Good Bones

Good Bones

Muriel Wills

Smashwords Edition

Text copyright 2012 Muriel Wills

All Rights Reserved.

Smashwords Edition, License Notes

This ebook is licensed for your personal enjoyment only. This ebook may not be re-sold or given away to other people. If you would like to share this book with another person, please purchase an additional copy for each recipient. If you’re reading this book and did not purchase it, or it was not purchased for your use only, then please return to Smashwords.com and purchase your own copy. Thank you for respecting the hard work of this author.

Special thanks to Martin Swett, Wells Fargo Bank, for his invaluable assistance; to B. A. Whitney of GoodDog Designs for creating the cover image; and to my family for giving me just enough peace and quiet to finish this book.

Table of Contents

Chapter 1

Chapter 2

Chapter 3

Chapter 4

Chapter 5

Chapter 6

Chapter 7

Chapter 8

Chapter 9

Chapter 10

Chapter 11

Chapter 12

Chapter 13

Chapter 14

Chapter 15

Chapter 16

Chapter 17

Chapter 18

Chapter 19

Chapter 20

Chapter 21

Chapter 22

Chapter 23

Chapter 24

Chapter 1

They say some people are born salesmen, steeped in the womb with that special brew of qualities—a confident handshake, an engaging smile, the silver-tongued gift of gab—that stimulate the rest of us to part with our money.

I wasn’t blessed with any of that. In fact, the words of my dear father, spoken on the day I learned I’d passed the California state real estate exam, were engraved on my psyche:

No member of this family has ever succeeded in sales, he’d said.

My name is Sam Turner and I’m a licensed real estate agent in Arlinda, California, home of the state’s longest-running weekly Farmer’s Market (thirty-three years if you really want to know). The photo on my business card shows a woman with brown hair, green eyes, ordinary chin, height and build average, and no distinguishing marks, though I’ve always fancied my nose leans a bit to the left. My smile falls short of engaging by a considerable margin, and there’s something uncompromising in my expression that suggests I have no great love for my fellow man.

Which makes it all the more unaccountable that at age thirty-seven, I chucked my minimum wage job and entered the field of real estate sales. I didn’t know what to expect when I jumped in feet first, but I believed in the product I was selling. And when that belief kicked off a chain of events that embroiled me in extortion, fraud, escrow and murder—well, that changed me in ways I never could have expected.

I’d thrown in my lot and license with Home Sweet Home Realty, a small brokerage housed in a former self-service laundromat on the corner of 5th and Sunset. For more than six weeks, I submerged myself in the lore of real property, studying contracts, offers, counteroffers and addenda under the watchful eye of a broker. The rest of my time was spent sitting at my desk answering the phones, organizing my pens by size and color, molding my office chair to the shape of my ass and waiting for lightning to strike. And when it finally did, it struck twice on the same day.

It was just after noon on a Monday in late February when I heard the bells on the front door jangle. I was alone in the office; Home Sweet Home’s budget didn’t extend to a receptionist, so agents did double duty when they were on the floor.

I jumped up from my desk and sprinted down the hallway to peer into the reception area, a small landing a few steps up from the street. There was a young family there, two somewhat scruffy adults, a small boy who looked about five and a plump baby in the arms of the mother. They looked ill at ease. Well, I would fix that.

I smoothed my hair with my fingers, slowed my breathing and entered the lobby. Can I help you?

The man I’d pegged as the father stepped forward. He was about 5’10", on the wiry side at maybe 170 pounds. He looked like John the Baptist on cannabis: untrimmed brown beard and mustache, deep-set dark eyes reddened by sleep deprivation or grass, a mass of brunette dreadlocks cascading down his back. One dread had been wrapped around the others to secure them in a makeshift ponytail. He wore an orange Burning Man tee, jeans and scuffed black work boots and clutched a greasy rainbow-colored knitted cap in his hands, apparently removed to satisfy the dictates of nice society.

Eric Freeman, he said, shaking my hand. His skin was dry and calloused, his fingers criss-crossed with curious thin red lines. This is my wife, Hannah.

Sam Turner, I said.

Hannah shifted the baby and grasped my hand briefly. She was small and square, with light brown hair that hung loose to her shoulders and brown eyes set in an arresting heart-shaped face. There was strength in that face; I wondered if motherhood had brought it to the forefront. A smattering of freckles covered her nose. She wore a loose-fitting cotton top and wide bellbottom pants made up of green, mauve and denim patchwork squares, a fashion very much in vogue in Arlinda. The baby clung to her koala-style, supported by a cloth sling of coarsely-woven Indian fabric that wrapped around her mother’s shoulder.

We’re looking for a home, Hannah said. Are you an agent?

I nodded, my heart fluttering a little. Come on back to my office.

The little boy skipped ahead and pounced on the box of toys I kept behind my desk. He was cute as heck, with big solemn eyes, a high forehead and wispy silvery-blond hair clipped short, probably by his mom. He was neatly dressed in a flannel shirt and little-dude jeans, with work boots that were miniature versions of his dad’s. He emptied the toy bin and turned to me. You have any cars?

Eric ruffled his hair. How about you introduce yourself, big guy.

The boy stepped forward. I’m Luke, he said.

I shook his hand. Luke, I’m Sam. Nice to meet you.

Sam is a boy’s name.

It can be a girl’s name too. Here, check this out. I showed him the two die-cast VW buses I kept on my desk and demonstrated how to make them go by dragging them backwards along the floor. He was soon engrossed in vrooming around the office.

I settled Eric and Hannah into uncomfortable rattan and metal chairs next to my desk. The baby gazed at me with her mother’s big brown eyes. She was six or seven months old, an irresistible age, with the robust good health and pleasing chubbiness that breastfed babies always seem to have. She was dressed in a tie-dyed cotton romper; one bare foot peeked out below the sling, displaying tiny perfect toes. She looked me over and suddenly grinned, showing an expanse of pink toothless gum. My heart melted.

Oh, wow, I said.

This is Bree, Hannah said. She turned six months old last week.

She’s beautiful.

Thanks. I think she’s cutting her first tooth. She kept us up a couple of hours last night. Eric finally walked her around the block at 1 a.m.

We chatted about kids for a minute and I showed them a picture of my son Max, all the while wondering how to get down to the business of offering my services before my shallow reservoir of conversation was tapped. Eric saved me the trouble.

We’ve been working with another agent, he said.

My hopes plummeted. Not only was I second choice, they’d probably seen all the available properties with the first agent. I’d likely wind up sweating before the Board of Realtors as they adjudicated an ugly commission dispute.

We’ve rented a double-wide at the Jolly Giant Trailer Park going on five years now, ever since Luke was born, Hannah said. It was okay at first, but now with four of us it’s about to burst at the seams. Eric has a good job—he’s been with Friends of the Dunes for almost that long.

Yeah? What do you do for them?

Everything, Eric said. Trail maintenance, nature walks, habitat recovery for the western snowy plover, dune restoration. We’re pulling European beach grass this month. He held up his oddly marked hands and the light dawned. Beach grass was razor-sharp.

We just want a little place that’s our own, with a nice grassy yard and a tree or two, Hannah said.

With room for my dog, Luke put in. He had stopped playing and was listening.

What’s your dog’s name?

He smiled up at me from the floor. Moon Rover.

Hannah caught my eye and shook her head. We don’t actually have a dog, she said in a low voice. The park doesn’t allow pets.

I felt a pang of empathy. Every kid should have a dog.

Tell me about this other agent, I said.

Actually we’ve been to a few, Eric said. Usually they tell us they’ll keep in touch, and that’s the last we hear from them. Finally my boss said to try Beverly Sloan. Said she had a lot of experience.

I nodded. Sloan and Associates had a reputation for success, and Bev Sloan had been Realtor of the Year three years running, a distinction heavily touted in her weekly full-page ad in the Grovedale Dispatch, our local daily. How many properties did she show you?

Eric didn’t quite make eye contact. Zero, he said. She talked to our lender and said unless we wanted to buy a trailer in a park or maybe settle for a condo, we weren’t going to find anything in our price range.

You’re kidding. Who’s your lender? And what’s your price range, if you don’t mind me asking?

No problem. It’s Becky Daley of Arlinda Mortgage. And she said up to a hundred and sixty thousand.

Maybe in Grovedale? Grovedale was one town south of Arlinda, the county seat and the armpit of the North Coast.

We don’t want to live anywhere but Arlinda.

Bree clutched at her mother and squirmed a little. Absently Hannah slid up her shirt and tucked the baby in to nurse. Soft, downy angel hair covered the back of Bree’s head; one chubby hand pushed against her mother’s shirt, giving me a brief glimpse of pale breast before Hannah tugged the shirt back into place.

I drummed my fingers on the desk, thinking hard. Bev Sloan might have been blunt, but she was realistic. Homes in Arlinda started at $250,000 and went up from there, way up. Besides being a popular place to live, the local market was driven by the housing needs of Redwood State College students, so even when the market was slow—as it was now—the lower-priced homes were snapped up by investors. I was eager to get started, but I could end up wasting a lot of time. Then again, what else did I have but time?

I glanced over at Luke. He was still pushing cars around the floor and making engine sounds. He caught my eye and smiled his sweet smile. I wasn’t the type of mom transformed by parenthood into someone who was naturally great with children—in fact, other peoples’ kids tended to annoy the hell out of me. But there was something in Luke’s wistful innocence that pulled at my heart. I thought about Moon Rover and pushed my doubts aside.

Listen, I said. I have to tell you I’m brand new at this. You would be my first clients. Is that okay with you?

Eric nodded and Hannah smiled. Sure.

Good. You mind if I talk to Becky?

No, go ahead.

I took a deep breath. Ask for loyalty, my broker always said. And, uh, you’re not interviewing any other agents, are you? Or going back to Beverly?

No way, Eric said.

I got their contact information and a few more details, then we shook hands again and I saw them to the door. I watched as the couple buckled the kids into a 1970s Chevy station wagon. It was metallic green with faux wood paneling along the sides, its wheel wells nibbled by rust. Bumper stickers plastered every square inch of the rear hatch, sporting messages like, Peace: Back By Popular Demand and Love your Mother Earth. The station wagon roared to life, engulfing the office in teeth-rattling decibels and a cloud of blue smoke. Then it was gone.

Returning to my desk, I dug out my real estate bible, How to Kick Butt in Real Estate: Six Simple Steps to Becoming a Super-Agent. Step number one told me to invest my time and energy in the top of the market, not the bottom. I sighed and tucked the book away. I wasn’t exactly kicking butt.

Chapter 2

Arlinda is a town of about 15,000 free thinkers and five hundred or so freeloaders. Its shops are arranged with self-conscious prettiness around a square—the Plaza— the length of a city block on each side. At its epicenter is a bronze statue of an embarrassed-looking William McKinley extending his hand to the masses. And the masses came, planting themselves on the green grass of the Plaza to smoke their weed, hawk their glass pipes and glory in their unwashed states. At night, pranksters targeted the 25th president, wrapping him snugly in toilet paper or stuffing string cheese up his nostrils. One year, a vandal snapped off his thumb, but it was mailed in to the police station anonymously and brazed back on so as you’d hardly notice the difference.

On the weekends following Memorial Day, the pipe-sellers disappeared and the Farmer’s Market took over. Local growers laid out their beets, cabbages, cucumbers and broccoli on long trestle tables and sold them directly to the hungry public. Fat heirloom tomatoes rubbed shoulders with crunchy bush beans and dark green kale so fresh you were likely to find a black-spotted potato bug making its way up the juicy stems. Local bands jammed at the base of McKinley’s feet, pumping out hot percussion-driven tunes. Tourists and locals mingled, shopped, and danced.

I was born right down the road from the Plaza at the Arlinda Community Hospital, room 16. My parents took a look at their third girl in a row and decided they were tired of waiting for a son on whom to bestow the family name, so I got the whole thing: Samuel Maxwell Turner, just like my father. My folks have since retired to Phoenix after a quarter of a century in the coastal fog belt, preferring to dehydrate under Arizona’s relentless sun rather than mildew on the North Coast, where two consecutive days of temperatures in the mid-sixties is classified as a heat wave. I suppose when one’s internal thermostat starts to ratchet down, the climate here can feel inhospitable, but it suits me fine. I don’t spend a lot on moisturizer and sunscreen and I prefer it that way.

For all its eccentricities, Arlinda is an appealing place to live. It has giant trees, low crime, big surf, biking and hiking trails galore and even a decent number of jobs, if you aren’t too particular about what you do.

I spent the rest of my floor time organizing my empty files and doodling on my desk calendar. I did a cursory search for Eric and Hannah; the cheapest Arlinda home on the multiple listing service was $249,000. If it would just come down $89,000, we’d be in business.

At 1:59, I was reaching toward the phone to switch it over to our automatic answering system when it rang under my fingertips. I punched a button and snatched up the receiver. Home Sweet Home Realty, Sam Turner speaking.

The woman on the other end didn’t waste time with pleasantries. Are you available tomorrow to show some properties in Arlinda? We’ll be in town only one day.

Be still my heart. "Absolutely. I’m totally free. Totally. Do you know which homes you’d like to see?"

She rattled off a list of addresses that I copied down with feverish haste. All were in the $300-400,000 range. God, what a break. The woman told me she and her husband were looking for something suitable for their daughter, who would be attending Redwood State in the fall.

That’s a great idea, I babbled. Lots of parents do the same thing.

We’ll be at your office at eleven, she said, and hung up.

I replaced the phone, dazzled with my achievement. Two clients in one day! I grabbed a calculator and figured out my commission. Three percent of the sales price, divided by two to give my broker his fifty percent cut, minus E & O, the errors and omissions insurance premium I was required to pay with every transaction. Holy cow, that was a big-ass chunk of change.

Don’t screw this up, Sam, I said by way of a pep talk. Then I locked up the office and hit the road.

As a sales associate, I was required to work for a supervising broker. My real estate bible advised me to interview with at least three brokerages and to jumpstart my career with a national franchise offering proven growth potential. Instead, after one somewhat hostile interview with Redwood Realty up the street, I’d chosen Home Sweet Home.

Looking back, I had to attribute my folly to the Svengali-like personality of Home Sweet Home’s broker, Everett Sweet. His voice on the phone was a lesson in salesmanship: warm, mellifluous and hinting of a rich vein of humor. I’d met him at the office with my list of questions. After a quarter of an hour listening to that mesmerizing voice, I’d dashed off my signature on an employment agreement and handed over my license for his safekeeping, the ink on it barely dry.

The brokerage was housed in the former Wash ‘n’ Dri building on a high-traffic corner south of the Plaza. Everett Sweet had moved his business there about five years previously, and had had a contractor throw up flimsy walls to carve tiny offices out of a space that had once housed industrial-sized washers and dryers. In damp weather, the faint smell of fabric softener still permeated the air.

I shared an office with another agent whom I’d never met, plus Del Tonini, the firm’s property manager. His desk was always cluttered with tools and rental applications, and he kept a toilet snake in a plastic grocery bag in the corner behind his printer/copier combo. There was a three foot square of white pegboard leaning against the wall at the back of his desk holding at least a hundred sets of keys. Each hook was neatly labeled with an address; the guy was organized.

My own desk was particle board veneered in faux oak, with two file drawers on each side and a center drawer for my paper clips. An orange iMac sat back and to the right, with the keyboard placed front and center on my desk calendar. Two pictures of Max, one braced upright in a dollar store frame and one taped to the wall, plus a fake plant in a clay pot, a couple of toys cars and a rack of my business cards completed my desk decor.

Twice a week, I sat in Everett’s office trying to absorb not just the science, but the art of real estate sales. We went over the nuances of the contracts, the procedure for using my lockbox card, the secrets of marketing and getting my name out there. Everett’s advice seldom jived with How to Kick Butt in Real Estate, whose author wanted me to plaster my name and face all over magazines, newspapers, television and shopping carts.

Screw that shit, Everett said. Your most important marketing tool is your business card. Hand it out to everyone you meet. Have a thousand printed up and always keep a handful in your pocket.

I was taken aback at first that his erudite wisdom was often peppered with profanity,