Knockoff Rembrandt - Chapter Four Jake Burbank mystery thriller

CHAPTER FOUR

Jake started thinking about Unc when he woke up.

The familiar fog was there, the rushing throb of a headache that beat in time with his heart.

He was so used to it by now that he only noticed when it was gone.

He kept on thinking as he puttered around the trailer, moving from the queen size bed under the curved roof on one end to the full size sofa under the picture window on the other.

Thirty feet or so, but the different space didn’t offer any clarity.

He hated Sundays.

Amanda kept the bar closed on Sunday.

She said she needed a day off.

And laughed when Jake asked for a key so he could go in and drink by himself.

Told him he could drink at home, which he did, but it wasn’t the same.

Nothing was.

He could hear the cars on the road from here.

The street wasn’t busy, just enough traffic to remind him he wasn’t alone.

Hell, maybe he missed the sound of construction across the street. The damned real estate development had been going in and up for the past eighteen months, long enough for him to get used to it.

Like the headache.

He didn’t know he’d miss it when it was gone.

“Screw that noise,” he pulled on a pair of pants and slipped his feet into a pair of boots.

They were new, because all of his old stuff burned down with his farmhouse.

He opened the door and peeked through the gray screen at a bright morning.

Didn’t seem right for the sun to keep shining after the way he’d watch a man get shot yesterday.

But that’s the way the world worked.

People got shot and the earth kept spinning and seven billion other lives kept going.

There was no circle of life, not where man was concerned.

There was just a stupid accident that left them with more questions than he knew what to do with.

He stepped out into the driveway and stared up at the house.

Some owner had painted it pink in the past, claiming it was true to the Victorian era roots.

Another had painted it white, and still another a light green.

The weather and time decided to chip away at various pieces until the exterior was a cobbled together collection of pastels, sun faded and rain washed.

It was not pretty.

The lines were there, the gables and scalloped trim. She looked like she had been a grand old queen once, squatting on the corner five blocks from Main Street.

Now she faced the railroad tracks on one side and industrial buildings on the other, from when the government took a bunch of dilapidated house and tore them down to put up squat brick structures that reminded him in of concrete chicken shacks.

“What were you thinking?” he asked himself and fished out a key from inside the door.

He almost blamed Deonte.

The man said he had a place he could stay, which was the trailer and a place he could buy, which was the historic Knox House. It came with half a city block of property, a shed they knocked over to make room for the Airstream and a promise to fix it up.

There was city money involved, thanks to Deonte’s cousin, and federal tax credits thanks to historic societies and preservation groups.

Jake found himself in the middle of it thanks to paperwork and promises.

He wanted to haul the trailer out to the soot stained ground that once housed his farm home, but the developer across the street made noise about a lien on the land.

He didn’t want the Airstream to bring down property values.

He opened the oak back door and pushed inside.

It smelled like must and dust and age, stale air and old paint.

The house had been many things in her life, but the most recent incarnation was boarded up boarding house turned apartments.

The scent of a hundred transient tenants clung to the peeling wallpaper, most of it painted over in industrial white.

“Nothing to it but to do it,” Jake said aloud.

His words fell flat in the stale air.

He turned around and went back to the trailer for a legal pad and a pen, and opened the front door and pried open four windows on the ground floor to air the place out.

He made notes with neat precise writing as he took inventory of a to do list.

Most of it involved gutting.

The wiring would need to be brought up to code. He could see insulated strips peeling through holes in the wall.

Same for the pipes.

He imagined taking it down to the bare bones and knew there were structural issues. These old houses always had them.

The oak in the back yard would have shot roots to wrap around the cast iron sewage pipe, so that would need to be replaced to the city lines.

He made a note.

Each room got a detailed look and write up.

He wasn’t sure he was up for all of it, but maybe if he talked it over with Deonte’s cousin, they could come up with a plan.

“Sections,” he told himself when he wondered how he would pay for it.

Property values around here weren’t skyrocketing by any means, but when the downtown renewal was complete, he expected it might.

Combine that with sensible planning and use of grant money, and maybe the old queen could become a showpiece again.

He wasn’t sure what he would do with her then.

“Cross that bridge,” he told himself.

The stairs needed reworked and refinished, after a couple of knock down interior walls came out.
He checked the upstairs, the floor creaking and groaning under each step.

A second set of stairs wound from what once had been the Master Suite to the kitchen, but Jake spied an egress that was blocked off.

He worked at the corner of a board with one finger until he got some purchase, then pried it off.

The ancient nails were brown with age and rust, and screamed when he pulled the board from the wall.

The second one came easier and he could see the stairs going up, into the third floor attic.

There was no history on the house, nothing written anyway, but Jake knew there was no other access, which meant no one had been up there since this way was blocked.

Or he figured that, because he couldn’t find another way up.

He went back to the trailer again and hunted for a flashlight, but came up empty, so he walked around the exterior of the house.

Three of the gables were set on the third floor direct, which meant the attic got light.

He just wasn’t sure how much.

The window panes looked solid, and he couldn’t see any breaks in the roof to indicate any wild animal was calling the space home.

He grabbed a hammer and went back up, just to take a look around.

A third board came off and he could step onto the stairs.

His heart beat a little faster, wondering if the wooden slats would hold him as he made the twelve steps up into the attic.

Light came in through the windows, casting a soft glow over the wooden floor.

The attic ran the length of the house, with tall ceilings canted high walls that matched the contour of the roof.

He spied a couple of wooden trunks in a corner, with some framed paintings resting behind them, and a row of cardboard boxes on the other wall.

Several had spilled open as heat and humidity played with the cardboard, breaking it down. Their contents spilled across the thick dust that covered the floor. Cobwebs floated in the light from the windows.

It was like a time capsule, he thought as he stepped onto the floor.

It stirred up a cloud of dust that tickled his throat.

He decided it would be better to explore with more light, and after a drink.

Or better with a drink.

He wrote a quick note on his pad.

Turn attic into master suite, and went to get one.