When Rafe came through the door, it was after seven, and I was sitting at the island in the kitchen with my laptop open in front of me. Pearl the pitbull was snoozing on her pillow by the back wall, twitching occasionally in sleep. Carrie was sitting in her bouncy seat kicking her feet and batting at brightly colored animals hanging from the handle, and on the stove, Bolognese sauce was simmering and water was on the boil, waiting for me to toss in a couple handfuls of linguine. A tray of garlic toast was sitting on the counter, waiting to go in the oven.
Then Pearl raised her head from the pillow and started rumbling in her throat. I glanced at her. “Did you hear something?”
The stub of her tail slapped against the pillow once, and she turned her head to fasten her eyes on the door. When the key slid into the lock, she gave a single bark.
“It’s just Rafe,” I told her. “No need to go crazy.”
By then, she’d figured that out for herself, and was settling back down, her stubby tail wagging and her jaws split in a doggie grin, but she wasn’t barking anymore.
Rafe stepped through the door and shut it behind him, and bent to give her a scratch behind each ear before turning to me. “Sorry I’m late.”
“It’s no problem,” I said, as I looked him up and down. “At least you let me know.”
As usual he looked better than anybody had a right to. Faded jeans clinging to long legs and a black leather jacket stretching across broad shoulders and tapering to a narrow waist. I couldn’t see what was under the jacket, but I knew. I had to clear my throat before I added, “I ate a couple hours ago. I kept the sauce warm for you. It’ll take ten minutes to boil more pasta and heat more bread.”
“Just enough time for me to get a shower.” He glanced at the heat in my cheeks, and grinned. “Wanna come upstairs and wash my back?”
I smiled back. “You have no idea how much I’d like that. But with the baby…”
He nodded, and came a couple steps closer. “Hi there, pretty girl.” He reached out and ran the tip of his finger down Carrie’s cheek. She gurgled. At three months old, she was already a confirmed daddy’s girl.
Rafe turned to me. “And you’re pretty, too.” He bent his head and fitted his lips to mine. By the time he straightened, my head was swimming and I had to unclench my hand, one finger at a time, from the leather.
“You sure you don’t wanna join me upstairs?” He winked.
“I would love to join you upstairs,” I said, and it was God’s honest truth. “But I can’t just leave Carrie to fend for herself. If you can hold off an hour, maybe…”
He grimaced. “I’d rather get the stink off now.”
Somehow, I was sure there was no stink. His body is perfect in every way, including that one. However— “I’ll have food ready for you when you come back down. And you can tell me about all the excitement.” And then we could have sex—not in the shower—later. After Carrie was asleep.
He nodded. “I’ll be back in a few.”
“I’ll be here,” I said, and watched him walk across the room and into the hallway before I slid off the chair and padded over to the stove to crank the heat up to high.
By the time he came back downstairs, the linguine was draining in the colander, and the Bolognese was bubbling. I told him to take a seat at the counter, and then I went to doctor his plate the way I knew he liked, with a sprinkling of parmesan and a bottle of beer. Red wine would go better with the Italian food, but as he’d told me once, he’d spent a couple of years eating meals provided by the Riverside Penitentiary, and he wasn’t picky.
When I turned around, plate and beer in hand, he had pulled my laptop over so he could look at what I was doing. He arched a brow. “Looking to leave me?”
“Of course not.” I nudged the computer back out of the way and put the plate and bottle in front of him. “Charlotte and I are talking about renovating a house. She needs money. Her husband has frozen their accounts and canceled her credit card.”
“I bet he hasn’t frozen his own account,” Rafe said, picking up his fork.
I leaned my elbows on the counter and shook my head. “I’m sure he hasn’t. But Charlotte probably doesn’t have an account of her own. Or if she does, it was an account he funded, so she could have some spending money. She hasn’t worked since she married him.”
“She’s worked,” Rafe said, twisting linguine around his fork. “She just didn’t get paid.”
Point to the man with the bare feet. Charlotte had taken care of Doctor Dick’s children, and probably Doctor Dick’s house and yard and laundry and meals, not to mention Doctor Dick’s sexual needs. Or at least some of them. And now the bastard had cut her off without a penny.
“We had lunch earlier today,” I explained. “Charlotte suggested that maybe she could get a real estate license and we could work together. I guess she thinks maybe I’m doing better than I am.”
Rafe chuckled, but didn’t say anything.
“When I pointed out how long it would be before she’d start earning money, we came up with the idea of flipping a house instead. I’ve been looking at the options.”
“Come up with anything?” He wound another forkful of pasta and conveyed it to his mouth.
I made my way around the island. “If you don’t mind eating and looking, I’ll show you.”
He swallowed. “Sure. I don’t guess Scotty Junior’s house is on the market?”
The house I mentioned earlier, the lovely little Victorian cottage with the remains in the basement.
I shook my head. “I wouldn’t want to buy that, anyway. It’s going to be a long time before anyone in Columbia forgets what was hidden there. It would be almost impossible to sell.”
Rafe nodded, and picked up a piece of garlic bread and bit into it. It crunched, and the smell of garlic butter wafted my way. My teeth watered, even though I’d eaten my share—or more—of garlic bread earlier.
“These three are what I came up with.” I ran my finger over the mouse pad. “Here’s a cute little mid-century ranch in Sunnyside, with all the original features.”
I showed him a picture of a low-slung brick one-story before I started scrolling through the interior shots. “The price is a little high for a fixer-upper, but it’s a nice neighborhood. Big yards. And if we kept a lot of the original features, like this pink tile—”
Rafe winced.
“—and the knotty pine kitchen cabinets, we could bill it as mid-century chic.”
“Most people don’t feel like mid-century chic means a knotty pine kitchen,” Rafe said. “Not these days.”
No. “But at this price, we won’t have the money to redo two bathrooms and the kitchen. And mid-century is popular.”
Rafe didn’t say anything, just focused on winding linguine around his fork, and I sighed and moved on. “Here’s another little Victorian not too far from the Mason house, but without the stigma of bones in the basement. Nice front door. Nice fireplace mantel in the parlor. Unpainted, which is always a bonus. The tile on the hearth is ugly, but it wouldn’t be hard to replace it. Someone already ripped out the original tile and replaced it with this ugliness, so I wouldn’t feel bad about taking it out again. It isn’t original. The kitchen would need redoing, and the bathroom…”
I scrolled through the pictures.
“Lotta work,” Rafe said. “And only one bathroom? That could be a problem.”
It could. People these days like to have more than one potty.
“Anywhere in the house you could add one?”
“If I sacrifice one of the bedrooms,” I said. “Turn it into a two-bedroom, two-bath house, instead of a three-one. That would give me somewhere to put the laundry room, too. Right now it’s in this shed addition off the original back door…”
I scrolled through the pictures until I got to the shed addition, and watched another flicker of pain cross Rafe’s face. “You don’t like the idea?”
He glanced at me. “That’s gonna turn into a lot of money, darlin’. Redoing the kitchen and existing bath, adding another bath and a laundry room. That means moving plumbing and electrical. And if you’re tearing off the laundry room, you’re not only not adding square footage, you’re taking it away.”
True. And the smaller the house was, the smaller the out-price—the price we’d be able to get for it after it was finished—would be. I gnawed on my bottom lip. “I think the roof needs replacing, too. And the area isn’t as nice as Sunnyside. It would probably be harder to sell.”
“What else did you find?” Rafe asked, and picked up his fork again. “Where are you getting the money for this, by the way? We don’t have much.”
“Darcy’s going in with us,” I said, while I brought the next listing up on the screen. “She has a job, so she won’t be doing a lot of the work, but she’s footing the bill.”
“Nice of her.”
“She loves me,” I said, and Rafe grinned.
“Yeah. She does.”
“And I won’t ask you to help, either. You’ve already got a job, and I know you’ve got your hands full. We’re hoping to find a house that mostly needs cosmetic renovation, so we can do a lot of the work ourselves.”
Rafe nodded. “I’ll go take a look with you, give you an idea what you’re looking at as far as work. But I don’t think I’m gonna be a whole lotta help after that.”
“Just looking at it and helping me pick the right house would be great,” I said. “Here’s the last one.”
It was a much more recent construction, built in the last twenty years, and situated in a subdivision of similar cookie-cutter houses on the north side of Columbia. It hadn’t weathered the time as well as the other two. Rafe took one look at the exterior shot and shook his head.
“No?” I pulled up the interior pictures. “Are you sure? It isn’t bad inside.”
“Laminate flooring,” Rafe said, pointing to it. “Plastic molded tub, pressed wood cabinets, quarter-inch drywall…”
“You mean, it’s badly constructed?”
“Cheap,” Rafe said. “At least those knotty pine cabinets were solid wood. The clawfoot tub in the Victorian was cast iron. The walls were real plaster. This is all cheap materials.”
“But if we tore it all out and put in real hardwood floors, and ceramic tile, and solid wood cabinets…”
“Like putting lipstick on a pig, darlin’.”
“Oh.” I sank my teeth into my lip. “Then I don’t know what to do. These were the only three possibilities I could find on the MLS…”
The MLS is the Multiple Listing Service, where all the realtors share their listings with each other. Outside the MLS, the options are severely limited.
“Craigslist?” Rafe suggested.
“Do people sell houses there?” If so, I wasn’t proud. I’d buy a house on Craigslist. I mean, I was a professional. I had all the required forms and knew how to fill them out. Where most people could get in trouble buying a house on Craigslist, I actually knew what I was doing.
He shrugged. “Ain’t there a tax sale tomorrow?”
“Is there?”
“I heard something about it,” Rafe said.
“At the meeting?”
The reason he was late for dinner was a last-minute meeting called at the police department that he’d been required to go to. He hadn’t told me anything about it, other than that he’d be late, so it seemed like a reasonable question.
He grinned. “No, darlin’. Earlier this week. Extra cops directing traffic around the courthouse on Saturday morning.”
“Is that where the sale is taking place? On the courthouse steps?”
“As far as I know,” Rafe said. “Tax sale. Courthouse.”
“Do you know what time? Or what’s going to be auctioned off?”
He shook his head. “I’m sure there’s a website.”
I was sure there was, too, and was already Googling. “Here we go. Ten o’clock tomorrow. Two properties.” I rattled off the addresses. “Do either of those sound familiar to you?”
“South J Street is near downtown,” Rafe said. “I think it’s by the railroad tracks. Didn’t used to be the nicest area back when I was running the streets, but that coulda changed in the past ten years. Not sure about Fulton.”
I had already found South J Street on Google Earth and was waiting for the streetscape to populate. When it did, I tilted my head from one side to the other. “Hard to see, with the vegetation.” The picture obviously hadn’t been taken recently, since the yard was almost covered in foliage. You don’t get that in February in Tennessee. “Looks like it could have potential, though, if I’m looking at it right. Another little Victorian cottage. Might be some original features inside.”
He glanced up from the plate and over at it. “Might not.”
No, it might not. And if they were, they might be in as bad a condition as the previous little Victorian we’d looked at.
Nonetheless, I gave the picture a longing look. “It probably wouldn’t be a good idea to go over there now.”
Rafe glanced at the clock on the stove. “It ain’t that late.”
“It’s dark,” I said. And while it was still before eight, he had already had a long day. It was something he didn’t point out, but something I should keep in mind, as a good wife. “Maybe we could make it over there tomorrow morning instead.” When the sun was up and we could see what we were looking at. “Before the auction.”
“Better to do our snooping in the dark,” Rafe said, “if it involves breaking and entering.”
Yes. But— “It won’t. I have a key.”
He arched that brow at me. “How’d you get a key to a house you didn’t even know was coming up for auction until fifteen minutes ago?”
“It’s called a HUD key,” I said. “Or at least that’s what Tim calls it.” Tim is—or was—my broker at the real estate agency I worked for in Nashville. Since I hadn’t moved my license anywhere else, I guess he still was, technically, my broker.
Not that any of that mattered to what we were talking about. “When a house goes to foreclosure, the Department of Housing and Urban Development changes the locks, so the previous owners can’t get back in. But then there’s a parade of other people through the house. It has to be winterized, and inspected regularly, and once it goes on the market, realtors come and go. It’s much easier with a universal key.”
“Makes sense.”
“LB&A had one, and one day I made a copy of it, so I wouldn’t have to borrow the office key every time I wanted to take somebody into a foreclosed property. It was inconvenient. Much easier to have my own.”
His lips twitched. “Sure.”
“I still have it. So we won’t be breaking and entering. It’s legal to enter as long as I have a license and the key.”
“Ain’t that a shame,” Rafe said. “But we can pretend. Be almost like old times, wouldn’t it?”
I guess it would. “If you’re willing to cut your evening short, I’m certainly not going to try to stop you.” It would give me the time tomorrow to show Darcy the place before the auction. “But you really don’t have to. You’ve had a long day already, and…”
“It ain’t likely to take long.” He pushed his empty plate away. “I’ll go get dressed.”
He padded barefoot toward the hallway. I rinsed the plate and put it in the dishwasher, considered the pots and pans on the stove and decided they could wait until we got back, and went to the foyer to get my coat and boots, and Carrie’s pink winter suit and the car seat.
By the time Rafe came back into the kitchen, in socks and boots and a sweater and jacket, Carrie and I were dressed and ready to go. Pearl was thumping her stubby tail hopefully against the pillow, and looked crestfallen when I told her, “Sorry, baby. We’re going to look at houses. You wouldn’t enjoy it.”
“Bring her,” Rafe said. “If I’m right and South J still ain’t the nicest place, she could come in handy.”
“I guess it doesn’t matter. Nobody will be there to see us. And it’ll make her happy. C’mon, Pearl. Car ride.”
Pearl jumped to her feet, all quivering excitement. When Rafe grabbed her leash from the hook next to the door, the little bit of her tail that’s left wagged so hard the entire back half of her body moved from side to side.
“Good girl.” He opened the back door. “Let’s go.”
Pearl bounded past him into the dark, barking joyously, and then came back to circle him, making sure he was making progress toward the garage and the car. I stopped long enough to lock the door and then followed, with Carrie’s car seat over my arm.
When the mansion was built, around 1840, give or take a year, people had carriages, not cars. By the 1900s, that had changed, and the old carriage house was converted into a garage at some point before I was born. Rafe opened the bay where the Volvo was parked—the chrome on his Harley-Davidson caught the light from the next bay over—and then the front passenger door of the car for Pearl. When we have her with us, she rides shotgun while I stay in the back with the baby. I mostly trust Pearl around Carrie, but it makes me feel better not to take any chances. Pearl had a rough life before we rescued her, and until I’m sure she won’t suddenly lose her mind and attack Carrie, I don’t leave the two of them alone together, even in the backseat of the car.
So we made ourselves comfortable, and Rafe backed the car out of the garage and headed down the driveway around the corner of the mansion and toward the street.
“Nice night for a drive,” he told me as he took the turn from the driveway onto the Columbia Highway heading north.
I suppose it was. A little cold, but not freezing. Clear, so we could see the stars, and a pale sliver of moon to the east. “It was nice of you to offer to come with me.”
“Can’t let you have all the fun,” Rafe said, and focused on keeping the car on the road while Pearl sat up on her haunches, panting excitedly, next to him.
We were on J Street in Columbia about fifteen minutes later, cruising between small Victorian cottages and bungalows sitting close together on narrow, city-sized lots. Here and there, a porch lights gleamed, but more often, there was just the blue flicker of a TV from behind half-drawn curtains.
“Don’t look much different from what I remember,” Rafe said, peering left and right.
It didn’t. Or at least it didn’t look much different from what he’d told me to expect. The street had a rundown and sort of desolate air. There was trash piled up at the gutter here and there. The cars were all older, past the first bloom of youth, nothing new or shiny. The houses were on the small side and not well kept. They must have had some individuality originally—all Victorian cottages and Craftsman bungalows—but at this point, they’d all taken on the same air of quiet desperation. If someone ever decided to take a chance on the area, it had the potential to turn into something nice. But no one had so far, and I didn’t think I wanted to be the first.
“I’ll have to search recent sales in this area,” I said, as Rafe pulled to a stop in front of a small white cottage with peeling paint and dark windows. “Just in case this goes for a song tomorrow. If we can get it cheap enough, there might still be some money to be made.”
Rafe nodded. “Let’s take a look.” He opened his car door as Pearl watched him, wagging eagerly.
I unfolded myself from the car and grabbed the car seat while Rafe clipped the leash to Pearl’s collar. And off we went, across the sidewalk, through the gate, and up the walkway to the house. I stumbled over an out-of-alignment brick, and almost took a nosedive.
“Here.” Rafe reached back and took the car seat out of my hands. “You take the dog.”
We made the exchange, and kept going. Rafe didn’t stumble over anything, of course. His night vision is far superior to mine.
“The porch is rotten,” he informed me as he climbed the steps. “Be careful.”
I nodded, focused on where I was placing my feet. I wasn’t really worried, though. If the steps had held him and Carrie, they would probably hold me no problem.
I dug my keychain out of my purse and sifted through for the HUD key in the dark.
The house was late Victorian, and would probably have had a nice, ornate wooden door when it was first built, with a window in the top half.
If it had, that door was long gone. Someone had replaced it with a standard builder grade metal door. Not only did that mean there was no original door here to restore, it also meant that I and Charlotte, or whoever ended up renovating this place eventually, would have to spend money on a better door than was here now.
So my mental tally added the cost of a new and fancy front door in addition to what it would cost to rebuild the porch and deal with the landscaping. We hadn’t even gone inside yet, and the renovation costs were mounting.
“I’ll go first,” Rafe told me. He held his hand out for the key. I handed it to him and watched as he inserted it in the lock and twisted.
Nothing happened.
He tried again. “You sure this is the right key, darlin’?”
“It’s supposed to be the right key,” I said, and took it back so I could hold it up to my eyes to peer at it. “Yes, it’s the right key.”
“It ain’t working.”
“Try it one more time.” I handed it back to him, and he tried it one more time, and shook his head. “Sorry.”
“Well, damn. I mean… darn.”
It was so dark on the porch that I almost couldn’t see his lips curve. “Good thing I don’t need a key, ain’t it?”
It was. A very good thing. “Need anything from my purse?”
He shook his head. “No, darlin’. I got my own.”
Of course he did. I watched as he dug in his pocket, and pulled out a skinny black case, and then I watched as he turned his back to me to fiddle with the lock. After a few seconds he straightened and pushed the door open. And walked in, feeling for a light switch on the wall inside the door.
I opened my mouth to tell him that the power would be off, that part of the procedure of prepping a foreclosure is turning off the power and water, but before I could say anything, the lights flashed on and practically blinded me. I squeezed my eyes shut, but not before a room full of furniture had imprinted itself on my retinas. Sofa and chairs in front of the fireplace, small TV in the corner, old shag rug, books on the shelves, an ashtray full of cigarette butts…