Chapter 2

I kept telling myself that I hadn't really wanted this house to begin with. It was a near complete disaster and Jason was probably right that it would be a money pit to restore ... and I didn't even have that kind of money left over to spend anyway! Why did I even need a house? I was living cheap in an apartment and I didn't have a wife to support anymore! Why did I even want all of that responsibility again anyway? But still, I'd rather liked the oddness of the place and even its recent tragic history intrigued me.

On Monday morning, well just a few minutes after noon actually, the ringing of the phone roused me up from my bout of lethargically dozing in bed. My motivation since losing out on the bid on the house that Saturday had gone pretty much straight into the flusher. My get-up and go (which has been none too going these last few months) had gotten up and went elsewhere.

"Mr. Heltzer?" The enquiring female voice enquired. "Have I reached the residence of Kurt Heltzer?"

"That's me." I replied with a loud yawn. That's the trouble with owning a business or having formerly owned one or even registering a DBA with the city, every sales and marketing firm for two hundred miles will randomly cold call you seeking to sell you something. I get at least five of these sorts of calls daily, even after putting my number on both the national and state 'Do Not Call' list. I was getting ready to immediately hang the phone up when she sensed the acute suspicion in my voice and began to hastily get to the point of her call.

"Mr. Heltzer, this is Kathy Yates. I'm the Assistant Chief Operations Officer with First Pillagers Bank and I understand that you attended our home foreclosure auction this last Saturday and were the under bidder for one of our properties, the house in Ranger Heights Village?" (no, this wasn't actually their name ... but I do think it's on their corporate mission statement).

"That's me." I confirmed to the cheerful feminine voice over the phone. "Is being an Assistant Chief very much like being an Assistant Plunderer, where you just hold your boss' battleaxe while he or she gathers up all of the loot into a big sack marked 'Swag'? Sounds like a sweet job! Are you hiring any entry level Pillagers? Or how about 'expert treasure hunters' even? I have to admit that my burglary skills are a little weak and I'm way too tall to squeeze into tiny tunnels to ravage dragon hoards either but you'll find me earnest and extremely willing, and I do own a clean pocket handkerchief! I can be the guy who picks up the customers by the legs and then shakes them upside down to further empty out their pockets!"

"Alas, no ... no such job openings are available at the present, although I think our Manager of Despoilment might be soon looking for a career change, so I'll keep you in mind." She laughed. "Actually Mr. Heltzer, can I call you Kurt? I'm calling today to inform you that there have been some problems completing the sale of the property that you were interested in to the high bidder ... and that's rather something of an understatement. Their verified letter of account with their bank has been determined to be insufficient for the final closing sale price of the property. Under the terms of the auction, final payment via a certified bank check must have been made by no later than twelve noon today, which was about five minutes ago ... and the buyer did not by that time complete the transaction. Accordingly, by the legal terms of the sale, I am now allowed to offer you the next opportunity. Your final bid was one hundred and seventy thousand, is that correct?"

"It was ... and yes, I would still be interested in the property at that bid price."

"Actually, with the added 5% buyer's premium and the title company's closing cost fees of $750, I would need a certified check from you in my office no later than five o'clock this afternoon for the total amount of $179,250. Can this be arranged?"

"It can, but only if I can bear to pry my ears apart from your lovely enchanting voice! Give me some directions to your office and I think I can be there by three o'clock at the latest!"

This timeline was perhaps slightly pushing it, but I scrambled out of bed and hauled ass to my bank and I had the certified check in my hands in barely an hour later. Her bank office was all the way across town and Austin traffic is horrific now at nearly any time of day, but I made there in time, sitting in a large overstuffed leather chair outside of her office at the bank by just a little after two-thirty that afternoon. Ms. Yates was currently in a meeting in a conference room just down the hall and from the sounds of things it wasn't at all a happy one. Even with the heavy wooden door completely shut the loud sounds of arguing could be clearly heard down the hall and I could almost, but not quite, listen in from where I was sitting.

It sounded like a couple of extremely unhappy customers were having a go with Ms. Yates and a few other senior bank officers! Even bank security was starting to become involved and a pair of armed bank guards arrived and remained standing just outside the door, waiting to see if the situation would escalate in actual violence, which didn't sound at all unlikely from where I was sitting.

"You can't do this to us! We've got rights!" The loud voice of a black male bellowed, just as the conference door was opened from the inside. I recognized him at once from the auction on Saturday, the head bidder of the rather oddly out of place urban group that had won the final bid for the property. They had looked rather out of place then ... and even more so now once I could get a good look at them. They were dress very urban with lots of black leather, dark sunglasses and bling around their hands and necks. It all shouted 'gangsta' or wanna-be in a rather loud and unsubtle way.

"We can get the money ... in full, to you by Wednesday! We've told you that! We need this property and you just can't sell it out from under us! If you do – we'll sue!" A second voice shouted. A moment later this was revealed to be the youngest white male partner of the group, a guy about my age but as decked out in hip-hop fashion as the rest.

"The auction contract you signed to receive your bidding number was explicitly clear," another voice sounding like an elderly white male calmly stated, "and the bank statement of credit you provided was insufficient for approval of your final purchase bid amount in any case. The auctioneer should have disqualified your final bid right from the start. In any case, by the legal terms of the sale, final payment in full was to be made today not later than noon and you were unable to complete the terms of this sale. As we've already explained several times we are legally and contractually obligated to follow the exact terms of the foreclosure auction rules, which does not include any extra time for the buyer to gather the necessary funds for payment."

"We're only short $38,000!" The older black male snapped. "We can have the rest by Wednesday morning ... count upon it! Can't we just arrange a temporary signature loan today for the balance, to be repaid later this week to complete the sale?"

"Again, no. The terms of the foreclosure auction require immediate and full payment by a cashier's check, which at this time you cannot provide us. Accordingly your high bid for the property cannot be accepted and the under-bidder now has the next legal claim to this property. We are sorry that we cannot assist you further." A middle-aged man with a suit, probably Kathy's boss the COO or even the bank manager opened the door for the unhappy gentlemen to make it clear that the meeting was over.

"You'll be sorry you crossed us you assholes ... and you too bitch!" The third rejected buyer, the rougher looker Hispanic male shouted as he abruptly shoved away his chair and stood up to apparently leave, but not before taking a couple of menacing steps towards Ms. Yates. Her direct boss, the middle-aged man in the sharp shirt was manly enough to take a step to his side in front of his employee to protect her. The more elderly bank officer, probably the bank manager, did quite the opposite and started backpedaling. Age or not, that marked him as a weasel in my book for not at least holding his ground to protect his female employee.

I think that if the two armed security guards had not been present right there at that doorway, some real violence might have erupted. The Hispanic gent gave Kathy one last final glare and turned to leave, and then found a security guard in his blocking the door. This was about the time that he decided to give the middle-aged bank officer a rather smart and sudden sucker punch in the gut before he made a bulrush to get through the door to leave. There was then good bit of pushing and shoving and several raised fists were wildly flailing about until one of the guards horse-collared the belligerent Hispanic man and bodily threw him halfway down the hallway, nearly landing in fact by my feet.

The Latin thug and I exchanged a pair of pointed looks as we each immediately remembered each other from the auction bidding but he and his two companions were nearly immediately grabbed by more arriving security and soon frog-marched him forcibly right out the front door and literally thrown out onto the curb.

They sure didn't go quietly, and I moseyed along at a safe distance behind the guards and the bank officers to catch the very final act of the drama. There was a lot more yelling and shouting from outside, and there were quite a few comments that sounded like terrorist threats to my tender ears. I'm also pretty sure that this time the older black guy, who again seemed to be their overall leader, had also caught a glimpse of me and he stopped his own yells of threat making to give me a pointed fish-eyed look of menace. The stare was more like a glare ... a malevolent 'I'm gonna get ya sucker ... and your little dog too!' A baleful squinty-eyed stare that promised all sorts of incipient malice would soon be heading my way, because somehow all of their misfortune now all seemed to be my fault!

Fuck ... that was all that I needed right now! Besides I don't even own a dog and Kelly had taken our cat with her. I was starting to get a bad feeling about this situation all over again!

"Well, I guess the high bidders did have some slight problems with their financing!" I commented to Ms. Yates when she returned to her office after a short private meeting with the bank manager. I was trying to be casually funny, but I don't think either one of us were particularly in the mood to laugh.

Even bug-eyed with concern and transparent fear, Kathy was at least as pretty in person as her voice had sounded over the phone. Tall and slender but not overly skinny and very close to my own age or just a year or two younger, maybe about thirty give or take a year. Her figure was clearly an extremely athletic one, with extremely toned arms and legs and a stomach that even hidden underneath her suit jacket I could tell was nearly washboard flat. She had some meat on her bones and in just the right places to suit my tastes. Her hair was a long auburn brown but wrapped up tightly behind her head in a severe bun. Her business suit was professional and probably from an expensive store since it was perfectly cut and fit her flawlessly, but the silk shell under her jacket didn't quite hide all of her luscious assets, nor did her knee length skirt either.

If I'd had to choose just one part of her to focus upon, it would be her legs. They were very, very good and long legs ... and she knew it, emphasizing them when she walked and how she adjusted and readjusted them once seated back behind her desk. They were runner's legs; the kind that you can only get by working out avidly, several times a week and not just a token hour or two spent lounging about at a gym. She wore thin narrow glasses that nicely suited her face in sort of a sexy librarian kind of way that her bright green eyes now peered over the top rim of in order to take a better look at me. That gave a bit of the game away that she didn't really need the glasses to see, just perhaps for reading documents with fine print or else they were just for looks. Oh, she was entirely suitable for pillaging herself and she had no wedding or engagement rings on her fingers!

A faint smile crossed her face before we began our business so I guess that I passed her inspection as well. I look pretty good I think for being just over the wrong side of thirty. Hauling antiques about is often heavy work and it tends to keep my stomach (mostly) relatively flat and my muscles adequately toned. I wasn't buff enough for a fireman's beefcake calendar but I could still fit into my old college football jersey without straining the mesh fabric too much. I don't deliberately work out much, but I used to jog a little at least twice a week and then on Saturday mornings I had been in the habit of pumping weights for at least an hour. Since the divorce I had been mostly skipping these routines and I decided that I needed to get back in the habit again soon, or I'd start to get a bit soft. My gym equipment was all in storage but I could correct that little problem.

Her eyes quickly but keenly glanced over my arms and shoulders several times, probably admiring the athletic cut of my only good but mundane department store suit (which also nearly dated back to my college days but it still fit almost perfectly as well) but eventually her eyes settled upon my head and her fingers gently twitched for a moment, as if she were thinking about running them through my hair. It's a nice sandy brown color with gold highlights if I've been working out in the sun much, which I hadn't been lately. It was a little longish in the back but it didn't quite reach my shoulders. I'd get it cut short at the start of this summer, as usually, when the central Texas heat would start to get unbearable and start to turn my head into a wet mop.

"More than just slight problems." She weakly replied, trying to focus once more upon business. "We did try to work with them, within terms of the auction contract, but their bank in Houston wasn't especially helpful either. The bidders didn't keep large balances in their account and their bank wasn't willing to write them an immediate signature loan for the remaining balance either. We tried that route earlier this morning. So ... do you have the certified check?"

I did, and presented it to her. It took awhile for my bank to confirm it but not excessively so. This purchase brought my remaining bank balance down to just under twenty thousand, but it would be enough to close the deal. The final house closing of the title wouldn't take place for another two weeks, and that was fairly expedited. It wasn't going to take me more than a few days to pack up my rental apartment afterwards, especially since I'd never really unpacked much of anything since the divorce in the first place. Nearly everything I owned was still in boxes and I could probably haul everything over to the house in about three trips, once the title transfer was complete.

"Well ... this has to be the single most expensive introduction to a beautiful woman that I've ever paid for," I laughed, once we'd completed all of the bank paperwork to start the closing procedures, "but I have to admit that it has been worth it. Now that we've been formally and professionally introduced, I'd be delighted if I could have the opportunity of taking you out to dinner sometime soon?"

"Well..." she hesitated, "until after the closing is completed, no ... sorry, that wouldn't be professional of me. But afterwards ... ummm, yes ... I'd then be happy to accept!" She was slightly embarrassed and had a coy little smile that she was trying unsuccessfully to hide, so I got the impression that my request for a date wasn't at all unwelcome. If anything, from the way that her jacket covered bosom gently heaved, I think my appeal for her continued company was something of a slight relief ... that perhaps she'd even been considering asking me out herself. That would have been fine too ... I like assertive and occasionally aggressive women – they tend to know what they want and are usually direct about getting it! They also usually don't bother much with any of the silly mind games that a lot of women like to try playing with men. That was one habit my ex-Kelly had that sometimes drove me nuts! She'd hint obliquely at things and rarely ever get to the exact point ... and then it would be my fault that I couldn't understand what she was talking about half of the time!

We shook hands goodbye and for a slight fraction of a moment I thought that it was her hand held in mine that was the most reluctant to first break contact between us. It held mine just the slightest bit harder and more firmly until it slowly released to let our fingers now slide apart.

"Until closing then!" She said with a smile and with more than a hint of anticipation. I could hardly now wait myself!

"Kurt, just what the hell is going on at that house?" Garry asked me a few days later when I was bringing over another of my stuff to keep in his garage until after closing. "There was another break-in at your house last night. Two trucks with about six people total and all armed with crowbars and sledgehammers. They tried to sneak in quietly really early in the morning but nothing gets past Arlene! She called me and I called in for backup. They drove off when they heard the sirens but there are even more holes to patch now in the basement!"

Arlene was our neighbor who lived at the first house on the left in our circular cul-de-sac street. She was retired and probably in her late seventies and as crusty an old senior citizen as you could get. She never seemed to sleep and her idea of fun was to watch what everyone else in the neighborhood was doing at all hours of the day or night.

"Did either of you get a good look at any of them?" Nope, Garry just shook his head.

"Arlene thought that a few of them might have been black and a couple more either white or Hispanic, but I never got a look at them. They were all wearing jeans and hoodies from what I can tell so there wasn't much to see. It's a wonder that she didn't take a potshot at any of them!" Arlene was also noted for toting her late husband's shotgun around with her nearly everywhere she went and was prone to use it on anyone she considered an interloper, with only trivial provocation.

"This is getting silly! I thought the great treasure hunt was all over? Jason has looked over every inch of that basement and garage and swears that nothing is hidden down there. He's got a friend with some ground penetrating seismic radar equipment used for tracing water or sewage pipes or ground buried electrical cables and he's offered to borrow it for another full sweep ... and I think I'm going to ask him to."

"Yeah, do it ... and post up the images on your Facebook page to show the world that there isn't jack shit down there while you're at it! I think I'll now set up a couple of hidden cameras to watch the place as well, just to see who it is that has suddenly now taken such a keen interest in your house, now that it has sat empty for three years. Besides, the idiots could get confused and try to break into my house the next time by mistake! Any idea who they might be, other than the obvious?"

"Nope, I'll give you three guesses and the first two don't count!" I muttered.

"The high bidders from the auction that didn't have the cash to close the sale? Yeah, that would be my guess too! If I can get their license plates or some facial pictures I could run through the state computer, we just might find out who they are and what their interest really is. Old friends or dodgy business partners of dead DD's, I'd bet... still looking for his stash of hidden loot and now worried that the property will be soon permanently unavailable ... or worse, that you'll now find the treasure!"

"Fat chance. I still don't think there ever was any fortune ... at least not hidden here, or if there was loot hidden here once then someone else found it years ago. But unfortunately, no one else seems to think that. Let's catch these guys and squeeze them, and if we can't send them off to county jail for burglary and vandalism, then at least we can make it too hot for them to try and come back."

"I hate to say it, but my gut instinct is that these guys won't know how to quit and things are only going to get more violent. They also might know where you live, the old apartment. Want to move in onto my couch until closing in week and a half? Also, I'd keep your gun handy and on you. Do you have a concealed handgun carry license? If not, let's do it this afternoon. I know a guy who runs a gun shop and target range just down the road and he teaches the CHL class and if I ask him nicely he might sign off all of the paperwork and get it started for you today. We've also got a form the police chief can sign that will expedite the process a lot once it gets to DPS, to get it approved in probably less than thirty days instead of the usual four to six months waiting period."

"Sure ... let's do it, the sooner the better. I'm starting to get a bad feeling about all of this too! I just need to get one more load of boxes from the apartment and then I can turn in the keys. The dump came furnished, so hardly any of the furniture there is mine, so nothing's bulky or heavy. Kelly kept most of our old stuff anyway."

We got the letter from the chief with no hassle. He was a late middle-aged butterball of a man who bore more than passing resemblance to the portly actor William Conrad, completely with a tobacco and whiskey scoured rasping voice. His eyes seemed sharp enough but Garry had already pre-warned me that not much ever happened underneath that balding scalp of his. Pretty much anybody could get him to sign anything without the need for a whole lot of explanation or fast-talking. Signed papers in hand, we then went to see Garry's friend who owned and operated the small gun store in a strip mall on the county road just outside of the Village to the west. His name was James Torrence and we explained to him what was going on and showed him the request for expedition from the chief and without debate he pulled out the CHL application, signed it and then handed it over to me to fill out the particulars. Talk about fast service!

"What's your piece?" James asked, checking over the document pages for omissions and likely errors. "I've got a full-featured shooting range out in the back and I'd like to see you fire off a few clips, just so that I can make sure that you know what you're doing with a gun now that I've pre-approved you. You'll still need to sit down and take the class, it's four hours total over two days, and the sooner the better actually, but this will get the paperwork into Austin and start the processing for you about a week earlier."

I showed him my rather battered and worn M1911.45 automatic and he grunted with approval. It had belonged to my dad and it was Korean War era military surplus. My target shooting at close range at of both 10 and also 25 yards also appeared to be adequate enough to suit him for now. I used to shoot a lot back in my college days for fun but Kelly didn't like guns much and didn't even like me to keep the weapon in the house, even unloaded. To keep the peace, I left it mostly at the antique shop underneath the sales counter and I'd been lucky and had never needed to pull it out, even to frighten anyone away.

"Not bad, but you're tense and your aim technique is sloppy, and you also take way too long in-between shots ... time you won't have if someone is shooting back at you. I'd normally say that a full sized 1911 is much too big for a concealed carry weapon but you've got broad shoulders and I've got a holster that should fit you. I'd personally suggest eventually getting an H&K USP Compact, or something similar. Their .45 ACP model is very nice if you want to stick with that caliber, but I like and carry the .40 S&W version myself. Most of the local cops around here use the .357 SIG variant for their CCW, and that's a pretty good choice too! You do need more practice, so I want to see you here at least once a week. Friday nights are a very good time for shooting here, we have an informal shooting league and gun club that meets here at seven o'clock and then later we go across the street to Louie's for a few beers afterwards. Come join us."