Home For the Haunting: A Haunted Home Renovation Mystery (5 page)

I glanced with regret toward the piles of donated food on the card tables, the hand-lettered signs directing the volunteers to the cleanup and first-aid and tool stations, the heaps of costly supplies, the stack of lumber for the handicap ramp, the proud Neighbors Together banner flapping in the wind.

No good deed goes unpunished.

•   •   •

Stan, Luz, Claire, and Stephen, as well as a handful of the volunteers—including Jefferson and a couple of other frat boys, who seemed to feel guilty about their late start—assured me they would return next weekend to help finish the renovations on Monty’s house. If I could guilt—or, at last resort, pay—a couple of my employees into joining us, we would be able to complete the unfinished projects without much trouble.

Fortunately, the most weather-sensitive project, the roof, was nearly finished, and the projects that remained could be completed come rain or shine. The ramp was three quarters of the way done, and several of the rooms inside had been primed and prepped for painting. The yard and shed cleanup had been bonus projects to make use of the volunteer labor and to make things nice, but they weren’t necessary for Monty’s health or safety, especially since he wasn’t able to access them anyway. Monty had said something about converting the above-ground basement into a rental studio, but that wasn’t in the scope of our project. He could hire someone to do that if he so desired.

I should be able to finish up next week, I reassured myself once more, without too much trouble.

Unless, of course, I was embroiled in yet another murder investigation.

Which I wouldn’t be, since the woman’s death had nothing to do with me or my project.

Monty confirmed to the police that although he had occasionally used the portion of the shed that faced his yard, it was actually on the neighbor’s property. Which meant the crime scene was the neighbor’s problem—yet another tragedy related to the Murder House.

Junkie or no, the poor woman’s death was shocking, sad, and unsettling.

But what really bothered me were the faces I kept seeing in the windows of the hulking, vacant house next door. Did those ashen, flickering countenances belong to the long-ago murdered family?

And . . . did they have something to tell me?

S
unday morning, I made a leisurely—some might say slothful—arrival at my dad’s jobsite, the sweet little cottage belonging to Ms. Etta Lee.

The project was humming along smoothly, while mine was covered in
DO NOT CROSS
police tape.

I stood for a moment, staring at it glumly. I should be hiding in the Port o’ Potty to get away from
my
volunteers, not helping my dad complete his project. Worse still, the suspension of the work meant I had lost our bet to see who would finish first and now faced an entire week of
NCIS
reruns.

As I viewed the scene from across the street, Monty’s suggestion that his house was an outbuilding of the Art Nouveau house made sense. Monty’s home had been built earlier than the others on the street, and though it didn’t share the exquisite lines of the main house, neither did it have much in common with the stucco bungalows, which were typical of those built in the forties. These postwar homes typically opened onto a combination living room/dining room, which led to a kitchen and back door; a side hallway led to two small bedrooms with a bath in between. Compact yet cozy, the small bungalows were snug and neat, and when first built had been priced to sell to working-class families.

Monty’s home, in comparison, was much more interesting than Mrs. Lee’s, with multipaned windows and odd nooks and crannies indicative of a custom design. I wondered if it had originally served as the caretaker’s home.

The Murder House must have been incredible when it was first built. I itched to take a peek inside. My eyes rested on the blue front door. A large, heavy-looking knocker hung on it. It was hard to make out from here, but it looked like knockers I had seen in Europe, with a hand holding a ball . . . I started over to take a closer look.

“Mel!” called my father. As he approached, I noted his distinctive Dad scent: the faint aroma of tobacco—he claimed he didn’t smoke, but he wasn’t fooling anyone—mixed with automotive grease and food. Today, it was onion from the omelet he had made this morning—the one I missed out on by choosing sleep over breakfast. “Glad to see you’re still with us.”

“Hey, the cops shut down my project, remember? I can sleep to a reasonable hour every once in a while.” I winced at the defensive edge in my voice. Like it or not, I had inherited my father’s early-to-rise work ethic. If I wasn’t up at five in the morning getting ready for work, I felt like a slug.

“I gotta hand it to you, Mel. You do have a knack for being in places where people die. Kind of like—what’s her name? Typhoid Mary.”

“Gee, thanks, Dad,” I said, annoyed. “I am
not
a Typhoid Mary. The police said the woman had been dead since before we arrived. It had nothing to do with me.”

“Seems to me I hear that phrase a lot these days,” said Dad. At the look on my face, he had the good grace to change the subject. “Did you get breakfast? We’ve got doughnuts.”

“Thanks. I had a latte.”

Dad rolled his eyes. He believed in the power of breakfast, even if it consisted only of fried dough drenched in icing and served in a pink cardboard box. A pragmatist, Dad had also arranged for a couple of boxes of Blue Bottle coffee and gallons of Jamba Juice for the jobsite. I felt myself relax just knowing that hot coffee was nearby if I needed it. Maybe he was right: I was becoming a caffeine addict.

Dad and I love and cherish each other. We also drive each other crazy. Dad is former military, a tough guy who believes in hard work, beer, and football. Oh, and firearms. And because the fates like to mess with us mere humans, this man’s man had fathered three daughters. He adored each of us, but he had taught us while were young to ride motorcycles and shoot guns. He also dragged us from one construction site to another, hoping to pass on the construction genes.

The daughter most like him turned out to be me, though we had fought a lot in my teenage years, and when it came to politics we remained in opposite camps. Still, I shared his love for old buildings and his talent for renovation. My sisters lived in brand-new housing developments and refused to come anywhere near a compressor, much less a power saw. But Dad’s gung-ho approach to life took a beating a few years ago when my mother passed away suddenly. Overnight, my tough-guy father just lost it. Somebody needed to take over Dad’s construction business, and since I was at a crossroads in my own life, I had stepped in “for a few months.” Three years later, here I was, still acting like the general.

I was a bit cranky about it.

“How soon can you finish up that project and move on to something that makes money?” he asked.

“The police need a few days. Monty’s flexible, so there’s no huge rush. Probably next weekend.” I slewed my eyes toward him. “Say, any chance you’re available next weekend?”

He stuck out his chin, which was peppered with white stubble. “I dunno. A job like this is hard on a man my age. Might need to spend next weekend relaxing and watching the game.”

Behind us, Dad’s project was buzzing along, alive with well-directed, skilled workers. In addition to his regular crew, several of my volunteers had shown up this morning as well.

“Doesn’t look to me like you’re working too hard,” I pointed out, then realized how my words echoed Kobe’s from yesterday. Speaking of whom . . . I wondered if the boy knew more about the poor woman in the shed than he had admitted. He seemed to know a lot about what went on in the neighborhood.

I heard Dad chuckle. “Course we’ll come back. Turners aren’t quitters, right, Caleb?”

He slapped my teenage stepson—my
ex-
stepson, actually—on the shoulder. Caleb wasn’t technically a Turner, but he seemed pleased to be called one, and stood a little taller.

“That’s right,” Caleb said. Caleb was my ex-husband’s son by his first marriage, but I had raised him for years and thought of him as my own child. To my delight, my father had come around to the same conclusion, so much so that I was starting to think Dad considered Caleb the son he never had. Blood relative or no, Caleb was now a full-fledged member of Clan Turner.

I leaned over and ruffled his hair, then let my hand linger on the nape of his neck, where the dark hair met his smooth olive skin. Caleb squeezed his shoulder to his ear, as though to slough off my hand.

“You need a haircut, bud,” I said, unable to stop myself. At some point I had switched from the cool stepmom who engaged in sword fights and made pirate costumes to the annoying stepmom who nagged about haircuts and homework. “Come by the house and I’ll trim it for you if you want.”

He shrugged. Caleb’s hair was dark and wavy, curling at the neck. He wished it were straight, and boy, did I know that feeling. Since we weren’t related by blood, Caleb hadn’t inherited those genes from me, but I still felt vaguely guilty, as though associating with my curly-headed self had somehow rubbed off on him. Occasionally, Caleb would agree to let me cut it, though only because his father threatened to take him to a fancy place on Union Square, where they would charge a fortune to “style” his hair so that he would look, in his own damning words, “like someone running for class president.”

“Bill, Ms. Lee’s looking for you,” said Caleb.

We turned to see the homeowner making her slow way down the front path toward us. Etta Lee was in her seventies, and though she walked with a cane, she had a look about her that indicated she was of hardy stock. Lively, light brown eyes held an undeniable sparkle. She also looked as though she’d spent a day at the beauty parlor to look “put together” for the volunteers who had descended upon her house. Her gray hair had been carefully set and tightly curled around a pleasant face. She was the picture of graciousness, oohing and aahing over what the volunteers had accomplished.

Me, I got stuck with “Hey, Mel?” Monty.

Ms. Lee stepped carefully, the sort of tread that suggested she knew a fall might cause a hip fracture from which she would never recover. I felt a stab of regret, remembering the elderly woman from the last big Turner Construction project. She had not met with a good end, and the memory still haunted me. Figuratively speaking.

“Bill Turner,” Ms. Lee declared, “you are a darling man. Has anyone told you that?”

“Not recently. In fact, I’d like to introduce you to my biggest critic, my daughter Melanie.”

“I go by Mel,” I said, offering my hand. “It’s wonderful to officially meet you, Ms. Lee. I’ve heard so many lovely things.”

“Please, call me Etta. And this is Dooley, my constant companion.” Dooley was hands-down the ugliest cat I’d ever seen: a skinny three-legged tabby whose orange striped coat stuck up in random tufts. He meowed raucously until I leaned down and petted him.

“Mel is taking over the family business,” said Dad. “My girl knows her stuff.”

There was an unmistakable note of pride in his voice. That was my father for you—one moment I’d be ready to throttle the cranky old guy, and the next he’d do something sweet, like signing off on the phone with a gruff
“Love you, babe.”
He never used to say things like that before my mother passed away. Then he had been the distant, hardworking disciplinarian, the military man who seemed baffled that his three daughters didn’t respond to his orders like a company of well-trained cadets. Having gone through a personal tragedy with the loss of his wife, Dad had become an odd mixture of Grumpy Old Man and sensitive New Age Dad.

I found it easier to deal with the Grumpy Old Man. It was more my comfort zone.

After a few more minutes of pleasantries, we settled in to work. Etta had hit the jackpot when my dad was assigned to her renovation project. A skilled crew was repouring a portion of the foundation, a major job that would clearly run beyond this weekend. Others were bolting and shear-walling in the basement, two methods of keeping a house from sliding off its foundation in the event of a major earthquake. Painting crews were at work in both bedrooms, and outside, an empty lot was being used as a staging area, though volunteers were cleaning it out to put in a vegetable garden. In the bathroom, the broken tile around the tub and the dry rot underneath had been removed, and now waterproof backing was going in to prepare it for new tile. And last but not least, Dad had somehow talked one of our regular suppliers into donating double-paned replacement windows for the weather-facing side of the house.

When Dad picked up a brush to help the painters, I pulled on my coveralls and joined the basement foundation crew. We had been working for several hours when we stopped for a lunch break, which today was pizza and salad provided by yet another group of volunteers. As I soaked up pizza and sunshine, I thought how amazing it was that people could get so much done when they worked together.

“Mel, you should check out the interior before you go back under,” said Dad, as we finished up our slices. “It’s small, but so well maintained. And you’ll never guess what’s in the sun porch.”

I didn’t have to be asked twice; I’d been working in the dark basement all morning and I love snooping around old houses. I stood at the front door and knocked. Even though it was a worksite, I didn’t want to invade Ms. Lee’s privacy any more than we already had. It’s tough to live on a jobsite, even if it’s only for a weekend.

“Oh, come in!” she said, greeting me at the door. “How polite of you to knock.”

“I didn’t want to startle you,” I said.

Following her into the entryway, I saw Dad wasn’t kidding. These old bungalows weren’t fancy, but they boasted beautiful wood trim and panels in the Arts and Crafts tradition. I was betting there would be cross-sawn wood under that paint. Problem was, if I checked for it, I was obligating myself to strip the paint, as once it was scratched, there would be no fixing it. Was I willing to go down that road?

Neighbors Together, like most community groups, was underfunded and did the best it could with limited donations of time, materials, and money. House captains were encouraged to focus on health and safety issues first, such as fixing dry rot and installing handrails. There simply wasn’t the time or the money to strip wood and bring a bungalow like this up to the standards of
This Old House
.

Still . . . it wouldn’t take much to transform this place. It was small enough that the necessary work could be accomplished in a couple of weekends.

“I know I’m old-fashioned,” Etta said. “But I used to harangue my students about common courtesy, things as simple as saying ‘please’ and ‘thank you’ or knocking before entering a room. Even when I visit a dear old friend, I always knock. It amazes me that people don’t teach their children basic manners anymore. Of course, a lot of them are children themselves when they become parents. Children having children . . .” She trailed off, shaking her head and then chuckling self-consciously. “Well, would you listen to me? I’m sounding more and more like an old crank, aren’t I?”

I smiled and shook my head. I am a sucker for public servants, especially teachers and librarians. The kind of people—usually women—who dedicated their lives to our children for low wages and crummy working conditions, and now even their pensions were in danger. Maybe I could talk my dad into coming back with me and stripping the woodwork. . . . I felt a plan coming on.

“Let me show you the best part,” Etta said as she led me toward the back door.

At some point the former concrete patio had been enclosed, and judging by the quality of the construction, I was guessing Mr. Lee, or perhaps Etta herself, had done the work. Two-by-fours formed the skeleton, the roof was made of corrugated fiberglass, and the walls were thick plastic sheeting stapled to the wood frame. Raggedy plants and tattered wicker furniture sat around the perimeter, forming a circle around a huge model train set built on a plywood platform. Three adorable miniature towns were separated by tiny scale rivers, mountains, and forests. One town was hosting a carnival that appeared to have been there for some time—the revelers on the minuscule Ferris wheel were caked in dust.