Murder on the House: A Haunted Home Renovation Mystery (Haunted Home Repair Mystery) (14 page)

Stay out!
There’s room in the well for you all.

* * *

The next morning I hit the road early, answering incessant phone calls and doing my usual check-in with all my crews. There was solace in the rote everydayness of my Monday routine.

In Pacific Heights I checked in with the foreman at a great Beaux Arts building on Vallejo. This project had been nearly completed when the quirky owner—my friend Matt—decided he wanted to raise the roof. The new drawings were now up for review by the permit office, and I’d spent more time than I ever wanted down at city hall.

This was the problem with being a small-business owner: I rarely got to do any actual hands-on work, since most of my time and energy was spent on administration and client relations. Stan was my right arm, completing paperwork, dealing with payroll, and fielding phone calls, but there was no getting around the fact that someone had to run around from jobsite to city hall and back again, checking on progress schedules, getting clients to sign off on agreements, and shepherding paperwork through San Francisco’s bureaucratic morass.

Next, I stopped in at Cheshire House. Not so long ago this building had been the site of a serious haunting, but now that its unhappy specters had been laid to rest, the place felt different: peaceful, serene, and strikingly beautiful. It would soon be a warm home for the young family who was ready to move into the house.

I stood outside for a moment, looking up at the facade of the splendid Queen Anne Victorian. It featured two turrets and curlicue woodwork known as “gingerbread” along every window and ledge, and under the roofline. This was the kind of house that put San Francisco on the architectural map. Unfortunately the pattern of decorative shingles on the roof would be marred by the solar panels Graham was having installed for the owners, but sometimes historical accuracy had to make way for the future of our planet.

I spent half an hour developing a punch list, or a tally of final details to attend to, with the owners, Jim and Katenka Daley. Their young son was walking now, drooling and happy as ever. We went over some paint colors and gilt ideas for the exterior details, and I ran some suggestions for the interior decorative touches past them—Queen Anne was not a subtle architectural style. The home’s tall ceilings called for plenty of embellishment, and some of the original had been stripped or damaged during the years the building operated as a boardinghouse.

Finally, I spoke with the refinisher and confirmed arrangements for the wood floors to be sanded, stained, and sealed. The floor guys would be among the last workers in; after the final coat of polyurethane was laid down and thoroughly dried, Katenka and Jim could start moving into their beautiful new old house.

I couldn’t decide who was more excited: them or me. I adore seeing a project like this coming to fruition, a historic home reclaiming its grandeur with the help of appreciative owners. Before I left, I presented the Daleys with a scrapbook filled with before-and-after photos, progress pictures, and ephemera from the project, as well as a group portrait of everyone who had worked on the house. There were blank pages in the back, to be filled with photos when the furniture was in place and the house was ready to live in. These mementos were a Turner Construction tradition my mother had started for our clients years ago, and I always felt like she was with me as I pasted and stamped and jotted down notes.

As I left I noticed a small pile of mossy bricks in the still-undone front yard. They put me in mind of yesterday’s incident: the brick sailing out of a window of the Bernini house, straight for us.

More to the point, I thought about the threatening message:
There’s room in the well for you all.

What a wretched thing to write. Who could have done such a thing?

After reading the note off the brick yesterday, I had called Inspector Crawford. She retrieved the evidence from us, but seemed underwhelmed at the idea that this “clue” might crack the case wide open. She appeared more interested in why I had returned to her crime scene, and then suggested I stay away from the Bernini house altogether.

“Do you think you’ll get any evidence from the brick, or the note?” I asked.

“I’ll send it to forensics,” she said. “But I don’t expect much.”

“You think it was the killer who threw it?” I asked. “The threat about the well and all?”

She shrugged. “It’s a talkative neighborhood. By early this morning I imagine everyone from the pizza guy to the heater repairman had been weighing in with details about the crime and the crime scene. It would be easy enough to break into this old place, and it’s so big I imagine you could be in there for some time without being noticed. For all we know, it could have been a local kid who thought it was funny.”

Or a spirit? I wondered. The handwriting was unusual. Could it have been written by the ghosts? And would that mean that
they
had harmed Mrs. Bernini? I didn’t think ghosts did such things, but could I be sure? In any case, I knew better than to share my suspicions with the skeptical inspector.

After meeting with Inspector Crawford, Graham and I took the proverbial walk on the beach to get my mind off things. Then, to
really
get my mind off things we made out a little—enough to steam up all the truck’s windows and send me into some kind of hormonally charged needfest—but when I started to feel out of control, I pulled back, and he didn’t push. I think he was waiting for me to feel comfortable, and to make the first move.

That was probably a mistake. Graham might have the patience of Job, but I was a tough case.

Enough of such thoughts.
I was supposed to be working, so I headed across town to one of my favorite supply stores, Victoriana, which made ornamental plaster castings from original pieces, as well as wood moldings, carved wood pieces, newel posts, and turned balusters. On my way there I noticed a sign that I had seen many times before:
HOMER’S DELI
. Mrs. Bernini had mentioned that one of her foster sons, Homer, had a deli in this neighborhood. It must be his place. How many Homer’s Delis could there possibly be?

I continued on to my destination, and spent the next hour studying the store’s inventory, making notes on the fat catalog. Finally, I asked for some small samples of several antique wallpaper borders. I’m not sure where Victoriana had stumbled across this stash, but these were a rare find, heavily embossed and painted by hand. They would look great in Jim and Katenka’s master bedroom.

For that matter, one of them would be perfect to replace the damaged frieze in Mrs. Bernini’s old master bedroom, presuming the faux finishers were unable to perform their magic and repair it convincingly.

It’s not my job,
I reminded myself. At least not yet.

My mind went from thinking of the Bernini house, to Mrs. Bernini’s death, to a school photo of a Howdy Doody–looking boy with freckles, long neck, and big ears. How would someone like that have aged? I wondered. And more to the point, what might he be able to tell me about the hauntings at the Bernini house? I was very curious to meet this Homer.

I checked my phone for the time: eleven twenty. Nearly lunchtime. A deli sandwich was sounding good right about now.

Chapter Thirteen

I
assumed by the loading dock out front that Ho
mer’s Deli did a lot of wholesale business, but right inside the no-frills front door were a counter and a chalkboard listing today’s special sandwiches. Opposite the deli case were huge freezers full of lasagna, tortellini, ravioli, pierogi, and a variety of sauces and ragùs.

At the back was a doorway with
KITCHEN
written on the door.

The line for sandwiches was long, the workers harried. I tried to catch someone’s eye to ask for Homer, assuming that neither of the young men working behind the counter was old enough to be him, but they were too busy to be bothered.

Instead, I snooped. I poked my head through the plastic flaps over a side doorway, keeping the warm air in. Out in the loading dock area were several more freezers, refrigerated trucks, and tall stacks of boxes printed with the Homer’s Deli logo: a man with an exaggerated mustache and a tall chef’s hat. I headed for a small glassed-in office in one corner.

“I’m looking for . . . ?” I said to the woman at the front desk, though I needn’t have bothered. My eyes alighted on the man in the interior office. He was lanky, with strawberry blond hair shot through with silver, freckles, and rosy cheeks.

Howdy Doody, all grown up.

He was holding up two phones, one to each ear. His desk looked a lot like mine: covered in tall, loose piles of paper. It dawned on me that not only was I catching him at a bad time, but he might not yet have been informed of Mrs. Bernini’s death. Who was I to break this kind of news to him?

“May I help you?” asked the receptionist.

“No, my mistake,” I said, deciding discretion was the better part of valor.

I was about to scurry away when Homer’s eyes met mine. We stared at each other for a moment through the doorway.

“Wait!” I heard from behind me as I turned back toward the door. “Are you . . . you wouldn’t be Mrs. Bernini’s new friend, by any chance? The, uh . . . ghost whisperer?”

“Um, yes, I think I am. How did you know?”

“The way you were hovering there . . . Mrs. Bernini told me all about you the other day, and described you to a tee. You and your . . . outfits.”

Today I was wearing a bright pink, rather low-cut T-shirt Stephen had given me that read: “Rome wasn’t built in a day.” I had matched it with a jeans skirt and tights, and wore a leather jacket over the whole ensemble to ward off the city’s foggy chill. Oh, and my work boots, of course.

“Come on in, please. Have a seat. This whole thing . . . it’s been such a shock.”

I felt a wave of relief that he had already been notified of her death. “I’m so sorry for your loss.”

“Thank you.” He ran a pale, freckled hand through his hair. “I’m not sure it’s really sunk in yet. It’s so . . . sudden. And I just feel, well, guilty that I didn’t get over there more. We Skyped every Saturday morning, but that’s hardly a substitute for visits. It’s just . . . I hate that place.”

“Which place?”

“That old house.”

“Why?”

“There were always weird things happening, and it was freezing. And that damned radio always came on, and . . .” He stopped suddenly, wiping his palms on his trousers. “Well, you’re in the business, so I’ll just say it: I think there are ghosts in that house. They . . . they used to run us out of the playroom. I’ve never seen anything like that before or since, thank goodness. But those . . . whatever they were . . . sure didn’t want us playing in that nursery. Mrs. Bernini would send us up there to play, and they would chase us out. She didn’t believe us at first, but she finally let us play downstairs instead.”

“What sorts of things did you see?”

He shook his head and let out a long breath. “Mostly the toys . . . they would move of their own accord. There was a puppet theater and the marionettes would move by themselves. And a toy carousel that played creepy music. Once . . . once or twice I thought I saw a little girl. The first time I thought she was a new foster child, but then I realized she was something else altogether.”

“Did she say anything to you?”

He shook his head. “No. Thank goodness. I think that might have done me in.”

“Could you tell me anything about the other foster kids?”

“There was a passel of them. Kids from all over. A lot of them were short-term; I was one of the longer ones.”

“Could you . . . I’m sure the police have probably talked with you already, but I was just wondering . . . can you think of anyone who would want to harm Mrs. Bernini?”

He looked at me askance. “I thought you were there for the ghosts. . . . Are you looking into the murder, as well?”

“Not really,” I hastened to assure him. “I guess I’m just trying to make sense of it all.”

His desk phone started to ring and Homer stared at it as though it had never before done such a thing. Then he shook his head. “I don’t really know. I can’t imagine, except . . . my foster mother had a way of getting what she wanted. She was wonderful, don’t get me wrong. But sometimes she made promises she couldn’t keep. I gathered from what the police said that there might be a couple of different wills floating around, which doesn’t surprise me. Knowing her, there might be half a dozen. And that place must be worth a fortune. . . .”

He trailed off, leaving me to come to my own conclusion. I wanted to ask whether Homer had expected to inherit something, as well, but couldn’t think how without sounding a whole lot like someone poking her nose in where it didn’t belong.

“Mrs. Bernini spoke fondly of you,” I said. “She mentioned that a lot of the foster children came back for a memorial service when Angelo died. Do you suppose you’ll want to arrange something for her, and let the others know?”

His freckles stood out against his pale skin, and there was a sheen of tears in his pale eyes.

“Yes, definitely. I’ll take care of it.”

* * *

I pondered my conversation with Homer as I stood in line to buy a sandwich. Did this whole mystery boil down to who held the authentic will? That sounded like more of a challenge for the lawyers than for me: sifting through the paperwork to find the legitimate heir. Period.

On the other hand, that still didn’t determine who killed Mrs. Bernini, and why.

While the man behind the counter was piling prosciutto, roasted red peppers, provolone, and tapenade on a fresh sourdough roll, my stomach growled and my mind turned toward more prosaic issues. I decided to buy a platter of frozen ravioli and a tub of ragù to take home for dinner. I figured it could defrost in the car. It would last in the January chill.

The sandwich was massive. It made me think of my perpetually hungry friend Luz.

“I have food,” I said over the phone as I tried to convince her to join me. I was supposed to go over to Daniel’s house. The house where his current wife was remodeling my careful renovation, where I was sure to have to bite my tongue when I saw what they’d torn out, and where my stepson, Caleb, had been hurt, perhaps by ghosts. I felt sleep-deprived, scared, and in desperate need of moral support. “Aren’t you off early on Mondays?”