"This place is a heap," Phillip pointed out.
"Yeah, so it'll come cheap. We put a couple thousand into fixing it up—"
"Better to have it bulldozed and start over."
"Phil, try to control that wild optimism." Cam turned to Ethan. "What do you think?''
"It'll do."
"It'll do what?" Phillip threw up his hands. "Fall down around our ears?" At that moment a spider—which Phillip estimated to be about the size of a Chihuahua—crawled over the toe of his shoe. "Get me a gun," he muttered.
Cam only laughed and slapped him on the back. "Let's go see Claremont."
stuart claremont was a little man with hard eyes and a dissatisfied mouth. The little chunks of St. Christopher that he owned were most often left to fall into disrepair. If his tenants complained loudly enough, he occasionally, and grudgingly, tinkered with plumbing or heat or patched a roof.
But he believed in saving his pennies for a rainy day. In Claremont's mind, it never rained quite hard enough to part with a cent.
Still, his house on Oyster Shell Lane was a showplace. As anyone in St. Chris could tell you, his wife, Nancy, could nag the ears off a turnip. And she ruled that roost.
The wall-to-wall carpet was thick and soft, the walls prettily papered. Fussy curtains were ruthlessly coordinated with fussy upholstery. Magazines lay in military lines over a gleaming cherry wood coffee table that matched gleaming cherry wood end tables that matched gleaming cherry wood occasional tables.
Nothing was out of place in the Claremont house. Each room looked like a picture from a magazine. Like the picture, Cam mused, and not at all like life.
"So, you're interested in the barn." With a stretched-out grin that hid his teeth, Claremont ushered them all into his den. It was decorated in English baronial style. The dark paneling was accented with hunting prints. There were deep-cushioned leather chairs in a port wine shade, a desk with brass fittings, and a brick fireplace converted to gas.
The big-screen television seemed both out of place and typical.
"Mildly," Phillip told him. It had been agreed on the drive over that Phillip would handle the negotiations. "We've just started to look around for space."
"Terrific old place." Claremont sat down behind his desk and gestured them to chairs. "Lots of history."
"I'm sure, but we're not interested in history in this case. There seems to be a lot of rot."
"A bit." Claremont waved that away with one short-fingered hand. "You live round here, what can you expect? You boys thinking of starting some business or other?"
"We're considering it. We're in the talking-about-it stages."
"Uh-huh." Claremont didn't think so, or the three of them wouldn't be sitting on the other side of his desk. As he considered just how much rent he could pry out of them for what he considered an irritating weight around his neck, he looked at Seth. "Well, we'll talk about it, then. Maybe the boy here wants to go outside."
"No, he doesn't," Cam said without a smile. "We're all talking about it."
"If that's the way you want it." So, Claremont thought, that's the way it was. He could hardly wait to tell Nancy. Why, he'd had a good, close-up look at the kid now, and a half-blind idiot could see Ray Quinn in those eyes. Saint Ray, he thought sourly. It looked like the mighty had fallen, yes sir. And he was going to enjoy letting people know what was what.
"I'm looking for a five-year lease," he told Phillip, correctly judging who would be handling the business end.
"We're looking for one year at this point, with an option for seven. Of course, we'd expect certain repairs to be completed before we took occupancy."
"Repairs." Claremont leaned back in his chair. "Hah. That place is solid as a rock."
"And we'd require termite inspection and treatment. Regular maintenance would, of course, be our responsibility."
"Ain't no damn bugs in that place."
"Well, then." Phillip smiled easily. "You'd only have to arrange for the inspection. What are you asking for in rent?"
Because he was annoyed, and because he'd always despised Ray Quinn, Claremont bumped up his figure. "Two thousand a month."
"Two—" Before Cam could choke out his pithy opinion, Phillip rose.
"No point in wasting your time, then. We appreciate you seeing us."
"Hold it, hold it." Claremont chuckled, fought off the little tug of panic at having a deal slip through his grasping fingers so quickly. "Didn't say that wasn't negotiable. After all, I knew your daddy…" He aimed that tight-lipped smile directly at Seth. "Knew him more than twenty-five years. I wouldn't feel right if I didn't give his… boys a little break."
"Fine." Phillip settled down again, resisted rubbing his hands together. He forgot all his objections to the overall plan in his delight in the art of the deal. "Let's negotiate."
"what the hell have I done?" Thirty minutes later, Phillip sat in his Jeep, methodically rapping his head against the steering wheel.
"A damn good job, I'd say." Ethan patted him on the shoulder. He'd reached the Jeep ahead of Cam this time and had taken winner's point in the front seat. "Cut his opening price in half, got him to agree to paying for most of the repairs if we do them ourselves, and confused him enough to have him go for the what-was-it—rent control clause if we take the seven-year option."
"The place is a dump. We're going to pay twelve thousand dollars a year—not including utilities and maintenance—for a pit."
"Yeah, but now it's our pit." Pleased, Cam stretched out his legs—or tried. "Pull that seat up some, Ethan, I'm jammed back here."
"Nope. Maybe you should drop me back by the place. I can start figuring things, and I can get a lift home later."
"We're going shopping," Cam reminded him.
"I don't need any damn shoes," Seth said again, but in reflex rather than annoyance.
"You're getting damn shoes, and you're getting a damn haircut while we're at it, and we're all going to the damn mall."
"I'd rather get hit with a brick than go to the mall on a Saturday." Ethan hunched down in his seat, pulled the brim of his cap low over his eyes. He couldn't bear to think about it.
"When you start working in that death trap," Phillip told him, "you'll likely be hit with a ton of them."
"If I have to get a haircut, everybody's getting one."
Cam glanced briefly at Seth's mutinous face. "You think this is a democracy? Shit. Grab some reality, kid. You're ten."
"You could use one." Phillip met Ca
m's eyes in the rearview mirror as he drove north out of St. Chris. "Your hair's longer than his."
"Shut up, Phil. Ethan, goddamn it, pull your seat up."
"I hate the mall." In defiance, Ethan stretched his own legs out and tipped the back of his seat down a notch. "It's full of people. Pete the barber's still got his place on Market Street."
"Yeah, and everybody who walks out of it looks like Beaver Cleaver." Frustrated, Cam gave the back of Ethan's seat a solid kick.
"Keep your feet off my upholstery," Phillip warned. "Or you'll walk to the damn mall."
"Tell him to give me some room."
"If I have to get shoes, I get to pick them out. You don't have any say in it."
"If I'm paying for the shoes, you'll wear what I tell you and like it."
"I'll buy the stinking shoes myself. I got twenty dollars."
Cam snorted out a laugh. "Try to get a grip on that reality again, pal. You can't buy decent socks for twenty these days."
"You can if you don't have to have some fancy designer label on them," Ethan tossed in. "This ain't Paris."
"You haven't bought decent shoes in ten years," Cam threw back. "And if you don't pull up that frigging seat, I'm going to—"
"Cut it out!" Phillip exploded. "Cut it out right now or I swear I'm going to pull over and knock your heads together. Oh, my God." He took one hand off the wheel to drag it down his face. "I sound like Mom. Forget it. Just forget it. Kill each other. I'll dump the bodies in the mall parking lot and drive to Mexico. I'll learn how to weave mats and sell them on the beach at Cozumel. It'll be quiet, it'll be peaceful. I'll change my name to Raoul, and no one will know I was ever related to a bunch of fools."
Seth scratched his belly and turned to Cam. "Does he always talk like that?"
"Yeah, mostly. Sometimes he's going to be Pierre and live in a garret in Paris, but it's the same thing."
"Weird," was Seth's only comment. He pulled a piece of bubble gum out of his pocket, unwrapped it, and popped it into his mouth. Getting new shoes was turning into an adventure.
it would have stopped at shoes if Cam hadn't noticed that the seat of Seth's jeans was nearly worn through. Not that he thought that was a big deal, he assured himself. But it was probably best, since they were there anyway, to pick up a couple of pairs of jeans.
He had no doubt that if Seth hadn't bitched so much about trying on jeans, he himself wouldn't have felt compelled to push on to shirts, to shorts, to a windbreaker. And somehow they'd ended up with three ball caps, an Orioles sweatshirt, and a glow-in-the-dark Frisbee.
When he tried to think back to exactly where he'd taken that first wrong turn, it all became a blur of clothes racks, complaining voices, and cash registers churning.
The dogs greeted them with wild and desperate enthusiasm the minute they pulled into the drive. This would have been endearing but for the fact that the pair of them reeked of dead fish.
With much cursing and shoving and threats, the humans escaped into the house, shutting the dogs with their hurt feelings outside. The phone was ringing.
"Somebody get that," Cam pleaded. "Seth, take this junk upstairs, then go give those stinking dogs a bath."
"Both of them?" The thought thrilled him, but he thought it best to complain. "How come I have to do it?"