Give Up the Ghost: A Haunted Home Renovation Mystery (26 page)

G
raham flew in the next day. We had dinner plans.

All day, going from one job to another, I practiced: “Graham, you are a wonderful man, you deserve better. Graham, I don’t think I want to have children. Graham, I’ve met someone and even though nothing happened it feels as though something could and that isn’t right.”

As bad as I was at relationships, I was worse at
ending
one. At least when my marriage broke up I had good reason to despise my husband, so I could stomp around and call him names and be righteously indignant. But the last thing I wanted to do was hurt Graham. And yet, that was exactly what I was going to do. There was no way around it.

I offered to bring takeout to his place so we could speak in private. I picked up Ethiopian from one of his favorite restaurants and had it waiting for him when he arrived from the airport.

We ate and shared some wine, and dinner conversation mostly revolved around my chasing ghosts and
nearly tumbling off the roof. I tried to downplay what happened at Crosswinds, since I still hadn’t quite wrapped my mind around the fact that I had shot a man, no matter how much he might have deserved it. And I couldn’t forget that sickening moment when I watched Mason slip over the edge of the roof, the terror in his eyes, his horrific scream, and the awful knowledge that his body had slammed into the pavement four stories below.

At the time I had been so intent on not sharing his fate that I hadn’t dwelled on it, but the image kept coming back to me. Haunting me.

Mostly, I enjoyed making Graham laugh by recounting the phantom food fight at the Mermaid Cove apartment.

I was trying to work up my courage to begin The Talk when Graham said, “So, I have some big news.”

“Really? What is it?”

“I’ve been offered a great job. In Paris.”

“Paris?” I echoed. “Paris, France?”

“No, Paris, Texas.
Of course
Paris, France.”

He brought a small robin’s egg blue box out of his pocket and placed it on the table between us. Tiffany’s.

“Oh, no, no no no no,” I said. “Graham . . .”

He cocked his head. “I thought you’d be thrilled. You’ve been wanting to move to Paris ever since you got divorced.”

“Yes, but . . .” It’s true I’d been talking about running away to Paris ever since my marriage ended. Those fantasies had gotten me through some dark days, and the promise of that shining city propelled me forward, kept me sane. But now . . . I thought about Turner Construction and saving old houses and keeping my crew employed. And Dad, who wasn’t getting any younger. And
Caleb, who would be going off to college soon. And Dog, who I couldn’t bear to leave, or to rip away from his current home. And Stan and Luz and . . .

A trip to Paris was one thing, but did I really want to
move
there?

The fact was that I had changed. Without my fully realizing it, I had moved on in my life not by traipsing off to Paris, but by staying in the Bay Area and reinventing myself, throwing myself into work I loved with people I loved, caring for others and being cared for. I didn’t want to move to Paris.

I didn’t want to move to Paris.
Wow.

“You okay?” Graham was asking. “I have to say, in my mind this discussion went a whole different way.”

“I know. I’m sorry. I’m really sorry, Graham. You’re wonderful, and you had every right to think I would want to move to Paris with you. But . . . I don’t.”

He fixed me with a grim look. “You don’t want to move to Paris, or you don’t want to move to Paris with
me
?”

“I care deeply for you, Graham. I do. But I’m not ready for marriage, much less children. And the truth is, I’m not sure I ever will be. I don’t know that I want that anymore. Even though my marriage to Daniel wasn’t ideal, I already experienced that with him: I was a wife and a mother, and I loved some parts of it—like Caleb, obviously. But now Caleb’s about to go off to college, and I’m pretty happy with myself, with my weird dresses and my crew and my strange life . . . and even with talking to ghosts. I just realized, just right this second, that this is what I want. I want the life I have.”

“Without me?”

I took a deep breath. “I think we want different things. You’re fabulous, a really good person, and gorgeous and sweet and loyal. And you deserve to have someone meet you halfway.”

He blew out a long breath and ran a hand through his hair. “Is this about that Landon character? The one who kept you from falling off the roof?”

“Why would you think that?”

“From the way you speak about him.”

“I’d be lying if I said I didn’t feel anything for him. But that’s not what this is about. It really is what I said: You and I want different things out of life. Don’t you want children?”

He nodded.

“I’m not sure I do at this point. And that’s a pretty huge issue for any couple.”

He nodded slowly and started carrying our dishes to the sink. Silence reigned for several minutes. Finally, Graham let out a long breath and said, “I tell you what. I’m going to take the gig in Paris, and maybe you’ll come for a visit. I’m not willing to give up on this. On
us
. Not yet. We’ll see what happens when you taste a
pain au chocolat
fresh from the
boulangerie
.”

I smiled. “You really are an amazing man, Graham Donovan.”

“And don’t you forget it.”

•   •   •

The next night, Luz and I found a miraculous parking space on California Street, not far from where I’d been last time. I had given Luz the short version of what happened with Graham and made her promise not to ask me about it for the interim. For the moment, it was all I could do to hold it together enough to deal with the ghosts in my life; my romantic prospects were going to have to wait.

“Okay, my friend, are you going to tell me why we’re here?” Luz demanded. “This is supposed to help me get over my guilt about spurning my dead grandmother? ’Cause I probably have better things to do.”

“You ever go to camp when you were little?”

She raised one eyebrow at me. “Where I come from, we spent the summers dodging bullets. Picking four-leaf clovers and singing ‘Kumbaya’ at camp wasn’t an option.”

“So you never heard the campfire story about the hitchhiking ghost?”

“I have a feeling I’m not going to like this story,” she said as she craned her neck to look in the backseat.

There was no one there. Yet.

“So usually, a hitchhiking ghost asks for a ride home. Then when the Good Samaritan pulls up to the address the ghost gave him or her, they find an abandoned house, or some elderly mother who tells them her daughter died ten years ago in a car accident. Something like that.”

“That is so frickin’ sad,” said Luz.

I nodded.

“So . . . are we looking for said hitchhiker?” she asked.

I nodded. “Flora Summerton, the daughter from Crosswinds. She ran away and became a missionary in Hawaii, but tried to come back to visit her father on his deathbed. But she was struck and killed by a cable car right along here somewhere, so she never made it home.”

“Is her father waiting for her? He’s the one haunting Crosswinds?”

I nodded. “I think they’re both seeking reconciliation. They won’t be able to rest until—”

I was cut off by a banging on the window. Luz and I jumped, and she rolled her passenger-side window down.

It was Deputy Doofus.

“Yes?” Luz said, her tone polite but not particularly friendly.

“Hi,” I said, looking around Luz at the rent-a-cop. “So nice to see you again.”

“You guys wanna move it along?”

“No.” Luz raised her window and turned her attention back to me. “As you were saying, her father’s still waiting for her?”

I nodded. “Sometimes she appears here, walking in the middle of the street. I guess a lot of people have seen her over the years, and some have tried to help her get home, but they’ve never managed. She always disappears before they get there.”

“And you think we can help her?”

“I hope so.” I brought out the envelope full of her photos, including one with Chantelle. “I’m hoping that Chantelle can help us, maybe talk to her from the other side.”

Luz perused the photos, then gave me a look.

“As always,” I continued, “I don’t claim to know what I’m doing. But it seems worth a try, don’t you think? I was thinking that with you, me, and Chantelle, Flora might not slip away this time.”

“Chantelle’s dead, right?”

“Yep.”

“Oookay, just wanted to be sure I was clear on this concept. So it’s you, me, and a dead woman looking for yet another dead woman. Sort of like freaky girls’ night out?”

“Something like that.”

“I don’t—”

“There she is,” I said quietly. “See, in the middle of the street?”

Luz opened her door and stood.

“Get out of my way,” she told the security guard. “Flora?” she called.

Flora turned around.

“Hey,” said Luz, clearing her throat. “We’ll, uh, give you a ride.”

A cable car passed in front of Flora. When it passed, she had disappeared.

“Get in, Luz,” I said. “This is how it happened last time.”

Luz got in. And when we looked back, Flora was with us.

I started driving. We had pretty much the same conversation as last time, with Flora asking us to take her home, and me telling her I knew the way. Luz’s eyes were huge but she hung in there, turning around and addressing the ghost directly.

Luz passed the photos into the backseat.

“These are beautiful photos,” Luz said.

The ghost looked shocked. “Papa took these. I wanted adventure, and he said this way I would live a thousand lives. I look very . . . young.”

Luz nodded. “Hey, Flora, you know how you always disappear when you get near home? Because it’s probably pretty overwhelming and scary. How about this time, you and I go in together?”

Luz, straight-talking spirit social worker.

I pulled up to the stop sign where Flora had disappeared last time, and looked back.

She was still staring at the photos. One finger brushed over Chantelle’s face.

“Do you know who that is?” I asked.

She nodded. “We’ve been introduced.”

“Stay with us this time, Flora,” I said, taking my cue from Luz. Might as well call a spade a spade, to the dead as well as to the living. “Don’t disappear. Your father’s waiting for you.”

She looked up, sadness in those big eyes. When I pulled up in front of Crosswinds, Flora was still in the backseat.

Luz climbed out and opened the back door.

“Let me take you in, Flora,” Luz said, reaching out to her. After a moment’s hesitation, the ghost put her hand in Luz’s. “Let me take you home.”

And hand in hand, they walked up the steps of Crosswinds, where Peregrine waited.

S
ix weeks later, Andrew and I stood in the foyer of Crosswinds.

Sleek, sterile surfaces had given way to one paneled wall with ornate moldings and a large bookcase. I had replaced the modern fireplace surround with the one I’d found at Uncle J’s, featuring carved cupids; antique crystal chandeliers now hung from decorative plaster medallions overhead.

Crosswinds was now a surreal mélange of old and new, but the odd blend worked, somehow.

“The buyers loved the idea of the secret passage,” Andrew said. “The wife’s an amateur photographer, and the husband’s a real history buff.”

“That’s great, Andrew. I’m so pleased.”

“They want to keep Turner Construction on the job a while longer, to finish things up and make everything consistent.”

“I’d be honored. Please give them my contact information.”

He nodded, sadly, taking another long look around
the room. I could hear far-off strains of a Strauss waltz, but decided not to mention it. After all the havoc, the Flynts had lowered the price on Crosswinds to a mere twenty-two million, and Karla had signed a lovely couple who would be moving in soon with their children and large extended family. They seemed positively sanguine about the strange goings-on in the house, which now consisted of occasional orchestra music and, every once in a while, a photograph of Flora Summerton appearing out of thin air.

George Flynt had recovered from what was, after all, a simple flesh wound and shock; Egypt was still nursing a broken leg, but her concussion had healed. George had hired her to work on the computer systems at Tempus, Ltd., reinforcing the firewall to prevent future hacking. George thanked me for my help that terrible day, and offered me free enrollment in a Tempus antiaging program. I thanked him but declined; I would take my aging as it came. I could use all the maturity I could get.

Landon Demetrius, for his part, was enjoying teaching at UC Berkeley and had decided to relocate permanently. He had hired Brittany Humm to find him a great house in the area, and was intent on teaching me to waltz. It wasn’t going well, even when I agreed to take off my steel-toed work boots.

“How is Stephanie?” I asked Andrew.

He shrugged. “I guess . . . Well, it’s simply devastating when something like this happens. Obviously. She doesn’t leave the house much. But she’s on a retreat now, at Green Gulch Farm. That helps. And believe it or not, Lacey went with her. They’re . . . newly close.”

“That’s good.”

“You know . . . Mason was always such a good boy. Such a sweet boy. He had some rough teenage years and
had to be put on medication, but somehow we thought . . .” His voice grew faint and husky. “I guess we all thought he was over the worst of it.”

“I’m so sorry, Andrew.” That was all I could think to say. What on earth does someone say to a parent who has lost a child? Especially when that child was hell-bent on the destruction of others, including your contractor, and your own father? Words were woefully inadequate.

“Well,” he said in a forced upbeat tone indicating he was more than ready to change the subject. “I’m off to work. Nice to see you again, Mel.”

“You too, Andrew. Please give my best to your family.”

“Oh!” he said, turning back and taking something out of his briefcase. “I almost forgot. I found this the other day and Karla told me you might want it. Can’t imagine what for, but . . .”

He trailed off with a shrug and handed me an old sepia-toned photo.

It was Peregrine and Flora Summerton, standing on the roof of the turret, by the newly installed widow’s walk. The skyline behind them was modern-day, and included the Golden Gate Bridge.

Wind whipped their hair, and they both smiled into the camera.