Give Up the Ghost: A Haunted Home Renovation Mystery Read online

  “It’s possible. I imagine the police will want to rule it out, anyway.”

  “Oh, good heavens.” Karla sighed and began shaking another packet of sweetener in the air. “Scandal does seem to follow this house, doesn’t it? First the haunting, then the association with Chantelle’s murder?”

  “No one knows yet if there is a connection. It’s probably wholly unrelated.”

  Karla poured the third packet of sweetener into her mug and stirred vigorously while I sipped my unadulterated coffee and thought about what Graham and I had discovered on the Internet about Landon Demetrius. A world-famous mathematician with a well-known psychic sister. If he was wealthy it was doubtful money would have been a motive for murder, but could she have been an embarrassment to him? He said they used to be close but had grown apart. Had his logical mind suddenly snapped for some reason, and he took her out there and then?

  While I was pondering, Karla took a gulp of her sweet coffee, set the mug down on the table, and pulled a file out of her leather satchel. Crosswinds was written at the top in a round, loopy script.

  “I brought the before-and-after photos you asked for,” she said. As she opened the file, a couple of very old photographs fell out. Similar to the photo I had found while touring the house with Andrew, these were sepia-toned and appeared fragile, with several of the corners broken off.

  Leaning across the table, I picked one up. It was of the same young woman: pretty, clearly pampered, and yet with a sad expression on her face. In this photo, though, her long hair fell to her waist, she wore gauzy white robes, and she held a small leafy tree branch, as though costumed as a nymph or some other character from mythology. In the second photo, she carried a parasol and wore a hoop skirt and stood in profile, gazing over her shoulder at the photographer.

  “They’re sort of . . . wistful, aren’t they?” asked Karla. “When they were doing the construction they found scads of these old photos behind the walls, under the floorboards, just everywhere. Skip threw most of them out, of course, but I kept a few. I thought they’d look amazing in the right frames, don’t you think? For staging houses? Like when you buy old photos in antiques stores and pretend they’re your relatives?”

  “Um . . . yes, they are amazing.” It felt unseemly to pretend the young woman was some sort of ancestor. She gazed so directly—yet so mournfully—at the camera that I longed to know who she was, what had become of her. I saw intelligence in her eyes, an almost palpable sense of simmering urgency, as though she were willing the photographer to put down the camera so she could get on with her life.

  Why were her photos found at Crosswinds? Had she lived there? Perhaps died there?

  I had seen only the spirit of an older man at the house, but I hadn’t spent much time there yet, so perhaps she would appear as well. On the other hand . . . the young woman was dressed in different costumes, so perhaps she wasn’t the lady of the house after all, but an artist’s muse. A working-class woman, or an actress, who posed for money. This must have been early days for photography, when the early adaptors applied the artistic conventions of fine painting to their subjects.

  “Do you know if one of the former owners was into photography?” I asked.

  Karla looked surprised. “I really have no idea.”

  “Skip didn’t find anything related to photography at the house? Just the photos?”

  “He didn’t mention anything to me. So anyway, here are the before-and-after pics. And here’s the promo shot we’re using for the sale. We have an entire Web site devoted to Crosswinds.”

  “I saw that,” I said. The eight-by-ten glossy she handed me was the same photo featured on the Web site.

  Except, now that I was looking at it more closely, it looked like a figure was standing atop the turret, where the widow’s walk should have been. A ghostly, barely-there figure, hard to make out against the cloudy backdrop.

  “What’s this?” I asked, pointing to the turret.

  “That? It’s a tower,” Karla said. “Common to Queen Anne Victorians. Mostly for decoration, it’s largely unusable space but it does make for a distinctive roofline.”

  “No, I meant—” I looked at the photo again, and saw nothing but the turret. Were my eyes playing tricks on me? I took another sip of coffee. “Sorry. I could have sworn . . .” I trailed off as the image returned. There was a figure standing on the tower. A woman in a dress. And it looked an awful lot like the young woman in the sepia-toned pictures.

  Great. Just great. I was now being haunted through photographs? Seriously?

  “Are you all right?” Karla asked. “Let me get you a glass of water.”

  “No, thanks. I’m fine. Really.”

  She gasped and her blue eyes widened. “Wait a minute. . . . Did you see something? As in, see something?”

  “I thought I did, but . . . never mind. Let’s look at the before and afters.”

  The before photos showed that Crosswinds had originally featured the kind of architectural details I would have expected: gorgeous finishes and moldings and built-ins. True, it looked a bit run-down and rooms such as the kitchen, especially, had been in need of updating. People live and entertain differently these days, and want their houses wired and energy efficient. Old is not necessarily better, I really do get that. But still.

  And then I saw one photo that caught my attention: It was a weathervane shaped like a ship. But unlike modern mass-produced versions, this was full-bodied, the details ornate and beautiful. A green oxide patina heightened the relief and the detail on the ship, and below it was an arrow and the four directions: North, South, East, West.

  “Could you e-mail me those photos?” I asked. “They’ll be very helpful when I look for items to replace in the house.”

  “I can do you one better,” she said, handing me a memory stick. “I loaded them on the memory thingee for you. Along with several listings I thought you might enjoy perusing.”

  At my questioning look, she continued: “Andrew mentioned you live with your father, so I took the liberty. . . . A woman like you must want privacy.” She winked.

  I didn’t quite know how to react to that.

  “I, well . . . Thank you,” I said. “Karla, may I ask you something? Please don’t take this the wrong way, but your office is in Walnut Creek, and I know that Realtors tend to specialize in certain localities. Why didn’t the Flynts hire a San Francisco Realtor for Crosswinds?”

  Karla laughed, clearly unoffended. “Skip introduced me to Andrew and Stephanie at the Hearts after Dark Ball last Valentine’s Day—it’s a fund-raiser for San Francisco General, do you know it? Skip and I are huge supporters of charitable causes, so we have that in common with the Flynts. The minute Stephanie and I met we hit it off! It’s important clients feel comfortable with their Realtors, and, well, Stephanie and I became as close as sorority sisters. And while it’s true I’m not as familiar with the city as others might be, what matters most is to have the best no matter her office address, don’t you think?”

  “I suppose so,” I nodded. Still, it seemed odd, and I wasn’t willing to take Karla’s word for it. She seemed open and friendly enough, but she was married to Skip, who I would trust about as far as I could throw my table saw. I decided to call Brittany later and do a little fact-checking on Karla.

  “I see your husband is working on an office building downtown,” I said.

  “Oh, yes, his business is really taking off.”

  “How did Skip get the Crosswinds remodel?”

  “The Flynts had several bids, and Skip’s won. He’s really very good, as I’m sure you noticed when you visited the house.” She checked her phone. “Transformed the place; really brought it into the twenty-first century.”

  “But how—” I broke off when I saw none other than Landon Demetrius III walk into Mama’s Royal Café, and come straight over to where we were sitting.

 
; “Excuse me for intruding,” he said in that stiffly polite, deep voice.

  “What are you doing here?” I asked him.

  “I called your office, and a man named Stan told me I could find you here. And it just so happens I was hoping to talk to Ms. Buhner, as well.” He nodded at the Realtor sitting across from me. “You are Karla Buhner, are you not?”

  “Yes,” she said, rather breathlessly. “I am.”

  “You left a message on the answering machine at my sister’s flat. I heard your voice when I . . . just as I came in and found her.”

  “Oh, how awful! I was so sorry to hear about what happened,” Karla said with a little gasp. I watched, fascinated, as she keyed into Landon: preening ever so slightly, sticking out her chest, playing with her hair. “What a shock. What a tragedy! And to hear me leaving a silly message when you were finding her . . . How terrible!”

  I had been so focused on the shocking events that evening at Chantelle’s apartment that I hadn’t really noticed, but now it hit me: Landon Demetrius was an extremely good-looking man. He and his sister must have made quite the gorgeous pair. Despite his rigid posture and formality—or because of it?—Landon really was captivating.

  “Thank you,” said Landon with a little nod. “I wanted to ask you why you had called, and if you knew anything about her schedule that day?”

  Karla shook her head. “The police contacted me about that already. It was nothing, really. A professional colleague, Brittany Humm—she’s a friend of Mel’s, by the way, I see you two know each other!—has a certain expertise in . . . in psychics and whatnot. So when I told her of my difficulties selling Crosswinds because of the ghosts, she recommended the Flynts ask Chantelle to do a reading.”

  “So you are the one who arranged for the reading?”

  “Yes, I was. Although I must say, I was a wee bit disappointed that she recommended tearing out all of Skip’s hard work. That’s what I was calling Chantelle to discuss that day. I think it’s an atrocity. No offense, Mel, but it just makes no sense at all. Skip has been working there for years, managed to turn it into a showpiece. It’s going to be a hodgepodge of styles if you bring back that old garbage.”

  I counted to ten.

  “It remains to be seen how far we’ll go with everything,” I said finally. Much as I hated to admit it, Crosswinds had been too butchered to easily restore. I had dreamt about it last night: smooth expanses of white walls, sleek lines, clean open spaces. To bring it back to its former glory would take far more than a couple of trips to the salvage yard. “I think I may have made initial contact with the ghost, though. I thought I’d try to track down the weathervane and widow’s walk, at least start with those, and see what happens.”

  “That’s absurd,” Karla said.

  “It’s a place to start, and neither of those will interfere with any of Skip’s interior work.”

  She shrugged.

  I became uncomfortably aware of Landon’s intense gaze. Finally, he said, “Contacted by the ghost?”

  “It’s a thing. We can talk later.” I turned back to Karla. “So, do you know what happened to that old weathervane? Or any of the other stuff Skip pulled from the house?”

  She blushed and looked away. Very much like her husband. And also like him, she didn’t volunteer any information.

  “Karla?” I urged. “Do you still have it?”

  “Don’t be absurd.” She checked her phone again, in what I was beginning to think was a nervous habit. Either that or she was desperate for it to ring so she could extricate herself from this discussion. “It’s . . . This whole discussion is absurd.”

  That seemed to be her favorite word of the day.

  “Could you tell me what you experienced at Crosswinds?” I asked. “In as much detail as possible.”

  “It’s . . .” Again with the phone. “It’s embarrassing, really, and I have to say I don’t really believe in any of this. But . . .”

  “But?”

  “I had a very exclusive client in from Dubai. He was very interested, absolutely loved the place. Very qualified buyer—oil money. You know, they’re buying up all the truly exclusive places these days. Even the more exclusive computer folks aren’t as interested in these big old mansions anymore—they’re all buying islands. It takes a foreigner to truly appreciate an old-style mansion.”

  Landon was sitting straight and attentive, as though hanging on every word. Karla kept looking up at him through her lashes.

  “Don’t you want something?” I asked Landon. “Coffee or tea? You have to order up at the counter.”

  “I’m fine. Thank you.”

  “Would you mind getting me a refill?” I persisted. I wanted Karla to be able to speak plainly without worrying about what Landon might think. “I would so appreciate it.”

  After a beat, he said, “Of course. Anything else?” His words had a subtle edge, as though he knew I was sending him away.

  “That’s it. Thank you.”

  Karla’s eyes watched him as he went up to the counter. Then she turned back to me and blushed prettily, and shrugged. “Nice view from here.”

  I gave her a tight smile.

  “What is it they say: Just because I’m on a diet doesn’t mean I can’t look at the menu?” She leaned forward, and her voice dropped. “Besides, a person can cheat on a diet once in a while and still be okay, am I right?”

  Karla was a trim woman, but she wasn’t talking about her calorie intake. As someone who only recently had waded back into the romance department after a difficult divorce from a man who frequently cheated on his diet—me—I wasn’t about to voice my thoughts on this topic. In fact, one of the reasons I wasn’t ready to commit wholeheartedly to Graham was because I wasn’t sure about the whole one-person-for-the-rest-of-my-life thing, which, it seemed to me, was implied when a person said “I do.” But then Karla and Skip seemed an odd pair, especially if her idea of a good time was going to the Hearts after Dark Ball and landing multimillion-dollar real estate deals; he seemed more the drown-my-sorrows-in-beer-down-at-the-corner-bar type. But I was making assumptions.

  Besides, maybe if I’d been married to someone with flat, emotionless eyes like Skip I’d be ordering from the dessert menu myself.

  “Where in the world is he from?” Karla continued, eyes still on Landon, apparently not ready to move on from this topic.

  “Upstate New York, I think he said. But he’s been living in England for several years.”

  “Oooh, I love England. I’m a bit of an anglophile.”

  “I have a thing for France myself. Anyway, back to the topic: What did you see at Crosswinds?”

  “That place has become an albatross around my neck.” Her lips pressed back together and I wondered whether her displeasure was related to the ghosts or the delayed commission, or both. “When I signed Andrew and Stephanie Flynt I thought I had it made, you know? They are so charming, so cultured. Very exclusive.”

  “And the ghosts?” I was feeling like a broken record, but either Karla was avoiding talking about this or she had a scattered mind.

  Just then Landon returned to our table. Perfect timing.

  “Well, there’s the squeaking of the weathervane overhead, of course. And the strains of an orchestra. But I was able to explain those away until Abdellah Hammoudi’s wife, Iftikar, claimed she heard a man’s voice crying out. She hit the floor, and her husband had to coax her out of the place.”

  “She hit the floor?”

  “She said the man was yelling at her to get on the floor. What can I tell you? Her English wasn’t so hot, she might have misheard.”

  “But you didn’t hear it?”

  She shook her head. “I really don’t know what she heard, but it was something. And it freaked her out, and her husband later called to pull his bid. Do you have any idea what a three percent commission on twenty-nine mi
llion amounts to?”

  I shook my head, not even willing to try the math in my head. I measure things on jobsites so I’m pretty good at adding five-sevenths of an inch, but otherwise arithmetic wasn’t my strong suit.

  “Eight hundred seventy thousand dollars,” said Landon without a pause.

  “Human calculator,” I said at Karla’s questioning look. “Maths professor.”

  “Ah,” she said.

  “That’s quite a commission,” I said. “I can see why you’re anxious to seal a deal.”

  She made a grunting sound of agreement. “Anyway, after that fiasco I managed to find another likely buyer, this one from India, and something similar happened. The woman heard a man yelling at her, berating her. Someone, or something, is running people off. It’s absurd.”

  “But you yourself haven’t seen anything?”

  “I’ve heard the music, that’s all. Do you think . . . ? Could that Egypt person have anything to do with this?”

  “Why would you think that?”

  “She lives there, and claims she doesn’t hear anything. Doesn’t seem bothered by it at all. I was thinking, as soon as the place is under contract she’ll have to move out. She’s going to lose a pretty cushy situation there.”

  Sounded to me like Skip and Karla had discussed this possibility. And they could be right. Skip had mentioned Egypt was good at computers. Maybe she was a technological whiz who’d figured out how to pipe random noises into the house, and to tell poor Iftikar Hammoudi to hit the floor.

  But if she was that gifted, why wasn’t she using her powers to make a comfortable living somewhere? The Bay Area was the high-tech hub of California, after all. Why go through all that trouble to stay in a former servant’s room in a house where you barely even used the kitchen?

  “And Chantelle’s reading said the ghosts were unhappy?” asked Landon.

  “Yes, apparently. I wasn’t actually there; it was just family, and Egypt was there to take notes. But Stephanie told me they went through the whole house, every room, and even up on to the roof. And then afterward Chantelle met with each and every one of the Flynts privately. At her rate? Very expensive.”