Smith's Monthly #24 Read online

  “And then?” he asked, smiling at her.

  “Then,” she said, taking his arm and turning him toward the gym door, “if you’re a really good boy, I’ll let you blow your horn again.”

  “I like that idea a lot,” he said, smiling back at her.

  The end of the world had never sounded so good.

  Sometimes, what we all wish for can happen in the Twilight Zone.

  Other times, our wishes come true on just a simple suburban street.

  Caro Rosefield must investigate a very strange foreclosed home. A nightmare or maybe a new future?

  On Bryant Street, anything seems possible. And anything can happen.

  FOR YOUR CONSIDERATION

  A Bryant Street Story

  ONE

  Caro Rosefield parked his rented Chevy Suburban near the curb of the quiet suburban street in a newer subdivision on the edge of the urban sprawl of Boise, Idaho. He left the engine running to keep the air-conditioning on since the temperature outside had just gone past one hundred and he didn’t do well with heat. It made him light-headed and often sick.

  The forecast for the Boise Valley was even hotter tomorrow. He hated July in general and he really hated it here in city plopped between a desert and a mountain.

  He had his suit jacket in the back seat, his briefcase on the passenger floor, and the foreclosure paperwork for the house he was parked in front of on the seat beside him. Usually he never did anything without that jacket on, but it was just too hot to wear.

  A couple of his friends teased him that since he had finished college he was never seen out of a suit. And dressing down for him was taking off the jacket. Caro had laughed at the ribbing, but it had hit home.

  He didn’t used to be like this. He liked backwoods biking and playing softball. But he’d been so busy lately, he couldn’t even drag his six foot frame out to see his oldest daughter play softball. He kept his hair short now, but in college it had been long, and now he was even getting a pot gut from sitting so much, something he hated but couldn’t seem to find the time to do anything about.

  He had three homes in this city his employer, Secured Construction and Management, wanted him to deal with. They had bought hundreds of foreclosed homes around the west. And were buying more every day for next to nothing and then flipping them. They were making money off the misery of families who had lost everything.

  His job was to get the foreclosed homes in shape to sell. He was what they called “Shoes on the ground.”

  After he got these three homes here worked around, he could be back on the plane and out of this heat, back to his home in Portland, Oregon, where the normal color was green instead of dried brown.

  He hated being away from his home and his family so much, especially his two daughters. They were getting to that age where things were changing every day, and if he blinked twice, they would be grown and gone and he will have missed them growing up completely.

  He hated that the most about this job, but in these times, any job was a good job. Someone had to pay the mortgage and buy the clothes.

  He checked the address on the paperwork one more time, then studied the split-level home that was his assignment at the moment. Nice home, about four thousand square feet, two levels, three bathrooms, large lot, two-car garage.

  But this house looked to be a problem. A huge problem in fact. In three years of getting repossessed houses ready to show for sale for his company, he had never seen anything like what he was seeing now.

  The house was already perfect.

  In fact, the first time he had spotted the address, he figured he was on the wrong street.

  But he wasn’t. The house was 2761 Bryant Street.

  He was on Bryant Street. Right town, right state, right legal description, everything. And the house had 2761 in clear numbers on the siding near the front door.

  He picked up the stack of white papers and checked the address one more time.

  Yup. That was the exact address on the papers that said this house used to belong to a couple named Davis who had lost it to First Trust Equity a year ago. First Trust Equity had then gone out of business and sold the house to his company four months ago. He had been put on the job to get the house ready to sell. He was to hire a team of local contractors and cleaners, get it into shape, clear out any signs of the previous owners who had lost the home, and then get the property listed with a local reality company.

  But this house was clearly not empty as it was supposed to be.

  The lawn had been freshly mowed and a paint truck was parked in the driveway. A paint crew of three men was actively working on a new coat of tan paint.

  He had heard of people squatting in empty, bank-owned properties before, but never painting them. Something was very, very wrong here and he had a hunch he wasn’t going to figure it out quickly.

  In fact, more than likely this problem might be something for the lawyers to untangle.

  Someone, somewhere, had screwed up and he was about to tell that fact to the fine people in this well-kept home that they clearly cared for.

  Damn he didn’t want to do that. He wasn’t supposed to deal with people other than painters and cleaners and real estate agents. Never owners or squatters.

  He had heard of things like this, just never been a part of it before.

  He wished on this hot July afternoon, he wasn’t a part of it now.

  TWO

  He glanced down the road. Four homes had sale signs in yards and all four seemed empty, lawns not watered or cut, and one empty house two doors down the street had a garage door that looked like it needed replaced. None of those homes were his concern. At least this trip. The way housing prices were dropping in this city, he had no doubt he would be back.

  He hoped that next trip it wouldn’t be so damned hot.

  The house two doors up the street was the kind of place he expected to find here at 2761 Bryant Street. Not a well-kept two-story being freshly painted.

  He leaned back into the blowing stream of air-conditioning and studied the place. Clearly the water was on since the lawn was a lush green and the power was turned on as well, since one of the painters had a compressor plugged in and working.

  Water and power companies did not do that for squatters, only home owners who could actually prove ownership.

  “Oh, damn,” he said to himself. “What a mess.”

  He let the cool air blow over him for another moment, then said, “Better get this over with.”

  He shut off the car and decided to just leave his jacket in the back seat. He even left the paperwork on the seat and just took his company business card with him. He had a hunch this wouldn’t go well and he would be on the phone in a few minutes letting the company lawyers sort it all out.

  He climbed out into the hot afternoon air. The heat wrapped around him like a choking rope that made his throat dry and his skin feel like it was flaking off.

  His sweat didn’t even last on his forehead it was so dry and hot.

  How could anyone live in this kind of heat?

  He headed for the front door, feeling like he was in a modern Twilight Zone episode. He had spent a lot of nights in hotel rooms watching old episodes of that show.

  He could almost imagine Rod Serling standing off to one side of the freshly-mowed yard, smoking a cigarette, looking at the camera, saying, “For your consideration, one Mr. Caro Rosefield, hard worker, by-the-numbers kind of man, now faced with a dilemma pitting a corporation against a family’s home. Mr. Caro Rosefield, the first shot of a war that can be seen being waged every day, not in the Twilight Zone, but on every street in every city just like this one.”

  Caro shook his head. The heat was getting to him. He hoped like hell Rod Serling wasn’t standing over there talking like that. This situation was strange enough as it was.

  He rang the bell as the guy with the paint gun moved around to the far side of the house. How was it even possible to paint in heat like this?

  A young
, smiling woman answered the door and a man in a golf shirt and blue slacks appeared a moment later behind her.

  She looked to be thirty and had on a blue summer dress that accented her clearly athletic body. Her long blonde hair was pulled back and tied and she had a smile that lit up the area around her.

  Her husband looked more like a golf professional than anything else, with a short-sleeved Izod shirt and blue slacks. He had close-cropped brown hair and also a smile on his face.

  Both had good tans and looked like models out of a sports magazine.

  “Yes?” she said.

  Caro stuck out his hand and gave his full name, then handed them his business card.

  “Come on in out of the heat and the paint fumes,” she said and held the door open for him.

  He stepped inside and was hit with a shift in temperature of at least thirty degrees. It felt heavenly and made him break out into an instant sweat.

  “Thank you,” he said, sighing as she closed the door behind him. “I’m from Oregon. Just not used to this heat.”

  The entryway showed a clean home with a living room of modern and expensive furniture, all tastefully organized. Through the windows, Caro could see the back yard was as well taken care of as the front.

  These people had clearly lived here for a long time. A very long time.

  The husband stuck out his hand. “Ben Davis. This is my wife, Stephanie. What can we do for you, Mr. Rosefield?”

  Suddenly Caro knew what was happening. Ben and Stephanie Davis had been the names on the property before First Equity foreclosed. More than likely these fine people had been paying their mortgage all along and the payments had gone into some scam or another.

  This was worse than he thought. These people were about to have one of the worst days of their entire life. And he was the one who had to deliver the message.

  “I’m afraid I don’t know how to even approach this,” Caro said.

  “It’s about the house, isn’t it?” Stephanie said, smiling, not looking worried in the slightest. “Come on into the kitchen and we’ll talk and I’ll get us some lemonade.”

  Caro nodded, feeling even more puzzled then he had before. Maybe Rod Serling really had been standing out there on the driveway.

  “I’d love that,” he said and followed them into the kitchen that looked like it had been remodeled recently with new granite counters and state-of-the-art appliances.

  One area had a counter surrounded by stools with a large bowl of fruit in the center of the counter top.

  “Nice,” he said, indicating the kitchen as Stephanie poured him a large glass of lemonade out of a pitcher and Ben sat on a counter stool.

  “It’s amazing how much work you can do on a house,” Ben said, smiling, “when you don’t have to pay mortgage payments every month.”

  Caro stared at Ben. “Then you know why I’m here?”

  “Oh, sure, about the house,” Stephanie said, still smiling. She sat down on another bar stool and slid her husband a large glass of ice water and cradled a second in her hands.

  “Sit, enjoy your drink. We can talk about it,” Ben said. “We’ve worked with banks before. In fact, I worked at Idaho’s largest bank before I was laid off three years ago. I know how the system works.”

  “Yeah, you’re here to get the house into shape to be sold,” Stephanie said. “Right?”

  Caro stared at her and then at her husband while nodding. Usually someone about to be kicked out of their home would be angry. These two just seemed pleased that he was here like they never had guests. He had to be careful about what he said. These two were clearly nuts.

  Caro sat on the offered bar stool and took a deep sip from his lemonade. It tasted wonderful. The perfect drink for this kind of hot day.

  “So tell me?” he asked, taking another sip and then putting the glass down on the counter. “Why aren’t you two upset that your home is about to be sold out from under you?”

  “Oh, it’s not going to be,” Ben said, smiling. Then he turned to Stephanie. “Which house on the street do you think we should have cleaned up and sold next?”

  “Oh, the Benson’s old place of course,” Stephanie said. “That garage door damage just isn’t doing the look of the neighborhood any good at all.”

  Caro just stared at her. He was right. She was nuts, completely nuts.

  Ben turned to Caro. “You saw the house two doors down?”

  Caro nodded. “Sure I did, but that’s not the address on my paperwork. This is the address.”

  “Oh, I know that,” Ben said. “But that’s the place you are going to have your clean-up crews go and fix up and paint and let your company sell. Stephanie can even help them pick out colors, can’t you dear?” Ben said.

  “I’m really good at colors,” Stephanie said, nodding and smiling.

  “And why would I do that?” Caro asked, now starting to worry that these two might really be dangerous.

  “You got a mortgage, Mr. Rosefield?”

  “I do,” he said.

  “And when you saw us in this wonderful home, even doing painting, what did you think?”

  “That there had been a massive screw-up somewhere.”

  “Exactly,” Ben said, still smiling like he had just won the lottery. “You thought we had been paying our mortgage regularly for years and some bank somewhere had taken advantage of us. Right?”

  “I did,” Caro said. “Is that the case?”

  “Of course not,” Ben said, laughing. “We haven’t paid a cent of mortgage for over three years now, and have no intention of ever paying again. In truth, we own this house completely.”

  “We’re just trying to get the rest of the homes along Bryant Street cleaned up,” Stephanie said. “We want to get some new neighbors, get things back to normal on our little street of dreams.”

  Caro wanted to call it more like a street of nightmares and nut-balls, but he didn’t say anything. The lawyers were going to have a field day with this one.

  “And you and your company would really help out if you would clean up that mess two doors down,” Ben said.

  Caro just shook his head. “I don’t think you understand completely. I’m here for this house.”

  “Oh, we understand completely,” Ben said. “But let me show you something. Remember, I worked for a major bank in their mortgage funding area for ten years. I know how all this works.”

  He climbed off the bar stool and indicated Caro should follow him.

  Caro wasn’t sure if he should or make a bolt for the front door, but decided he needed to understand just what these people thought they could do to stay mortgage free here. That way he could let his company lawyers know the scam these two crazies were trying to pull.

  THREE

  Ben led him through the entry way and off the living room into a large side office with a huge computer system with at least five large monitors.

  “Ben makes us a lot of money here trading stocks,” Stephanie said, smiling.

  “I could teach you,” Ben said to Caro. “If down the road you are interested in getting out of your job.”

  “Thanks,” Caro said. “But show me why you are not concerned about why I am here.”

  “Glad to,” Ben said, sitting down in a high-backed chair and indicating Caro should come around and stand beside him to watch.

  “Sweetie,” Ben said to Stephanie, “would you make sure of the address on the old Benson place?”

  “Glad to,” Stephanie said and turned and headed out the front door as Ben clicked his computer screens out of sleep mode.

  On the screen was all the paperwork Caro had for this property and his trip here. Every bit of it, including the house paperwork, his flight times, rental car agreement.

  Everything.

  “We knew you were coming,” Ben said, smiling. “It’s why Stephanie made lemonade and we have steaks for the grill with corn and a salad if you want to stay for dinner.”

  Caro opened his mouth, but couldn’t think o
f a thing to say, so he just closed it again and just kept staring at the paperwork on the main screen. More than anything now he wanted to run for the front door and maybe the closest police station, but his feet stayed planted beside Ben’s chair.

  Ben pulled up all the paperwork and history for his house on a second screen and pointed to it. “You see, your company bought this a year ago, but the reality is that the people they bought this house from didn’t actually own it either.”

  Ben pointed at another area of the screen. “I changed that and put this house into the pool for your company so we could get you here today. We didn’t know it would be you, of course. But someone from your company would come knocking on the door eventually. It took almost seven months, pretty fast these days.”

  “You put your own house in a foreclosure auction?” Caro asked, stunned. This guy really, really, really was crazy.

  “Oh, sure,” Ben said, his fingers dancing over the keys. “Actually, this property is owned by three other companies like yours as well. As I said, we’re just trying to get the neighborhood cleaned up.”

  On one side screen the address and property description of 2761 Bryant Street showed that it was on three other foreclosure sales and notices.

  “How can you do that?” Caro asked, his voice choking. “How is that even possible?”

  Ben laughed. “As I said, I worked in this area of banking for a decade. I was their computer tech, so they figured I wasn’t needed when they downsized. It is stunningly easy in this mess of foreclosures to shift properties around.”

  “And the state records and recording?”

  Ben laughed even harder and pulled up the state records showing that the home Caro was in was actually owned by four different companies and also Ben and Stephanie Davis. It showed Ben and Stephanie as not having a lien on the property at all.

  Caro leaned against the chair. “This is crazy,” he said. “You are crazy.”