Cynthia Thomason - Your House or Mine?

His mouth twitched upward in a strange sort of grin. “What circumstances are you talking about?”

Was he pretending ignorance of their obvious dilemma? She felt her face flush. “Well, I’m sure you’ve been repairing things around here because you thought the house was yours…”

He shrugged a shoulder. “I still do believe it. I bought this house.”

A spark of anger flared inside her. “Look, Deputy Murdock…”

“Wade.”

“Fine, Wade. I told you. My aunt gave the house to me. I plan to live here someday, and any repairs that need to be done are my responsibility. I don’t want you to put any more effort into a property that will one day be mine.”

“I’ll take my chances,” he said. “Besides, fixing this old place has sort of become a hobby. A labor of love you might say.”

“But you’re wasting your time…and money.”

“I don’t see it that way.” He leaned back against the counter and appraised her with cool, confident eyes. “And if you don’t mind an honest observation, I don’t think you’re that sure of your claim.”

She dropped her spaghetti-laden fork. “What? I’ve been sure of my claim to Ashford House for years, Deputy.”

“Wade.”

“Whatever. Why would you think such a thing?”

“Because I just went through the parlor to pick up the plate of spaghetti.”

“And?”

“And I saw that mess on the floor. You’ve been looking for something, Meg. Rather frantically, it seems to me.”

“What I’ve been doing is none of your business.”

“You didn’t find it, did you?”

“Find what?”

“The deed.”

She picked up her fork and began twirling spaghetti as if her life depended on curling the strands into a concise, compact roll. “I don’t want to talk about this with you. I don’t think we should talk about it.”

“That’s funny. When I’ve got twenty thousand dollars invested in something, I don’t consider it a taboo subject.”

She raised the fork and peered at him over the top of the pasta that had immediately begun to unravel. “Don’t you have some crimes to solve? Aren’t there cats to get out of trees?”

“That’s the fire department. Besides, I’ve already had one cat caper tonight. But, yeah, I’ve got to go.” He crossed the kitchen and pressed one hand on the swinging door to the dining room. “Just one more thing…”

She whirled around in her chair. “What now?”

“When I went through the parlor, I noticed you did find the contract of sale.”

Right. The contract had been in the lap drawer of Amelia’s desk. “You’re quite a snoop, aren’t you?”

“Training. When you’re part of a two-man law enforcement team in a hotbed of crime like Mount Esther, you don’t leave any stone unturned.” He smiled as he pushed the door as far as it would go. “And it helped that you left the contract on top of everything else on the desk…like maybe you’d been reading it.”

She crossed her legs and began pumping the right one up and down. “Okay, I may have looked it over, and I’m glad I did…”

“Me, too.”

“…because it’s only a lease-option agreement. You haven’t actually bought the house.”

He took a step back into the kitchen and let the door close. “It’s a binding contract, Meg. I’ve paid Mrs. Ashford a down payment and I’ve been giving her rent on the barn. It’s a done deal.”

Meg didn’t know enough about real estate contracts to rebut his argument, but she did know that four years ago, Amelia had prepared a clear deed with her name on it—if only she could find it. “I wouldn’t be so sure, Deputy,” she blustered.

“We’ll see,” he said. “Anyway, you’ve seen mine. Now it’s time for me to see yours. Then maybe we’ll figure out what to do about this mess.”

She listened to his footsteps recede through the house. “I’ll find the deed, Deputy,” she called out. “And I’ll be only too happy to show it to you.”

His voice carried from the parlor. “It’s Wade, Meg, for the third time. And you know where to find me.”

A RINGING TELEPHONE jolted Wade from a dream of an auburn-haired woman, her full lips tugging down into a frown, sitting in Mrs. Ashford’s parlor in the middle of a pile of papers. He turned over in bed and opened one eye to see the digital clock on his nightstand. 6:36. Great. He’d had a whopping five hours sleep and lost the end to a fantasy whose possibilities were far more exciting than his reality.

In the darkness, he fumbled for the portable, grabbed it off its cradle, and croaked, “Deputy Murdock. If this is anything short of murder, call back in two hours.”

The voice that answered was familiar, and irritating. “Wade, this is Harvey Crockett at the Quick Mart. You’d better get over here right away. Newton Bonner just ran out on his gas bill and left me holding a twenty-dollar tab.”

“Oh, geez, Harvey,” Wade grumbled. “Can’t it wait till the sun’s up? Newton isn’t going anywhere.”

“How do you know that? He peeled away from the pump like a bat outta hell. He could be halfway to the county line by now—on my tank of gas.”

Wade pictured eighty-eight-year-old Newton Bonner and doubted the man could peel a banana, but it didn’t pay to argue with a citizen he was hired to protect. He swung his feet to the floor and arched his back to stretch his muscles into service. “I’ll drive on over to Newton’s place and check it out, Harvey. Call you when I know something.”

“I’m gonna have to make folks pay before they pump from now on, Wade. I don’t give credit here, and I can’t cover the cash drawer myself…”

Wade held the phone away from his ear and stood up. “Harvey, do you want to keep me on the phone listening to you, or do you want me to go after Newton?”

“You get that old buzzard, Wade. He can’t get away with this.”

Wade pressed the disconnect button and returned the phone to his nightstand. He was thankful tomorrow was Sheriff Hollinger’s day to answer the calls.

A DOZEN PEACOCKS and three times that many chickens scattered in advance of the patrol car as Wade pulled onto Newton Bonner’s property. Wade didn’t know much about peacocks, but he’d heard that old Newton had made a living for more than fifty years selling their colorful quills to novelty shops and the birds to petting zoos. Now that he was retired, Newton still kept a few birds around his place because he claimed they were good company. Since the old guy had never married, Wade supposed that a family of fowl would be preferable at this point in the man’s life to living, breathing, arguing people. The birds appeared content as well, Wade observed. The property wasn’t even fenced, and Wade had never been called out on a rampaging peacock emergency.

Newton emerged from a shed and began scattering pellets of feed on the ground. The birds forgot about Wade and, with their colorful tail feathers spread, beat an awkward path to the goodies. When he saw Wade, Newton and his entourage crossed the yard to meet him.

“Morning, Deputy,” Newton said. “What brings you out here?”

Mindful of his clean uniform, Wade swatted a couple of curious hens away from his pants leg. “You know why I’m here, Newton,” he said. “You’re not so old that you forgot what you did not more than half an hour ago.”

Newton ground the stub of an unfiltered cigarette into the dirt. “That damn Harvey Crockett. Did he call you out this early in the morning to run me down?”

“Yes, he did, and he had a right to. You stole twenty dollars’ worth of gasoline.”

Newton removed a wide-brimmed felt hat and ran long, gnarled fingers through white hair that hadn’t seen a barber in quite a long time. “I woulda’ gone back there in a day or two to pay up,” he said.

“That’s not the way it works, Newton, and you know it.”

“I left my wallet at home. I remembered it when I was already halfway to the feed store. What was I supposed to do? If I’d a’ passed on by the Quick Mart, I’d a’ run out of gas before I hit the county road.”

“You forgot your wallet?” Wade repeated.

Obviously thinking he’d brought Wade over to his way of thinking, Newton nodded his head vigorously. “That’s right. Left it on the kitchen table.”

Wade scowled at the old man. “Then you were driving without your license, too?”

A spiderweb of veins turned pink under Newton’s thin skin. “Hell, no, Wade,” the man lied. He patted his shirt pocket. “I always put my license right here, and I had it with me.”

“So where do you keep your twenty-dollar bills?” Wade asked him. “You bring me one now and maybe I’ll overlook a charge of petty larceny this time.”

Newton grinned with the half dozen teeth still in his mouth and trotted off to his house. He returned a minute later with a crisp twenty-dollar bill, one of the newly minted ones. Wade bet that the sly old fella had a trunk full of them hidden away somewhere.

“You’re a fair man, Deputy,” Newton said.

Wade tucked the bill into his pocket. “Maybe, but I’m also a man who’s running out of patience. The next time you do this, I’m writing you up.”

Newton bent over and scooped a fat hen from the ground at his feet. “Here, take this home for dinner. It’s my treat.”

Imagining Jenny’s reaction at witnessing the decapitation of what would later appear on her plate, Wade politely refused. “Some other time, Newton.”

The old man walked Wade back to his patrol car. “So how’s everything going with the Ashford place?” he asked. “Are you thinking that you bit off more than you can chew?”

Wade shook his head. “Nope. Not yet. I’m pleased as I can be with that house. Working on it has brought me and my dad closer than we’ve been in years.” He scanned the clear blue sky above him. “And this climate has done wonders for his pleurisy. I think another winter in New York might have killed him. Now I believe he’ll go on forever.”

“You started working up in the attic yet?”

“No. That’ll be the last job I tackle,” Wade said.

“You been up there, though, haven’t you?”

“Sure. When I bought the place from Mrs. Ashford I took a quick look around the third floor. All I saw was some worn-out furniture, a mess of cobwebs and a couple of critters. It’s a small space, so…”

Newton cackled. “A small space, you say?”

“Yeah. Besides the turret which opens onto all three floors, the actual attic can’t be more than twelve feet square.”

They’d reached the patrol car, but Newton was obviously not done talking. “Guess you didn’t see the mural then.”

Wade thought back to that day several weeks ago. He’d seen some ratty old picture frames leaning against a wall, but nothing the size of a mural. “I didn’t see anything as big as that.”

“You missed the best part then. I remember when Stewie Ashford built that place and hired a guy to paint a picture the size of a church door in the attic. There were some high times up there once that mural was finished. Why, a fella could stand in the turret and see a car pull into the drive all the way from the county road. I was there once when I was just a youngster, not more than seventeen, I’d say. Stewie let me come up there anyways. He didn’t pay any mind to county laws.”

Wade crossed his arms over his chest and leaned against the hood of his car. “What are you talking about, Newton?”

A wide grin creased the old man’s face. “Guess I’ve said too much already. You go on back up there, Wade, and look for the mural. That’s all I’m saying. I won’t be the one to blacken a dead man’s memory, or for that matter, start up rumors that’d vex his sweet widow.”