Keeper of the Castle: A Haunted Home Renovation Mystery Read online

  PRAISE FOR THE NOVELS

  OF NEW YORK TIMES BESTSELLING AUTHOR

  JULIET BLACKWELL

  THE HAUNTED HOME RENOVATION MYSTERIES

  Home for the Haunting

  “Just when I think Juliet Blackwell can’t get any better, she ratchets it up a notch . . . an intense, riveting story.”

  —Lesa’s Book Critiques

  “Juliet Blackwell continues to craft enjoyable and fun novels with a woo-woo aspect that is surprisingly minimal.”

  —Kings River Life Magazine

  “Fun . . . this story, with the usual characters as well as some new faces, is fascinating and keeps readers thinking that there is more than meets the eye.”

  —RT Book Reviews

  Murder on the House

  “A winning combination of cozy mystery, architectural history, and DIY with a ghost story thrown in . . . This well-written mystery has many different layers, offering something for everyone to enjoy.”

  —The Mystery Reader

  “Juliet Blackwell successfully blends house renovation and ghosts in . . . this delightful paranormal mystery.”

  —Lesa’s Book Critiques

  Dead Bolt

  “Juliet Blackwell’s writing is like that of a master painter, placing a perfect splash of detail, drama, color, and whimsy in all the right places!”

  —Victoria Laurie, New York Times bestselling author of the Psychic Eye and Ghost Hunter Mysteries

  “Cleverly plotted with a terrific sense of the history of the greater Bay Area, Blackwell’s series has plenty of ghosts and supernatural happenings to keep readers entertained and off-balance.”

  —Library Journal

  “Smooth, seductive. . . . Fans will want to see a lot more of the endearing Mel.”

  —Publishers Weekly

  If Walls Could Talk

  “A riveting tale with a twisting plot, likable characters, and an ending that will make you shudder [at] how easily something small can get totally out of hand. [It] leaves you wondering what you just saw out of the corner of your eye . . . a good, solid read.”

  —The Romance Readers Connection

  “Melanie Turner may well be one of the most exciting, smart, and funny heroines currently in any book series. . . . There’s enough excitement to keep you reading until late in the night.”

  —Fresh Fiction

  THE WITCHCRAFT MYSTERIES

  A Vision in Velvet

  “Another gripping and delightful story, sheer entertainment with all the ingredients: murder, danger, high stakes, love.”

  —Mysteries and My Musings

  “Blackwell blends vintage clothing, humor, an interesting corner of San Francisco life, a touch of romance, some powerful magic, and a history of witchcraft and women. A Vision in Velvet is just the latest captivating story in a bewitching series.”

  —Lesa’s Book Critiques

  Hexes and Hemlines

  “Hexes and Hemlines carries you along with an unconventional cast where nothing is out-of-bounds. Extraordinarily entertaining.”

  —Suspense Magazine

  “This is a fun and totally engrossing series that hooks you instantly and makes you want more. . . . I love the mix of vintage clothes, magic, and a lingering possibility of romance combined with mystery.”

  —Fang-tastic Books

  A Cast-Off Coven

  “If you like your mysteries with a side of spell-casting and demon-vanquishing, you’ll enjoy the second title in Blackwell’s Witchcraft Mysteries.”

  —Romantic Times

  “This awesome paranormal mystery stars a terrific heroine.”

  —Genre Go Round Reviews

  Secondhand Spirits

  “Juliet Blackwell provides a terrific urban fantasy with the opening of the Witchcraft Mystery series.”

  —Genre Go Round Reviews

  “It’s a fun story, with romance possibilities with a couple hunky men, terrific vintage clothing, and the enchanting Oscar. But there is so much more to this book. It has serious depth.”

  —The Herald News (MA)

  ALSO BY JULIET BLACKWELL

  HAUNTED HOME RENOVATION MYSTERIES

  If Walls Could Talk

  Dead Bolt

  Murder on the House

  Home for the Haunting

  WITCHCRAFT MYSTERIES

  Secondhand Spirits

  A Cast-off Coven

  In a Witch’s Wardrobe

  Hexes and Hemlines

  Tarnished and Torn

  A Vision in Velvet

  A Haunting is Brewing

  (a Haunted Home Renovation and Witchcraft Mystery novella)

  OBSIDIAN

  Published by the Penguin Group

  Penguin Group (USA) LLC, 375 Hudson Street,

  New York, New York 10014

  USA | Canada | UK | Ireland | Australia | New Zealand | India | South Africa | China

  penguin.com

  A Penguin Random House Company

  First published by Obsidian, an imprint of New American Library,

  a division of Penguin Group (USA) LLC

  Copyright © Julie Goodson-Lawes, 2014

  Penguin supports copyright. Copyright fuels creativity, encourages diverse voices, promotes free speech, and creates a vibrant culture. Thank you for buying an authorized edition of this book and for complying with copyright laws by not reproducing, scanning, or distributing any part of it in any form without permission. You are supporting writers and allowing Penguin to continue to publish books for every reader.

  OBSIDIAN and logo are trademarks of Penguin Group (USA) LLC.

  ISBN 978-1-101-63533-9

  PUBLISHER’S NOTE

  This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, and incidents either are the product of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously, and any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, business establishments, events, or locales is entirely coincidental.

  Version_1

  Contents

  Praise

  Also by Juliet Blackwell

  Title page

  Copyright page

  Dedication

  Acknowledgments

  Chapter One

  Chapter Two

  Chapter Three

  Chapter Four

  Chapter Five

  Chapter Six

  Chapter Seven

  Chapter Eight

  Chapter Nine

  Chapter Ten

  Chapter Eleven

  Chapter Twelve

  Chapter Thirteen

  Chapter Fourteen

  Chapter Fifteen

  Chapter Sixteen

  Chapter Seventeen

  Chapter Eighteen

  Chapter Nineteen

  Chapter Twenty

  Chapter Twenty-one

  Chapter Twenty-two

  Chapter Twenty-three

  Chapter Twenty-four

  Chapter Twenty-five

  Excerpt from Spellcasting in Silk

  About the Author

  To Anna Cabrera,

  Hermana del corazón

  You inspire, just by being you.

  Acknowledgments

  Many thanks to my wonderful editor, Kerry Donovan—and a warm welcome to earth to little Maeve! Thank you to Jim McCarthy, agent extraordinaire. And to the whole Penguin crew who work so hard to make my books a reality—thank you for everything.

  Special thanks to Mary Grae for her fascination with chandeliers made of bones, which inspired part of this story line. And to John Sperling, who—whether he knows it or not—always seems to influence my depiction of incred
ibly wealthy men.

  To my writer posse: Sophie Littlefield, Rachael Herron, Nicole Peeler, Victoria Laurie, Gigi Pandian, Mysti Berry, Adrienne Miller, Cecilia Gray, Lisa Hughey, and LGC Smith. And a special thanks to the wondrous women of Xuni who make my life so much easier: Maddee James and Jen Forbus, you two make me look good! You rock. And to Lesa Holstine, may your love of books always be contagious.

  My sister Carolyn always provides me with calm, steady writing support just when I’m about ready to blow. Thank you for all the brainstorming, rewriting, and general muse-worthy actions that never fail to help me get my manuscripts to the finish line.

  Thanks to my father, Robert, who allows me to follow him around and write down the things he says for Mel’s dad, Bill. And to my sister Susan, for her unflagging support and cheerleading. And Mom—I miss you, ever and always.

  Finally, thanks are due, as always, to my son, Sergio, for making me happy and proud to be his mom every single day. And merci to Eric, for putting up with the crazy of book deadlines and creative crises—I know it’s not easy to put up with an author, but you do it with a certain je ne sais quoi.

  Chapter One

  Communicating with the netherworld can be a game changer.

  For instance, I never used to believe in bad omens. But ever since I started encountering ghosts on my construction sites, I’d become more open-minded.

  And it was clear that the Wakefield project was cursed.

  It had been plagued with ill portents from the get-go: Two well-respected general contractors had walked off the job; sign-waving protesters blocked the tall iron gates to the property; there had been a series of suspicious building mishaps; and the big, burly, and typically fearless construction workers—those who remained on the job, anyway—refused to linger at the site after sundown. I wouldn’t have been surprised to note a line of crows perched nearby, or a ring around the moon, or some other sign of disaster ahead.

  Luckily, this wasn’t my jobsite.

  “Coffee?” offered Graham.

  “I thought you’d never ask.”

  I had driven to Marin County, north of San Francisco, bright and early today only because a very attractive man had asked for my help. Tall and broad-shouldered, with the cut physique of a man who worked with his muscles, Graham Donovan had a way of making me forget that, when it came to romance, I was a battle-scarred cynic.

  Adding to his many charms, the green-building-consultant-to-the-stars also happened to be in possession of a thermos of piping-hot, dark French roast.

  Besides . . . I was just plain curious: Why would someone dismantle an ancient Scottish monastery, ship it overseas stone by stone, and try to reconstruct it as a retreat center in California?

  Graham poured coffee into a small tin cup and handed it to me. Graceful tendrils of steam rose in the damp early-morning air, the rich aroma mingling with the pungent scents of eucalyptus and dried grasses. The day was just dawning, and we stood alone on the hill. My mutt, named Dog, loped around, sniffing the ground and wagging his shaggy brown tail.

  “I’ll say this much for your client: He chose an amazing site,” I said. “It’s almost . . . magical.”

  A gently sloping meadow surrounded by lush forest opened onto a view of the faraway Pacific Ocean. Behind us was a gorgeous old Victorian manse; below us was the jobsite, where stones lay in piles or stacked to form partially built walls, as though a fourteenth-century Gothic ruin had materialized right here, just north of the Golden Gate Bridge.

  “That’s the to-be-assembled pile,” said Graham, gesturing to a massive mound. Bright blue chalk marks—which I knew corresponded to a coded schema intricate enough to drive a Rubik’s Cube expert nuts—stood out from the dirt, lichen, and moss clinging to the rough-hewn stones. Carved pieces were scattered among the rectangular blocks: Some were components of columns and vaults, others crude gargoyles and decorative plaques.

  “Okeydokey,” I said, sipping my coffee. “Would those be the suspicious ghost-encrusted stones, then?”

  “I get the sense you’re not taking this seriously,” said Graham.

  “They look perfectly innocent to me. Frankly, I’d worry more about spiders than ghosts.”

  “Some tough ghost buster you are, scared of a few tiny little spiders.”

  “First off, I have never claimed to be a tough ghost buster. Not even an official ghost buster, really. And I’m not scared of spiders per se. But you know how this sort of thing goes: A couple teensy arachnids hitch a ride to America, and next thing you know, they end up devastating California’s citrus groves.”

  Graham smiled. “I’ve always admired your sunny outlook.”

  “I’m a native; I think about such things,” I said. “Look what happened with William Randolph Hearst: He imported zebras to roam the grounds of his ‘Castle’ decades ago, and his rancher neighbors are still dealing with them.”

  “What have they got against zebras?”

  “Turns out zebras are rather foul-tempered. Or maybe they’re just grumpy about being displaced from their natural habitat. My point is, I’m not sure bazillionaires should be allowed to just import whatever they want, willy-nilly. It’s asking for trouble.”

  “Which brings us back to ghosts. It’s gotten so bad the men won’t go into the building once the sun goes down.”

  “Ancient stones like these, in a setting like this. Throw in a little fog and a moonless night . . . Could be people’s imaginations are running away with them.”

  “Could be. But I think there’s more to it. You know I don’t say this easily, Mel, but I’ve seen a few odd goings-on, myself.”

  “You really think your client imported a ghost along with these stones?”

  “Maybe. Is that possible?”

  “I’m not sure. I would have thought a ghost would have remained with the land. But, frankly, I probably know more about spiders than the intricacies of ghost immigration. I’ll have to look into it. Does your client have a particular affinity with Scotland? ‘Ellis Elrich’ doesn’t sound Scottish.”

  “I’m not sure,” said Graham. “You could ask him tonight. We’re invited to his ‘sherry hour.’”

  “I’m not a big fan of sherry.”

  “It’s just what he calls it. There will be other drinks available.”

  “Then why call it sherry hour?”

  A slow smile spread across Graham’s face, and he reached out to pull on a corkscrew curl that had freed itself of my serviceable ponytail.

  “I do love your curious mind,” he said.

  “Curious in the sense that I always look for answers? Or in the sense that I’m strange?”

  “Why limit ourselves to only one interpretation?”

  I couldn’t help but return his smile. After a few years of bitter sniping about men in general, and my romantic prospects in particular, I had been mellowing. Graham was helping me to regain my sense of humor.

  “Anyway,” I said, getting back on track. “I don’t really feel like going to sherry hour. The man’s not my client, after all.”

  “Perhaps we could change that.”

  “Yeah, about that: The whole project sounds like nothing but trouble to me.”

  “Mel, look at the big picture: Elrich is willing to spend a lot of money on this project. How often does a job of this scope and complexity come along that will implement cutting-edge green building techniques?”

  “Not often,” I conceded. And it was true that Turner Construction needed work. The high-end historic-home- renovation business in the San Francisco Bay Area had taken a nosedive in the past few months, and while I had so far managed to keep my workers gainfully employed finishing up some residential projects, the principals of Turner Construction—my dad, our friend and office manager, Stan, and I—had been forced to skip a few paychecks.

  We were in dire need of a new client. An important client. The deeper the pockets, the better. But still . . . I’d already faced enough ill omens for one lifetime. I had been hoping to find
a nice, quiet, non-ghost-laden building somewhere to renovate.

  “And you’re the only builder I know with ghost experience,” Graham continued.

  “I wouldn’t be so sure. The builders who ran screaming from this jobsite experienced some ghosts. They just didn’t want to admit it.”

  While we were talking, workmen had started trickling onto the jobsite, arriving in beat-up Jeeps, muddy Toyotas, and full-sized Ford pickups, a few with grinning dogs in the passenger’s seat. Many were Latino, some of whom, I imagined, spoke little English. The rest were a mix of whites, blacks, and a few Asians. They toted lunch boxes, big thermoses of coffee or tea, and carried hard hats tucked under brawny arms. I admired these men—like my dad, they showed up every day, worked an honest eight hours, and built our homes and communities.

  One man in jeans, boots, and a plaid jacket made a beeline for us.

  “Here’s Pete now. He’s been running the job,” Graham said.

  Dog let out a welcoming “woof,” wagged his tail, and presented himself for a petting.

  “Pete, I’d like you to meet Mel Turner, the general director of Turner Construction.”

  Pete had the ropy muscles common to those who spent their lives on jobsites, but his slightly batty, wide-open eyes and blond hair, worn long and frizzy, lent him a crazy-professor vibe. A knowledgeable foreman was worth his weight in gold and was allowed to push the conventions a little. Construction tended to attract offbeat personalities—like me. It was one of the reasons I liked the business so much: I met a lot of real characters.