Karin was busy with paperwork for the Bennett’s North
Madison property. She’d been over to the building and found her hunch was
correct. The apartment that hadn’t shown any income was definitely empty, but
it was also clean and ready to rent. So, she was preparing an ad for the local
paper and new lease documents for the buildings. The phone rang.
“Oh, hey Michelle, what’s up?”
“I was going to ask you the same thing.” Michelle said. “Where’ve
you been all weekend?”
“I spent it with Jay, out at his parent’s farm.” Karin said.
“The whole weekend?” Michelle squealed.
“No, not exactly, but mostly yes.” Karin said.
“Eeeek! That’s so awesome. So, what did you do?”
“Mostly we just talked about old times. He cooked for me and
we watched a movie. We just hung out.” Karin said.
“Oh, that is so sweet,” Michelle said.
“He really was.”
“So, are you guys over the whole parental approval issues
then?”
“No, not at all.” Karin said. “He wants me to trust him, and
I want to trust him, but I don’t know how it will ever work. In fact, Troy
Bennett asked me out on Friday and I almost said yes.”
“Troy Bennett? He is twice your age, that would be like
going out with your dad. Gross.” Michelle said.
“He’s not that bad.” Karin said. “He is a really nice guy
and he just buried his mom. I think he was just looking for some company.”
“I still think it’s weird.”
“Yeah, it sort of was weird.” Karin admitted, “but, it’s not
like Dunewood is full of eligible bachelor’s.”
“That is true, but, I think you can do better than some
middle aged divorcee.”
“Anyway, I didn’t say yes. It just got me thinking that
maybe I’m wasting my time waiting for something that I can never have.” Karin
said. “But, on a different note, business is good. I’ve got the Bennett
account, I just got the go ahead to start cleaning up from the fire on First
Street and those are the only vacancies that I have so my numbers are staying
in line.”
“Sounds busy as usual.” Michelle said. “My client just
walked in. Give me a call if you are free for lunch at all this week.”
“Okay, bye” Karin hung up the phone and returned to the pile
of papers on her desk. She had driven over to the North Madison property that
morning and caught a few of the tenants at home. She always liked to meet the
tenants in person, so that they would have a face to go with the name on the
letterhead when she began to correspond with them. It wouldn’t make a
difference in every case, but she believed that tenants were more likely to
respond positively to her if they saw her as a real person doing a job rather
than just a name. She planned to schedule extra time around the showings of the
empty unit to try and meet the other tenants.
Karin was on the phone with the Dunewood press, placing a
classified ad when another call came through. She let the call waiting beep and
allowed the call to revert to voice mail while she finished placing her ad.
When she hung up, the phone rang again before she could dial in to check the
voice mail message center.
“Hello, Troy. How are you this morning?” Karin said.
“Good. I just called because I forgot to tell you that the
garage behind building one and the basement are both full of my dad’s stuff. He
never rented those areas out to anyone, but used the basement for storage and
an office. The garage was his workshop, he did all the maintenance on the
properties himself.” Troy said.
“Yes, I remember your mom telling me that.”
“After he died, my mom hired that Roger guy, the same one
that you use, I think, and Dad’s tools have just been sitting in the garage
ever since.”
“Troy, I’m really glad you called, this is important
information. I’m glad to know that Roger is already familiar with the property.”
Karin said. “What do you want to do with the space now?”
“I don’t know. I have to talk with my brothers and sisters.”
Karin thought she heard Troy’s voice crack just slightly. “They’ll probably
just want to clean it out and sell everything.”
“Alright, well, there’s no rush on my end. It doesn’t
interfere with my job in any way.” Karin said.
“Okay, I just wanted to let you know.”
“Great. While I have you on the phone, I did go over to the
house this morning and the unit we talked about is empty, and I just got off
the phone with the Press to place an ad for it. I’m sure I can get it rented
pretty quickly.” Karin said.
“Oh, good. I’m sorry that I didn’t know more about the place
when I hired you.”
“It’s fine.” Karin said. Troy’s voice sounded especially
worn out this morning. There was a part of her that wanted to reach out to him
and be a friend, but she also wanted to be cautious not to send the wrong
message and have him think she was romantically interested. It was such a fine
line to walk. “Things are going to work out just fine, Troy. Don’t worry. I’ll
take care of things there and let you know if there’s anything I need.”
“Alright, well, goodbye then.”
“Goodbye Troy.”
Karin looked at the clock and put away her paperwork. She packed
a bag with grubby clothes for working in and packed some basic cleaning
supplies in the back of her car, just in case the adjuster was willing to let
her start cleaning right away. She hung up the Closed sign and headed down to
First Street.
She ran through the McDonald’s drive thru and ate a sandwich
on the way. She finished her sandwich parked outside the house, and then popped
a couple of mints to freshen up her breath. She took photos of the exterior of
the house while she waited for the adjuster to show.
Max LaLane introduced himself when he arrived. He had dark
curly hair and a thick beard and mustache. Karin thought he looked more like a
sailor than an insurance adjuster, but she’d never had to work with an adjuster
before, so she hadn’t really known what to expect.
“It’s nice to meet you.” She said politely. She usually made
small talk with everyone, but he made her nervous, not because of his
appearance or demeanor, but just because of the job he had to do. If he gave
her numbers that were lower than she could get the work done for, she was going
to be doing a lot of it herself and cutting into her profits, so she wanted to
be careful not to say anything that might have an effect on how he calculated
his numbers.
Inside the downstairs apartment, the fire damage was visibly
contained to the bathroom, but smoke had damaged every inch of the place. Karin
and Max both worked silently, shooting pictures and taking notes. Karin’s
camera moved to the couch where she could see the outline of her mother’s body
in the smoke stained fabric. On the floor, she saw the tipped over clear
bottle. She didn’t need to check the label, she knew it was gin. There was a
full ash tray on the floor beside the bottle. Karin noticed two different
brands of cigarettes in the ash tray.
“Well, at least you didn’t finish that fifth by yourself.”
Karin thought. But, she was thankful that her mother’s guest, whoever he was,
was not involved in the fire.
When they went upstairs, they saw that the fire had moved up
the walls of the house rather than spreading wide, so the upstairs bathroom
which was right above the downstairs bathroom had the most fire damage as well.
The smoke damage was less intense in the upper unit, but still quite severe.
“Have you had a lot of experience with this type of damage?”
Karin asked Max when they were back outside.
“Yes, fire damage is all I’ve done for the last fifteen
years.” He answered.
“Wow, I didn’t know there were that many fires around here.”
“I cover the western half of the state.” Max explained.
“Oh, that makes sense.” Karin said nodding. “So, how does
this place compare to other’s you’ve seen?”
“Well, it’s still standing. The structure doesn’t appear to
be compromised, so I will be recommending repair rather than demolition, but
that’s all I can tell you for sure today.”
“Can I let the tenants in to try and salvage their personal
items, and start getting things cleaned out?” Karin asked.
“Sure, go ahead. I have all the information that I need from
here. I’ll have more information for you tomorrow. Is this still a good number
to reach you at?” Max held out his clipboard with her name and phone number at
the top.
“Yes.”
“Do you have an alternate number you’d like to add?” Karin
nodded and gave Max her cell phone number.
“You should start getting estimates for the repairs right
away and I should be able to tell you tomorrow how much we will be covering.”
Karin called Roger as soon as Max was gone and told him to
come right over. She grabbed the cleaning supplies and her backpack from the
car and went inside. She changed in her mother’s bedroom and hung her clothes
up in Virginia’s closet.
Karin grabbed the box of garbage bags and opened one. She
put on a pair of gloves and starting pitching things from the floor into the
bag. She worked fast and forcefully, venting her anger with her mother into
every piece of trash and food and clothing that her mother had left all over
the floor. Then, she heard Roger’s voice from the living room.
“Hey, what are you doing? Your face is bright red.” Roger
said when he saw her.
“I’m just cleaning up,” she answered, a little embarrassed. “I
must have gotten hot in there.”
“Well, be careful, and drink lots of water. You don’t want
to overheat here all by yourself.” Roger said gently. He had been the
maintenance man for the Marquette’s when they were alive and was a good friend
of their family. He’d been fixing up old houses and finding creative ways to
keep things working without breaking the bank for over fifty years.
“Thanks Roger, that’s really good advice.” Karin answered. “Most
of the damage is in the bathrooms, both here and upstairs. The upstairs
apartment is unlocked if you want to go up there, but the tenant is on her way
over with her guy to try and collect on her renter’s insurance. I’m going to
keep cleaning up. Holler if you have any questions.” Karin went back to the
bedroom, and continued throwing things away, but with a little less force.
Roger had a list of repairs that he would need to make along
with supplies and an estimate for labor within an hour.
“I padded the labor some, because it’s a bigger job than I
can do myself so I’ll have to hire some guys and you know that they don’t all
work as fast as we’d like them to.” Roger said.
“Thanks for getting this done so fast,” Karin said. “I
really appreciate it. The insurance adjuster is supposed to give me a spending
limit tomorrow.”
“Well, make sure that you are adding in all of your hours
too.”
“Right now I’m just cleaning up Virginia’s mess.” Not
everyone knew that Virginia was Karin’s mother, but Roger did.
“That doesn’t matter. You work, you get paid. Mr. Marquette
wouldn’t have it any other way.”
“Yes sir,” Karin said. Roger left and she went back to
cleaning up the bedroom. Whether she turned in any hours for it or not, she
felt she had to clean up Virginia’s mess herself, she couldn’t ask anyone else
to do it.
She soon got over the stench of the smoke and was numb to the amount
of garbage that had accumulated around the apartment. For awhile, Karin had
been bringing her lunch to the apartment as an excuse to see how Virginia was
keeping up with the house, her lack of housekeeping skills had been a problem
for as long as Karin could remember. She would schedule time each day to have
lunch and do some general picking up, wash dishes, put away some laundry, take
out the trash and so on. Then, she got busier and only came a couple times each
week and now, as she entered into her busiest season she just hadn’t made time
to visit her mother. She knew she would have to clean up the garbage, and she
accepted that.
It was the bottles that got to her, the seemingly endless
bottles of alcohol, mostly empty or near empty, but everywhere, piles in the
closet, hidden in the dresser drawers, behind the couch and in every cupboard
in the kitchen. She filled bag after bag with bottles and she kept herself from
crying. The sun set along the gorgeous western coast at the edge of the town of
Dunewood, Michigan while thousands of tourists watched from their boats and
beach houses and towels in the sand, and Karin just kept finding more and more
bottles and filling more and more bags.
As the apartment began to get dark, she returned to Virginia’s
bedroom, where it was the cleanest. She pulled back the blankets and the
mattress itself was generally undamaged. In the bottom drawer of the dresser,
Karin found a set of sheets that were virtually untouched from the fire except
for a slight scent of smoke. She lay the sheet out across the top of the
mattress and as the last bit of sunlight streamed in through the window, she
lay down on top of the sheet, curled into a fetal position and cried out.
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