But would you believe that it was three months before I was missed? Here I was, making this sacrificial statement by absenting myself, and nobody had noticed! Obviously, the church was progressing right along without me—and I use that word deliberately, for the church was getting so aggressively progressive that Pastor Ledbetter, now retired, petitioned the presbytery to reactivate him, and I was thinking of extending my sabbatical for another year.
But I’m getting ahead of myself.
—
The Cochran house, three-fourths enclosed by a fence the likes of which no one had ever seen before, now sat empty and forlorn. No FOR RENT or FOR SALE signs were out front, and what had once been so prized by so many was now abandoned and tossed aside. Except by J. D. Pickens, who was consumed by worry over who would pick up the pieces.
“No telling who’ll move in next,” he muttered, rubbing his hand over his mouth. I had stopped by to visit with Hazel Marie, expecting that they’d be rejoicing in seeing the last of a group home next door.
“Why don’t you buy it?” I ventured to ask. “That way, you’d have some control over who your neighbors are.”
“I would,” he said, “or try to, anyway. But it’s not on the market. No agent to contact, and no owner of record except that strange corporation that nobody knows anything about. Or,” he amended himself, “who’ll admit to knowing.”
I knew that, because Mildred and I had put Tom LaSalle on the trail of an owner—someone who could sign a listing agreement—and he’d had no luck. I had a feeling that we might have to send Tom to Belize.
But the strangest thing happened, or almost happened, a week before Christmas. Hazel Marie called to tell me that someone had moved into the Cochran house.
“Overnight, Miss Julia!” she said, almost gasping for breath. “Yesterday nobody was there, but this morning somebody is. And would you believe they’ve got the windows covered with coats and towels and I-don’t-know-what-all. And Lloyd said he saw a hippie-looking man with a backpack wheel a bicycle inside, and another one with long hair and tattoos all over him, and he had a backpack, too. And,” she went on, “J.D. is beside himself because he says it’s squatters who’ve moved in. And, Miss Julia, I didn’t think it could get any worse than a group home, but now it looks like it can.”
Well, of course I was up in arms over the thought of unauthorized persons just taking over an empty house as if they owned it—another instance of defying the law! What in the world were we coming to?
But I’d not reckoned with J. D. Pickens, who with uncharacteristic restraint quickly solved the problem. He invited Sergeant Coleman Bates and ten or so of Coleman’s fellow deputies, as well as the sheriff himself, to dinner at his house, requiring only that they come in full uniform. Abbot County Sheriff’s Department cars, including two occupied K9 vehicles prominently parked in front of the Cochran house, lined Jackson Street—one or two under NO PARKING signs—and deputies in padded leather jackets walked back and forth along the sidewalk with that impressive, creaking swagger that a duty belt heavy with firearm, handcuffs, taser, reloaders, and who-knows-what-else inspires. Even though the temperature hovered around forty degrees, Mr. Pickens grilled steaks outside, dancing in place as Lloyd’s boom box played what passed for music. Over and over, and at deafening levels, a song about somebody coming for the bad boys blared throughout the neighborhood, while Ronnie, dizzy with excitement, scampered across both yards.
The Cochran house was empty again the next morning. But our long-term problem with it wasn’t solved. Tom LaSalle was sure that he’d eventually find an owner without going to Belize, although he wouldn’t mind going if that’s what it took. In the meantime, Great Dane Properties now owned three houses, and neither Mildred nor I knew what to do with them.
When approached, Jan Osborne was delighted to stay where she was and rent from us, which of course obligated us to replace the roof and the furnace for her. Mr. Pickerell was grateful to be able to rent his house from us as well, as he’d not been able to find a suitable place for his wife. The Winsteads, however, who’d been the last to want to sell, were the first to move out. Mildred, who loved doing such things, was researching the history of their Tudor house and applying for listing on the National Registry of Historic Places. Which meant we were in for a long restoration project to put it in its original condition.
So what was our long-term plan for that block after we acquired the Cochran house? We didn’t have one. At this time, it was enough to have moved a group home and, according to Mr. Pickens, forestalled a drug house, thereby saving the neighborhood from a precipitous decline.
I’d say that was a fairly good piece of work.
—
It’s a wonder to me how rumors, both true and false, first get started and then run rampant throughout the town. As closely as Sam, Binkie, and I had guarded the secret of who owned the Victorian house on Wilson Avenue, somehow it had gotten out. And I had not even told LuAnne. Maybe somebody had looked it up at the Register of Deeds office. And, now that I think of it, it had probably been Madge who had done the research. And if so, I hoped she felt chastened and chastized upon learning that her archenemy not only owned the house but had made it available to her.
I knew that the secret was no longer hidden the morning a couple of days before Christmas when I answered the phone and heard Helen Stroud’s
