked out to the kitchen. “I’m thinking you’ll need new appliances in here.” She knelt down and peeled at an edge of the vinyl-roll flooring. “This stuff would have to come up, too. So either refinish if there’s wood or put down new vinyl.”

He nodded. “I was gonna have the stove and fridge hauled off, probably tomorrow.”

“How much were
you
thinking it would cost to get it ready to rent again?” Grace asked.

Arthur pursed his lips and flicked his cigarette ash onto the carpet. “With appliances—there’s a washer and dryer on the back porch, and they’re ruined, too, I’m thinking a couple thousand.”

“With appliances? I’m thinking at least five thousand,” Grace shot back. She’d walked out to the porch and was staring out at the overgrown yard. “The screens out here are all shot and you’ve got rotten framing, too.”

She turned around. “How about the air-conditioning? Does it work?”

“Window units,” he said, pointing to a rusting brown hulk that stuck out of the front living room window. “Couple smaller ones in the bedrooms. They do the job. Or they did, up until now.”

Grace put her hands on her hips. “What do you charge for rent? If you don’t mind my asking?”

“Four-fifty a month,” he said. “And we pay utilities.”

“Oh, Arthur,” she said with a knowing smile. “This house has such potential. And you’re only, what? A block from the bay? If we fixed this place up—I mean, really fixed it up, cleaned up the yard, got it landscaped, maybe put in a little central air unit…”

“No central air,” he growled. “Think I’m made of money?”

“It couldn’t cost that much,” Grace said. “How many square feet here?”

“A little under a thousand,” he said.

“If you’re paying for the electric, you’re spending way more money now with three old window units,” Grace said. “I bet if you put in a new efficient central unit, you’d save enough to pay for it after just a couple years. Plus, once I’ve got it fixed up and looking great, you’re gonna get more rent anyway, and definitely attract a better-quality tenant.”

“You make it sound so easy,” Arthur said. “You have any experience fixing up houses? Or handling investment properties, for that matter?”

“I’ve fixed up three old houses,” Grace said. “And my ex-husband and I had a little two-bedroom, two-bath in Bradenton that I did this very same thing with. That one, I gutted to the studs. By the time we sold it, a year ago, we were getting $1,200 a month. Unfurnished.”

“Ex-husband?”

“About to be,” Grace said casually. “We split a couple months ago. That’s why I’m living with my mom right now.”

“Sorry to hear it,” Arthur said.

“I’m not,” Grace said, lifting her chin. “So? What do you think?”

“Have to run it by my wife,” he said. “Five thousand. You’re talking about a lot of money.”

She decided to push her luck. “Five thousand, more or less. I haven’t even seen those bedrooms. And we don’t know what shape the floors are in.”

He chewed on that for a minute or two. “All right. Assuming my wife doesn’t hate the idea, you’ve got a deal.”

“Great!” Grace beamed. “What about the rattan furniture? It’s really good stuff, Arthur. I love it, but I don’t actually have a place I can use it right now. Once I get this house cleaned up, it’ll be perfect in the living room. Is there a place we can store it until then?”

He yanked his head in the direction of the back of the house. “There’s a garage out back. Guess I could lock it up out there for now.”

She couldn’t believe what she’d just done. Gone out for a run, found a set of cool old furniture, and ended up with a new decorating gig and several months’ worth of potentially fabulous, totally original blog posts. This was a nonpaying gig, sure, but she couldn’t wait to dig in, turning this toxic-waste dump into a treasure.

“When can I get started?” she asked, trying not to sound too anxious.

“As soon as you like,” Arthur said. “I’ll get the worst of this crap hauled off tomorrow. Meet me over here then, and I’ll give you a key.”

“How will we work out paying for the materials?” Grace asked. “I’m, uh, kind of tight on funds while I wait for my divorce to play out.”

“I’ll set up a draw for you at the hardware store,” Arthur said. “Just keep the receipts. Oh, and there’s just one more thing. Part of the deal, you might say.”

“Yesss?” Grace felt her throat tighten. She knew it was too good to be true.

He walked toward the hallway. A moment later, he thrust the stinking, shivering bundle of fur into her arms. “You keep the dog.”

21

She didn’t dare tell her mother what she was up to. It was nearly 9:00
A.M.
by the time she’d walked home with her bundle tucked under her arm. She thanked every holy force she could think of that it was Monday, and Rochelle had gone out do the week’s grocery shopping.

Grace dragged a washtub from the carport and filled it with water from the garden hose.

“It’s okay, sweetie,” she cooed, keeping one hand on the dog’s back for reassurance. “We’re gonna get you cleaned up a little. This won’t hurt, and you’ll feel a lot better afterward.” She squeezed a little of her own shampoo into her hand and gently rubbed it into the dog’s fur.

The animal whimpered a little, but Grace rubbed and cooed and breathed through her mouth as a vile stream of brown water surged off the quivering animal.

When finally the water had turned clear, and she could see no more crust in the dog’s fur, Grace wrapped her in a beach towel. Upstairs in her bedroom, she set the beach towel on her bed and turned her blow-dryer to cool, running it back and forth over the little dog’s damp fur.

Even though she was now semiclean, the poor little thing still looked so pitiful, Grace could have wept.

“Okay, sweetie,” she said, ruffling the dog’s ears. “There’s a vet over on Anna Maria. I think we’ll just run over there to see if they’ll take a look at you.”

*   *   *

It was Grace’s first time in a vet’s office. The receptionist looked up at her with a blank expression.

“So … you don’t know anything about this dog?”

“No. Basically, she’d been abandoned, in a house. Locked in a bedroom, and I don’t know for how long. When I got her, she was kind of bloody. I think she’d tried to scratch her way out. I gave her a bath, but I think there’s probably something else wrong with her. Because she keeps shivering.”

Grace looked down at the little brown dog, huddled under the swaddling of beach towel. “But you’re a good girl, aren’t you, sweetie?”

The girl had been typing on the computer. She looked up. “That’s her name, Sweetie?”

“Uh, sure,” Grace agreed. It was as good a name as any.

“It’s slow right now,” the girl said, clicking over to another page of her computer. “I think Dr. Katz can see her pretty soon. Can you wait?”

“The vet’s name is Dr. Katz?” Grace suppressed a giggle. “Really?”

The girl rolled her eyes. She’d heard it all before. “Really. How did you want to pay today?”

Grace hesitated. “Cash, I guess.”

“You can sit over there,” the receptionist said, pointing to a chair. She held out her arms and Grace handed the dog over, towel and all. “It’s okay now, Sweetie,” the girl said softly. She reached into a glass jar on the counter and gave the dog a biscuit, which she eagerly snapped up. Then she disappeared behind a swinging door.

Grace sat in a hard vinyl chair and read a magazine about schnauzers. She hadn’t realized there was so much to say about schnauzers, but apparently there was. On the opposite side of the waiting room, an elderly lady cradled a pet carrier in her lap. A huge tabby cat nearly filled the thing, its tail sticking out through the wire-mesh door.

Thirty minutes later, the receptionist was back at the desk. “Sweetie Davenport?” she called.

Grace suppressed a giggle. It was as though she’d acquired a new baby sister. “Yes?” she said, standing.

“Dr. Katz is back with Sweetie, in examining room one,” she said. “You can go back and talk to her.”

The veterinarian was a compact blond woman, in her late forties. She wore a short white lab coat that had silk-screened cartoon images of dogs and cats on it.

Sweetie was lying on a stainless steel examining table, and the vet held one hand on her back, slowly stroking her fur. When the dog spotted Grace, her stubby brown tail beat a tattoo on the table.

“Hi there,” the vet said, nodding at Grace. “You’ve got a very good little girl here. She let me examine her, and she didn’t make as much as a squeak.”

“Is she okay?” Grace asked.

“A little deyhydrated,” Dr. Katz said. “And she’s got an intestinal parasite, and some wounds on her paws, which are infected.”

Grace felt her throat tighten with anger. “The people who owned her, they just left her, locked in a bedroom of the house they’d been renting, and took off. She’d apparently been trying to dig her way out. We don’t know how long she’d been there when the landlord found her today.”

“It happens,” Dr. Katz said, ruffling Sweetie’s fur. “I’m sorry to tell you we see all kinds of cruelty to animals. It’s upsetting, but not unusual.”

“What can you do for her?”

“I’d like to keep her overnight. Put her on some IV fluids and get her started on antibiotics,” the vet said. “We don’t have any idea of her medical history, but given the fact that she was abandoned in this condition, I think we should assume she’s never had any shots. We’ll give her parvo and rabies shots, and start her on worm meds. And,” she added, “give her a good flea dip.”

“Right,” Grace said. She hesitated. “Look,” she said, her cheeks flaming with shame. “I’m in the middle of a divorce, and right now I just don’t have a lot of money. I’m living with my mother, and getting a dog was the last thing I’d planned. How much will all this cost?”

Dr. Katz put a hand on her sleeve. “Don’t worry too much about that. Let us work on Sweetie a couple days. We’ll call you Wednesday and let you know what time you can pick her up. We do have a special rate for people rescuing strays, and we can always work out a payment plan, if need be. Does that sound all right?”

“Yes,” Grace said. “Thank you! I’ll be honest with you. I’ve never owned a dog, and wasn’t looking for one. But I couldn’t just leave her there and let her be dropped off at the dog pound.”

“Good for you,” Dr. Katz said.

“Can you tell me anything about her?” Grace asked. “Like what breed she is, or how old?”

Dr. Katz continued to stroke Sweetie’s head. “She’s no puppy. Judging by her teeth, I’d say she’s probably at least four years old. It’s hard to tell without doing DNA testing, but I feel confident that she’s got a good bit of toy poodle in her, maybe some cocker spaniel, too. Considering what she’s been through, she’s surprisingly calm and docile. Once we get her feeling better, she’ll make you a loyal, adoring little buddy.”

Grace’s eyes rested on Sweetie’s big brown ones. She could have sworn the dog was grinning at her.