The Last Curtain Call Read online

  “You’re right. I remember now, hearing about that place,” said Stan, already looking it up on his phone. “But I’ve never been. Says here there’s a film museum, and they show movies on the weekends. Maybe we should go check it out.”

  “I think we should,” I said.

  “But for now,” Dad said, “time to set the table. Let’s eat.”

  * * *

  * * *

  “Babe, you got a minute?” Dad asked later that evening as Landon and I were heading into our bedroom.

  “Of course.”

  Landon bid Dad a good night and ducked into our room while I followed Dad into the room he had shared with my mother. I noted several piles of things in one corner: a jewelry box and scarves, stacks of books and papers, a small antique trunk. Alongside these were several bags full of clothes, which my father had asked me to go through last week.

  At long last, Dad was cleaning out some of my mother’s things. The process filled me with contradictory emotions: Part of me wanted to keep everything exactly as it had been when she was alive, but it also seemed like it was time to make a change. Dad had held Mom’s place in his heart for a long time; it would be good for him to open himself up to something new, and maybe even someone new.

  “What’s up?”

  “I thought you might want to take a look at these,” Dad said, handing me several old notebooks. They weren’t the fancy leather-bound, hand-tooled journals favored by aspiring poets and writers, but simple black-and-white composition books used by students, back in the day.

  “Are those my old school papers?”

  Mom had held on to everything my two sisters and I had created: school papers and graduation certificates, locks of hair and baby teeth, finger paintings and middle-schooler poetry. Like a well-educated serial killer.

  “Toss ’em,” I said. “At this point I think we can safely say I’m never going to clear up that ‘Incomplete’ I got in my freshman-year modern-philosophy class.”

  “No, honey,” Dad said, sounding uncharacteristically subdued. “These were your mother’s.”

  “Mom kept a journal?”

  I took the stack of notebooks he held out and saw a date written in Mom’s familiar cursive. I flipped open the cover to reveal pages and pages of handwritten thoughts, remembrances . . . and talk of spirits.

  Our eyes met. Dad nodded, the expression on his face uncertain. “I thought about burning them, but then I thought that was how the Nazis began.”

  I smiled. “I hardly think it ended at a mother’s journals.”

  He shrugged. “I’m just saying. What your mother, and now you, experienced—you know I don’t really go in for that sort of thing. I think that’s why she started writing her thoughts down . . . She didn’t talk to me about it because I didn’t want to hear about her . . . whadayacallit? Visions?”

  “Something like that,” I said in a quiet voice.

  “So I thought maybe . . . maybe they could tell you something. Something that might help you.” His voice was husky with emotion. “Since she’s not here to do it.”

  “Thanks, Dad.” I gave him a hug. “Love you.”

  “Love you, babe. Mel?”

  “Yeah?”

  “Promise me you’ll be careful. If anything happened to you . . .”

  I nodded. “I promise. And you, too. Quit smoking already, will you?”

  “Get to bed, babe. You need your rest.”

  * * *

  * * *

  Despite Dad’s advice, I stayed up late, perusing my mother’s journals. She wrote in a beautiful old-fashioned cursive, the writing occasionally wavering as her hand grew tired.

  As Landon snoozed beside me, I read of my mother’s doubts and concerns when she was a young married woman, juggling the demands of the family business, a tight budget, and the needs of a husband and three rambunctious children. I smiled at some of her remarks about me; apparently, I had been a bit of a handful. As the hours passed, I heard my mother’s voice once again, her phrasing and wry commentary summoning vivid memories of the woman who had raised me and loved me, and whom I still missed every day.

  I was about to close the journals and turn off the light when I came across a reference to her first ghost sighting.

  “It dawns on me that my old ‘imaginary friend,’ a movie star in a spangly dress, might have been an actual spirit from another dimension. If only I could approach the current owners to ask to visit their attic, see if she would appear to me once more. I wonder why she showed herself to me—what was it she wanted, and needed?”

  Could this movie star be Hildy?

  I slid out of bed as quietly as I could, trying not to wake Landon. He slept with one arm tossed over his head, looking more like a Scottish Highland rebel than a math professor—or at least any math professor I had ever studied under. Maybe that was why I never did well in the subject.

  I studied the dress Hildy had given me. It certainly looked like a genuine dress from that era, not that I knew much about vintage clothing. My mother’s journal entry suggested she had seen Hildy’s ghost, too, as a child. Was there a connection? Was there some reason Hildy had given me a dress?

  I tugged it over my head. It smelled of cedar and cigarettes, was heavy with beads and spangles, and felt scratchy. I imagined a well-bred lady—or a starlet like Hildy—would wear a slip underneath, preferably one made of silk.

  In one corner of my bedroom was an old “looking glass” that I had salvaged from a tear-down. I stood before it and gazed at my reflection.

  Again, I smelled cigarette smoke. But it wasn’t coming from the fabric of the dress.

  In the mirror, I held a long cigarette holder between the fingers of my left hand. I watched as a stream of smoke curled and skittered in the air.

  Closing my eyes, I drew in a long, slow breath.

  I opened my eyes again. This time the image reflected in the mirror was not me at all. It was Hildy.

  Hildy, with a bloody knife in her hand.

  Chapter Nine

  No matter how late I go to bed—whether I’m up half the night thinking about murdered dancers and ghostly actresses, reading my late mother’s ghost journals, or seeing visions of bloody knives and wondering what it all might mean—I still rise with the sun.

  I blame my father and his chosen profession, which I had inherited. Construction projects start early. We’re on the jobsite by six or seven in the morning, which means rolling out of bed by five at the latest.

  But this morning, more than most even, I was in desperate need of coffee, stat.

  My dad, with many more years of working construction under his belt than I, was already up and bustling around the kitchen. The scents of onions frying and coffee perking, and the clatter of silverware greeted me as I descended the stairs, making me feel nostalgic and homey.

  “Morning, Dad,” I croaked, walking into a kitchen bathed in early-morning pink-and-orange sunlight. I gave him a kiss on his whiskery cheek.

  “You look like something the cat dragged in,” Dad said, spatula held aloft.

  “Thanks, Dad. One thing I can say for you—you’re good for a woman’s ego.” I yawned while pouring freshly brewed coffee into my favorite travel mug. A very, very large travel mug. “I stayed up late, reading Mom’s journals.”

  He turned back to the omelet he was cooking. When he spoke, his voice was subdued. “Learn anything useful?”

  “I’m not sure. But I haven’t gotten that far in them yet. Did Mom ever mention a ghost she had seen as a girl, in her grandparents’ house?”

  “You mean the place you and Landon are redoing?”

  I nodded.

  He inclined his head slightly and blew out a breath. “All I know is she told me that might have been when things started, when she first started seeing things.”

  “She was just a little
kid.”

  He shrugged.

  “What do you know about the history of the house?” I continued.

  “Not much. Anything in particular you’re lookin’ for?”

  “For instance, was someone killed in the house? Stabbed to death, perhaps?”

  He frowned. “What the hell are you talking about?”

  “I don’t mean when Mom’s grandparents lived there,” I said, taking a sip of coffee and savoring the strong French roast. Knowing this coffee was waiting for me was one of the reasons I was able to haul myself out of bed each morning. “I mean, a long time ago, before then.”

  He shrugged and gave the omelet pan a practiced flick of the wrist, neatly flipping the omelet. “Never heard about any murder from your mother. But in California, any death in a building—homicide or not—has to be disclosed when the building is sold.”

  “Even if it happened back in the old days?”

  He shook his head. “Not sure when that law passed. I doubt the law applies to every building, though, or no place over seventy-five years old would be without a disclosure. People used to die at home, in their own beds, back in the day. Which is where I want to meet my Maker, by the way.”

  I hated when Dad talked about dying, which he was doing more frequently now, as he aged. I knew full well that I was likely to lose my father one day, just as I had lost my mother, but I didn’t want to think about it. Denial and I had an ongoing and intimate relationship.

  “Breakfast?” Dad asked as he did every morning. “I’ve got sourdough toast.”

  “Just coffee for now, thanks,” I responded with a smile, as I also did every morning.

  Dad grunted. My father insisted that breakfast was the most important meal of the day, and that as a woman “in the trades,” I especially needed fuel to get through my day. I agreed in theory, but in reality my stomach wanted nothing to do with food first thing in the morning. In fact, the early morning was pretty much the only time I didn’t feel like eating. This would have paid dividends, had I not more than made up for my lack of appetite in the wee hours by enjoying hearty meals the rest of the day. I was lucky Hildy’s beautiful dress fit.

  Which reminded me . . . I should probably do something about a wedding gown. Stephen had been asking if I wanted him to design one for me. But the thought of a wedding made my heart flutter, and I tried to tamp down on my nerves.

  “So what’s on the agenda for today?” Dad asked, sitting down at the kitchen table to enjoy his breakfast.

  “I need to do some work in the office this morning,” I said. “I got home too late last night to check messages.”

  “If you change your mind, the offer of an omelet still stands,” Dad said.

  “I’ll keep that in mind. Sourdough toast, too?”

  “Toast, too.”

  I carried my coffee down the hall to our home office and the “worldwide headquarters” of Turner Construction. Here Stan ruled supreme, but he wouldn’t be in for a while.

  I sorted through my phone and e-mail messages, separating them into piles: urgent, not so urgent, new project queries, and inquiries about my ghost-busting services. After Haunted Home Quarterly named me an “up-and-coming ghost buster” a while ago, I started receiving a fair number of requests to relieve homes of unwanted spectral visitors. Usually I referred these to my friend and mentor, Olivier Galopin, because I didn’t need the extra business. I encountered more than enough ghosts in the course of my day job.

  Case in point: the Crockett Theatre and my own new (old) house.

  I took a big gulp of coffee and got to work. First things first: the urgent messages. These were about supplies and permits and had to be dealt with immediately because nothing shut down a jobsite faster than a lack of building materials or a cranky building inspector. I spent half an hour responding to e-mails and making phone calls to the only other people I knew who were at work at this hour: contractors.

  Nonurgent messages I set aside. I would deal with them later, when I had time, or later, when they escalated into urgent status. Whichever came first.

  What to do with new business queries was more problematic. Checking out potential projects, meeting with clients, working up proposals and budgets, providing references—all the necessary steps to taking on a new client—were enormously time-consuming. I could spend days just drumming up new business. On the other hand, construction schedules were such that if I didn’t have new projects in the pipeline we would eventually wind up with nothing to do, which didn’t bode well for the future of Turner Construction, Father and Daughter. I set a few aside to see to personally, but earmarked the rest for Stan to follow up on by making preliminary calls. Stan would winnow out the truly interesting possibilities from among the numerous query calls, many of which came from folks who were in the preliminary stages of gathering information, or who were fantasizing about turning their boxy master bedroom into a spalike retreat on a budget of $2,500.

  Laying on his thick down-home Oklahoman accent, Stan was a master at letting people know we weren’t interested without hurting their feelings—or ruining a possible future relationship.

  I then called the hospital to check on Gregory Thibodeaux, partly because I was worried about him, but also because I wanted to ask him what had happened. Had he simply fainted? Or was there something more? Had he heard, or seen, or felt anything prior to falling? Could it be that the theater’s ghosts were actively malevolent, to the point of being able to hurt the living? Or had his injury been caused by someone still breathing? And if the ghosts were evil and able to inflict physical harm, then why hadn’t they assaulted the squatters?

  Unless they had. I needed to talk further with the squatters.

  I tried googling the address of my new home—Landon House? Mel’s Retreat?—but found no mention of murder. But that didn’t mean much; the history of an old and otherwise undistinguished home was unlikely to show up on a website. I should stop by the California Historical Society and see whether they had archived copies of the local paper from the 1910s and 1920s.

  Next, I searched for references to Hildy Hildecott. Nothing came up, but then I might have had the spelling wrong. I tried several variations, which yielded phone numbers for people living in Cary, North Carolina, and Binghamton, New York, as well as a few entries in Germany. A search for “silent movies” yielded thousands of results, but most of the names were the familiar ones: Charlie Chaplin, Rudolph Valentino, and Clara Bow. The list of credits on early movies was far more limited than today; if Hildy had been an extra or a bit player, would her name have even appeared? I tried to remember the names of the movies she mentioned being in, but only Charlie Chaplin came to mind.

  I even looked her up on IMDB, a website that included most movies and actors, but it didn’t contain much information pertaining to that very early era.

  Finally, I picked up the file on the Crockett Theatre and flipped through a variety of documents: architectural drawings, copies of the original blueprints, production schedules for electrical, plumbing, and stucco-plastering repair. We would need to redo the entire HVAC system, of course. When the theater was built, there was no such thing as air-conditioning, but the good news was that the theater had been outfitted with a passive-ventilation system that circulated air through a system of ample plenums and roomy shafts. I could work with that.

  Then came the fun stuff: the schedules for painting and gilded finishes, restroom and light fixtures, flooring and carpeting. Which reminded me: I should gather the rest of the salvaged fixtures I saw with Thibodeaux and take them to the Doctor, an impossibly old Czech man who adored antiques and could repair anything. He was a treasure, though he was expensive, and he worked slowly. Very slowly. I had to give him as much lead time as possible.

  I wondered how long the theater would be considered a crime scene and how quickly I could get back in there, start cleaning up, and work up my renovation ti
meline. I made a mental note to ask Dad to do a walk-through with me. Although officially retired from the business, Dad was still the best at estimating costs, and had a nose for problems born of extensive experience.

  “Good morning, gorgeous,” said Stan as he rolled his chair into the room.

  “Morning, Stan. Have you had coffee? I have a few things I need to ask you about.”

  He held up a mug and took a sip. “I thought as much. Ask away; I’m ready to roll.”

  We spent some time reviewing the calls that had come in, and the supply orders for a couple of current jobs, including my own home—Turnetrius Hall? MelLan Manor?

  Then, naturally, the talk turned to the Crockett.

  “Thibodeaux mentioned the Xerxes Group funded a smaller theater in Oregon, as well,” I said. “Are these moneymaking ventures? I thought all the money was in high tech these days, not renovations of old buildings.”

  “Not all investments are driven by profit, Mel. A lot of people love classic theaters. Remember the projects we reviewed when the possibility of the Crockett first came up? The Lerner in Elkhart, Indiana, the Malco in Hot Springs, Arkansas? Those aren’t exactly tourist towns, but someone felt their historic theaters were worth the time, money, and effort to restore.”

  “I’m betting they didn’t have anywhere near the labor costs we have here in San Francisco,” I said.

  “My point is, maybe the Xerxes Group isn’t only in it for the money—though the tax funds make it more attractive, of course. But maybe they do it for the same reason you do: the love of all things ancient.”

  “Is that why I love you?” I couldn’t resist. Stan was one of my father’s oldest friends, and they had worked together until an accident on the jobsite had robbed Stan of the use of his legs. My parents had helped him through rehab and the transition to a new way of life, and when my mother had passed away suddenly, Stan was a steadfast friend to my dad. Now the two men lived together in this old farmhouse that was constantly under construction and quibbled like an old married couple.