Murder on the House: A Haunted Home Renovation Mystery (Haunted Home Repair Mystery) (15 page)

“Yes, but as I’ve told you, I don’t know how many times: I don’t like ghosts.”

“I doubt there really
are
any this time. For real. Plus, it’s the middle of the day, for heaven’s sake.” This didn’t stop ghosts from appearing, in my experience, but there was no doubt that confronting a specter at night was more disconcerting than in broad daylight. “Plus, we’ll be seeing Valerie.”

Her tone perked up. “Valerie?”

“Mmm-hmm.”

“And I get to torture her just as much as I want? What about the Worm? Will he be there?”

“I’m not sure.” The Worm was her nickname for Daniel.

“But if he is, I get to do a number on him?” Luz was a loyal friend, which in her mind meant that Daniel and Valerie were evil, pure and simple. As was the case with most human relationships, things were slightly more complicated than that. Still, there was an undeniable beauty to having a pal act out one’s basest impulses.

I stopped by her place, an old 1920s art deco apartment building that had been converted to condos. We ate our sandwich for fortification, then headed toward my former residence.

* * *

“
Mel
, so glad you could make it.” Valerie met us at the door. Her long, silky hair hung dark and sinuous down past her shoulders, and her creamy complexion was set off by the crisp wool designer outfit she was wearing.

The ensemble was tasteful but boring. Rather like the woman herself.

Don’t be mean, Mel.
I forced myself to smile in greeting.

Valerie’s eyes flickered over my getup, a flash of distaste registering on her face before she managed a polite smile. Since I’d just done the same thing to her, I was in no position to throw stones.

It didn’t escape my notice that Valerie and I treated each other rather like wary competitors, which was strange in that I had no desire, in any part of my being, to have Daniel back. What I wanted was to get him out of my head entirely. But I wasn’t willing to give up my stepson.

“Hi, I’m Luz. Rhymes with ‘juice,’” said Luz as she thrust out her hand, almost aggressively, toward Valerie.

“Nice to meet you,” said Valerie with a tight smile.

“The pleasure’s all mine,” Luz said as she pumped Valerie’s hand enthusiastically. “Really. Can’t get enough of it.”

Valerie and Luz had met several times, but Valerie never seemed to remember. This resulted in Luz making a big deal out of introducing herself, each and every time.

Luz cracked me up.

The building was a classic San Francisco Victorian town house, not particularly grand, but charming. A long flight of exterior stairs led to the entrance on what was called the first floor, containing the living room, dining room, entry, and kitchen. Above this was the second floor, with three bedrooms. And below, on the ground floor, were the garage, a couple of guest bedrooms, and Daniel’s study, which led out onto the garden. The house stood in an exclusive neighborhood, near the corner of Presidio and Clay, so it was worth a small fortune despite its lack of ostentation.

When I first moved in with Daniel, I set about renovating it—it was my very first attempt, back when I was still pretending to be an anthropologist. I made a lot of beginner’s mistakes, but I brought this place back from an unfortunate 1970s remodel with the sweat of my brow in a misguided attempt to make a beautiful home for me, my husband, and his son.

Turns out my time would have been better spent on, say, doing my nails. Or just about anything. Still, I learned a lot.

Valerie stepped back and gestured us into the front hall. I steeled myself to see exactly what direction Valerie had taken with the renovations; I hadn’t set foot in here since I liberated my things when the divorce became final a year and a half ago. The furniture she’d chosen was understated and expensive, covered primarily in shades of ecru and beige. The walls had been changed from the historically accurate colors I had chosen—deep wines and ochers, sap greens and robin’s egg blue—to various shades of white. It wasn’t ugly, just lackluster. It didn’t suit my house.

Her
house. Hers and Daniels.

Once again I felt a fervent desire to escape to Paris.

“Is Daniel here?” As much as I disliked my ex-husband, I would rather deal with him than with Valerie.

“No, he’s on campus today,” Valerie said as she led the way across the foyer. “He told me you would be stopping by.”

“And Caleb?” Luz asked. “How’s he feeling?”

She shrugged. “Seems fine. He emerges for food every once in a while, but goes back downstairs to play video games or God knows what. What else is new?”

Caleb spent most of his time at his mom Angelica’s house, but stayed part-time with his dad. He had an official bedroom on the second floor, but preferred a room down on the ground level, which led directly into the garage and had its own entrance. To my mind, providing a teenage boy with his own entrance—which also served as an
exit
—seemed like a bad idea. Amazingly enough, no one had asked my opinion.

“It sounds quiet,” I said, noting the lack of any activity indicating construction work being done in the house. But plastic sheeting covered the stairs and the foyer floor, and drop cloths protected the carpet.

“Daniel shut things down, temporarily, after Caleb’s accident. Sent everyone away for a few days. He’s pretty upset.”

“Could you run me through what happened?”

“Well, what started this whole thing was that the toilet lid broke. One of the workers got sloppy, I guess, but no one would admit to it. Anyway, I reminded them that these things cost money, and money doesn’t exactly grow on trees.”

“Uh-huh. And then?”

“Then yesterday, Caleb went up for his basketball shoes and was coming back down. He was on the lower part of the stairs, right there.” She gestured to the short flight of steps off the entry. The balustrade, I noticed, had so far escaped alteration; it was made of intricately carved and turned newel posts, putting me in mind of the Bernini house. “He heard something, turned to look up, and luckily stepped up a stair right before the broken toilet lid fell down on him. When he looked up”—she paused for dramatic effect—“there was
no one
there.”

“No.”
Luz gasped and put a hand to her cheek. I thought she was overdoing it a tad, but Valerie seemed to take it seriously. She nodded solemnly.

I climbed a few steps, peering upward. “You can’t see anything beyond the railing from here,” I said. “Someone might have knocked it accidentally, then jumped back, out of sight. Scared of what had happened.”

But why would a toilet bowl lid have been balanced to drop from the landing above?

Rage and fear coursed through me. I couldn’t keep from thinking what might have happened if the heavy porcelain had hit Caleb on the head, rather than simply scraping his arm. I made a silent promise to the universe: If someone had done this on purpose, they would pay.

“
Or
,” Valerie said, her dark eyes imperious, “there could be ghostly activity here. . . . Maybe the men were telling the truth when they denied doing it. This isn’t the only thing that’s happened.”

“Really?” gasped Luz. “What else? Do tell.”

“Tools turn on by themselves—just last week a jigsaw took a chunk out of the new dining room table. It’s a total loss.
Look
at this.” She showed us the table, with, indeed, a chunk taken out of it. “Things have gone missing, and then someone—or some
thing
—took my clothes out of the closet, all of them, and spilled on them.”

“Awesome.” I heard Luz chuckling under her breath.

“Spilled what?” I asked, ignoring Luz.

“
I
don’t know,” Valerie said impatiently. “Something . . . icky.”

“Ectoplasm, maybe,” Luz suggested. “That’s
super
icky.”

Valerie’s big eyes gazed at Luz, as though she was unsure how to respond.

“Could there be a disgruntled worker on the crew?” I asked.

“Of course not. They should be thrilled to have work in this economy.”

So said the woman with no visible means of support, other than her husband.

“Daniel mentioned you’re acting as your own general. That’s a tough job, under any circumstances. Has anything happened between you and the crew? Any heated words exchanged, anything like that?”

She shook her head vehemently.

“Mind if I look around? Where are they working mostly, upstairs?”

She nodded. “We had a bit of a fiasco with some of the kitchen cabinets—they have to redo the ones to the far side of the stove. But other than that, they’re pretty much done down here, so they’re concentrating on the bathroom upstairs, the master. But while they’re here, we’re having them do a few other odds and ends—a door in Daniel’s office to open onto the garden, retiling the downstairs baths, that sort of thing.”

I nodded. This happened all the time—a small, contained job expanded. Once homeowners realized they had skilled labor on the premises, they remembered all sorts of odd jobs and wish-list items that had been adding up over the years. Often this was fine, as contractors charged for the added jobs. But some contractors failed to factor in extra time for such change orders, so they were under pressure to finish up jobs in order to move on. If a client wasn’t a great listener, for example, she might inadvertently step on toes.

On the other hand, disgruntled workers were more likely to be angry at their immediate employer, the owner of the construction company. They screwed things up on the job to make the company look bad. I should follow up with whoever was providing the workers . . . unless they were freelance, which I doubted. I couldn’t imagine Valerie pulling up in front of a home-improvement store parking lot and picking up day workers. Among other things, she didn’t speak a word of Spanish, which was pretty much a requirement for general contractors in the Bay Area.

Valerie led the way up the stairs to the second floor. Daniel and Valerie must be spending their time in another bedroom, I thought, as the master bath job had spilled out into the majority of the bedroom.

I noticed old coffee cups, sawdust collecting in crevices, even a few cigarette butts. This wasn’t unusual, but I would never allow my jobsites to look this messy. My dad had trained me from childhood:
Things look sloppy enough on building sites, by necessity. No need to exaggerate things. If it’s sloppy in public, imagine what it looks like behind the walls.

The tub had been torn out of the bathroom. The old cast-iron slipper tub that I’d found at the Sink Factory in Berkeley, the one I’d scrubbed with a wire brush and repainted on the outside with noxious oil-based enamel. The one with feet that looked like claws holding balls.

I had adored that tub. I presumed the still plastic-wrapped fiberglass Jacuzzi sitting in the bedroom had been brought in to replace it.

“Do you still have the old bathtub?” I asked.

“I told the guys they could take that and the pedestal sink to Urban Ore or wherever, just to get them out of our hair.”

I literally bit my tongue to keep from saying something nasty. No sense getting upset. I could probably still track it down at the salvage yard if I really wanted it back.

Next I studied the plumbing that was being done inside the wall: They were using copper piping, which was excellent, but some of the joints were poorly soldered. A couple of the framing two-by-fours were out of plumb, and they had used particleboard in the cabinet under the sink, a definite no-no in wet locations. Still, I kept my mouth shut.
Never
did contractors say anything nice about the work done on a structure before their arrival. It was ubiquitous. I always wondered whether it was so we could have someone to blame if something went wrong later, or so we looked good by comparison. Though often tempted, unless it was a health and safety violation, I tried to refrain from jumping on the critical bandwagon, since it made the clients feel unsure about the quality of their home and put in doubt their decision making about previous workers.

Still, I might mention the particleboard no-no to Daniel. But by and large, I wasn’t here to inspect the quality of work. I was looking for ghosts.

And so far there were no signs of the kinds of ghostly pranks I’d seen elsewhere: footprints and marks in unlikely places, cold spots, knocking in walls, doors opening and closing, that sort of thing. No whispers or quick moves out of the corners of my eyes. No figures appearing in the mirrors, other than me, Valerie, and Luz.

Feeling rather sheepish, I brought out the EMF reader.

“What’s that?” Valerie asked, eyes wide.

“It’s supposed to note energy changes, if there are any,” I said. “Ghosts are said to draw on the energy in the room, and this device measures the fluctuations.”

Luz was wandering around the bedroom, picking up one tchotchke after another, frowning and looking off into space, as though she were feeling vibrations.

“We might need to perform a full séance,” she said in a portentous voice. “I’m feeling . . .
something.
I can’t quite put my finger on it. . . .”

I ignored her and checked through the bathroom, by the master closet, then moved over to stand next to her. The whole time I waved the EMF reader slowly from one side to another in front of me. It wasn’t registering so much as a click.

“Luz, back off a little,” I said out of the side of my mouth.

“Oh, I’m just getting started,” she whispered back. She closed her eyes, held the fingers of one hand to her brow, while making sweeping gestures with the other, mimicking my moves with the EMF detector.

“I feel . . . could it be? Lingering spirits. The unhappy, restless ghost of a cruel stepmother . . .”

Valerie paled.

“Look, Valerie,” I interrupted. “I don’t see signs of anything paranormal. But in any case, I should talk to the folks you’ve got working on this, and see what they have to say. Have they complained about anything, any of the guys think there’s a ghost of some kind?”

Valerie nodded eagerly. “Several of them have told me about them.”

“Really?” I’d like to talk to them directly. “Who’s doing the work? Anyone I might know?” There were a thousand general contractors in town, and another thousand or so unlicensed builders, and at least as many carpenters. That didn’t even count the folks who were handy and sold their handyman services. Sometimes running small crews, sometimes getting in over their heads.