Home For the Haunting: A Haunted Home Renovation Mystery (15 page)

“It turns out the BART train is lovely,” said Cookie. “And the sweetest young fellow helped me find my stop.”

“Isn’t Graham flying in today?” asked Dad.

I coughed on a swallow of coffee. Hacking over the sink, I nonetheless saw Cookie and Dad exchange a significant look.

“
What
?” I demanded.

“Nothing,” said Cookie, wide-eyed.

I looked at Stan, who just shrugged.

“Is he coming to dinner?”

“Maybe. I’m not sure. I’ll let you know,” I said, filling my commuter mug. “Dad, I’m going to leave Dog home with you today.”

“How come you insisted on taking him yesterday, when I was in the car with you?” Cookie whined.

“All right, all right, I’ll take him.” On second thought, I could use his distraction when I picked up Graham. “Come on, Dog.”

I spent the rest of the morning working with a single-mindedness born of nervousness, then headed to SFO. I decided to play my luck with the curbside pickup, and lo and behold, Graham was walking out of the double doors right as I was pulling up. Like we’d planned it.

Graham had the tall, athletic build of a man who knew his way around a construction site. He had dark hair, deep, searching eyes, and enough ruggedness and scars to speak to an interesting life.

He threw his small bag in the back, then climbed into the passenger seat. I inhaled deeply. Graham also managed to smell really, really good . . . even when stepping off an airplane from the East Coast.

I started to pull back into traffic, but he stopped me with a hand on my arm and a smile so warm it lit up the car.

“
Hey
. How about a welcome-home kiss?”

I glanced out the window, where the cop was walking toward us.

“The cops want us to go.”

“They understand a welcoming kiss. Trust me.”

I leaned over, intending to give him a quick peck. Predictably, it turned into something much more, much deeper. I forgot myself for a moment, reveling in the feel and scent of him, as I tended to do whenever we kissed.

Graham was the first one to pull back. He smiled at me and let out a loud sigh.

“Guess you’re right; we’d better go before things get out of hand. The cops might not be
that
understanding.”

I pulled away from the curb, concentrating on negotiating the congested airport arrivals area.

“So, have you thought about what we were talking about before I left?” asked Graham. This was the real question I had dreaded. I was hoping he might have forgotten somehow. This was the reason, I was pretty sure, why I kept obsessing about my wardrobe and whether to park or do curb pickup. I’m pretty good at self-deflection.

“Um . . . I’ve been really busy.”

I stared straight ahead, but I could feel the heat of his intense gaze on my profile.

“Ghosts?” he asked.

What was I, a billboard? First Raul, now Graham. How did everyone know just by looking at me?

Finally, I shrugged. “It seems to be what I do.”

“I thought you did home renovation.”

“The ghosts seem to have other ideas.”

“Is this why you’ve been avoiding my calls?”

“I wouldn’t say
avoiding
, exactly . . .” He was right; I had been avoiding them. Maybe Cookie and I shared more than I’d like to admit.

“
Please
tell me there’s been no body count this time.”

I didn’t answer as I maneuvered the tricky series of shifting lanes and ramps that led back toward the freeway.

Graham blew out an exasperated breath.

“It had nothing to do with me this time, nothing at all. Also, I’m getting a little sick of having to explain myself all the time.
I
don’t know why this keeps happening to me. Maybe I’m like a death magnet or something. It’s not like I have much control over the situation.”

“I don’t suppose you would consider leaving this to the police?”

“For your information, this time the police
asked
for my help. Inspector Annette Crawford, remember her?”

Now it was Graham’s turn to be silent. He looked out the window onto the nothingness of this stretch of freeway, a sea of strip malls and identical-looking houses marching up the hills of Daly City and South San Francisco. Tourists are sometimes fooled into thinking SFO is located in San Francisco, but in fact it lies many miles to the south, in Burlingame. The ride to the city from the airport can take half an hour, or much more, depending on traffic. And the worst is that from this angle, San Francisco sneaks up on you rather than rising up like a world-class city. This would explain, I imagined, why so many movies show people arriving in San Francisco over the gloriously filmable Golden Gate Bridge, which in fact heads north, to Marin County.

“How was your trip?” I asked to change the subject. “Did you learn all sorts of new green techniques with which to torture me and my crew?”

Graham’s latest client was a mysterious, reclusive, extraordinarily wealthy fellow who was planning on reconstructing an entire small monastery he was shipping over from Scotland piece by piece. He had sent Graham to a green convention in Boston to learn new techniques to adapt the historic building to modern life.

“Yes, because my life is all about torturing you. Like, for instance, I’d like to know what’s going on with you and the ghosts and the body.”

“It’s a little complicated—”

“As usual.”

“Yes, as usual. So, I was doing my community project last weekend, as you know—speaking of which, this is actually great timing, because I have to go back this weekend and finish up. Would you be willing to come with me? I sure could use some skilled labor on the site.”

“Of course I will. In fact, I’m not sure I’ll let you out of my sight for a while, and certainly not around ghosts and bodies.”

“Only one body.”

“So far.”

“Anyway, a volunteer found a body in an outbuilding. She had been dead for a while before we arrived, so we weren’t implicated in any way.”

“And the ghosts?”

“They’re in the neighboring house.” And possibly the shed. But I was going to let that one slide.

“What do the neighbors’ ghosts have to do with anything?”

“The outbuilding may have been on their land, officially. And the deceased, Linda Lawrence, grew up in the house, and when she was just a kid, she witnessed her father kill her mother there.”

Graham swore under his breath. “I’m still not getting why you’re involved.”

“I told you, I was officially asked by a member of SFPD to investigate. A little.”

“You mean you weren’t planning on looking into it yourself?”

“Not really.” Again, I thought about going into the shed. And the fact that I met with Hugh, and couldn’t seem to leave the story alone. “Okay, maybe I would have. Probably I would have eventually given in to curiosity and looked through the house. Those ghosts are calling me, Graham. I think they need something from me.”

“And you’re going to respond, even if it means putting yourself in danger?”

“Like I said, I’m getting tired of explaining myself.”

Twenty minutes of clipped, overly polite conversation later, I dropped Graham off at his place. He didn’t invite me in.

I
wasn’t far from Monty’s house. I figured I might as well stop by and see if it would be c
onvenient for him if I came to finish up the ramp tomorrow afternoon, assuming my schedule stayed clear.

Also, given that Stan had shared some misgivings about my Neighbors Together client, I wanted the chance to talk to him with those things in mind. There were a few things Monty had said or done over the last few weeks that seemed off to me, too. It was worth a visit without the pressure of construction around us.

Monty answered my knock on the door, as he most often did, with a book in his lap. He invited me in, and we chatted for a moment about the unfinished work on his house. Then he changed the subject.

“Have you ever read any of Hubert Lawrence’s poetry?” Monty held up a small green volume.

Twisted Memories: A Life Forged from Fire
.

“I thought you were more of a nonfiction guy.”

“I’m trying to branch out. And after everything that’s happened . . . I dunno. I guess that whole family’s on my mind. I read this a long time ago, when I first moved in. Etta gave it to me.”

“Do you like it?”

He shrugged. “It’s a little . . . raw. Especially when you know it comes from real life. Especially when you live right next to the freakin’ Murder House.”

I nodded.

“You know,” Monty continued, “Etta told me the whole story when I moved in a coupla years ago, and how Hugh Lawrence was this famous poet. She said he wrote about what had happened, that his heart was still broken from it, but that it made good literature. Doesn’t that seem like kind of a weird thing to say?”

“A little. She probably didn’t mean anything by it.”

“I wish I’d known he was actually going to be working on my house! I would have loved for him to have signed it.”

“I have the sense he’ll be around more. I’m sure you haven’t missed your chance for an autograph.”

“I guess that’s true. I’ve seen him once or twice in front of the Murder House.”

“What does he do when he comes here, do you know?”

“Just looks around, I guess. That’s how I met Ray—he was with him one time. His wife, Simone, comes a lot.”

“Simone comes a lot without Hugh?”

“Not ‘a lot’, exactly. But she’s come through a few times with a Realtor, looking it over.”

“Are they planning on selling it?”

“I guess. I mean, if you were Hugh’s wife, wouldn’t you want to get rid of the place? I don’t even understand . . . why would anyone who had gone through something like that want to be in that house again?”

“I think he’s using it as a sort of catharsis. I guess exposure therapy can be useful sometimes.”

“And that’s what they were trying to do with the sister?”

“I guess so. I’m not really clear on the details, myself. But then, I’ve never been through something like that. I imagine the trauma sticks with you. Poor Linda.”

I watched him carefully, but unlike some people I knew, I wasn’t much of a human lie detector. I knew this about myself. I had been fooled too many times.

Something occurred to me. “Last weekend you assured me the Murder House was vacant, full only of ghosts.”

“That’s true. I mean, every once in a while somebody stops by, but they don’t live there. All’s I’m saying is that if they want to sell that house, now’s the time to get it fixed up so they can sell it when the new research campus goes in.”

“What new research campus?”

“They’re building right down there at the bottom of the hill. They say all our houses are going to double in value. Or maybe not double, but increase, that’s for sure.”

“
You’re
not planning on selling, are you? After we just fixed up your house?”

He looked decidedly guilty. “No, of course not. That would be scummy, right?”

“Yes, it would be,” I said, unconvinced.

“So, you’re coming back tomorrow afternoon?” Monty said. I got the feeling he wanted to be rid of me.

“I’m going to try, if my schedule stays clear and I can get some help. I’ll let you know.”

Outside, I noticed Etta was working in her new vegetable garden. She leaned on her cane with one hand and dropped seeds to the tilled earth with the other. The process was slow and laborious, but even from a distance I could hear her humming to herself.

I crossed the street to join her.

“Hello, Mel! Beautiful day, isn’t it?”

“Lovely,” I said with a smile. “Could I give you a hand?”

“Oh, no, I’m fine,” she said. “Thank you for the offer, but you’ve already done so much.”

I looked at the vacant lot and wondered why it had remained empty for so long.

“Could I ask you something? Have you heard something about property values rising with a new research campus being built nearby?”

“Oh, I’ve heard the rumors,” she scoffed. “But you know, these houses are worth a pretty penny anyway. San Francisco’s an expensive place these days.”

“True.”

She waved a hand in the air. “Not that it matters to me anyway. What am I going to do—sell this place and move to a tropical island? What in the world would I do there?”

Etta’s laugh was infectious. I smiled. She was right; it was hard to imagine her anywhere but here amid her things.

“Who owns this lot now, do you know?”

“I have no idea,” said Etta. “Do you think it’s terrible I’m using it? It seems a waste, just sitting here all these years. Perhaps the original family still owns it, but doesn’t want to sell for some reason?”

“You said it was the site of the, um, ‘drug house’?”

“Yes, Joe Jacobsen was the name of the owner. We were friendly enough at first, but he got worse the more he drank. Gerry and I had a few altercations with him over the years, but we made sure our fence was strong and ignored him, mostly. The saddest part was that he let his kids run wild. I knew a couple of them from school and tried to intervene, but there really wasn’t much I could do. It was sad to see them grow up like that.”

“What happened to the children, do you know?”

“The oldest was shot and killed in a gang-related shooting before he was eighteen. The middle wound up over in San Quentin, and the youngest eventually disappeared, but he was already on drugs, so who knows?”

“You mentioned the other day that Sidney Lawrence was fighting with Joe Jacobsen. Do you know what about?”

She nodded. “Sidney wanted Joe to rein in his second boy, Dave. He was worried that Dave was a bad influence on his daughter Linda.”

“Dave’s the one in prison now?”

She nodded. “A guest of the state, as they say. He was . . . well, I always felt bad about Dave. I truly believe he had a good heart, but there was no denying that he was dealing drugs. Attracting all sorts of characters to the neighborhood. It only takes one bad apple to destroy the sense of a place, and this whole block went from being a family-focused, friendly area to one where there were petty thefts, screeching tires at night, that sort of thing. Even the occasional gunshot.”

“That must have been terrible to live with.”

“It was. Gerry was not happy; I’ll tell you that much. But our kids were already grown and gone, and we both worked so much, we weren’t around that much for the drama. And it’s possible we were more tolerant than some of our other neighbors.”

“Like Sidney.”

She leaned on her spade and shrugged. “When he and Jean found out that Dave was friendly with their daughter Linda, well . . . They found Linda with a joint one day and blamed it on Dave. And let’s face it—it was very likely she bought it from him. So Sidney had words with Dave, and then with Joe.”

“Did they respond at all?”

“They responded by harassing him more. The kids used to go bang that front door knocker all the time, just for fun. Now kids still do—they seem to think the place is haunted and they dare one another to run up and bang on the door.”

The sound of the knocker reverberated through my head, sending chills up my spine. The way it echoed through the closed-up house . . .

“So, if Sidney and Joe were feuding, are you suggesting . . . that Sidney had something to do with Joe’s house burning down and that Dave or his father went over that night and killed everyone in retaliation?”

“Oh, good heavens, no! Dave may have been dealing drugs, and he was running wild, but he has a good heart. I go visit him a few times a year, just to keep connected.”

“Visit him? In San Quentin?”

“When I go up to the firing range. It’s right there.”

“The firing range is right next to the prison? Doesn’t that seem . . . dangerous?”

“I don’t see why. A lot of the guards practice there.” Etta smiled and leaned toward me conspiratorially. “I’d wanted to go inside San Quentin prison for years. I was dying of curiosity, driving past it all the time. Is that terrible of me to say? When I’d heard that Dave was there, I thought I should go visit, for old times’ sake. The cards were stacked against him from the start. Another kind of family, things would have been very different for him. He was always decent to me, caring in his own way. I can’t blame young people for the sins of their fathers.”

“Speaking of fathers . . . do you think Dave’s father, Joe, could have done it?”

“Joe might just have been mean enough to go after the Lawrences, especially after the house burned. But frankly, he was so far gone by then, I don’t think he could have managed. He had jaundice, the shakes, the whole nine yards. He passed away from liver failure not three months later.”

•   •   •

I called Inspector Crawford to see if she had an update on Linda’s case that she was willing to share with me and, more to the point, whether we were officially allowed to go back in the yard to finish the job on the weekend. The kind folks who had volunteered—including the fraternity boys—should have as much notice as possible; they hadn’t signed up for two weekends in a row, after all. Plus, we needed to arrange for yet another Port o’ Potty and Dumpster, and make sure the insurance was still in place.

“Yes, I’ll be releasing the scene today. You are free to go back to work on Monty’s house any time. In fact, that girl we caught? What was it, Crow?”

“Raven.”

“Right. Knew it was a black bird of some type. Anyway, I scared her and told her she had to do community service with you at Monty’s house tomorrow.”

“Tomorrow?”

“I just got off the phone with Monty—he said you said you’d be working there tomorrow afternoon.”

“I mentioned it was a possibility, but I didn’t promise . . .”

“How about you make it happen? I figured maybe Raven would learn a thing or two about giving back to her neighbors; I even told her she’d get extra credit for any other juvenile delinquents she might drag along with her, so with luck you might have a few volunteers of the Goth variety working with you. Let me know if she shows up, will you? Hope that’s okay.”

Funny thing about people who didn’t manage volunteers was that they always assumed the more volunteers the better, which was actually almost never the case. If volunteers had no skills, much less a willingness to work, they were far more trouble than they were worth. Still, I reminded myself, a big part of the Neighbors Together philosophy was training people in basic skills and, like Annette pointed out, teaching them how good it could feel to contribute to their communities.

“Okay, I’ll keep an eye out for her and any hooligan friends who might show up. Thanks.”

“Also . . . this is a little . . . unconventional, but would you like to go talk to a man in Martinez with me this afternoon?”

“Um . . . what kind of man?”

“The original inspector on the Lawrence family murders.”

“Does he have information pertinent to Linda’s death?”

“Not sure. That’s why I wanted to talk with him. It’s a long shot, but listening to his memories of the case might trigger something. You never know.”

“This is one of the stranger things I’ve heard myself say . . . but yes, I’d love to go to Martinez to talk to a man about a mass murder. Thank you for thinking of me.”

We agreed to meet at three at the Fourth Street parking lot in Berkeley. In the meantime, since I hadn’t had much luck getting through to a human at Neighbors Together on the phone, I decided to stop by the office and let the staff know, in person, what had happened last weekend and about the change in plans.