Maureen put a hand on his shoulder. 'Find anything?' she asked.
He touched her hand, gave it a squeeze, last night's simmering hostility forgotten. 'Not yet,' he said.
'So what's the plan?'
He shook his head. 'I don't know.'
Jeremy was a lawyer, and Barry considered calling his friend for some free advice, but he thought about what Ray had said and decided to hold off for now.
He had a sneaking suspicion that he might be needing a lot of legal advice in the future.
Barry put away the handbook and stared out the window at the trees. He wondered if he might be able to set up a little office in their storage unit, and he drove down to Corban to check. As he'd known, the small space was completely full, piled high with boxes and furniture and all the extraneous crap they could not fit into the house. He stopped by the office on his way out and asked the old man behind the counter if it would be possible to rent another space and use it as a work room.
The old man shrugged. 'No law against it, I guess. But you'd have to keep the door closed except when loading and unloading. Company policy. And there's no lights inside and no electrical outlets. Gets pretty hot in there come June and July.' He squinted as if visualizing something and shook his head. 'Now that I think on it, maybe it ain't such a good idea.'
Barry nodded.
'Not a bad thought you come up with, though. Storage units rented for office space. Somebody could make a fortune. Not here, though, not in Corban. Maybe in St. George or Cedar City ...'
'Thanks for your time,' Barry told him.
He got into the Suburban, looked out the dusty windshield for a moment, thinking. Realistically, there was only one option open to him, and he drove down to the real estate office, poked his head inside the trailer. 'Is Doris here?'
The skinny woman seated behind the desk nearest the door called out, 'Boss?' and a second later a familiar face peeked around the corner of the conference room.
Doris saw him and smiled. 'Hey!' she said. 'How's it going?'
'Fine.'
'Give me a minute, will you? I'm sending a fax to one of the sellers.
You can sit down at my desk there.' She pointed. 'Or you can--'
'That's okay,' he told her. 'I'll stand.'
'I'll just be a minute.'
Barry glanced around the office, saw an autographed photo of Pat Buchanan in a frame on one of the desks, amateur paintings of fish and wildlife on the paneled walls.
Doris emerged from the back room. 'Sorry to keep you waiting. Is this business or pleasure?'
'Uh, business,' he said, caught off guard.
'Just teasing. So how do you like living in Bonita Vista?'
'We love it,' he said.
'No problems?' She smiled. 'How do you like the homeowners'
association?'
'Well...'
'Sorry I had to soft-pedal that, but it's my job.'
'That's kind of what I'm here about.'
'What can I do for you?' she asked sweetly.
'I need an office. The homeowners' association says I can't work at home, it's against their rules and regulations, so I have to find someplace else to write. I was wondering if there's a small room or something I can rent in town, maybe a--'
She put a hand on his arm. 'Oh, I've got just the place! It's, right in back of the coffee shop. Used to be a teapot museum, if you can believe that. Old Man Pruitt, who owned a lot of land in these parts some years back, had a wife who collected teapots. Antique teapots, china teapots, teapots from Russia and all over the world. Well, she got this idea in her head that she wanted to open up a teapot museum. I
don't know who she thought would come to visit it. There aren't exactly a horde of tourists passing through here, and even if everyone in town came to see her collection--which not all of them did--it wouldn't take more than two days. But Old Man Pruitt built her a little building and set her up. It was hardly ever open, but she kept it until the day she died. That was back in the eighties. It's been empty ever since. Want to go over and take a look at it?'
'I'm not looking to buy anything,' Barry told her. 'I just want to rent.'
'That's what I'm talkin ' about, sugar. Bert from the coffee shop bought that property off Old Man Pruitt in case he ever wanted to expand or build a bigger parking lot or something. That little building's just been sitting there empty ever since, and I bet if we made him an offer he'd take it. He probably hasn't thought about it for years, and if he found out he could make a little cash on that shack just by doing nothing, he'd jump at the chance.' She smiled, picked up her keys off the desk. 'Come on. Let's go talk to Bert.'
The coffee shop was only a block away, but Doris still wanted to drive rather than walk, and Barry figured that for an old real estate trick, an effort to ensure the customer would remain in her clutches and at her mercy until she decided it was time to let him go. But he got into her Buick without complaint, and the two of them drove down a narrow dirt back road rather than the highway; a long cut it seemed to Barry, but one that allowed Doris the time to fill him in on Bert's eccentricities and convince him that it was smarter to stay silent and let her do all the talking.
It was midmorning, after breakfast but well before lunch, and the only customer in the coffee shop was a sour looking old man eating eggs and toast at the counter. Doris waved to the teenage waitress. 'Lurlene!
Your daddy here?'
'Just a sec!' The girl disappeared into the kitchen and emerged a moment later with a short, skinny man sporting a crew cut and wiping his hands on a dishtowel.
'Bert!' Doris called out.
The man nodded, no discernible expression on his face. 'Doris.'
'I got a man here's interested in renting Pruitt's teapot museum from you.'
'What?' He looked genuinely puzzled.
'I thought you were interested in making some extra money.'
'Always.'
'Well then. Mr. Welch here's a writer, lives up in Bonita Vista. The homeowners' association won't let him write at home, so he's looking for an office, someplace he can set up shop and work on his books. I
knew you had that old museum sitting empty, and I thought the two of you might come to some agreement.' She touched Barry's arm again in a way that seemed overly familiar.
Barry looked at her, and she smiled at him. There was a flirtiness that had not been there in Maureen's presence and which made him slightly uncomfortable. He should have brought Mo with him, was not sure why he hadn't, and he glanced quickly away.
'What're you thinking?' Bert asked. 'Moneywise?' The question was addressed to Doris.
They hadn't discussed amounts, hadn't even speculated on a range, and before Doris committed him to something he was not willing to pay, Barry spoke up. 'Why don't we look at the place first?'
'That's a fine idea,' Doris agreed brightly. She turned her smile on Bert. 'Want to let Lurlene hold down the fort for a few minutes while we go on back and check it out?'
Bert grunted noncommittally but put down his dishtowel. 'Don't worry, Daddy, 'Lurlene said, smiling. She nodded toward the old man at the counter. 'I can handle this crowd.'
They walked through the kitchen and out a back door.
The building was indeed small, Barry saw. The size of their master bedroom. But it had windows, shelves, a built in counter and electrical outlets. Most importantly, there was an adjoining closet-sized bathroom. Neither the water nor the electricity were turned on, and Bert said that Barry would have to pay for both, but at least they were
