The Family Plot Read online

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  This one is for everybody who’s ever loved an old house.

  ACKNOWLEDGMENTS

  In addition to the usual suspects (spouse, agent, editor, etc.) who have seen their names in these paragraphs a dozen or more times … I want to thank the folks from Black Dog Salvage in Roanoke, Virginia. I was sitting around with a glass of wine one night, watching a rerun of Salvage Dawgs all alone while my husband was out of town, and I happened to catch the “Check out our website/Drop us a line” note at the end of the episode.

  I’d had just enough to drink to take them up on it.

  So here’s to Salvage Dawgs, a show that taught me just enough about the business to be dangerous; and in particular, here’s to general manager Grant Holmes—who was kind enough to let me talk his ear off on the phone one fine day.

  I know I didn’t get all my facts perfectly correct, but in my defense (1) Most of what I know about old houses comes from the restoration angle, and (2) Grant really did do his best to straighten me out, I promise, but sometimes the narrative convenience of monsters had to prevail. So again, my thanks for all the help, and my apologies for all the things I screwed up. One of these days, I’ll make it out to Roanoke with a U-Haul and shop my face off, I promise.

  She buried them under the marble stone,

  Then she turned and went on home.

  —From the ballad “The Cruel Mother”

  (one of many variants)

  1

  “YEAH, SEND HER on back. She has an appointment.”

  Chuck Dutton set aside the walkie-talkie and made a token effort to tidy his desk, in case Augusta Evelyn Sophia Withrow expected to speak with a goddamn professional. The owner and manager of Music City Salvage was every inch a goddamn professional, but he couldn’t prove it by his office, which was littered with rusting light fixtures, crumbling bricks and broken statuary, old books covered in mildew, stray tools that should’ve been packed away, and a thousand assorted items that he was absolutely going to restore to life or toss one of these days when he got the time. His office was the company lint trap, and it was no one’s fault but his own.

  He successfully rearranged a stack of old license plates and stuffed all his pens into an I LOVE MY MASTIFF mug, just in time for his visitor to appear. She arrived in a faint cloud of expensive perfume: a tall, thin lady of a certain age and a certain pedigree. Her hair was silver and her dress was blue linen, something with a fancy label at the neck, unless Chuck missed his guess. Her handbag was large, square, and black—more of an attaché case than a purse.

  She stood in the doorway, assessing the mess; then she bobbed her head, shrugged, and stepped over a nested stack of vintage oil cans that Chuck kept meaning to relocate.

  Chuck darted out from behind his desk, hand extended for a greeting shake. “Kindly ignore the clutter, ma’am—like myself, this office is a work in progress. I’m Charles Dutton. We spoke on the phone, before you met with James.”

  “Yes, of course. It’s a pleasure.” She accepted his handshake, and, without giving him a chance to offer her a seat, she drew up the nearest chair—a Naugahyde number that had once sat in a mid-century dentist’s lobby. “Thank you for seeing me. I’m sure you’re very busy.”

  Chuck retreated to his original position, sat down, and leaned forward on his elbows. “Anytime, anytime,” he said cheerily. “Projects like yours are what keep us busy.”

  “Good. Because one way or another, that old house is coming down. It can’t be saved, or at least, I don’t plan to save it. But there’s plenty on the property worth keeping—as James saw firsthand last week.”

  “Yeah, he couldn’t shut up about it. But this was your family home, wasn’t it?” He already knew the answer. He’d looked it up online.

  “That’s correct. My great-grandfather built the main house in 1882. He gave it to my grandparents as a wedding present.”

  “And none of the other Withrows are interested in preserving it?”

  “There are no other Withrows,” she informed him. “I’m the last of them, and I don’t want it. On the fifteenth of this month, the house will be demolished. By the first of November, all other remaining structures will be razed, and the property will be donated to the battlefield park. The paperwork is already filed.”

  “Still, it seems like a shame.”

  “Spoken like a man who never lived there,” Ms. Withrow said, not quite under her breath. Then, more directly, “You mustn’t cry for the Withrow house, Mr. Dutton. It’s a miserable, drafty, oppressive old place with nothing but architectural details to recommend it. James made notes and took photos, but I have a few more, left over from the assessment when I inherited it last spring. If you’d care to take a look at them.”

  “I’d love to. He said you two talked numbers. I trust his judgment, but my finance guy balked when he heard forty grand, so I’m happy to see more of the details. I hear you’ve got imported marble fireplace inlays, stained glass, wainscoting…”

  In fact, Barry the Finance Guy had not balked; he’d put his foot down with a hard-ass no. The company was owed a small fortune in outstanding invoices, as least two of which were headed for court. Music City Salvage barely had enough cash on hand to keep the lights running and cover payroll—and if a windfall didn’t come along soon, they’d have to pick between the two of them. There was absolutely no stray money for sweetheart deals on old estates.

  Period. End of story.

  Still, when Augusta Withrow unfastened her bag to withdraw a large folder, Chuck eagerly accepted it. She said, “As for the fireplaces, only two have Carrera inlays. The other five surrounds are tile, but all seven mantels are rosewood, and, as you can see, the grand staircase is chestnut.”

  “Mm … chestnut…” He opened the folder and ran his finger over the top photo. It showed a staircase that was very grand indeed, with a ninety-degree bend and a platform, plus sweeping rails that terminated in graceful coils. He positively leered. These pictures were a hell of a lot better than the ones James had snapped on his phone.

  “I’m told that American chestnut is extinct now.”

  “It’s been that way since the thirties,” he agreed. “It’s strong as oak at half the weight, and pretty as can be. Woodworkers love that stuff. It’s worth … well. It’s very desirable, to the right kind of craftsman. I don’t often see it in stairs, but I’ll take it wherever I can get it.”

  “Then I should mention the barn, too. It’s falling down, but I’m fairly certain it’s made from the same wood.”

  “Mm.” Chuck’s eyes were full of rust lust and dollar signs. He kept them fixed upon the photos so Ms. Withrow couldn’t see the greed and raise her asking price even furthe
r out of reach.

  After the staircase, he found a shot of a large fireplace. It had a double-wide front, with a pair of ladies on either side—their poses mirroring one another in white and gray marble. He spied a few thin cracks, but nothing unexpected. All in all, the condition was better than good. He looked up. “James said something about a carriage house. Is that chestnut, too?”

  “Only stone, I’m afraid. It has the original copper roof, but it’s all gone green now. You know how it is—the weather gets to everything, eventually.”

  He glanced up in surprise. “No one’s stripped it? No one sold it for scrap?”

  “I don’t know what kind of neighborhood you think we’re talking about, Mr. Dutton, but…”

  “No, no. I didn’t mean it like that.” He shook his head and returned his attention to the folder. “I’ve been to Lookout Mountain before. I know it’s a nice place. I wasn’t trying to imply it was all et-up with meth heads, or anything like that. It’s just something that happens. Over the years the metal goes manky, so people swap it out for cedar or asphalt shingles.”

  She didn’t reply for long enough that he wondered what her silence meant.

  Finally, she said, “You won’t find any meth heads, no. But the house is just barely on the mountain proper. It’s down toward the base, and some of the nearby neighborhoods are not as savory today as they were a hundred years ago.”

  “At the foot … you mean down by the Incline station?”

  “At the edge of Saint Elmo—that’s right.”

  Chuck frowned. “I know that place; it’s a historic district. Do you have the city’s permission to bulldoze the property?”

  “It’s near Saint Elmo, not in it. I don’t need the historic office’s permission, and I assure you, all the appropriate legal steps have been taken. Now, did I mention that the floors are heart of pine, over an inch thick? Except in the kitchen, where they were replaced back in the sixties. My uncle was a very thorough man, with an unfortunate fondness for linoleum.”

  “A full inch of pine? Lady, you’re speaking my language,” he said, and immediately felt silly for it.

  She grinned, unperturbed by his informality, and pleased to have redirected his attention. “Then you’ll love this part, too: No one’s been inside the barn or carriage house since before I was born. My grandfather boarded both of them up, and declared them off-limits. God only knows what you’ll find once you get the doors open.”

  Chuck didn’t dare speculate about her age—not out loud—so he asked questions instead. “Not even a groundskeeper’s been inside? No maintenance people? Burglars?”

  “I won’t vouch for the delinquent youths of outer Chattanooga, but barring some unknown vandalism … no. The house is isolated, and the property can be tricky to reach. You might need to throw down a gravel drive for heavy equipment or trailers. I assume you’ll want to take the colonnades? The portico?”

  He sorted through more promising photos.

  Four columns held up the side porch … he wondered if they were wood, or carved limestone. They weren’t pre-war, but if they were stone, they were worth thousands. If they were only wood, they were still worth thousands, but not as many. He said, “I want to take it all.”

  “Then you’ll need a forklift, at least.”

  “Good thing I’ve got one. Now, in these pictures, the house is still furnished. I assume all that’s been cleared out by now?”

  “Some of it. Some remains, but I won’t kid you about its value. What’s left is too cheap or too broken to pique the appraisers’ interest. You can have it, if you like. I know your representative said you preferred to work piecemeal on projects like this, but my offer is all-inclusive. I don’t have the time or energy to go through the place and put a price tag on every damn thing, if you’ll pardon me for saying so. Anything, anywhere, on the four acres that make up the estate is yours for a check and a signature.”

  Yeah, but she wanted that check made out for forty thousand dollars.

  It was the most Chuck had ever paid out for a salvage opportunity, by a long shot—and he was still waiting for Nashville Erections to come collect (and pay for) a haul they’d reserved three months ago. It probably served him right for tying up twenty grand in a company named for somebody’s dick, but he knew they were good for it. Eventually. And T&H Construction still owed him for another thirteen grand’s worth of room dividers, bay windows, and a turn-of-the-century door with sidelights and surrounds. Chuck had graciously let them take that batch on credit and a handshake, so it wasn’t even on the floor anymore.

  Because sometimes, Chuck was an idiot.

  All right then, fine. Sometimes, Chuck was an idiot. But this was the haul of a lifetime, and it could skyrocket the company back into the black within a couple of months.

  Or it could be the nail in its coffin in a couple of weeks.

  But what a nail.

  Cash was low—perilously low—but the stock at Music City Salvage was stagnant. Pickers hadn’t brought in anything interesting in months, and a haul like the Withrow estate would be something worth advertising … a landmark Southern estate, relatively untouched for generations. He could take out a full page in the paper. They’d have customers out the door, rain or shine; they’d come from hundreds of miles around. It’d happened before, but not lately.

  The pictures sprawled across his desk, glossy and bright.

  Ms. Withrow’s offer wasn’t too good to be true, but it felt too good to be true, and he couldn’t put his finger on why. He was dying to whip out his checkbook and shout, “Shut up and take my money!” But something held him back … something besides the fact that he didn’t actually have enough dough sitting in the corporate account right that moment. In order to sufficiently fill ’er up, he’d have to take money against a credit card. Or two. Or all of them.

  It’d be the biggest gamble of his life.

  He looked up from the photos, at the woman who sat with her legs crossed just below the knee. She’d scarcely moved since she sat down. She did not look tense, or sinister, or deceitful. She looked like a fancy old lady with good taste who had one last piece of business to take care of before she retired to Florida or wherever fancy old ladies go when they’re finished with Tennessee.

  “Do you have any questions?” she gently prompted.

  He closed the folder and rested his hands on top of it. “Just one, I guess. Why me? I know at least two salvage crews in Chattanooga who’d be thrilled by a haul this size. Why come all the way out to Nashville?”

  “It’s only a couple of hours’ drive, Mr. Dutton—it’s not the Oregon Trail. But since you asked, I visited them both first. Out of pure convenience, let me be clear—I don’t mean to imply you’re third string, or anything of the sort,” she said smoothly, that highbred accent purring. “Scenic Salvage is closing this year; the owner is retiring, and she declined to pursue my offer. As for Antique Excavations … well. Let’s be honest. They don’t have the supplies or the manpower for this job. They were, at least, direct enough to confess it.”

  “Judy Hanks told you no?”

  “She’s the one who suggested I try you. I understand you know one another.”

  They did, but it wasn’t entirely friendly. He didn’t really like her, and as far as he knew, the feeling was mutual. “Sure. I know her.”

  “She said you were an ass, but you ran a competent ship—and you’d have the resources to take care of an estate this size.”

  Ah. That was more like it. “Not a good ship?”

  Augusta Withrow withdrew another folder from her bag. “You should settle for ‘competent.’ It’s high praise, coming from her. High enough that I’ve already arranged the paperwork, based on the details James and I discussed—and I’ve brought it with me. None of this faxing or e-mailing nonsense. I prefer real ink to dry on real paper. I find it reassuring. So, Mr. Dutton?”

  “Ms. Withrow,” he stalled.

  “Going once, going twice—forty thousand dollars, and
you can pick over the remains of my family estate. Do we have a deal?”

  He swallowed. He felt the fat stack of pictures beneath his hands. Forty thousand dollars was a lot of money, but the Withrow house was a gold mine. Maybe even a platinum mine, once he got that carriage house open. There was literally no telling what might be inside, if it’d been closed up for what … seventy years? Eighty?

  But, but, but.

  But the company budget was so tight, it squeaked. But the stock was getting stale. But Barry would kill him, if for no other reason than if it didn’t work … he’d probably be out of a job. For that matter, they’d all be out of a job. The business would have to run on fumes until the Withrow estate started to sell. Paychecks might bounce. Lights might dim. Doors might close for good.

  But, hell, in another year or two they might close anyway. A family business was a fragile thing, and Music City Salvage was on shaky legs.

  But chestnut. But marble. But stained glass and built-ins and heart of pine. But the big locked box of the carriage house, and everything that might be waiting inside. The magical crapshoot of rust lust tugged at him harder than fear, harder than Barry would. Harder than caution, and harder than common sense, perhaps.

  But what an opportunity. What a Hail Mary pass.

  He stood up and reached for his coffee mug full of pens. While he rifled around for one that definitely worked, he declared, “Ms. Withrow, we’ve got a deal.”

  “Excellent! Shall we summon your finance fellow, for approval?”

  “Nah. He works for me—not the other way around.” Until the first paycheck bounced.

  She rose to her feet, papers in hand. “You are the boss, after all.”

  “Damn right, I’m the boss.” He took her papers and signed where indicated. He produced a checkbook, started writing, then postdated the check by several days. “I’ll need to juggle some funds,” he explained. “I hope that’s all right.”