The Last Curtain Call Read online

  “How did they get this armoire up that ladder in the first place?” I asked.

  “Back in the day, big pieces of furniture were often made so they could be taken apart, brought up piece by piece, and reassembled,” said Mateo.

  “Why bother?”

  “Like you said, probably needed more storage space.” One side of his mouth kicked up. “Unless, of course, they were trying to keep something in that closet. Ever see Rosemary’s Baby?”

  “Very funny.” I encountered enough weird stuff in my daily life; I didn’t need Mateo encouraging such thoughts.

  “Want to take a look inside?” Mateo asked.

  “You know I do.”

  Mateo and I had worked together for years, and we shared a strong streak of curiosity. As a young man, he had done a short stint in prison for a nonviolent drug offense, and when he was paroled, my dad had given him a chance to prove himself on the jobsite. For the past decade, Mateo had been a loyal and reliable employee. When Turner Construction’s much-cherished foreman, Raul, obtained his contractor’s license and set up his own shop, Mateo took over as the boss of our crew. He had married and now was a very proud father of an adorably chubby baby. There wasn’t anyone I would rather have heading up my home renovation.

  Taking up positions on either side of the heavy armoire, we coordinated our movements—“One, two, three, heave!”—and together managed to shove the heavy cabinet far enough away from the wall to allow us to inspect the closet door.

  “What do you think?” I asked Mateo.

  He shrugged. “Nothing special about it, so far as I can see. Its twin is on the opposite side of the attic.”

  Across the attic a second closet door stood open, revealing nothing more sinister within than a jumble of cardboard boxes.

  I flipped my toolbox open, and the clang of the metal top hitting the metal side reverberated in the confined space.

  Mateo jumped. “Ay-yay-yi . . .”

  My unflappable foreman seemed a little on edge today. Guess I wasn’t the only one who read Stephen King novels late into the night. Then again, Mateo had worked with me on many projects and had seen more than his share of the unexplainable. Maybe I was the one making him jumpy.

  He took a step back as I reached for the doorknob and gently turned it.

  “Locked?” he asked.

  “Sure is.” The door had an original locking mechanism, the kind with the big keyhole meant for an old-fashioned skeleton key. I squatted and peeked through the keyhole, but without any light inside, it was impossible to see anything.

  I smelled another strong whiff of cigarette smoke.

  “Now what?” Mateo said.

  “Now we get physical,” I replied. I riffled through my toolbox, which had been decorated with Magic Markers years ago by my (sort-of) stepson, Caleb, back when he was a little boy who thought I was cool. The memory flooded me with warmth, and I took a moment to revel in the sensation, drawing upon that love to ground myself. Similar to what the acupuncturist had suggested, my ghost-busting mentor, Olivier Galopin, had taught me to always ground myself before encountering spirits, and though I didn’t really expect to encounter anything more menacing than fragile old holiday ornaments—and possibly a few spiders—it was wise to be prepared.

  I rummaged through my tools and found the right-sized pick and sweep to jimmy the door lock.

  “Mateo?” a voice called from the hallway below. “You up there?”

  Mateo couldn’t hide the relief on his face. “Well, looks like I’d better get back downstairs. The cement truck should be showing up any minute.”

  “Coward.”

  He grinned. “Seriously, you want me to stay? Help you take the door off the hinges?”

  “I’ll be fine,” I said, waving him away. “These old locks are usually easy to pick. You go deal with the cement contractor.”

  “Call me if you need me. Hey, maybe there’s a treasure or something valuable inside. Stranger things have happened.”

  “You got that right,” I muttered.

  I watched Mateo disappear through the hole in the attic floor, wishing he weren’t leaving. Who was the coward now? The thing was, not only did I smell cigarette smoke, but I heard something from within that closet.

  And it probably wasn’t a rat.

  In the past few years, I have encountered more than a few restless spirits trapped within the bones of vintage structures, roaming the halls and corridors of old houses. Sometimes what I felt was merely the whispered remnants of those who had once dwelled within those walls, but at other times, it was much more—an active, unhappy spirit. I had long since reconciled myself to such encounters.

  But they still scared the pants off me.

  Too bad Landon had a class, I thought. He was always eager to back me up on this sort of thing.

  I knelt in front of the door. In the public rooms downstairs, the doors were adorned with large crystal knobs, the old glass tinted purple from years of exposure to sunlight. In the rooms meant just for the family—or “the help”—the hardware was a serviceable brass, darkened with age. I’m no locksmith, but as I told Mateo, these antique mechanisms are pretty easy to open. I inserted my pick, feeling carefully for the voids in the tumbler lock, as I had learned to do as a child, at my dad’s knee. I, in turn, had taught Caleb. I winced when I thought of all I had exposed that boy to over the years, since many skills used in the building trade could be applied to less respectable pursuits. Luckily, Caleb was basically a good kid, otherwise growing up in the Turner household would have prepared him well for a life of crime.

  Satisfaction surged through me as the lock mechanism popped open, and I felt the bar slide back.

  Now, to open the door. I grabbed my flashlight and held it at the ready.

  Just as I turned the knob, I felt it. A whisper of gossamer.

  This was not my imagination.

  Deep breath, Mel. Ground yourself.

  I pushed open the door and was enveloped in a cloud of cigarette smoke.

  Uh-oh.

  Not Christmas decorations, after all.

  Chapter Two

  The walls of the small room were lined with dresses from the 1920s: Feathers, beads, silks, and satins gleamed under the beam of my flashlight. Besides cigarette smoke, the space smelled strongly of the cedar wood with which it had been paneled.

  But what demanded my attention was the woman perched on a low upholstered stool in the middle of the closet, puffing away on a long cigarette holder.

  She gazed at me, eyebrows raised, an expectant but surprised look on her heavily made-up face. Her curly bleached blond hair was styled in a bob, and a glittery tiara crowned her head.

  “You just gonna stand there?” she demanded after a pause.

  “For the moment,” I croaked.

  “What on earth are you wearin’?” she asked, casting a critical gaze over my denim coveralls. “You a gold miner or somethin’?”

  “No, I . . . actually, I have a dress on underneath,” I said, then wondered why I was explaining my wardrobe choices to a ghost. But at the moment, I was distracted by the fact that I was able to see her so easily. In the past, most visitors from the spirit realm appeared in my peripheral vision, which was both disconcerting and tiring. “I’m Mel Turner. I’m working on the house.”

  “You the new housemaid, huh? Gotta tell ya, the windows in this place need washin’ real bad.”

  “No, I’m, um . . . No.”

  The woman frowned, then shrugged and took a drag on her cigarette. “I’m Hildy Hildecott. You’ve probably heard of me.”

  “Um . . .”

  I had been seeing ghosts long enough by now to know they are a diverse lot. Some fade in and out, some manifest as cold black miasmas and are as scary as hell, and a few were like this one, almost indistinguishable from a living, breathing person
. At least they were visible to me; most people could not see ghosts, even if they wanted to. Had Landon been here to provide me with backup, he would have witnessed me talking to nothing but air.

  I knew from experience that spirits remaining in this dimension aren’t carnival sideshows. They’re human souls trapped on this plane of existence or in search of . . . something. And since I was one of the few living people who could see them, I felt an obligation to help. Besides, this was my dream house, and I wasn’t sure I wanted to share it with a ghost.

  Renovation often stirred up spirits, disrupting as it did the bones of the place. As it were. The question was: What did this ghost want, or need, from me? Was Hildy showing herself for a reason? Why had her spirit remained in this closet? How had she died? And would she be yet another problem for Landon and me to deal with, along with dry rot and wallpaper?

  Among other things, I had learned that ghosts often don’t know that they are dead. That can be a tough thing to explain to someone you’ve just met.

  “You haven’t heard of me? The Heiress? Or The Adventures of Lila? How about The Little Tramp?” At the blank expression on my face, Hildy added: “You know, Charlie Chaplin?”

  “Yes, I’ve heard of him, of course. But I haven’t seen many of his movies.”

  “What, you never go to the picture show?”

  “I do. But not all that often. I work a lot.”

  Another bone of contention with Landon: I got up at five most mornings to be on the jobsite by six thirty, so I wasn’t a big one for nightlife.

  Hildy gave me a disapproving look, rather reminiscent of Landon, as a matter of fact.

  “You should get out more, honey. Goin’ to the picture palace is like walkin’ into a dream.” She clasped her hands together and gave a dramatic sigh, the ash at the end of her cigarette quivering. “Ain’t that expensive, neither. The cheap seats don’t but cost a nickel, ya know. Even a housemaid can afford that once in a while. Anyway, shut the door, would ya? I gotta get changed for my big number.”

  “Hildy Hildecott, right?”

  “Right. Say, why you got a boy’s name? Your ma didn’t like you or somethin’?

  “Oh no, she liked me well enough. My name is actually Melanie, but whatever you’d like to call me is fine. Just don’t call me Melly—”

  “Tell ya what, Melly. Choose somethin’ nice for yourself—anythin’ from that rack over there. I know what it’s like to be a workin’ gal; ol’ Hildy didn’t come from money—that’s fer sure! But I got lotsa clothes now, and don’t wear but half of ’em. Your fella will thank you for it.” She gave me an exaggerated wink.

  “Oh, that’s not necessary.”

  “Try that one there, the green,” she said, gesturing to a frothy sage green concoction decorated with feathers and beads. “It has a little cut in it, but you’ll hardly notice once it’s mended. G’wan, don’t be shy. I know how it is, to come from nothin’.”

  This last was said with a slight melancholic tone.

  I took the dress from the rack, bid Hildy au revoir, and closed the door.

  * * *

  * * *

  Downstairs, I found Mateo leaning over a thick set of blueprints.

  “I take it you got the door open?” he said, looking at the frothy garment in my arms. “Whatcha got there?”

  “No Christmas decorations after all,” I said. “But some beautiful old dresses in surprisingly good shape.”

  “Nice. Cedar closet?”

  I nodded. “I locked the door. Do me a favor and keep the guys out of the attic for now? I need to think about what to do with the clothes.”

  “And all the rest of that stuff up there.”

  “That, too.”

  “Sure thing. We’re not scheduled to work up there until you decide about the insulation, and finalize the lighting plan for the upstairs bedrooms.”

  More things to go over with Landon.

  “I like that dress,” continued Mateo. “It looks like your style.”

  I smiled and held the dress up to me. It might actually fit, which was a nice surprise. I wasn’t built for most genuine vintage clothing—I was what was popularly called “curvy,” which meant I had a bosom and hips in ample quantities. But now that I thought about it, Hildy Hildecott wasn’t exactly a stick herself.

  “Thank you,” I said. “I’ll have to try it on later.”

  Here’s how strange my life has become: Until Mateo commented on the dress, I wasn’t entirely sure if it was real and visible to others or some kind of ghostly remnant that only I could see. But since the dress was real, everything else in that closet, except for Hildy herself, was probably also real.

  But why was Hildy there in the first place? Had she died in the house and her spirit remained in this world to guard her wardrobe? And did she have the run of the place, or was she trapped within that closet?

  Based on my experience with ghosts, I suspected there was more to this story.

  At the moment, though, I didn’t have time to pursue the history of Ms. Hildy Hildecott and her early film career. I had to fight my way through the maze of freeway traffic and across the Bay Bridge into San Francisco, where I had a meeting with the owner of a 1920s-era movie theater.

  A “picture palace,” as Hildy would have called it, which was rumored to be haunted.

  Huh.

  Interesting coincidence.

  * * *

  * * *

  The fellow sitting on the other side of the booth in the Mission neighborhood diner-turned-hipster-locale was disconcertingly attractive. He wasn’t really my type—Landon was my type—but there was no denying that Mr. Gregory Thibodeaux was intriguing. With golden blond hair framing a strong, handsome face, and sparkly blue eyes shining with intelligence, Thibodeaux was clad in a fine gray wool three-piece suit—not something a person saw every day here in the land of T-shirts and jeans and tech-bro fleece vests.

  I, on the other hand, was clad in one of my friend Stephen’s designs, a blue-and-yellow spangly getup—my coveralls were in my bag—so I suspected the other diners might have guessed we were members of an acting troupe.

  “You represent whom, exactly, Mr. Thibodeaux?” I asked, and not for the first time. We had been speaking by phone and e-mail for months now, but this was our first face-to-face meeting.

  “I’m here on behalf of a consortium of investors, with varying backgrounds. They call themselves the Xerxes Group. They like to maintain their privacy, which is why they hired me to represent them.”

  “So you’re the front man.”

  “Exactly.”

  “Just to be clear: This isn’t some sort of organized-crime-related ‘consortium,’ is it?”

  “Nothing of the sort, I assure you.” He chuckled and took a sip of his coffee. Beams of sunlight cast golden highlights on his well-coiffed head.

  “The thing is, Mr. Thibodeaux—”

  “Gregory, please.”

  “Okay, Gregory . . . as I’ve said before, I prefer to work closely with the client. There are constant decisions to be made over the course of a renovation, from how to file the permits to what kind of toilets to use.”

  “I am authorized to work with you on all of that.”

  “Glad to hear it, but you know the old saying ‘What do you get when you build a horse by a committee?’”

  He cocked his head and gave me a questioning look.

  “A zebra.”

  “I happen to like zebras,” he said with a charming smile. “Very distinctive animals. The consortium donates to a wildlife sanctuary in Washington State, by the way.”

  “Oh, well, that’s nice to hear. But my point is, I can’t be negotiating every single decision with the group. We’d be working on the renovation through the end of the century.”

  “You won’t have to. That’s my job.”

 
This whole setup made me nervous: mysterious out-of-town investors swooping in to save a neighborhood monument? This renovation would cost many millions of dollars if done properly, and though the theater had great historical and cultural value, it was unlikely to ever turn much of a profit, much less repay the investment. Why wasn’t the Xerxes Group investing in computers, or the newest app, or the oil industry, or pharmaceuticals, like all the other rich people with money to burn?

  “You mentioned the previous contractor walked out on the job?” I asked. “Who was it?”

  He ducked his head and flashed another charming smile. “Can’t tell you that, I’m afraid, Mel. Professional courtesy and all that. The point is, the initial permits are already in place, and a lot of the boring foundation work has been completed and passed inspection.”

  I could find the original contractor’s name easily enough by checking the city permits, but I appreciated Thibodeaux’s discretion. Most people who had problems with contractors, or who thought they did, were more than happy to bad-mouth them to everyone they could.

  “Why did they walk out?” I persisted.

  Don’t say ghosts.

  Thibodeaux hesitated a moment before saying, “I don’t want to cast aspersions on anyone, and as I said, the city inspector has signed off on the foundation work. But upon reviewing the job thus far, we felt the contractor lacked sufficient . . .”—he paused as though searching for the proper adjective—“. . . finesse to complete the job to our satisfaction.”

  “So the contractor didn’t walk off the job so much as was fired?”

  “Let’s just say it was a case of irreconcilable differences, and we had an amicable parting of the ways.” He smiled. “Believe me, Mel, they were well compensated and are off on new adventures. It won’t be a problem.”

  “Do you remember the name of the building inspector?”

  He shook his head. “I’m really not sure. But all of the documents are in order. All you have to do is step in and continue the job of bringing this magnificent structure back from the brink.”