There Was an Old Woman

Chapter Forty-four


“That’s the message?” Ginger said when Evie had gotten her on the phone the next morning and read her what Mrs. Yetner had written down. “What’s it mean?”

“Beats me. Too bad we can’t ask her,” Evie said, staring at the words written on the scrap of paper.

“You’re sure that’s all?”

“I’m looking at it right now. It was under the couch. I never would have found it except that Mrs. Yetner’s nephew let himself in last night to get the cat. Ivory hid under the couch and put up such a fuss that it woke me up.”

“He didn’t know you were there?”

“Apparently not.”

“How creepy is that?”

“Scared me half to death until I realized who it was. If I’d gotten up in the morning and found the cat missing, I’d have been beside myself.”

“Read it to me one more time, would you?”

“ ‘Tell Ginger. Don’t let him in until I’m gone.’ ”

“Right.”

Right. What Evie couldn’t help wondering was whether she’d already let “him” in.

After Evie got off the phone, she fed Ivory, straightened Mrs. Yetner’s upstairs bedroom, and packed up her things. She planned to spend the morning cleaning her mother’s house, but as she was leaving, she picked up the document she’d found under the couch. Life estate deed. What exactly was that?

Evie sat down and made herself read it through once, then again to be sure. It was just what it said, a deed. The property was 105 Neck Road—Mrs. Yetner’s house. Properly signed and executed, it would have transferred ownership. Instead of payment, it gave Mrs. Yetner the right to continue living there. She’d be responsible for property taxes and “maintenance and upkeep.” But the minute she kicked it, Soundview Management, or the “remainderman,” in legalese, would receive the property. No muss, no fuss, and no need to go through probate. Their logo was so innocuous, a double row of wavy lines beneath the outlines of a crab and a fish.

The reason why anyone would sign away property like that was prominently laid out. The “life tenant”—in this case, Mrs. Yetner—would receive a regular income, twenty-four thousand dollars a year in monthly increments, a sort of reverse rent. Sounded like a great deal for someone who had a good long life ahead of her—someone, say, in her sixties.

The thought left Evie ice cold. Her mother was sixty-two. And she’d told Ginger that she was getting a new monthly income. That would explain those cash-filled envelopes. The sooner her mother died, the better the deal was for the remainderman.

Could an agreement like that be nullified or was it already too late? Evie needed legal advice, and she needed it fast. Too bad she didn’t have a friend who was a lawyer. Then it occurred to her. She did.



When Evie got to Sparkles, the store seemed empty. Her “Anyone here?” got no answer. She helped herself to a jelly doughnut from the glass case by the register and left a dollar and a quarter on the counter. When she got outside, she noticed Finn’s pickup parked behind the store. He couldn’t have gone far.

Evie was walking back to her mother’s house when she realized what she’d thought at first was the omnipresent roar of a jet on its approach to LaGuardia was much louder and more uneven. As she turned onto Neck Road, a big flatback truck roared past her on the narrow street. Riding on its platform was a yellow bulldozer. Close behind came two dump trucks, their beds filled with debris. One of the drivers gave his horn a friendly toot, and Evie raised her hand to wave.

Standing in their dust, it occurred to Evie to wonder where they were coming from. Her mother’s street, which ran along the water, only went on for about another half mile before it came to a dead end at the lagoon.

Evie followed the trail of grit and glass the trucks had left in their wakes past her mother’s and Mrs. Yetner’s houses, past blocks she had ridden her bike up and down when she was little. The trail ended at an empty lot. There was Finn, crouched amid the rubble, staring out into the marsh.

“Finn?” Evie said, coming up behind him.

He jumped to his feet. “Oh. It’s you.” He gestured toward the empty lot. “Can you believe this? Yesterday there was a house here.”

Evie looked around. There was another empty lot two houses farther along. “And over there?” She pointed.

“Up until a few months ago, there was a house there, too.” He hadn’t shaved and looked like he hadn’t slept, either. He seemed so distraught, and she wondered if he’d been up all night, witnessing the destruction.

Finn walked across what had been the front lawn of the recently demolished house, his sneakers crunching the debris. He bent over and fished out a foot-long piece of what looked like windowsill, its bright red paint flaking. “Must have brought in the equipment yesterday after dark. While me and anyone who might have tried to stop them were at the neighborhood meeting.” He gazed somberly out across the water.

Evie walked over to him and took his arm. She didn’t know what to say.

“What kills me,” he said, “is that I might have been able to prevent this. Mrs. Yetner brought me a demolition permit she lifted off the house that was here.” He took a folded yellow card from out of his jacket pocket. “She must have told you about it.”

“She didn’t,” Evie said. Occasionally the Historical Society would get similar documents, a last remaining vestige of a building that someone had deemed too historically insignificant to be left standing.

This house, and the one two doors up, had hardly been historically or architecturally noteworthy—none of these houses in Higgs Point were. Unlike brownstones in Greenwich Village or Brooklyn Heights, the history of Higgs Point was not steeped in entitlement. But taken together, this neighborhood with all its little shotgun houses on lanes too narrow to be called streets, built within a few years of one another, was a one-off. There was nothing like it anywhere else in the five boroughs. Evie could easily make a case for preserving its unique flavor.

“Listen, even if you’d been here, what could you have done?” Evie said. “Were you going to lie down in front of the bulldozer?”

“I could have called the Preservation Board. Or the Department of Environmental Protection. And yeah, I could have gotten some volunteers together and blocked the bulldozer. Called the newspaper first of course. The thing is, I didn’t do anything. Not a goddamned thing.” Finn rubbed his grizzled chin with the back of his hand. “I didn’t think it was going to happen this fast.”

Evie walked into the debris and poked her toe through it. She kicked up what looked like the rim of a plate. She squatted to get a closer look. The piece was white bone china, hand-painted gold. Poking around nearby she found the metal screw cap of a lightbulb and an undamaged ceramic salt shaker in the shape of a miniature lighthouse. Farther in was the shiny, black-and-chrome beehive-shaped base of a blender. It was labeled OSTERIZER. It was so old it would have been worth something on eBay.

“This really is outrageous,” Evie said, returning to Finn’s side. Houses were supposed to be emptied out before they were bulldozed. This one looked more like it had been hit by a tornado. Like whoever did the job hadn’t a clue what he was doing. “Can you believe what a mess they left behind?”

“Looks like they even pushed a shitload of debris into the marsh. Knuckleheads.”

“Someone ought to file a complaint. Or threaten a lawsuit. Make them come back and do the job properly.” The more Evie talked, the more worked up she got. “Let me see that permit.” Evie snatched the card from Finn’s grasp. She flattened it and read.

The permit for demolition was all properly signed and sealed. SV Construction Management. Evie recognized the name immediately.

“Have a look at this.” She dug in her bag and found the life estate deed she’d pulled out from under Mrs. Yetner’s couch. “Here. See? Here’s Soundview Management. And here?” She held up the work permit. “SV Construction Management. Got to be the same outfit.”

“Where’d you get this?” Finn asked, taking the life estate deed from her.

“I found it at Mrs. Yetner’s, shoved under the couch.”

Finn paged through the document, his face growing darker. He muttered under his breath and then stood there, staring off into the water.

“Pretty clever, if you ask me,” Evie said. “It’s the perfect scheme for taking over properties without their ever going on the market. Without anyone being aware. The owner signs away the house before he or she passes away. Don’t you think that’s what happened here?”

“I don’t know, but I aim to find out. Can I keep this?” Finn folded the document and shoved it into his jacket pocket, but not before Evie made yet another connection: the crab and fish logo.

“Wait a minute. Isn’t their logo like the one your preservation group uses?”

“You noticed, too?” Finn said, looking chagrined. “One of the members told me that a developer had appropriated our logo, but I hadn’t gotten around to doing anything about it. Now I know where to send a cease and desist letter.”

Just then a cell phone rang. Finn slipped a phone from his hip pocket and shook his head. “Must be yours.”

Evie was afraid to look. But it wasn’t the hospital. It was the gas station. Her mother’s car was ready to be picked up.