Big Sky Seduction

Pound, pound, pound.

Her father was home. She knew he was. He’d become nocturnal, staying ensconced in his den of trash by day, only emerging at night to complete his weekly circuit of Dumpsters, searching for perfectly good things that other people threw away.

“Dad!” she shouted, hating that she was creating a scene.

A bolt slid, then another, then a series of chain locks unlatched and the door opened a crack. Her father’s watery blue eyes stared, large behind his glasses. “Oh, Gloria-Rose. It’s you. What are you doing here?”

Such a good question. Swallowing down the bile that rose in her narrowed throat, she held up the grocery bag. “Meals on Wheels,” she said with a fake smile.

Her father’s smile was genuine and his watery eyes teared up in delight as if she didn’t do this every single month. The sight broke Gloria’s heart.

“You’re such a sweetheart. Come in. Come in.” He opened the door wide and Gloria was greeted by a wall of stuff. Mostly newspapers, fliers and old books, piled from floor to ceiling, creating a wall of paper goods on either side. Her father lived in a massive fire trap. A coffin of stuff.

“Oh, Dad.” How the hell did he live this way?

“You’ll have to go in first so I can lock the door.”

Gloria shook her head. She couldn’t do it, the piles were claustrophobic. “Can we visit outside today, Dad? I’m not feeling so good.”

He gnawed on his lip, rubbed his face and adjusted his glasses, all nervous behaviors that had worsened over the years. Before he had a chance to answer, a siren came from down the street, growing closer. Her father’s already pale face went ashen. “Get inside, Glo. Now.”

She shook her head and held her dad’s hand, uncertain about what was going on, but having a sense that she needed to be here for this.

The cruiser stopped outside the gate followed by a city truck with a logo for Health and Public Safety on the door.

“Those bastards,” her father muttered beneath his breath. “Why can’t they just leave me alone?”

Two uniformed officers emerged from the cruiser. There was no mistaking the revulsion on their faces as they took in the house and yard. “Mr. Andrew Hurst?” the bigger of the two officers asked as he tried to make his way to the door, having to walk sideways in places.

“Who wants to know?”

Gloria squeezed her father’s hand. Her vision going spotty as the anxiety and panic took over.

“Cook County Sheriff’s Department. You’re under arrest.”

* * *

GLORIA SAT AT her desk, staring blankly at the computer screen. She should just go home and sleep except she couldn’t, her father was there, “working,” which meant he was calling lawyers and writing angry letters to the justice department about his civil rights. If he wasn’t doing that he was likely yelling over the phone at some poor city clerk about the injustice he was facing.

The injustice he was facing? How about the injustice she was facing? Her whole life savings, all seventy thousand, had gone to pay his fines: five years’ worth of fines for public nuisance. If he hadn’t been able to pay, he would have been facing jail time.

So, bye-bye nest egg.

Yet, there was a part of her that was glad because not only had Public Health and Safety condemned the yard, they’d scheduled the house for inspection to determine whether it should be condemned, too. Which it would. The whole place was sagging.

But that meant her father would never be able to go home.

Faith came in, carrying a steaming cup of tea. She set it down beside Gloria’s hand and then plopped herself into the chair on the other side of the desk. Gloria had confided some of what was going on. She’d finally had to tell someone.

“So, now what? We go over and enact a little Black Sect Tantric Buddhist Feng Shui on the place?”

There it was. Faith’s daily recitation of the full, tongue twister of a name of the brand of feng shui she studied. She smiled out of habit. “I wish it were that simple.”

“How bad can it be?”

“A thousand times worse than you can possibly imagine.”

“I bet it’s not that bad.”

Gloria scrolled through the photos on her phone, found some of the best—or worst—of her dad’s yard and turned the phone around so Faith could see.

“Holy shit,” Faith said, her voice low with awe. She leaned across the desk and took a sip of tea from the mug she’d given Gloria. “So, what are you going to do?”

“I have no idea.” She shook her head. “I love my dad. I want to help. But this is a sickness and he needs professional help. I can’t pay for that sort of help and his teacher’s pension sure isn’t enough, either.”

“Hmm.” Drumming her fingers on the desk, Faith considered her. “Speaking of money, did you see the contract that came in this morning?”

“Which one?”

Coming around to Gloria’s side of the desk, Faith slid the keyboard closer and tapped on the keys, opening up the office email and clicking on one that had come in early that morning. The subject line read, Montana Estate Sale, Stager Required.

Gloria read through the email from a real estate agent in a place called Half Moon Creek, Montana. A large ranch was going on the market and needed an experienced stager to prepare it for sale. The email intimated that the client was hoping to attract a certain type of buyer and had been given Gloria’s name as a recommendation.

“What the hell?” Gloria asked, clicking on the attached contract.

“You know someone in Montana?” Faith asked.

“Nope.”

“So where do you think they got your name?”

“I have no idea.” She reread the email. “And what do you think they mean by, ‘a certain type of buyer’? it sounds like code for something.”

“I was just reading an article about all the celebrities who are buying up ranches in Montana.”

“Like who?”

“Letterman, Dennis Quaid, Michael Keaton, Harrison Ford...”

Gloria swiveled her head toward Faith in surprise.

“What?” Faith smiled sheepishly. “So I follow celebrities? They’ve got nice places and people with nice places like to hire people like us.” She pointed between the two of them.

“I bet it was one of the guys from the fund-raiser I threw for Daisy’s bakery last year,” Gloria said, still stuck on the question of who would have recommended her for a celebrity-style job in Montana.

“That could be it.” Faith moved closer, reading the screen over Gloria’s shoulder. “But you’re not even at the best part yet. Go to the last page.”

Scrolling to the final page of the contract, Gloria read through the terms of payment. “It says 2.5 percent of the sale,” she murmured. “Are you kidding me? No flat rate?”