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

  The sensation finally ebbed when I emerged from the cloister, stepping into the bright sunshine.

  I shook my head, as though to dislodge the memory from my brain.

  “Just one more time,” Detective Bernardino said, misinterpreting my gesture. “Then we can wrap this up and you can go. Heck of a day, huh?”

  “You can say that again.”

  Detective Bernardino was about my age and height; pear-shaped, with an olive complexion, he had dark curly hair, and full, sensuous lips that would have been attractive on a different sort of man. “You say the victim and”—he checked his notebook—“this Pete Nolan person were fighting?”

  “They were arguing. Not fighting, exactly.”

  “What were they arguing about?”

  “They were discussing the proper admix for the mortar, but I certainly wouldn’t characterize it as a ‘fight.’”

  “And what about this Graham Donovan person?”

  “He’s the green consultant on the project.”

  “He a hippie type?”

  “Um, not really, no. He’s a green consultant type who—”

  “Was he fighting with the victim as well?”

  “Nobody was actually fighting. I mean, I don’t think McCall was Graham’s favorite person. After all, nobody likes building inspectors. But—”

  Bernardino’s beady eyes bored into me. “Nobody likes buildings inspectors?”

  “I didn’t mean that, exactly. It’s just . . . In fact, Graham used to be an OSHA inspector, himself. So he understands the need for regulations. Besides, he was with me the whole time, so unless you think we worked together to drop a bag of mortar on that poor man’s head, I—”

  Apparently I had opened up a whole new avenue of investigation because Detective Bernardino fixed me with an interested look. Shut up, Mel, I told myself. Shut up, shut up, shut up. The detective doesn’t know you from Adam and has no reason not to think you’re an upstanding citizen who just happens of see a lot of ghosts.

  I was starting to miss Annette Crawford.

  I began again. “Sorry. I’m not being clear. What I’m trying to say is that Graham—who is an honest, upstanding businessman—was with me the whole time. He had no reason to harm Mr. McCall, no motive, and no opportunity. Neither of us did. That’s what I meant to say.” I sat back and tried to relax.

  Detective Bernardino’s gaze rested briefly on my chest. Now I really missed Inspector Crawford.

  “Okay, so what you’re saying is the DB—’scuze me, that’s cop talk for dead body—was threatening to shut down this job,” Bernardino said. “That about right?”

  “It didn’t get that far—”

  “So the owner of the project would have plenty of motive. Am I right?”

  “I . . . um . . .” I wasn’t sure what to say. Annette Crawford never asked my opinion about whodunit. “I can’t imagine Ellis Elrich would risk everything—and he has a lot—just to rid himself of a pesky building inspector. There are much easier—not to mention less homicidal—ways to take care of something like that.”

  Now Detective Bernardino gave me the stink-eye. Apparently, I wasn’t supposed to have that much of an opinion.

  The once-peaceful scene was a whirl of activity, with squad cars, unmarked police cars, the medical examiner’s wagon, and the CSI van littering the meadow, and dozens of police officers and other officials milling about. Could Pete Nolan really have killed Larry McCall? Last I’d seen him, he was following the inspector into the building, but then I’d spent several minutes chatting with Graham and on my phone. For all I knew, Pete had stormed out of the building even as someone else entered, found McCall, and crushed his head with a sixty-pound bag of mortar. But who? That took strength, and a lot of it. I was reasonably strong, and while I could probably drag a bag that size from point A to point B, maybe even carry it if someone handed it to me, there was no way on earth I’d be able to hoist it up, much less throw it at someone. It took a lot of force to move sixty pounds of dead weight.

  “What I meant to say is that if Mr. Elrich had a problem with a building inspector, he has more than enough money to bribe someone. Or at the very least, to pay one of his employees to take care of it.”

  Sheesh. I couldn’t believe what was coming out of my mouth. I was implicating people left and right. I was the opposite of the kind of person you wanted in your foxhole when hell started raining down.

  “So you think Ellis Elrich had motive and opportunity.”

  “I actually don’t think anything, really. That must be obvious by now.”

  “You seem awful nervous.”

  “I’m not used to finding . . . to, uh, being around . . . I mean . . .” Could I be any more suspicious? I took a deep breath and let it out slowly. As far as this paunchy fellow is concerned, I told myself, you are an innocent bystander. Start acting like one. “I’m sorry. It was a very unsettling experience.”

  “I can imagine,” the detective said, seeming more sympathetic.

  “Let me start again. I’m a contractor. I’m not at my best around murder.”

  “You think it’s murder?”

  Well, yes, Detective, I thought. I assume the man did not drop a bagful of mortar on his own head in a rather inventive suicide.

  But I was finally getting smart. I kept my mouth shut and shrugged.

  “So. A lady contractor.” Bernardino looked me up and down again. I was beginning to think he wasn’t attracted to me as much as he couldn’t wrap his head around the idea of a “lady” contractor.

  “Actually, we just refer to ourselves as contractors. The ‘lady’ part seems kind of unnecessary. Superfluous, even.”

  He nodded, as though he’d finally figured me out. “Gotcha. You’re a libber, then.”

  “Sure, that’s me, a lady libber.”

  “Huh.” There was a hint of a smile on the detective’s ruddy face, but it wasn’t particularly friendly. His eyes ran over me one more time, and I lost my patience.

  “Do you have any other questions that might help you figure out what happened to poor Larry McCall? Because if not, I’d like to go.”

  “Well. Somebody’s got her knickers in a twist, doesn’t she?”

  “My knickers are none of your—”

  Bernardino’s eyes flickered over my shoulder, and he seemed to nod to someone behind me. “Okay, I guess that’ll do for now. Just one more question: Why didn’t you call nine-one-one right away when you found the body?”

  “I tried, but my phone didn’t work. The guys say it’s the thickness of the stones, or something, but cell phones don’t work inside the monastery.”

  “Huh. This your current address and phone number?”

  I nodded.

  “All right. You can go, Ms. Turner,” he said grandly.

  I headed over to where Graham had been speaking with some of the construction crew. He looked grim.

  “You okay?”

  I nodded.

  “Did you tell him about the fight between Nolan and McCall?”

  “I may have mentioned it.”

  I could see a muscle work in Graham’s jaw as he scanned the hectic scene. It was a tableau I had encountered too often in the last couple of years. It always amazed me how many people were involved in the processing of a crime scene. Especially since I suspected Marin County didn’t see a lot of such crimes. Ellis Elrich’s celebrity status no doubt also guaranteed the full-court press.

  “I think I managed to implicate just about everyone in McCall’s death, up to and including myself,” I continued. “Given how often I’ve been through this lately, you’d think I’d be better at dealing with the police. The detective was kind of an ass. As much as Annette Crawford scares me, I’m starting to pine for her.”

  Graham gave a humorless chuckle.

  “Are you worried about Nolan?”

  He nodded. “They were asking a lot of questions about him, and given how many witnesses overheard his argument with McCall . . . I don’t know. It do
esn’t look good.”

  “Nolan does seem to have a temper.”

  “Yes, he does.” Graham inclined his head.

  “Still . . . do you really think he could have done it? Practically right in front of everyone? I mean, that would be pretty stupid, wouldn’t it?”

  “Anger can make people do some pretty stupid things. But I don’t know. . . . I’ve known Pete for years—your dad knows him, too. I’ve never seen him become violent. Not unless . . .”

  “Unless what?”

  “Unless he’s been drinking.”

  “Surely he wasn’t drunk this early in the morning?” Pete Nolan had seemed sober enough to me, but I hardly knew the man and hadn’t been close enough to him to detect the odor of alcohol.

  “No, not that I could tell. He got sober a couple of years ago, and as far as I know, he’s been on the wagon since. But he’s got a couple of priors, bar fights from back when he was still drinking. I hope they don’t dig those up and draw some conclusions.”

  “I hate to say it, but Detective Bernardino wouldn’t be much of a cop if he didn’t.”

  Graham’s eyes were shadowed with worry. I understood what he was feeling—the first time I’d seen a ghost was when my friend Matt stood accused of murder. Matt and I hadn’t been particularly close then, but I remembered the urge to prove his innocence and the frustration of not knowing how. The justice system can be relentless, and there’s nothing quite like having someone look at you as if you’re a killer to throw you off your game.

  “It could have been a freak accident,” I suggested. “Maybe Pete was threatening him with the bag of mortar—you know, just to scare him—and it slipped out of his hands. . . .”

  “And landed on McCall’s head?” Graham shook his head. “Dammit, I should never have let them go in there alone.”

  “You couldn’t possibly have foreseen something like this. And you can’t police everybody on a jobsite.”

  “Still, I wish I’d followed them.” Graham blew out a breath and ran a hand through his hair. “I hate to think Pete did this. But it happened so fast, and it’s true he’s always been a hothead. Anyway, I expect we’ll know more after the police review the security tapes.”

  “What security tapes?”

  “Elrich had the site wired for security.”

  “He bugged a monastery?”

  “And his home,” Graham said with a shrug. “He has an extensive surveillance system. That’s not unusual these days for folks with lots of money. Factor in Elrich’s personality, and well, it’s safe to say there’s not much going on around here that Elrich doesn’t know about.”

  I made a mental note not to do anything on the jobsite that I didn’t want Elrich to watch and possibly share with others—I could only imagine some lame construction folly going viral—then followed Graham’s gaze to where the man in question was speaking to Detective Bernardino. The police officer appeared to be smiling and nodding obsequiously.

  Ellis Elrich was okay-looking, though a bit bland for my taste: Of average height and build, he had light brown hair cut short and was clean shaven. A recent photo on the cover of Forbes magazine had indicated he had brown eyes, thin lips, small ears, and a mild expression. Altogether ordinary, though clearly there was a lot going on beneath the surface. One doesn’t build a motivational-speaking empire and become a self-made billionaire without having at least a few unusual qualities—or being unusually ruthless.

  “What’s he like, for real?” I asked.

  “Elrich?” Graham shrugged. “Pretty much what you’d expect: charming and very much in control. But if you’re asking me whether he had a pain-in-the-ass building inspector killed to get him out of the way, I would find that hard to believe. There are always ways to get around an uncooperative inspector. And even if McCall did somehow pose an insurmountable threat, I imagine Elrich’s methods of dealing with it would be more subtle than murder right here on the worksite, which would be guaranteed to trigger a police investigation.”

  We stood in silence for a few moments. It was hard to know what was appropriate after a loss of life, even that of an unpleasant stranger. Not for the first time, I wondered how first responders coped with the awful situations they faced on a daily basis. Go home and hug their kids? Find a favorite bar and hoist a few? Catch a matinee and tamp down the emotions with an extra-large tub of buttery popcorn?

  “So what are you up to now?” I asked.

  “I should probably check in with Elrich, see if there’s anything I can do. Why don’t you head on back to the city? I’m sure you’ve got plenty of work waiting for you. Should I assume this puts the kibosh on your taking over this project?”

  “The money’s tempting and the building is beautiful, but I think I’ll pass.”

  “Had enough encounters with dead bodies, have you?”

  I nodded. Not to mention beautifully dressed specters who made me break down and cry. I had enough on my plate as it was. And I was not a pretty crier.

  Chapter Three

  The next day I found myself fighting the urge to throttle a stubborn building inspector who was holding up a job at a bed-and-breakfast in the Castro because he wanted yet another engineering review of an already overengineered garage addition.

  I tried not to think about what had happened yesterday, but the scenario put me in mind of poor Larry McCall.

  The truth was, there weren’t a lot of us general contractors who hadn’t wanted to kill an inspector from time to time. Of course, that was where it ended, and a responsible contractor knew it was necessary to find a professional way to work out differences.

  It had been unsettling, to say the least, to find a dead body. Especially of someone I had been speaking to only moments before. Such a tragic and violent loss of life. But if I were to be brutally honest, the overwhelming sadness I had felt in that moment, the profound grief, also had something to do with the weeping figure in the red dress.

  Who was she?

  Her gown was far too antiquated to have been from the United States. She must have been attached to the imported stones somehow; it was the only explanation. I knew from experience that ghosts hated renovation projects: The disturbance to their surroundings could be profoundly upsetting for them. So what would happen if a ghost’s home was dismantled, stone by stone, shipped overseas, and rebuilt in a new land?

  Talk about confusing. And that wasn’t all; Pete Nolan had said workers had been chased out of the cloisters by a man with a broadsword. So maybe there was even more paranormal fun to be had at the Wakefield Retreat Center.

  Graham had called last night to tell me that, indeed, the police were holding Pete Nolan as a “person of interest” in McCall’s slaying because the evidence pointed to his guilt. Graham also mentioned he was going to take advantage of the work stoppage to follow up on some new wind-energy technology being developed by a small firm in LA, so he was flying down for a couple of days and would return on Thursday.

  After dealing with the stubborn building inspector at the bed-and-breakfast conversion, the next item on my to-do list was to check in with the B and B’s ghosts—the family that had built the house a century ago and who had wanted to remain. Fortunately, the B and B’s owners were happy to have them; they delighted in showing me a recent article about their haunted bed-and-breakfast that had come out in Haunted Home Quarterly. My name was mentioned prominently as the builder—and ghost buster—on the job.

  I made a mental note to warn my office manager, Stan, who had been fielding an increasing number of query calls more interested in ghosts than in renovation. It was a worrying trend.

  Once I settled things in the Castro, I met with Raul at an Art Nouveau house in Bernal Heights. Raul was by far my best foreman, and though I dreaded the day he would move on, I knew it was only a matter of time before he started up his own company. There had been spirits in this house once, too, but after an intervention, they appeared to have departed.

  Raul and I went over the double-paned gla
ss we were installing to increase the old home’s energy efficiency. This was tricky. If the existing sashes weren’t thick enough, or the window structure itself wasn’t sturdy, we could end up replacing the original glass as well as remilling the sashes and sills; by the time we were done, there might be nothing left of the original. I understood the energy-saving reasons behind it, but it hurt my heart to dump the wavy old window glass. Historic renovation demanded creativity and compromise.

  Even while hashing out these details with Raul, my mind kept wandering back to Pete Nolan. True, I didn’t know him, and he had been upset with Larry McCall, but it was hard to believe that a quick fit of temper could result in such a tragedy. Still, as SFPD inspector Annette Crawford so often reminded me, most murders were the result of exactly this sort of scenario: some stupid disagreement that got out of hand.

  Way out of hand.

  Thinking about my last couple of big jobs, I realized that both the Castro B and B and the Bernal Heights house had contained entire spirit families that were trying to tell me something about crimes in the present. At least in the case of the Wakefield project, I didn’t think the spectral Lady in Red was connected to the building inspector’s death. There was too much separation of time and space; if the spirit had come here with those ancient stones, what possible connection could she have to Larry McCall?

  Once I wrapped up my day, I headed to Pacific Heights to pick up my ex-stepson, Caleb, whom I had talked into joining me, my dad, and our friend Stan at Garfield Lumber’s annual barbecue.

  “I don’t know why I have to go to this lame barbecue,” grumbled the seventeen-year-old. His chestnut hair fell so low over his forehead it almost covered his near-black eyes, which was probably the idea. I tamped down the urge to brush his hair back so I could see his expression.

  “It’s . . . fun,” I said. Which was sort of a lie. “Anyway, it’s tradition.”