|
Mystery House
by John G. Rodwan, Jr. When sitting at the desk where I habitually write, I face two windows through which I can see several houses, all of which contain mysteries, as houses inevitably do. While the actions or inactions of several neighbors might at times seem curious, one house in particular strikes me as especially mysterious. Indeed, I think of it as the Mystery House, which stands on a corner one street to the east of ours. During the summer when we moved into and began fixing up our house, work was also being done at the Mystery House. I saw a new roof being completed around the same time we had ours replaced. A neighbor told us that work had been going on at the house on the corner for a couple of years. It obviously had new windows. Over the course of the next several years, more work was done on the place. The large stone-walled front porch was rebuilt, which, as I learned when we had our more modest brick porch replaced, was no small or inexpensive endeavor. Some trees were planted. Yet during this time, no one lived in the Mystery House. The new windows had brown paper taped over them on the inside. Instead of a front door, the Mystery House had a piece of plywood across which someone had painted “Not 4 Sale.” Beyond the oddity of a large brick and stone Tudor house being restored but remaining unoccupied, what made the place seem strange were the rare appearances by people who either owned it or were tasked with periodically looking in on the place. One day, a burglar alarm went off (which indicated to me that someone was paying for the barely used electricity). Not long afterward, someone with keys showed up, entered the house, turned off the alarm, and immediately left. About four years after one delivered our belongings, a moving van pulled up beside the Mystery House. It idled in the street for a while, but it pulled away before anything was carried in or out of the house. A year or so later, a flatbed tow truck stopped near the garage attached to house by a covered walkway. A silver BMW convertible was removed from the garage and hoisted onto the back of the truck. I didn’t see the car return, but about a week later, I noticed a van stop near the garage. Since any activity at the Mystery House intrigued me, I stopped whatever I was doing to watch what happened next. A woman got out of the passenger side of the van as the garage door powered open. She pulled the same BMW out into the street and sat in it while the driver of the van took a broom and swept out the garage, after which she returned the two-door car to its spot. As the garage door closed, the pair climbed back into the van and drove away. Now, as someone who knows what it costs to replace a roof and windows, who is painfully aware of what it takes to insure an automobile in Detroit, who knows about what property taxes are, and who also pays for alarm service and utilities, I think this might be the most expensive parking garage in the city, especially since the Mystery House is bigger than my house (just as the car kept there is pricier than the one I drive). If my neighbor who told me that work had commenced a couple of years before we bought our place was correct, then the owners might have been able to buy the Mystery House very cheaply. It would have been at the height of the subprime mortgage crisis and economic recession that drove housing prices dramatically down. Even so, whatever the purchase price, owning, rehabbing, and maintaining what I’d guess is a four bedroom house with at least two and a half bathrooms (not counting whatever is on the third floor) is no trivial affair. Why would anyone take on such a financial burden but not live in the house, rent it to someone else, or try to flip it? Why would someone choose to use a large house in a city with notoriously high car insurance rates as no more than a place to store a luxury car? Hell, why would someone have a few dozen windows replaced but not have a proper front door? Puzzling over the Mystery House, I’ve tried to think of plausible scenarios for what I’ve witnessed. Perhaps the buyers fully intended to move in once repairs were made but an unforeseen change in jobs occurred taking them to another town. Sure, that could happen, but then why not try to sell? And why did alterations continue to occur over the span of several years? And who are these people responding to alarms and moving the car in and out of the garage? Perhaps there’s some major problem, much greater than a missing door, invisible from outside that needs attending to before the place can be inhabited. If so, though, why hasn’t it been attended to if the owners could undertake multiple other large projects (the roof, the windows, the porch) as well as relatively minor ones (the trees). It just doesn’t add up. Maybe one day people will finally move in, tell me the full story, and demystify the Mystery House. Then I will be able turn my attention, as I gaze out my office window, to the peculiarities of the house across the street from the Mystery House, of which I have an even better view, at least when the leaves are off the trees in the yard of the home of certain neighbors who are almost never seen, which, as I’m sure you’ll agree, is somewhat suspicious. |
|
