Give Up the Ghost: A Haunted Home Renovation Mystery (9 page)

“Helloooo?”
I yelled as I flung open cabinets and tossed a dish towel to the floor. “Anyone home?”

I started to smell fresh baked apple pie.

“Anybody?”

The canned goods in one cabinet were lined up in straight rows. I rearranged them.

Suddenly, the aromas of cinnamon and fresh dough enveloped me. The scents might be coming from another unit, I supposed. Maybe Friendly from across the way had been in a hurry to take a pie out of the oven. But scent was often my first indication of a spiritual presence; cigar smoke or citrus or perfume sometimes lingered from days past.

“Is anybody here?” I tried again. “Is this your kitchen?”

I opened a drawer. Inside, mismatched cutlery was arranged in neat stacks. I pulled the drawer all the way out, shook it so the silverware was one big jumble, then pushed it back in.

I waited.

Nothing.

I gave up and headed toward the door. “Sorry, Luz. I guess she’s not in the mood. Maybe I should try at night. Sometimes it’s easier to make con—”

Behind me, there was a deafening crash.

The silverware drawer had been pulled out and
thrown to the floor, sending the spoons, forks, and serving utensils skittering across the linoleum.

Luz screamed and ran out the door.

•   •   •

“It’s all right, Luz,” I said as I urged her to have a seat on the half wall, the students milling about her.

“Is she okay?” Carmen asked.

“You okay, Luz?
Estás bien?
”

“Of course,” Luz said with a frown, gruff with embarrassment at having lost her composure in front of the students.

“What happened in there?” asked Eddie, putting a comforting hand on her shoulder. “Did she come after you with the egg beaters? Dude, she did that to me once, I was freaked.”

“She attacked you?” I asked.

“You trippin’,” said Diego. “She did not. You dreamed that.”

Eddie shrugged. “Seemed real. I was trying to get the cupboard over the fridge open. It’s, like, painted shut? And I practically fell, I was so freaked-out.”

“All right,” I said, blowing out a breath. “I’ll try to figure this out, but it might take a few days.”

“Okay, guys, you can unload your stuff from my car back at my place tonight. I’ll see you all later.” Luz turned to me. “I know I said I would take you wherever you wanted for lunch, but I am in desperate need of lemongrass chicken and a beer. Maybe the other way around.”

“Beer and Thai food, it is.”

O
n the way to the restaurant I dropped Dog off with my foreman Raul, who loved dogs and whose own beloved pup had recently passed away. The pup would be well taken care of while I was at lunch. Raul still carried Milk-Bones in his truck.

“You okay?” I asked Luz.

We were seated at Lers Ros Thai restaurant and had ordered egg rolls, pad Thai, lemongrass chicken; beer for Luz and Thai iced tea for me.

Luz nodded, but she seemed distracted, as though she had something on her mind—something beyond her troubled students. And I had a sneaking suspicion I knew what it was. Luz was fierce and proud, and wasn’t afraid of anything except ghosts and clowns. The clown part was self-explanatory—they gave me the willies, too—but for some time now I’d had the sense that Luz had had some kind of experience with the unexplainable, something that had left a scar. And if she wouldn’t tell me, I imagined she hadn’t shared it with anyone.

“Sooner or later you’re going to have to tell me,” I said as I dug into the egg rolls.

“And why is that?”

“Because I’m your best friend. And I won’t make fun of you or think you’re crazy for having seen ghosts. Or . . . whatever it was you saw, or experienced. Not that I’m saying you have, you know. Just in case you did.”

She shrugged.

I watched as she toyed with her food. Luz always played her cards close to her chest. Though she taught social work, she was much more comfortable with theory than practice and didn’t believe in a lot of self-disclosure. She knew far more about my issues and concerns than I did about hers, but she was fiercely loyal and dependable and about the best friend a person could have. I wanted to be that for her, too.

I forced myself to remain silent. Finally, she opened her mouth as though to say something.

My phone rang.

Dammit.
The screen read: Annette Crawford. I try to avoid answering the phone while dining with friends, but the SFPD was hard to ignore.

“Take it,” Luz urged.

“I’m sorry. It’s Annette Crawford, so I probably should. I’ll be right back.”

I went outside and ducked down a little alley, away from the noise on Larkin Street.

“I thought you were babysitting Landon Demetrius?” Inspector Crawford asked without preamble.

“I, um . . . didn’t realize babysitting was in order.” Had the Inspector picked up on Landon’s lost puppy vibrations? Or was he just getting in her way? “I dropped him off at his hotel yesterday. I figured he’d be all right since he is, after all, a grown man, and . . .” I paused. “You’re just messing with me, aren’t you?”

I heard her deep, pleasant chuckle. “He thinks you’re very . . . interesting, I believe was the word he used.”

“Isn’t that polite Brit-speak for ‘kind of weird’?”

“That’d be my guess.”

“Yeah, well, tell him to take a number. So what can I do for you, Inspector?”

“According to Demetrius, you saw his sister. His
dead
sister. In a didn’t-seem-dead state, if you catch my drift.”

“Well, now, I suppose that is true. . . .”

“Any reason you didn’t think to mention that to me? You know, when I asked you if there was anything else, anything at all you needed to tell me?”

“No. . . . She didn’t tell me anything pertinent.”

“Did she say anything at all?”

The fact that Annette would ask me this, that she even
knew
to ask me this, was proof of how much our relationship had changed over the past couple of years. When I first met Inspector Crawford on a crime scene, neither of us was sure we believed in ghosts. Since then, we’d both learned a lot.

This was why Annette was my go-to homicide inspector whenever I tripped over bodies. It was refreshing not to have to explain myself each and every time.

“No,” I said. “She didn’t speak. She came out of the apartment, and sort of smiled, as though trying to signal she was okay. She ran her hand over her brother’s face, and then she went down the hall, got in the elevator, and went up.”

“Is that a metaphor?”

“No. Or . . . yes, I suppose it is. But it’s also what I saw.”

“What about Crosswinds?” Annette asked. “Anything further on that possible connection?”

“I went by there this morning, and spoke with the caretaker and the extended Flynt family, who all seem pretty eager to sell the place. They seemed genuinely shocked by the news of Chantelle’s death. I can’t imagine
what they would be holding against Chantelle, but then as we both know I’m not very good at this sort of thing.”

“I don’t know about that. You tend to stumble on murderers.”

“I guess ‘stumble on’ is the part I’m referring to. I rarely seem able to suss out the killer before they try to kill me. I should probably work on that.”

“Personal growth. It’s important never to stop learning.”

“You’re funny today,” I said. Annette was in a positively jocular mood. It was rare for her. “What’s up?”

“Can’t a woman enjoy her work?”

“Of course . . . although considering you work in homicide, that gets into a creepy zone pretty quickly.”

She chuckled. “Anyway, what else have you learned about Crosswinds?”

“I can confirm the presence of at least one ghost. An older man, late fifties or early sixties, dressed as though from the late 1800s. I don’t know what his story is yet, much less what he has to do with Chantelle’s death, if anything. He yelled at me to get off the roof. He startled me, and I nearly fell.”

“What were you doing on the roof?”

“Looking for a ghost.”

Annette paused. “You do have an interesting time of it, don’t you?”

“Anyway, after my ghost encounter, I went to speak with the contractor who did the remodel. Before Chantelle was murdered, she told the Flynts to appease the ghost by undoing some of the renovations on Crosswinds. So now I’m trying to track down some of items that were ripped out. The contractor, Skip Buhner, is supposed to be getting me some before-and-after photos. But there’s no obvious connection between Crosswinds and Chantelle’s death that I can see so far. Is there?”

“I have no idea. She worked out of her condo and had a lot of clients going in and out, which annoyed some of the neighbors. Didn’t seem like the problem was sufficient to provoke murder, but I’ve seen murders committed for less reason. She also appears to have been juggling more than one boyfriend, which may be a promising lead. There are plenty of ways to get in and out of the building undetected, so the murderer could also have been a stranger. But I’ll be talking to the Flynts today. Just wanted to touch base with you first for any insights you might have.”

“Oh, Skip says the Crosswinds caretaker, named Egypt Davis, probably killed Chantelle so she doesn’t have to move out.”

“Excuse me?”

“I’m just telling you what he told me. Seems like a bit of a long shot, but as you always say, tell you everything.”

“True.”

“Sorry I can’t be more help.”

“Just keep me up to speed, if you don’t mind.”

“Annette, is Landon Demetrius a suspect?”

“We don’t have anything in particular to make us think so—other than you.”

“Me?”

“You saw him kneeling over the body.”

“Well, yeah—but he wasn’t stabbing her, just kneeling there looking like he was about to cry. Is there anything else to suggest he did it?”

“Not so far. Forensics took photos and swabbed his hands and clothes, but didn’t find anything incriminating such as defensive wounds or blood spatter. We released his luggage to him today. But family often seems to drive people to thoughts of murder.”

“I suppose that’s true enough. Hey, while I’ve got you on the phone, does this address mean anything to you?”
I read off the address of the Mermaid Cove apartment complex.

“No. Should it?”

“Just wondering. Seems to be haunted. A group of students going to San Francisco State rented it, and were run out by a spirit or spirits unknown. According to the neighbor, no one stays very long.”

“I’ll run it and see if anything pops up, crime-wise. But you haven’t found any dead bodies there, so far?”

“Dead-body free at the moment,” I said.

“Good. Let’s keep it that way. Gotta go.”

“Bye.” I hung up and turned to go back into the restaurant. One of the chefs had come outside for a smoke break, and was staring at me with a look of horror on his face. Either that or he’d eaten some bad lemongrass.

“Sorry,” I said. “Talking to my friend, the homicide inspector.”

This explanation did not help the situation.

I ducked back into the restaurant and joined Luz, who was scrolling through her phone.

“Googled the address, but nothing came up,” she said, before shutting it down. “How’s Annette? Find the killer yet?”

A waitress chose that moment to approach the table with steaming plates of noodles and chicken. Again with the look of dismay. I wondered if she and the chef would trade notes and ban us from their restaurant, which worried me. Lers Ros was my favorite Thai food in the city.

“Not yet,” I said after the waitress left. “In fact, the investigation is just starting. And we don’t even know that it’s connected to the Crosswinds mansion.”

“Probably is.”

“Why do you say that?”

“Because you’re involved. No offense,
amiga mia
, but you do attract this kind of disaster.”

“Hey, weren’t you the one asking for pro bono ghostbusting services? Speaking of which—what were you about to tell me when Annette called?”

She gave a quick, tight shake of her head, which meant: off-limits.
Dammit.
She had been ready to spill, but had changed her mind while I was on the phone. No point pushing her now. If there was one thing I knew for certain about Luz Cabrera, she wouldn’t tell me—or anyone—anything until she was good and ready.

Instead, she changed the subject.

“So, you were saying last night that there was a weathervane on Crosswinds? Makes me think of the opening scene in Mary Poppins. You remember that one?”

“Remind me.”

“The wind changes, and down comes Mary Poppins with her umbrella.”

“Strangely enough, that thought doesn’t actually comfort me. I always found Mary Poppins sort of creepy.”

Luz nodded. “Anybody who holds her feet like that shouldn’t be permitted around small children without supervision.”

“She scared the heck out of me when she floated down like that. I’ll bet that movie wouldn’t even be made in today’s day and age.”

“Me too, to tell the truth.” She helped herself to more pad Thai. “So any idea how we track down this landlady?”

“There must be a record of who owns the property at the city,” I said. “I’ll check out the paperwork, you check out anything you can think of.”

“The students send their rent to a PO box, but maybe I can get some information from the post office, or
Google her name for an address. And then we’ll go talk to her together, try to figure out what she knows, shake her down if need be. But in the meantime, could you look into arranging for a spiritual cleansing so the kids can move back?”

I nodded as I dug into my lemongrass chicken. “Usually, though, if a ghost is hanging around there’s a reason. And as loath as I am to admit it, I seem destined to help them out. This ghost reached out to me. I’d like to see if I can figure out what it wants.”

“She reached out to you by throwing silverware all over the floor?”

“It’s a ghost thing,” I said with a shrug. “They can only communicate in very particular fashions. Sometimes they scare by accident, even when they don’t mean to. It’s not easy to get through the veil.”

“An accidental haunting?” Luz finished off her beer. “I gotta hand it to you,
chica
. You do have an interesting take on things.”