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  And the Bellamy house was a prime example of what could happen to a property handled that way. The owner didn’t want to sink more money into the house in order to fix it up. But he also didn’t want to lower the price. Each time he finally dropped the price it was by too little and way too late.

  All that was before 1992, when Cindy joined the firm. For years now the file had lain undisturbed. The owner might be dead, for all Cindy knew. So . . . she called him.

  To her surprise, he not only wasn’t dead, he even answered his own telephone. “That old piece of junk?” said the old man. “Every year when I pay the taxes on it I just want to spit.”

  “Well, we have a potential buyer.”

  “You’ve got to be kidding. The house hasn’t blown down? Didn’t Hurricane Hugo finish it off?”

  “Still standing.”

  “Well, ninety thousand dollars and not a penny less.”

  “You already dropped the price to eighty-four nine back in ’89.”

  “Did I?”

  “And it didn’t sell then at that price.”

  “I’m quite aware of that! Don’t tell me my business. That’s a valuable property!”

  With a smile in her voice, Cindy ignored his warning. “A property is worth what someone will pay for it. If no one will pay for it, then it’s worth the value of whatever you produce on the land. If you produce nothing and nobody will pay for it, then that property is worthless.”

  “Are you determined to insult me by taking me back to college?”

  “You’ve been paying taxes on that house for ten years now, earning nothing from it and never getting closer to a sale than a price quote. Do you want to sell this house or are you planning on taking it with you when you die?”

  For a moment Cindy thought the man might explode, he was so furious. She let him rail on about her rudeness and stupidity for about fifteen seconds. Then she set down the receiver on the cradle and took a drink from the Poland Spring bottle she kept at her desk. One minute. She glanced at the News and Record on her desk, flipped to the Word Jumble, worked it in about two minutes, and then picked up the phone and pushed the redial button.

  “You hung up on me,” he said.

  “Was that you?” she said. “It sounded to me like a man who didn’t want to sell his property. But why in the world would such a man be talking to a real estate agent?”

  The man chuckled grimly. “Well, aren’t you the clever one.”

  “Not really,” said Cindy. “I’m the one who doesn’t much care. I don’t get a commission if you get angry at me and fire me as your agent. But then, I also don’t get a commission if the property just sits there because the owner has a completely unrealistic view of its value.”

  “Well, what do you think the value is?”

  “I think the value is whatever the buyer offers.”

  “Are you crazy? You’re going to take the first offer?”

  “Let’s not get into the question of who is or isn’t crazy,” said Cindy. “Let’s just be realistic about it. There hasn’t even been an inquiry on this house in years. Every week you wait to sell it, the less value it has. For all I know, this man’s only interest in it is to tear the house down and build something new on the lot.”

  “A beautiful old house like that? It would be a sin!”

  “No worse than letting it die slowly, the way you’re doing.”

  “All right, I’ll tell you what. You drop the price as far as you want below eighty thousand. But for each thousand you drop the price, your commission drops by a percentage point.”

  “I have a better idea. My commission on this is a flat eight thousand dollars no matter what price the house goes for.”

  “What? Are you insane?”

  “You keep asking me that,” said Cindy. “But you’re the one who decided to start changing the rules on commissions. So let’s compromise and stick to the original agreement on my commission. What do you say?”

  “It’s a good thing I’m a gentleman, or I’d tell you right to your face what I think of you.”

  “When you get your check and you stop having to pay taxes on that empty house, then what you’ll think of me is that I’m a damn good agent who finally did what no other agent has been able to do: get you free of that house. You may even realize that the main obstacle I had to overcome was a stubborn owner who has no idea what’s going on in the real estate market in Greensboro.”

  “How do I know the buyer isn’t you? How do I know you aren’t knocking down the price yourself to cheat me?”

  “I’ll tell you how you know. Because when you start insulting me like that, I won’t stick around to take it.” And, once again, she hung up on him.

  At the next desk, Ryan Bagatti grinned at her. “I can’t wait to see the motivational tape that taught you that technique. Sean Penn and Zsa Zsa Gabor star in the video You Can Make Millions in Real Estate by Hanging Up on Clients!”

  “Hey, I didn’t slap him.”

  “I’m not sure but what he has a bruise from the way you talked to him.”

  Cindy tossed her hair nonchalantly. “What do I care about money and commissions? Poverty is good for the soul. Unemployment is capitalism’s way of getting you to plant a garden.”

  Her phone buzzed. The receptionist told her who it was. She cheerfully stuck her tongue out at Ryan and picked up the receiver. “Hey,” she said.

  “Do whatever it takes but sell the damn house,” said the owner.

  “Commission as per our agreement?” said Cindy.

  “Take the whole purchase price, just get it off my hands!”

  “I’ll do my best, sir.”

  “And don’t you dare give me that ‘sir’ baloney. You are not a lady, young woman. I hope you realize that about yourself!”

  “I do now, sir, and thank you for helping me make another leap forward in my quest for self-discovery.”

  “You just don’t let up, do you?”

  “It’s my most endearing trait,” said Cindy. “After it grows on you.”

  “I just better see results.”

  “Have a nice day.”

  This time the hanging up was peaceful, and she turned to grin at Ryan.

  “You only got away with that because you’re a woman,” said Ryan.

  “I only had to do it because I’m a woman,” said Cindy. “If I’d been a man, he would have listened to my advice seriously without having to go through all the drama.”

  “You’re really pretty when you’re on a feminist rant,” said Ryan.

  “And you’re really attractive when you remember that you’re married,” said Cindy.

  “Not to my wife I’m not.”

  “Well, she’d know,” said Cindy.

  She had a few hours to kill and the house intrigued her. The file said it was built in 1874 by a Dr. Calhoun Bellamy. Cindy always liked to tell her prospective buyers the history of a house, even if it was only a few years old. They liked knowing that a mansion was built by an executive with Jefferson-Pilot, for instance, or that a modest house was built by one of the textile mills as affordable housing for its employees. It gave them a sense of connection with the place, a story to tell their friends. Most important, it made them feel as though the house had some personality and that made them connect with it. No way of knowing whether that finally helped them decide to buy, but it couldn’t hurt, could it?

  So she went to the county offices and spent a couple of hours hunting for the pertinent records and examining all the transactions. Not many buyers. Dr. Bellamy and his wife lived in the house until they both died in 1918—the flu epidemic? Their children tried to hold onto it, apparently, until 1920, but then they sold it for nine thousand dollars. A very good price in those days. After that the place was nonresidential for a while, whatever that meant, and by the mid-thirties it was just one landlord after another renting ever-smaller apartments to ever-poorer residents.

  Boring. It was the Bellamy family that would interest the buyer. And so Cin
dy walked across the street to the main library and got the microfilms of the newspapers from that era. There was no index, but she knew the pages she wanted—society news. Sure enough, there were notices about the Bellamys all the time. They were party hounds. Soirees, balls, receptions almost every week, sometimes two or three in the same week. And apparently there was real cachet to getting an invitation from the Bellamys. The heavy schedule of entertaining continued until the turn of the century, but then tapered off to an annual ball and reception. Well, that would be something, wouldn’t it, to tell the buyer that the Bellamy house had been the high society hot spot of the late 1800s.

  Her eyes were bleary from looking at the microfilms. As always after one of these research marathons, she mocked her own obsessiveness. How could a real estate agent seriously hope to make a living if she kept, in effect, taking a day off? This buyer seemed eager, the seller had given her carte blanche on price—why did she need to do research when the deal was as good as done?

  Because she loved houses, that’s why. Loved houses and the people who lived in them and the neighborhoods that grew up out of the ground and sprouted families and children. Houses are the trunk of the tree, Cindy felt, and people are the leaves that sprout from them until the neighborhood is lush with them. Then the leaves age and fall, the neighborhood decays, but the trunk remains, until another generation of leaves can bud and grow.

  She almost never said this to anyone, of course, because they either looked at her like she was crazy or mocked her the way Ryan did. And they were right. But she had no intention of changing her mind or her habits. If she couldn’t be herself selling real estate, then real estate could go sell itself as far as she was concerned.

  Don Lark arrived five minutes early for his appointment. Cindy knew at once that this must be the man from the payphone, and not just because of his workclothes and shaggy hair. He came in and looked around for a moment and said nothing when the receptionist asked, “May I help you?” Didn’t even show a sign that he heard her, for a few moments at least. Only when he spotted Cindy watching him from her desk down at the end of the long room did he turn to Leah at the reception desk and say something. Leah pointed a painted fingernail at Cindy and the man nodded and Cindy thought: He doesn’t care about making a good impression. He doesn’t hurry to ingratiate himself with people. He takes his time sizing up a situation and then finds the least troublesome way to his goal.

  Cindy didn’t really have a strategy for dealing with people like him. The ingratiaters required her to be visibly impressed with them, to ooh and aah over their taste and judgment. The roughshod type, on the other hand, would have ignored Leah completely and headed straight for Cindy’s desk upon spotting her. Those she worked on by being contrarian, telling them why the house she wanted them to buy wasn’t really within their price range, or had a lot of extras they didn’t want to pay for. Cindy didn’t count these selling strategies as hypocrisy. People looking for a house exposed themselves emotionally, and what Cindy did was feed their need. If she ever did a motivational video, that’s the phrase she would use. Feed their need.

  This man, though, was of that rare type that knew what he wanted but didn’t want anything badly enough to demand it or beg for it or hurt anyone else in the process of getting it. Which meant that all she could do was show him the house and answer his questions and, if he decided he wanted to buy, help him put together a deal. No strategies. Instead of dealing with his inner child, she could talk directly with his inner grown-up. Such customers seldom came along, but she was always glad when they did.

  So her smile was genuine when she stood up and offered her hand and said her name.

  “Don Lark,” he answered. His handshake was firm but brief. “That house on Baker.”

  “Your car or mine?” she asked.

  “Let’s each take our own,” he said.

  Cindy glanced at Ryan, who was shaking his head and rolling his eyes. Ryan’s theory was that if ever a customer refused to ride in the same car with you, it meant no sale. Cindy’s theory was that it meant they had somewhere to go afterward and didn’t want to have to go back to the real estate office.

  “Fine,” said Cindy. “I have to warn you, though. I found a key that I think is the one to the lockbox, but the file’s been inactive for so long that I can’t be sure it’s the right one or if it’ll work even if it is.”

  Don nodded. “If it doesn’t fit, what’ll you do?”

  “Call a locksmith, I assume.”

  “Let’s go,” he said.

  She was pretty sure that if the key didn’t fit, he would have the door open before she could call a locksmith. But he didn’t say so right now because that would lead to a needless discussion. Naturally he assumed that she would argue with him and tell him about laws and rules and damaging the client’s property. Well, she could be patient, too, and let him find out that she didn’t have a bureaucrat’s tiny fears and passions when the occasion arose.

  As she got into her Sable—ostentatiously modest among the BMWs and Lexuses—she noticed that while his truck looked like it had been used for real work, the engine started smoothly and quietly. It reaffirmed her impression of him: Doesn’t care how his tools look, but makes sure they work perfectly. And for the first time it crossed her mind: He can’t possibly be married if he doesn’t have a phone.

  4

  Inspection

  Cindy had driven by the Bellamy house on her way back from the library, but she hadn’t had time to stop. Now as she drove up, she tried to see it the way a man like Don Lark would. He’d ignore the shaggy yard. The peeling paint and boarded-up windows and clumsy graffiti would mean nothing to him. Beyond that, the house actually looked pretty good. Nothing sagged. The trim was mostly intact. The roof was old but not a ruin. Don Lark had an eye that could see a good house beneath a faded exterior. A middle-aged divorced woman could get naked with a man like Don Lark.

  Don’t think like that, she told herself sternly.

  By the time she got out of her car, Don was already talking to a man on the front lawn.

  “Cindy Claybourne, this is Jay Placer. He’s an engineer who looks over houses for me.”

  Cindy smiled and shook Jay’s hand. He was a little younger than Don, and his soft hands and body showed that he had an indoor job and didn’t do anything in his free time that would toughen him up. That was fine—Cindy kept a clear distinction in her mind between men who were tough because they had real jobs and men who were tough because they had the money and the ego need to spend many hours doing expensive manly activities. Cindy’s father was a fireman who hung wallpaper on his free days. She respected a man like Don whose rough hands were earned by hard work. She also respected a man like Jay, whose soft body also came from hard work at a different kind of job. Respected him, but unfortunately was never attracted to his type. It was the tragedy underlying the Dilbert cartoons, which made it so she couldn’t really enjoy them. She always wanted to scream at Dilbert: Get out of the office and pour some concrete somewhere!

  Cindy led the way to the front door. The lockbox wasn’t too rusted—a surprise, considering how many years the thing had been out in Greensboro’s weather, which ranged from intense rain to oppressive humidity, but always involved corrosive amounts of moisture. And the key she found went right into the lockbox and opened it.

  “Well,” she said. “Success.”

  From the lockbox she took the key that hung there and then discovered that it didn’t fit the heavy Yale padlock that hung from a hasp on the front door. She was baffled.

  Don reached for the key. She handed it to him. He bent and inserted it into the deadbolt keyhole on the door itself. It fit perfectly and the lock clicked open. Unfortunately, that did nothing for the massive padlock.

  “I can’t believe they’d put the key to the door in the lockbox but not the key to that padlock.”

  “Seems obvious the padlock went on after people stopped using that lockbox,” said Jay. “Probably the owner
had it put up to keep vagrants and vandals out.”

  Don was already heading for his truck. He came back with a wicked-looking wrecking bar, whose bladed end he slipped under the edge of the hasp on the door. He rocked it back once and got one side up; he slid the blade farther under the hasp and levered it off in one move. The screws tore chunks of wood out of the door coming out.

  “So much for the locksmith,” said Cindy.

  “I’ll fix it whether I buy the place or not,” said Don. “Wasn’t a very secure lock anyway.”

  He put his hand on the door and pushed it open easily.

  “Is that the same technique you use with women, Don?” asked Jay. “Show ’em the wrecking bar and they open right up?”

  So Jay was the kind of man who felt the need to make macho dirty comments in front of women. Too bad for you, Dilbert, thought Cindy. Not that Cindy was actually that bothered by the joke, but in this era of political correctness a man who talked like that in front of women was either deliberately trying to give offense or so oblivious to the culture around him that he should be checked for brain activity.

  The entry hall was dingy, with a door on either side leading into the two ground-floor apartments. The whole back of the entry hall was filled with a wide stairway, forbiddingly high, that swept straight upward to the second story. The carpet on the stairway was worn to the underlying fabric in the middle.

  Jay turned around and around, sizing up the layout. He patted the wall on the right of the stairway, the north side. “With the door off-center the way it is, this has to be the load-bearing wall cause it runs close to the center of the house. The other one was added in to divide off the other apartment, probably back in the thirties, judging from the transom over the door.”

  “Original stairs?” asked Don.

  “Got to be,” said Jay. He jumped up onto the first step, the second step, the third step, landing hard each time. “No way would some cheapjack landlord put in a stairway this wide or this solid. The thing’s still like a rock! Somebody knew how to build back when this house went up.”