Murder on the House: A Haunted Home Renovation Mystery (Haunted Home Repair Mystery) (10 page)

“We were in a community theater production,” I said, just to be snarky.
“Peer Gynt.”

“Huh. You eat yet?” Ah, the real issue.

“No, but we’re starved.”

“Well, come on in.” He scooted us back into the kitchen. Stephen and I perched on stools at the counter while Dad started rummaging through the ample contents of the refrigerator, extracting a dozen eggs, bacon, and milk.

He set a bag of potatoes and a grater on the counter in front of me. “Make yourself useful. Wash those and shred ’em up fine for hash browns.”

I did as I was told. My father had raised me and my two sisters with the sort of undisputed military authority he’d honed during two tours of Vietnam. I had rebelled by the time I hit adolescence, so he and I had butted heads through much of my youth. But since I had come back to stay with him after Mom died and I divorced Daniel, we’d worked out a sort of détente: I avoided talking about politics, he avoided talking about when he was going to start back in running Turner Construction, and we dealt with each other’s quirks with as much patience as we could muster.

As he whisked eggs to make an omelet, I asked him about Thomas Avery and his nephew Josh.

“Old Tom’s all right . . .” He hesitated. Dad wasn’t the kind of guy who said negative things behind other people’s backs—he was more the sort who didn’t say anything if he couldn’t say something nice.

“But . . . ?”

“Well, as you know, we were competitors. And truth is . . . he was a fierce competitor.”

“Would you say he was underhanded at all?”

He stuck out his chin, then frowned. “No, nah. Nothing like that. Didn’t adhere to Turner Construction standards of cleanliness on the jobsite, things like that. But then, who could?” he asked with pride. “Tom had a nice old German shepherd. Good dog.”

Upon hearing the word “dog,” our brown mutt scampered across the kitchen to beg at Dad’s feet. Now that he was fed regularly, his brown coat had taken on a shiny deep chocolate hue and was silky to the touch—he was so pretty that strangers stopped us on the street to ask what breed he was. But unlike almost all the mutts I’ve known in my life, Dog wasn’t smart. At all. He was sweet, but dim. Very dim.

His English vocabulary consisted of maybe three words: “Dog,” “cookie,” “walk.” That was about it. He didn’t know how to play ball, or Frisbee. He didn’t fetch sticks, much less bring a person her slippers at night. And to top it all off, he got carsick. As dogs went, he was less than ideal. We all adored him.

“And Tom’s nephew Josh, have you ever met him?”

“Never heard of him,” he said as he turned the bacon that was sizzling and popping in the huge old iron skillet, filling the house with enticing aromas. “But Tom’s kids all left the area, so I’m not surprised he’d bring someone else in.”

“They’re not all lucky enough to have a daughter like you,” said Stan Tomassi as he wheeled himself into the kitchen. Stan had been one of my dad’s best friends for twenty years. They used to work together until a construction accident landed Stan in a wheelchair. Now he lived here, and the two men were like an old married couple, bickering over the TV and cooking together.

Stan was also the one who had roped me into taking over the construction business “for a couple of months” after my mother’s sudden death, when my father fell apart. Two years later, I was still waiting for my dad to step back in.

I think Stan felt a little guilty about it, and I wasn’t above letting him wallow in the sentiment. Still, he was a huge help to me by running Turner Construction’s home office, charming customers with his homespun wisdom.

“Good morning, Stan.” I got up and gave him a kiss on the cheek. “Did we wake you?”

“Nah, you know how it is. Back hurts after five or six hours in bed. Besides, I must be getting old like your father—I can’t sleep past five anymore.” Stan rolled over to the refrigerator and pulled out a blue plastic pitcher. “Orange juice? Squeezed it fresh yesterday.”

A few scraggly trees in the yard still gave twice-yearly citrus harvests.

“Get a load of that,” muttered Dad. “Stan Tomassi, aka Martha Stewart.”

“I’ll take some, thanks. Hey, Stan, we were just talking about Thomas Avery, Avery Builders?” I said. “You remember him?”

“Sure. Tom was one tough old bird. Beat your dad out of more than one juicy contract, if I remember correctly.”

Dad snorted. “He underbid, then ran over on change orders. Not professional in my book.”

“You just told me he was a decent guy,” I said.

“All’s fair in love and business, Mel,” said Stan with a smile. “Just not for Turner Construction. We hold ourselves to a different standard—says so right on our business cards.”

“And his nephew Josh?”

“Never heard of him. But it seems to me Tom mentioned a couple of sisters, so it wouldn’t be too surprising.”

Could Josh have killed Mrs. Bernini? But why? He had disappeared, true . . . but why would he have killed Mrs. Bernini while Stephen, Claire, and I were looking around the house, then come back to join us, then run away after the toys attacked? It made no sense.

Speaking of Martha Stewart, as we talked, my father had been frying up delicious-smelling hash browns, bacon, and omelets. I’m not a breakfast person in general, but I make an exception for bacon and hash browns. Besides, something about being up all night gives a person an early-morning appetite.

Though he made it a point to be surly, I could tell Dad was inordinately pleased to have me at the table. It was a source of daily disappointment to him that I grabbed only coffee for breakfast.

When the food was ready, we all sat around our scarred pine kitchen table and dug in. We chatted, and I described the architectural details of the Bernini house but kept things vague with regards to our evening, and ghosts. I sidestepped the subject of murder altogether.

Dad stared at me as I ate bacon and hash browns but avoided the eggs.

“You want waffles, babe?”

“No thank you.”

“Different kind of omelet?”

“Nope. I’m great. Thanks.”

He stared some more. “Cream of Wheat?”

“Dad, I’m the daughter who doesn’t like breakfast foods. Remember?”

“I thought you liked pancakes.”

I shook my head. “Different daughter.”

“
I
like pancakes,” Stephen said.

“Good man.” My dad slapped him on the back.

I was beginning to think Dad was getting the wrong idea about Stephen and me. He hopped up and down bringing salt and pepper, and butter, and refills of juice to the table. You’d think this breakfast was my dowry for all the attention he was giving it.

Probably he figured if I couldn’t land Graham, he might as well welcome the second string. The man was developing a morbid fear of me dying an “old maid.” No amount of argument would convince him that in the modern world, there really
was
no such thing as an old maid; on the contrary, a woman who chose to remain single might be fulfilled, or even happier than someone married.
Especially
than someone in a miserable marriage.

For a few blessed minutes we ate in companionable silence. And then Stephen opened his big mouth.

“Mel’s leaving out just one little aspect of the evening. The homeowner where we were spending the night . . . she died. Was killed.”

“Your client was killed?” Stan looked startled. “Again?”

“It’s not my
fault
.” I’d been up all night, seen ghosts, practically witnessed Mrs. Bernini’s death, and dealt with cops. Now that I had warm food in my belly, I felt like I’d hit a wall. “Why does everybody think it’s
me
?”

Dad gave me a Look.

I was cornered, so I gave them an abbreviated version of our evening. “. . . and then the cops took statements from all of us and were collecting evidence. I think that’s the end of it, as far as we’re concerned.”

“Good,” said Dad.

“So what does this mean for the job?” asked Stan.

“She doesn’t need any more fool jobs where she thinks she’s seeing ghosts, for crissakes,” interjected Dad. He jabbed his fork in my direction. “Move on to that Piedmont remodel. That’ll keep you busy, and it’s half the commute anyway.”

My father telling me what to do with the business—the business that he had practically foisted upon me, the business I had managed to keep in the black despite the economic downturn, the business that was keeping me from disappearing among Parisians—riled me like no other subject.

“Wow,”
I blurted out before I lost my temper. I faked a huge yawn and stretched my arms out, like cartoon characters always did when they were sleepy. “Gee, I’m beat. Stephen, would you like to stay over? You’re welcome to Caleb’s room if you like.”

“Thank you, no. I’d better get on home and get some sleep and a change of clothes. Got to be at work by noon.”

“What kind of work do you do, there, Steve?” asked my dad.

“I’m a barista.”

“A ‘barista’?” He reared back and looked at Stan, who shrugged. “What the hell’s a
barista
?”

“I make coffee. Lattes, cappuccinos, that sort of thing. I used to work for an evil national chain, whose name I’ll no longer mention, but now I work at a little place on Columbus. My
real
love is costume design, but as you can imagine, that doesn’t pay the rent.”

Unblinking, Dad looked at Stephen for a long moment; then he stared at me. Shaking his head and muttering under his breath, he started clearing the table.

Chapter Ten

I
slept until one in the afternoon. Actually, that was an exaggeration—I stayed in bed until one, but I slept only fitfully. I couldn’t stop thinking of Mrs. Bernini, couldn’t get her sweet face out of my mind. I dreamt of her shuffling down the hallway, the smile that lingered on her lips as she told her stories, the overly eager expression on the Propaks’ faces, and then the woman who came to the crime scene and claimed Mrs. Bernini had left the house to her. . . .

I hadn’t warmed to the Propaks when I first met them, but could they really have wanted Mrs. Bernini out of the way so badly that they would resort to murder?

And if those thoughts weren’t enough to chase sleep from my grasp, my cell phone rang repeatedly. I ignored it and pulled a pillow over my head. I imagined it was either work or the police; I wasn’t in the mood for either.

With the supreme self-serving logic of the sleep-deprived, I figured Sunday was supposed to be a day of rest, even for general contractors. And I had told the police everything I knew.

Finally I heard the house phone ringing, and the muffled sounds of my dad answering, then his footsteps on the stairs, and a light knocking at the door.

“Mmmff,”
I answered.

“Sorry, kiddo. Your ex, Caleb’s dad, is on the phone.”

“Daniel?”

“Caleb’s in the emergency room.”

I sat bolt upright in bed. My dad handed me the portable phone.

“Daniel? What happened?”

“Sorry about this,” said Daniel. “But Caleb insisted on me calling you. He’ll be fine, but he’s got to have stitches.”

Without so much as stopping for coffee, I pulled on yesterday’s clothes and ran out the door. Dog had been in the yard and, assuming my running was an invitation to play, chased me out to the car. Not wanting to take the time to put him back in the house, I let him come along for the ride. Unfortunately, I forgot about his carsickness pills, so by the time we crossed the Bay Bridge, the poor canine was sitting down in the footwell, dry-heaving. I comforted him as best I could.

I rushed to the San Francisco Medical Center, let Dog out to sniff the edges of the parking lot for a few minutes until he felt better, gave him a little water, put him back in the car, cracked the windows, and then made my way to the emergency room.

There, I found Caleb looking reassuringly healthy against the snowy white of the bedsheets. His dark hair was overlong and ruffled; his near-black eyes looked tired. He even had the beginnings of a dark mustache, which always surprised me; I still thought of him as a child.

Speaking of children . . . Caleb was being tended by a doctor who looked almost as young as he. At least the attending nurse looked reassuringly grown-up.

“Hey there, Goose,” I said, wincing at my inadvertent public use of the nickname I had dubbed him with, no idea why, when he was just five. “Wow,
this
is exciting. What do you say, Doctor? Will he live?”

“Nothing much to worry about long-term,” said the physician, who had finished cleaning the wound on Caleb’s arm and was about to begin stitching. “It’s deep, but it missed bone and tendon, just sliced through flesh.”

“He’ll have a big scar,” Daniel said.

“Well, girls love scars,” I said, feeling inane chatting like this, but unable to stop. The alternative was to start crying. Or yelling. My heart was pounding. “We’ll come up with a good story for you, a knife fight in a bar in Hanoi, something like that.”

“You okay, Mel?” Caleb asked.

“Sure. Why?”

He and Daniel shared a smile. “Thanks for coming and everything, but, like, did we get you out of bed or something? Your hair’s kind of like . . . messed up.”

I tried to smooth it, knowing it was no use. I have impossible hair, thick and curly and with a mind of its own. The only way it looks decent is if I wet it every day and use heaps of conditioner. Rising from bed I could easily be mistaken for Medusa’s frizzy-haired doppelgänger. Nor was I wearing any makeup. I had thrown on yesterday’s outfit because it was at the foot of my bed, and had run out of the house without so much as looking in the mirror.

“Ingrate. I was a little too anxious to be with you to attend to my usually rigorous beauty regimen.”

Caleb managed a half smile in response, keeping his eyes on me but wincing each time the doctor passed the needle through his skin.

Across the bed, I saw Daniel turn white as the sheets Caleb sat on. He was a loving father, but he’d never been strong in the face of blood. I, on the other hand, had dealt with my fair share of sliced appendages and broken bones on the jobsite, so that part didn’t faze me. The idea of my baby being hurt, however . . . that was a different story.