If Walls Could Talk (13 page)

“Last I heard, Matt Addax was in the hoosegow for murder.”

“Keep your voice down, Dad,” I scolded in a loud whisper. “Matt hasn’t been charged with anything yet. He could be released anytime. In the meantime, he’s got everything he has wrapped up in this place, and the job needs to get done. Our Marin project has been delayed while they work out the hillside engineering issues, and the Piedmont job is still in the consultation phase. Our employees are going to be out of work soon if I don’t get them on another project, and this one happened to fall into our lap.”

I paused, then added, “And on top of everything else, it’s an incredible house. It’s been abused. It needs us.”

Usually appealing to my dad’s sense of duty worked. Not this time.

“Sounds like a damned waste of time to me. Especially after what happened there. Doesn’t sound safe. What you need to do is get out on the town and find yourself a husband, and quick, if you want to give me grandchildren. You’re not getting any younger.”

“Gee, thanks. Anyway, my sisters have provided you with plenty of grandchildren. And I already have a son. Remember?”

“He’s a loaner.”

“He’s mine.”

Bought and paid for with innumerable PTA meetings, never-ending homework sessions, countless lunches packed and boo-boos kissed and tears wiped. I had left my husband without a backward glance, but his son was a different matter altogether.

“And by the way,” I added, “I don’t appreciate you calling Graham Donovan behind my back, asking him to talk me out of this remodel as if I were a child. In case we’re not clear,
I’m
running Turner Construction these days. As soon as you’d like to step back in and take over, I’ll happily bow out.”

I topped off my coffee and moved toward the hall that led to the office. “At the moment I’ve got to bring Stan up to speed on Matt’s job and have him draw up the contracts, and then I have a million other things to do today, not the least of which is trying to figure out what’s up with my most recent client. Otherwise you may have inherited yourself yet another stepson.”

As if on cue, Caleb shuffled into the kitchen. He’d never been what one might call a morning person, and now that he’d come down with a bad case of teenage-hood, the before-school sullenness had only gotten worse. But in his own way he was trying.

“Hey, Mel. Hey, Bill,” he rasped before reaching into the fridge and pulling out a carton of orange juice.

“Morning, kid,” my dad answered. Not unfriendly, but not with the warmth of the typical grandfather. My ex-husband was one of my dad’s least favorite people, and it was hard for Dad to separate Caleb from his father.

Dylan trailed in a moment later and helped himself to some juice.

“Sit down, both of you, and have a hot breakfast before you go,” Dad said.

“We’re pro’lly gonna be late,” Caleb muttered.

Both boys sat down at the table like well-trained recruits. They responded to Dad’s innate air of authority, just as I always had when I was young. I looked at my father with fond exasperation.

The man was well past his prime, but once a marine, always a marine.

 

My father always said that being a general contractor was like leading an orchestra in which every member belonged to a different union. I just thought of it as a constant juggling act. After dropping the boys at school, I returned more phone calls, met with some new clients and their architect, then checked on a paperwork snafu at city hall.

While I was there, I looked up the permits I had supposedly filed for Matt’s house. There was “Turner Construction,” listed on the paperwork as plain as day, with all of our pertinent licensing information. I supposed anyone could have lifted private business information from a similar permit from any other job. My signature had been forged. I made a copy for our files, still wondering whether I should make a stink over the forgery or just let it pass.

I should have gone by Matt and Kenneth’s business office to look through their paperwork, but it was located in Matt’s house in Mill Valley and I had no time or desire to schlep all the way out there. Not this morning, anyway. Maybe I could swing by later, after lunch with Luz.

The rest of the cold, foggy morning was spent on the job site in St. Francis Wood, making sure everyone was still on schedule and riding herd on the final subcontractors. This was the fun stage, though, where the countless details started adding up to a polished jewel of a home. Unless I was mistaken, once the Zaben home was properly furnished it would be yet another Turner project ripe for
Sunset
magazine, or even
Architectural Digest
. Or maybe that AIA award. One of these days . . .

It worried me that Nico still wasn’t answering his phone and hadn’t called me back. I considered dropping by his house later to make sure everything was okay. Among other things, as soon as the scene was officially released I wanted to start on Matt’s renovation. Nico and his nephews were my go-to demo guys, the first in on a job of this magnitude.

To my great relief, Kenneth was nowhere to be seen this morning. So maybe it really
had
been some sort of temporary insanity. Still, I was looking forward to talking to a trusted friend about it. Just in case she needed to take my car keys and admit me to the SF General psych ward for my own good.

My phone buzzed.

“This is Mel,” I answered.

“Melanie Turner?” asked a gruff voice.

“Yes.”

“Inspector Lehner here. I wanted to let you know the Vallejo Street house is open—you’re free to do whatever it is you do.”

“Already? That’s great.”

“You gonna start the job right away?”

“That’s the plan.”

“Okay, good. Let me know if you find anything else.”

“Find anything? Like what?”

“Anything at all that might seem like evidence. We did a pretty comprehensive search, but you’ll be in and out of every corner of that place, am I right?”

“Wait, Inspector—does this mean Matt’s off the hook?”

“Let me know if you find anything out of the ordinary.” He hung up without answering my question.

I guessed Lehner’s call meant that SFPD had its evidence . . . or acknowledged the lack of it. I tried Matt’s lawyer again, but the phone went immediately to voice mail; I left a message.

Then I rushed to meet Luz at Liverpool Lil’s, at the edge of the Presidio, right down Lyon Street from Matt’s house. The old-school restaurant was modeled after a genuine British pub, but its clientele reflected the tony residents of the Pacific Heights/Cow Hollow neighborhood. Most people eating lunch were wealthy and over the age of sixty; the others were trendy sorts who sought out the haunts of late, lamented local editorialist Herb Caen.

I had chosen it because Luz really liked the hamburgers there . . . and because I doubted anyone I cared about would be able to overhear what I had to say.

Before I even had a chance to sit down, Luz brought out a neatly labeled three-ring binder full of pictures she had clipped from magazines, alongside paint swatches and catalog entries. She had recently bought a condo in a 1920s-era building and was redoing it in an energetic fit of first-home-ownership pride. She asked my opinion on some lighting fixtures for her media room, and then we discussed her tile choices for the master bath and the paint color in the guest bedroom. I tried to save her a little money by buying whatever items I could with my contractor’s discount, and I lent her some of my guys from time to time to help her with small jobs.

After the waiter brought our food, I gave Luz an abbreviated rundown of what had happened with Kenneth.

“A nail gun
and
a circular saw?”

I nodded.

“Okay,
that
is just about the most disgusting thing I’ve ever heard,” she said in the slightly inflected, husky drawl that always made me think of a Latina Marlene Dietrich. She put down her bacon cheeseburger as though she had lost her appetite.

“Unfortunately, that’s not the worst of it.”

Luz leaned back in her chair, crossed her slim arms over her chest, and raised one neatly plucked eyebrow.

“I saw him.”

“Him who?”

“Kenneth.”

“You just told me that. You said you held him until the paramedics got there.”

“I mean after he . . . died.” I picked at the turkey on my Cobb salad.

“You saw his body?”

“I saw his ghost.”

Pause.

“You did not.”

“Oh, right, because I’m making this up to make myself look sane.”

“You’re saying you think you saw this Kenneth person’s
ghost
?”

I nodded.

“Seriously.”

I nodded again.

“Really, though.”

“
Luz
, please.” I rearranged my knife and spoon. “It’s not like I haven’t gone over this a thousand times in my own mind. Could I . . . Do you think . . . After a traumatic event, a person could suffer from PTSD, right?”

Luz and I had become friends six years before, when she attended a summer course I offered in anthropological methods. Though she aced all the tests—she was a whiz at theory—she wasn’t as gifted with fieldwork. She ended up pursuing sociology instead, where researchers can keep a safe distance from their subjects and don’t have to get their hands dirty. She went on to get her PhD, and now taught potential social workers at SF State; she still was more comfortable teaching others than actually dealing with clients in need.

“Ye-e-ah,” she said, sounding doubtful. “PTSD usually has to do with living through some immediate danger to you, though, rather than just witnessing something gross.”

“ ‘Gross.’ Is that a technical term?”

“Sure. Like ‘crazy as a loon.’ ”

“Funny. So if it’s not post-traumatic stress, what do you think’s going on?” I asked.

“Well, it would more likely be diagnosed as CISS, or STSD.”

“What are those?”

“Critical incident stress syndrome, or secondary traumatic stress disorder. We see them sometimes in ER workers, cops, first responders of all types. People who deal with the aftermath of traumatic events, or who deal with the people who were involved with aforementioned traumatic events.”

Luz dug back into her hamburger. Speaking of the unexplainable, I would never understand how the woman managed to consume what she did and still maintain her lithe figure.

“Maybe that’s it,” I said, stealing a couple of her fries and dunking them in ketchup spiked with Tabasco. “Do you think that’s it?”

Still chewing, Luz looked suddenly serious, her therapist vibe coming through.

“What I think is that you’ve had a rough couple of years, and this trauma has triggered those feelings of loss.”

“Okay, I get that part. But why in the world would my mind invent a ghost, of all things? And if I’m suddenly seeing ghosts, why is it of someone I don’t even like?”

“An obnoxious man in your life. Gee, let me think of where I’ve heard that before.”

“You’re saying Kenneth is a stand-in for my ex-husband?”

“It’s possible. This guy, Kenneth, was an arrogant thorn in your side, right? The subconscious tends to transpose parallel characters in dreams, so why not in waking life?”

“But it’s more than just seeing him. I feel like he wants something from me. I get the sense I should find his killer, bring him to justice. Isn’t that what ghosts need? Unfinished business and all that?”

“Again, I think maybe you’re fixating on this as something you might be able to solve, since you’re feeling out of control in your own life.”

I pondered that. Companionable silence reigned for a few moments as we both turned back to our food.

“Hey, guess who I saw yesterday,” I said.

“I’m hoping you mean somebody alive,” Luz said.

“Yes. Very. Graham Donovan.”

“Who’s Graham Donovan?”

“I told you about him. He used to work with my dad, and I had a crush on him when I was in grad school.”

“Oh, right! Biceps gleaming in the sun, echoes of that famous Diet Pepsi commercial.”

“Trust you to remember the visuals.”

She shrugged. “Don’t have much else to go on. Wait! Was this was the guy who tried to derail your wedding?”

I nodded.

“Sounds like a smart man.”

“Yeah. And I rejected him. Thanks for the reminder.”

“Is he still gorgeous?”

“I didn’t see him with his shirt off.”

She cast me a Look.

I gave a rueful smile. “Older. A few more miles on him. But yes, gorgeous.”

“Where’d you see him?”

“He’s investigating me. Or the scene, anyway. Of the—” Was it a crime or an accident? “The incident at Matt’s house.”

“The
incident
that resulted in the supposed ghost that followed you home. Uh-huh.” She stirred half a packet of Splenda into her latte before fixing me with a compassionate yet challenging stare. “Lots of stuff going on lately, is all I’m saying.”

I nodded and considered Luz’s interpretation. It was true that my emotions were all over the place. It had been a rough couple of years—and Kenneth’s death really
had
been traumatic.

“Remember my brother, the one who’s a Realtor in Danville?” Luz said.

“Tim?” I asked. I had a hard time keeping Luz’s six siblings straight.

“Manuel. He’s got this colleague. . . . I always assumed she was a whack job, but apparently there’s a lot of that going around.”

“Again, I love the sensitivity of the mental health professional.”

She rooted around in her huge, expensive, designer bag. I know my fashion sense isn’t shared by many, but I really don’t understand those purses. Humongous buckles, multiple pockets, gold lamé . . . To me they seemed like the sort of things we would all make fun of in a few years. And on top of being garish, they cost a month’s rent.