If Walls Could Talk (18 page)

“Next to what he’s facing, I don’t imagine he’ll care very much about a piano,” Dad said. “Let’s get inside.”

We all tromped into the kitchen, Dog included.

“Guess I’d better start setting the home alarm again,” grumbled Dad. “I’ve gotten pretty lazy about it.”

As soon as I walked through the mudroom, I noticed a rifle and a handgun atop the kitchen counter. Fear surged yet again in the pit of my stomach.

“What’s going on?”

“A man’s got a right to protect his home and family,” Dad said.

Stan sat at the kitchen table, cleaning a Glock .40.

“
Stan
,” I said, aghast. “I thought you were Mr. Gun Control.”

“Aren’t they all, until they need to defend themselves and their loved ones,” said Dad as he pulled a bag of peas out of the freezer.

He handed it to Graham, who pressed it to his rapidly developing black eye.

“Awesome.” Dylan picked up the handgun off the counter.

“
Stop right there!
” I yelled.

I took the weapon from him to make sure it wasn’t loaded. It had no clip, but there could always be one round hiding in the chamber. My dad was hyper-conscientious about this sort of thing, but still . . . Something about fifteen-year-olds and firearms did not mesh in my mind.

Something about sixtysomethings and firearms didn’t mesh especially well, either.

“These aren’t toys,” I said, sticking the handgun in the waistband of my skirt.

“I know,” Dylan said. “Bill already gave us a training.”

I glared at Dad, who avoided my eyes, whistling silently as he scrounged in the refrigerator. He brought out an egg and some leftover rice and hamburger, mixed the ingredients in a bowl, warmed it for a few seconds in the microwave, and set it down for Dog.

“There’s a good pup,” I heard him say in that quiet, tender voice that he reserved for speaking to animals. His kinder, gentler side. He patted the grateful dog on the back.

Looking around at Stan, Dylan, Caleb, and my father, I could practically smell the free-floating testosterone.

Even Dog was male.

I glanced at Graham, who seemed amused. Hoping he would be the voice of reason, I gave him a “
Well?
” look.

“Bill, Stan, I think you should reconsider the guns,” Graham said, stepping up. “Let’s let the cops handle this.”

“Yes, by all means,” I piped up. “Let’s let the cops handle this.”

“You think the Oakland Police Department has time to guard my place twenty-four/seven?” Dad asked. “I don’t think so.”

Graham caught my eye and shrugged. “He’s got a point.”

“Oh, great, thanks so much. Super effort.”

“Excuse us for a moment,” Graham said to the group, taking me gently by the elbow and directing me down the hall toward the Turner Construction office. He closed the door behind us and started rummaging in the large cabinet by the window.

“Looking for something?” I asked.

“Your dad always used to keep a—Here it is.” He held up a first-aid kit, set it on the desk, and started looking through it.

“You need aspirin?” I asked.

“No, it’s for you. Your arm.”

I looked down to see that there was blood on the upper sleeve of my sweater. It had hurt earlier in a vague sort of way, but I was so caught up in the action that I hadn’t noticed.

I stripped down to my pink tank and sat on the edge of the desk while Graham started cleaning the area with cotton balls wet with hydrogen peroxide. I flinched—there were still a few tiny shards of glass stuck in my skin. He found a pair of tweezers in the box and carefully began picking them out.

Graham’s head was bent in concentration, his injured eye swollen and sore-looking. Dark hair curled at the base of his neck; a five o’clock shadow darkened his jaw. He smelled of soap mixed with just the tiniest bit of axle grease and sweat, from the fight, no doubt. Somehow he still managed to smell great, a distinctive scent that was all his. One that I had remembered through the years.

“Just in case what happened at the storage unit is connected to the garage fire,” Graham said, interrupting my wayward thoughts, “it wouldn’t be a bad idea for them to be on alert.”

“Alert is one thing, Graham. The Wild West is another. They’re about as likely to shoot each other as a criminal.”

“You’re dad’s ex-military,” Graham pointed out. He extricated the last piece of glass, inspecting the area in the light. Then he began to swab it delicately, again, with cotton balls. “Surely the man knows his way around firearms.”

“He’s . . . not always his old self lately. I don’t know how often you see him, but he’s changed. Besides, this is the Bay Area, for heaven’s sake. Isn’t it illegal for kids to handle guns around here?”

“I’m sure your dad has gun permits.”

“For himself maybe. That doesn’t mean he can take teenagers out shooting anytime he feels like it. You don’t know Dylan’s mother. She’d go crud-monkeys over something like this.”

“ ‘Crud-monkeys’?” Graham asked, looking at me with a questioning smile.

“It’s something the boys say to avoid swearing around me.” I shrugged. “Probably one of their private jokes.”

Graham applied Neosporin to my arm, then brought out a roll of gauze. The sleeves of his blue work shirt were rolled up, and I noticed the way his dark hair clung to the smooth muscles of his forearms. As he wrapped the gauze around the afflicted area, his knuckles grazed the side of my breast. My eyes flew up to his. They were on me, intense and unreadable. I swallowed, hard, and turned my head away.

“The way that blond boy was talking,” Graham said, taping the gauze and stepping away from me, repacking the supplies neatly in the first-aid kit, “it sounded as though he’d moved in with you.”

“That’s Dylan, Matt Addax’s son. His mom’s off on a cruise somewhere, so he’s staying with us for the interim.”

“And the other boy?”

“My son, Caleb. My stepson. Ex-stepson. Sort of.”

“He lives with you?”

“His mom’s out of town as well.” Feeling almost naked in my tank, I pulled on a sweatshirt that hung over the desk chair. In need of a distraction, I got up and unrolled the blueprints from Matt’s job, spreading them out on the drafting table.

“And his dad?”

“Caleb’s not exactly thrilled with his new stepmother, and it’s causing a lot of friction between his dad and him. I said he could stay with me until his mom gets back next week.”

Graham came over to stand at my side, staring down at the blueprints with me. “So you’re running your dad’s business, employing Stan and who knows how many others, sheltering two teenage boys, and now fostering a stray dog.” He paused for a moment, studying the drawings in front of us. “For someone who’s trying to live baggage-free and move to Paris, you’ve garnered a lot of obligations.”

No kidding
. I remained mute.

I was looking at the spot where we had found the box in a recess of the eaves. Could there be more hidden in similar parts of the house?

“Might be worth looking through the rest of the eaves, see if there’s anything else to be found,” Graham said, as though reading my mind. “Who knew you took that crate from Matt’s house?”

“Nico, obviously,” I said, realizing that Nico’s disappearance coincided with all of this. I hoped to heaven it was merely a fluke. I brought out my cell phone and tried him; voice mail picked up, but I didn’t bother to leave another message. I flipped through my phone’s contact list. I didn’t have Nico’s home phone, or numbers for any his nephews.
Darn it
. One of these days I was going to have to get more organized.

“Who else might have known?” Graham asked.

“The responding police officer—I asked whether I could go ahead and take it, and he approved. The neighbors, Celia Hutchins and her friend Meredith. Anyone else who might have been around on the street—I wasn’t on the lookout for goons. Hoisting a piano down the steps is pretty obvious. I had no reason to keep it a secret.”

“I heard Caleb mention he and his friend are on spring break starting this coming weekend,” Graham continued. “Any chance you could talk your dad into taking everybody on a trip somewhere?”

“A trip? Where?”

“A camping trip, maybe? With everything going on, it might be good to get out of town for a few days. Less chance of mayhem with the firearms, for one thing.”

“Actually, Dad’s been talking about getting up to Stan’s family’s cabin, building a ramp for the chair.”

“That would be perfect. A chance for all of you to get away.”

“
I’m
not going anywhere. Someone’s got to work the business.”

“It wouldn’t be a bad idea for you to take a few days off as well.”

“I’m all right.” Except for the part about seeing a ghost.

“Really, Mel, this whole thing feels fishy. I wish you would stay away from it until I can figure out what’s going on. I’ve got some contacts in the police department; I’ll ask around and see what I can dig up.”

“I told you, Inspector Lehner called me this morning and told me I could begin Matt’s job.”

“Starting when?”

“Starting now.”

“Like hell.”

“Stan already wrote up the contracts. I’ll leave a couple of men at my last job to finish up with the landscapers and supervise a few odd jobs, but I’m calling the rest of the crew tonight. We’ll start in on Matt’s place tomorrow, or the next day at the latest. We need to get things cleaned up, check out plumbing and electrical, make a plan.”

“Mel, a man was killed at that site two days ago. And now someone clearly went after the stuff you took out of the house, looking for something. What is it about this that you’re having a hard time understanding?”

“How it’s any of your business. OSHA no longer has jurisdiction, do they?”

“You don’t even have a building permit.”

“According to Inspector Lehner, we do.”

“A permit you claimed was forged.”

“That was when Kenneth’s death was called a construction-site accident. Now that we’re off the hook, we might as well take advantage of an expedited permit.”

“Forward progress, no matter the cost?”

“What ‘cost,’ Graham? Kenneth’s gone; there’s no bringing him back. How would delaying the project teach us anything we don’t already know?” I shook my head. “If anything, I’m likely to dig up more clues than the cops can find. I’ll leave the den intact for now, just in case, but I’ll be through every inch of that house, behind walls and in all the cracks. If I find any kind of evidence, anything at all, I’ll secure the scene and call you.” I paused. “And pardon me for pointing it out, but you’re not a homicide cop any more than I am.”

“I don’t want you going back to that house, Mel.”

“Amazing how I haven’t seen you for more than a decade but you’re still ready to tell me what to do.”

“Perhaps if you took my advice more often, you’d be better off.”

“What exactly do you mean by
that
?”

“That you’re thinking with your heart, not your head. You want to get into that house so you can find something to absolve your boyfriend. But the truth is, you’re more likely to get yourself in some sort of trouble. Trouble that your father will no doubt ask me to rescue you from.”

“Boyfriend? Matt’s not my—”

“Whatever you want to call him.” Graham waved a hand in a dismissive gesture. “I was right last time, wasn’t I?”

“You are still such an arrogant piece of—”

“Graham—” My dad swung the office door open and stuck his head in. “You’re staying for dinner, aren’t you?”

“He can’t,” I hastened to say.

“I’d love to,” Graham said.

 

Later I had to admit that dinner was . . . fun.

Graham was at his most charming, teasing the boys and accomplishing the nearly impossible by coaxing them into actual conversation, with whole sentences. They talked baseball statistics and music while we enjoyed Dad’s famous Southern-fried chicken and garlic mashed potatoes. Over Bakesale Betty’s apple pie à la mode for dessert, Stan, my dad, and Graham traded stories and memories with the ease of old friends.

I skipped the pie and took refuge in the office for a few moments, feeling the need to lose myself in my work. I called Nico one more time—still no answer. Then I spoke to Raul and let him know about starting Matt’s job. I arranged to shift several of our workers over to Vallejo Street tomorrow morning so I could orient them. Before we hung up, I asked him whether he’d gotten through to Nico yet.

“Not yet. He hasn’t answered my messages.”

“You don’t happen to have any alternate numbers for him, do you? His home, maybe?”

“No, sorry. It does seem strange that he hasn’t called,” Raul said. “By the way, Katy says she has to take some time off for finals.”

It frustrated me that I had only one woman on the job these days. Katy was a good worker and I was hoping she’d stay with us a while, but she was a student, with an erratic schedule. I had lost the last woman in my employ to the trades—she was now a journeyman plumber, working union jobs in big housing developments, mostly—and the one before that to motherhood. Not that I blamed women for wanting to start families, but it was tough to break out of the men-only construction tradition when females were the ones who got pregnant. The job site was a dangerous place to gestate.

I would love to have a whole team of women working on my sites. In my experience they tended to be conscientious, clean, and organized, like the best male employees. The only problem was their general desire to be anywhere but on a construction site with construction workers. It was something of a Catch-22.

Still, as Luz liked to point out, I talk a big game, but I really like men. Especially the good guys that I worked with. Speaking of good guys . . .

I searched Stan’s desk drawers and dug up the old office Rolodex. Finally I hit pay dirt: Nico’s contact information card included a number for one of his nephews, who went by the name of Spike. I called him.