Mid-Century Monster Read online

  “Well…” Marzie flopped down in the chair opposite Cin’s desk. “I don’t know if I want to look or not. Seriously, Jerry did a number on me. I might be in therapy for years. Losing a guy you thought was yours forever can hit hard.”

  Cin nodded as she glanced over the spam in her inbox. “But I don’t think that’s what you wanted to talk about.”

  “Yeah, you’re right.” Marzie sighed. “I got to thinking about it the other day, and even as good as the real estate market is right now, I think I need to learn a couple more things to expand my skill set. We don’t know when there might be another bubble that will take all of us out, or worse.”

  “I can see that.” Cin closed her email. “Chad and I have talked about things we could do if another bubble came up, but the rental market is a bit different from the sales end of things.”

  “Yeah, you’ll always have people looking for a roof over their heads, unless things get so bad people can’t afford even that.” Marzie steepled her fingers and leaned forward to rest her elbows on her knees.

  “I’m hoping that doesn’t happen.” Cin leaned back into her chair.

  “But…well, I was wondering if I might be able to…I don’t know…apprentice under you guys and learn how to flip houses. I mean, I don’t need to know about the buying and selling part, but the reno angle is foreign to me.”

  A couple of years earlier, it had been pretty odd to Cin too. They hadn’t really kicked things into gear until they found RJ, or was it him finding them? She wasn’t sure. “And you’d like to start with that Mid-Century house we looked at today?”

  Marzie nodded. “If that’s okay.”

  “You realize Chad and I won’t even have time to discuss buying the place for a couple of days.” Cin was fairly sure they were going to go for it, if they could get the cost down far enough, but she wasn’t going to tell Marzie that.

  “I do. And I know you’ll have to talk this over with both Chad and RJ, but since we’re friends, I figured I’d start by asking you.”

  “I can appreciate that.” Cin pursed her lips and nodded slowly. She hadn’t picked up anything weird at the house, so she wasn’t totally worried about Marzie finding out her family’s secrets. “I’ll talk to Chad and RJ and see what they have to say. Odds are they’ll be happy to have the help. I can show you how things like design work, and they can show you all the harder, more physical angles of things. Shouldn’t be a huge deal, but you’ll need to know what to look for and what to handle yourself. Are you going to try to find your own RJ?”

  Marzie shrugged. “Unless I can steal yours.”

  Cin laughed. “Not a chance.” While they waited, Cin went ahead and started explaining everything they looked for in a flip house. She didn’t think Chad and RJ would have an issue teaching Marzie the ropes, but she wasn’t going to give her the go-ahead without their approval.

  3

  A cheerful bell rang as Cin walked into Marzie’s office. She smiled. The gentle sound felt almost magical as it chased negativity out of the little space.

  “Be there in a minute,” Marzie called from somewhere deeper in the office.

  “No rush,” Cin replied a little louder than normal to make sure Marzie heard her. “It’s just me.”

  After a minute, Marzie rushed down the hallway that led to the storage room and bathroom. “I hoped it was you, Cin.”

  “You said the final approval came in so we can get the paperwork finished and start work.” With Chad and RJ out handling a broken water pipe in one of their new properties in Salida, she’d been looking for a reason to get out of the office for a little while but not feel like she was skipping out on the ever-growing pile of paperwork she needed to get through.

  “Yeah, I was a little surprised they went for the offer, since it was nearly half of what they were asking for, but I guess the estate just wants to be free of the place.” Marzie pointed toward her little office space. “That makes me wish I’d tried to buy it myself and then talk you into loaning me Chad and RJ.”

  Chuckling, Cin shook her head. “Not going to happen. You can’t steal my guys, but they’re both ready to teach you the ropes for reno projects.”

  “Gotta start somewhere.” Marzie pulled out a stack of papers. “Let’s go over all this so we can get the title transferred over to you. Oh, and while doing the title search, stumbled onto something interesting.”

  “Interesting?” Cin wasn’t sure she was ready for another house that had such a descriptor attached to it. “How so?”

  Marzie pulled out one of the folders and laid it on top of the stack. She flipped back to a page with a blue sticky tab on it. “This place was at one point owned by Nicolas Jackson.”

  A chill went through Cin. “Not Sheriff Jackson?”

  “Yeah.” Marzie nodded. “What’s interesting is Lucille’s name isn’t on the previous title.”

  “When was this?” Cin glanced at the paperwork.

  “I bet it’s before they were married. I don’t know for sure when that was, but it should be available at the county clerk’s office.” Marzie tapped on the paper.

  Cin pulled out her cellphone and started working on getting through to the county webpage. “Let me check. Chad showed me how to look at the county’s website and save myself time going to the courthouse. They’re supposed to have the data available.” She typed as fast as she could on her phone. “I just hope they were married in the county. If they went to Vegas, or Denver, we might be out of luck for a simple answer.”

  Marzie shrugged and eased back in her chair. “No idea. Hey, while you’re checking that out, have you heard anything from the Taylors? It’s unusual hat they weren’t around after the school dance last year. They haven’t even put their house up for sale or anything. If they aren’t paying their taxes, it could be the next house you pick up for back taxes.”

  Finding what she was looking for, Cin hoped the website would hurry up. She didn’t want to sit there and explain how the Taylors had been real aliens. Paul, the one Char had been dating, had been eaten by an alien shape-changing dog, and his mother Gloria had been killed by a school guard, and her body had vanished on the way to the morgue. It fell under the huge part of her life about keeping the paranormal out of the eyes of the normal humans in town.

  “It’s weird how they just vanished.” Cin pulled up the marriage registry site. “Char’s still holding out hope that Paul will show back up. I think she really liked him.” She honestly felt her eldest daughter was forming a bigger link with the strange alien pet rock Chad had found and brought home than she had with Paul Taylor when they’d been dating.

  “That’s sad. I remember my first high school crush. Brad.” Marzie sighed a pleasant memory sigh. “He was so handsome. I sometimes wish I hadn’t let Dad drive him off so I could be with Jerry. He treated me better than Jerry ever thought about.”

  Before Marzie got all depressed about her failed marriage, Cin found what she’d been looking for. “Okay, back to the house.” She glanced at her screen. “When did Jackson sell it?”

  Marzie moved some papers around. “Okay, looks like it was back in eighty-five, had been in his family for a while.”

  “And this says he married Lucille back in eighty-seven.” Cin let out a long breath. “That doesn’t mean they weren’t dating during the time he lived in the house, but that decreases the possibility of skeletons in the backyard.”

  “That really freaked you out, didn’t it?”

  “A bit.” Cin nodded. “It did you too, if I’m remembering things right.”

  “You are.” Marzie closed her eyes. “There was so much going on at the time. I didn’t like to think of yet another thing going wrong. It wasn’t fair.”

  “No, it wasn’t.” Cin turned her phone off and slipped it back into her purse. “But there isn’t anything wrong with this house that RJ can’t fix.” She didn’t add ‘with his magical screwdriver’ but thought it really loudly.

  “We’re not going to make RJ do all the work.” Marzie pulled out a pen and grinned. “Now let’s get this paperwork filled out so I can get started helping him with the reno.”

  Cin took a pen out her purse and tapped it against her lips. “Yeah, you and the guys have fun with that; I’m going to keep my regular distance while the work gets done. I think Chad and RJ prefer it when I stay out from underfoot.”

  “And you’re sure me hanging out getting a feel for things isn’t going to be too much for them?”

  “Nah.” Cin shook her head. “I asked them separately, and they both said it would be fine. I think they understand you wanting to expand your repertoire so you have more things to fall back on. We all lived through the housing bubble and understand how quickly things can change.”

  Marzie nodded vigorously. “Which is why I want to do this. Tell them thanks for me, and I’ll be sure to tell them tomorrow or whenever we get started.”

  “Depends on how long the plumbing job takes in Salida, but definitely before the end of the week.”

  “Good.” Marzie grinned as she started pulling paperwork out and turning it toward Cin. “Then let’s get this done so we can get it filed with the county and city so nothing there slows you down.”

  Cin gave her teeth a final tap with her pen, and poised herself to start signing things as Marzie slid them across the desk to her. It didn’t take long for everything to be signed, and Marzie was ready to head over to the courthouse and get the paperwork filed. Solstice Properties had just purchased their next project house. Cin really hopped they were going to be able to get it cranked out quickly and settle in for a quiet winter of nothing worse than a broken pipe now and then.

  4

  “This isn’t right.” Cin leaned over the table in their new meeting room, staring at the blueprints showing on the large display. She tapped on a wall. “This isn’t there.”

  RJ nodded. “Right, that’s why I brought this to your attention. “From the way I remember the house, there isn’t a wall there. Plus, this open space on the north side of the house? It’s been broken up into a couple of bedrooms.”

  Marzie threw up her hands in surrender. “Doesn’t that just mean that someone has gone in and redone some things?”

  “Yeah, maybe.” RJ scratched his beard. “We won’t know that until I pull some of the ceiling down and see if there’s evidence of walls. It’s not totally uncommon to find a house with a different layout from what’s on file with the county. But you are supposed to update things so houses can be taxed correctly.”

  “Right.” Chad tapped the blueprint. “This house would be taxed at a lot lower rate than the one we’re working on, just due to the extra bedrooms.”

  Marzie nodded. “I wondered about that when I checked the tax records before closing the sale. They seemed awfully low.”

  “With all the new construction going on, the county offices are having trouble keeping up with things,” Cin added. She didn’t note that if Jackson had been sheriff when the house went on the tax rolls, there was a good chance he’d gone in and manipulated things in his favor. Although everything the Jacksons had done had been magically wrong, it didn’t mean they, or he, hadn’t been up to some mundane manipulation of things in his favor. “We’re going to have to make sure to have the records updated once we’re done.”

  RJ inclined his chin. “Definitely. Don’t want anyone coming back at us for making mistakes. What do you say to going over there and figuring out what’s wrong and making adjustments so we can properly get started on our plans? Don’t want to take out a load-bearing wall. With some of these Mid-Century houses, you can have a bit of a challenge due to the odd angles and such.”

  Marzie shook her head. “I’d love to, but I’ve got a showing this afternoon.” She pulled out her phone and glanced at it. “In about thirty minutes. I need to get going.”

  “We’ll let you off the hook this time.” Chad flashed her his bright teasing smile. “Don’t make a habit of it, or you’ll not pass Solstice Reno 101 on the first try.”

  A light, silly laugh slipped out of Marzie. “I’ll do my best to not miss too many classes.” She picked up her purse. “You guys have fun. I’ll check after the showing and see if you’re still over there, might be in time to catch a few pointers.”

  “If we stop for the lunch we haven’t had yet, you just might.” Cin glanced at her own phone that showed just after one. “Good luck with the showing.”

  “Break a leg.” Chad flashed her a thumbs up.

  “Let’s get over there and see what’s going on.” Cin turned off the monitor. “We can find out a bit more without Marzie around. I’m still not thrilled this is a Jackson property, even if he wasn’t the last one to live there.”

  RJ headed for the door. “But these last folks were there long enough to have triggered things, if they were there.”

  “Unless they were strictly human and never had magical or non-human company,” Chad threw in as he turned off the light.

  That was Cin’s fear. After having the incident of Chad setting off a trap designed for shifters, she didn’t take exploring new houses as casually as she once had. She would call her mother in to get a ghost’s POV.

  Cin stared as her mother went up and down the visible spectrum at one of the walls that hadn’t been on the original blueprints. She’d been trying to pass through the sheetrock for a couple of minutes and hadn’t made any headway. Neither Cin nor RJ could sense anything wrong with it, and Chad assured her it smelled like sheetrock to him.

  “I have no idea why I can’t get in,” Cin’s mother, Charity announced. “It’s like there’s something built into the wall that’s keeping me out. I don’t understand.”

  “Passive protections,” RJ muttered. “That’s something AJ ran into a while back while researching an unusual angle for a book. We stumbled onto passive spells, almost like the runes on the trap spell, but things that wouldn’t go off like it had.”

  “So something that’s like a magical brick wall?” Cin tapped the wall. It sounded like sheetrock over standard 2x4 studs. Nothing special. It didn’t make any sense.

  “If the wall is somehow magical, that might explain why Jackson never had it added to the official blueprints,” Chad suggested.

  “What’s on the other side?” Cin hadn’t gone looking around while her mother had struggled with the barrier.

  “That’s the thing—” RJ pointed around the corner “—from what I can tell, there’s about three feet of dead space.”

  Cin raised a hand to block the idea as she shook her head. “Okay, let’s not say dead, okay? I don’t want things delaying this reno. Winter’s closing in, and I don’t want us freezing or using too much power to stay warm while we’re working on this place. We need it done ASAP. That means no dead bodies.”

  Chad took a deep breath. “Yeah, still no dead bodies on site, at least as far as I can tell.”

  “And let’s keep it that way.” Cin wanted to make it through a few more renos before having to deal with the police, fire department, or other emergency service, again.

  “Thing is, there is something that smells wrong, but it’s not a dead body.” Chad wrinkled his brow in concentration. “I can’t figure it out. Very strange.”

  “Then we keep our noses open as we work this.” Cin started around the corner and inadvertently walked through her mother. “Sorry, Mom, where did you go?”

  “Around the walls.” Her mom took a couple of steps away and put her hands on her hips with a look of frustration about Cin walking through her. She hated it when people, particularly people who could see her, walked through her. Chad got a pass since he couldn’t see her. Even after becoming a werewolf, he was still blind to the spirit world. “RJ’s right, it’s a strange section of space and protected on all sides. I think we’re going to need to break it down to get in there.”

  “I can go get tools out of the truck.” RJ turned toward the front door.

  Cin shook her head. “Not today. We’re going to try to stick to schedule. We’ll try and demo this section,—” she glanced up at the ceiling. From what she remembered of the layout, the strange walls weren’t load-bearing, so they should come out quickly and easily. “—when Marzie isn’t around, in case there’s something woo-woo in there that we have to deal with.”

  “Sound plan.” Chad leaned against the wall. “RJ and I should be able to get it down fairly quickly and easily.”

  “Good. Let’s go over the rest of the place and see if there’re other sections that have issues.” Cin turned away from the wall. “Chad, we also need to check with the PD and see if there have been any strange reports in the neighborhood.”

  Pursing his lips, Chad nodded. “Right. That might give us an idea if we still have something happening. Hey, didn’t Shelby say something about wanting to get together for dinner since she and Zack got engaged? They want to talk soon-to-be married cop to married ex-cop. We might ask them.”

  Cin grinned and returned his nod. “Sounds like a plan. I’ll call Shelby when we get done here and see when she wants to do that. Maybe we can get it in tonight, or tomorrow.” She chuckled. “You know, sometimes I love living in a small town where we can make schedule pivots easily and quickly.”

  RJ shrugged. “Depending on how you live your life, it’s not that hard. We just have to live a simple life, which Cottonwood helps facilitate.”

  Cin’s mother laughed. “He’s smart as well as hot.”

  “Mother.” Cin rolled her eyes. Recently it was like her mother was developing a crush on their handyman. Luckily, RJ was handling it well. It wasn’t like he wasn’t a married gay man, and she was a ghost. He had nothing to worry about.

  5

  Cin strolled into her bedroom. “Chad, are you ready?”

  From the bed, he held up his hand for quiet, then pointed to the smartphone held to his head. “Sure. We’re working on a house flipping over there and want to check and see if there’s any problems. One of the neighbors came over and said it was a nice area.”