Page 121 of Save the Date
“I suppose so.”
“You don’t play piano anymore, do you?”
“Uh, no ma’am.”
“Good. You were a terrible student. One of the worst I ever had. I never understood why your poor mother insisted you should try to learn.”
Jack laughed. He thought it was probably the only time he had ever laughed in this house. “It was my dad’s idea. He thought everybody should learn to appreciate music.”
“Appreciate it, yes. Play it, no. What was your little brother’s name?”
“Ryan.”
She nodded. “That’s right. He was a ginger, as I recall. Nice boy. Totally tone deaf, of course. And your baby sister. Maureen?”
“Meghan. I think by the time she came along, Dad gave up on piano. Meghan took ballet, instead.” Jack cleared his throat. “I was sorry to hear about your mother.”
“Thank you. You know, she was nearly ninety-one, and still cooked for both of us and did all the grocery shopping. I took her car keys away a year ago, but she was still sharp as a tack right up until that last stroke.”
Sharp as a tack, Jack thought, and mean as a snake, that would describe Bernice Bradley. And her daughter.
“You said you had a business matter to discuss with me?” Sylvia said, regarding him through glasses with lenses so thick and convex they gave her the look of a giant insect. “What type of business are you in these days, Jack?”
“I’m a contractor. Specializing in historic restoration. Ryan and I are business partners.”
She looked at him with distaste. “I have contractors leaving flyers and business cards in my mailbox every week. As though I would hire somebody who has to resort to passing out flyers to get work.”
“Um… that’s not really why I wanted to talk to you. Actually, I came here today to ask you about a piece of property you own downtown.”
Suddenly the room got very quiet, and the ticking from the grandfather clock in the corner seemed synchronized with his own pulse-beat.
“Mother and I own quite a few properties downtown. My father worked for the C&S Bank, you know, but he believed in buying real estate, not stocks and bonds.”
“Smart man,” Jack said. “I’m probably not anywhere near as smart as your father, or as successful, but I believe in buying real estate too. Especially in this last economic downturn, Ryan and I found that we were able to pick up some distressed properties for a pretty modest investment.”
“I don’t own any distressed properties,” the old lady shot back.
“Oh, no, no ma’am. I didn’t mean to insinuate that,” he said quickly. “Not at all. The thing is, I’ve always admired that three-story building you own on West Jones Street. I like the retail mix on the ground floor, with the residential above it. And of course, that’s one of the most desirable streets in the historic district.”
“How do you happen to know I own that building?” Sylvia asked. “Are you one of those scam artists who hang around the courthouse records room, looking to make a quick killing?”
“Not at all. I only know about it because I got a call from a man named Cullen Kane—a florist here in town. Somebody gave him my name, and he called me up and asked me to take a look at West Jones Street. To give him estimates to do some work on the building. And he mentioned that he was buying it from you.”
“That’s right,” she said cautiously. “We close on the thirtieth. Mother and I always kept our properties up, but, well, tenants these days are so demanding, especially the young woman who’s renting the space right now. She’s another florist, you know, but every week she had a new complaint. Mr. Kane called me up out of the blue, asked me what I wanted for the building, and I thought, Mother is gone. Why not? I named a price, and he countered, then I countered, and we agreed to it.”
“Just like that?” Jack asked.
“He sent me a beautiful orchid plant,” Sylvia confided. “And he has lovely manners, for a homosexual, I mean.”
Jack almost choked on his Hawaiian Punch. “Miss Sylvia, would it be nosy of me to ask how much he offered you for the building?”
She told him, and he nearly choked again. Sylvia Bradley might be old, but she’d managed to squeeze top dollar out of Cullen Kane.
He put his Dixie cup carefully down on the marble-top coffee table. “I wish I’d known you were going to sell that building, Miss Sylvia. Because I would have been able to offer you more than what Cullen Kane did.”
“Is that so?”
“Yes, ma’am,” Jack said.
