“So the house and the royalties went into the trust,” she noted. “The Campbells must have loved this town.”
“They did,” he said. “Mrs. Campbell always said it was the first place that finally felt like home to her. ’Course there’s the mystery surrounding how they managed to build this house. But you wouldn’t be interested in that.”
“Wasn’t Aaron Campbell a successful novelist?” she asked.
His eyebrows winged up at her as he took a sip of lemonade. “’Course he was,” he said. “But his first book wasn’t published until over a year after this place was completed.”
Maggie’s interest was piqued. “What about the family jewelry stores?”
“What are you asking me for? How should I know how two jewelry stores in Idaho in the late 1800s run by a father and three sons could afford a place like this? Especially when the homes of the other partners looked like shacks in comparison.”
Perhaps Aaron Campbell had taken more than his fair share, she mused. “What about Mrs. Campbell? Maybe she came from family money.”
“Ava Dedman Campbell’s family allegedly came from some wealthy European dynasty,” he said.
“Allegedly?”
“No one’s had any luck tracing the ancestry.”
Interesting. She wondered if any of the Campbell ancestors had done DNA testing from one of the genealogy sites.
She interlaced her fingers on the table. “Mr. Pfeffercorn, things will change here. But not everything. I’m not going to knock it down and start from scratch. I want to bring it back to life. Maybe with a few modern conveniences, but without taking away the historical significance.”
He didn’t look appeased. “That’s what you say now to get me out the door. Then the thick-headed hammer swingers start putting holes in walls.”
“I am one of the thick-headed hammer swingers, and I only put holes in walls that require them,” she said.
“Yeah, yeah. Women’s lib. You can do a man’s job. Don’t get your petticoat in a twist.”
She sighed and tried another tactic. “Mr. Pfeffercorn, do you know what YouTube is?”
“I don’t give a good dog crap about YouTube. I care about what this place means to this town. Just because it’s not a museum anymore doesn’t mean it doesn’t deserve some dignity,” he grumbled into his lemonade.
“I’m here to bring the house into this century and make it into a home again. But I’m also here to tell a story. This house’s story. I do that through a show on YouTube. I think viewers would be interested in your expertise.”
“A home or one of them condominiums that rents out to hippies and yuppies that come here for a week to stink up our air with their giant SUVs and take up too many restaurant tables?”
She pressed her lips together and held back a laugh. Wallace might be the grumpiest grumpy old man she’d ever encountered.
“What did you do at the museum?” she asked, trying to steer to a safer topic.
“Gave tours. Cataloged Mr. Campbell’s papers. Decorated for the holidays. Not that you care. You’d probably just as soon dump all of those ornaments in the trash.”
Maggie rubbed at the spot between her eyebrows. “If I promise not to throw out anything of reasonable significance, maybe you could help catalog some of the family possessions?”
“So you can do what? Sell it on that Antiques Roadshow? I won’t be a party to the gutting of the Campbell family’s estate.”
“I’d like to keep as much of the finds as possible with the house,” she said, exasperated.
He leaned in, mustache twitching with suspicion. “What’s your game, girlie?”
“Right now it’s not having an aneurysm. How am I doing? Are my pupils the same size?”
“My great-uncle died of an aneurysm. You shouldn’t joke about that kind of thing. He was walking from the barn to the house and then BAM!” Wallace slapped the table with his hand. “Dead as a doornail. Left a wife and seven hungry children. My great-aunt worked from dawn to dusk to keep the farm going and all those mouths fed.”
Maggie’s head was starting to throb dully, and she hoped it wasn’t the ghost of Wallace’s great-uncle. “I’m very sorry for your loss,” she said.
“My loss? I didn’t even know the man,” he barked.
She cleared her throat. “Uh. Okay. Well, you clearly have a great respect for history,” she began.