At one time, it had probably been another small bedroom. But now the space was fitted with a set of 1950s-era flesh-pink metal kitchen cabinets, a small two-burner stove, with a cherry-red teakettle on the back burner, a stained porcelain sink barely big enough to hold a medium-sized saucepan, and the skinniest refrigerator he’d ever seen. There was a single window over the sink, and it held a jelly jar with a cluster of faded pink flowers. A flowered mug in the sink held a teaspoon.
“You cook in here?” he asked.
“All the time,” Cara said with a laugh. “It’s tiny, but it does the job.”
They continued down the hallway, and Cara pointed through the open door. “My boudoir.”
Cara’s bedroom was a large, high-ceilinged room, with wide coved crown molding at the ceiling, and high baseboard molding, all painted a yellowing white. The wallpaper was old and age-speckled, but the pattern of ivy and white roses against a pale aqua background made the room look like the inside of a garden.
The ceiling was painted a soft aqua, and there was a large Victorian brass gaslight that had been electrified, hanging from the middle of an ornate plaster medallion. The scarred heart-pine floors were bare, with the exception of some scattered braided rugs in muted colors. An elaborately carved and gingerbread-decked mantel on one wall held a small coal-burning fireplace.
Her bed, a white-painted four-poster, was unmade, its crocheted bedspread tossed aside, the pillows and sheets rumpled.
“You caught me,” Cara said lightly. “I usually make my bed, but last night was so miserable, and it’s so hot, I couldn’t stand being up here one more second.”
“I’m shocked,” Jack said, with a laugh.
“Nice room,” he said, looking around. “All original woodwork and plaster and wallpaper. Even the fireplace. I guess that’s the upside of having a cheapskate landlord. They left everything alone. You’d be surprised how many downtown houses from this era I see that have been carved up or stripped of everything original.”
“Oh, it’s all original,” Cara said ruefully. “Right down to the ancient plumbing, the leaky roof, and the crappy wiring.”
He went over to the double set of windows facing the street, took the screwdriver she’d given him earlier, and ran it across the windowsill. Paint shavings fell onto the floor, but the window stayed shut.
He went around the room, examining the other windows, but they were all in the same condition, as Cara warned, painted shut with years and years’ worth of layers.
“Okay,” he said, turning to her. “I’m gonna run home, get my truck and some tools, and I’ll be back in about half an hour.”
“Really?” Her face lit up. “It’s your day off, and I know you do this for a living and I hate to ask… but if there’s any way you can cool this place down—even a little—you would totally be my hero for life.”
“No big thing,” he said lightly, heading for the stairs.
“Just leave Shaz here with me and Poppy,” Cara called. “They can stay out in the garden where it’s a little cooler.”
29
Half an hour later, Jack eased his pickup truck into the lane behind Cara’s town house. Back at home he’d taken a quick shower, and grinned at himself in the bathroom mirror as he shaved for the first time that weekend. Wouldn’t hurt to not look like like a Yeti, he decided. He changed into jeans, a T-shirt, and work boots, then went outside to load what he needed.
He went around to the bed of the truck, grabbed his tool belt, and fastened it around his waist.
Cara met him at the gate from the courtyard, unlocking it so he could enter. She eyed the tool belt, then looked over his shoulder at the truck. “Ladders?”
“Yup. I’m thinking I’ll probably need to unseal the windows from the outside as well as the inside. No telling what all they did to paint those windows shut.”
“I had no idea this was going to be such a production,” Cara fretted.
***
Like those of many homes and shops in the historic district, Bloom’s front windows were covered with decorative and functional wrought-iron burglar bars. Jack attacked these with his cordless screwdriver. Cara helped him lift off the bars, and set them aside, along with the flower boxes she’d planted with ferns and Nikko Blue hydrangeas.
He pulled a lethal-looking tool from his belt. It had a spade-shaped head with wicked serrated edges, and he ran it along the edge where the windowsill met the bottom of the lower window sash.
“What the heck is that thing?” Cara asked.
He held it up for her to examine. “It’s called a window zipper. We have to use them on almost every historic restoration we do downtown.”
“Gotta get me one of those,” she nodded.
He performed the same operation on the top of the window sash, then ran the tool along the sides of the sash.
