Coming Home to Roost: Chapter 5

Heading back into town, I detoured over to the Kroger store to stock up on the food and drink items I was going to need.  I also did­n’t for­get to vis­it the liquor store adja­cent for sev­er­al bot­tles of wine and a bot­tle of Glenlivet.  I sus­pect­ed that for­ti­fiers were going to come in handy in the next few weeks.

The house was large — too large for one per­son — com­fort­ably fur­nished and com­plete with all the kitchen uten­sils and acces­sories I would need.  And it only took a short time before I was brew­ing a fresh pot of coffee.

Tomorrow I would be going to the post office to reg­is­ter my change of address and then over to the library, where I would pay for the destroyed copy of Cussler’s book, and find out if they were going to let me check out any more. And pull my lit­tle trick on them.

After that, I was going to vis­it a local archi­tect and get things start­ed on a new house.  I had­n’t a clue about what was involved and was actu­al­ly look­ing for­ward to the expe­ri­ence.  The pre­vi­ous house was not one that had been specif­i­cal­ly designed for me; I had pur­chased it from the pre­vi­ous own­er, demol­ished a por­tion of the inte­ri­or, and had the vault put in place.  Maybe this time, the end result would be much more attuned to me.

I slept rather fit­ful­ly that night, being in unfa­mil­iar sur­round­ings, lis­ten­ing to the pecu­liar sounds that every house makes, and sleep­ing in a bed not so sim­i­lar to my own.  Although it’s pos­si­ble that the many hotels I had fre­quent­ed over the years had accli­mat­ed me some­what to con­di­tions unlike those at home.

The next day I walked down­town as it was only a few blocks from the house where I was stay­ing, and I had nev­er before expe­ri­enced a walk through these neigh­bor­hoods.  It was a pleas­ant day for walk­ing, and very enjoy­able to be able to casu­al­ly view the hous­es on the way. I should do this more often, I thought.

I sup­pose it was a bit naïve of me to expect that I could just walk into a pro­fes­sion­al’s office and be received imme­di­ate­ly with­out an appoint­ment, but Mr. Gibson’s office was a small oper­a­tion with only two addi­tion­al drafts­men and a sec­re­tary. He cour­te­ous­ly wel­comed me into his office with­out hes­i­ta­tion after his sec­re­tary announced me.

Extending my hand, “Good morn­ing, Mr. Gibson. I’m Michael Tate.”

“Good morn­ing, Mr. Tate.  Good to meet you.  Please, have a seat.  May I offer you some coffee?”

“Coffee would be great.  Black, please.”

“Shirley, would you mind bring­ing two cof­fees, please?  Both black,” he called out to his sec­re­tary, sit­ting just out­side his office door.

“What can I do for you this morn­ing, Mr. Tate?”

“Well, for starters, you might just call me Michael.  I pre­fer to get around for­mal­i­ties as much as possible.”

“Sure,” he respond­ed cheer­i­ly.  “And I’m Martin.  Ah, here’s the cof­fee.  Thanks, Shirley.”

As Shirley exit­ed the room and I sipped my first taste of some very strong cof­fee, I said, “Well, Martin, I’ve just lost my home to a fire, and I thought the best way to go about rebuild­ing was to come to a pro­fes­sion­al like your­self.  I guess I could have gone look­ing through thou­sands of home plan mag­a­zines, but I think hav­ing some­one like your­self over­look­ing the whole process might make things much eas­i­er and take a load off my shoulders.

“Also, I expect you know oth­er pro­fes­sion­als like con­trac­tors and oth­ers, so I would­n’t have to go around search­ing for all the dif­fer­ent trades involved.”

“Well, you’re right about that, Michael.  Let me sug­gest some of the process for you and see if you’re com­fort­able with it.

“First, I’d like to vis­it the site. I’m assum­ing you are plan­ning on build­ing back on the same piece of land?”

“Yeah.”

“Okay.  I’m also assum­ing, based on what you just said, that you don’t plan on rebuild­ing the same house you had before?”

“Right.”

“Was the house a total loss?”

“Yeah.  Right down to the foun­da­tion.  Except for a fire­proof vault where I keep a valu­able col­lec­tion of porce­lain.  And I would like the new place to be built around that so I won’t have to demol­ish it.”

“I don’t see a prob­lem with that.  With a total loss and only the foun­da­tion remain­ing, we’ll prob­a­bly want to get a demo­li­tion crew in to remove all the debris as well as the foun­da­tion so we won’t be hin­dered by that when the new build­ing begins.  I can rec­om­mend a demo­li­tion con­trac­tor to you, and you can pay him direct­ly so there won’t be any addi­tion­al fee to me for his work.  And we can prob­a­bly begin demo­li­tion as soon after I view the place as he can get a crew there.”

“And then what?”

“Well, while the demo­li­tion is under­way, you can pro­vide me with details of what you want in the new place, what style, num­ber of rooms.  Things like that.  With that, I can begin schemat­ics which will pro­duce a gen­er­al lay­out.  Then we review the schemat­ic togeth­er, see if the lay­out meets your expec­ta­tions, has all the ele­ments you require and, once approved, go on to design development.”

“And design devel­op­ment does what?”

“It refines all the issues we’ve agreed on and add specifics, like the arrange­ment of the kitchen, door loca­tions, win­dow types and sizes, mate­ri­als to be used, where elec­tri­cal out­lets go, and most of the minu­ti­ae that goes into a house.  At the end of that phase, we’ll meet again, go over every­thing in detail and make sure I’ve met all your require­ments before going into the final phase of com­plet­ing con­struc­tion documents.”

“And will you be over­see­ing con­struc­tion as well?”

“Not over­see­ing, as in the sense of telling the con­trac­tor what to do on a day-to-day basis, but we’ll be there peri­od­i­cal­ly to make sure the mate­ri­als are the ones spec­i­fied and that the con­struc­tion is going accord­ing to the doc­u­ments.  That is, unless you are entire­ly com­fort­able with the con­trac­tor and don’t want us to do con­struc­tion mon­i­tor­ing, in which case your fee to us will be dimin­ished by about twen­ty percent.”

“And I can make that choice after the con­trac­tor is selected?”

“Sure.”

“When do we start?”

“Well, I’ve got a cou­ple more meet­ings this after­noon.  How about tomor­row morn­ing?  Say nine-thir­ty?  I’d be glad to pick you up, and we can go together.”

“Sounds fine.”  I gave him the address on South Maple, and told him I was rent­ing the place for the time being and would be ready at nine-thirty.

“Oh, just one thing,” I said as I stood to leave.

“What’s that?” he inquired.

“I want this house to be all-electric.”

It was near­ing eleven forty-five, so I decid­ed to grab some lunch down­town at a near­by place called The Cave, where I could get a real­ly good chick­en sal­ad sand­wich, some chips, and iced tea and watch a lot of the down­town work­ers come and go for lunch.

As I sipped on my tea and wait­ed for my sand­wich and chips to be brought to the table, the sher­iff, Pearl Drew, entered the restau­rant.  Pearl was in her ear­ly fifties but had main­tained a pret­ty good fig­ure for some­one her age.  She wore her dark brown hair in a pony­tail while work­ing, but let it fly loose down to her shoul­der blades at oth­er times, and it was start­ing to show a bit of gray in places — gray which she wore with great aplomb.  She was not beau­ti­ful in the strict sense of the word.  Handsome might be more appro­pri­ate, but once when I saw her in an evening gown at a local gala, she turned a few heads of both bach­e­lors and mar­ried men.

 Spotting me sit­ting alone, she walked over to the table.

“Hi, Michael,” she said hearti­ly.  “Heard about your bad luck.  You doin’ okay?”

“Yeah, I’m fine.  Didn’t even get singed but lost every­thing else.”

“Real sor­ry ’bout that.  Anything my office can do to help?”

“Nah, just tryin’ to get every­thing worked out.  You know, insur­ance and stuff.”

“Sure.  Got to be a has­sle, though, I imagine.”

“Some.  Want to sit and join me?”

“Like to, but I got­ta get back to the office.  Just called in an order.  Gonna pick it up and head back.  Good to see you, though.  You let me know if there’s any­thing I can do to help.”

“Will do.  Thanks, sheriff.”

She walked over to the counter where the serv­er had seen her walk in and had her order waiting.

I had­n’t noticed before, but won­dered, are male deputy’s trousers that tight in the rear?’