If Walls Could Talk (24 page)

“And here I thought real estate might be boring.”

Brittany laughed and dug into her salad again.

“One more thing,” I said. “I was told the asking price on the Vallejo Street house was lower than normal because the owner had to disclose that the house was known for being haunted.”

Brittany smiled. “Exciting, isn’t it?”

“Could you tell me how that works? I mean, most people don’t really believe in this stuff, do they? How is it a law?”

“There was a court case back east. A couple bought a house that was infamous locally for being haunted, but since they were from out of town they had never heard the rumors. They went to court, contending that their potential resale value was affected by the stories of the haunting. The judge agreed and released them from the contract, setting a precedent that we all now follow.”

“So, since the Vallejo street house was supposedly haunted, the price was lowered.”

“Yes. But the timing on that was strange,” Brittany added. “The house wasn’t widely known for being haunted—I didn’t have it listed on my Web site, for instance. But right before Gerald Buchanan sold it, there were a flurry of posts about Walter Buchanan’s tragic suicide, and then the haunting, almost as if someone was
trying
to lower the price by stoking the rumors.”

“Any idea who posted the stories?”

“That’s strange, too. It’s one of their neighbors, someone who’s actually somewhat well-known in our circles for being a medium.”

“Celia Hutchins?”

“No, Meredith Montgomery. Do you happen to know her?”

“I met her very briefly just the other day.”

“That’s perfect, then! Talk to her—I’m sure she could tell you about it. It was just odd to see her online because as far as I can tell, she doesn’t really do the Internet thing. A lot of mediums are dead set against it . . . so to speak. They don’t trust the electronics involved. But I’ll bet she’d be excited to hear about your sight!”

“My sight?”

“You know, the third eye. The ability to see what most of us can’t. It really is a privilege, you know.” She fiddled with her ring again. It sparkled, dazzling, in the sunshine. “There’s only one thing . . .”

“What’s that?”

“Suicidal ghosts . . . they tend to be angry, self-destructive. Sometimes they’re just sad, but sometimes . . . they can be malevolent.”

“Malevolent as in harming someone in the house?”

“Maybe.”

“Could a so-called malevolent ghost have had something to do with what happened to Kenneth Kostow?”

“I wouldn’t put it past a vengeful spirit. You really should ask Meredith Montgomery about it.”

I was so deep in thought as I walked out to my car that it took a moment for it to sink in that the passenger window had been smashed.

Inside was a mess. My toolbox, random newspapers, old coffee cups, the papers in the glove compartment—everything had been tossed, rifled through.

The back of my neck tingled as I cast my eyes around the parking lot and street. I couldn’t see anyone . . . but it gave me the creeps to think that someone might have been tracking me. On the other hand, what did I know? Maybe it was a random crime. I was out in the wilds of the suburbs, after all. This wasn’t my turf. Maybe this sort of thing happened all the time in Lafayette.

Using an old rag, I brushed broken glass pebbles off the seats, climbed in, locked the doors, and drove to a crowded shopping plaza. I felt the need to have people around. I called Trish at the historical society, but she assured me that no one had been in asking after me or anything I’d left. She promised to lock up the papers in the restricted area.

Then I talked to Dad. He was okay and on guard, and reported nothing amiss. He handed the phone to Stan, who told me that as far as he knew there had been nothing stolen from the office, no evidence of anyone rifling through Turner Construction paperwork at any point. Whoever had filed a construction permit for Matt’s house had access to our information so they could fill out the necessary forms, so it was probably someone I’d worked with before.

I looked through the papers in my satchel until I came upon the copy of the forged work permit I had made yesterday while I was at city hall. I’m no handwriting expert, but upon comparing it to the scrawled document I picked up in Matt’s home office, I was pretty certain they had been penned by the same hand. Kenneth’s hand.

Though it was early for rush hour traffic, there was still a backup of cars sitting at the eastern entrance to the Caldecott Tunnel, the result of four lanes funneling down to two in order to pass through the single bore. There were three bores in the mountain, and the middle one switched directions during the day to accommodate the heaviest traffic flow. Some poor transit worker had to run out and put bright orange stakes in the road at least twice a day to switch the designated direction. Vaguely I wondered how the workers accomplished it without being sideswiped by goal-oriented, belligerent Bay Area drivers.

My broken passenger-side window let in exhaust mixed with the scent of the damp, grassy hills. I caught myself checking the rearview mirror obsessively, trying to figure out if someone was following me.

I used the delay to contemplate. Who had placed the lien on the house, and why? It couldn’t have been Kenneth—assuming he was trying to sell the house and abscond with the money, it wouldn’t have made any sense. He might have forged the permit, but the lien . . . ?

Someone must have found out about the potential sale and tried to stop it, or at least slow it down.

As I finally made my way through the tunnel, I realized I had just spent an hour talking about ghosts as though they were as real as Brittany, or Matt, or I. Maybe Graham was right: I should take a few days off, go out and breathe some clean mountain air, and stay out of the way of the homicide investigation . . . or what there was of one.

That was what really bothered me. No matter where I went or who I talked to, I didn’t seem to be bumping into Inspector Lehner—or any other police personnel for that matter. Why was I more obsessed with this case than professional law enforcement was?

In large part, I supposed, because the victim’s ghost kept following me around.

What next? Work, of course. There’s always work. There is no real “end” in construction—you complete the main components, then start the long trek to the finish as you whittle the punch list down. Eventually everyone gets tired and so eager to move in that you’re done—except you aren’t. Not really. For months, sometimes years, the clients call:
The garage door sticks. I want to change out the faucet I special-ordered from Italy. There’s a new crack in the garden wall. I’m not sure about the paint color in my daughter’s room.

And it’s essential to keep those contractor-client relationships healthy and happy. Despite spending hundreds of thousands of dollars to redo their homes, people still tend to relocate, and often. Luz’s Realtor brother once told me that the average American family moves every five years. I would wager that statistic is even higher amongst the very wealthy.

So there’s
never
nothing to do.

Meanwhile, I had to keep ahead of the game, making sure there would be work for my employees a week, a month, a year down the line. I subcontracted to people with their own businesses, of course, but Turner Construction kept seven full-time workers, not including me and Stan. They did odd jobs, everything from project management to cleanup to demo to running errands and washing windows. They needed paychecks, and as with many small businesses, there were months when we owners went without our own salary in order to cover payroll. Of course, a happy workforce, in general, led to a profit at the end of the day. I was proud of the fact that other than sporadic temporary shortfalls, Turner Construction operated in the black.

Back in San Francisco I stopped to check on the progress at Matt’s house. All was going well, and quickly. The men had not discovered anything unusual in the walls. Spike gave me the happy news that his uncle had been released from the hospital and planned on coming back to work soon.

Before leaving, I found a piece of plastic sheeting and duct tape and did my best to create a temporary passenger-side window in my car. Then I screwed up my courage and stopped by Meredith Montgomery’s graceful, well-tended Victorian. There was a long wait after I rang the bell; I was just about to leave when the door opened.

“Oh,” Meredith said, her lipsticked mouth making a perfect ring, her big eyes wide with surprise. “I was afraid you’d come by.”

“I’m sorry. . . . Is this a bad time?”

“No, no, nothing like that. Come on in. Would you like a drink? Or tea?”

“That would be lovely, if you have a few minutes to talk.”

I followed her into the well-appointed kitchen, ringed by cherry cabinets and black granite. She put the kettle on and prepared a china teapot with Earl Grey. I couldn’t remember the last time I had been invited for tea twice in one day. Felt downright civilized.

“You said you were expecting me?” I asked.

“Oh, yes. The cards told me. I was hoping they were wrong. But they never are. Never are.” A little frown marred her forehead as she fluttered from one cabinet to the next, laying out pastry-shop cookies on a pretty porcelain platter painted with English roses. She then filled a small crystal bowl with picture-perfect deep red strawberries.

I was impressed. Clearly Meredith was the sort of hostess who had such things at hand just in case people stopped by out of the blue. Then again, she had her early-warning device in the guise of tarot cards.

Maybe I should have tried that. My ex-husband always wanted me to be that sort of hostess; I tried for a while, hoping to please him, but I was never much good at it. I was too caught up in my own work or research to care that much about such things. My idea of a dinner party was a group enchilada-rolling event; Daniel would have preferred pheasant under glass. The wonder was that we stayed together as long as we did, or that we had gotten together in the first place. That was what I got for trying to be somebody I wasn’t.

Once the kettle boiled, Meredith poured the hot water into the teapot, loaded everything onto an etched silver tray, and led the way to a charming breakfast nook with windows that looked out to the Palace of Fine Arts, the Golden Gate Bridge, and the mouth of the bay.

“I wanted to ask you about your club. About the . . . séances.”

“I know, dear. I know.” Meredith shook her head and poured tea for us both.

“Have you ever made contact with anything, or anyone, or just . . . anything?”

“Well, that all depends on what you define as ‘contact. ’ We’ve had some interesting sessions, especially with the Ouija board. But frankly not as much as one might expect, given the history of the house.”

“What kind of history?”

“I believe there is an angry spirit there. I believe he even went after Celia’s husband.“

“Would this be the ghost of Walter Buchanan?”

“Oh, no, dear. Someone else entirely.”

“And you think that Celia and her husband were haunted by this . . . this ghost?”

She nodded. “Celia tried her best, you know. She thought she could block the access in the basement with bricks. But it doesn’t work that way. She even bricked over . . . bones.”

“Bones?”

“Don’t ask,” she said, a hand fluttering up to her cheek again. “Must have been an animal of some sort. Poor thing must have wandered in somehow, got stuck. Like that dog you found not long ago.”

“The brown dog?”

“I saw you take him with you. That was kind.”

“When did Celia find these bones, and brick things over?” Just the thought made me cringe. Did no one read Poe anymore? These things never ended well.

“About six months ago.”

Vincent had told me his parents bricked over the access to the neighboring house decades ago, when he was a child. I wondered which one of them was lying.

“She and Gerald had a terrible row,” Meredith continued. “He wasn’t invited back into the circle after that. He said our séances had ratcheted things up, tried to take the bricks down with his bare hands. He said the ghosts were angry.”

“You’re saying that Gerald Buchanan sometimes joined you in the séances? I thought he was a recluse.”

“He was, dear. He was. But I believe he was almost in love with Celia, at least for a while. And he was petrified; he claimed his great-grandfather’s suicide was brought on by a ghost, and that the family’s been under a curse ever since. Funny, though, I don’t think he’s been happy since leaving the house. Sometimes they need one another, you know, the living and the dead.”

“I thought Gerald Buchanan had passed away,” I said.

“Oh, no, he’s living in Oakland Hills.”

“Right here in Oakland?”

“At an assisted-living facility. He tells me he can see the city from his bedroom. We talk on the phone from time to time.”