He needed a new idea, and he needed it fast. His thoughts drifted back to what Tasha, the SCAD administrator, had told him; that Savannah had the distinction of being the largest intact contiguous trove of original nineteenth-century architecture in the country. This town was a beehive of restoration and renovation activity.
His mind worked as furiously as his legs. On a street called Tattnall, he spied a trio of vehicles parked in front of an imposing three-story Queen Anne Victorian. As he got closer, he saw two pickup trucks that had KAVANAUGH & SON, GENERAL CONTRACTING stenciled on the door.
Mo paused at the curb and looked up at the house. A full-scale restoration was obviously under way. Scaffolding had been erected on the east side of the house, where some of the old wooden siding had been replaced, and other sections had been scraped down in preparation for paint. Piles of lumber were stacked around the yard, and pallets of roofing shingles had been unloaded on the porch.
The roof and the porch overhang were both covered with blue tarps. The eaves and porch of the house dripped with elaborate wooden gingerbread trim.
He leaned the bike against a sawhorse and climbed a set of temporary wooden steps leading to the porch. The front door, a period-perfect confection of hand-carved detailing inset with a leaded-glass window, was ajar.
Mo paused in front of the door, edging it open with the toe of his shoe. “Hello?”
His voice echoed in the high-ceilinged foyer. No answer. He shrugged and stepped inside. The interior of the house was a marvel of Victorian excess. Several different decades’ worth of wallpaper layers were in the process of being stripped away to the bare plaster walls. Overhead, an enormous chandelier dripping with dusty crystals and frosted glass globes swung from a ceiling decorated with crumbling but intricate plaster ornamentation.
“Place is a money pit,” Mo muttered, but the contrast between the before and after could be amazing. He walked toward the back of the house. Looking up, the view was of ceilings with gaping holes; underfoot were floors of oak parquet laid in a herringbone pattern, nearly obscured with decades of blackened varnish.
“Nice.” He kept walking, passing what had obviously once been a bathroom. The old penny tile floor was filthy, and the only remaining fixture was a claw-foot bathtub filled with fallen plaster fragments. Exposed pipes poked up through the floor.
At the end of the hallway he spied the wide opening to what would obviously be the kitchen. He stood in the doorway, studying the scene. It had high, water-stained ceilings and walls that had also been stripped to the studs. The floor featured layers upon layers of linoleum, some of which had been peeled all the way down to the subfloor.
Mo took a couple of steps into the kitchen and suddenly, the world seemed to crumble beneath his feet. He heard wood splintering and reached out, in vain, to try to break his fall. Then, darkness.
The last thing he remembered hearing was an outraged voice screeching, right in his ear, “What the hell?”
* * *
Hattie scooted on her butt as far under the house as she could, looking for the source of the broken pipe. She thought she was now directly beneath the kitchen, but it was damp and dank, and her flashlight beam picked out a maze of corroded cast-iron piping that had been dug out to expose the line.
She heard footfalls overhead.
“Cass?” But these footsteps were too heavy to be coming from skinny-as-a-rail Cass. Maybe Ronnie had a change of heart? Surely he’d know better than to walk into the kitchen where termites had laid waste to those floor joists.
Thunk. Chunks of rotted wood and linoleum and more than a century’s worth of unspeakable debris rained down onto her face. Followed by a body. A large, living body, which landed directly on top of her.
“What the hell?” she shrieked.
In the dim light she could see that the body was a man.
“Uuuhhhh,” he moaned. His face was beside hers, and he looked dazed.
“Get offa me,” Hattie said through clenched teeth. With effort, she managed to roll him sideways, until he was lying flat on his back in the muck beneath the house.
She heard footsteps again. “Hattie?” Cass’s head poked through the hole in the kitchen floor. She pointed the beam of the flashlight at her friend, and then at the prone body of the intruder, who was groaning and also trying to sit up. “Who’s the guy? And what the hell is going on down there?”
“Damned if I know,” Hattie said. She held out a hand to her best friend. “Come on. Get me outta here. Ronnie was right. The pipes are toast.” She pointed at the stranger. “And so is this guy. Call the cops. Looks like we trapped us a scrap bandit.”