Home For the Haunting: A Haunted Home Renovation Mystery (6 page)

Unfortunately, the enclosure smelled neither of the outdoors nor the interior, but of must and mildew. It really should be either demolished entirely or shored up properly.

“This is quite something,” I said. “Are you the train enthusiast?”

“That was my husband. I haven’t kept it up the way I should. I’ve got the arthritis, so I don’t get around as well as I used to. Lord, I used to have such energy!”

“Does it still work?”

“The trains still run, but a lot of the smaller items don’t work well anymore. The Ferris wheel is supposed to go around, that sort of thing.”

“My dad’s pretty good with electrical work,” I said. “Maybe he can take a look at it.”

“Oh, he’s so busy I wouldn’t want to ask. He’s already doing so much.”

“I bet he’d get a kick out of getting it to run properly.”

Etta nodded, but looked distracted. “Listen, Mel . . . I was wondering . . . I heard about what happened at Monty’s yesterday.” She picked up a tiny truck and blew off some dust, then cleaned it with her hands before setting it back down on a tiny highway. “You poor thing. It must have been quite a shock. Do they know who it was?”

“I really don’t know,” I said.

“How sad. That place, all those lost souls . . .” She trailed off with a sigh. “I swear, it must be haunted.”

I studied her for a moment before realizing she was speaking metaphorically.

“Ms. Lee—”

“Oh, please, call me Etta.
Ms. Lee
is so formal. Makes me feel like I’m still a teacher.”

“Etta, then. What grade did you teach?”

“Middle school at first, and then high school later.”

“Wow. Teenagers. I’m impressed.”

She smiled and brought a tiny bright yellow train engine over to a worktable. She studied it through a jeweler’s glass, dabbed a minuscule brush in fresh paint, and then started painting the toy with surprisingly steady hands. Seeing Etta now, I realized she probably wasn’t much older than my father, maybe five years at most.

“I love teenagers. I know, I know, I’m crazy. But there’s something so . . . energetic about them. I love the way they throw themselves into things—feetfirst, all in, no doubts. Sometimes that impulsivity gets them in trouble, of course, or even puts them in danger. But there’s something about that energy I just love.”

“My stepson’s sixteen. He seems to be stuck in the grunting, shrugging stage.”

“My advice with teenagers? The more obnoxious they are, the more they’re begging you to spend time with them, pay attention to them. They try their best to run you off, but they’re really begging you to stay.” She grinned, and it was clear to see that she had always been what one would call a handsome woman: tall, strong-looking, I was guessing Polish stock. Capable and, I imagined, unflappable in the face of whatever antics teens might dream up.

“I understand you’ve lived here a long time. You must know a lot about the history of the neighborhood.”

She gave me a keen-eyed look. “By ‘history’ I assume you’re curious about what happened over at the Lawrence house.”

“Is that the house across the street, next to Monty’s?”

She nodded. “The children call it the Murder House.”

Once again, I told myself not to ask. The ghosts were none of my affair. I was running a volunteer project, and a dead body entirely unrelated to me was found in a building entirely unrelated to my project. And even if the dead woman had been found on Monty’s property, her death had nothing to do with the ghosts I had seen in the neighbor’s windows, much less the foggy circles on the windowpanes, as though someone were breathing on the glass . . .

“It was the most interesting thing to happen around here in ages,” Etta said as she stroked more paint onto the engine. She glanced up, wet brush held aloft. “That sounds terrible, doesn’t it? I simply mean that tragedy is inherently interesting, far more interesting to outsiders than happiness. That’s why all great literature is tragedy.”

“I never thought of it that way.”

“Of course, that pertains to fiction, not to life. When it comes to living a tragic life versus a happy one, I know what we’d all choose. Which is what makes what happened across the street all the more tragic. The Lawrences . . . They always seemed so happy.”

“What happened, exactly?”

“Sidney Lawrence killed his oldest daughter, his wife, and then himself.”

So Kobe and his gang exaggerated the details, but were otherwise on target.

“I met a few of the neighborhood children yesterday. Do you know Kobe?”

“Was he bothering you? I’d be happy to talk to him. I know his mother. No father in his life, unfortunately, which is what he really needs. So many of these kids just need their parents to be more involved in their lives, but a lot of their folks are juggling jobs, or addictions, or other problems. I know they can be bratty at times, but after years of working with them, I have concluded that without involved parents, they don’t have much of a chance at life.”

“Kobe was no bother at all. In fact, he and his friends pitched in on the cleanup at Monty’s house.”

She looked at me, askance. “What did they get in return?”

“Snacks and a T-shirt. But they were good-natured about it all. They told me a little about the, um, murders. And they mentioned one of the children escaped?”

“Two. The middle daughter apparently saw what was going on and helped her little brother to escape through a second-story window. Sidney killed himself instead of chasing after them; thank goodness for that. Can you imagine? Poor little babies. They ran over here, to our house.” There was a catch in her voice, and she cleared her throat before resuming her story. “It was a little after nine on a cold spring night in—
Oh
, I just realized—this Friday will be the twenty-fifth anniversary.”

The silver anniversary of a double murder-suicide. That isn’t portentous at all, is it?
I thought.

“That night, the doorbell rang over and over,” Etta continued. “We thought it was some neighborhood children fooling around, so we debated whether to answer. The neighborhood was a little rough in those days, so we hesitated. But then Gerry looked out and saw . . . the poor little babies.”

“Did you know them well?”

“Of course, I knew everyone then. Though as a teacher, I wasn’t around much—spent most of the day at school. But the Lawrence family was very sweet, very steady. Or so it seemed.” She set the yellow engine down and picked up a red caboose. “I’m sorry to say I was one of those neighbors you see on the TV, saying, ‘Gee, they always seemed so nice. I never would have expected it.’ But it was true.”

“You never heard arguments, saw any sign of abuse?”

She shook her head. “But I’m not sure I would have noticed anything amiss. This is an urban neighborhood, closer than many, but we’re working people and in and out so much it’s not as though we exchange words every day. But . . . I suppose I could believe a man getting passionate enough to kill his wife—for infidelity, something that might push him over the edge—but to kill his baby girl? Sidney doted on those children. He was, according to everything I ever saw, a devoted father. That’s why he was so upset with the goings-on at the house across the street from him.”

“Which house?”

“The drug house.”

Oh, boy
. First a murder house, now a drug house.

“Which was the drug house?” Etta’s house was right across the street. There were an empty lot to the right and another small bungalow to the left that didn’t look much like what I would think of as a drug house.

“It’s just an empty lot now.”

“The one where all the equipment is? I noticed some of the volunteers were clearing it out.”

“It’s just been sitting there empty this whole time, so I thought I might as well spruce it up, put in some vegetables.”

“What happened to the house that used to be there?”

She nodded. “It burned down and had to be demolished. Can’t say any of the neighbors were too upset to see it go. That wasn’t long before the Lawrence . . . incident.”

She set the train down and sighed.

“This train set belonged to Gerry, my ex-husband. The neighborhood kids used to love coming here, watching the train go round and round. All the kids back then—Dave and Linda and the others—spent many a Sunday afternoon here, hands sticky from lemonade and cookies. I keep thinking if I get it back in shape, maybe I could resurrect the tradition now that I’m retired and have more time. What do you think? Do kids today still like model trains?”

Did they? Or were they so enmeshed in their electronic gizmos that the simple pleasure of a miniature world would no longer intrigue them?

“The Neighbors Together crew seems pretty interested,” I said. “What does Kobe think?”

“Do you know, I don’t believe he’s ever seen it. After Gerry left, I stopped having the kids in. Just didn’t have the heart, and then the set fell into disrepair, as you can see. If I get it cleaned up . . .”

“Maybe you should ask Kobe and his little gang to help you.”

She looked up at me, alarmed. “Kobe’s joined a gang?”

“Oh, no, not a real gang. But he seems to travel in a pack. They’re too young for a real gang.”

“Oh, believe me—they’re not too young. You’d be surprised how the gangs pick up aimless kids, as young as nine or ten, and begin to indoctrinate them.”

Something else occurred to me.

“You know, I was thinking about how we might help you fix up the rest of this place. The classic lines of this house, the woodwork and the built-ins, are amazing. I bet my dad could help with the train set, too. And he’s great with kids.”

Actually, Dad was gruff and demanding, but a lot of kids responded to that sort of treatment.

“Do you think so? I have to admit that as much as I like children, one of the reasons I stopped opening my home to them was that as a single woman, I felt a little nervous around the older teens. But if your father was here as well . . .”

“Couldn’t hurt to ask.”

“Would he have the time?”

“Oh, he’s got all the time in the world.”

“Mel?” Caleb called from the interior doorway. “Um . . . Sorry to interrupt.”

“That’s okay,” I said. “What’s up?”

“Bill’s busy and I think”—he kept glancing nervously at Etta—“I think you should see this.”

“Sure. Excuse me, Etta. I should probably get back to work.”

“Oh, of course! It is so good of you all to do all this for me. I don’t know how to thank you.”

I smiled. “Sometimes charity is its own reward.”

I stepped into the hallway and confronted Jefferson, the fraternity brother, who was holding a .38 Special.

I
froze.

“Jefferson . . . ?” I began, taking care to speak low and slow.

“Oh, hey, Cap’n. No worries,” he said, flipping the gun around and handing it to me, the muzzle pointed toward the floor and the butt toward me, as was proper safety procedure. “I checked; it’s not loaded.”

Gingerly, I took the gun from him and double-checked. He was right; it was empty. I glanced at Caleb and three other college boys standing in a semicircle.

“Who brought a gun to the worksite?” I demanded.

“It’s mine,” said Etta from behind me. “Don’t worry; I know how to use it—I go out to the shooting range at least once a month, up by San Quentin.”

Dear Ms. Etta Lee, retired schoolteacher, was getting more interesting by the moment.

As I carefully handed the gun over to her, she explained: “It’s for protection. I told you, this used to be a rough neighborhood. I’m a single woman now. And to tell you the truth, I enjoy the feel of it in my hands.”

That clinched it: Etta and my father were perfect for each other.

•   •   •

By four o’clock, we were winding down. Dad was conducting a careful walk-through and checking items off the punch list, while the majority of the volunteers were busy with the final cleanup of the jobsite and the tools, which is no small thing. With our energy flagging, we were digging into the sugary snacks. I was helping myself to what I swore would be my last Krispy Kreme—for the day, at least—when I glanced across the street.

A shiny silver Lexus was pulling into Monty’s driveway.

Great
. Our house sponsor, Ray Buckley. I blew out an exhausted breath. I should have called to let him know about what had happened yesterday and that the project was on hold. Between the commotion and chatting with the police, it had completely slipped my mind.

It was common in the Bay Area, despite—or perhaps because of—its rampant entrepreneurialism, to deride successful capitalists for their greed. Then along came someone like Ray Buckley. Ray had donated a check for Monty’s project that was so generous, the organization had allotted part of it for Ms. Lee’s house. Without the contributions of businesses and businesspeople, Neighbors Together wouldn’t have been able to accomplish half of what it did.

“Ray, how nice to see you,” I said, hailing him from Etta’s side of the street.

Ray must have been pushing seventy years old, but in his elegant suits, he still cut a fine figure. With his silver hair and upright posture, he looked like the sort of model you see on vitamins for older people that promise youthful vitality no matter one’s age.

He gestured to the crime scene tape. “What happened? Was there an accident? Is everyone all right?”

“Sort of.” I gave him a brief rundown of the previous day’s events. “But it looks as though the shed is actually on the neighboring property, not Monty’s, so it shouldn’t be a problem in terms of the project, long-term.”

“The woman was found in a shed? That’s terrible. Who was it?”

“I have no idea. The police think it might have been someone looking for shelter—and there may have been drugs involved.”

His eyes fixed on me.

“Did you see her?”

“Yes, I was there when they found the body. She was in her forties, maybe? Light brown, curly hair. She had a tattoo of a hand on her neck. . . .”

As I said it, I realized what the tattoo reminded me of: that knocker on the blue door of the haunted house, the hand holding a ball.

Ray turned white as a sheet. “Not . . .
Linda
?”

“Linda?”

“Linda Lawrence? The . . . the girl who escaped the Murder House?”

•   •   •

When a person goes into shock, there’s nothing quite like fruit juice to set them aright. Or at least that’s what my father always said, and he’d dealt with more shock than I had over the years. So Ray and I sat in the shade, and I urged him to down some Jamba Juice while we waited for Inspector Crawford. Dog, who I had let out of the car, was doing a much more effective job of comforting Ray than I was. Ray kept up a steady rhythm of petting Dog’s silky brown coat while sipping his smoothie.

For my part, I had served myself yet another cup of Blue Bottle coffee, because that morning’s earlier jolt of caffeine simply wasn’t cutting it anymore.

“You told me you were familiar with this neighborhood, but I didn’t realize you knew the Lawrence family,” I said quietly.

“I did know them. Quite well.”

I nodded, remaining silent while I tried to formulate my next question:
Did you know of the massacre? Could you tell me about it?
No matter how I phrased the query in my mind, it seemed rude, even ghoulish.

He looked at me out of the corner of his eye. “I’m going to assume from your silence that you’ve heard something about what . . . happened?”

“I heard a man killed his family.”

“You heard right.” He blew out a long breath. “That man was my best friend.”

I looked over at him, shocked.

“I know what you’re thinking. Sidney Lawrence must have been a madman, right? And how could a madman have friends?” He shook his head and ran a hand through thick salt-and-pepper hair. “I don’t know what to say, except that what Sidney did that night . . . that wasn’t Sidney.”

“Then who was it?”

There was a long silence, and he took another swig of juice. The scent of the smoothie’s strawberries and bananas wafted toward me, melding with the aromas of tilled earth and sawdust. Pleasant smells, comforting smells.

“Do you believe in demons, Mel?”

“I . . . uh . . .” I stammered. A year ago I wouldn’t have admitted to believing in ghosts, but now I understood that our human energy lingered on long after the physical deaths of our bodies. But demons were a whole different ballgame. I didn’t know much, and I didn’t
want
to know more. Quite frankly, I didn’t even want to consider the possibility that they might really exist. “I don’t . . .”

“I know, I know. . . . It sounds crazy. I don’t know that I believe it myself, except that it’s the only thing that could explain what happened that night. Some sort of demon possession. But maybe that’s my Catholic upbringing talking. I guess in the modern world, we would refer to it as a psychotic break. Some kind of mental problem, where he snapped, became someone other than himself.”

“Were there any signs? Odd behavior leading up to that night?”

He shrugged. “I guess . . . I mean, we were both under enormous stress. We worked together and the business was facing a number of challenges—we were undercapitalized, and we had both sunk everything we had into it. I was okay; I had some other resources. But Sidney had a wife and three children to provide for. He was . . . at his wit’s end, I guess.”

“Was he acting strangely at work?”

“There were allegations . . . some unexplained financial activity, though I could never believe it of him. Even after . . . It’s funny—in a way, the idea that Sidney snapped and struck out in violence would be easier for me to believe than his cooking the books. He just wasn’t that kind of guy. We were . . . He was my best friend.”

Another long moment of quiet passed. I imagined we were both pondering the sort of thing that could have driven a man to do such a horrific thing, to destroy his own family in a few moments of rage and betrayal and madness. Ray was right: It would be easier to believe—almost comforting that a demon had possessed your best friend than to accept that he could knowingly and willingly inflict such pain.

I felt my father’s eyes on me and looked up to see him giving me the “What, are you gonna sit around on your fanny all day rather than help me get this job done?” look. He had no clue what Ray and I were talking about, which was best. Looking at my dear, cantankerous father, I tried to conceive of him turning on me. Inflicting mortal wounds. Impossible. I couldn’t imagine the sense of betrayal, the disbelief Sidney’s doomed daughter must have felt.

Relief washed over me when I spotted a beige sedan pull up in front of Monty’s house: an unmarked police car. Inspector Crawford climbed out and crossed the street to join us. She was going to take Ray’s statement and see whether he could provide a positive ID of the body.

After a brief greeting, Ray went with the inspector, and a few of us went back down into Etta’s crawl space to finish up the foundation work.

After all, when all was said and done . . . there was no use in going over the family tragedy again and again. It was in the past, thirty years ago. Water under the bridge and all that. It had nothing to do with the body we had found.

Unless, of course, the walls of the Murder House had absorbed the spirits of those souls so unfairly slaughtered on that night—as well as the father who had done the evil deed. Unless those spirits were still there, searching for meaning, for understanding . . . or for victims.

•   •   •

After a day working with my dad and explaining to Monty why we couldn’t continue construction on his place at the moment, I was about plumb worn out. So, after we had packed up the tools and dumped the last of the trash into the happily named Dumpster, Etta thanked the volunteers and took a picture with everyone lined up on her cement stoop. Everyone went off weary and slightly sunburned but proud of themselves.

It was a good project, successfully completed. Etta would now be able to live without worrying about falling through her rotting kitchen floor, the building was newly strong, and the paint was not only pretty but would protect the building from the elements. She even had a new vegetable garden planted. And the charity could not have been bestowed on a more grateful recipient.

Monty, however, was unhappy.

“Hey, Mel? How come you finished up old lady Lee’s house, but not mine?” he demanded for the third time, wheeling his chair out onto his sagging wooden porch.

“I told you,” I said. “We have to wait for the police to clear this place, and we’ll come back and finish up. I promise. It’s not like we’ll leave it half done.” I was such a stickler for finishing the jobs I started—that early-childhood training stuck with me—that I was always a bit shocked when people didn’t trust me to fulfill my commitments.

“Hmmph,” he said.

“Monty, could I ask you something . . . a little odd?”

“Shoot.”

“You said earlier that the house next door was ‘kind of’ vacant. What did you mean by that?”

“I don’t know exactly, but lights go on and off, even though supposedly no one lives there. I guess you’ve heard the stories by now, about what happened.”

“I did, yes.”

“Some people say it’s haunted.”

“Do you believe that?”

“I don’t know. Maybe. Do you?”

“Um . . . maybe. I might have noticed something in the window. . . .” We stared at each other for a moment. “Anyway, I was just going to check something down in the yard real quick.”

I knew it was stupid to snoop. But if the body really was Linda Lawrence, would that mean it was somehow related to the ghosts I had seen in the windows of the house? It seemed so tragic that she should survive that long-ago night only to die like she had.

I could hear Dog barking in my car.

Would her ghost be here, somewhere? Could she have been one of the faces I’d seen in the windows of the house next door? Was she now back with her family, and was it indeed just a sad suicide by pills?

I felt compelled to investigate, just a little, on the off chance any lingering spirits would talk to me or give me some clue. I wasn’t committed enough to break into the main house—not to mention not brave enough—but the least I could do was look through the shed.

Bright yellow crime scene tape covered up the door of the shed. I thought about it for a moment, but I wasn’t anti-establishment enough to just break through it. However . . . there was another entrance from the other side. On the lot of the Murder House.

I crept around the shed, squeezing through the gap between the fence and the shed. I gained a few slivers in my hands from the rough gray wood. I felt the slight sliminess of fresh green weeds underfoot, smelled the damp earth as I walked. I tried looking in the window, but it was caked in grime and even the beam from my mini-flashlight couldn’t make it through the layers of dust to show anything more than some old shelves shoved up against the glass.

At least there was no sign of ghosts.

I continued around to the other opening of the shed, feeling guilty and looking over my shoulder. Slowly, I turned the old brass knob on the door. The air inside was chill and dank, and smelled vaguely of rodents. Slowly, I pushed the door in, trying to peer into the dim depths of the small building.

I heard whistling.

“Hello?” I said, and the whistling stopped.

I felt strong hands on my back, and before I could turn around, I was shoved headlong into the shed.