“Well, I don’t know what I can offer them, Jack. A few dodgy investments, a lot of debt.”
“We’ll have to do a valuation, Michael. Get a figure on what the stocks and shares are worth, how much you’ll get for the house. You’ve put it on the market, haven’t you?”
Michael nodded. “But things are slow. Real estate is in a slump right now. People are making silly offers that would put me into negative equity. I’m going to have to ride it out if I want to get the best price.”
“Well, if the valuation on the property is equal to or less than the size of the home loan, they can’t argue that one. Unless they want to take on the debt. But I think you are going to have to wave goodbye to the stocks and shares.”
A sigh of pure frustration forced itself through Michael’s lips. “That’s all that’s feeding the loan repayments, Jack. And the cost of running the place. You know that house costs thirty thousand bucks a year in taxes alone?”
Jack canted his head apologetically and folded his hands on the desk in front of him. “Then you’re just going to have to sell it for what you can get, Michael. I’m sorry.”
They say that death always comes in threes. And that bad news never comes alone. Mora’s money seemed tainted. It had brought only fleeting happiness to her husband, and then to her. Now both of them were dead, and it flashed through Michael’s mind that maybe he was next. The third in the death cycle of three. Or maybe the money would take its death curse with it. If so, the greed of Mora’s dead husband’s family would bring them more than they were bargaining for.
As for the bad news. The next instalment wasn’t long in coming.
Michael sat amongst the potted palms in the office allocated to the manager of the State Bank of Southern California, Newport Beach branch. It was a fish bowl looking out across an open-plan office where customers bargained with bank staff over loans and overdrafts. His meeting with Jack Sandler had been a little over two hours earlier.
Michael was not on first name terms with Walter Yuri, who liked to be called Mister. Mr. Yuri was a short, avuncular man with a fine head of dark hair going grey, a neatly trimmed moustache, and the bedside manner of a family doctor. He breezed into the office, a busy and distracted man.
“Sorry to keep you, Mr. Kapinsky. This subprime lending debacle is putting everyone under pressure. God knows where it’s all going to end. Vicious cycle, you know. Vicious cycle.” He sat down behind his desk. “I’ve been saying it for years. The government can’t prop up the economy with consumer spending that’s financed by credit. Sooner or later people have to pay back the loans. Or default on them. Which is what’s happening now.”
Michael shrugged. “Of course, I don’t suppose the banks can shoulder any of the responsibility. I mean, who can blame them for offering unsecured loans to people who couldn’t afford them?”
Yuri glanced up sharply. Michael’s penchant for irony often baffled native Californians. It was something he had learned during an East Coast upbringing at the hands of an acerbic-tongued Scottish mother. Yuri pursed his lips and opened the file on the desk in front of him. “Well, fortunately, this bank had the good sense to secure your loan with the house in Dolphin Terrace, Mr. Kapinsky.” He drew a short breath. “Which is just as well, since I’m going to have to call in our collateral now.”
Michael frowned. “You can wait till the house is sold, surely? I mean, it’s not going anywhere.”
“We can’t afford to wait, Mr. Kapinsky. You are several payments behind, and at $16,000 a month, we’re already looking at a shortfall of over $100,000. Just imagine where we’ll be in a year’s time if you still haven’t sold.”
Michael had no answer to that.
“Which, I’m afraid, leaves us no option but to take possession of the house as soon as possible. We’ll be sending someone over to do an appraisal and put a value on it.”
“But I stand to drop at least a million if you do that.”
Yuri adopted the sympathetic smile that doctors reserve for giving bad news to terminally ill patients. “I’m sorry, Mr. Kapinsky, but unless you can find... ” he glanced again at his folder, “... $3,173,000 by this time next week, I’m afraid we’re going to have to take your house and sell it ourselves.”
Chapter Five
Mora had built the house in Dolphin Terrace on one of the most sought-after plots in Corona del Mar, high up on a ridge that looked down over Balboa Island, the harbour, the peninsula beyond, and the vast blue expanse of Pacific Ocean that led the eye on a clear day to the outline, in silhouette, of Santa Catalina Island.
It was a square, single-storey building with shallow-pitched, red Roman-tiled roofs that sloped into a central open-air courtyard where they were supported on classical columns. A semicircular hot tub was built into one corner of the courtyard, and paving stones led through a profusion of shrubs and flowers in bloom to glass doors on all sides. The views into the house gave, in turn, on to views over the harbour, the entire front of the house being divided into three panoramic windows, like framed masterpieces of living landscapes.
In the central space stood the grand piano, down a short flight of steps. More glass doors opened on to a terrace that ran along the full width of the house at the front. To the left of it was the sitting room, with its own views of the harbour. And to the right, the office that Michael had shared with Mora, windows opening left and right on to the side and front terraces. It was here that they had planned their trips, mapped out their itineraries, laughing together in excited expectation of a whole world out there for them to explore.
The main impression that visitors had of the house was one of light. Light that drifted in from the central courtyard. Light that poured in through the picture windows at the front. Light that fell down through cleverly placed skylights set at angles in the ceilings. Its other virtue was its openness. The dining room gave on to the kitchen which gave on to the living room, which was open to the piano room. Only the office and the bedrooms had the privacy of doors that shut.
The courtyard, and the side and front terraces, provided unexpected little nooks where tables and chairs lurked to offer the opportunity of breakfast in the shade, or lunch in the sunlight, or dinner with a view of the sunset over Catalina, the harbour channel below glowing crimson before fading through purple to black.
Michael loved the house. He loved its curves and corners, its angles and arches and columns, the slatted trellis over the front terrace which divided the sun into long slices that fell through the window of the piano room. He loved its light and space, and the way it always lifted his spirits. It somehow captured the very soul of Mora, who had played such a major role in its design. It was her house, and just being in it made him feel close to her. It was breaking his heart to have to sell it. Like losing the last part of her, finally, six months after she had gone.
As he moved from the garage into the utility room, he could hear voices in the kitchen and his heart sank. He recognised Sherri’s simpering laugh, and a couple of other voices he didn’t know.
Sherri was his realtor. A blond, fifty-something, surgically perfected, large-breasted, thin-waisted, wide-eyed, thrice-married native of Newport Beach. She had been trying, unsuccessfully, for three months to sell his house. It was a wonderful property, she had assured him. People would be falling over themselves to buy it. Three-and-a-half million at least. Maybe even four.