“Those bastards! I knew that something…” He took a deep breath. “But aren’t there inspections before sales, don’t houses have to meet some kind of standards? Aren’t there disclosure laws?”
“Can you show me your contract?”
By the way Sai asked, Willard knew that worse was coming.
4
Five minutes later they were sitting in the living room. Catherine had just returned from the master bedroom, where they kept important papers in a small lockbox tucked away at the top of their closet.
She settled herself next to Willard on the couch. Sai faced them in the matching armchair.
Without speaking, she handed the sheaf of legal-sized papers over to Sai.
He shuffled through them, muttering here and there as if keeping tabs on what he had seen and what he had not. He was apparently looking for a particular sheet.
“Ah,” he said finally. The silence had begun to grate uncomfortably on both Catherine and Willard. They could hear the kids playing quietly in the family room. No interruptions. Thanks for that, at least.
“Here we are.” He leaned across to hand the papers to Willard. He had folded the top sheets back and under at the place he had been looking for, and indicated a short paragraph which his finger. “Read that.”
It was only a line or two on the inspector’s report.
Willard read it aloud: “Structure shows signs of some foundation issues, notably minor cracking of the external surfaces and additional soil at the base, above anticipated grade level.”
He looked at Catherine. She looked back. They both shook their heads and shrugged, nonplussed.
“What does that mean?” Catherine handed the papers back to Sai. “Sure, we saw a couple of small cracks here and here outside, especially at the corners of the windows, but isn’t that common with stucco houses?”
“Yes, it is. But that is not what this sentence is talking about. What you have here is realtor-speak for ‘Beware-there’s something wrong with the foundation, otherwise the current owners would not have gone to the expense of hauling in dirt and hiding the base.’”
“It doesn’t say a word about…!” Willard was on his feet.
“Sit down, Mr. Huntley. Please.” Sai leaned back in his armchair and looked sympathetically at the pair. “You’re right. It doesn’t. But what it does say is sufficient in a court of law to indicate that there were fundamental problems with the slab. I’ve seen this sentence-or others like it-on enough contracts here in the Valley to recognize legalese that basically says ‘You haven’t got a leg to stand on. You were warned.’”
“But we didn’t even see that!” Willard was standing again, gesturing angrily as if he wanted to strike out at someone-Sai, since there was no one else available.
“You initialed the bottom of the page,” Sai said quietly.
That stopped Willard for a second. He examined the paper again. When he spoke his voice was cold, his rage under control for the moment but waiting to explode.
“When we signed the papers,” he said carefully, biting off each word, “they took us through them so quick that we didn’t get a chance to read everything. And Chuck said…”
“Chuck?”
“Chuck Maxwell, the real estate agent.” Willard’s teeth were clenched now, his body perfectly rigid.
“He offered to accompany us to the signing. To help us if there was anything…” Catherine fell silent.
She understood now.
“Maxwell.” It was a low murmur, redolent with emotion.
Sai shook his head sadly. “Even so, everything done was-from the court’s point of view-legal. Punctiliously so.” He seemed to enjoy the word. He had probably used it before in just this context.
He let the Huntleys have a couple of moments before he spoke again.
“I would venture to guess that you’ve seen more than just the foundation problem.”
Willard looked startled, shaken from an angry reverie.
“Uh, yeah. You could say that.”
He stalked to the sliding doors that led to the patio and jerked back the carpet and padding, not difficult to do since there was no longer any tack-strip holding them down. He pointed to the break.
“This goes from the far corner of the kitchen all the way along the back of the house.”
He gestured widely with one hand.
“There are cracks in nearly every joining-walls, ceilings, floor.” He motioned for Sai to follow.
“You can see where the slab’s broken under the tiles here in the entry way.” Sai nodded. Willard did not give him time to respond any other way.
“But here’s the best. Oh yes, here’s the really fun part.” He laughed bitterly as he led Sai down the hall. Catherine did not follow. She went into the family room to be with the children. She could hear small sounds of discomfort coming from them. They had heard their daddy’s tone of voice before, and they did not like it.
5
They stood in the doorway of the back bedroom, Willard fuming and speechless, Sai calm and dispassionate.
Willard didn’t need to say anything.
It was all there. The sinuous crack nearly bisecting the room, disappearing beneath the baseboard with the clear intention of continuing on into Suze’s bedroom and, who knew, on from there into the master bedroom.
The rough fissure fully exposed along the back wall, inches wide and black as hell, who knew how deep.
The odor, even though faint, still cloying and oppressive five full days after the spill. Suggestive of rot and decay and suppuration, suggestive of many things but not of sewage.
Sai merely stood there, impassive.
When he finally spoke, it was with a certain amount of sympathy in his voice. “I’ve see this before. House after house. There’s one place in Sunset Hills where the living room floor is so displaced along one side that there is a four-inch differential. It’s like the owners have half a sunken room. They are one of the unlucky ones. It didn’t slip that much until after the insurance deadline passed.”
Willard stared at him, speechless.
“I would guess that the side wall here probably shifts as much as a couple of inches between winter and summer.” He studied the line where ceiling and wall met. “See there, in the closet, where the new plaster is already cracking. You’ll probably have that in all three rooms along this wall. On family with a problem like this told me that in the summer, they can see stars between the wall and the ceiling.”
He turned to face Willard.
“At least this house has wide eaves. Probably you won’t have any rain coming directly inside unless the wind is especially strong.”
He paced over to the back wall and knelt beside the break. He crumbled a bit of the concrete between his fingers. Then he took a pencil-like implement, extended it to a couple of feet, and worked it into the crack. Inch after inch of the thin metal disappeared. He wiggled it back and forth. Willard could hear concrete scraping against the metal.
Sai pulled the shaft out and studied it.
“See here,” he said, pointing to a clump of damp brown caught on the end. “The crack extends completely through the foundation slab, more than a foot. This”-indicating the clump-“is soil from beneath the house.”
He ran his hand up and down the back wall.
“Most likely, this wall will continue to pull away from the slab, a bit at a time. The patio out there is slowing the movement a fair amount, but even that is being pushed gradually toward the back of the yard.
“I wouldn’t worry too much though,” he said, facing Willard again. “It will probably take a couple of decades more before the place threatens to collapse.” He shrugged as if to say, wish I could tell you something else, but
