“I don’t see what call you got to come in here and...”
“Shut your face and listen, Dave,” Mrs. Persons said quietly.
“There are a few things wrong with the picture you presented to Mrs. Barnes,” Cal said, his voice mild and factual. “Last season one of your cottages was rented. The year before neither of them was. Yet, in going through these... uh... notebooks, I found rental income shown. In every case the rental income was at the bottom of the page with indications there had been erasures and new totals put in. On many other sheets I found that sales of gift items had been added, sometimes with a pencil, sometimes with a ball-point pen using the same shade of blue ink in every entry.”
“I told you were a damn fool, Dave,” Mrs. Persons said.
“Shut up, Mary.”
“I adjusted the income and expenditure figures and I have learned that this business is not even marginal. It operates at a loss. Because you haven’t had to mortgage it, I assume you have some sort of pension income so you can make ends meet.”
“But it’s like having a house for free,” Persons said.
“Not exactly. I checked your inventory. You’ve put most of the items in at retail value. Mrs. Barnes would not be interested in that merchandise. You can dispose of it yourself, or sell it to her, if the deal goes through, for four hundred dollars total.”
“I wouldn’t hear of any such damn thing!” Persons roared.
Cal Burch smiled at him. “Come now! You’ve been trying to sell out for nearly four years, and it may be another four years before anybody else comes along.”
“Sell it, not give it away,” Persons said bitterly.
“You’re still talking too much, Dave,” the woman said.
“Property taxes and school taxes are going up next year. Your roadside signs are on the state right of way, and they’re so beat they discourage trade rather than attract it. Mrs. Barnes will probably have to put several thousand dollars into structural repairs and into your water system.”
“Some, maybe, but not...”
“After checking it all out, I’m prepared to advise Mrs. Barnes to offer you twenty thousand cash for the whole thing.”
“But the highway frontage alone...”
“The land is all right, but there isn’t much on it.”
“Look here, Burch, that’s less than half what I got to get. You and that Barnes woman are trying to steal this here place!”
“You weren’t trying to steal anything, Persons? You know she’s been a widow nearly one year. You know she has no business experience. You weren’t trying to steal anything?”
“When you got something to sell, you have to...”
“Falsify your records?”
“That would take some proving.”
Burch stood up and moved toward the door. “Not very much.”
Persons followed him outside, his face ugly with anger. “I’m not going to talk to you about this. I’m going to talk to her!”
“To the Barnes woman, or to Miss Laura?”
“Don’t you twist what I say!”
“Mr. Persons, I’m asking you to think this over. Talk it over with your wife. You wanted cash and a mortgage from Mrs. Barnes. This way she’ll give you the whole amount in cash. You think it over and phone me at the Sageland Motel, Extension 18, before four o’clock this afternoon saying either yes or no. There’ll be no dickering. This is a final offer. And if you make any attempt to see Mrs. Barnes or talk to her about this, I’ll take my photostat copies of some of your notebook pages to the local law and see what the ground rules are around here on fraud.”
All the anger seeped out of Persons’ face. “Now wait a minute,” he said weakly. “Now you just wait a minute!”
“All you have to do is phone me. If the answer is no, I won’t use those records to try to pressure you, Mr. Persons. The offer is fair. Just don’t go near Mrs. Barnes.”
As he drove out onto the highway, he glanced back and saw the elderly couple standing and looking at each other, their mouths working, their faces angry. Too easy, he thought, to feel tolerant and even sentimental toward them. Yet what is more reprehensible than cheating widows and orphans, hiding guile and lies behind that folksy manner? A widowed woman, unused to having money, having a little, anxious to use it to build a future, is the most vulnerable thing our culture can produce...
Laura and her children were in the motel swimming pool in the late afternoon when Cal came walking toward the pool. She could read nothing in his face. She felt exasperated with him. He took her wet hand and helped her out. She went with him to sit in the shade of a big faded beach umbrella.
“I don’t see why you have to make it all so dam mysterious,” she said. “I’m glad you came to help me. I almost didn’t ask you. But I didn’t expect to be... left out of everything.”
“You won’t be, from now on. But there are ways to do this and ways not to do it. You got too chummy with those people, Lollie.”
“They’re dear people, really.”
“If you want it, you can have it.”
“You know I want it, Cal.”
“Tomorrow morning at ten we’ll go to the realtor’s office and you’ll sign the papers.”
“Then you do think it’s a smart thing.”
“I know it’s what you want to do. I don’t know how smart it is. You should have the chance to do what you think you want to do.”
“I’m not a child, Cal.”
“And you’ve never run a store and you’ve never been a landlord. You’ll have to see how you like those things.”
“I will. I know I will.”
“So you’ll have to come up with twenty thousand cash.”
“And how much mortgage, Cal?”
“None. That’s the whole deal.”
She stared at him. “But that’s impossible!”
“That’s their price.”
“But I can’t do that to them, Cal! They’re my friends. How did you get them to set a price like that? What did you do to them?”
She saw an odd, cool expression on his face. “I suppose I must have strung them up by the thumbs and kept whipping them.”
“I’m sorry. I just don’t understand.”
“It’s very simple. And it isn’t exactly unusual. They were trying to cheat you. Those fine old people told you a few dozen lies and he falsified the records. You were fair game. But you sent for me and I spoiled the game. But they’re anxious to sell anyway, so they’re taking a fair price.”
She looked at him and knew he was telling the truth. She felt old and soiled and sick. She remembered the evenings with Dave and Mary Persons, telling them about Mitch, telling them all about herself. “Excuse me a minute,” she said in a small voice. “Keep an eye on the kids.”
She stepped into her sandals, picked up her towel and went to her motel room. She looked at herself in the mirror, sternly, accusingly, and said, “Idiot! Silly female person!”
She showered quickly, changed to shorts and a blouse, then sat on the edge of the bed and cried a few meager tears, small hot tears that burned like a mild acid. She felt that it had all been spoiled, that she no longer wanted the place, but she knew that to be childish. She would do it because she wanted to do it. But some of the innocent enthusiasm was forever gone, replaced by an almost sullen determination. She fixed her eyes, her hair and her mouth, and went back out to where Cal waited for her.
“You all right now?” he asked.
“I’m just fine, thank you. I wish I didn’t have to see them tomorrow, though.”
“You won’t have to talk directly to them. I lined up a lawyer for you. Nice guy. George Emer. He’ll be there. When they vacate, they’ll turn the keys over to the realtor and you can pick them up there.”