If Walls Could Talk (30 page)

“What?”

I realized I hadn’t filled Matt in on all the details yet.

“It looks as though Kenneth was trying to sell the house, to reap the profit.”

“And what about all of us?” Matt looked at me, aghast.

I shrugged. Matt was smart; he didn’t need me to spell it out for him.

“Wow,” he said. “I don’t know what to say.”

“Matt, do you think Lehner could have done this? Maybe he found out about Kenneth’s scheme to sell the house, filed the lien papers to slow him down, then confronted Kenneth sometime after the party and . . . lost it.”

“No. He would never do that.”

“You wouldn’t have believed Kenneth would double-cross you, either, would you?”

Matt just shook his head, looking blankly out the window.

“Have you ever found anything here in the house, in the walls? Maybe Kenneth mentioned something, or you heard stories about it?”

“No. But I wasn’t really here in the house that much, to tell you the truth. Not like Kenneth. I mostly just worked on design.”

 

The men wanted to knock off early for the holiday weekend, so I paid them and watched them tramp out.

Matt, too depressed by our little talk to get to work, left along with them.

The instant I was alone, the place felt lousy with ghosts. The smell of a pipe in the parlor. The rattle of a newspaper.

As I entered the front room, I had a clear vision of what the parlor had looked like, set up for a séance. I’ve always had the ability to visualize the original sense of a house: floor plan, wall treatment, woodwork details. When I remodeled the Victorian that Daniel and I lived in on Clay Street, I could practically see it unfold in front of me. I had always assumed it was just a knack. But now I realized it was much more.

I remembered again the boy, Anthony, whom I thought of as my imaginary friend, so many years ago. When I closed my eyes I could still see his child’s toys, could feel his small hand tugging at my skirt, hear his high-pitched laugh.

“You see them, don’t you?”

I jumped nearly out of my skin, letting out a little yelp.

“You scared the
hell
out of me!” I snapped.

“Sorry about that,” Kenneth said, not looking particularly sorry. He did, however, look rather tragic and wan—and he was wearing nineteenth-century garb. Like a proper ghost.

“What are you wearing?”

“I found these. Yesterday. When we were in the basement. Don’t you like them?”

“You look like you’re an escapee from your local community theater.”

“You’re a fine one to talk,” he said. “Look in the mirror lately?”

“Touché,” I said.

“But I can tell,” he continued. “You can see the others.”

“Not really. Not as clearly as I see you, that’s for sure.”

“But you sense something?”

I nodded. “Who’s here in this house besides you, Kenneth?”

“An old guy with a white beard.”

“Is he a pipe smoker?”

“Yes. How’d you know?”

“I can smell it.”

“And there’s another one. An angry guy. Don’t really know what his story is. Nobody uses names.”

“Can’t any of them tell you why you’re still hanging around? Or why they are?”

“I’m telling you, they treat me like I’m barely visible. Like you.” He collapsed onto the second-to-last stair and put his head in his hands. “I’m such a disaster. I can’t even make a proper ghost.”

I slumped onto the step next to him. He had been a real schmuck in real life. But now I felt bad for the guy.

“Maybe . . . maybe this is your chance to do something really good. To help Matt . . .”

“With what? I can’t remember anything useful.”

“Can you tell me anything about what was going on with the finances? You tried to sell the house and just keep all the money for yourself?”

“I guess. I don’t remember.”

“So you can’t recall if that’s why you were killed? Could it have to do with the gem field map?”

“Gem field Matt?”

“What?”

“I thought you said ‘gem field Matt.’ ”

“I said ‘map,’ not ‘Matt.’ Wait—was that what you were referring to at the hospital? The ‘damned
map
,’ not ‘Matt’?”

“I don’t get it.”

“Maybe you were trying to tell the nurse you were killed over the
map
, Kenneth.”

“I guess you could be right.”

Okay, so what would this mean? I could give the box to the authorities, say I just dug it up and found the map, and tell them my theory about the nurse getting the words wrong. And then what? Would they go along with it and exonerate Matt . . . or was this another crazy, irrelevant idea?

“Okay, so the bearded guy here,” said Kenneth suddenly. “He claims there’s something to do with jewels.”

“As in the map?”

“I have no idea. He’s not exactly clear. But you might want to look into it.”

“Next time I am
so
getting a more knowledgeable ghost,” I muttered.

“Hey, I’m doing the best I can here. I don’t know what the hell’s going on. For instance, I told this guy to speak to you directly, but he says, and I quote, that you’re ‘getting there but not ready yet.’ Unquote.”

My stomach fell.

“That makes it sound like I’m going to be visited by other ghosts. Kenneth, I swear, I am
not
becoming the conduit for spirits. You hear me? This is
so
not how I envisioned things. When I go to Paris to hide from people, that includes dead people.
Especially
dead people. You get me?”

“Like I’m in charge around here. I reiterate: I don’t know what the hell’s going on.”

He disappeared.

“Kenneth, come back here!” I yelled.

No answer. No more pipe smoke, no rattling newspaper, no forlornness, nothing.

Apparently I had a lot to learn with regard to proper ghost etiquette.

 

I called Dad on his cell phone.

“Have fun last night?” Dad asked.

“Yes, thanks,” I replied, my head still pounding from way too much fun. “Where are you guys?”

“Still driving east. Thought we’d check out Murphys before we set up camp. Nice little town. Couple good bars. The boys’ll enjoy it, I think.”

Murphys . . . That rang a bell. “If you’re in Murphys, will you ask them about a rock-hound convention in town last fall?”

“What about it?”

“Ask . . . if the rock hounds were looking anywhere in particular. Ask if they were looking at that Jumping Falls claim, the one on the map.”

“Will do. Hey, don’t forget to check on Dog.”

“He’s not with you?”

“Carsickness, remember? He’s with Tom next door—Tom’s a dog lover. But you should pick him up later.”

After hanging up, I pulled on my coveralls and screwed up my courage to go down to the basement. For one thing, the ghosts seemed to have gone elsewhere. Even if they were still around, I was finding them much more annoying than frightening lately, thanks to my frustrating—and rather banal—interactions with Kenneth. In fact, at this point I was almost looking forward to having a conversation with whatever phantoms might be attached to the house. They were invisible witnesses to everything that had happened here over the years, after all.

Plus I had the handgun from my dad’s house in my satchel. It wasn’t loaded, but still. . . . I know it went against my father’s credo, but even an empty gun would give a person pause. Just in case.

The door was still off its hinges, making the doorway to the basement a forbidding black rectangle. I switched on the overhead light and made my way down.

I stepped off the stairs onto the damp bricks.

I whirled around, but saw nothing more threatening than thick cobwebs and a couple of rusty old paint cans.

The whispers continued. Urgent. Unintelligible.

Swallowing hard, I tried to regain some of my recent bravado.
Annoying
, I told myself.
Annoying and confused. They can’t actually do anything to hurt you.

I had to hand it to this ghost, though—the vague, barely audible whispers were far creepier than anything Kenneth had ever managed to pull off. If it hadn’t been for my recent experiences, I’m sure I would have run screaming out of the house by now. Instead I thought of my mother. She didn’t let the spirits she found in houses frighten her; on the contrary, they helped her to choose great old homes that she and my father then flipped, allowing them to build up a successful business and to provide for their family.

If I had inherited even a fraction of her abilities, I wouldn’t let the whispers frighten me.
Remember what Brittany Humm said
, I told myself.
It’s a privilege
.

I made my way to the bricks between the houses and started removing some of them from the floor. They came up so easily it seemed as though they had recently been disturbed.

Under one, I saw something that appeared white. Bonelike.

I let out a breath. If there were actually bones here, I would have to call in a forensic anthropologist. Probably shut down the job site for a number of days.

Still, surely any bones would, indeed, belong to some poor animal, as Meredith had suggested. No one would simply brick over a human skeleton in their basement, would they?

As I was about to gingerly replace the bricks I had moved, I saw something else. Something metal. A chain. With a small medallion attached.

Wiping away the mud, I saw it was a St. Christopher medal. Words on the back were written in Italian.

The whispers increased in volume, still unintelligible but more strident.

Okay . . . Walter Buchanan had supposedly been haunted by a ghost. But the buildings were new when he built them. What ghosts would have been lingering? Could it be an Italian Catholic ghost? Perhaps someone Walter had buried in his basement? Like a prospector who had duped him? The man to whom Buchanan had signed over Norton notes, one of the men in the photograph with him, holding up their hands in celebration?

If that was true . . . he wouldn’t have any reason to be angry at me, would he? I could help him, maybe. Just like I was—sort of—helping Kenneth.

I let out a deep breath, closed my eyes, and concentrated, trying to invoke the spirit, somehow. If I tried hard enough, could I talk to it with my mind?

It didn’t escape me that I started seeing Kenneth very much against my will, and even now he seemed to show up only when he wanted to, rather than when I wanted to speak with him.

Nonetheless, I figured I might as well try. Doing yoga was the closest I came to achieving any sort of altered state. I took a deep breath, sat down on the damp bricks, yanked my work-boot-shod feet into as close to a lotus position as I could manage—which wasn’t very close—and laid my hands, palms up, on my knees.

“Mel?”

Letting out a screech, I wheeled on my haunches and wound up falling backward on my butt in the mud, whirling around with the gun in my hands. Aiming.

Graham jumped off the basement stairs to crouch behind them, hands in the air.

“
Don’t shoot!
What is
wrong
with you?” he yelled at me from his hiding place. “And you were accusing your
father
of being gun crazy.
Damn
, woman.”

I closed my eyes and blew out a breath.“You shouldn’t sneak up on a person like that. In a basement, no less.”

His eyes went past me to the upended bricks

Eyebrows raised in question. “What’s up?”

“I really don’t know,” I said, feeling unaccountably guilty.

“Uh-huh. You’ve got something buried in your basement now?”

“Don’t look at me like that. It’s not like I put it there.”

“What is it?”

“Could be nothing,” I said with a shrug.

“Or it could be . . . ?”

“A skeleton? Maybe?”

“A skeleton. Oh, goody.”

“I think I’d better call in a forensic anthropologist.”

“I thought
you
were an anthropologist.”

“I was a cultural anthropologist, not an archaeologist. I followed Daniel around on a lot of his digs, but I’m not qualified for something like this.” I tore my eyes away from the bricks and looked back at Graham. “What are you doing here, anyway?”

“Exactly what I swore I wasn’t going to do: worrying about you. You and I were supposed to meet for dinner last night, remember? You weren’t answering your phone. I called your dad and he said you were out with me.” He shrugged. “So I worried.”

“I’m sorry, Graham. That was terrible of me.” My already sour stomach took a turn for the worse.

“You okay?” he asked. “You don’t look so great.”

“I might have had a little bit too much to drink last night. And coffee on top of that.”

“How about we get out of here, I make a couple of calls—though I guarantee you we won’t get a forensic specialist out here on the holiday weekend—and we go get some lunch?”

“That’s the best idea I’ve heard all day.”

“G
raham, could I ask you something?” I said over our meals at Rose’s on Union Street.

“Shoot.”

“Do you believe in ghosts?”

“Is this a trick question?”

“No.”

He shook his head, taking a bite of his overstuffed sandwich.

“Never?”

Graham sat back in his chair and studied me. “I take it you think you’ve seen a ghost?”

I could feel myself blush. I ducked my head and took a sip of my iced tea.

“Then again, I guess there are ghosts, and then there are ghosts. Your mama, for instance . . . she sure knew how to pick a house.” My eyes flew up to meet his gaze. “Look, Mel, I don’t believe in ghosts per se, but anyone in the trades will tell you there are some projects that are blessed, or cursed, from the start. Some houses just have worse feelings than others. Like your Vallejo Street project, for instance.”