Home For the Haunting: A Haunted Home Renovation Mystery (4 page)

“Sorry,” the young man said sheepishly. “Didn’t mean to be so nosy, but this place is incredible; it’s like a time capsule. Look at those lines—that’s Art Nouveau. You don’t see a lot of that in this area.”

“Architecture major?”

“How’d you know?”

“Not a lot of people know much about Art Nouveau.”

“It’s one of my favorite styles. I’m Jefferson, by the way.”

“Nice to meet you, Jefferson. I’m Mel Turner, the house captain for this project.”

“Aye aye, Cap’n.”

I had to smile. “I’m fond of the Art Nouveau era, myself. But that’s a topic for another day. Today we’re restoring this fine example of twentieth-century cottage architecture. You guys arrived late, so how about you make up for lost time and get to work?”

“Sure thing. Just tell me what to do.” Jefferson was a good-looking guy, tall and strong, with pearly white, straight teeth. Someone had made sure he took his vitamins. And now that he was shaking off the hangover, he appeared polite and accommodating.

I wondered how he would handle it if, while he was pulling his Peeping Tom act, a ghost had peeped back.

“Check in with Luz over there. She’ll put you to work.”

I looked around for Monty and spied him on the porch. It was his usual perch, overlooking the crowd, except when he hid inside, reading.

One of the things I had immediately liked about Monty were the wall-to-wall bookshelves—stuffed with volumes—lining his living room. Many of the clients I dealt with had adorned their living spaces with nothing but giant flat-screen TVs and sound systems worthy of a professional rock band. Even in the finest homes, entertainment systems had replaced libraries. Book lover that I am, this hurt my feelings.

“Monty?” I called from the side of the house. “What do you know about the house next door?”

“My house used to be its carriage house, or something like that,” said Monty.

“Uh-huh. But it’s unoccupied, right?”

“You could say that.”

Okay . . . I guess I should follow up on the Murder House once I found a little free time. I wasn’t getting involved, though. No way. I would just ask Monty what he knew, and then I would move on.

Our main goal today—besides the roof and now under the kitchen sink—was to build the wheelchair ramp, which would allow Monty easy entry and exit, both for safety and to improve his quality of life. I had asked Stan Tomassi to lead this part of the project. Stan worked for Turner Construction and was himself in a wheelchair as the result of an accident on the job. In typical Stan fashion, he had collected all the materials needed, including “lumber” made of recycled pressed polymers, and early this morning had gathered around him several eager beavers to explain to them what the job required.

Stan made a point to encourage women to join and learn as well. He checked them out on the power tools, demonstrated how to read simple drawings, and helped them lay out the project. At the moment, a newly empowered group of three men and three women was sawing equal lengths for the treads and screwing them onto the assembled frame. Stan was careful not to hover, allowing the volunteers to make mistakes and learn from them. He kept a close watch out of the corner of his eye, though, prepared to intervene when necessary to avoid ruining expensive tools and materials, and to correct poor workmanship.

Speaking of seeing things out of the corner of one’s eye . . . now that I knew a bit about the history of the house next door, I couldn’t seem to keep from glancing over at it. The house had obviously been vacant for some time. But . . . there was vacant, as in uninhabited, and then there was vacant, as in inhabited by those not of this time and space.

My ability to see and interact with ghosts had manifested itself not long ago out of the blue, and took me by surprise. At the time, my knowledge of all things ghostly had been shaped by popular fiction and cable television shows, neither of which offered much that proved useful. Since the ghosts gave no sign that they intended to leave me alone anytime soon, I thought it wise to learn more about them, and I signed up for Ghost Busting 101, a course offered by my ghost-hunting friend Olivier at his new ghost-hunting store. The very idea of taking “ghost-busting” lessons was embarrassing—I was an established business owner with a local reputation to maintain—but I was determined. So far, most of the spirits I’d encountered had been harmless or well intentioned. A few had been more threatening but incapable of inflicting serious harm. Still, I knew so little about ghosts and what they were capable of. The thought of going up against something malevolent while armed only with a courage born of stupidity and stubbornness seemed like a Very Bad Idea.

Fortunately, ghost-busting class met tomorrow night. I might just run a few specific questions by our intrepid instructor.

I noticed the blond fraternity volunteer, Jefferson, looking through the windows of the house again. What was with this guy? The place was vacant, but still. Did he go around peeping into everyone’s windows?

Out in the car, Dog began barking frantically.

Could Jefferson be seeing something . . . more?

“Mel, check out the sorority,” said Luz, distracting me from my thoughts. “Or, as I like to call them, Team Amoeba.”

“Are they biology majors?”

She shook her head. “Watch them for a moment. They won’t move. They stand in the same spot, the whole gang crowded together, not reloading their paintbrushes or anything.”

She was right. The girls were talking nonstop, but otherwise not accomplishing much as they flicked their paintbrushes over the rough stucco. The fact that they were using brushes instead of rollers was crazy. Done properly, brushes would access the divots in the stucco better than rollers, but that required a level of skill these young women did not have.

“Watch this,” Luz said as she grabbed the girl on the left by the shoulders, and marched her down the wall ten feet. The other young women shuffled down to join her, and without losing a beat picked up the story about some boy’s inability to commit emotionally.

“More paint on those brushes, girls,” Luz said, and held up the bucket of paint. Again, without a pause in the story, each girl dipped her brush in the paint can and listlessly stroked the paint onto the wall.

Luz joined me at the tool blanket. “Team Amoeba: They change shape but ultimately come back together.”

“That’s brilliant,” I said, laughing.

“I know.”

I headed down the alley between the two houses, shimmying around both the ladder leaning against the side and the stacks of asphalt roofing tiles. I tried not to look, but . . . there it was again: a flash in my peripheral vision.

Monty rolled out onto the corner of the wrap-around porch.

“Hey, Mel, that’s not the right shed,” he said. “They’re supposed to clean out the one at the back of the yard, not that one—”

There was a crash and I saw someone had managed to shove a length of new copper pipe through a basement window.
Better add a new pane of glass to the Home Depot shopping list.

“Hey, Mel!” Monty called again. “They’re cleaning out the wrong shed.”

“What?”

From the backyard, I heard a scream.

N
o one who works construction sites is a stranger to on-the-job injuries, whether painful blisters, bloody cuts, or broken bones. Without pausing to think, I grabbed a nearby first-aid kit and ran in the direction of the cry. Stephen was hot on my heels, a bright orange bottle of sunscreen in one hand and a box of Garfield Band-Aids in the other.

I knew it. I knew it,
I thought to myself. Hangovers and tools were a dangerous combination. What had I been thinking?

“What’s the story?” I demanded as I reached the frat boys, who were crowded around the ramshackle shed. “Who’s hurt?”

“No one,” Jefferson said, his face pale. It looked like his hangover was hanging on.

“So what was the screaming about?” I asked, angry. “Not cool, guys. You scared me.”

Jefferson pointed to the shed. “It’s in there.”

“What is it?” I asked. “A rat?”

“It’s not a rat,” said Jefferson. “It’s . . . Well, look for yourself.” He placed one hand on the door and gave it a little shove, then stepped back.

Annoyed at this unnecessary drama, I peered in.

The first thing I saw were locks of hair. Long hair, from someone’s head. Baffled, I searched for an explanation. One of the sorority girls? But their hair was long and silky, with the shine of expensive hair care products. The hair I was looking at was wild and frizzy, a dull mousy brown.

I glanced at Stephen, who was swallowing convulsively but who remained by my side, loyal pal that he is.

Only then did the horror wash over me. It was a person. A woman . . .

“Is she . . . ?” he asked, unwilling to complete the sentence.

“I think so,” I said. “I don’t know . . . but yes, I think so.” I blew out a breath, crouched down, and switched on the tiny flashlight on my keychain. Its faint light did little to illuminate the shed’s dark interior, but I could see that the woman’s skin was a shade of gray that looked more like a Halloween dummy than a person. I guessed her age at around forty.

“Call your friend in the SFPD,” Stephen suggested.

“I don’t
have
a friend in the SFPD.” Inspector Crawford wasn’t a friend, not exactly, and I worried that she might grow suspicious of my tendency to stumble across dead bodies. Such a thing wasn’t normal, I thought. What were the odds yet another body would turn up when I was around?

“Jefferson, you have a phone, right?” I asked, noting that the confident young man was looking a bit green. “Call nine-one-one, please. Tell them we have a suspicious death.”

“Yes, Captain,” Jefferson said, and pulled out his iPhone.

“Everyone else, listen up,” I said, hoping I sounded calmer than I felt. The buzz of excited chatter around me fell silent. “Do not go anywhere. The cops will want to take a statement from each of you. You haven’t done anything wrong, so there’s nothing to be nervous about. Just tell them what you saw.”

“What if we didn’t see anything?” a scared young woman asked.

“Then tell them that,” I assured her.

“What can I do?” Stephen asked quietly.

“Take the phone and talk to the cops,” I said. Jefferson was staring at his phone, not dialing. I realized he probably didn’t know the street address or any pertinent details. “Will do,” said Stephen.

“And then come back and stay with me? In case I go all girly and faint?”

In the past year I had been involved in several disturbing incidents, but most had involved immaterial ghosts, not all-too-material corpses. But as much as I wanted to flee, it seemed wrong somehow to leave the body alone. I turned back to the shed and crouched to examine her.

“Don’t touch it!” Stephen said, pausing with the iPhone in his hand. “
Her
. I meant don’t touch
her
. That’s what I meant.”

“You don’t have to worry about that,” I replied, switching the tiny flashlight back on. “I’m just looking. Call nine-one-one, please.”

Stephen nodded and went to stand near the house.

I flicked the penlight over the woman’s face and noticed specks of vomit on her collar. Her eyes appeared swollen and small, and red bumps dotted the back of her hands—hives? Had she died of a bee sting, perhaps?

“With those hives and swollen lips and stuff . . . maybe she had an allergic reaction?” suggested Jefferson from behind me.

“Do you know about that sort of thing?” I asked.

“I saw it one time with a frat brother of mine. He was totally, like, allergic to opioids, but he didn’t know it. He had some pain pills when he broke his collarbone playing rugby, but he swole up like that, eyes and lips and hives. Looked terrible.”

This poor woman looked terrible, too, no doubt about that.

I noticed a tattoo on her neck. It appeared to be a hand holding something. It was upside down from my perspective, and as I was angling my head to get a better view, I felt a hand on my shoulder and fell back onto my butt.

It was Luz.

“She’s been dead for a while, Mel,” she said, her voice gentle. “This has nothing to do with you.”

“But . . . could this be . . . ?” My mind flashed on the Murder House next door. Had its evil seeped onto this property? Could Monty, to all appearances a decent guy in a wheelchair, have been killing women and stashing their bodies in his shed? Could there be a whole cache of bodies hidden in the home’s crawl space?

Don’t be ridiculous
, I scolded myself. I was letting my imagination run away with me. Monty didn’t have the mobility to get into the crawl space of his house even if he wanted to. Nor would he be able to transport a dead body here to the shed at the bottom of his sloped yard. He told me he hadn’t even been to the basement floor of his house since his accident. He couldn’t even get out of his house unassisted, which was why we were building the ramp.

Luz’s dark eyes scanned the area, checking out the neighbors’ house.

“Could be anything,” she said. “In fact, I heard those kids talking about drugs being dealt out of the vacant house next door. And the way this shed is situated, it looks like it straddles both properties. Look, there are access doors on both ends . . . are we even sure this is Monty’s shed?”

I shook my head. “I guess . . . not. Monty’s cottage used to be an outbuilding to the big house. Since there’s no real fence . . . it’s hard to tell where one property ends and the other begins.”

“It’s probably as simple as that, then,” Luz said, wrapping an arm around me. “Probably someone bought some drugs, wandered down here for privacy . . . and that was the end of the story.”

The end of her story, that was for sure. Poor woman.

“Cops are on their way,” said Stephen as he joined us. He was as breathless as if he’d run a 5K. “I asked for Inspector Crawford since we already know her. I figured that way you wouldn’t have to go through the whole ‘why do you keep finding bodies’ routine.”

“You think her knowing me from other crime scenes makes my being here
less
suspicious?”

“I hadn’t really thought of it that way,” said Stephen, his hand flat on his chest, as though willing his heart to slow down. “My heart’s pounding. Are your hearts pounding?”

“No,” said Luz. “My heart’s steady as a rock. Sounds like a guilty conscience—you sure you didn’t kill her, Stephen?”

Stephen ignored her. “I don’t really think I should call back and cancel, though, do you? That would seem suspicious, wouldn’t it?”

“You got that right,” said Luz, glaring at him.

“This is ridiculous,” I said. “I’ll just call her myself to explain why we requested her.” I had Inspector Annette Crawford’s direct number stored on my phone as a result of our earlier interactions. Her number was
not
, however, on speed dial. That was something, I reassured myself.

Inspector Crawford said that she would send over a car immediately and we were not to touch anything. She repeated “don’t touch anything” several times.

Now what? Luz planted herself in front of the shed, arms akimbo, prepared to ward off invading hordes. Stephen stood nearby for moral support, though he was still breathing hard and looked so ill at ease I half expected him to blurt out a spontaneous confession of homicide. The frat boys and a dozen others attracted by the commotion stood around them in a loose semicircle, whispering and trying without success to peer into the shed’s dim interior.

I looked at the volunteers swarming over Monty’s house and wondered,
Should I shut everything down?
It felt unseemly to worry about such prosaic issues at a time like this, but I hesitated to send everyone home. That might mean leaving the project half-finished, and if that happened I might have to pay my regular, nonvolunteer construction crew to come out here to complete the job.

I crossed over to Luz’s tool cache, unearthed a small brown paper bag, and brought it to Stephen, who was now—quite predictably—hyperventilating.

“Luz, do me a favor?”

“Sure. What do you need?”

“Stop me before I volunteer again.”

•   •   •

I couldn’t get folks to leave. Although the police had, as I had feared, ordered the renovations suspended pending the outcome of the investigation, most of the volunteers loitered out front, curious about the goings-on. I had thanked them, suggested they volunteer across the street at my dad’s site tomorrow, and offered them the leftover food, but still they lingered.

It’s odd how fascinated we humans seem to be with the demise of other humans, but, like the impulse to check out a car crash as we roll by, it seems to be pretty much universal. Unfortunately, I was learning this with experience.

At last, Inspector Annette Crawford arrived, took my statement, and began inspecting the scene for the third time.

I noticed Kobe standing by my car, petting Dog through the open window, watching the police, and nodding in a world-weary way.

“You know anything about this?” I handed him a bag full of bagels and cookies.

“I’m just sayin’.” He shrugged, then nodded his thanks for the food. “They don’t call this the Murder House for nothin’.”

I followed his gaze to where paramedics were carrying a stretcher with the woman’s remains. The black plastic body bag gleamed in the brilliant sunshine, an affront to her untimely death. We observed the sad procession in silence.

Suddenly, Inspector Crawford appeared.

With her typically imperious air, she looked at Kobe and said, “What did you call this place?”

“The house next door? They call that the Murder House,” said Kobe. “Everybody knows that.”

She looked at me. I shrugged.

“Okay, I’ll bite,” she addressed Kobe. “Why do they call it the Murder House?”

“A man killed his family there. Only one kid escaped. Maybe two. Depends on who you believe.”

“Uh-huh,” murmured Crawford. “When was this?”

“Long time ago. In the eighties, I think,” he said, then added, “The
nineteen
-eighties.”

As though we might be confused as to which century.

“That’s twenty, thirty years ago,” the inspector said. “Why are you bugging me about something that happened in the neighbor’s house thirty years ago?”

“I’m just sayin’, is all.”

“How about recently? What do you know about this place?”

“Used as a drug drop sometimes, maybe. Only sometimes.”

“You know that, or are you making it up?”

“I hear things.”

“You have a name or description of these supposed drug runners?”

He shrugged.

“Got anything else for me?”

“Nuh-uh.”

“Then go get me a cup of coffee with sugar, no cream.”

To my surprise, Kobe shuffled off toward the refreshment table, where the big container of coffee still beckoned.

The inspector turned to me. “You and the college boy . . . Jefferson—you were the only ones who touched the shed door or the body?”

“As far as I know, yes. I asked the fraternity brothers to clean out the shed, though it seems we picked the wrong one. The homeowner meant the small metal garden shed, not the old wooden one. I’m not even sure that one’s even on Monty’s property.”

“Okay. I want to talk to the students. You can tell everybody else to leave.”

“I did. They didn’t leave.”

“Tell them again,” the inspector said, looking surprised. I doubted she ever had to say anything twice, unlike me. “Looks like the body’s been there for a few days, so I doubt any of you have anything to do with it.”

“About the project . . .”

She fixed me with her patented don’t-mess-with-my-crime-scene look. “The project is on hold until we figure out what happened.”

“You think it was a homicide?”

“Too early to tell. It’s a death under suspicious circumstances, that’s for sure. There are a whole lot of people who will have to weigh in on this one, starting with the medical examiner. Until he makes his determination as to cause of death, we gather evidence. It’s how we do it.”

“Gotcha.”