Caleb 66 - Revenge

"Thanks E," I said. "As it happens, I was going to give you a call in any case. I wanted to talk to you about something."

"Oh yes?" he asked.

"It's not urgent," I said, "I was hoping to find a place to stay soon. How about when we do, you and Connie come over for dinner and we can talk then?"

"Sounds good," he said. "Let me know. Obviously, I'll have to discuss it with my secretary."

I laughed. "Tell Connie 'hi' from us," I said.

"I will," he replied. "Stay safe." He ended the call.

Since I had my phone in my hand, I checked my emails, happy to see that I'd finally had a reply from the realtor about the house on Bob's street. They had a slot at six the next day for us to go and see it if that would work for us.

Since all the girls were now awake, having been woken by my phone, I asked them. They all agreed, and I replied to the email.

It was while I was in the shower, luxuriating in the attention I was receiving from Jules who was busy washing my back, that I realized that Sarah was still sleeping with us. In point of fact, we were almost wasting the money on the second suite because, even though having the second room was nice, and I could go to bed earlier than the girls as I was used to doing, I'd invariably wake up surrounded by all of them, Sarah included.

I mentioned it to Jules.

"She feels safe in with us," Jules replied. "The fire spooked her. Also, I don't know if you've noticed or not, but your autonomic nervous system hasn't played up even once. Even when you've woken up with her draped over you."

I considered that "Hmmm," I said. "That's true. What's going to happen when we get our new place. Is she going to go back to sleeping alone?"

"Probably not," said Jules. "Maybe, if and when Arnie stays over she'll sleep with him, but on other nights, I suspect she'll want to bunk in with us."

"I also think," she said, "given that, we ought to look into getting a bigger bed."

"Is there a bigger bed? Ours was a Wyoming king, I thought that was the biggest. Are we going to have to get a custom build?"

"There is a bigger one," she replied. "An Alaskan King. It's nine feet square, the Wyoming king was only seven feet wide."

"We'll have to see what size the rooms are in the house to see if we can get one before we rebuild. Otherwise, we might have to make do until we can."

"I'm sure it will be fine," she said.

The rest of the day passed without incident. I hadn't heard anything regarding Knight or Greenwood, but I wasn't really expecting to this early. I thought that the IRS might take a few days to evaluate the information they'd been sent before acting. Since the two people concerned had no memory of what they had done, there was no rush. They would carry on with their lives without concern until the hammer fell. As far as they were concerned, we had been well and truly put in our place and they put us out of their mind.

Purcell and his team wouldn't be telling anyone about the dreams that they had had, nor would they be in any hurry to come anywhere near us again.

Thursday evening, we went to look at the house on Bob's street. All the girls had pretty much decided this was going to be our new home until our house was rebuilt. I'd also asked Marcia to come along and look over the house to make sure there were no problems with it that we needed to know about. I wasn't averse to spending some money on the new house, but I wasn't about to buy a lemon either.

The realtor's eyes widened when so many people turned up together.

"Mr. Stott?" she said as I walked up the driveway toward the front door.

"Caleb," I said smiling at her. She shook my hand, uncertainly.

"I'm Veronica Sykes," she said.

"Would you like me to take you around, or would you prefer to just take a look yourselves?"

"We'll just look around if that's okay," I said. "Then if we have any questions we can ask at the end."

"That's fine," she said.

"First question first," I said. "Is this property in a HOA?"

"No," she said. "Most of the houses on the streets are rental properties."

"Perfect," I said.

We went into the house. Both Ness and I went straight to the kitchen. It was nowhere near the size of the kitchen in our old house, but it was big enough and had a six burner stove and a high level built-in oven and grill.

The living area was a combined living and dining room that would be large enough for a ten place dining table as well as seating for eight in the living area. There was a half bathroom off the kitchen. There was also a study which wasn't huge, but big enough.

"Would this work for you as a workshop?" I asked Jules, and she grinned at me.

"I was just thinking the exact same thing," she said. "I could put a bench there, and..." she went on to describe how she'd equip the room.

Upstairs there were four bedrooms, two with ensuites, and a family bathroom.

The master bedroom was easily as big as ours and I was certain the big bed would fit with space to spare.

I sighed.

"Only two of the rooms having ensuites might be a problem," I said to the girls.

"Not really," said Louise, "If we took this room, we're right next to the bathroom in any case. It's not a huge deal."

"You only offered because you love wandering around the house naked," said Amanda. "That would be the ideal excuse."

Louise grinned at her but didn't deny it.

"What do you think Sarah?" I asked indicating the second of the bedrooms with the ensuite. "Will that be okay for you?"

Sarah looked at me, a complicated look on her face.

"Yes," she said eventually. "That would be great." There wasn't a great deal of enthusiasm in her words.

I decided to leave it for now and talk to her later, or perhaps see if one of the girls could find out what the issue was.

While we were walking around, Marcia had taken herself on her own tour, and eventually met up with us in the entry hall. She had a notepad on which she'd made a few notes.

"On the whole," she said, "not bad. There are a few little niggles, but they shouldn't cost that much to put right. If you spent maybe five thousand on the place, it would be worth the asking price."

I looked at the realtor.

"How flexible is the seller on price?" I asked.

"There's already been an offer made," she said, not actually answering the question. I saw from her mind that the offer was, actually, nearly fifty thousand below the asking price. The problem for most people coming to view the property was the area. It was full of students and people didn't want to live in the midst of students. They made noise, were rowdy, and had parties. The only people interested in buying were those who wanted to buy the property to rent out to those very students. Because of that, they wanted to get the property cheaper and weren't willing to pay the kind of money that someone looking for a home might.

"What do you guys think?" I sent to the girls. "Is this the place for us, for now?"

I got a resounding chorus of yeses from the girls.

"My contractor says that if I spent five thousand on the house, it would be worth the asking price." I said to the realtor. "So, that's my offer. Five thousand below asking price. I'm looking for a quick close. I can have the money in escrow probably by the end of business tomorrow if our offer is accepted."

"You have seven hundred and fifty thousand dollars in cash?" the realtor asked.

"Yes," I said simply. "How long will it take for you to get an answer for me? Are there other viewings lined up?"

I could see that there weren't, and that she'd been authorized to accept any offer that came within ten thousand of the asking price. The house had been on the market for a little while, and the previous owners, although they had moved, had taken out a bridging loan. The interest on that loan was starting to become a problem. They wanted out of the house.

Veronica wondered briefly if she should try for more money, but decided against. She smiled.

"I'm authorized to accept on the owner's behalf," she said. "If I can take some details from you, we can get things started."

We spent another hour at the property completing paperwork. Marcia had left already, although she'd left an envelope with me, presumably with the costings for the site clearance at our old house.

"How long before we can move in?" I asked. "Our house burned down, and we're currently living in a hotel. We're anxious to move as soon as possible."

"We have to do some checks," she said. "We're required by law to do anti-money laundering checks on anyone buying properties cash. That can take a few days. Then it's really in the hands of the lawyers. I'll get the ball rolling and hopefully by the end of business tomorrow we'll have an idea of the timescale. Would that be okay?"

"That would be fine," I said. We shook hands again left.

Once again, we decided not to eat at the Nines. The restaurant was good, and the food was really good too, but eating there every night wasn't just expensive, it was just too much. We wanted something a little more down to earth. We decided on a diner that made a really nice burger, and ate there.

We were just getting ready to leave the restaurant when my phone rang. Dianna.

"Hi, Dianna," I said. "What's up."

"Caleb," she said. "What did you do?"

"Do?" I asked. "What do you mean?"

"I know Maggie said 'don't get caught', but I never dreamed you'd go that far," she continued. "We never expected this! Maggie wants you to come in."

I sighed. It appeared that Maggie didn't think arson and attempted murder warranted turning them in to the IRS.

"They burned down our house," I said. "They could have killed any or all of us. What did you think I was going to do, give them a swirly?"

"I didn't know," she admitted. "I thought you might get them to confess to the police or something."

"Confessing to the IRS isn't worse than that," I said. "I don't see the problem."

"What?" she said. "Confessing to who?"

"I got them both to turn each other in to the IRS, with proof of their wrongdoings," I explained. "I figured that was an appropriate response and would see them taken down."

"The IRS?" she said hesitantly. "So, you didn't..."

"Didn't what?" I asked. "What's going on?"

"Caleb," Dianna said, "Walter Greenwood is dead."