Chapter Fourteen
“Blake,” I told the intercom. “I have an appointment with Mrs. Callicoat.”
A female voice, made tinny by the speaker, agreed I was expected. The heavy iron gate hummed and swung open like the mouth of a leviathan preparing to swallow me. The voice instructed me to follow the drive around to the rear of the estate. Her mistress, the voice went on, awaited me in the carriage house. I thought carriage houses disappeared with the horse and buggy. What did I know? I didn't have two nickles to rub together. Salivating as I passed the mansion, I followed the long curving drive through unending immaculate lawn and into the estate's back forty.
Turned out I had been right. Carriage houses, functioning ones, had disappeared from America's residential landscape with the loss of ho
