Page 16 of Ten Beach Road

Seven

“Look out!”

The bird dipped so low over their heads that Nicole could feel the air its wings displaced as it flew past them, just missed John Franklin, and shot out the open front door. Inhaling in surprise, the smell that assaulted Nicole’s nose made her want to bail out with the bird.

She took another breath because there was no alternative and drew in a lungful of heavy air that smelled like a bathing suit that had been rolled up wet, stuffed in a suitcase, and then forgotten.

“Oh, my God!” Madeline pinched her nose shut with her fingers. Her brown eyes were large with panic.

Nicole cleared her throat. Avery did the same beside her. The Realtor stepped into the center of the foyer, which was large and square, and somehow managed to breathe normally. “It’s been closed up for quite a while,” was his only concession to the stench. “Let me open a couple of windows and let some fresh air in.”

None of them answered, but Madeline and Avery were wearing the same kicked-in-the-gut look that Nicole felt on her own face. They hadn’t made it past the foyer and already it was clear that the old lady had a lot more wrong with her than blotchy skin.

Above them hung a rusted iron chandelier choked with dust and trailing cobwebs. Beneath their feet the wood floors were scratched and scuffed and stained with lighter spots where furniture must have once stood. A wooden staircase angled up to the second floor, gap-toothed with missing spindles, its surface chipped and peeling. The once-white walls were speckled with yellow age spots and amoeba-shaped stains.

John Franklin took a spot beneath the chandelier and began pointing out the home’s features as if they weren’t all gasping for breath while trying not to breathe, and beginning to feel like even bigger victims than they’d been when they arrived.

According to their “tour guide,” the central hallway stretching to the back of the house was a classic Mediterranean Revival feature as were the wide arched openings that ran along both sides. It all sounded quite lovely except that the whole place smelled like that rolled-up bathing suit—dank and sodden. Despite the open front door, the large fixed glass on the landing, and the vast number of uncovered windows, the bright sunlight outside seemed no match for the accumulated layers of dirt and grime.

Madeline, the hausfrau in the white capris, ran a hand over a squared knob of the banister and came away with a palm full of dust and grit, which she stared at woefully.

“What a shame,” Avery, whom she’d mentally christened the little blonde with the big bust, said. “I don’t know how anyone, even Malcolm Dyer, could neglect a house like this.”

Nicole wondered if Malcolm had ever actually set foot here or had simply purchased it to add to his investment portfolio. He’d started buying up estates and properties shortly after he’d made his first million—a milestone they’d celebrated together and of which Nicole had been exceedingly proud. For children who’d been evicted from as many places as they had, owning anything was huge. Owning homes as large and larger than this had been a validation of just how far her little brother had managed to come.

“Yes, it’s a fine old home,” the Realtor said as if their surprise had been of joy. “And as you’ll see a large portion of it has been renovated. It just needs a little tender loving care.”

“More like hospitalization,” Nicole said. “Or a team of paramedics.”

Relentlessly positive, John Franklin led them through the downstairs with its large rectangular rooms and ceilings beamed with Florida cypress, pointing out the architectural details with great delight. They toured the formal living room with fireplace, the study/library, the salon, the formal dining room, a lounge with an elaborately tiled bar, Moorish decor, and torn leather banquettes, then speed-walked through a kitchen that had clearly been modernized in a blaze of Formica—sometime in the 1970s.

He gestured toward an open-air loggia that stretched between the kitchen and the waterfront salon. The French doors that spanned the back of the house would have undoubtedly provided a fabulous view if they hadn’t been quite so caked with grime and salt. Nicole tried to make out the detached garage and pool and beyond that the narrow pass, where the bay and Gulf met, but it was like being inside a somewhat murky aquarium; everything outside the glass was vague and out of focus.

Franklin continued his monologue as he led them through another archway and up the back stairs, but Nicole was too numb to process anything besides the fact that this house was in no condition to be listed for sale. Her partners’ faces reflected the same mixture of horror and disappointment.

Upstairs was more of the same. They found the escaped birds’ nest in a corner of the master bedroom just beneath one of many grime-stained windows that were either missing panes or didn’t quite close. The room had been enlarged at some point, and with its dressing area and master bath filled with funky green tile and ancient fixtures, it took up the whole west side of the upper floor. But the plaster had fallen off a sodden section of the ceiling, where shards of daylight and blue sky could be seen, and lay in clumps on the floor, which was covered in a moldy pile of green shag carpet undoubtedly installed at the same time as the kitchen.

They saw three more bedrooms and two more funkilytiled bathrooms as Franklin expounded on the damned Florida cypress, the tile and woodwork, the stone accents, the house’s symmetry and generous proportions. The 1920s hardware, dull and scratched though it was, might have been the crown jewels. At least in his eyes the broken windowpanes, dripping sinks, flaking chrome, and peeling wallpapers, along with the other countless signs of age and neglect, simply didn’t exist.

“They just don’t build houses like this anymore,” John Franklin said as he led them back into the master bedroom. “Not at any price.”

“You’ve got to be kidding.” Nicole crossed her arms and looked the Realtor in the eye. She’d spent close to a year hiding her fear and desperation. Now she felt as if she’d crawled on her belly through the scorching sands of some desert only to discover that the oasis shimmering in the distance was a pile of camel dung.

“It does have great bones,” Avery Lawford said. “And I can see they’ve tried to renovate within the original footprint of the house, but . . .”

“Maybe it just needs a facelift to get it ready for sale?” Madeline asked hopefully.

Nicole snorted. “This house needs serious reconstructive surgery.” She could feel her anger mounting. She didn’t even have enough money for a Lifestyle Lift. Not for herself, and not for this house. Full-blown plastic surgery was out of the question.

“If we put up a sign and sold it ‘as is’ what could we get for it?” she asked.

Franklin shook his head. “I wouldn’t do it. You’d get maybe a million, which would be like giving it away.”

They looked at each other. A million sounded like a lot until you deducted the sales commission and divided it in thirds. She might end up with enough to spend the summer in the Hamptons trolling for clients, but only if it sold quickly, like in the next twenty-four hours.

“Come on,” Franklin said. “Let me show you why you don’t want to do that. You have a significant ace up your sleeve. I really should have started there.”

He put a key into a deadbolt lock on one of the master bedroom’s French doors, manhandled it open, then led them out onto the balcony. A peeling wrought-iron stair wound down to the patio below, but no one looked straight down. They all looked out over the barrel roof of the loggia, past the cracked and empty pool and out over the seawall, their gazes inexorably drawn to the house’s true reason for being.

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