Home Improvement: Undead Edition (41 page)

“Dodie Kilburn,” he said in a husky voice, “I hear you raised a man for no good reason.”

“Says who?”

“The loa be telling me.”

“Don’t the loa have better things to do?”

“They do,” Philippe said, dropping out of his voudou patois, “but Margery doesn’t.”

“I should have known.” Margery, the woman who ran the office of the Order, knew the business of every houngan in the Atlanta area. “Then she should also have told you that I had an excellent reason to bring Gottfried back.”

“Actually, I should have heard it from you, what with being your sponsor.”

“Since when do I have to get approval for a job?”

“Since you took one that three other houngans turned down.”

I had wondered about that—it wasn’t like I had clients busting down my door. Most newer houngans get referrals from established ones, but most older houngans think I’m a flake. “I don’t know what their problem was, but I did my homework. The next of kin signed off on it, and the job fits Order guidelines.”

“Bringing back a world-famous architect to fix a house?”

“It’s a special house, like one of Frank Lloyd Wright’s houses.”

He didn’t look impressed.

“And it’s for charity.”

No response.

“Am I in trouble with the Council?”

“There’s been some talk, which could have been avoided if I’d known ahead of time.”

“I’m sorry—the client was in a hurry, and—”

“And you haven’t had much work this month.”

“No, not so much.” I hadn’t had much the month before, either. If things didn’t improve, I was going to have to either go work with my father’s insurance agency or go work for another houngan, which would probably mean doing the whole voudou queen thing, including trying to make Dodie sound appropriately exotic. If I’d had any dealings with the loa, I’d have sacrificed my autographed photo of the cast of
The Big Bang Theory
to get them to throw more work my way.

Philippe said, “Just give me the details.”

I told him what Mrs. Hopkins had told me, that a supporter had left a dilapidated mansion to the Stickler Syndrome Research Foundation in his will, and how she’d gotten the idea of reimagining the place in order to sell it for mucho bucks. Somebody knew somebody who knew somebody who knew Gottfried the architect and talked him into taking on the job pro bono. Unfortunately, midway through the project, Gottfried fell down a flight of stairs at his condo and broke his neck, which left the project in limbo.

“Couldn’t somebody else finish the job from his plans?” Philippe asked.

“Gottfried wasn’t big on planning. They had some rough sketches, but Gottfried is famous for adding things as he goes, and without all those special touches, they won’t be able to get nearly as much money. Not to mention the fact that Gottfried started the crew doing some things without telling them what he was aiming for, so there’s all kinds of work half-finished. They really do need him.”

“And he’s willing to do the job? You asked him?”

“Duh!”

“Okay, I think I can spin it the right way. But if you get another job like this one, please run it past me first.”

“You bet.”

“ ’Cause Papa Philippe think you make master houngan someday if even it kill you—if it do, he be bringing you back hisself.”

THE APPRENTICES HAD
Gottfried all ready to go when I got back to Revenant House the next morning, and they had found him a pair of khakis and a polo shirt to wear instead of his burying suit. Though he told me good morning when he got in, he didn’t say anything else for most of the drive. I took that to mean that he was ready to hunker down and work.

The house he was working on was part of a gated community in Dunwoody, one of the pricier Atlanta suburbs, and the security guard didn’t look impressed by my beat-up car. Then he saw Gottfried and did a double take before letting me drive into the Emerald Lake development.

The town houses and lawns looked nauseatingly perfect, and Gottfried must have agreed, because he blurted out, “Cookie-cutter crap.” I saw several signs proudly proclaiming that Emerald Lake was a Von Doesburg development, which explained why the man had been at the cemetery the night before.

The mansion being renovated was at the end of a road, right on the lake, and obviously predated the cookie-cutter crap. It had three stories, wide white columns, a balcony on the second floor, and a veranda that stretched all across the front of the building. There were tarps and piles of supplies everywhere and a Dumpster in the middle of the front yard, but I could see it was going to be a showplace. No wonder Gottfried had been willing to come back to finish.

As soon as I parked, Gottfried got out and started walking toward a trailer parked on the edge of the lot, so I followed along. A sign on the door said CONSTRUCTION OFFICE, and when Gottfried opened it, we saw the four people from the previous night plus another guy.

“Good morning, Gottfried,” Mrs. Hopkins said, but Gottfried went right past her to go to the desk and start flipping through papers.

“Well!” said the newcomer, a scrawny man with his nose hiked up in the air.

“Dodie,” Mrs. Hopkins said, “this is Theo Scarpa, the president of the Emerald Lake Homeowners’ Association.”

I said pleased-to-meet-you.

“Mr. Scarpa has some questions about . . .” She glanced at Gottfried. “About your work.”

Scarpa sniffed, and at first I thought it was a comment on me, but then realized he was checking to see if Gottfried stank of rotting flesh.

I said, “No, he doesn’t smell. In fact, revenants smell better than most living people.”

“I see,” he said, as if suspecting a hidden insult. “Sorry, but this is my first experience with this kind of thing. Can you tell me how you expect him to be able to finish a renovation this complex? It’s my understanding that a revenant has limited mental capacity.”

“It’s not that his capacity is limited—it’s just very focused. Gottfried is just as capable of finishing this house as he was when he was alive. The difference is that he no longer has any interest in anything other than this task.”

“But he’s got to modify his plans to fit into our development,” he said, waving a handful of papers at me. “How can he do that?”

“This house predates the development,” Gottfried’s assistant, Elizabeth, said. “You should be modifying those trashy houses to match his work.”

The two of them started in on each other, ignoring Von Doesburg when he tried to calm them down. I said, “Mrs. Hopkins, if you want my advice, I’d say to let Gottfried get to work.”

“That’s an excellent idea,” she said. “C.W., why don’t you take him out to the house?”

The construction chief nodded and said, “Come on, boss, and I’ll show you what we’ve done while you were gone.”

“Gottfried, I’ll be back this evening to take you back to Revenant House,” I said, but he didn’t even pause. As I’d told Scarpa, his attention was all on the house. I checked with Mrs. Hopkins to see what time I should pick him up, and left her to handle the bickering.

It was at about three thirty that afternoon when I got that panicked call about Gottfried being dead. Again.

FOR ONCE I
was glad I didn’t have any other jobs going so I could drive over there right away. A bunch of men wearing tool belts were standing around, and when I got out of my car, Elizabeth came running over to nearly drag me inside the house.

Just past the front door was a gorgeous set of stairs, the kind made for sweeping down in a ball gown. The image was spoiled by the sight of Gottfried’s body at the bottom. And it was a body, not a revenant—he didn’t even look a little bit alive anymore, and the smell of formaldehyde was strong. Mrs. Hopkins and C.W. were looking down at him.

“What happened?” I asked.

“Your damned spell wore off,” Elizabeth snapped, “and he fell down the stairs.”

“Wait. He died before falling? You saw that?”

“No, I didn’t see it—I was in the trailer—but what else could have happened?”

I pushed past her and went up the stairs. The floor up there was covered with a sheet of sturdy paper that must have been taped down to protect the wood from the workers, and the tape at the very edge had peeled off, leaving a fat curl of paper.

Elizabeth had followed me up, so I had to push by her again to go look at Gottfried’s shoes. Revenant House must not have had any shoes in his size because he was still wearing the black dress shoes he’d worn in his coffin, and I could see scuff marks on the toes.

“His original cause of death was from falling, right?” I asked.

Mrs. Hopkins nodded.

“Then this is what must have happened. He tripped on that paper up there—revenants don’t have a lot of feeling in their extremities and tend to be clumsy. He could have survived the fall just fine—you can’t really kill him, just damage him. But when he felt himself falling, he remembered the other fall, and let himself die. You could say it scared the life out of him.” It was unusual, but not unheard of. Papa Philippe had once raised a drowning victim because she was needed to locate some important papers, but when the revenant saw she was going to have to go on a boat, she collapsed and he couldn’t raise her again.

I was afraid I’d get some push back, but Mrs. Hopkins was nodding. “The contract did say something like this was possible. The question is, what do we do now?”

“You’ll have to bring him back,” Elizabeth said.

“According to our contract, you’d have to pay me again,” I pointed out, “but since this is for a charity, I’ll do it for free.” Well, that and the fact that I was hoping that Mrs. Hopkins would mention my name to the wealthy friends her clothing choices implied she had. “But I need another sacrifice.”

“This is outrageous!” Elizabeth said, but C.W. was pulling a ring off his finger. “Use this.”

“Are you sure?” I asked, taking it. It was ugly, but it was gold and the sapphire looked real.

“Yeah, take it. My ex-wife gave it to me—I never did like it.”

“Is it enough?” Mrs. Hopkins wanted to know.

I hefted it. “Yeah, it should be.” I remembered Papa Philippe’s warning from the night before, and said, “I should talk to my sponsor first.”

“There’s no time!” Mrs. Hopkins said. “Scarpa is coming back with an inspector. Gottfried has to be up and talking.”

“How long do we have?”

“Von Doesburg is stalling him now. Twenty minutes, if we’re lucky.”

I should have called Papa Philippe anyway, but instead I sent Elizabeth out to my car to get a fresh carton of salt. I could have done it myself, but what was the fun of having a minion around if I didn’t take advantage of her. Then I made a circle, put the sacrifice on the floor next to Gottfried’s body, and did my thing. Five minutes later, I was explaining to Gottfried why I’d brought him back again, and with my fingers crossed, I asked if he was still willing to finish the house.

He agreed just in time for Von Doesburg to arrive with Scarpa and the inspector. I stayed around long enough to make sure Gottfried was compos mentis enough to hold his end of the conversation, then made myself scarce. I could have left entirely, but I was going to need to take Gottfried back to Revenant House in an hour or so anyway, and you can hardly get anywhere in the Atlanta area in that length of time. So I found where somebody had set up a bunch of folding chairs under a tree and swiped a bottle of water from a cooler that looked as if it was there for everybody.

C.W. came and got a bottle of his own after a while. “How’re you doing?” he asked.

“Not bad. You?”

“Not your average day on the work site, that’s for sure.”

“You mean you don’t work with revenants every week?”

“Not hardly,” he said with a grin. “I guess it’s old hat to you.”

“I don’t usually raise the dead on-site, but otherwise, same old, same old.”

“Have you been doing this long?”

“Since college. I was an apprentice for five years, then got my license about a year and a half ago.”

“You went to college for this?”

“Nope, I just happened to fall into it after a particularly wild Halloween party at one of the frat houses. Somebody had brought a stuffed black cat—the taxidermy kind, I mean—for decoration, and while I was drunk, I started patting it. Before I knew it, the thing was purring. We had to call a real houngan to put it back to rest, and he told me I should look into doing this as a career.” I shrugged. “What can I say? It’s a living.”

It took him a minute, but he eventually got the joke and chuckled.

“I am sorry about your ring.”

“Don’t be. I only wore it because the ex-wife wanted it back in the divorce settlement. I was just afraid it wouldn’t be enough of a sacrifice.”

“Something valuable, something important. Either will work.” We sipped for a few minutes, and then I asked, “So what’s Scarpa’s deal?”

C.W. made a face. “He hates this house being here because it makes the other houses look like slapped-together garbage, which is what they are. It pissed him off no end when Mrs. Hopkins brought us in to fix it up.” “Wow. He puts the
ass
in
homeowners’ association
.”

That got a snicker.

“Wait, didn’t Von Doesburg slap together the garbage? Why is he helping you guys fend him off?”

“He says it’s because having a Gottfried house here will increase the profile of the place, but I think he’s trying to persuade Shelia to let him buy up some of the acreage around the lake so he can put in a country club. He’s been trying to get hold of the land the house is on for years, but the owner wouldn’t sell. Von Doesburg thought he’d get it cheap from the heirs, but that was before Shelia got involved.”

He went on to tell me about the plans Gottfried had for the house. “When he died, I didn’t know what we were going to do, but now that he’s here, we’re on track.”

C.W. went back to work and I went back to killing time until construction shut down and Gottfried was ready to go. Again, conversation was spotty, though I did warn him again about poor sensation in his feet so he wouldn’t have any more “fatal” falls. I stopped in at Revenant House just long enough to suggest they find him some sneakers so he’d have more traction.