Maggie Moves On(28)
“What did you do at the museum?” she asked, trying to steer to a safer topic.
“Gave tours. Cataloged Mr. Campbell’s papers. Decorated for the holidays. Not that you care. You’d probably just as soon dump all of those ornaments in the trash.”
Maggie rubbed at the spot between her eyebrows. “If I promise not to throw out anything of reasonable significance, maybe you could help catalog some of the family possessions?”
“So you can do what? Sell it on that Antiques Roadshow? I won’t be a party to the gutting of the Campbell family’s estate.”
“I’d like to keep as much of the finds as possible with the house,” she said, exasperated.
He leaned in, mustache twitching with suspicion. “What’s your game, girlie?”
“Right now it’s not having an aneurysm. How am I doing? Are my pupils the same size?”
“My great-uncle died of an aneurysm. You shouldn’t joke about that kind of thing. He was walking from the barn to the house and then BAM!” Wallace slapped the table with his hand. “Dead as a doornail. Left a wife and seven hungry children. My great-aunt worked from dawn to dusk to keep the farm going and all those mouths fed.”
Maggie’s head was starting to throb dully, and she hoped it wasn’t the ghost of Wallace’s great-uncle. “I’m very sorry for your loss,” she said.
“My loss? I didn’t even know the man,” he barked.
She cleared her throat. “Uh. Okay. Well, you clearly have a great respect for history,” she began.
“Darn right I do. If we don’t honor our history, we’re nothing but a bunch of heathens running around not understanding consequences.”
Consequenceless heathens. That was a new one.
“If I promise to honor the history of the Campbell house, will you be willing to share some of the stories about the house and the Campbell family?” she asked wearily.
His glare was shrewd. “Maybe. Dunno. I’ll think about it.”
She tore off a corner of a piece of drafting paper, wrote down a number, and handed it to him. “This is my partner Dean’s number. If you decide you’re willing to help out, give him a call.”
Take that, Chicken Dean.
“Probably won’t,” Wallace huffed, heaving himself out of his chair. His gaze roamed the room. “But I might.”
Maggie stood, too.
“I’m takin’ this with me,” he said, grabbing his lemonade and motoring toward the front door.
“Thanks for dropping by,” she called after him.
Windows95Luvr: Okay. Apparently Idris Elba is married. Who is single and worthy of our Maggie?
ShakespeareWuzHere: Just found out that my 55-year-old dad has seen every episode of Building Dreams! We’re planning a binge rewatch when I come home from college for the summer! #FamilyForMaggie
10
“Who’s a good boy?” Maggie crooned to the chubby dog wagging his entire back end at her. “This is Kevin,” she said for the benefit of the camera she was shooting with. “He’s with the landscaping crew, and we didn’t want him to feel left out, so we got him a little present.”
She held up the green, squeaky hammer toy she’d picked up at Tanner’s General Store.
“Sit. Good boy. Here you go.” She handed over the toy, and he took it with a gentle mouth, his whole body quivering. “Now, go fix something,” she said.
With a series of gleeful hammer squeaks, Kevin romped out of her office and barreled down the hall.
Maggie turned off the camera and eyed the giant whiteboard she’d set up in her makeshift office, mentally juggling timelines. Outside, the roofers were making progress. She didn’t envy them clambering over steep pitches three stories up. Silas’s crew had built a mountain of brush in the front yard and were in the process of laying out new and improved planting beds around the house.
Inside there was more chaos. Usually it was tricky having the electrical work and plumbing done at the same time, with people climbing all over each other in kitchens and bathrooms, but given the scope of the work and the good-natured relationship between both crews, the trades were juggling things nicely.
While Jim and company opened and closed walls and ceilings, the electricians started their rewiring, and Albert, the plumber, and his apprentice, Judy—his daughter and another of the plant closing’s victims—roughed in the plumbing for the new powder room in the former fishing magazine room and the full bath behind the kitchen.
She needed to make tile decisions for the kitchen and downstairs bathrooms by end of day to get the materials ordered. The fixtures upstairs could wait a bit, which was good, since she was still trying to figure out the best place for a freestanding tub in the master bathroom.
Making a note to revisit the idea of stealing space from the bedroom behind the master, she moved on to the production schedule. She would film some stuff on the fly today, maybe creepy basement footage. As much as her subscribers loved a kitchen reveal, they also seemed to enjoy freaking out over dank, eerie spaces. The episode when Dean walked backward into a cobweb in a garage and started throwing punches at nothing was one of their most popular. It entertained her to no end and pissed Dean off.
She added lighting? to the whiteboard, grabbed her fat stack of tile samples, and headed into the kitchen.