Songbird Season Read online

  “And there’s many of those.”

  “Oh, that’s for sure. So it’s an old farmhouse. So what? Everything’s working. Other than losing power during that ice storm last month, I haven’t had a bit of trouble out here. When it comes to the mechanicals, anyway,” she added ruefully. “And besides, Horace is giving me an incredible deal. If the house needs work, I’ll just have to come up with the rest of the cash, that’s all. It’ll be worth every penny.”

  “Oh, I know it will.” Ron stared at his shoes, which were already splattered with mud. Then he gave Melinda one of his this-will-all-be-fine smiles, which she had come to rely on.

  “For your sake, though, I hope any suggested improvements will be on the minor side of things. I’m so glad you wanted to buy the place. Kevin and Ada say you’re just like family, and I agree.”

  “Ron, that means so much to me. Thank you.”

  She glanced over at the house, at the gray-green shingles that sheltered its steep gables and the narrow clapboard siding whose white paint had faded over time. The gray trim around the windows was peeling a bit, but there was already a line of cheerful crocuses peeking out along the south-side foundation.

  Her heart swelled with pride. From here, across the driveway, everything looked wonderful to Melinda.

  “Well, the house is pretty sound.” Ron seemed to be talking to himself more than to her. “Great-grandpa saw to that, of course. But you know, once Grandpa Henry passed on, it was all on Uncle Horace and Uncle Wilbur to keep things up. I’m not sure if they did enough, in hindsight. Money was always tight. When they didn’t have it, they didn’t have it; and I think when they did, they hated to spend a dime.”

  “They grew up during the Depression.” Melinda shrugged. “They learned early on to stretch every dollar as far as it would go.”

  A brown blur dashed out of the windbreak behind the garden, bringing with it the flash of white feet and happy bark that signaled Hobo’s arrival. Seeing her sweet dog rush toward her brought tears to Melinda eyes.

  She loved him so much, but that wasn’t all. Hobo was absolutely filthy.

  As he rounded the straw bales still huddled along the farmhouse’s northwest corner, it became obvious Hobo had been up to more than sniffing the decaying leaves on the windbreak’s floor. A sheen of mud covered all four legs, and more plastered his stomach. He hadn’t just been down at the creek, but in it, too.

  “Oh, Hobo,” she wailed as he rushed at her, his tail wagging with excitement. “No, no, don’t jump up on me! Oh, no! Ron, look out …” Two muddy paw prints soon marred the front of Ron’s khakis.

  “No matter.” He laughed and rubbed Hobo’s ears. “Figured I’d get dirty today, one way or another. I should have changed into jeans before I left town, but I didn’t think of it. Guess that means I’ve been off the farm for too long, huh?”

  “I’m so sorry.” Melinda reached for Hobo’s collar, trying to calm him down. But he squirmed away and trotted off to sniff the tires on Ron’s vehicle. “He doesn’t have the best manners. I’ve worked with him on a few commands, but it’s touch-and-go.”

  “That’s one of the perks of being a farm dog. You run where you please, do what you want.”

  “Well, I can tell you one thing,” Melinda said as they started for the house. “He’s not coming inside until after the inspection. And not until I can get him cleaned up, somehow. It’s too cold to turn the garden hose on him. Which he loves, by the way.”

  Hobo whimpered as she guided him to the picket next to the snug doghouse he rarely used, as he preferred to sleep on Horace’s old bed. “Yes, I know, you want to run around. But I think you’ve gotten into enough trouble for a few hours, at least. Here, I’ll refresh your water. Why don’t you try to settle down? The inspector’s going to be here any minute.”

  Sunny and Stormy coolly observed Hobo’s moment of shame from the picnic table. They were his friends, there was no doubt; but the smirk on Sunny’s face said it all.

  “So, Ron, about the house. Do you know when the roof was shingled last, or when any of the mechanicals were replaced?”

  “Not for sure, no.” He craned his neck to study the dormer that marked the farmhouse’s stairwell. “I’d venture to guess nothing’s been done for, oh, twenty years at least. But you know, I’ve seen worse. Much, much worse. I’m talking mold from leaking pipes, clogged sewer lines, squirrels camping in the attic, that sort of thing.”

  Melinda’s eyes widened. “It’s good thing the upstairs has those half-sloped walls, so there’s no attic. I don’t go in the front bedroom much, since it’s so crammed with stuff, but I’m pretty sure the only furry roommates I have are Hobo and the kittens.” Grace and Hazel, orphans rescued by the local veterinarians, arrived at the farm in January. Melinda had agreed to foster the babies, then hadn’t been able to put them up for adoption.

  “Hey, here comes Merle.” Ron checked his phone as an extended-cab truck turned into the lane. “Only twenty minutes late, not too bad. I hope he didn’t get lost. Well, I guess we’ll get some answers soon enough. And don’t worry, he’s honest. Sometimes, too honest for some of the agents.”

  Melinda laughed. “I’ll take that over unethical any day.” She squared her shoulders. “I’d rather know exactly what I’m up against.”

  Merle climbed down from his rig and adjusted a frayed canvas cap over his buzz-cut brown hair. He was a large man, stocky and strong, and his sort-of beard was short and streaked with gray.

  Melinda, who’d been on a failing quest to keep most of the spring mud out of her house, cringed at the sight of his steel-toed boots. Ron could be persuaded to kick his shoes off inside the back porch, but she didn’t think Merle would go for any of that nonsense. And here she’d scrubbed the farmhouse’s narrow-plank oak floors just that morning as part of a last-minute bid to get the place sparkling for the inspection. She really shouldn’t have bothered. Merle didn’t drive all the way out here to admire the farmhouse’s charming features, no matter how plentiful they were.

  Merle reached into the truck’s cab and dragged out a clipboard and a canvas bag crammed with tools.

  “Hello, ma’am.” He offered Melinda a meaty, sort-of-clean hand. “You must be the lucky winner. Ron says you’re getting a sweet deal on this place.” He glanced up at the farmhouse’s weathered siding and gave a sigh so small Melinda almost missed it.

  “Thanks for coming out, Merle.” Ron stepped forward. “I really appreciate it.”

  “You weren’t kidding when you said this farm was aways out.” He slapped Ron on the back. “Forty minutes from Mason City, at least.” He turned to Melinda. “What do you do, again? Ron said something about a store?”

  “Oh, I work at Prosper Hardware, it’s been in my family for four generations. My aunt and uncle run it now.” Merle just stared at her, confused.

  “I can see you’ve never heard of it.” She had to laugh at herself. Prosper Hardware was a landmark business in this part of the state, so much so that one could forget its fame hadn’t spread far and wide. “Did you come down the state highway? When you turned west on the county blacktop, if you’d gone one mile east instead, you would have come into Prosper. It’s pretty tiny; Main Street’s only four blocks long.”

  “Oh, I see,” Merle nodded. “One of those blink-and-you-miss-it places.”

  Ron gestured to the back porch steps and they started for the house, Hobo’s sad eyes watching them go. “Once you get on the right road, you can’t miss Prosper,” he told Merle. “There’s nothing around it but cornfields.”

  Merle stopped to peel some of the mud off the bottom of his boots, using the metal shoe scraper buried near the edge of the sidewalk. “I can see this place has some sort of charm.” He switched from one foot to the other. “But this,” he held up his clipboard, “will tell me what I really need to know.”

  Ron’s smile faded as he opened the door into the enclosed back porch. “Merle, I have to tell you; as a family member, I understand the emotional
pull of this farm. As a professional, however, I’m a little concerned. God knows what you might find.”

  “Well, I’m not sure I can give you all the bad news in an hour or so. What I mean is, today’s just the start of things. The well needs to be tested, and the septic system, too. We’ll just be looking for any deal-breakers here in the house. Say, I kinda like this enclosed porch. Really practical.”

  He jumped up and down on the gray-painted floorboards. To Melinda’s relief, they held their own. “Seems pretty sturdy.” He made a note on his clipboard. “So far, so good.”

  The farmhouse’s kitchen was like a time machine that had made stops in every decade since its construction. The wooden windows were original to the house, and Melinda suspected the deep porcelain sink was as well. The light fixtures looked to be from the seventies, the sage-green cabinets from the fifties. The tired electric stove was at least thirty years old, but the domed refrigerator was practically an antique.

  Even so, the kitchen looked far better than it did when Melinda moved in. She and two friends had erased the pale brown walls with a soft cream paint, and cream-and-sage checked panels now softened the double window that gazed out over the driveway to the barn. Cheerful throw rugs covered the worn linoleum in front of the sink and the stove, and a taupe tablecloth hid the scratches on the square wooden table centered under the main windows.

  “Isn’t it great?” Melinda pointed at the sink, which enjoyed a view of the backyard. “People pay crazy amounts of money for reproductions these days. And look, it’s got the faucet to match.”

  Merle tucked the clipboard under his arm and turned on the faucet. Or at least, he tried to.

  “Yeah, the cold tap sticks a bit,” she admitted as he gave it a jerk. “There you go.”

  “Water pressure’s good,” he said at last. “But you can’t get parts for these old faucets anymore. And like you said, the repos aren’t cheap.”

  The cabinets under the sink jerked open with a creak of protest. “Hey, nice and clean under here,” Merle’s voice echoed from below. “It’s easy to see the pipes.”

  “I cleaned under there this winter,” Melinda said proudly. “Had to keep these doors open for a few days, during a cold snap, to keep the water flowing.”

  Ron closed his eyes for a moment, as if trying to steady himself.

  “Oh, yeah, I’ll be checking the pipe insulation in the basement,” Merle said warily. “Most of the time, in these old houses? It’s terrible.”

  Ron leaned against the laminate counter. “So,” he tried to sound cheerful, “how do the pipes look, really?”

  “They’ll hold up for a while, at least. Dunno for sure, but I’d say they were changed out thirty years ago.”

  “Well, I know Grandpa put plumbing in back in the forties. So what we’ve got here is not original, at least. I wasn’t sure if …”

  A throaty grumble filled the kitchen as Merle slid back across the floor. “Whatever is that?”

  “Horace’s refrigerator is so charming,” Melinda said quickly. “Look at that fancy chrome handle. And the shelves inside? All chrome, too. No plastic, anywhere.”

  “I’d believe it.” Merle peered back along the plaster to where cobwebs smothered the cord’s plug. The refrigerator was so heavy, Melinda and her friends had simply painted behind it as far as they could reach. “You know, that’s gotta be only a two-prong,” he muttered. “Damn fire hazard.”

  He pointed toward the back porch. “Ma’am, if you like it so much, put it out there, unplugged, and use it for storage. Get yourself an energy grant, and buy something from this century.”

  She and Ron followed Merle into the dining room, where he was again brought up short. “My God, where did these things come from? Do they attack during the middle of the night?”

  “Grandma Anna was a woman of impeccable taste.” Ron couldn’t keep the smirk away. “So no one can understand why she chose wallpaper smothered with bluebirds and green vines.”

  “Just look at this woodwork, though.” Melinda pointed to the built-in buffet and the cased opening that connected to the living room, where bookcases with glass-paned doors flanked the fireplace. “All solid oak, never been painted. The floors, too. See the leaded glass over the top of the picture window in there? It sparkles in the mornings, just as the sun is coming up.”

  Merle only nodded, then pulled Melinda’s chic beige sofa away from the wall to examine the picture window’s frame. “Does this thing open?”

  Ron shrugged, and he and Melinda exchanged a nervous look. “I’ve never bothered to try,” she finally said. “So much wonderful light and fresh air comes in all the other windows. This house was built to take advantage of the views.”

  More notes on the clipboard, a frown on Merle’s face. Ron started to look a bit worried.

  “You know I want this place, no matter what,” she whispered to him. “See? So far, so good.”

  Merle found himself distracted by the stunningly beautiful Grace, who continued to lounge on the couch and groom her long calico coat despite some stranger sliding her throne across the floor.

  “If he finds anything really bad, we’ll just work it out, that’s all,” Melinda told Ron. “Oh, Merle! You don’t …”

  When Grace flattened her orange ear a beat ahead of the black one, Melinda knew what was coming. But it was too late. Swift justice was dispensed with an indignant howl and a claws-bared front paw. Merle took a hasty step back, trying not to wince.

  “I’m so sorry. She’s queen bee around here,” Melinda tried to explain. “Even though she’s only four months old.”

  “Aw, it’s nothing.” Merle pulled a bandage and a flashlight from his tool kit and turned his attention to the fireplace. “Well, it could look worse. Flue seems to be clear. I can tell it’s been used recently. Any trouble?”

  “Not a thing,” Melinda was happy to report. “This room is so cozy with a fire going on a cold night. Even with my rugs down, the oak floors can get a little chilly.”

  “I bet they do.” Merle fished a marble from his pocket, then pulled back the floral rug. The marble took off, doubling its speed by the time it reached the opening into the dining room. Ron put his hands over his face.

  “Uh-huh.” Merle tried again with the marble. “Just as I thought. Goes to the middle, you see? Now, a little of that is to be expected after a hundred years. As long as the subfloor’s good, you’re golden.” He made more notes. “But then, that’s a load-bearing wall. There’s always the possibility we’ll need to get a structural engineer out here.”

  “That sounds … expensive.” Melinda squeezed her hands together.

  “Yep.”

  Ron gestured into the downstairs bedroom, which had last been Horace’s and was still claimed by Hobo. “The bathroom on this level is there in the back,” he said brightly. “It’s pretty new. Horace and Wilbur put it in, only ten years ago.”

  Merle paused to swing the bedroom’s door back and forth. He tried more than once to make the latch catch, but it never quite matched up.

  “Oh, I never close that.” Melinda shrugged, wanting Merle to move along. “This is just Hobo’s room, you know.”

  “He sleeps in here?” Merle eyed the antique iron bedstead, and let out an appreciative whistle. “Look at that scrollwork. You know,” he turned to Ron, “my sister-in-law runs an antique shop over in Clear Lake, she’s always looking for fine pieces like this. And there’s collectors who would fight over that crazy quilt. Hand-stitched, I’m sure of it. And that dining-room table, with all those turned posts? It’s worth some serious cash, too.”

  Melinda was caught off guard. Who knew this scruffy guy had an eye for the finer things in life?

  Merle slapped the clipboard on his leg, thinking. “Or Melinda, if the stuff stays with the house, you could sell it to cover some of the repairs you’ll need. And I’m sure we’ll find something before this is over.”

  Melinda winced, and Ron put a reassuring hand on her shoulder. The family�
��s heirlooms and antiques had triggered a war of harsh words and hurt feelings that wasn’t yet resolved. Melinda was trying to stay out of it, but felt a pang of sadness every time she passed the cheerful clock on the mantel. The piece was spoken for, and she was already scouring websites for one to replace it.

  “The family’s sorting all that out right now, actually,” Ron said in a casual tone that gave no indication of the squabbles started by the farm’s impending sale. “We’ll divide up some things, and then have an auction later in the spring to clear out the clutter.”

  The downstairs bathroom easily passed Merle’s assessment, but Melinda was reeling by the time they finished their tour of the second floor. The stairwell treads were too steep; she really needed another ceiling light on the landing. The upstairs windows were as drafty as the ones on the first floor, and some of their pulleys were broken. “And that’s a custom job,” Merle trilled as he made more notes on his clipboard.

  The upstairs bathroom got only a few grunts and a raised eyebrow, at least. In the front bedroom, which hadn’t been occupied for decades, Merle had to wind his way around boxes and crates to get a better look at its amenities.

  “I might move my bedroom in here someday,” Melinda told Ron, trying to fill the awkward moments created by Merle’s grim silence. “This wide dormer is beautiful, and those three windows let in a lot of light.”

  “We got more than that coming in.” Merle shined his flashlight over a small-yet-threatening brown patch on the sloped plaster ceiling. “Could be an old leak, but I’ll need to get up on that roof. What’s with that plywood over the north window?”

  “I’d guess my uncles were just trying to keep the drafts out,” Ron offered. Then he glanced up, and jabbed Melinda with an urgent elbow. One edge of the ceiling’s only light fixture sagged away from the plaster, exposing an angry nest of dusty wiring.

  Merle pointed at the electrical contraption with his pen, then let out an ominous whistle. “Now, I’d say that’s a problem.”