Give Up the Ghost: A Haunted Home Renovation Mystery (13 page)

I
had to stay away from Landon.
I wasn’t sure what to make of my reaction to him, but I knew one thing for sure: It wasn’t fair to Graham.

I checked my phone but Olivier still hadn’t answered my increasingly frantic texts and didn’t pick up when I called. Then I tried Brittany Humm, and asked if she trusted Karla, and what she made of the situation.

Brittany said that while Karla worked out of the same office, she couldn’t really vouch for her since she hadn’t known her that long. It was unusual, but not unheard-of, for a San Francisco property to be represented by an agent from Walnut Creek. Brittany had never met Skip. She did, however, agree that with an asking price as high as Crosswinds, there could be a lot of fishy stuff going on.

Frustrated, I decided to get back to the kind of work I knew I was good at. I dropped by the job we were finishing up in Bernal Heights and worked with the foreman for a while on developing the final punch list. Afterward, I headed over to Olivier Galopin’s Ghost Supply Shoppe, located in an old brick building—Olivier
claimed it was a former bordello—in Jackson Square, one of the oldest neighborhoods of San Francisco.

The store was large, with sections for books, maps, jewelry, art, all sorts of charms and amulets, electronic equipment, release forms, and other paperwork necessary for the ambitious ghost chaser. Upstairs was a classroom where Olivier held surprisingly popular classes about spirits and hauntings.

Inside, Dingo was standing behind the display counter. He was a short man with gray hair sticking out at all angles, à la Albert Einstein. He wore a black AC/DC T-shirt covered with a leather vest. Appearances to the contrary, Dingo was a sweet man with a love of bad puns.

“Mel! Welcome!” he said as I passed through the front door.

“Hi, Dingo, how are you?”

“In high spirits. Thank you so much.”

“Is Olivier around?”

“Not a ghost of a chance,” he said. “Sorry.”

“When do you expect him back?”

“Not for a while. He’s in Hungary.”

“Hungary?”

“No, thanks,” said Dingo. “Just had lunch.”

I smiled. “Seriously, though, how long will he be out of town?”

“It’s sort of hard to say. Pesky critters, demons.”

I blanched. “He’s gone up against a
demon
?”

I had only recently managed to wrap my mind around the idea that the spirits of humans sometimes lingered on this plane after their bodies had died. Demons were a whole other bag. Not only was I not sure if I believed they existed, I wasn’t sure I even wanted to think about it.

Dingo did not seem particularly put off by the idea. His countenance didn’t change in the least: grizzled chin sticking out, placid smile.

“He has help. So, somethin’ I can do for you? May not seem like it, but I’m pretty good at spirits and the like.” He tapped his temple with his finger. “Mind like a steel trap, is what.”

Why not?
I would take all the advice I could get.

“I’ve got a situation with a kitchen ghost,” I said. “Cleans things up, slams cupboard doors, that sort of thing.”

“Cleans things up? Usually it’s the other way around—makes a mess.”

“Not this one. Though she did throw the silverware drawer on the floor to scare me. But she probably picked it up once I’d left.”

“Hmmm. Well, now, kitchen ghosts are usually female—there’s a lot of reversion to old-fashioned gender stereotypes, on account of ghosts are usually from another era.”

“Yes. Thanks. I was thinking that as well. That’s probably why I refer to her as ‘her.’”

“You sure you wanna get rid of her? Housekeeping services aren’t easy to come by these days.”

“It’s not that I don’t see your point,” I said, “but some students have rented the place, put down first and last and security and now they can’t afford to move. And she scares them.”

“Students are slobs. No offense.”

“As a general rule, I’d have to agree with you. Anyway, any thoughts on how I might get rid of her?”

“Same as usual, probably. Try to figure out why she’s stayed, what she needs. Usually once things are resolved, they feel free to leave. Unless they’re very stubborn, in which case they stick around no matter what you do.”

I nodded. That had been my experience.

“What’s the address?” He pulled a giant ledger out
from under the cash register and set it on the counter with a grunt.

“Address?”

“This here’s a register of all known hauntings in San Francisco.” He patted it like a pet. “Lots going on in this city. Real active, spirit-wise.”

“Why isn’t it on the computer?”

“Olivier maintains a database of hauntings, but I’m an old-fashioned kind of guy. This way I can keep notes, newspaper clippings, that sort of thing all in one place. And nothing gets erased—you might cross something out, but you can still see it. Nothing’ll get this baby but a fire, and we got sprinklers. You got an address?”

I gave it to him, then perused the wide selection of spirit catchers and good-luck amulets while Dingo flipped through pages, searching. It took a while. The ledger didn’t appear to be organized in any fashion, and there was no table of contents. Even though I’m not that much of a computer person myself, I did appreciate the advantages of a searchable database.

I checked out some of the high-tech electronics and wondered if I should invest in a new EMF detector or infrared camera. They were nifty little gadgets but the last ones I had didn’t last very long, and truth to tell ghosts usually found me, rather than the other way around.

All this fancy equipment was more suited to someone like Olivier, who was trying to collect scientific proof of otherworldly specters. I didn’t care about that; I was usually just trying to work my construction jobs, and help the ghosts resolve whatever they needed to so they would get out of my way. When you’ve been chased by a ghost with a broadsword, or seen a ghost throw silverware on the kitchen floor, or had a ghost yell at you to get off his roof, you don’t need further proof of their existence.

Several minutes, one customer, and two phone calls later—during all of which he continued thumbing through the big pages of the ledger—Dingo had a hit.

“Aha!
Thought
it rang a bell. Overly active housewife, circa mid-1940s. Rental.”

“Yes, that’s it!” I said, surprised. I really hadn’t expected him to find anything in that disorganized tome. “What can you tell me?”

He shook his head. “Nothing much here. Lessee. . . . See, this is why I like my handwritten book, ’cause of my notes. Sometimes the chicken scratch doesn’t make it into the fancy-pants computer, but I still take ’em.”

“What
does
it say?”

“Just conjecture, looks like,” he said with a shake of his head. “That’s why Olivier won’t enter it into his database—the man believes in proof, hard-and-fast evidence. There was at least one death in that apartment, while it was rented to a Mr. and Mrs. White, no first names here.”

“Anything about the death?”

“Nope.”

“That’s it?” I deflated.

“Nothing factual.”

I perked up. “Anything not factual?”

“Apple pie mean anything to you?”

“Apple pie?”

He squinted at something written in pencil. “Says here ‘apple pie.’ I could swear that’s my handwriting, but for the life of me can’t figure out what that means.
Huh.
”

“While I was there I thought I smelled apple pie,” I said. “But what would that mean? Is it a symbol, or something?”

“Maybe she’s waiting for her husband to come home from the war,” Dingo said. “But he never will.”

“Well, that would be sad.”

“Maybe she committed suicide, or like that?” he suggested. “Not sure, but I think maybe she was waiting and then got the news that he’d been killed.”

“What makes you think that?”

He shrugged. “Suits the era. But I dunno anything, not really. Olivier says I got a mind for fiction. That’s why he keeps me out of the computer. That, and on account of I don’t like computers.”

“I’m with you on that. So then I need to convince her that she doesn’t have to wait for her husband anymore?”

“Exactly. I mean, that’s if I’m right. Coulda been something else.”

“Like what, do you think?”

He shrugged, scratched his stubbly cheek. “If her husband really was a soldier, well . . . violence isn’t good for people. You know, back in the day when someone came back from the war troubled, they didn’t call it PTSD. They called it shell shock.”

I nodded.

“They didn’t know much about it back then, and maybe it wasn’t as big of an issue then as it is now, but I think it probably was, but just wasn’t talked about. Like a lot of things back then—child abuse, sex abuse—that sort of thing
happened
, but it wasn’t out in the open.”

“So you think maybe her husband came back from the war with shell shock?”

“It’s possible. Maybe while he was away at war, she had a life, you know, like Rosie the Riveter over at the Kaiser shipyards? And that didn’t sit well with him, and he just snapped. It happened.”

I took a moment to let that sink in. Dingo did the same, studying the scrawled comments in his book. A few customers roamed the shop, inspecting intricate woven dream catchers and sparkling crystals, perusing books on exorcisms and how to brew magical beer.

“Well, now, this is interesting,” Dingo said.

“What?”

“Ya know, I mark down when people ask me about something,” said Dingo. “See, right there? And I’ve had three different parties asking about this address. So that seems strange.”

“So my students aren’t the first group of renters to notice something amiss?”

“Can’t say for sure if the other people asking were renters. But there were definitely other people asking.”

“Do you have names or phone numbers? Maybe I could ask them about what they experienced?”

“No, I keep a tally, that’s all, unless someone volunteers their name. But most don’t—you know how it is.”

“Okay, thanks for your help. I should let you get back to your customers. Oh wait, before you put that away—do you have a mansion called Crosswinds in that big book?”

“Crosswinds?”

I nodded. “I couldn’t find anything much online.”

He hesitated.

“What?” I asked. “You’ve heard of it?”

“Oh, sure.”

“How come there wasn’t anything online about it?”

“This is what I’m saying. You can’t trust the online stuff—either it’s made up, or people like Olivier insist it not be put up unless it’s documented. Or people take stuff down because they don’t want folks to know things about their house. But as far as Crosswinds, haven’t you heard of the flower girl?”

“Let’s assume I haven’t heard of anything. What happened?”

“No one knows. She ran away. Maybe killed herself, who knows? Flora.”

“A little flower girl named Flora? How old was she?”

“A young woman, I guess is more politically correct. And she wasn’t a flower girl, I just call her that on account of her name was Flora. They say she disappeared from home on the evening of her eighteenth birthday.”

“But her ghost is there, in Crosswinds?”

“Nope. According to legend her ghost roams California Street, between Jones and Powell, asking for rides to Crosswinds. It’s one of those really sad cases. A lot of people have seen her, but don’t know she’s a ghost. If they give her a lift she disappears before they arrive.”

“Have you seen her?”

He shook his head vehemently. “I don’t got the eye. But Olivier’s seen her, tried to help her get home, but she disappeared from him, too. Made him pretty mad, I tell ya.”

“Do you know why she’s trying to get home? Could this have anything to do with a weathervane, somehow?”

He shook his head. “No idea. But if you could help her get all the way home, maybe you could put her to rest.”

O
ne of the most frustrating things about being a clueless ghost hunter was that I frequently found myself at this juncture: All my investigations were opening up new avenues of inquiry instead of answering my original questions.

So now I knew more, yet understood how to address it even less.

I called Luz and told her what I learned about the students’ apartment.

“Maybe poor Mrs. White was killed by her soldier husband, and ever since feels compelled to keep the kitchen spotless, a pie in the oven. If we knew the full story I could try to make her understand what had happened, so she could move on once and for all.”

“I sent a letter to the landlady,” said Luz. “An actual pen-and-paper letter that I dropped in the mailbox, can you believe it? But even if she gets right back to me, it’ll take a couple of days. Don’t know if I can hold out that long. Can’t you just do an exorcism or something?”

“Doesn’t work that way. Besides, I’d really like to know the whole story. Tell you what . . . ,” I said, glancing
at my schedule. “Why don’t we meet at the Historical Society tomorrow? I need to look up Crosswinds anyway. We’ll read through some microfiche together—it’ll be fun.”

“Looking up dead people in libraries is not my idea of fun, as I think you know. But whatever you say,
chica
. Just let me know when to meet you.”

Next I headed to Marin to meet with the electrician and make sure everything was proceeding on track for the Wakefield Retreat Center’s Grand Opening, scheduled a mere two months from now.

As I crossed the Golden Gate Bridge, taking in the incredible vista of the Pacific Ocean on one side and the San Francisco Bay on the other, I pondered. While in Marin I could check out a couple of other salvage yards and junk shops I knew up there. Which made me wonder . . . Had the incident at Uncle Joe’s been an accident?

Could Nancy have sent me there on purpose, somehow?

But why would Nancy do such a thing? I’d known her for years, and she’d never tried to have me killed before. If she didn’t want me to find anything from Crosswinds, why not just deny she knew anything about it? Or could someone have followed us from Griega Salvage to Uncle Joe’s? I hadn’t been paying attention to a possible tail, and besides, big black trucks weren’t exactly unknown in these parts. It looked exactly like half the trucks on any construction jobsite.

Could it have been Skip Buhner, or one of his men? Skip had struck me as squirrely, and not above violence if the odds were in his favor. But why would he bother attacking me? What would he have to gain?

Or maybe it really had been a random accident.

Then I thought about what Dingo had told me about
the Crosswinds ghost, Flora. Was the funny little guy reliable? He seemed so odd, but he worked for Olivier and as Dingo himself had pointed out, Olivier was pretty darned serious when it came to the business of ghosts and ghost hunting.

Still, the tale he told about Flora sounded like a story from childhood, the kind of tale told around the campfire, of hitchhiking ghosts who could never go home again. Perhaps it was because of that association that Flora’s tale seemed spookier to me than encountering spirits in houses.

When I arrived at my destination, I riffled through my papers until I found the photo I had picked up in Crosswinds, and the ones in the file Karla had given me.

I studied the somber young woman for a few minutes. Could this be Flora Summerton, the girl who had fled her home on her eighteenth birthday? What might she have to say for herself? I surely would like to know.

One way to find out. I called Dad and told him I wouldn’t be home for supper.

“I have to meet up with someone in San Francisco tonight.”

“Have fun.”

“Thanks,” I said. “It’s more business than fun, but it’s sure to be interesting.”

“Just stay away from dead people.”

Good advice. Which I had no intention of following.

•   •   •

It wasn’t really fun. Or interesting. It was dead boring.

Stakeouts imply action and secret adventures. In reality, they meant struggling just to stay awake. Also, for the past half hour or so I had been trying to convince myself I didn’t need to pee, which I knew from experience was a losing battle.

I was sitting in my car on California Street, between
Powell and Mason, where Dingo swore Flora’s ghost hung out. It wasn’t far from Chantelle’s Nob Hill apartment, and the competition for parking spots was fierce. I kept having to wave people off, even while trying to focus on spotting a ghost.

So far the best part of the evening, hands down, was the dumplings I had bought at one of my favorite Chinatown bakeries. But they were long since finished, and now I sipped cold coffee—even though it would make me have to pee even more—and tried to ignore the fact that the Scion now smelled like dumpling dipping sauce.

California Street had two sets of tracks in the middle of it, and occasionally a cable car would go clanging past. I remembered learning on a school field trip that the rich “nobs” who originally lived on the hill paid to have the tracks installed so they wouldn’t have to climb the steep hill on their way home. But I had never heard about the ghost of Flora Summerton, walking these streets alone and trying to find her way back to Crosswinds. . . .

Someone banged on the window, rousing me from a semislumber.

I jumped, my heart thudding heavily in my chest. It was a cop, standing at my driver’s-side window.

I rolled down the window. “Hi,” I said.

“You got a problem?” he asked.

“Only that I need to pee.”

He looked nonplussed.

“Sorry,” I said. “No problem. Just waiting for . . . a friend.”

“Someone reported suspicious activity.”

Then I realized: He wasn’t a police officer. He was a security guard, the kind that wore a neat uniform that made him look, at first glance, like a real cop.

“What kind of suspicious activity . . . ?” My words trailed off as I saw a woman walking in the middle of the
street, between the cable car tracks. She wore a long flowing yellow dress, and her long hair half tumbled down her back, falling from an elaborate, old-fashioned coif.

I sat up, trying to see around the wannabe cop.

“I think . . . I think I see her now. My friend.”

The man turned around. “Where?”

“There, in the middle of the street.”

She was stumbling a little, as though confused or lost.

A couple of cars swerved to avoid her, while others passed right by. I thought of what Dingo said: “I don’t got the eye.” Funny how some could see and some couldn’t, and how those who could often didn’t realize that what they were seeing was a ghost. It was a little crazy making.

I climbed out of my car and pushed past the security guard.

“Flora?” I called as cars whizzed by.

She turned toward me. It was her, the woman in the photographs. I felt transfixed by her mournful gaze.

A cable car came between us at that moment, blocking the view. When it clambered past, she was gone.

“I don’t see anybody,” said the security guard.

“I don’t either, anymore. She was just here.”

Dammit.
Part of me had known it couldn’t possibly be that easy. It wasn’t like me to set out to see a ghost and then simply see a ghost.

“Listen, lady, time to move along. You’ve got no business here,” said the rent-a-cop.

“Am I breaking any laws by sitting here?” I asked, exasperated. “If so, by all means call the police. You might ask for Inspector Annette Crawford. She’s a good friend of mine. Tell her you’d like to use up precious SFPD resources ousting people from legal parking spaces.”

“I might just do that,” he sneered.

“Use my phone. I’ve got the Inspector on speed dial.”

He gave me a nasty look.

I got back into my car, annoyed by Deputy Doofus, but mostly wondering where Flora had gone, and what my next move should be. Would she reappear if I waited? Or was she now wandering somewhere else? Maybe she’d hitched a ride on the cable car, or with another passing motorist. I wasn’t clear on how hitchhiking ghosts operated.

I reached up to adjust the rearview mirror to keep the end of the block in view.

Flora Summerton gazed straight back at me.