Home For the Haunting: A Haunted Home Renovation Mystery (12 page)

“You could say that. Why do you want me to accompany you through the Murder House?”

“If there are ghosts in the house, maybe you could. . . . That is, you might. . . . Actually, now that I’m saying it out loud, I don’t quite know what I’m expecting you to do.”

“How about I try to communicate with them?” I suggested. “It’s possible they could tell me something helpful, about that night or about Linda’s recent death.”

Her eyes met mine. I had respected Annette Crawford since I met her. Liked her, even, as much as one can like someone whom one does not really know. I found her thoughtful, almost preternatural calm appealing. I identified with how she seemed vaguely pissed off much of the time, and wondered if she was always like that or if it was the murder scenes that put her in a bad mood.

“When should we do this?”

“You have plans right now?”

“It . . . takes a little preparation. There’s some equipment I should take with us, for example.”

“What kind of equipment?” The inspector’s customary skepticism had returned, replacing her open, almost vulnerable facade of a moment ago.

“Just your average, everyday ghost-hunting equipment,” I said. “Listen, I know it sounds odd. Believe me, I do. But dealing with ghosts is a lot more complicated than people realize, which is why I’m taking a class in it.”

“A class. Huh.”

Ooh, boy. Now she was raising one eyebrow.

“Look, you can’t have it both ways, Inspector: Either ghosts don’t exist, in which case you don’t need my help, or ghosts
do
exist, in which case it’s wise to learn as much as you can about them before seeking them out.”

She nodded, conceding my point.

“The equipment I have in mind measures energy frequencies, which helps to determine the possible presence of a ghost.”

“How does that work?”

“All of us on this plane of reality vibrate at a particular frequency, which we can see or feel. But there are other frequencies, like those whistles that dogs can hear but humans can’t detect.”

“So ghosts are like dog whistles?”

“Something like that. Ghosts exist on a frequency only a few people can sense. Like me. Special equipment, if properly calibrated, can also identify a spirit, ‘see’ a ghost, in effect. A recorder picks up sounds we hear only when we go back over the recording and amplify them. A camera can reveal movements too fast for the human eye to register. The electromagnetic field, or EMF, detector perceives energy we can’t feel.”

“Uh-huh.”

“That being said, I don’t usually use equipment, at least not properly.” My ghostly encounters so far had been the result of the ghosts’ reaching out to me, not mine to them. “I could go in cold. But we should wait until dark, when spirits are stronger. The quiet makes it easier for them to manifest.”

Another raised eyebrow. Not long ago, I would have had the same reaction. Sometimes I couldn’t believe what I heard myself saying these days. Nothing like a few ghostly encounters to alter one’s world view.

Nowadays, instead of rolling my eyes at the idea of ghosts, I was considering becoming a Catholic so I could have a rosary to clutch and recite. None of the ghosts I had met had actually harmed me, but they did scare the stuffing out of me.

“Here’s a thought: After my ghost-busting class tonight I’m doing the walk-through with Hugh and Simone. How about we make it a foursome? It might help to have Hugh there.”

“Tonight, then,” she said, standing and leaving a sizable tip on the table. “I’ll call and square it with the Lawrences. And, Mel? Thank you.”

“Anytime, Inspector.”

After Annette left, I hung around for a while chatting with Stephen, but the café started hopping with the before-work crowd, so we left. My mind was on murder and ghosts, so I had to ask Cookie to repeat what she’d just said.

“I’m sorry?”

“I
saaaiiiid
, mind if we stop at Sephora?” asked Cookie.

“What’s a For-a?”

“Sephora.
Hello
? The cosmetic store?”

“We’re not going shopping for makeup, Cookie. It’s a workday.”

“They do full makeovers, Mel,” she said, her eyes wide. “I’m just saying it wouldn’t hurt . . . Dad tells me you’re having trouble nailing down this Graham fellow.”

“Things are perfectly fine with Graham. Exactly as I want them to be. And if they weren’t, overpriced makeup wouldn’t be the solution.”

Cookie looked at me sympathetically. “A little rejuvenation wouldn’t hurt, would it? Every girl likes to look her best for her man.”

“He’s not my man,” I said through gritted teeth.

“So there
is
something wrong.”

“Besides, the store’s not even open at this hour, is it?” I said, trying to ignore an annoying stab of insecurity. “And even if it is, I’m working. Running Turner Construction isn’t some hobby, Cookie. It’s work,
real
work, that pays the bills and keeps a roof over our heads.”

“Oh, don’t be silly, Mel,” Cooke said, making a pretty little twist of her carefully colored lips as we approached my Scion and climbed in. “Dad paid off the mortgage years ago. You can afford to take a spa day.”

“Spa days are for people with more dollars than sense, not for people who work for a living,” I said, wondering where this working-class-hero stuff was coming from. I didn’t normally talk like this.

“You sound just like Dad.” Cookie sighed.

“And I most certainly could ‘nail Graham down’ if I wanted to, though I have no intention of doing so. What a terrible metaphor. It just so happens he wants me to be his girlfriend.”

How old was I, twelve? Why did I regress so quickly when my sister was around?

“Mm-hmmm,” she said with a half shrug, all innocence. “And where might Graham-the-perfect-boyfriend be these days?”

“Out of town. He’ll be back tomorrow,” I said, before realizing she would want to meet him. That must not happen.

“Oh, super! Let’s all have dinner, shall we? Or did he have a romantic tête-à-tête planned for just the two of you? I wouldn’t want to get in the path of true love.”

“I’ll have to get back to you on—oh, rats, the phone’s ringing,” I said, and grabbed for it as a drowning person grabs for a lifeline. “Excuse me, gotta take that.”

For once I was glad to have a call interrupt my day.

I
spent the rest of the day dragging Charlotte “Cookie” Dopkin, née Turner, from jobsite to jobsite, alternating between thinking I should find something to interest her and hoping to find something that would appall her. What was supposed to be a quick meeting with a client in Union Square turned into a lengthy delay when Cookie disappeared into the bowels of Williams-Sonoma and refused to leave until she had found just the right French café press pot to bring home, because all Dad had was an old-fashioned Mr. Coffee drip machine. One might think that I’d find common ground with a fellow coffee snob, but Cookie’s forty-five-minute discussion of the comparative merits of German versus French press pots drove me smack out of my mind. It was only when I threatened to buy a domestic press pot and smash her over the head with it that she agreed to leave.

“Well, that was fun, wasn’t it?” she asked as I stomped out of the store. “Hungry? Methinks
somebody’s
feeling the effects of low blood sugar.”

“We could grab some tacos at the taco truck if you’d like.”

“You know, I’m afraid I gained a few pounds over the holidays that I’m
still
trying to lose. I don’t have to tell you how hard that can be! How about a salad?”

“No time for yet another sit-down meal.” I had given in and let her take me to a fancy café earlier for lunch. “I don’t want to be late for my class.”

“I see the perfect solution—pull in there!” Cookie said, pointing to a strip mall. Ten minutes later, we were sitting at the juice bar of an organic food store drinking wheatgrass shots.

“Isn’t this the
best
?” Cookie chirped. “
Mens
sana in corpore sano!
A healthy mind in a healthy body!”

“You bet,” I said, using a toothpick to Roto-Rooter the wheat germ that was clogging my straw so I could finish the yogurt-mango smoothie. “Who needs carne asada and fresh salsa when you’ve got . . . whatever this sludge is?”

“Oh, you goofball!” Cookie said. “You can’t kid me; you’ve always liked yogurt.”

“I’ve always hated yogurt. Daphne, our other sister, likes yogurt.”

“Really? I could have sworn . . . Well, a little yogurt never hurt anybody.”

By the time we arrived at Olivier Galopin’s haunted supply store, I was more in need of a stiff drink than of a lecture on how the metal in household locks, doorknobs, hinges, and the like can retain energy from beyond.

As we approached the brick building in Jackson Square, one of the oldest neighborhoods of San Francisco, Cookie reared back.

“A ‘ghost hunting and spiritual supply shoppe’?” she read from the painted sign, hanging like a pub medallion over the door. “How come you refused to go shopping all day and now we’re at your friend’s shoppy?”

“The
e
in
shoppe
is silent.”

She glared at me. “I was making a joke. How come no one ever gets my jokes?”

“Sorry.” I forced myself to smile. Cookie was right; I’d been a Grumpy Gus all day long, while she’d been relentlessly cheerful. I suspected the two were connected. “Anyway, we’re not here to shop. Like I told you, I’m taking a class in ghost busting.”

“Oooh, creepy.”

“No need to be scared,” said a short, pudgy man as he rushed up the stone steps to open the black-painted shop door. “There’s nothing to be afraid of. Spirits operate in other dimensions, but they have no intention of hurting us.”

Cookie favored him with a brilliant smile and swept into the spiritual shoppy. Pudgy followed her in, allowing the door to swing shut in my face. Just inside the door was a bulletin board bristling with notices and announcements, many hand-printed and hand-illustrated. Although Olivier’s shop had only been open a few months, it had already become a hub of activity, both spirit-hunting and personal, for the “open-minded” folk, as they liked to call themselves. Covering the bulletin board were flyers for ghost walks, the kind the tourists take in Chinatown or the Haight, or on Olivier’s own Pacific Heights tour. There were also signs touting the services of spiritual cleansers to rid homes of haunting, advertisements for the services of those who liked to document hauntings, and information for those in search of meditation classes, spells for protection and hexes against neighbors, and séances. It was one-stop shopping for spiritual needs of all kinds. I found it fascinating.

While I was scanning the board, a long arm reached around me and yanked down a bright pink flyer advertising hexes.

I watched Olivier Galopin crumple the paper in one large hand.

“Not a fan of curses?” I asked.

“I don’t believe in such things, nor do I associate with those who do.”

“Good policy.”

Olivier took down a few outdated notices from the bulletin board. “You are looking lovely today, Mel, as always.”

“Thank you,” I said, though I didn’t put much stock in his flattery. Olivier was French, and he knew his way around women. I could only imagine what he’d say when he saw my sister. “You’re not looking bad, yourself.”

Olivier liked to dress for the occasion and often wore a formal jacket that appeared to be straight from the Victorian era. The effect was rather dashing and suitably un-twenty-first-century. Olivier’s dramatic streak—and the fact that he led the touristy Pacific Heights ghost tour—was one of the reasons I had been slow to trust him. But he’d turned out to be much more helpful, and far less larcenous, than I had at first expected.

“Oh, hey, I’m sort of babysitting my sister tonight. I hope you don’t mind; I was thinking perhaps she could audit the class? She’ll be quiet.”

“You do not think the subject matter will frighten her unduly?”

“I don’t think so. . . .”

“Then she is most welcome to join us this evening. Where is the little darling?”

“Talking to Dingo, over at the counter.”

Upon spying her, he raised his eyebrows. “I thought you were talking about a little girl, but your sister—she is a beautiful woman, no?”

“Yup.”

Cookie was pawing at trays of Celtic jewelry while chatting nonstop with the odd fellow named Dingo, who was clad in a tie-dyed Grateful Dead T-shirt and who ran the register. The two were getting along famously, and I overheard Cookie recommending a cream rinse of avocado, salt, and olive oil to tame the flyaway gray hair that stood out sideways from Dingo’s head.

And here I’d thought that in this setting, at least, Cookie’s easy charm would fail her and
I’d
be the one smoothing the way. But I had underestimated my sister, and not for the first time.

Olivier led me over to meet our guest lecturer for this evening’s class.

“Mel, I’d like to introduce you to Rosie Parker. Rosie, Mel is one of my star students, a gifted medium, though she still doesn’t like to admit it.”

“I’m happy to admit it,” I said. “The problem is, I still have no idea what I’m doing. Nice to meet you.”

“Same here.” Rosie was probably many years younger and a few inches shorter than I, with dark hair and hazel eyes. Around her neck she wore a rusted piece of metal on a hand-forged copper chain.

“I love your necklace—it’s so unusual.”

“It is, isn’t it? It’s an old key, actually. From the fourteenth century.”

“Are you kidding? I’ve never seen anything like it.”

It wasn’t shaped like any modern or antique key I’d ever seen. Instead, it was a bar that had a slim sheet of metal wrapped around it, rather like the bacon-wrapped asparagus my sister and I had enjoyed for lunch at the chic bistro on Chestnut Street that Cookie had insisted on. My stomach growled at the memory. I had to admit it was a darned good lunch, much better than that yogurt fiasco we’d had for dinner.

“Rosie is an expert in locks, hardware, doorknobs, that sort of thing,” said Olivier.

“I didn’t realize a person could specialize in that.”

“Oh, sure,” said Rosie. “I used to teach university classes on it, believe it or not. Just the standard architectural and technical history, though, not the more . . . interesting aspects of antique metal pieces.”

That reminded me. “Could I ask you something?”

“Sure; fire away.”

“Would a door knocker be a particularly sensitive item—I mean, in the paranormal sense?”

“You will see,” interrupted Olivier with a smile, “that my friend Mel always comes here full of questions. She has a curious mind.”

I wondered whether he meant curious as in
curious
or as in
strange
.

Rosie laughed. “A door knocker could definitely be a paranormal conduit. I mean, all metal conducts energy really well, which is why antique jewelry and watches and the like often conserve a bit of the person who wore them.”

“I didn’t know that, but I guess it makes sense.”

“But a door knocker, in addition to being made of metal, is also symbolic of the point of entry. A door, of course, is the entry to a home, and the symbol of a door can be the symbol of a point of entry to something else.”

“So a banging door knocker might symbolize . . . ?”

“Somebody—or some
thing
—seeking permission to enter.”

“Enter what?”

“A physical place, of course, but also a spiritual place.”

“You mean . . . like a person?”

Rosie paused. “Potentially.”

But the residents of the Murder House, I realized, were trapped
inside
. Who would be seeking entrance?

“If I heard knocking when no one was at the door . . . could it be residual? Left over from a traumatic incident? Could the knocking be attached to that, somehow?”

“An echo across time,” said Olivier.

Rosie nodded thoughtfully. “It would make sense. As I’m sure you know, paranormal activity, by definition, isn’t hard science; it’s all open to interpretation. Is it possible the knocking could be trying to tell you something? A message of some kind?”

“It might well be. If only I had a clue. That’s why I’m taking Olivier’s class. So, how did you get interested in the history of locks?”

“I learned early about locksmithing. Sort of a family business, you might say.”

“Have you ever heard of Neighbors Together?” At the shake of her head, I explained the program.

“It sounds like a great organization. I should get involved next year.”

“Your locksmith skills would come in handy in some of these old houses.”

She blushed. “I’m not what you’d call a certified locksmith—”

“The Key Master’s work is much more interesting than that,” interjected Olivier.

“Thanks so much, Ghost Boy. I was telling it my way,” Rosie teased, and Olivier laughed. “What our French friend means to say is that I am not a conventional locksmith. I was trained in safecracking. It’s a very long story and one I am happy to share with discerning individuals, though at a time and place of my choosing. Which usually involves dirty martinis.”

I smiled. “I have found the inclusion of dirty martinis enhances many a discussion.”

“This sounds like a lovely evening! Am I invited?” asked Olivier.

“No,” Rosie and I said in unison, then shared a smile. I felt a friendship coming on.

“Maybe another time,” I added.

Olivier sighed theatrically. “I understand. The girls’ night out is a highly respected tradition in this country, no?”

“You betcha,” Rosie said, and she handed me her business card. “Call me, Mel, and we’ll have those martinis.”

“And now, dear ladies, I believe it is time for class to begin. If everyone will please have a seat?”

After her lecture on antique metals—which was much more fascinating than I’d anticipated—Rosie departed, and Olivier devoted the rest of the class to the protocol for ghost hunting. As far as I was concerned, the protocol was to avoid being scared to death, but Olivier and the other five people in the class were focused on recording and documenting incidents of haunting. They hoped to find evidence that could be used to prove to a skeptical world that spirits indeed existed.

We then watched portions of a popular TV show about ghost busting. Olivier led the class in analyzing the show, breaking it down into what was done correctly and what was done incorrectly. From what I gathered, the biggest problems occurred when the crews didn’t document fully—noting not only the noises and sights they were seeing right there, but also the ambient noises, so there would be proof later. The discussion was interesting but not all that pertinent to me. I might be jumping on the ghost-busting bandwagon, but I wasn’t driven by the need to prove to the world that I wasn’t crazy. I was more about getting the darned renovation done.

Although I supposed I had a new motivation: Inspector Annette Crawford had asked me to lead her on a ghost tour through the Murder House.

Never thought I’d live to see
that
day. Mel Turner: SFPD ghost consultant.

When Olivier started going over the benefits and limitations of infrared camcorders, my mind wandered again. Why was I so fixated on that door knocker? For one thing, the banging I heard while I was in the shed had sounded like the smart rapping of a metal knocker, but there was no such thing on the plain wood doors. And when I looked at the knocker on the front door . . . I could still hear that sound, reverberating through my head. What could it mean, if anything? Had death come knocking that terrible night? Linda had a picture of the distinctive hand-holding-a-ball knocker tattooed on her neck; it
must
mean something.
I should ask Hugh about it,
I thought.
Speaking of Hugh, maybe I should read some of his poetry.
Luz—and whoever named the poet laureates—seemed to think it was worthwhile, and maybe there were some clues in it.