Free Queen Bee Goes Home Again by Haywood Smith

members backed up to ancient shacks from the “black” section, as the old ladies called it.
    Surely I could find one decent, attractive house for this guy.
    Julia came in grinning like a mule eating briars. “You know that cute place next door to y’all that Jerry Ronson bought from the city for a dollar, then redid as an office space? Well, guess what? Since the bottom fell out of the commercial market, he’s had it zoned back to residential and put in a kitchen, then converted the offices to two big bedrooms with two full baths.” She handed me the keys. “He’s carryin’ a ton of properties, so he’d love to unload it. Asking only ninety-nine, five, completely redone. Probably what he has in it. Only thing missing is a laundry room, but there’s a big closet in the back hallway where a buyer could put one in. Why don’t you check it out?”
    I took the key. “But it only has two bedrooms. He asked for three.”
    Julia dismissed that with a flutter of her scarlet manicure. “He can do with two.”
    Even though our thick, ancient camellia hedges blocked the house from Miss Mamie’s first-floor windows, I didn’t want a drug dealer or a cranky neighbor next door. Or another jerk like Grant Owens. “Here’s hoping your guy’s the kind of person we’d like to have as a next-door neighbor.”
    â€œOh, he is, my dear,” Julia crowed. “He is.” She picked up her phone. “I’ll call Jerry and have him spruce up the yard for tomorrow.”
    Julia was enjoying herself so much, I didn’t question her further before I left.
    I parked in our garage, then walked around to the front of the new listing. Once there, I unlocked the new insulated steel front door and stepped into a blessedly cool, simple space with neutral gray walls, white trim, dark hardwood floors, and new, energy-efficient doors and windows. Jerry had done away with the interior walls of the old living room, kitchen, den, and dining room, opening the smaller rooms into one big area with a shiny kitchen along the back wall, defined by a counter-height pale gray granite peninsula that offered lots of casual seating.
    That should be plenty of kitchen for a single man. I’d once sold a rundown bungalow to a rabid recycler old bachelor who’d promptly torn out the rotted kitchen, then happily settled for a secondhand refrigerator, sink, and a microwave on a TV table in its place.
    This bungalow, built for supervisors from the mill, used to have three small bedrooms, but Jerry had wisely split the space between two larger ones, each with generous closets back-to-back and a roomy bathroom with separate tub and shower for each one.
    Great storage spaces in every available nook. Smart move.
    And everything had that new-paint smell.
    Perfect.
    The only drawback (besides the missing bedroom) was, Jerry also owned a half-restored version of the same house on the other side, which might become an attractive nuisance if he couldn’t afford to complete it for sale. In these times, abandoned houses quickly became drug hangouts.
    I made a mental note to call and ask him his plans. Maybe I could nudge him into locking up the other place, at least.
    Back home that night, I ate my frozen low-carb meal, then watched reruns of NCIS, but when ten rolled around, I wasn’t sleepy.
    The outside temperature had dropped to the mid-seventies, so I put on my pink seersucker robe, bombed myself with insect repellent, then took a quart glass of decaffeinated iced tea to the rocking chairs on Miss Mamie’s porch. I eased into the second white rocker from the front door, then leaned back to savor the night.
    I breathed in the smells of fresh-cut grass, granite dust, sweet autumn clematis, and creosoted railroad ties, an appropriate mix for a railway town like ours. In the “management” houses across the tracks, only a few small bathroom windows glowed yellow,