Chapter 42
“Winn, reread that contract. Does anything on it state we have to turn over anything to the bank people, anything at all?”
“No. I already looked at it because of the food and stuff. Why?”
“Because I’m just wondering what all is in that safe, if anything.”
“Holy crap. You don’t think …”
“I don’t know, that’s why I was asking you,” I told him.
“Let’s look around to see if there’s a key or combination. I can drill it, but I’d rather not. That’s one of those old safes and it will be a bear to break into.”
We found the combination written on the inside of a well-used bank bag.
“How the heck did you think of that?” Winn wanted to know.
I snorted. “Aunt Nita used to do that with the safe before we got the big one.”
Winn and I both sat on the floor looking inside once we got it open.
“Winn, is this going to give you heartburn to keep this?” I asked. It wasn’t always easy for me to tell how Winn was going to react to stuff.
This time his answer was definitive. “No. But I don’t want it bandied about either. Can we put it in your big safe? We’ll divvy it up later.”
After nodding in the affirmative I asked, “Is that stuff even spendable? I mean they’re really old dimes. And what are those?”
“Silver ingots if they’re legit. And these rounds look like they’re home melted. We’ll have to see how pure they are and if they are stamped with the correct weight.”
He’d managed to surprise me. “How do you know that stuff?”
“My dad used to be into it before he had to liquidate everything when he got sick. I still inherited his coin collection. My mom thinks it is a bunch of old junk coins but I’m pretty sure my step-dad suspects it’s worth more than Mom understands. He told me not to tell anyone what I had and to get it in a safe deposit box.”
I’d stopped trusting the banks about that stuff when Aunt Nita had died. I told Winn, “Aunt Nita used to have some stuff in a safe deposit box but that didn’t keep Uncle Tinker from getting into it. Had some of their mom’s stuff in there but I don’t know what because Uncle Tinker took it. I was just barely smart enough to keep my mother’s jewelry box with hers and Dad’s jewelry in it with me with when Nels Gibson started rearranging my life. I bet if he’d known, he’d found some way to take it from me.”
When Winn got thoughtful I added, “If you don’t want to put your stuff … um, your collection … in the big safe maybe we could find a way to move this one downstairs and …”
“If we are going to put this in the big safe I might as well put my stuff from the safe deposit box in there too. Er … there’s some papers too. Like my DD214.”
“I’ll clean out a shelf and we’ll figure out the rest like a new combination and stuff when we do that. Let’s just go ahead and get this out of here. What about the paper money?”
“We’ll need to go ahead and spend it as soon as we can. They say by the end of the year they are going to be issuing that new currency that has the chip embedded in it.”
“I thought it was going to be debit cards.”
“That too but in areas that doesn’t have wifi service or its down or whatever they say the new currency will fill that gap.”
That was another scary thought I’d started thinking about but it was all too new and confusing and I had other stuff that needed doing first.
# # # # #
I looked around. “You said Celeste said this place was a mess. You sure we have the right address? It doesn’t look bad at all.”
“Yeah, I think that’s the man coming down the road to meet us.”
Instead of us being late for the three o’clock meeting the other guy was. He apologized and was relieved we were still here.
“Yeah, the outside looks decent. The real estate agent said curb appeal was important. We mowed the place. Picked up the yard. Threw a coat of pain on the outside and got rid of the worst of the piles. My wife and I work though and I wouldn’t trust the kids to take care of this on their own. My sister and her husband are next to useless and if they didn’t live three states over it would be even worse. This is my great uncle’s place. His wife died last year and he didn’t outlive her by long. But in that time the house really went to pot because she’s the one that took care of everything for him, including the yard work.”
“A lot of delayed maintenance?”
“If we can get the place cleaned out, we are just going to sell it ‘as is’. Mostly I just want out from under it. The property over there was a flea market that was open during tourist season. It won’t reopen this year and they are looking for a buyer for the land. The neighbor on the other side is just a lot where a local contractor parks his trucks. The county wants everything cleaned up on all three properties or they are threatening imminent domain. I looked their numbers over and that won’t even pay the inheritance taxes. Just look around and let’s see if we can make a deal.”
I did a seemingly casual look into everything, including the basement, then asked, “Is there an attic that also needs cleaning out?”
“We already brought everything down to go through it. After my wife and I got through with that we decided to just chuck everything else until Celeste mentioned that you might be available. We aren’t looking to make a lot of money, like I said we just want to make enough to pay the inheritance taxes.”
I knew for there to be inheritance tax, there had to be money someplace but it must not be in liquid assets. And then I got my answer that the farm he and his wife manage with their oldest son and his wife was part of the problem. It had been a family farm owned in large part by the great uncle as the last surviving sibling of that generation. They couldn’t afford to lose the land but couldn’t afford to buy the uncle out before he died. What a mess.
I gave a nod to Winn from behind the man’s back. And when Winn told him we could make it work, the man was more than just relieved.
After what we ran into in the diner I wanted everything on the table. “I know you said you have taken everything you want but are you sure?”
“We don’t have room for what we did keep. I … I just don’t want to know where this stuff goes but please don’t just throw it in a dumpster some place.”
“No. That won’t be happening. As I go through the house I’ll set any photos aside. Will I be running into personal papers?”
“I’ll be honest and say I don’t know but probably not. When my uncle’s wife realized how sick she was, and that she wouldn’t be getting better, she started going through all that stuff. She even boxed up all her clothes and shoes and … it was just amazing. She tried to take care of everything for my uncle but there’s still a mess. Her son was supposed to come help him but when he found out there was no money in it, he just took her car and walked away. Broke my uncle’s heart as he’d helped to raise him. Sorry, probably not what you wanted to hear.”
When you work in estates you almost always wind up having to deal with personal and private stories or items. You have to build walls, or at least maintain a healthy distance. Winn was still learning that and I could tell he was a little ick’d out by some of the story that had been told. Luckily the man left soon after that. The man drove off, relieved he could turn things over to someone else to deal with.
“Edie, what are you thinking girl. I know that look.”
“I’m thinking we need a bigger storage bay. We aren’t going to want to store this stuff at the cabin. And to be honest I’ve got enough to manage up there as it is. I’ll start setting up the booth at Dotty’s. I’ll take most of the breakables there that will be too hard to pack for shipping. A lot of this vintage stuff is really moving. I’ll give it two weeks to move there and then I’ll add it to my online offerings as a back up. Things that I think will move quickly online but I don’t get a nibble on or many views within two weeks I’ll take them to Dotty’s. The furniture I’ll stage at the consignment warehouse. Dotty’s husband wants to do more of that to draw people in. I didn’t want to say anything but it looks like the uncle moved his wife’s stuff to the basement rather than taking it to a donation center like she had told him to.”
“Are you serious?” Winn asked with a groan.
“Just let me look. If it is too big of a mess I’ll just move everything in the Tahoe myself. We’re going to have at least one load to the landfill. That’s on you. The mattresses are pretty ratty and need to go in that load. All the blinds are dry rotting. I’m not sure what the linens look like. There are some good furniture pieces but at least half of it is particle wood under the veneer. That sofa in the front room looks like it wants to eat someone. What color orange is that?”
Winn slowly grinned and said, “You know I wouldn’t be doing this without you right?”
I gave him an atomic eyeroll. “Or me without you. Stop with the worrying and heartburn. We’ll make bank. There might not be a huge margin in this one but it isn’t the disaster you were trying to paint it.”
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