Mariah Stewart - Coming Home

“What about your cash receipts?”

“They can wait until Sunday morning.”

“Don’t you think that might be tempting fate? Oh, I know, there hasn’t been a robbery on Charles Street in years, but still.” Steffie went into the dressing room to change.

“Maybe I’ll stop in after the reception.”

“I’ll talk to Cathy about it. She’s my best counter girl. I’ve had her close for me several times.”

“That would be worthy of a deep discount,” Vanessa said. “But that raises the question of what you’ll do.”

“I’ve had several of the others close for me from time to time.” Steffie emerged from behind the curtain with the dress. “But even if I have to leave the reception for a bit to close up both our shops, I’d do it in a heartbeat.” She opened her bag and withdrew her wallet. “And I’d say we have a deal…”

It was almost dark when Vanessa locked up and walked the three blocks to her house on Cherry Street. There had been a brief shower earlier in the afternoon, and the rain had washed some of the tree pollen from the sidewalks, leaving the air clean and fresh. She inhaled deeply as she strolled along, admiring the spring flowers her neighbors had planted. The entire front yard of the small brick Colonial on the corner of Cherry and Mavis was planted in yellow and red tulips that brightened the entire block. Three houses up, the owners had planted hundreds of mixed daffodils. And farther up, one house in from the next corner, sat Vanessa’s pride and joy. She never minded the walk, because she never grew tired of catching that first glimpse of her house as it came into view.

Off-white clapboard with a high slate roof, gables on each side of the second floor, and two deep porches-one front, one back-the house was a hodgepodge architecturally, but she’d fallen in love with it the minute she saw it.

“It’s a bit of a bastard child, architecturally,” Hamilton Forbes, the Realtor, had told her while he unlocked the front door that Saturday afternoon back in September. “I’d be hard-pressed to put a name tag on it. It’s not quite Colonial, not quite Victorian, though it does have features of each. The layout suggests a bungalow, but it was built before that style became popular. It’s in desperate need of updating and hasn’t been painted in God knows how many years, but it’s sturdy and the mechanicals are decent. The estate is leaving the contents, so you’ll have furniture. Some of it is pretty good, actually, and God only knows what’s in that attic. Everything has been covered since Miss Ridgeway’s death.”

Vanessa had barely heard a word once she’d stepped inside. There were hardwood floors and an oddly placed mantel on one of the dining room walls. White sheets covered every piece of furniture in the place. There were several bay windows and a kitchen with a real nook that overlooked the backyard. She’d all but sprinted past the Realtor to get to the second floor, where there were three good-size bedrooms and one tiny one, and one and a half baths. A door led to an attic that had thick wooden rafters and lots of dark corners in which boxes holding who knew what were stacked. She’d run back downstairs to the kitchen, and unlocked the back door. She stepped out onto the porch, her eyes sweeping across the backyard hungrily. She knew next to nothing about plants, but her mind’s eye filled in the empty beds with color and the dry fishpond with water, koi, and water lilies.

She wanted the house so much she could barely breathe.

“… been on the market for quite some time…” Ham had droned on, but she hardly heard him. “… right before her one-hundredth birthday and she-”

“What?” Vanessa had been in the kitchen again, wondering how much a new stove and refrigerator would cost.

“I said, the woman who lived here died right before her birthday. She’d have been one hundred years old, if she’d made it another three weeks.”

“Was she the oldest inhabitant of St. Dennis?”

“Not by a long shot. Penny Grassi’s one-hundred-and-two-year-old great-grandmother lives in the Oakes Retirement Home, and old Mr. Ivens Sr. is almost one hundred and three. I’m sure there are others I don’t know about.” He grinned. “We grow ’em old down here on the Bay.”

“You said the house has been on the market for a long time?”

“Close to a year now.”

“Why’s that, do you suppose?” Before he could respond, she walked back into the dining room and asked, “Do you suppose there’s a fireplace behind that wall where the mantel is?”

“I’d certainly look into that.” He followed her into the room. “It sure does look like it might have been a working fireplace. Let’s take a look outside, see where the chimney is.”

He went out the front door, and Vanessa followed him.

“Yes, see? There’s your chimney.” He pointed to the side of the house where the chimney rose past the roof. “You could look into opening that up. I’d call Stan Westcott and have him take a look.”

Vanessa had nodded and gone back inside to take another walk from room to room, her head spinning.

“Why did you say the house had been on the market for so long?” Before she arrived, Hal had primed her to focus on anything negative as a bargaining chip. The only negative she could think of was maybe there was a problem with the deed, or the structure, something that wasn’t readily visible, because to her eye, the place was perfect.

“I started to tell you about the previous owner. Alice Ridgeway was a little… eccentric. She never left her house except to water her plants, maybe toss some fish food into that pond, putter around in her backyard. Never came out the front, had one of the neighbor boys mow the lawn. Of course, the pond is dry now, but at one time, she had an impressive number of koi out there.”

“But what does that have to do with the house not selling?”

Ham cleared his throat. “There are some who think Miss Ridgeway never did leave.”

The silence hung in the air between them for a very long moment.

“Oh.” Vanessa paused. “You mean, she might still be here?”

“In spirit only.”

“I see.” Vanessa wandered from room to room and tried to decide if she felt something otherworldly accompanying her. “Has anyone actually seen her?”

“A few of the neighbors claim to have, but who knows?” He shrugged. “Maybe we see what we want to see.”

Vanessa thought that he might be sorry to have brought it up. Still, there was that full-disclosure thing.

“What was she like?” Vanessa asked. “When she was alive, that is.”

“She was… well, as I said, a bit eccentric. Kept to herself, always did, as I recall. She read a great deal, I remember that about her. My sister worked for the library many years ago, and would bring books to her and pick them up when she was finished with them and take them back. Brought her a new stack twice a week.”

“I’m not seeing where she was so eccentric. Lots of people don’t like to leave their homes.” Vanessa defended the home’s departed-or not-owner.

“True enough. But to the best of my knowledge, Miss Ridgeway was the only true agoraphobic in St. Dennis.”

“Well, then, that gave her some distinction, didn’t it?” She gazed out the kitchen window. “I wonder what she had planted in those beds.”

“Well, she did have a big herb garden, and they say she liked those bug-catching plants.”

“What?” Vanessa turned to face him.

“Venus flytraps, that sort of thing.” He hastened to add, “But I hear she liked mint, too. Had several varieties. And as I said, she had her herbs. Those who know say she had bunches hung over the doors and some of the windows. I noticed there’s some still around, here and there.”