“What do you make of that?” I asked Landon.
“Covering up a hole?” he mused. “Maybe a window.”
“A window? Broken, no doubt.”
“Probably. Nice lock, though. Brass. Ready to try it?”
“Why not?” I pulled out the key, already attached to my silver sugar-skull keychain. “It can’t get much worse.”
I inserted the key in the lock, and after a little jiggling, it turned. I pushed the door. It creaked open.
It got worse.
“Cha-ching, cha-ching, cha-ching,” Landon remarked idly.
“Shut up,” I said, but he was right.
Besides the dirt — grunge, cobwebs, bits of broken wood and tile in odd piles — there were countless indications of decay. The wood floors probably would be beautiful with tons of work, but the curving staircase that climbed up from the foyer in two flights was almost as gap-toothed as the porch. Chunks of plaster were missing from the walls, revealing slats of old wood beneath. Where there was paint, it was crackled like one of Gary’s raku vases. The prisms on the chandelier above the entry hall were so encrusted with dust, they looked gray, and it was hard to tell how much of the fixture was actually there under the cobwebs.
The adjacent front parlor to the left had a fireplace with a pretty wooden mantel that badly needed a paint job. The front and interior of the fireplace were faced with tiles, though only a handful of them were left, and only one or two of those weren’t broken. The fireplace actually opened to the room beyond, so we went through the connecting door to check it out.
“This is huge!” I said.
“Ballroom?” Landon mused.
Maybe it could hold fifty or sixty people. “A modest ballroom, but a much bigger room than I expected. Check out the double doors into the hallway.”
“And the big windows and the designs on the parquet floors. At least these are in pretty good shape.”
I peered at the ceiling. “Is that crown molding hand-carved? Wow.”
“Too bad the light fixtures are missing.” He gestured to the hanging wires in two places on the ceiling. “They were probably chandeliers.”
“Cha-ching,” I said resignedly, writingBallroom lightsin my notebook.
In the kitchen, mint walls hinted at better times. The good news was that the cabinets and sink had gotten an update — in, say, 1955. Which would be cool if everything wasn’t so derelict.
“Let’s go upstairs,” Landon said, breaking the dismal silence as we stared at the scruffy cabinets, chipped sink, peeling paint and the black and white hexagonal tiles on the floor. Actually, the tiles looked pretty good, or would after a day or two of scrubbing.
“We haven’t finished the downstairs yet,” I said.
“We’ll get there. I want to see if the floors look sound up there.”
I raised an eyebrow. “By walking on them?”
He shrugged and smiled. “Carefully, yes. Besides, you don’t want them falling on our head, do you?”
“I don’t know,” I said, looking up at the grubby tin ceiling. “Maybe it would be better if the whole thing just collapsed into a pile. We could have a bonfire and be done with it.”
“That’s no way to talk about a historic treasure,” he said as we moved back to the foyer and began a trepidatious ascent of the staircase.
“This is pretty.” I nodded at the round window on the landing, leaded in a floral design with clear, beveled panels that looked out over the porch roof and the yard. It was cruddy but miraculously intact. Buoyed, I took a few steps up the next flight with more confidence. Until I teetered on a last-minute correction to avoid putting my foot through a hole.
“Watch it!” Landon clutched my elbow as I tried to recover.
“I’m OK,” I said, yanking my elbow away. The move threw me off balance, and I fell against the railing, which groaned and shifted. “Shit!”
And then I was falling.
