Zero at the Bone (3 page)

2

BY the time Katherine pulled her Wagoneer into the parking lot behind the one-story red brick building that housed the Bank of Boerne, the white blouse she’d just put on felt damp. She turned off the engine and checked her watch. Five minutes early. One fat drop of sweat rolled slowly from her temple along her hairline.

She’d faced adversity before. Often. But this was different. She loathed the idea of asking for help. It made her cringe just to think about it. And that she should have to ask George Bob Rainey made it even worse.

She pulled from her bag the letter and notice of sale that had arrived by registered mail six days before. She turned the engine back on so she could have some air-conditioning while she reread them.

It was bad news.

The worst.

She was three months behind on her mortgage payments. “In monetary default,” it said.
Default
—an ugly, accusatory word. The bank was forced to accelerate the loan so her entire balance of $90,899 was due immediately. If she did not make her payment by Tuesday, November 7, her property would be auctioned off on the east steps of the Kendall County Courthouse at 11
A.M
.

Only twenty-two days from today!

The bank’s attorney was posting the property and kennel assets for foreclosure on the bulletin board at the courthouse, and if she could not meet her commitments, it would go on public sale.

That phrase—“If you cannot meet your commitments”—stung her hard. She had always taken pride in meeting her commitments head-on. Hadn’t she always met more commitments than other people? When she was growing up, her mother had often seemed helpless and lost—more the child than Katherine. Hadn’t she taken care of things alone at home during her mother’s absences? And hadn’t she managed to do well in school, too? Hadn’t she put herself through college? Hadn’t she built a profitable business from the small beginning of raising and training a few golden retrievers?

And when her mother got cancer two years ago, hadn’t she, Katherine, taken over and paid the enormous hospital bills that her mother’s tiny trust income couldn’t pay? And all this on her own. The only help she had ever asked for had been this bank loan to buy her house and land. She had met her payments on time every month for eleven years. Until the medical bills and the downturn in the economy had sabotaged her.

Yes, she could go on and on about commitments.

As a matter of fact, that’s just how she saw herself: an independent woman who had always met her commitments. God, it sounded like an epitaph. She visualized it written on her tombstone: “Katherine Anne Driscoll. She met her commitments.” Somehow she didn’t like the sound of it as the summary of thirty-six years. Joyless.

She looked down at her watch again. Three past eleven. She hurried into the bank feeling hot, awkward, and pretentious in high heels and a straight skirt. Trying to look like I don’t need money, she thought. Trying to look proper.

As she entered, she saw George Bob Rainey across the lobby and felt the usual rush of embarrassment his presence always brought out in her.

He walked toward her beaming, his face even fuller and more boneless than when she had seen him two months before. “Kate. Good to see you. Good to see you.” He seized her hand and pumped it up and down several times. Priming the pump to get money out of it, Katherine thought. I wish it were as easy as that.

“Come on into my inner sanctum,” he said, steering her with an open palm on her back, something Katherine loathed. Especially now when her back was probably a little sweaty from the tension. When I was paying my mortgage on time, she thought, I could have shrugged his hand off. But not now.

The door of his office was mahogany with gold letters on it: “George Bob Rainey, Vice President.”

He opened it and steered her in. He gestured to a small straight-backed chair that was dwarfed by the huge desk. A supplicant’s chair. Perfect. She perched on it, adjusting her straight skirt to cover her knees.

“Well, Kate, you’re looking good, girl. Still seeing Johnny Rhenquist?”

“Uh, no. Not lately.” She was determined not to give him any grist for gossip over her broken engagement. “How’s Major?”

George Bob Rainey eased himself into the big burgundy leather executive chair with a low grunt. “Oh, mean as ever. A real pistol. We still have to muzzle him when guests come to the house. Hell, he took a chunk out of Charley Holbein’s leg last month. Damn dog. I pretty near beat him to a pulp after that. I should’ve done what you suggested years ago and had you train him. I’m afraid it might could be too late now.”

Katherine thought it had been too late even five years ago, when he had brought the huge German shepherd, then a puppy of eight months, to one of her group obedience classes. The dog was high-strung and aggressive toward the other dogs, and George Bob had refused to correct the behavior. She’d had to ask him to leave the class. She’d also had to reject the repeated leering advances he’d made over the years. Each time she turned him down, he’d clucked and said it was too bad she wasn’t a good sport like her mother.

The problem was this was a small community. He knew Leanne’s reputation and he never let Katherine forget it. Whenever she was around him, she felt an undercurrent of shame and a need to prove herself businesslike and sexless—the exact opposite of her mother.

George Bob was looking down at the open folder in front of him on the desk. In an instant, his face was transformed, from genial host to no-nonsense banker. This new man looked up at Katherine with his eyes slightly narrowed, his thin lips sucked back into his mouth. He was ready to get down to it.

She put the letter on the leather desktop and slid it across the wide expanse toward him. “I got this last week. It was a real shock.”

He glanced down at it. “Yes, ma’am, I know. Looks like we got a real problem here.”

Katherine took a deep breath and began as she had been rehearsing it in her head. “When I was in two months ago to talk about this, I told you my business was down, just like everyone’s around here, but that it was improving—slowly—and that I had plans for increasing my profits, if I could have some more time.”

She saw that his jaw was opening. He was about to interrupt, so she rushed on with the rest of her speech. “You said I could have a few months to work it out. I haven’t had enough time, and I can’t pay it all at once, but I am in the process of … working it out. I have some better ideas in mind. I can get an outside job; I can lay Joe off to save on overhead. If you could bear with me on this for just a few more months, George Bob, I will pay everything I owe. I’ve always been a good customer, paying right on time for eleven years.”

Katherine found herself breathing hard after this speech, not because it was more words than she usually spoke at one time, although it was, but because of her profound resistance to saying them. It was too close to begging. And she could hear herself what bluff it was. The truth was she was just stalling for time; she saw no way she could pay off the debt in this lifetime.

He leaned forward and folded his hands in front of him. “Kate, it’s no longer a matter of just curing the default. Since the loan has been accelerated, you owe the full ninety-one thousand dollars.” He didn’t even have to look down at the folder for the number, Katherine noticed. He was loaded for bear. “Now I don’t want to be discouraging here. I know what a can-do sort of gal you are, but let’s us look at some serious possibilities here. Have you tried to sell the place?”

She looked down at the backs of her hands. They were gripping her knees so tightly the bones and veins stood out in relief. “Not really. But I had a realtor look at it and she said I’d be lucky to get a hundred thousand for the whole thing, including the extra ten acres. That’s less than I paid for it. She also says it would take a long time to sell it in this down market.”

He shook his head slowly, sadly. “This is the hardest time for real estate I ever did see. Who ever would’ve thought this would happen?”

George Bob had lowered his voice to funereal tones. Katherine’s heart slowly contracted. This was certainly his worst-news voice. “Now, Kate, we want to work with you on this, but we have a responsibility to our shareholders and our depositors to see that these loans get paid. If they don’t get paid, we are responsible to make the most we can out of the collateral. Unfortunately, it’s just like the notice says.” He picked it up and pushed it back across the desk to Katherine. “The loan committee has decided that we will have to foreclose on this property if you can’t figure out a way to pay what you owe by November seven.”

“That’s only three weeks away. How can I figure it out in three weeks?” Her voice was in danger again of rising to a whine. She clenched her jaw to stop it.

“Kate, let’s get serious. You’ve got some family in Austin could help. I know from your mama that you’ve got a rich grandmother. Hell, you’re one of
the
Driscolls. Why don’t you call them and ask for a loan to get you over this bad hump? That’s what I would do if I was you.”

She shook her head angrily.

He continued. “If it was up to me, I’d give you as much time as you needed, but it’s not up to me.” He gestured to the office next to his, the president’s. “We don’t like to take over properties. That’s not the business we’re in. But the powers that be say we got to collect on these real estate loans or do the best we can with the collateral.”

For the first time he looked down at the open folder. “Says here in the loan agreement your collateral is the twenty acres, house, kennel building, and the assets of the kennel.”

“Other than the runs and some dog-training equipment, there aren’t any kennel assets,” she said, fearful of the next shoe to drop.

“Oh? It says here those champion dogs, big retrievers you breed and train—they’re part of the assets, the collateral assigned to the bank.”

Her breath got ragged. “Oh, I sold the dogs months ago to help pay the mortgage. They went into the May and June payments.”

“Did they? That must’ve been real hard for you. How about that big one rides around in the car with you, the one that wins all the field trials?”

“Ra?” Her voice sounded thin, even to her own ears. “But no one would consider him part of the kennel assets. He’s … my pet. Just happens to have won a show or two.”

“Charley Holbein says that dog is worth twenty thousand in stud fees alone. Says it’s the best field-trial dog he’s ever seen. Now come, Kate. I know how it is to get attached to critters, but this is business.” He pronounced it “bidness.”

Katherine had never before known what it meant to feel faint. She gripped the edge of his desk to keep panic at bay.

He looked her straight in the eye. “Anything I could do for you on this, Miss Kate, I would do, but the committee has made a decision. They think the value of the property will continue to sink, so giving you more time would likely just delay your agony, and increase the loss we’ll surely take on this.”

George Bob stood up. He was dismissing her. It was all over.

There must be more she could say to stop this. Katherine opened her lips to protest. But she didn’t utter a sound because she knew it would come out as a whine. And she had taught herself never, never to whine.

Finally she found a neutral voice. Still sitting, she said, “So that’s it? I have until the seventh of next month?”

“’Fraid so.” He looked at the calendar open on his desk. “Twenty-two days from today.” He looked up at her. “We go back a long way and you’ve been a good customer, Kate. I sure dislike having it turn out like this.”

“Me, too,” Katherine said in a small voice that was humiliatingly close to tears. She stood up and let him usher her to the door. Before passing through, she stopped for a final try.

“George Bob? About the dog—Ra—he really is a pet. The only reason he’s won some field trials is that he and I get on so well … you know, we have good rapport. He wouldn’t work well for anyone else. It wouldn’t make sense to foreclose on a dog, would it?” She tried to laugh at the idea, but the sound that emerged was more like a whimper.

The banker kept his business face in place, but he draped a heavy arm across her shoulders. “I know this is real hard, but that animal is a valuable asset. I’ll present it to the committee, Kate, but I can’t make no promises.” George Bob liked to slip in a double negative every so often to show that he was a good ol’ boy at heart, even though he was a banker.

*   *   *

When Katherine got back to the car she was shaking, her torso damp with cold sweat. She climbed in quickly, wanting to lie on the floor and pass out so she wouldn’t have to feel what she was feeling. It was fear, panic. Things were out of control, swarming in on her, and she was powerless to stop the momentum.

She rested her forehead against the hot steering wheel and pictured her house—the two old yellow wing chairs flanking the stone fireplace in the living room, her books neatly organized in the shelves; the cool white bedroom with the tall pecan trees shading the windows; the wood-and-brick kitchen. In her mind’s eye she saw the pasture behind the kennel in the morning light. Ra was loping through the wildflowers, his plumy tail carried high on the breeze.

Not only was she about to lose her home and her business, but she was probably going to lose Ra, too.

When a car pulled into the space next to hers, she sat up straight and searched her purse for the key. She began talking to herself: “Am I just going to lie down and feel sorry for myself? Let these bankers ruin my life? Hell, no. This is not like me. I’ve had hard times before and I’ve always gotten through them. I don’t have to accept this.”

She started the engine and revved it a few times to fortify her courage. She would fight back.

*   *   *

Katherine was so stunned she forget to put the phone down until it began to buzz at her. Then she let her head fall forward and pressed her fingers hard into the base of her neck. Her lawyer had just finished reading the loan documents. There was no recourse, he told her, but to come up with the full $91,000 in the next twenty-two days. In response to her question about Ra, he’d said there was no question that the dog was part of the kennel assets. Too bad, he’d commiserated, but there it was.