Give Up the Ghost: A Haunted Home Renovation Mystery Page 13

  Our gaze met and held.

  I had finished bandaging his leg but was still kneeling on the floor in front of him. I started to stand up but didn’t realize my leg had fallen asleep and fell over on my side.

  Smooth, Mel. Real smooth.

  “Mel, are you all right?” Landon, despite his injuries, leapt up to give me a hand. “Come, sit down.”

  I sat on the edge of the bed and he stood before me. Now his bare chest was right at eye level.

  “Are you sure you weren’t hurt earlier?” he asked.

  “Not at all,” I said, looking anywhere but at him. “I think you twisted midair so that I would land on you, ensuring your injuries, and my safety. Pretty smooth move.”

  “Nothing James Bond wouldn’t have done. Say, would you like to see the letter from Chantelle?”

  “I would love to.”

  He crossed over to a small writing desk and pulled the letter out of the top drawer, then passed the envelope to me.

  “A real letter,” I said. “On paper, with a stamp. I’m impressed.”

  “My sister was old-fashioned in some ways. It had to do with the ‘vibrations’ of computers—she preferred pen and paper. She still had an old-school answering machine because she didn’t trust voice mail. Yet another way in which we saw the world differently.”

  It was written in dark purple ink on light green paper. The script was upright and easy to read:

  Dearest Landon,

  You and I haven’t been terribly close over the years, and the last time we spoke you warned me of this very thing. But please believe that I know what I’m doing. I am putting things into place, and will soon be able to pay you back every penny. I know you would say that what I’m doing is wrong, but you and I have never seen eye to eye on such things. Dad always said you were a good little soldier, while I was a free spirit and in this, if nothing else, he was correct.

  I have a line on someone now, someone with more dollars than sense, and he’ll pay through the nose. With luck, I’ll have everything settled by the time you arrive!

  Love, Chantelle (your Cheryl)

  Below her name was a little drawing that looked like a ship with sails and a flag, with a pole through it.

  “That drawing . . . ,” I said. “It looks like the weathervane from Crosswinds.”

  “Does it?” he peered over my shoulder at the note. “I assumed it was a doodle of some sort.”

  “No. . . . I’m pretty sure that’s the weathervane. Karla showed me a photograph of it this morning.”

  Our eyes met for a long time.

  “So maybe your sister’s death really does have something to do with Crosswinds.”

  He nodded.

  I reread the note. “She says you warned her about something?”

  “I can’t remember what, but I’m sure it was something general, such as don’t play with people’s hearts.”

  “And she owed you money?”

  He nodded. “Chantelle did well, relatively speaking. But she always lived beyond her means. I—I feel as though I shouldn’t be speaking ill of the dead.”

  “You’re really not. All of us have some good and some bad in us; it’s how humans are. Right now we’re just trying to figure out what happened to your sister.”

  He went to gaze out the window. “Chantelle had gotten herself into financial trouble, and not for the first time. You saw where she lived. Do you have any idea how much that apartment cost? Though I suppose her business required her to convey the right image.”

  “Nothing succeeds like success?”

  “Just so. But Chantelle was also a spender. She didn’t drink, she didn’t take drugs, but she did like to shop. You should have seen the number of shoes the woman had.”

  “Oh, sure, me too,” I lied. “Can never have enough shoes. I wonder: Do you think this note suggests she was . . . well, blackmailing someone?”

  “I hope not. It does sound that way, though it could mean she had found a wealthy client whom she was able to string along. Unfortunately it doesn’t give the slightest hint as to whom the poor mark was—unless you’re right, that this drawing is of the Crosswinds symbol. And truthfully, she’d been rather . . . obsessed with the Flynt family since she met them.”

  “She mentioned them to you?”

  He nodded. “When I received the offer from Berkeley I phoned her to say I was coming to town. She was very excited about her association with the Flynts, even suggested I meet them, and perhaps invest in their latest venture, which was some sort of antiaging enterprise, I believe. I take it they’re quite wealthy.”

  “Very,” I said with a nod, thinking back on the information the Internet search had turned up about the Flynts. Grandfather George, son, Andrew, and his wife, Stephanie, were all involved in numerous public ventures and charities, and all, apparently, had more dollars than sense.

  “Okay. . . . So where does this leave us?” I wondered aloud. “How do we find out who Chantelle was blackmailing—assuming she was actually doing such a thing?”

  “I’m going to guess that Inspector Crawford would say it doesn’t leave us anywhere,” Landon said. “And that we should stay out of it.”

  “True. But I have work to do at Crosswinds, anyway. I planned to go over tomorrow afternoon. I’ll look through the place more thoroughly, and see if the ghosts can tell me anything.”

  “The ghosts.”

  It wasn’t a question, exactly, or an acknowledgment, but a statement.

  Landon sighed and collapsed back onto the side of the bed. He hunched over and with his bared torso, his chin resting on steepled fingers, he looked like he could be a modern day Thinker. He was gorgeous. Really gorgeous, like his sister.

  “Cheryl—I guess I’ll go ahead and think of her that way, now that she’s not here to object—she and I were so close as kids,” he said. “Our parents died early, and we didn’t have much, so we clung to each other. But when I went into the military, and she went off to ‘find herself,’ things changed.”

  “You were in the service?”

  “Started out enlisted, but I wound up getting some training, going back to school. I’m good with computers.”

  “I hear you’re great with computers.”

  “You looked me up?”

  “Of course I did. You looked me up too, remember? You discovered the Diogenes Theorem. Very impressive.”

  The corner of his mouth kicked up, just barely. “Do you even know what the Diogenes Theorem is?”

  “Not a clue. But I hear it’s pretty good.”

  Now he smiled for real, a brilliant smile that made him even more attractive. I wouldn’t have thought it possible.

  “Yes, I guess it is pretty good. It certainly made me a lot of money. But then I got tired of the cutthroat world of business, and secured a lectureship at Cambridge thanks to the cachet associated with the Diogenes Theorem.”

  “I hear academia’s pretty cutthroat too. You should meet my best friend Luz. She teaches at San Francisco State. Have you ever thought you may have gone from the frying pan into the fire?”

  A humorless laugh. “I may well have. The funny thing is I really enjoy teaching. Calculus is my favorite, hands down. There’s something so gratifying about watching students have that ‘aha’ moment.”

  “I only know enough to cut the right angle, I’m sorry to say.”

  He fixed me with a keen look. “Methinks there might be a little bit more to it. Not to mention, a little more to you than meets the eye.”

  Once again, our gaze held just a beat too long. I turned around too quickly and stepped on the first-aid kit, which flipped up and knocked over the bottle of hydrogen peroxide.

  We hurriedly cleaned things up, then I packed the first-aid kit, shoved it under my arm, and fled.

  Chapter Fifteen

  I had to stay aw
ay 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 l
ike 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.”