Catharine Bramkamp - Real Estate Diva 04 - Trash Out Read Online Free Page A

out what Debbie said next.
    I cupped my hand to my ear and walked down the porch stairs to hear her.
    “Sometimes I think I’m being watched.”  Her voice was quieter than I thought possible.
    “You are, Summer is still standing outside, maybe she wants to talk with you.”  I shooed off Debbie who looked like a kid being pushed back on the playground after a fall.
    I heard the roar of a construction truck pulling into the driveway behind the house. Just in time. I heard another shout and a crash in the back yard.  The rest of the shingles I presumed.  I wondered if they’d be finished by the first rains in November.  I would normally say “of course, they have two months,” but I’m not that confident in the efficiency of our Claim Jump construction workers .
    I w atched Debbie and Summer .  They certainly did not act like friends any more.  There was tension in their gestures and the more Summer talked, the unhappier Debbie looked.
    What had happened?  I waited for Debbie to stalk off.  Summer pushed back her black bob and glared at me.
    I smiled and waved.  She pointedly looked at her watch.  The banging and clanking increased as the workers slide down the roof and began to swarm through the kitchen. In any moment they would burst into the front rooms, intent on finishing the finishing touches. I escaped by crossing the street to join Summer .
    “What do you want? Aren’t you part of the Lucky suit too?”  She placed her rough hands on her ample hips.
    “Me?  Not me,” I proclaimed piously. I usually get a nicer greeting from Summer ; Grandma donates thousands of dollars to the theater . “I bought Lucky’s house and I’m selling one of Lucky’s houses, in the Lucky tradition, but I’m not part of the class action suit. I don’t believe in them.”
    She snorted . “Sure you don’t.  Everyone of those people who bought houses from Lucky are suing the estate courtesy of Miss Busy Body.”
    A few short months ago, Miss Busy Body herself was very busy helping Summer transfer choice pieces of furniture out of Lucky’s house and into Summer’s office , so I wasn’t sure that people who performed in glass venues should be hurling stones that hard.
    “I get my cash the old fashion way, I earn it.” I said.
    “You’d be the first,” Summer admitted grudgingly.  She smoothed her black bob and gently wiped a finger under her heavy eyeliner. “Do you have any idea what will happen if Debbie’s lawsuit goes through?”
    I did indeed know what would happen.  I had been part of what I considered a sanctioned cover - up.  Lucky’s daughter, Penny accidentally killed her father, well, mostly accidentally, but the semantics didn’t matter since the poor woman met with her own accident; death by shoes.  She had tottered backwards over the railing on her cantilevered porch. No one could have survived the fall.  It made me think twice before donning my favorite high heel pumps by Jimmy Choo.  But only twice. I was determined to keep my addiction and just vowed to avoid high places and slippery balconies.
    Anyway. What would happen if hundreds of residents, burned out of their homes due to negligence and willful use of known flammable material could prove their case and win their suit?   All the money in the estate would be gone, which wasn’t a problem in of itself, but the money would leave the city and go to outsiders. Most long-term residents would have never purchased a home built by Lucky, not, I was discovering, even a home he built for himself. Although the insulation used in Penny’s former residence was from a different manufacturer than the cheap, and, as it turns out, flammable insulation pumped into hundreds of tract homes built above my grandmother ’s house on upper Red Dog R oad.
    “No more theater , ” I said out loud.
    She nodded.  “No shit.”
    “What are you going to do about it?
    “Stop her. ”  Summer said darkly or like the gathering of a summer storm if I