“Deal.”
A door slammed behind him. Zach turned but rested a warm, reassuring hand on her back.
Safe, she thought, letting herself lean just a little. For now.
CHAPTER FOUR
AT THE TITLE company Zach shook hands and accepted congratulations along with a sheaf of papers, many copies bearing his signature. He also took possession of two keys—and a bank mortgage. Despite her big, practiced smile, his Realtor looked as if she felt a little bit sorry for him.
He considered himself lucky to have been approved for the mortgage given the condition of the house. It really was a dump. The appraiser had expressed serious reservations. However, the structure was essentially solid. The wiring had been redone at one point. There was an undertone in the appraiser’s report suggesting she was mildly surprised to have found something positive to say. The plumbing, however, was vintage, to put it kindly.
Nothing in the report was news to Zach. He had a good eye and enough experience to make a realistic evaluation. He’d looked at half a dozen houses when he’d first arrived in town, and passed on the others because of cracked foundations, walls or floors seriously out of plumb, or rot that wasn’t limited to the roof. His gut told him this one was redeemable. His inner eye could see the end result: a charming 1940’s era bungalow.
He had climbed up himself to evaluate the roof, which was emerald-green with moss. He’d been reminded of pictures he’d seen of sod roofs in Scandinavia. When he scraped aside the moss in several places and poked a screwdriver into the cedar shakes, he hadn’t been surprised to find them squishy.
That made a new roof number one on his agenda. As always, he intended to do much of the work himself, but would have to hire some help. That was a drawback to starting over in a new town. He didn’t yet have any friends he could coerce into giving up a weekend or two to sling shingles.
From the land title company, he drove straight to the house. He wanted to walk through and decide whether he could actually live in the place starting May first, only a couple weeks from now. Otherwise he’d have to keep his current apartment for another month.
Doing that might be smart, but he went by the “penny saved, penny earned” philosophy. Plus, once he got started, he liked to work late into the night when he felt restless. There were plenty of jobs that didn’t have to be done all in one go. He could strip and refinish the wood floors or molding, install new interior doors or tile when he had an hour or two. Living-in would be more convenient.
Parking in the driveway, he smiled crookedly. An objective observer would probably think he was nuts. The bright green roof, peeling paint and sagging porch didn’t make a good impression. A couple of the windows had broken panes, which was no big deal as he would be replacing all the windows anyway.
Demolishing the porch would be a good, early job, he decided. He could build a new one on his own, no problem, and it would provide a nice facelift. A more generous porch with room for a couple of Adirondack chairs or a glider would attract potential buyers when the time came, too.
He circled the house first, making mental notes. Fence around the backyard was a teardown. Back stoop was history, too, except for the concrete pad and couple of steps.
That looked just like the ones leading from the back door of his childhood home.
He tried to shake off the whisper of memory even as he tipped his head back to look up into the big maple tree. He’d come damn close to walking away because of that tree.
In the future, some dad might help his kids build a tree house, he thought, eyeing an ideal broad branch. He and Bran had had a lot of fun in the one Dad had built with them, until that hideous morning.
A fence had enclosed the backyard of the house where he’d grown up, although he recalled it being ramshackle. When he’d gone by his childhood home on his second day back in Clear Creek, he’d noticed the fence was gone. If the yard had been open to the neighboring ones back then, would Sheila’s killer have dared attack her right there under the maple tree, only feet from the back door?
He might have stuffed her in the trunk and driven her elsewhere, Zach reminded himself.
The fact he’d...assaulted...and killed her steps from what proved to be an unlocked door was one of the reasons the cops had suspected Michael Murphy. It felt too bold for a stranger to have dared. Zach’s mother slept like a log. Zach had a distant memory of his father teasing her, saying she’d handled the middle-of-the-night breastfeeding of all three of their babies without even knowing she was doing it.