Page 18 of Speak of the Devil

“Then you’ll be able to provide any advice I might need,” Caleb said, still appearing utterly unfazed.

She thought he might change his tune once he took a look at the place and realized he was going to have to drop at leastanother hundred grand just to get it put back together, but he was the client. That was his decision to make.

“All right,” she said, and scooped up the listings for the other three houses so she could return them to their folder. “Let’s go take a look.”

From the outside, the house didn’t appear too bad. Yes, the lawn was a dry yellow mess, the palm trees planted to one side desperately needed to be trimmed, and the tree to the right of the front walk had been neglected for so long that it was now more an enormous bush than anything else, but the house itself seemed all right, except for needing a new roof and some paint.

Inside, though…well, that was an entirely different matter.

“You weren’t joking,” Caleb said after she’d retrieved the key from the lockbox and let them inside. “It looks like they’ve been testing missiles in here.”

Immediately past the large double doors was a wilderness of exposed two-by-fours, stacks of drywall, and pallets of tile and flooring. The new stainless-steel appliances sat in the middle of the living room, looking forlorn.

“I’m not much for sugarcoating things,” Delia replied. No, she’d much rather a client knew the worst and made a decision based on all the available information rather than think they were inheriting a turnkey home.

Not that the best iPhone filters in the world could have made this place look like anything except the construction zone it truly was.

“Still….”

Caleb stood in the middle of the space, hands on his hips, and didn’t seem too daunted by what he saw. The flotsam andjetsam everywhere couldn’t hide the way the light streamed into the room from a pair of oversized sliders that opened onto the yard — a yard that backed up to a golf course, providing lots of green, relaxing views from every window at the rear of the house.

Nodding as he went, as if ticking off every project he detected, he headed toward the kitchen, which was another huge, empty space except for a refrigerator big enough to be used in a commercial kitchen, as well as a few pipes sticking out of the floor.

“Is that where the island is supposed to go?” he asked, pointing at the exposed plumbing, and Delia nodded.

“Yes. The plumbing and electrical have been roughed in and passed inspection, so at least you won’t have to deal with that. However, all the other rooms have been just as gutted and need to be rebuilt from the ground up.”

He was silent for a moment, dark eyes surveying the space. Once it was all put back together, it would be spectacular, thanks to the second set of sliding doors that opened from the breakfast nook and let even more light pour into the space.

“How much?” he asked, and Delia blinked at him.

“Well, they’re asking five-fifty, but I think we can talk them down, considering how long the place has been on the market.”

Caleb sent her a smile that was almost but not quite indulgent. “No, I meant to finish all the renovations.”

A bit of color touched her cheek, even as she told herself it had been an honest mistake. “Probably a hundred grand at least. A lot more if you want the place to be as authentic as possible.”

“A restoration versus a renovation?”

Delia nodded, feeling a bit more sure of herself now. “Right. The floors have all been pulled up, but you can see in the corners where it used to be terrazzo. It went out of fashion for a while, but now people who’re restoring these mid-century homes like to install the real deal if it’s in their budget. But even if youonly did the ground floor and put in wood or luxury vinyl plank upstairs and down in the lower level, it would still probably double the flooring budget.”

A lot of people would have blinked or showed some sort of reaction at the thought of paying close to fifty grand for flooring, but Caleb only nodded, looking thoughtful. “How would that affect the resale?”

“Hard to say,” Delia replied. “Putting in terrazzo isn’t the same thing as adding a bathroom or a bedroom. A lot of the time, it comes down to what the buyer is looking for. But I’d probably recommend going with wood floors throughout, just because it’ll still look spectacular while appealing to a larger group of prospective buyers.”

He seemed content with that answer, because he only nodded again and then asked to see the upstairs.

So she showed him the rest of the house, which, as she’d already warned, was just as torn apart as the kitchen and the living room. However, he seemed impressed with the size of the place, which included four bedrooms and four bathrooms, along with that huge bonus room — or man cave, or kids hangout — on the lower level next to the garage.

“I can see the potential,” he said once they’d come back up to the main level. “It doesn’t feel very haunted, though.”

No, it didn’t. The whole time they’d been exploring the property, she’d allowed that sixth sense — or whatever you wanted to call it — to range outward a bit, trying to see if she could detect even the slightest wisp of a ghostly presence.

She hadn’t felt a damn thing.

That was the problem with ghosts, though. They didn’t always manifest when you wanted them to, and a place that could be absolutely rife with spirit activity for one family or group of people could be silent as the grave…pardon the expression…for another.

“Well, we’re just walking around,” she said lightly. “So the spirit might not consider us disruptive or a threat. I’ll bet if we started putting up drywall, we might experience something.”

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