House of Strangers

Tante Helaine and Giselle would no doubt have turned up their noses at the food. But after years of grabbing godawful airline meals in flight and even worse in airports, Paul was happy with the menu at the café. These people served actual green vegetables, not simply fried potatoes.

“Wheat toast.” His waitress had returned.

“I think we’re going to be neighbors,” he said.

Instantly her face broke into a smile that lit her hazel eyes. “Wondered if you was him. Hey.”

As he was about to get to his feet, she flipped her hand at him. “We don’t stand on ceremony. I’m Bernice. Nice to meet you. Thought you was getting together with the chief this morning.”

“The chief? Not that I’m aware of.”

She laughed. “Buddy Jenkins, chief of police. He’s Jenkins Renovation and Restoration.”

“Oh, then yes, I am meeting him.” He checked his watch. “In about ten minutes.”

“You eat up. Buddy’s always on time unless there’s a law problem he has to handle. We mostly only get speeders out on the highway and drunk drivers.” She looked at him hard. “We have some drug problems in the county, but we sure as shootin’ don’t want any more.”

He smiled. “I’m sure you don’t. Thank you.”

As he bent to read his newspaper, he realized that all conversation had ceased. The farmers at the other table had swiveled in their chairs so that they could watch him. The moment he smiled at them, however, they turned away, hunched over and began to speak softly.

As a stranger moving to a small town, he’d expected to be checked out, but this was ridiculous.

He ate his breakfast, paid his bill, tipped the waitress generously, nodded to the farmers and left.

In Manhattan, piles of dirty snow still lined the streets. Here fifty miles east of the Mississippi River, the March wind was chill, but it smelled of fresh grass and newly turned earth. He’d been warned that west Tennessee summers were brutal, but he was ready to endure almost anything for this gentle early spring. Besides, he planned to install central air-conditioning in his new house.

At some point between the end of the Civil War and prohibition, Rossiter must have been prosperous. The small plaque that leaned against his front steps said that the Delaney house had been built in 1890. A dozen similar mansions along Main Street looked as though they dated from the early 1900s.

The railroad still ran along the far side of the open square that separated the town from the Wolf River bottoms on the north side, but the trains no longer even slowed to acknowledge the existence of the town.

Once there must have been a station. Probably it had stood where the small park with the shiny, ornate Victorian bandstand now perched across the parking lot from the café.

The café stood on one corner of what remained of the town square. About the time the Delaneys decided to build a fine house and move into town from their plantations, the area must have been a crush of mule-drawn wagons piled high with bales of cotton. Probably the café hadn’t existed then. He doubted the high-and-mighty Delaneys would have chosen to build their mansion next door to a café.

The pickup trucks and stock trailers parked haphazardly in the area now were not nearly as romantic.

Bank, mom-and-pop grocery, and dingy pool hall sat on the south side across the street from the café. Three handsomely restored row houses formed the west side. The lower floor of the first held his real-estate agent’s office and the second a florist shop. On the front porch of the third building, a twelve-foot black wooden grizzly bear advertised something, but Paul couldn’t begin to guess what.

Those few small stores constituted the entire business district of Rossiter. The nearest shopping mall was more than twenty miles away, on the road to Memphis.

Paul checked his watch and sauntered along the sidewalk toward his house. His house. He still couldn’t believe he’d done such an insane thing. He didn’t generally operate on impulse.

The sidewalk was dangerously buckled and broken by the roots of several giant oaks and magnolias in his front yard. Didn’t the city council, or whatever passed for government in this village, pay attention to things like dangerous walkways? Perhaps nobody in Rossiter actually walked.

When he reached the snaggle-toothed brick path that led up to his front porch, he simply stood and gloated. His house was younger, smaller and less splendid than Tara, but it must have been imposing in its day.

Unfortunately, at the moment it looked like an aging whore trying to cadge money for her next drink.

“I own your house, Daddy, you bastard,” Paul said louder than he’d planned.

Behind him he heard tires squeal. A squad car with the Rossiter seal slid to a stop by the curb. A man climbed out of the driver’s seat.

Paul had met Buddy Jenkins only once before, just after his bid to buy the house had been accepted. At the meeting in his real-estate agent’s office, Buddy had worn jeans and a University of Tennessee sweatshirt. They’d spoken on the telephone a number of times while Paul was winding up his affairs in New Jersey and storing his few possessions, but Buddy had never mentioned he was the chief of police.

In a town like this, being chief of police probably wasn’t a demanding job. No wonder he’d started his renovation company.

At first Paul had been reluctant to give the restoration contract to a local construction firm. How could anybody working out of a town the size of Rossiter be any good?

But when he’d inquired about renovation and restoration experts in the Memphis and west-Tennessee area, Buddy Jenkins’s name had come up repeatedly at the top of the list. After Paul checked out the mansions, theaters, government state houses and private homes that Jenkins had restored, he’d decided to hire the man.

“Don’t know if you can get him,” Mrs. Hoddle, his real-estate agent, had said. “He’s usually booked up pretty far in advance. But because the house is in Rossiter, you may be able to convince him to do the job for you.”

Buddy’s preliminary estimates on doing the job had taken Paul’s breath away until he found out what his New York friends were paying to renovate their brownstones.

Paul wanted the job done right. Now that he had committed to this crazy charade, this crazy crusade, being able to resell the house for a profit would make his victory even sweeter.

“Hey, Mr. Bouvet,” Buddy Jenkins said as he came forward and stuck out his hand. In uniform the man looked even larger. His starched shirt was perfectly pressed and tailored to his barrel chest and broad shoulders. His boots were spit-shined. What little hair he had left was cut in a gray fringe that barely showed against his tanned skin.

Jenkins probably carried 250 pounds or more on his six-three frame. God help the drunk driver who gave this man any lip. At six feet even and 175 pounds, Paul felt almost small by comparison.

“Ready for the bad news?” Jenkins said happily.

“Not really, but there’s no sense in putting it off.”

“First the good news. In three months or so this old place can look better than it’s looked since the day the Delaneys first moved in.”

“Three months?”

“Maybe five.”

“And the bad news?”

“Come on, I’ll walk you through.” Buddy reached into his pocket and drew out a key.

“If you don’t mind, Buddy, I’d like to use my key.”

“Sure.” Buddy grinned. “First time you’ve used it?”

“Since I had the new locks installed.” The front door was original, complete with an etched-glass oval in the center. Although the original brass lock remained, the shiny new Yale lock was the one that worked. Paul thought he’d feel a surge of triumph when he stepped into the house again. He felt nothing.

“Let’s start in the basement,” Buddy said. “We’ve got a temporary permit for the electricity, so we can see while we replace the wiring.”

“All of it?”

“Every whipstitch,” Buddy said. “Phone lines, too.” The old oak floors echoed their footsteps. “Watch your head.”

Over the next hour Paul listened to Buddy’s litany of disaster. Maybe the house hadn’t been such a bargain, after all.