Keeper of the Castle: A Haunted Home Renovation Mystery

by Juliet Blackwell

  “Do you have any idea who might be responsible for sabotage like that?”

  “The protesters, most likely.”

  “And do you think . . . ? Could they have been responsible for what happened to McCall, as well?”

  “I’d sure like to say yes, but I can’t figure why. If I were a betting man, I’d say Ellis Elrich is behind what happened. You mark my words: The man won’t stop at anything until he gets what he wants.”

  “But why would he kill the inspector?”

  “First off, a man like Elrich doesn’t get his hands dirty doin’ his own killing. He has minions for that sort of thing.”

  I sat back in my chair. “Look, I know the man’s charismatic, but are you trying to say he can order his followers to kill? Isn’t that . . . a bit much?”

  “I think you’d be surprised at how far some of his groupies would go to win his favor. For instance, I’d check into that Alicia woman.”

  “What about her?”

  “For one thing, that’s not her real name.”

  “No?” I was thinking perhaps Mrs. Danvers, after the sinister housekeeper from the classic Gothic novel Rebecca, but that was just me.

  “I looked her up. Until a few years ago, there was no such person. It’s like she invented herself out of the blue. Doesn’t that seem suspicious to you?”

  “Maybe. Or maybe she just got married and changed her name.”

  “Anyway, even if it wasn’t her, Elrich has plenty of money to make things like this happen. He could have one of his people do the job, maybe Buzz or Tweedledum and Dumber—those bodyguards of his—and then send them away to live out their lives in luxury on an island somewhere, while I’m trapped in here, takin’ the fall for somethin’ I didn’t do.”

  “I still don’t get Elrich’s motive for killing the building inspector,” Graham said.

  “Simple: McCall was going to shut down the project. He didn’t agree with the rest of the guys in the permit office, who are no doubt getting paid off by Elrich. And McCall, I dunno, he was going on about having found something new about this project, something that was going to blow the lid off this thing.”

  “That makes it sound like some kind of conspiracy,” I said. “We’re just talking building permits, aren’t we?”

  “All I know for certain is that I didn’t do it. Hell, I’d been dealing with that pain-in-the-ass Larry McCall for months. Why would I suddenly snap and hit him over the head with a bag of mortar, of all things?

  “Listen, we went into the round room so’s I could show him the mortar mix, but none of the latex admix was there. McCall wanted to see the documentation that we’d purchased it. I went to the trailer to get it, and that’s when someone killed him. I wasn’t even there.”

  “I heard there was no surveillance film from around the time of the crime.”

  “Yeah,” Pete said with a bitter chuckle. “Ain’t that a kick in the pants? According to what my lawyer gathered from the police, the security tape was erased, or intercepted or something. You think I’m smart enough to figure out how to do somethin’ like that?” He looked at us like we were his lifeline. “Please help me. I didn’t do it, and that tape will show I didn’t do it. Without it, I’m screwed.”

  “So you think the killer ruined the tape to keep his identity secret.”

  “Or her identity. Like I said earlier, Elrich has a lot of female groupies,” Pete said. “Starting with that personal assistant of his, Alicia Withers.”

  Chapter Twelve

  I fell asleep while Graham drove us back to the mansion. What with getting up at five, working twelve hours, and sherry hour in the evening, I lost consciousness anytime I got horizontal or was a passenger in a moving vehicle of any kind. Such a hot, romantic property.

  When we pulled to a stop, I roused myself.

  But we weren’t back at Wakefield. We were at the Marin County Civic Center. I recognized the building without having to see a sign. Designed by Frank Lloyd Wright, the Marin County Civic Center is a national and state historic monument; it is odd and futuristic-looking enough to have served as the locale for the movie Gattaca, starring Ethan Hawke and Uma Thurman.

  “Might as well ask a few questions of the permit office,” said Graham in response to my questioning look. “Don’t look at me like that. It was only a matter of time until you begged me to come here with you.”

  I had been to the building before, of course; most local architecture geeks had made at least one pilgrimage. Frank Lloyd Wright had railed against “excessive verticality,” and believed in following the organic topography and contours of the land. The Marin County Civic Center lived up to these ideals: Its buff walls and blue roof reflected the golden hills and the sky; and the building was long and horizontal, built over the site’s natural gullies and creeks.

  We parked and passed through the gold gates into the building. Corridors featured second-story catwalks overlooking small gardens and fountains. Finally, Graham stopped in front of a door marked MARIN COUNTY BUILDING DEPARTMENT.

  Inside, the room did not live up to Wright’s vision, I felt sure. It was full of beige desks and standard office chairs, acoustic paneled ceilings and fluorescent lights. The men wore white short-sleeved business shirts and ties; the only splash of color was provided by a woman standing at a file cabinet in an orange top and a paisley miniskirt.

  A framed poster of an eagle maintained that leadership was the result of “unquestionable integrity,” and another featuring a windmill focused on the importance of accountability and warned of the consequences of avoidance. Finally, a cute little calico kitty held on to a branch with one tiny paw, and under it was written, “Hang in there, Baby.”

  Building inspector Don Stickley recognized Graham, who introduced me. Stickley was pleasant to an extreme, which did make a person wonder.

  “I don’t mean to speak ill of the dead, but McCall was a real hard-ass,” Don said. “A stickler for the law. I tried to tell him, the law is only as good as the latest technological invention. It’s true that we aren’t the ones who set policy, but if Ellis Elrich is willing to foot the bill for trying to implement environmental advances, then we here at the department should support that. I mean, this is Marin. Who better to be at the forefront of green technology? And sometimes it’s as simple as the Saltillo tile Graham brought in.”

  “What about the tile?”

  “I’ll show you.” He went into the other room and brought back a terra-cotta Saltillo tile. “Graham treated this tile with linseed oil instead of the standard penetrating sealer. For weeks now we’ve tried dropping Coke, coffee, everything on it.” He knocked on it and shook his head. “Nothing gets through that sucker. I wouldn’t have believed it if I didn’t see it.”

  “It’s like the straw bale houses,” added one of Stickley’s colleagues. “A fellow’s building a house with straw bale covered in waddle and daub, using clay mud with sand and hay as binders.”

  “In the old days they used horse hair,” I said.

  “Right. Really, whatever was handy could be used as a binder. You protect that stuff from the rain with extended eaves on the roof, and it will last for centuries. Once it finally starts to deteriorate, it melds back into the earth—unlike concrete, which goes into landfills unless it’s ground up and reused. That stuff’s nasty.”

  By now every person in the office had joined our circle, talking about their favorite green technologies. Graham was playing it deliberately cool, but he wasn’t fooling me: He was as excited as I was—even more so. To find building inspectors this invested in green technology made a person hopeful for the future. I guessed it was like they said: Marin really was different.

  “Hey, Graham,” said Stickley. “I got a joke for you: How many official green-accredited professionals does it take to screw in a lightbulb?”

  “How many?”

  “Four: one to tell you how to earn your official green points, one to change it, one to document the change, and one to file for certifica
tion.”

  I didn’t get it, but the office staff burst into laughter.

  “Good one,” said Graham. “How many building inspectors does it take to change a lightbulb?”

  “How many?”

  “Change? Never!”

  The men guffawed.

  One more piped up: “How many salvage contractors does it take to change a lightbulb?”

  “Two: one to change it and one to sell the broken bulb as aggregate landscaping.”

  They were laughing so hard now they were wiping their eyes.

  After a few more minutes of chatter, the inspectors drifted off and went back to work. Only Stickley remained.

  “I really am sorry about McCall. We all are. All I can tell you is that he recently came back from San Francisco excited about something.”

  “Excited as in agitated, upset? Or happy?”

  “It was hard to tell with McCall. He thought he had something on the folks at Wakefield. You know, a couple of us here tried to take over the project, but there was nothing doing. McCall and that clipboard, you couldn’t pry it out of his hands.”

  This would be the Clipboard of Doom, I would expect. Whatever happened to it? I wondered whether Detective Bernardino would tell me if it had been found with the body, and if so, what it might have revealed.

  “The really sad part is McCall’s daughter was set to get married in January. He was excited about the wedding. And his wife’s a real nice gal, too. She came and got his things just yesterday, brought us cookies as a going-away sentiment. I guess she bakes a lot.”

  “Could I have her address? Maybe I could go pay my condolences.”

  He wrote it on the back of his business card.

  “Please say hello from all of us if you talk to her. McCall was a real pain in the ass, but still . . . what a shock.”

  * * *

  “Suppose there’s a taco truck around here?” I asked Graham as we drove out of the parking lot. “We still haven’t had lunch.”

  “This is Marin. Probably I could find some organic greens for you to munch on.”

  I smiled. “As long as we follow it up with some good coffee.”

  “So, did that visit tell us anything?”

  “There’s a missing clipboard, and McCall thought he had discovered something. Stop me if this is too crazy, but do you suppose McCall was onto the treasure Kieran mentioned?”

  “It’s possible,” Graham said. “Hard to imagine where that treasure would be hidden, though.”

  “There’s the warehouse Kieran mentioned. I was going to ask Florian about it, but he didn’t show up to sherry hour last night.”

  “I haven’t seen him since before I went to LA,” said Graham.

  “I suppose that might be on purpose. I mean, maybe McCall learned about the secret treasure, Libole killed him because of it, then ran off and sold it for a million dollars, and is even now living on an island somewhere in the South Pacific. Ta-da, murder solved, just that easy.”

  “Why the South Pacific?”

  “Because that’s where I’d go if I was on the lam with a million bucks.”

  “Not Paris?”

  “That’s the first place they’d look for me.”

  Graham smiled. “But if the treasure isn’t in the building, what is the ghost protecting?”

  “Darn you, Graham Donovan, for asking the really hard questions. I don’t know. . . . The ghost seemed confused. I’m not convinced he knows what he’s protecting. I guess I should add that one to my list of questions for him.”

  “Let’s go tonight after sundown.”

  “Let’s?”

  “I’ll go with you.”

  “I don’t think Donnchadh is fond of men.”

  “Is he fond of women?”

  “Not particularly, but he didn’t try to kill me. I think we had a connection. Anyway . . . I really don’t think you should go in with me. How about you wait at the entrance?”

  “I don’t like the thought of sending you in there alone.”

  “I appreciate that, but I’m not sure you understand exactly how scary this character can be. He seemed willing to talk to me, but was only interested in killing anyone with a Y chromosome.”

  Graham seemed to be mulling that over. “All right. I’ll stay in the entrance. But if I hear anything out of the ordinary, I’m coming in after you, ghostly sword or no.”

  That night Graham and I made short work of sherry hour and then headed down to the building site. But before I could even do my pre-ghost-gathering resolve ritual, we heard a woman’s scream coming from inside the chapel.

  This was no ghostly wail; this was human.

  We ran in, following the sound, and found Kieran kneeling on the ground, face wet with tears. Harper was in his arms.

  “Help. She fainted.” He looked as though he was about to drop her.

  “What are you doing here?” I demanded. Adrenaline surged through me, making me angry. “Breaking into a man’s property and putting his daughter in danger is no way to make your case for repatriation, you know.”

  “I know that. I’m sorry,” Kieran said, and he really did look remorseful. “I didn’t mean to. . . . I thought we could look around, that’s all. But I certainly didn’t mean to find a ghost.”

  “Is she okay? What happened?”

  “She—we—saw a . . . I don’t even know what we saw. There was something. . . . We heard a woman crying, and it was coming closer, and we both started crying, and then there was a man with a sword and . . . Harper fainted.”

  “Let’s get her home and put her to bed,” I said with another glare at Kieran. “Poor thing.”

  “I . . .” Kieran looked at us, hapless, as Graham gently hoisted Harper over his shoulder in a fireman’s grip. “Please tell her I’m sorry.”

  “I will. But seriously, Kieran. This is no way to go about reasoning with Ellis Elrich.”

  The eerie notes of a ghostly flute accompanied us as we made our way back up the hill, the music floating on the misty night air.

  * * *

  Murphy’s Law of Construction states that when disaster strikes, the client is sure to be on-site. A job can go months without a problem, but the moment the client sets foot on the jobsite, workers suddenly put their boots through windows, painters spill buckets of paint, and scaffolding folds like a house of cards. So I should have known that something would happen when I saw Ellis Elrich was scheduled to do a site tour.

  But I was feeling pretty confident. With Elrich’s ample resources at my disposal, things were developing fast. I’d been on-site for less than a week, but foundations had been poured and metal skeletons had been constructed. Guest accommodations were roughed out, and the kitchen power sources had been finagled. We were still working on drilling all the access points for the plumbing and electrical, but the guys now had their method perfected.

  Wakefield was starting to take shape.

  It was Saturday, but given the push on this project, we were working six days a week. Only Sunday would leave these stones in peace to their ghosts. Graham and I had an appointment at one to go talk with Jeanine McCall, the widow of the building inspector. Maybe she would be able to tell us if he’d discovered something unusual, oh, say, maybe a mysterious treasure, something important enough to inspire someone to kill her husband. It was a little hard to believe . . . but then again, people had been killed over much, much less.

  Elrich wanted to show the site to two of his business cronies. Harper—who hadn’t spoken a word to me since she woke up on Graham’s shoulder last night—and Vernon were walking silently and sullenly behind, and Alicia was taking up the rear, her notebook in hand.

  The city had sent out a new building inspector, Don Stickley, the man I’d met at the Building Department with Graham. Elrich was impressed to discover we were old buddies as I began to lead the group on a tour of the grounds.

  “Let me show you the latex admix we’re using in the mortar,” I began.

  Suddenly, there was a gr
eat crashing sound, and a plume of dust rose before us in the midday air.

  Chapter Thirteen

  “Was anyone inside?” I demanded as I reached the scene.

  It was the round room, where the men had been working on an exterior steel skeleton for added support. The interior stones had collapsed.

  “No, I don’t think so,” said Miguel.

  “Are you absolutely sure?”

  “I . . . I’m pretty sure.”

  “Okay, until everyone’s accounted for, let’s proceed as if someone’s inside. Miguel, gather everyone and take a head count; use the payroll list as a guide. Tony, you and I will implement procedures.”

  Forty-five tense minutes later, covered in mortar and stone dust, Tony and I were able to attest that no one had been trapped inside.

  Just then Graham arrived to take me to our appointment with Jeanine McCall.

  “What happened?”

  “Just a little . . . building collapse. No one was hurt, and the stones can be used again, of course. That’s the good news.”

  “And the bad news?’

  “A room made of stone imploded for no apparent reason.” Our eyes held.

  “So, I take it you’re not going to make it over to talk with Jeanine McCall?”

  I shook my head. “I wish I could, but . . .” I trailed off as Elrich walked up, his entourage not far behind him.

  “Dare I even ask?” said Elrich, displaying remarkable outward calm. Almost unnatural calm.

  “No one was hurt,” I said.

  “That’s the important thing. Do we know what happened?”

  “Not yet,” I said with a shake of my head. “I know Larry McCall had some questions about the composition of the mortar. It’s possible it wasn’t adequate, or perhaps there was a small trembler or something that tipped the scales.”