Murder on the House: A Haunted Home Renovation Mystery (Haunted Home Repair Mystery) (24 page)

“In this case you’re a spiritual consultant,” Dingo said.

“That makes me sound like a priest. Do I have to wear robes?”

Dingo didn’t crack a smile. As he was placing the boxes into a big paper bag with the store’s logo and
GHOSTS
written on the side, Olivier gave me a few last-minute tips for a legitimate ghost hunt.

“Write down everything, no matter how trivial it may seem. There are spirit encounters—as you well know—but a lot of what we see comes in the aftermath, studying the results of the EVP and the like. So write down any sounds you hear, from outside and in. You sneeze, you write it down so you’ll be able to note it on the recording. A car pulls up, anything.”

“Okay.” Folks were milling around, a few glancing over at Olivier with expectant looks on their faces, and I realized I’d been monopolizing the charismatic star of the show. “I’ll let you get back to your guests. I just have one final question—maybe the most important question: Can ghosts hurt people?”

There was a long pause. I hated that.

Whether he was doing it for the sake of theatricality or because he was choosing his words carefully, I wasn’t sure. But everyone in the store stopped what they were doing and observed him.

“There are three kinds of hauntings. First, the earthbound spirits of humans who have passed. Typically these are only as mean or kind as they were in life—our soul does not change markedly upon moving from one dimension to the next.

“Second are residual hauntings. These are like a scene that is played back endlessly. Especially on sites of old murders, suicides, traumatic events. These cannot hurt you.”

He paused again, and everyone in the store seemed to unconsciously lean forward so as not to miss his next words. Gone was the happy-go-lucky Gaul; when he spoke, he was very serious.

“And then there are spirits that are not human. These are bad news.”

“Not human as in, what?”

“Evil spirits. They were never human and cannot be prevailed upon the way a human ghost can. This is important: Never,
ever
, invite them to stay, or wish them into a building. Calling on them, even to answer questions, can be very dangerous.”

“And do these ever appear as children?”

Yet another long pause. I was about to kill me one blue-eyed, ghost-busting Frenchman.

“Almost never. These almost never appear at all. I myself . . . perhaps in all my investigations I have seen such a thing once, or twice. Many ghost professionals do not believe in them at all. Be resolute, Mel, and you should be just fine.”

I thanked him and turned to leave.

“Oh, and Mel? Look up the history of the place. You should have done that first thing. Perhaps this will answer all your questions.”

Chapter Twenty

I
wa
s going to take Olivier at his word when he said the demon stuff hardly ever happened. I had seen and felt nothing that would indicate some sort of pure evil. If Anabelle had been a demon, wouldn’t there be, I don’t know . . .
Exorcist
-like signs? Of course, a movie I hadn’t seen since I was a teenager wasn’t, perhaps, the most trusted source of information.

But still, knocking a defenseless old woman down, then hiding the body in the well, sounded much more humanly crass than diabolically clever.

And besides, it had taken me some time to wrap my mind around the concept of a thinning of the veils between the earthly and spiritual dimensions, and the occasional crossing over of energy. Demons and evil spirits on the other hand . . . unless forced to do otherwise, I would leave all of that to Hollywood.

By the time I climbed behind the wheel, my head abuzz with paranormal possibilities, all I really wanted was to go to bed. I checked my phone: It was a little after eight. I was pathetic. I remembered a day when I used to stay out until the wee hours, dancing and enjoying. But that was back when I was a student, not when I got up at five every day to hit the jobsite.

As soon as I slammed the car door behind me, my phone rang.

It was Luz. “What’s up?” I asked.

“Thought you should know that Stephen, Caleb, and I are on a stakeout.”

“I’m sorry?” I must have heard wrong. “You say you went out for steak?”

“On
stakeout
. We’re outside your ex-husband’s house. Your ex-house.”

“Why?”

“Caleb says his dad and the missus took off—they’re out of town until tomorrow night.”

I heard some laughter and excited chatter in the background. A sense of foreboding came over me.

“Luz, you aren’t by any chance out drinking with my underage stepson?”

“Get real,
chica
. You were a little caught up with your other haunted house, and anyway, we talked it over and have decided this place isn’t haunted. It’s probably the workers screwing around since they can’t stand Valerie. Hell, she makes
me
want to vandalize her and I’m an upstanding citizen. By and large.”

“Luz, I really don’t think . . .”

“Besides, poor Stephen was traumatized by the other night with you, so he had to get right back up on that ghost-busting horse. Right, Stephen?”

“This wasn’t my idea!”
I heard Stephen shout.
“I’m a hostage!”

Then another burst of laughter. I was annoyed, but there was no denying I loved to hear Caleb laugh like that, the way he used to before he became a sullen teen.

“We might go in and check it out.”

“No, you will
not
go in and ‘check it out.’ What are you, cat burglars now?”

“We weren’t going to
take
anything. A bottle of wine, at most.”

Now Caleb shouted toward the phone:
“It’s my house, too. We’re not breaking in.”

“Not sure Daniel would see it that way,” I grumbled.

“And Valerie even asked for your help,” Luz said. “So, we’re helping. We want to find out what happened to Caleb. If there are ghosts, wouldn’t they be out at night?”

I blew out a sigh. “Just promise me you won’t do anything until I get there.”

“She’s on her way,” I heard Luz say to her companions, before clicking off.

* * *

“I can’t believe you dragged me into this.”

“Dragged, nothing. I mentioned we were here and you felt you had to come rescue us. Because that’s what you do. Accept it.”

Caleb had let us into the house and disarmed the alarm system. Stephen and Caleb had a grand old time ripping into my packages and playing with the new devices—the EVP recorder, especially. Then the four of us did a quick walk-through of the house, from top to bottom.

I sensed nothing out of the ordinary: no sounds, no chills, no cold spots. Nothing out of the corner of my eye, no unexplained shadows or ectoplasmic mist. And if this house was haunted, wouldn’t I have felt something in those years I lived here? I disliked Valerie, and Daniel for that matter, but I couldn’t imagine they had killed someone and stashed the body somewhere in the intervening years, leading to a haunting.

Predictably, after forty-five minutes of clowning around with the equipment—I had the sense I would be treated to some unsavory,
South Park
–style jokes and sounds when I listened to the tapes—Caleb got bored and went to his room to text his friends and play video games.

“Can’t blame him,” said Luz, who was strutting around and talking a big game now that she was free of any lingering doubts that she might actually encounter a ghost. “Hey, let’s check out the wine cellar.”

“We are not going to break into the wine cellar,” I said with a nervous chuckle.

“After everything the Worm’s put you through?” she said with a slight East LA head waggle. “He owes you a bottle of merlot. Besides, no one’s breaking in—Caleb showed me where Daniel hides the key.”

She held up a tiny key.

“I’m not saying the man doesn’t owe me. But after all . . .”

But then I remembered something. Back when I lived here, I had bought myself a case of lovely twelve-dollar French Bordeaux. Daniel always stashed a copy of
Wine Spectator
by his bed, and in keeping with his vision of himself as a connoisseur of California wines, he wouldn’t touch a bottle under fifty bucks. So my contribution to the wine cellar had never been brought out in mixed company; unless Daniel had poured it down the drain, my stash was probably sitting where I’d left it.

Luz opened the small door to the cellar under the stairs. There it was, in the corner: an old cardboard box whose contents didn’t even merit a place on the shelves. It looked like Daniel hadn’t touched a bottle since I’d left—there was practically half a case remaining. I took one specimen out of the dusty box.

Beside my wine was a pile of tools, presumably left by one of the workers for safekeeping. That was peculiar—tools were expensive, and crucial to the job. Those of us in construction usually kept our tools with us, treating them with the care one would a child. I wondered, could Valerie be on to something? Was this the sort of ghostly prank they’d been experiencing on the job?

I paused and tried to open myself up to anything otherworldly, but felt nothing. After a few moments, I shrugged it off and joined Stephen and Luz, who were hunkered down on the floor in the darkened foyer, their backs against the wall, legs splayed in front. I opened the bottle and we passed it back and forth like a trio of overgrown juvenile delinquents.

“I gotta say, Mel,” said Stephen, “it’s hard to imagine you living here.”

“It looked a little different back in my day. This may come as a shock to you, but I’ve never been much of one for the ‘many shades of beige’ school of interior decorating.”

“Maybe I just envision you in that old farmhouse in Oakland,” said Stephen.

“This place doesn’t suit you, is all,” said Luz with a nod, taking a swig from the bottle and handing it back to me. “I think maybe the best thing Daniel ever did was dump you.”

“He didn’t exactly
dump
me. It was a mutual parting of the ways.”

“If it’s so mutual, why has it been so hard to move on?”

“I’m moving on. I’m dating, for heaven’s sake.”

“You’re dating?” said Stephen. “That’s news to me.”

“You’re not giving Graham much of a chance,” said Luz.

“I’ll have you know we walked on the beach just the other day.”

“Walked on the beach. And . . . ?”

“And nothing. We walked, and talked. It was nice.”

She and Stephen exchanged glances. They were sitting on either side of me, so this necessitated them both leaning forward. Flanked as I was, I was beginning to feel like this was a planned intervention of some sort. Lord knows what they had been plotting while they were in the car together, before I arrived.

“Okay, okay. I know I haven’t given Graham that much of a chance. It’s just that . . .” I took another sip of wine. “It isn’t Daniel per se. It’s that I showed such awful character judgment that I can’t trust myself anymore. I think maybe I should stick to houses. It’s what I’m good at.”

My phone rang. Speak of the devil: Graham.

“Hi,” I said, hyper-self-conscious in front of Stephen and Luz.

“Your dad’s worried.”

“I told him I was having dinner in the city.”

“It’s nearly ten.”

“What am I, sixteen?” I said, aggravated. Good Lord, I was pushing forty and my daddy was still checking up on me? “And why didn’t he call
me
? Why’d he call you?”

“I think he’s worried since you brought a man home the other morning.”

“I told you: That was no man; it was Stephen.”

“Hey!” Stephen interjected with a frown.

“You know what I mean.”

“Shall I take it that’s Stephen with you now?”

“Sort of.” Why was I feeling guilty? Nothing was going on, and Graham and I weren’t exactly going steady.

“Could I ask what you’re doing, or is it none of my business?”

“It’s a little weird. . . . Actually, I’m at my ex-husband’s house with Luz and Stephen and Caleb. And we’re, sort of . . .”

“On a stakeout,”
shouted Luz in the direction of the phone.

“On a stakeout?” I heard a soft chuckling. I couldn’t help but smile at the sound. “You’re going on stakeout and you take those particular friends with you?”

“Laugh all you want. Fact is, we found out some valuable information. In my newly minted role as a professional ghost buster, I can confidently say that Daniel’s house shows no signs of being haunted.”

“That’s a shocker.”

“Oh, here’s some good news: Starting tomorrow I’m going to be house-sitting the Bernini house.” No response on the other end of the line. Both of my wine-sipping buddies, however, stared at me. “It’ll give me a chance to have a real chat with the ghosts there. I hope.”

“Tell you what,” Graham said in a quiet, careful tone. “How about I meet up with you tomorrow? I’d love to talk more about this, in person.”

“Don’t you have a business to run?”

“The joy of being self-employed: I’m my own boss.”

“Is my dad putting you up to this?”

“Mel?”

“Yes?”

“I’ll meet you tomorrow. How about I take you to lunch? Taco truck?”

“Big spender.”

“Nothing but the best. I’ll call you tomorrow.”

I hung up.

“Don’t do that eyebrow-raising thing, Luz, I’m begging you. I can’t deal at this late hour. I get up very early, you know.”

“What do you
mean
you’re house-sitting at the Bernini house?” Stephen’s voice went so high it squeaked. “Weren’t you with me the other night, when we were terrorized by
ghosts
and an old woman was
killed
?”

“Of course, which is precisely why I have to go back, I—”

The knob on the back door turned. Someone was fiddling with it; I could hear the rattle plain as day, and a quick glance at my companions confirmed that they heard it, too.

From where we were sitting, we had a clear view to the door off the eating nook in the rear of the kitchen. We were sitting in the dark, but that area was illuminated by the neighbors’ back porch lights.

While we watched, the door opened slowly inward.