Keeper of the Castle: A Haunted Home Renovation Mystery

by Juliet Blackwell

  In other words, a person could get used to just about anything after a while.

  So perhaps I was becoming resigned to my fate. Apparently, I was meant to become embroiled in renovating historic houses, negotiating with their resident ghosts, doing my best to unmask murderers, and when my work was done, riding off into the sunset with a handsome man on my arm, just like the woman on the cover of Keeper of the Castle.

  I wondered if Graham would be willing to pose shirtless for me. . . .

  Given the grim look on his face, I doubted it.

  Chapter Eleven

  The next day, I was going over supply orders with Tony in the trailer when we heard a commotion outside.

  Oh, boy. I had wondered how long it would take for the ghosts to wreak havoc.

  But it wasn’t ghosts. Instead, Alicia had outdone herself. Under the shed, but beyond the reach of the stone dust, two long conference tables had been set up with urns of coffee and tea, tubs of iced sodas and sports drinks, and covered platters of fruit and crackers, chips and energy bars. Large red coolers held granola and yogurt, hard-boiled eggs, and sandwiches galore.

  One comment to Ellis Elrich, and the crew was no longer arguing over stolen food, and I was a hero. Amazing.

  Alicia hovered over the tables, straightening things every time one of the guys took something. She seemed nervous around them at first, but relaxed and blushed prettily as they politely thanked her.

  “This is incredible, Alicia,” I said. “It looks great.”

  She shrugged.

  Biting into a sandwich as big as his head, Tony thanked Alicia, then went to check on the reinforcement rods I had ordered installed at the mouth of the refectory. I lingered with Alicia for a moment, pouring myself a cup of coffee.

  “So, I was wondering,” I said, oh so casual-like. “Ellis mentioned you had an audio recording from the surveillance system at the time of Larry McCall’s murder.”

  She blinked.

  “Do you suppose I could listen to it?”

  “Why in the world would you want to?”

  I wasn’t sure, exactly. “I thought maybe it could tell me something—”

  “Why would it tell you something? The police have already listened to the tapes—there was no video, just a gray screen, and the audio seems to have come from some other place.”

  “Have the tapes been ruined before, at other times? Or did it happen only when Larry McCall was murdered?”

  “It does happen from time to time. It’s probably because we’re so remote, up here on the hill. Stray radio waves, is what the detective said.”

  I had a little experience with “stray radio waves.” Sometimes they were neither stray nor generated by a radio. Sometimes spirits were able to make themselves heard through such devices. I had seen the Lady in Red when I discovered Larry McCall’s body; maybe the tape hadn’t been erased on purpose, but her energy interfered with the surveillance tape, somehow. And if so, maybe I could make out what she was saying. It was a long shot, but as an “up-and-coming ghost buster,” I thought I should check it out.

  “It’s unintelligible,” said Alicia.

  “Do you know if the police sent it to be analyzed in a lab? By sound editors?”

  She frowned. “I don’t think so. Detective Bernardino said it was worthless.”

  “Did he take it with him, or ask for a copy?”

  “No.”

  “Could—”

  My request was cut off by the unnerving sound of men shouting. Workers were streaming out of the mouth of the chapel.

  “What is it?” I asked, grabbing Tony by the arm as he ran by.

  “I . . .” His eyes shifted to the building behind me. I looked around but didn’t see anything beyond the stone walls.

  “Did you see something?” I urged. “What was it?”

  He swallowed audibly. “If I didn’t know better, I’d say it was some guy out of Highlander, with a sword and . . .” He trailed off with a few choice swearwords. He took his hard hat off with one hand and ran the other through his sweaty locks.

  Highlander? Not my Lady in Red, then.

  “You sure it wasn’t . . . ?” Could Kieran be responsible for some kind of trick? He’d seemed harmless enough in the pub, but was it possible he was orchestrating costumed protesters to scare the hell out of the workers? “One of the protesters, maybe? Some of them wear kilts.”

  “I swear, Mel, it wasn’t my imagination. I know it sounds crazy, but I wasn’t the only one who saw . . .”

  “I believe you. Just tell me exactly what you saw, and where. And how—was it there waiting for you?”

  “We were here.” On the blueprints, he pointed to demonstrate the spot near the mouth of the refectory. “The men were putting in those reinforcement rods, like you asked us to. But then a few of us were checking out the other side, near that round room. I kept feeling like something was behind me, kinda like that tingling you get sometimes when you’re being watched? And then there was that noise—that’s why I say he was like out of the Highlander movie, because before we saw anything, we heard the sword as he took it out of its whaddayacallit? The sheaf?”

  “Sheath.”

  “Right. And then this . . . yell—it was terrible. Before we could react, he came running at us full-bore, sword drawn.”

  I tried to process this. I didn’t get far before Tony continued.

  “And as we were running, I looked behind me, and he . . . disappeared.”

  “As in, he hid?”

  “No. He disappeared. Into thin air. This was no protester in costume, Mel. It’s happened before—it’s something about that round room. That’s when it happens, when we’re doing something in that area.”

  “Every time? It’s always the round room?”

  “Not every time, but that’s the only place guys have seen . . . it. Or him, or whatever.”

  “All right. Go get yourself something to drink, and take ten. I’m going to check it out.”

  “Mel, don’t. Seriously.”

  “It’s okay. I’m a professional.”

  I put on a hard hat, then grabbed a big flashlight in case I needed to bop someone over the head.

  Who was I kidding? Not once had I managed to adequately defend myself in a crisis situation. Especially considering the course of my life lately, I kept intending to take a self-defense class, but there were only so many hours in a day and I was already making time for a ghost-busting class. Dad’s Glock was hidden in my bedroom up at Elrich’s house, of course, because though I wanted to have it nearby in scary situations, its mere presence gave me the willies. After all, once we all started running around with guns, civilization as we knew it was surely coming to an end. Then again . . .

  There was a sound.

  I halted and tried to quiet my ragged breathing. What was that?

  Caught up in my thoughts, I hadn’t been paying attention to my surroundings. I was still in the main chapel, nearing the sacristy. The arched windows and stone walls looked ludicrously out of place with the new cement floor, at least until the stone was laid. There was an echoey gloom in here, making me think of the monks that had passed through, the legions of people seeking sanctuary within these walls, the wars and suffering this place had witnessed.

  Resolve. Ghosts were merely remnants of humans, I intoned. Humans in the next dimension. Often confused, yearning, trying to attend to unfinished business.

  They weren’t actually out to kill a person.

  I rubbed the gold ring on the chain around my neck and thought about my mother, and her mother before her.

  As quietly as possible in my heavy work boots, I started walking again, passing through a series of cramped chambers, heading for the refectory. As I moved through a low stone doorway, I paused and listened.

  Sure enough, I heard something. But it wasn’t a bloodcurdling Highland yell. Or the Lady in Red’s heartbroken weeping. It was a sigh.

  An audible sigh.

  I inched around the side of the
doorway antechamber, peering around the carved stone edge.

  A man was sitting at the bottom of the stairs. He was powerfully built, wearing a tunic and a kilt and carrying a sword. A yellow-and-black-plaid tartan was slung over one shoulder.

  He was leaning over, holding his head in his large hands. Even in the dim light I could see a nasty scar running the length of the back of one hand.

  He leaped up.

  Then came the singing of his sword echoing off the stone walls as he pulled it from his sheath in one smooth move.

  My heart was hammering in my chest, and it was all I could do not to wet my pants right then and there. So much for my big talk about getting used to dealing with ghosts. I braced myself, forcing myself not to run away. If he charged me, I would stand my ground. Perhaps that would confuse him enough to make him talk to me.

  But he didn’t charge. At the last instant, he seemed to check himself. He tilted his head, and a frown of concentration spread across his broad brow. He was a giant of a man, especially considering he came from a time when people were much smaller than today. He had another scar on one cheek and a puckered one across his chin, which gave him a slightly lopsided countenance.

  “I’m, uh . . . Hello,” I began, then cleared my throat.

  “Who are ye?”

  “I was about to ask you the same thing.”

  “You’re a lass.”

  “Yes.”

  “I thought at first you were a man.”

  “I get that a lot.”

  He frowned again, then approached me. Walking slowly, deliberately, he held his sword at the ready. His eyes flickered left and right, making sure I was alone, that this wasn’t an ambush of some sort. Then his gaze returned to me. His eyes were dark, and though I could barely see, they seemed lit with something, as though an internal fire. Something otherworldly. Mesmerizing.

  Fear gnawed at my innards, and I forced myself to stand very still as he walked all the way around me, studying me.

  When I finally wrested my gaze from his, I realized the rest of him was fading in and out. The image was perfectly clear one moment, ethereal the next. At least he was appearing to me normally, I thought, and not merely out of the corner of my eye, like the other spectral denizen of these stones. It drove me nuts when that happened.

  Finally, he returned to stand in front of me. He sheathed his sword, and I relaxed. Theoretically a ghost sword couldn’t hurt me. But I didn’t want to put that theory to the test.

  “What strange sort of lass are ye?”

  Hoo boy. That was a doozy of a conversation starter. “I’m Mel Turner.”

  “Turner? English?”

  “American. It’s a . . . different time. What’s your name?”

  “Donnchadh MacPhaidein.”

  “Sorry, Donka . . . ?”

  “Donnchadh,” he repeated. “American? I dinnae understand. This place . . . Naught looks familiar.”

  “I know. Let’s talk, and I’ll try to explain.”

  There was a sound. A boot scraping on cement. I turned to see Tony in the vestibule.

  Before I could say anything, Donnchadh transformed, a look of fury on his face. He unsheathed his sword and let out a bloodcurdling yell as he ran toward the sacristy.

  Tony turned and ran in the opposite direction, screaming.

  I ran after them, back through the series of chambers and into the chapel. The image of the Highland warrior disappeared as we ran out into the sunlight.

  A couple of the men were gathered around, asking what was wrong. Tony shook off their help. But once the men dispersed, he drew me aside.

  “I don’t think I can take this much longer,” said Tony. “Seriously, Mel. I know you’re new, and I hate to leave you in the lurch, but I gotta say, this job ain’t worth it. One of these days that . . . that thing is going to catch me, and I don’t want to be here when that day arrives. I got kids.”

  I didn’t point out the faulty logic of his statement; I got the gist. But I would be up a creek if I lost a good foreman like Tony; most of the guys on the site didn’t really know me, and therefore didn’t trust me. The tone on a jobsite was set by the foreman, and his presence allowed me a certain flexibility that I would otherwise lose. Not to mention, if we were going to get this job done in time for the big opening event, I couldn’t afford to lose a single man.

  “Look, I don’t want to overstate the case,” I said, “but I have a certain expertise in these areas.”

  “What areas?”

  “The, um . . . ghost areas.”

  He stared at me for a long moment.

  “This isn’t my first rodeo, as they say.”

  Tony nodded slowly. “Is that why Elrich hired you for this job?”

  First Kieran suggested I was hired because I’m a woman, and now Tony was saying I was hired because I was a ghost whisperer. Apparently, the thought that I was hired because I was talented didn’t cross anyone’s mind.

  Irked, I said: “I’m well qualified to bring this project to completion, on time and on budget. Whatever other qualifications I have are just frosting on top.”

  “Okaaay,” Tony said, clearly neither believing me, nor caring. “So, are you going to talk to that . . . thing? Tell him to lay off so we can get this job done?”

  “Yeah. Sure. I’ll get right on that.”

  “Right now?”

  “No, um . . . not right now. I’ve got . . . a few details I need to take care of first.”

  “It’s almost lunchtime.”

  “Right. Can’t neglect one’s nutrition,” I heard myself saying. “Watch and learn, Tony. Watch and learn.”

  And I strode off, hoping he would be temporarily appeased with the “learn, young grasshopper” school of avoiding the damned issue.

  The issue, of course, was that I was scared. I needed a little time to think before chatting with that Highland warrior again. At the very least, I needed something to eat. This ghost-talking business could take the stuffing out of a person.

  I decided to visit with Dog for a few minutes. Usually, I didn’t invite him to sit in my lap, because at fifty-plus pounds, Dog wasn’t anyone’s idea of a lapdog. But at the moment I could use a little canine consolation. I sat on the ground and let him make himself comfortable, burying my face in the scruff of his neck. I could hear a couple of the men arguing about their lunches, while Tony tried to calm them down and suggested they grab sandwiches from the table.

  “You okay?” Graham asked as he walked up to us.

  “Why wouldn’t I be okay?”

  “Tell me what happened.”

  “I just had an interesting chat with a heavily armed ghost.”

  He looked startled. Graham had known me long before I started seeing ghosts, and more recently, he had followed me into enough haunted attics and basements to understand that I wasn’t crazy, that there were thin veils separating our world from others, and that at times I could see beyond them. He knew all this, and he backed me up, but he still found it unsettling.

  “What happened?”

  “Let’s go visit Pete Nolan,” I said, scooching Dog out of my lap. “I’ll give you the details on the way.”

  Graham drove as I described what I had seen, and the truncated little chat I’d had with Donnchadh. As I spoke, I realized that I hadn’t actually gleaned anything useful from my interaction with the ghost: whether there was a treasure he was protecting, what and where it might be, what was up with the Lady in Red, and if he knew anything about Larry McCall’s demise. I sat back in my seat, deflated.

  “Hey, buck up there, junior ghost buster. I’m sure you’ll get another chance. Surely he’ll try to kill someone again soon, and you can go in with a list of questions written down on a piece of paper, like you’re supposed to do when you go in for a doctor’s visit. That way you won’t lose your cool.”

  “Very funny. I never asked to be a ghost buster, you know.”

  Graham chuckled. “So, not to change the subject, but heres’ one of thos
e interesting—dare I say awkward?—couples’ questions we’ve never quite gotten to: Have you ever been to jail?”

  “Sure I have. How about you?”

  “Never.”

  “Never? Not even to visit friends?”

  “I guess my friends aren’t as interesting as yours.”

  “I thought you and Pete went way back.”

  “I would call Pete more an acquaintance than a friend.”

  Ever since I’d started tripping over bodies and seeing ghosts, I’d been to jail a few times. As a visitor, of course. Heck, not long ago I’d even visited a prisoner in San Quentin, a maximum-security prison. So while I wasn’t exactly an old hand at this sort of thing, I had some idea of what to expect.

  Graham and I went through the processing of visitors at the county jail where Pete was being held, and half an hour later were seated at a table across from him.

  “I never killed anyone,” Pete said. His eyes were red-rimmed, he was ashen, and even his blond flyaway hair seemed subdued. Dark gold stubble covered his chin. “I was framed.”

  “What happened that day?” Graham asked.

  “McCall’s been obsessed with the mortar we’re using, and with reinforcement of the stones.”

  “That’s pretty important in earthquake country,” I put in.

  “Yeah, I get it,” said Pete, agitated. “I’m not an idiot. But we’ve been doing a few experimental things, and this is a historic structure—it’s not like everything’s easy, or evident. And McCall was obsessed with that round room; you know the one I’m talking about?”

  I nodded.

  “That place has been a damned thorn in my side from the beginning. It just wasn’t fitting in anywhere, but Libole was obsessed with it, too, wants it done a very particular way. It already fell apart once, on a day when McCall dropped by the jobsite without warning, of course.” He shook his head. “This whole project has been a disaster from day one.”

  “What do you mean, it fell apart?”

  “Just what I said. I don’t know if it was sabotage, or what. It was put together, and then it wasn’t. And we’ve got a whole pile of stones supposed to go on top of it—it’s not a one-story room; it’s a damned tower. But we can’t get the thing to stand up. Go explain that one, why don’tcha?”