Grandma's Home

“The thing about this city, it’s always changing, growing, getting better. You know that old saying — out with the old, in with the new. Your grandma’s house is the old. And I’m the new.”

I looked at the piece of shit in front of me. “You ripped her off. You stole her house.”

“I did not. She had a lawyer—”

“Your lawyer.”

“Regardless, she agreed, and she signed the papers. Ergo, your Grandma sold me her house. All legal, and above board. And, I don’t think that I have to remind you, your grandma has to be out of her house in less than twenty-four hours. At which point, we will bulldoze this shack to the ground, and, in very short order, there will be a brand new condo residence standing in its place.” He chuckled.

My pulse was starting to ratchet in my ears. I was so angry. I wanted to smack his smug face. With a rock. Instead, I took a calming breath.

“I am going to sue you.”

“Go ahead. By the time you get a court date, we’ll have the new foundation poured, and your grandma’s home will be a distant memory.”

We were standing on the porch of my grandma’s home. I loved this house. I had practically grown up here. Gran always said she would die in this house. And she most certainly would have if she hadn’t answered the door when Mr. Chad Spinnelly had knocked.

“I think you need to leave. It’s still Gran’s house for the next twenty-four hours.”

“Actually, that would be—“ he shot his sleeve and looked at his watch, “twenty-two hours, girlie.” 

He smiled his smug, self-congratulating smirk at me, turned and walked down the steps to the walkway, and into an idling black Hummer parked at the curb.

Of course it’s a Hummer, I thought. Not only does he hate seniors, he also hates the environment.

I walked back into the house. 

Yesterday, when I had arrived home from a three week cyber security training course in San Francisco, I found the house full of half-packed boxes, and Gran sitting in her favourite chair, crying. She told me that she had sold the house. I was flabbergasted. I had spoken to her every night, and she hadn’t hinted that things weren’t right.

“Why?” I had asked her. “This is our home.” I was crestfallen that she hadn’t confided in me nor asked for help.

I had tried to talk to Gran about why she sold the house, but she was evasive, and mumbled something about her getting old, and how much work the house was. She said that the house needed too much work, and that she would be glad to be done with it. 

That was yesterday. Now I only had twenty-two hours to find out what really happened, and stop the sale.

I looked around the house. Sure it was a bit distressed, but there was no way that it was falling down dilapidated. It was a fine house. When my Gramps had been alive, he had always kept the house up-to-date, and immaculate. He’d had the electricity updated from knob-and-tube to copper, and the electrical box updated to 200 amps from 60 amps. He had modernized the kitchen three times in the forty plus years that they had lived together in this house, and had added an additional washroom in the basement, and a powder room on the main floor. This house was his pride and joy.

But then he died suddenly, eleven years ago. Gran was lost. So, I moved in. I was just finishing high school, and thought that living with my Gran would be more fun that living with my parents. 

And I was right. I loved living with her. We were a great pair, living a great life in the city. Now, we were going to be separated, because that bastard Spinnelly had made her sell the house. She wouldn’t be able to afford another home in Toronto, because she didn’t have enough money. Housing prices were crazy, and out of reach for most people. And at a healthy seventy-eight Gran had quite a few good years ahead of her, but now wouldn’t be able to afford to live in her own city. 

Damn you Spinnelly!

I didn’t know what Spinnelly had said to Gran, but he had scared her enough to make her sell. I was pretty sure that he had threatened her — that would be the only way he would have gotten her to sign the papers. The bastard.

I called the senior support officer at the police department. He told me that there was noting he could do because no laws had been broken. I called the Ombudsman for Seniors, and was told that, yes, they could do something about my Gran’s case, but that the wait time was between six months and a year for a hearing. We were so screwed.

I love Toronto. It’s been my home my my entire life. And my parents had lived here all their lives, and my Gran and Gramps had lived her all their lives, all the way back to the mid-nineteenth century. 

Family lore had it that my great, great, great, great Grandma had arrived in Canada, in 1842, via Nova Scotia from Cork, Ireland, with the promise of a job to work for a wealthy family in Toronto, on Jarvis Street. There she met my great, great, great, great Grandfather, who, at that time, was a constable with the Toronto Police Force, whose family had emigrated from Wales in the 1830s. For almost one hundred and eighty years, Toronto had been home to both the Griffith and Quinn families. Now, Spinnelly was trying to force my Gram out of her home, and probably out of her city.

I went out on the front porch and looked up and down the street. Her west-end neighbourhood was changing, but not, perhaps, always for the best. Yes, the neighbourhood had been in flux for a number of years, and yes, this flux had caused housing prices to soar. But the stratospheric values also attracted scumbags like Spinnelly who preyed on the elderly homeowners in the neighbourhood.

At one time, this neighbourhood had been solidly middle-class residential. But as the suburbs spread out around Toronto, homes in the city had become less attractive, prices stagnated, and many of the large homes were converted into rental and multi-unit homes. But in the last twenty years or so, people had begun returning from the suburbs, and the neighbourhood had again started to change back into a single-family homes, gentrifying the way so many other neighbourhoods had. The lots were large in this part of the city, which made the land extremely valuable to speculators. All over the city, private homes were being bulldozed, and multi storey condo buildings were being erected their place. Because of the exorbitant cost of the land, the only way to make a decent profit was to increase the density by building multi-unit residences. So far Gran’s street had escaped the wrecking ball, but Spinnelly had changed all that. I really, really, really needed to stop him.

When I came back into the house, Gran was sitting in her favourite armchair in the living room, looking out the front window. 

“I’m sorry, Anna. I didn’t know what to do. He told me that I had to sell to him. He scared me. I was so frightened.” I went over and hugged her.

“No problem, Gran. We’ll work this out.”

While I was away on my training course, I had noticed Spinnelly hanging around via the feed from the doorbell cam. I was worried about some random guy getting into Gran’s house, so I called her. At the time she hadn’t been very forthcoming, and wouldn’t answer my questions. So I had called my parents — Gran was my father’s mother. I explained that something hinky was happening at Gran’s, and that I needed them to go over and see what was going on. They assured me they would look into it. Apparently they hadn’t, because when I got home yesterday, I found out that Gran had sold the house, and she now had one day to evacuate her home of over fifty-three years. When I called my parents and told them what had happened they guiltily told me that they forgot to follow up on my phone call. I thanked them for their assistance.

I needed to do something, but I wasn’t sure what. I face-timed my three brothers, and explained the situation. They were furious. They loved Gran as much as I did, and wanted Spinnelly’s head on a pike. They even offered to make Spinnelly disappear.  Although tempting, I declined. They told me to let them know if there was anything that they could do. We left it at that.

I wanted Spinnelly to give my grandmother’s home back her. He had stolen it, and that was wrong. I wondered how many other people he had swindled.

I walked over to the desk in the small office cubby under the stairs, and rifled through the papers Gran kept there, and found the contract along with Spinnelly’s business card. If only I had been home, I could have stopped this. I mentally kicked myself.

I turned back to Gran.

“I’m going to look over this contract, and see if there is anyway to get out of it.”

“Oh, please, please, please, find something. I should never have signed anything without you here. I was so scared. I’m a stupid old woman.” She started to cry. 

I went over and rubbed her back. “No, you’re not. And we’re going to get our home back.” I paused, and looked at her. “Gran, why did you sign those papers?”

“I … I can’t tell you. He said he would know if I told you,”

“Gran, you have to tell me. Spinnelly isn’t here. I am. I want to help you.” She started to cry harder.

“He said he would burn down my house if I didn’t sell him the house.”

“WHAT!?” I was gobsmacked. “He said that?”

“Not exactly. He said that it would be a shame if the house burned down because it was so badly maintained.” She paused. “I told him to get the hell away from me, or I would call the police. He showed me a picture of you on his phone. He told me how lucky I was to have such a lovely granddaughter, and that Toronto could be a dangerous city.” She started to cry again. “Anna, it was surreal. I felt like I was in some terrible gangster movie. He was so awful.”

“Okay, okay. I’m going to take care of this.”

I knew that I should call the police, but I wasn’t sure that I had enough evidence, or time. Instead, I sat down at the dining room table with my laptop, and started to read through the contract. I was no lawyer, but it looked pretty air tight. I called a friend who worked at the courts, and he put me in contact with a real estate lawyer, Andrew Lyson. I called Lyson, and explained the situation. When I mentioned Spinnelly by name, he told me that this was not the first time he had heard that name in connection with suspicious home purchases.

“This Spinnelly character has done this exact same thing to at least three other older women in the last year. What he does is legal, but immoral.”

“If I scan the contract and send it to your office, will you have a look at it, and see if there are any loopholes?”

“I’ll have a look, but I wouldn’t hold your breath. He seems to know what he’s doing.”

“Thank you Mr. Lyson. I’ll send the contract right now.”

I picked up the business card — full name, Chad Spinnelly, Esq. Apparently a lawyer. I Googled him. He was a member of the Canadian Bar Association. I checked the Law Society of Ontario, and found that while in good standing, but he had three formal complaints pending. And he’d been sanctioned twice. All the complaints were regarding his real estate dealings. I could only find information about him for the last five years, nothing before that. I decided to check the other provincial law societies. Bingo. He had been member, not in good standing, in British Columbia, but had had his provincial license revoked for, you guessed it, questionable real estate dealings. It was only a matter of time before his license would be revoked in Ontario. Then he would move on to another province to destroy the lives of more seniors. He needed to be stopped.

I am cyber security expert and am very good with computers. What I was about to do was illegal, and could get me fired and arrested. But Spinnelly needed to be stopped. I leaned over the computer keyboard and started my deep dive. 

For such a conniving weasel, his security was pretty lax. I let myself explore his electronic life. Spinnelly Development was his one-man shop. He bought properties and sold them to other companies. A little more digging and I found that he sold all of his newly purchased properties to the same numbered company. A little more digging, and I found that the numbered company, was, in fact, Spinnelly himself. Hmmm. What else was he up to? 

All of his files were on the cloud. I perused them. They were a gold mine of incriminating evidence. Gran’s had been the fifth house that he had swindled this year. By looking at the contracts, he had not paid market value for any of them. I copied these files into my computer, making sure to hide my tracks. I continued my dive. He had a very hefty personal savings account. His business account was very robust as well. Hmmm. This is where my skills were at their best. If I hadn’t been gainfully employed, I would have been a fearsome hacker. I knew that this was the point of no return. I took a deep breath and forged ahead. I transferred all of his money into an untraceable offshore numbered account. I cancelled all of his business and personal credit cards. I changed the passwords on all of his devices. I even cancelled his phone. I stopped his car payments. I blasted his electronic life. When I was sure that I had successfully closed him down, I moved on to the next phase of my plan.

I called my brothers again, and explained what I had done, and said that Spinnelly was going to be furious when he realized I had shut down his life. Because of the threats to Gran, they agreed to take shifts watching over Gran and the house in case things went sideways.

I got busy. Using Spinnelly’s files, I located four of the five women he had swindled out of their homes this year. The last woman, Martine Simcoe, had recently died in a suspicious house fire. My stomach roiled, and I tasted bile in the back of my throat. Bastard!

I looked up the value of their homes, and anonymously deposited the true value of their houses into their bank accounts. I knew I couldn’t get their homes back for them, but I figured they deserved to be reimbursed their full value. 

I noticed that I had an e-mail from earlier in the evening. I opened it to see that Andrew Lyson had sent me a message saying that the contract for the sale of the house was air-tight. The only way that Gran could keep her house was if Spinnelly was unable to pay her on closing. He added that he was sorry he couldn’t be more help. I emailed him back my thanks.

I looked at the clock. It was almost four a.m. Closing was set for later this morning. I had to figure out my next step. I knew Spinnelly had SnapChat on his phone, and I could message him and the text would disappear once he read it. I chose my words carefully.

Cancel the sale, get your life back.

I pressed send on my encrypted phone. I hoped it worked and he would know it was me. I closed my computer, and waited.

It didn’t take long. It wasn’t even six o’clock in the morning when Spinnelly’s Hummer came careening up the street and screeched to halt in front of the house. 

I walked out onto the porch.

He started screaming at me even before he got to the front steps.

“What have you done? What did you do with my money? I want everything back! Now!”

I looked at him impassively. “I don’t know what you’re talking about.”

“You took all of my money! You locked me out of my business! You cancelled all my cards! You cancelled my phone plan! You cancelled my life!”

“I still don’t know what you’re talking about, Spinnelly.”

“I will burn this shit-hole to the ground and kill you and the old lady, if you don’t give me back my life. You’re dead! Do you hear me? Dead!” He shrugged his shoulders up and back. 

“We all want things to go back to the way they were.” I started to turn away to walk into the house. 

Spinnelly pulled a gun from under his jacket, and pointed it at me. “I. Want. My. Life. Back. NOW!”

“POLICE! Drop the gun, Spinnelly!”

Spinnelly turned aiming his gun at my three brothers who had been waiting out of sight, but who were now pointing their guns at him. Spinnelly swung back to me, firing and missing. All three of my brothers fired, hitting him centre mass. Spinnelly crumpled to the ground.

Dead. He wasn’t going to hurt anyone, any more. Problem solved.

I went back in to let Gran know everything was going to be okay.