The Inn at Angel Island by Thomas Kinkade Read Free Book Online

them?”
    “By one o’clock,” Liza answered quickly.
    Fran checked her watch. “It’s eleven thirty. Why don’t we get started, and I’ll make sure I leave for town in about an hour. That will give us plenty of time.”
    Liza wished she would go back to town immediately and send the sketches. But the plan made sense. And Fran had come all the way out here, expecting to look at the house.
    “Fine. Where should we start?”
    “Let’s start out here, I guess,” Fran replied. “I’m curious to see how the place has held up.”
    It had not held up that well, but Liza didn’t want to sound negative. She smiled and followed Fran as she headed around the side of the inn.
    Fran gazed up at the building, making the occasional note on a legal pad as she walked the property. It was cool and breezy outside, and the sun was shining. But the inn looked no better in the sunlight than it had last night in the rain, Liza thought. Maybe even worse.
    “This was once such a beautiful place.” Fran shook her head and tucked a strand of hair under her wool hat. “Such a shame for it to get run-down like this.”
    “Yes, it is,” Liza agreed. “My aunt tried her best. But she was all alone at the end and in poor health.”
    “Oh, yes, I know. Elizabeth was a wonderful woman. I knew her from church,” Fran added.
    Everyone seemed to know one another around here. From church or . . . wherever. Liza wasn’t surprised.
    “Your aunt had a beautiful garden back here and one in front, too. She was famous for her roses,” Fran recalled. She turned to Liza. “I don’t suppose it was kept up? That could be a selling point.”
    “I’m not sure. I don’t think so,” Liza said honestly.
    Unless Claire North had continued working on it. Liza would have to ask her about that. Claire had mentioned that they grew tomatoes last summer, but that didn’t mean they still kept a big garden. Just a few plants could yield piles of tomatoes.
    They went in through the back door and began to tour the rooms on the first floor. Fran didn’t say much, though she made a few notes on the pad and used an electronic device to measure the rooms. She took photos of the kitchen and several of the large rooms downstairs, the front parlor and dining room.
    Fran checked the condition of the pocket doors, which were solid oak. “Not bad,” she told Liza. “They don’t even stick much. And those plaster medallions on the ceiling are the real thing, not the plastic molds you can buy these days at the hardware store.”
    Liza hadn’t known you could buy ceiling medallions at the hardware store. She hadn’t even known what the ornate plaster carvings around the light fixtures were called until this morning.
    They climbed to the upper floors, where Fran took photos of a few bedrooms, those that were in the best condition and nicely decorated. She even took a few shots that showed the ocean views from different windows.
    Liza found that encouraging. Some people didn’t care what a place looked like, as long as they could see the water. You could see the ocean from nearly every room of the inn. That was one of the wonderful things about it.
    They finished the tour and went out again through the front door. “I’m going to take this information back to the office and work up some figures,” Fran said, pausing on the porch. “I want to have my broker, Betty Bowman, help with the asking price. She’s very good at it. There’s so little property out here for sale right now, it’s hard to find anything comparable. But we definitely need to figure in the rising market value. We don’t want to put it out there too low.”
    “No, of course not,” Liza said quickly. “What about fixing the place up a bit? Will that help?”
    “Some paint would help. You’d be surprised. Just the minimum to make it presentable. You can fix the shutters and those broken panes of glass—” She pointed out a window on the third floor that had been patched with cardboard.