The Handyman Read online

  But I was not wrong.

  Brad’s mother was in a coma because her house had collapsed.

  And both Frank’s house and our vacation home in Randall were going to be on a ghost-hunting TV show.

  And Billy was dead.

  Billy.

  I couldn’t give up now. This was just a temporary setback. I had to press on, even if I was by no means convinced that it would lead anywhere. I stared at the vacant lot, thinking. What I really wanted to do right now was go straight to that first house in Texas. My hunch was that it could teach me the most about Frank. Since New Mexico was on the way, however, it seemed stupid to pass by the house in Bernalillo without stopping, so I decided to go there first before moving on.

  I did some quick calculations. Bernalillo was a good ten to twelve hours from Las Vegas. Even if I left right now, there was no way I’d get there until after midnight—and I certainly couldn’t wake up the owners of the house at that time—so I figured I’d just drive as far as I could, and then stop someplace when I got tired.

  I sped through Arizona and ended up spending the night in a fleabag motel in the New Mexico border town of Gallup, having Taco Bell for dinner and McDonald’s for breakfast before setting off for Bernalillo.

  From the photo I’d seen and the description “ranch house,” I expected the dwelling Frank built to be out in the countryside. But, to my surprise, it was located on a cul de sac pretty close to the center of town. Bernalillo itself seemed as though it was a community from old Mexico. Many of the houses were adobe, and mine was the only Caucasian face I saw. While the town’s rural roots were front and center, however, there were newer shops and subdivisions spreading out from the original core, and I passed an Arby’s and The Store before my GPS told me to turn right off the main street.

  I pulled to a stop. The house looked just as it had in the photo I’d downloaded. It was cute, and seemingly well-constructed, which made me wonder if Frank had actually been involved with this one. Maybe “Frank Wilson” was another Frank, having nothing to do with my guy, and I was wasting my time here.

  I got out of the car and went up the front walk.

  An elderly Hispanic woman answered my knock. She didn’t seem to speak English, and I didn’t know enough Spanish to string together a sentence she could understand. Talking slowly didn’t help either of us communicate, so she called over her husband. He emerged from somewhere within the house, and though his English was slightly better, it was not great. We struggled through introductory pleasantries, and I tried to explain why I was here, but they both looked confused. When I asked them, “Did you buy this house from Frank?” however, their demeanors changed. The name “Frank” had a galvanizing effect, and I saw the man’s expression harden as the woman crossed herself.

  Jackpot.

  “Frank es bad man,” the husband said. “Muy malo.”

  I nodded to let him know I agreed. “Yes,” I said. “Si.”

  “Why you want to know about Frank?”

  I wasn’t sure how to answer that. “The police are looking for him,” I decided to say. “I’m trying to help.”

  The man translated for his wife, and the idea that the police were after Frank brought a smile to both of their faces. Introducing themselves as Arturo and Maria Garcez, they let me in, and I noticed with a shiver that, while smaller, the house seemed to have the same floor plan as the first story of Frank’s Randall home.

  I nearly tripped over a bump in the rug and could tell as my foot explored the spot that it was a floorboard that had not been properly aligned. Typical Frank job. As though reading my mind, Arturo gestured at the ceiling above our heads. I could see a dark stain on the white painted plasterboard. “The roof leak,” he said. He pointed ahead toward a back door that led from the living room into the yard, outlining the door in the air with his finger. “And wind blow through cracks.”

  Glancing into the adjacent kitchen as we walked into the living room, I recognized Sandy Simmons’ sink faucet. I was only able to identify it because the design was so unique, and the sight of it confused me. Frank always stole things from one project to use on another, but how had that worked here? Had Frank stolen it from himself? Or had he stolen both faucets from another job? I didn’t know, but the one thing of which I was certain was that the faucet was stolen.

  That was Frank’s MO.

  So were the bodies and bones.

  In the living room, I looked around. On top of a narrow table against the wall were framed photographs, most of a small boy. In the center was one photo larger than the rest, the child in his Sunday best. The frame was wrapped in black ribbon.

  My heart sunk in my chest.

  There was no way I was going to ask about that—but then again, I didn’t need to ask. I knew he was their son, and I knew he had died, probably in this house.

  Maria was speaking quickly in Spanish, and Arturo translated as best he could, letting me know that his wife thought the house was cursed. Wherever they lived, she’d always had a garden, but in this yard, all of her plants died. Their dog had run away shortly after they’d moved here. Whether they used a fan or the fireplace, the living room was always hot in the summer and cold in the winter, although that was not true for the rest of the house. Her face twisted with hate, and in the midst of the Spanish, I heard the word “Frank.”

  “Why don’t you move?” I asked, still speaking slowly, as though that would help me be understood.

  Arturo’s eyes flicked involuntarily toward the pictures on the table. He shook his head. “No.”

  I didn’t press.

  “What about Frank?” I asked. “Do you know where Frank is? Do you know where he went?”

  Arturo looked straight into my eyes. “No. But if I find him, I kill him. I kill him.”

  ****

  I might not have learned anything new, but what I’d already known I had confirmed, and at this point that seemed like progress.

  It was still mid-morning, and if I left Bernalillo right now and drove eight hours straight, I’d be able to reach that first Frank house, in Texas, by late afternoon. There was nothing more to be learned here, so I thanked the Garcezes for allowing me into their home, promised to let them know if Frank was found and caught, filled up my tank at a gas station and started off.

  It was the longest and most boring drive of my life, and Biscuitville, Texas, when I reached it, was the saddest little town I’d ever seen. It was not a cute little hamlet that had fallen on hard times, but a place that had never been cute. Literally three blocks long, the town consisted of buildings made from tan bricks and unpainted boards the same color as the surrounding flatlands, everything covered with a dusting of brown dirt and black diesel exhaust.

  Parking my rental car on the street, I walked into a dingy café, hoping to get some information about how to get to Frank’s house since my GPS did not seem to recognize this area of the state and the three streets I’d passed were not marked. A little bell tinkled as the door opened, tinkling again as it swung slowly shut behind me. Even the people here were ugly, I thought, looking around, and a depressing gloom settled over me as I crossed the scuffed floor to where an overweight waitress stood behind the colorless counter, frowning.

  “Excuse me,” I began.

  “Yeah?” Her voice was too loud and tinged with a defensive belligerence. She seemed to sense somehow that I was not here to buy anything and apparently considered me an annoyance. I could feel the hostile eyes of the other customers boring into my back.

  As a realtor, I was used to dealing with all types of people, but the atmosphere in the café was making me very uncomfortable. I forced myself to push those feelings aside. “I’m looking for Tulane Road.”

  The waitress snorted. “The B and B?”

  Had Frank’s house been made into a bed-and-breakfast? “I don’t know,” I admitted. “One-eleven Tulane Road�
�s the address.”

  “B and B’s the only thing out there.” She stared at me with unveiled disdain. “You know the address but don’t even know what it is?”

  A couple of men laughed harshly.

  I ignored them. “How do I get there?”

  She looked out the grimy window. “That your car?”

  “Yeah.”

  “Turn it around. Tulane’s the first street on your left.”

  I thanked her for the information, but she’d already turned away, and I passed between two tables of sullen diners on my way out the door. The café wasn’t exactly crowded, but it was nearly dinnertime, so it was probably as full as the place ever got.

  Now that I knew which sun-faded strip of asphalt was Tulane, I found it easily, and while I had to drive a mile or two out of town to reach it, the waitress had been right: the bed-and-breakfast was the only building on the road save for a collapsed barn and the crumbling foundation of a house that had never been built.

  It was obviously not a very successful business (after all, how many visitors could they expect in Biscuitville?). The homemade sign was faded almost into illegibility, and the parking lot was a square of hard packed dirt where a yard should have been, its only vehicle an ancient El Camino up on blocks.

  The building itself bore the signs of amateurish construction common to seemingly all of Frank’s projects. I saw crooked steps leading up to a slanted porch, an off-center front doorway, a poorly mortared chimney and numerous areas of patched roof that didn’t match the original shingles. The rooms, I was sure, would have windows that didn’t open or that let air seep in from outside. The wiring would be substandard; the plumbing wouldn’t work the way it was supposed to.

  It was late, and since I had nowhere else lined up—and there were no other towns for miles—I decided to stay the night. I also figured I’d be able to get more information out of the owner if I were a customer. There certainly wouldn’t be any problem finding a vacancy. Walking up the creaky steps, I knocked on the closed front door.

  The woman who ran the B&B was old and tired and didn’t look as though she’d ever been happy. As she informed me when I told her I needed a room for the night, she was the owner, operator and only employee of the establishment, so I wasn’t to expect what she called “hotel service.”

  “I don’t serve meals here,” she said as I signed in. “But there’s food over to the café, if you want. Breakfast, lunch and dinner.”

  I thought of telling her that the word breakfast in “Bed-and-Breakfast” ordinarily meant that that meal was served to guests in the morning, but I didn’t want to antagonize the woman. I needed to quiz her about Frank, and I knew she wouldn’t want to answer any questions if she felt insulted. It didn’t look as though she wanted to answer questions anyway, but I started off with a general query. “How long have you had this place?”

  She stared flatly at me. “Since it opened.”

  This wasn’t going to be easy. I kept my voice light and casual. “And when was that?”

  “What’s it to you?”

  I wondered if she was any relation to the waitress at the café. “This place kind of reminds me of a B and B I stayed at back in Colorado. Guy named Frank owned it.”

  She reacted to the name, and my heart started pounding. “He built the place himself—” I continued.

  “Frank Watson?”

  Watkins, Warwick, Wilson, Wilton, Watson…

  “Yeah, that’s him.”

  “He’s the lying son of a bitch who sold me this place.” There was real anger in her eyes.

  I decided to take a chance. Pretending to look around the living room/lobby, I said, “The place looks nice.”

  “You don’t know shit, mister.”

  The hostility in her gaze and the solid finality of her tone made it clear that she considered the conversation over. Rather than press the issue, I decided it was better to wait for another opportunity.

  I was lucky to have brought along my checkbook, because the bed-and-breakfast was unable to take credit cards. I wrote out a check for an exorbitant hundred dollars, thirty more than I’d spent the night before in Gallup, and the old woman—she hadn’t even told me her name—gave me a room key and led me silently down the hall.

  I had to admit, the room was nicer than I’d been expecting, certainly nicer than the peeling paint on the exterior of the house had led me to believe. A brass bed with a quilted cover occupied the center of the room, and some sort of dried wildflower arrangement decorated the wall behind it. To the left of the bed was an antique dresser, and to the right a small round table with two facing chairs, a tray on top of the table holding an empty water pitcher and four glasses. Against the wall next to the door, facing the bed, was a doorless armoire housing a pre-flat screen television set.

  I was told curtly that there was no ice available, but that I could fill up the pitcher with water from the sink in the bathroom at the end of the hall.

  “Do other guests—” I began.

  She cut me off. “You’re the only guest.”

  “Is that bathroom for both of—”

  “My quarters are in the basement.”

  The basement.

  I nodded. “Okay.”

  “There’s no hotel service here,” she reminded me again. “And I don’t like to be disturbed. If there’s an emergency, press this to call me.” She pointed to what looked like a doorbell button on the wall. “Otherwise, I’ll see you in the morning. Checkout time is anytime after eight.”

  She walked away before I could ask any questions or even thank her.

  I hadn’t eaten anything since a Subway sandwich lunch in New Mexico, but I didn’t want to go back to that café, so when I took my suitcase out of the car, I also grabbed the can of Pringles that I kept by the front seat to snack on while I drove. Though warm, my ice chest in the back still had a couple of Coke cans left, and I brought one of those in with me as well.

  It was late afternoon, easing into early evening, but still too early to shut myself up in my room, so I decided to do a little exploring and see what I could find. The old woman hadn’t told me where I could and couldn’t go, and I decided to take advantage of that. If she caught me nosing around somewhere I wasn’t supposed to be, I’d just plead ignorance.

  Once in the hall, I heard the woman’s footsteps going up the stairs to the second floor. Knowing where she was gave me some freedom, so I quickly walked through the open rooms of the first floor, checking out the bathroom, a supply closet, the living room and adjacent family room. I didn’t go down to the basement, not wanting to invade her privacy, but I did peek into the kitchen, which looked shabby and seldom used. I saw an old gas stove and an ancient Frigidaire. Hearing footsteps start down the stairs, I decided to check out the grounds. I’m not sure what I was looking for—

  signs of buried bodies?

  —but I went outside through the front door, and walked carefully around the building. The sun was going down, bathing the west wall of the house in hazy orange. To the east, across the flat prairie, the sky had already darkened into night.

  There was no cellar door, no small windows at ground level, no indication that the bed-and-breakfast even had a basement. What was it like down there with no windows? I wondered. It had to be dark and claustrophobic.

  And the old woman lived down there?

  I thought of the Goodwins’ basement and the skeletal remains of the boy they’d found.

  If there were any bones here, they were probably in the basement.

  With a loud smack! a rock hit the side wall, barely missing my head. There was a rustling in the brush off to my right, and another rock came sailing out, landing near my feet.

  What the—

  “Hey!” I called out. I dashed over to see who was throwing things at me.

  A naked child ran away through the t
all brown grass, giggling.

  I blinked, caught a glimpse of bare skin before it disappeared.

  That wasn’t possible. I stared at the still swaying grass. Had I really seen what I thought I’d seen? What had I seen? A naked kid? A chill ran down my spine. But where had he come from and where did he live? The bed-and-breakfast was the only extant building on this road, and in the direction the youth was heading, there was only desert. Could a child really cross miles of rough ground on bare feet?

  Was it even a child?

  I was afraid to find out, which is why I did not chase the figure but slunk back inside the B&B. In my room, I peered out the window at the darkening landscape. I saw nothing, but a rock hit the side of the house next to my room, making me jump, and I immediately pulled the drape shut. Turning on the light, I sat down on the bed.

  What the hell was happening out there?

  In my mind’s eye, I saw a band of naked feral children crawling through the brush, waiting for me to come outside again.

  To kill me.

  It was a crazy thought, but at that moment it did not seem at all farfetched.

  Taking out my cell phone with trembling hands, I called Teri, grateful to hear her voice. I couldn’t really fill her in on what was happening, but I filled her in on where I was, told her about my long drive today, about what a pit Biscuitville was, about everything that wasn’t important. Talking to her calmed me down. She told me about in-fighting in her department at work, and let me know that she’d driven by the real estate office on her way home because she was thinking about me. Too lazy to cook, she’d picked up a veggie burrito from Mother’s Market and was heating it up in the microwave even as we spoke.

  Hearing all this made her feel far away. And she was, I realized. Southern California was almost halfway across the country. I glanced toward the closed drape. Biscuitville was like some alien land, a place I had not known existed, that I wanted quickly to escape and that I never wanted to see again.

  “I miss you,” she said before we hung up.

  “I miss you, too,” I told her.