Round Rock - Michelle Huneven [7]
An associate in Red Ray’s San Francisco law firm eventually handled some of the more difficult probate proceedings and tipped off Red to what he described as “the steal of the century.”
The ranch didn’t look like a steal. The trees had been neglected and whole groves had withered. The mansion had been thoroughly ransacked. An attempt had been made to hammer plywood over the downstairs windows, but vandals had pried it off and entered at will. When Red first walked through, it looked like a stage for cult depravities, gang wars, snuff films. Mattresses and sofas were disemboweled. Half-burned clothes and draperies clogged every fireplace. Obscenities were spray-painted on the walls and shotgun patterns pocked the wainscoting and recessed ceilings.
Such heinous disfigurement of aging beauty caused a great hope to awaken and lumber through Red’s thoughts. His marriage of twelve years was faltering—in fact, his wife was conducting a house hunt of her own—and he saw in Sally Morrot’s defiled kingdom the groundwork of his own salvation.
Yvette Ray was an urban planner. She sat on the San Francisco planning board and lobbied for historical preservation at any and all costs. A slim, muscular woman with prematurely white hair and a crisp, patrician manner, she had been a promising ballet dancer until family pressure and a foot injury sent her back to college. Thereafter, her histrionics were staged in zoning battles and a few instances of civil disobedience. She’d grown up in the architectural wonderland of Pacific Heights, and as an adult, she fought to restore it to a glory that neither she nor possibly the district itself had ever known. Red had seen her weep with rage at the sight of a bulldozer near the Presidio. Yvette was articulate, militant, and convincing, and her cause was fallen elegance. She was, in short, a rich girl who loved a shambles. Providing, that is, that she could set to and clean it up.
Red Ray made the down payment on the old Sally Morrot ranch with the fat contingency he’d received from helping a quadriplegic become a multimillionaire quadriplegic. He didn’t breathe a word of his plans to Yvette, just lured her to a spa in Ojai for the weekend and, on Sunday, took her for a drive through the nearby countryside. He drove up the Victorian’s palm-lined driveway and, parking by the sweeping front steps, handed Yvette a key at the exact moment that her mouth started working in silent outrage at yet another crime against architecture. The oxidized, slightly bent brass skeleton key had no function, of course, as there was no glass in any of the windows and any child or dog could’ve pushed open all the downstairs doors. The key, obviously, was purely symbolic, and it inspired Red to an even greater act of symbolism. He reached in front of a shocked Yvette, opened the glove compartment, pulled out a bottle of Dewars, and emptied it out on the ground. Joe, their three-year-old son, was asleep in the backseat; Red woke him to extract a pint of Johnnie Walker Black from the accordion file he’d been using as a pillow. Red poured out this scotch as well. Then, he took the keys from the ignition, went to open the Mercedes’s trunk, and did likewise with another bottle of Dewars and a liter of clear mirabelle brandy.
Yvette was impressed—stunned, really—by the house, though skeptical about what had already become something of a ritual disposal of booze. She agreed to make the move, take on the restoration, but refused to quit her job, taking