The Homewreckers(2)

“I had a feeling something wasn’t right,” Ronnie said, pointing to the trench. “I decided to get under the house and take a look.”

Hattie swallowed hard. “Just tell me, Ronnie. What’s the problem?”

“The problem is, you got a hunnerd percent crappy old cast-iron pipes under there. And you know how it floods on this flat street, right? And it all drains to the back of this lot. Water’s been collecting under there for no telling how long. Well, it’s all ruint. Rusted, busted, ruint.”

“Oh God,” Hattie moaned. She eyed her plumbing contractor. He was in his late fifties and built like a fire hydrant, with a huge belly that lapped over his belt. “Are you sure? I mean, you went all the way under the house?”

Ronnie shrugged. “I got as far as I could go. It don’t take a rocket scientist.”

Without a word, Hattie walked away. When she returned, she was zipping herself into her own baggy white coveralls. She pulled a bandana from her pocket and tied it around her hair, then fastened plastic goggles over her face.

“What?” Ronnie said, his face reddening with indignation. “You calling me a liar? Hattie Kavanaugh, I been doing business with your father-in-law since before you were born.…”

“Calm down, Ronnie,” Hattie snapped. “I had this house inspected before we made an offer on it. Nobody said anything about bad pipes. I’m not calling you a liar, but I need to see it with my own eyes. Tug would tell you the same thing if he were here.”

“See for yourself then.” He turned and stalked off in the direction of his truck, muttering as he went. “Goddamn know-it-all girls.”

Cass bent down and peered at the trench beneath the foundation, at the pool of mud and brick rubble, then looked back at her friend. “For real? You’re crawling down into that swamp?”

“You wanna go instead?”

“Who, me? Oh hell, no.” Cass shuddered. “I don’t do mud.”

Hattie went over to a tarp-covered stack of lumber, selected a pair of two-by-fours, and slung them over her shoulders. She shoved the boards under the house, considered, then went back for another pair, laying them beside the first two boards.

Cass handed Hattie her flashlight.

“Pray for me,” Hattie said, flattening herself on the boards. “I’m going in.”



* * *



Mo Lopez pedaled slowly along in the bike lane. The neighborhood he was passing through was clearly in transition. On one side of the street, brick or wood-frame Victorian-era homes boasted signs of recent restoration, with sparkling new paint jobs and manicured landscapes. There were smaller homes, too, modest Craftsman cottages with bikes chained to wrought-iron fences, porches bristling with fern baskets and potted plants and weedy yards. As he pedaled, an idea began to form in his head.

Savannah, he reflected, was a pleasant surprise. He’d accepted the invitation to speak to television and film students at the Savannah College of Art and Design strictly as a favor to Rebecca Sanzone, the assistant head of programming at the network. One of her former classmates now worked in the SCAD admissions office. Becca, of course, had been much too busy to make the trip herself, and had forwarded the invite to Mo.

“You should go,” she’d urged. “Why sit around town and wait for these network idiots to make up their minds?”

The idiots were Rebecca’s immediate bosses at the Home Place Television Network. The former president of programming had been abruptly fired two months earlier, and the new guy, Tony Antinori, was said to be taking a long, hard look at the HPTV lineup.

Mo was understandably anxious. Killer Garage’s first season was considered a success for a new show, but this second season, viewers weren’t quite as fascinated with watching motorheads spend obscene amounts of money building garages equipped with everything from video-gaming consoles to elevators to full kitchens. The numbers, Rebecca had pointed out, weren’t awful, but they weren’t awfully good either.

He needed a new idea, and he needed it fast. His thoughts drifted back to what Tasha, the SCAD administrator, had told him; that Savannah had the distinction of being the largest intact contiguous trove of original nineteenth-century architecture in the country. This town was a beehive of restoration and renovation activity.

His mind worked as furiously as his legs. On a street called Tattnall, he spied a trio of vehicles parked in front of an imposing three-story Queen Anne Victorian. As he got closer, he saw two pickup trucks that had KAVANAUGH & SON, GENERAL CONTRACTING stenciled on the door.

Mo paused at the curb and looked up at the house. A full-scale restoration was obviously under way. Scaffolding had been erected on the east side of the house, where some of the old wooden siding had been replaced, and other sections had been scraped down in preparation for paint. Piles of lumber were stacked around the yard, and pallets of roofing shingles had been unloaded on the porch.

The roof and the porch overhang were both covered with blue tarps. The eaves and porch of the house dripped with elaborate wooden gingerbread trim.

He leaned the bike against a sawhorse and climbed a set of temporary wooden steps leading to the porch. The front door, a period-perfect confection of hand-carved detailing inset with a leaded-glass window, was ajar.

Mo paused in front of the door, edging it open with the toe of his shoe. “Hello?”