“You never fail to creep me out, Dolph. I’m gonna check down at the courthouse and if all this is a bunch of bull, you’ll never be welcome in here again; comin’ in here, creepin’ out my customers like you do. If this is all bull-crap, you’re finished here.”
      Dolph smiled, a wry smile, and said, “Check all you want; it’s all true.”
      “Yeah,” Hoolie said, thinking about something that had him wondering, “then why is the place known as Taylor Manse if it was that Major Pike that first lived there? You never mentioned anyone named Taylor.”
      “I never said Major Pike was the first person to live there. I said his family was the first family to die there. He didn’t build the house; the Reverend Michael Mariah Taylor built the house.”
      “Where’d he go?” Wade asked.
      “No one knows. He started construction of the manse first, plannin’ to build his church followin’ the completion of the manse, but in 1880 after completin’ the home, he moved in and immediately put the place up for lease. Major Pike leased the place in December of that year. The granite pillars at the end of the drive, each bearin’ the inscription ‘Taylor Manse’ were left there, unchanged, by agreement between Taylor and Pike. Ergo, it has always been known and referred to in that way. The story goes that Taylor offered Pike a very big discount on the first year’s lease in exchange for leavin’ the Taylor Manse pillars in place. Pike had mentioned to Taylor that he wanted them removed and replaced with red granite pillars bearin’ his own name. It was subsequently written into the lease that they were to remain unchanged, as a condition of each and every exchange of the house for a period no less than, but not to exceed one hundred years. And so it has been ever since, throughout each lessee’s residency there.”
      “Lessees? Do you mean to tell me that I am the first owner of the house since the Reverend Taylor, or his heirs? Everyone else who ever lived there was only leasing the place?” Wade asked.
      “Yes, that’s right. And, it has been empty for the past twenty-five years and went on the open market for the first time, ever, back in January this year.”
      “So, that explains the amount of work I need to do there; why it was so run down. But–Taylor can’t still be alive after one hundred and twenty-five years. So, who’s been collecting the lease payments all these past years, and who owned it prior to me? My paperwork on the house merely states that I bought it from the TRI Group. All the details were handled by the bank, so I never met the seller.”
      “Dolph smiled, and replied, “Taylor Realty Investment Group.”
      Wade frowned.
      “O–kaaay, so who comprises the group?”
      “Hiram Taylor, the Reverend Michael Mariah Taylor’s grandson. He’s ninety-five years old, lives alone in Milford in a modest home there, and from what I’ve heard he’s broke, or was before the sale of your house in February.”
      “Maybe I’ll go talk to this Hiram Taylor,” Wade said with a smirk of a smile. “It could be interesting. Maybe he has some insight into the infamous reputation of my house.”
      “What you had better do,” Dolph warned, “is finish that place up and get out before December. What happens there–every twenty-five years–always happens in December. I’d sure as hell be quit of the place by then.”