Give Up the Ghost: A Haunted Home Renovation Mystery

by Juliet Blackwell

  I realized Landon and I were staring at each other, and I suddenly felt horribly self-conscious. My dust-and-grime-encrusted coveralls hung on me like a baggy, dirty jumpsuit and I didn’t even want to think about what my hair looked like.

  “Well . . . ,” I said. “I’m just waiting for some of those salvage yard items to be delivered, so I’ll be in the garage. Feel free to look around; it’s a huge house.”

  “Yo, General, the truck’s here,” Jeremy called.

  “General?” Landon asked.

  “My crew call me that sometimes, because I’m the general contractor.” And because I’m bossy. “Like I always say, the G-word beats the B-word any day.” I blushed. “Um . . . would you like to meet Nico?”

  Half Italian and half Samoan, Nico was a giant of a man with a large truck and a seemingly endless supply of muscled nephews. Whenever I needed something moved or demolished, I gave Nico a call. His huge smile and boisterous good humor were always welcome, despite his fondness for cheap cologne.

  “General!” Nico enveloped me in a bear hug and lifted me clear off the ground. I am a substantial woman, but Nico was the kind of man who lifted pianos as an afterthought.

  “How come you not married yet?” Nico, asked, standing back and looking me over. “A strong, strapping, gorgeous woman like you?”

  I smiled. This was our usual greeting.

  “Because you’re not available,” I said. “What other man can compare?”

  “This is true,” Nico said, puffing out his chest.

  “Nico, this is Landon Demetrius, a friend. Be nice to him.”

  “Of course! How do you do?” Nico shook Landon’s hand with the verve normally reserved for a professional wrestling match. To his credit, Landon appeared to give as well as he got. “You get to work with Mel, here? Lucky man! Hey, listen, my friend, you should marry her!”

  “I will take that under consideration,” Landon said.

  Nico guffawed, clapped him on the back, then signaled to his nephews who started to unload the truck. They arranged the salvaged items in the garage: assorted fireplace surrounds, three old stained glass windows, lengths of decorative metal and various cabinets, carved moldings, and corbels. There were also half a dozen gold-gilt mirrors, andirons, fireplace backs, and one lovely old crystal chandelier missing a few glass drops.

  None of it was original to Crosswinds, unfortunately, but I could make it look as though it were. I just wished I knew if any of this renovation effort would appease the ghost, or ghosts. Would they appreciate the replicas? Because at this point if they were insisting on the originals we were all up a creek. Besides, Karla Buhner had made a good point; it was going to look like a hodgepodge of styles unless we did it right.

  Stan had put out the equivalent of a contractor’s APB on the weathervane—calling around to antiques stores and collectors—but hadn’t gotten a lead yet. If nothing shook out in the next few days, I would try Skip and Karla Buhner again. They had both seemed embarrassed when I asked them about the historic items from the house.

  On the other hand, the salvage yards wouldn’t have paid enough to make it worth Buhner’s while. He was doing remodels—albeit ugly ones—for the likes of Andrew Flynt, and now was heading up a new office building construction in the financial district. The most he could have gotten from the likes of Griega Salvage was a few hundred dollars, maybe a thousand in store credit. Hardly enough to make petty larceny worth it.

  Unless Skip was smarter than I thought, and had recognized that he had some valuable items. And held an auction for the Crosswinds Collection? I made a mental note to go back and talk with Nancy at Griega.

  Jeremy, Nico and his boys, and I took a few moments checking out the new items, standing around, pointing and throwing out ideas and making bad jokes.

  A lot of people who aren’t in the industry might witness us at a moment like this and think construction workers don’t actually do anything. But these informal sessions often set the stage for the best, most professional work. Builders need to be able to visualize the end result, to understand the final goal of a project, before diving in. Otherwise they might as well be working anywhere for an hourly wage, tending to what was immediately in front of them and not caring how the pieces fit together into a whole. Because of wealthy clients like the Flynts, Turner Construction was able to take a little more time and be sure that even the guy whose job it was to sweep up the jobsite understood—and respected—the final goal.

  The metal worker arrived shortly after we’d finished unloading everything to examine the decorative metal railing I had purchased and see if it could be converted into a widow’s walk for the turret. I had made some quick sketches last night, and gave him the approximate measurements. Then we went up on the roof to take the exact dimensions of the railing. I was wary as we clanged our way up the spiral stair and crawled through the skylight, and kept my eyes, ears, and sense open to the grumpy old ghost.

  Nothing.

  Up on the old widow’s walk I couldn’t help but think of my encounter with Flora last night, how it had felt when I first saw her sad eyes looking back at me in the rearview mirror. The strange echoey sound of her voice, which even in retrospect made me shiver.

  Why had she disappeared as we neared Crosswinds? What had driven her from her home in the first place, and what was keeping her from getting home now?

  Once the metalworker left, I went back to the foyer, where I had heard the music yesterday. According to the discrepancies between my measurements and the blueprints, I was sure there was space behind this wall. But . . . could it be something more? Something that would account for the music and the other noises—whispering, a man yelling—I’d heard? The easiest way to find out was to peek behind one of the sconces—modern, of course, with sleek stainless steel details—mounted to the wall. I unscrewed one, pulled it from the wall, removed the plastic electrical box, and stood on my tiptoes, trying to shine my flashlight beam in the small hole left in the sheetrock.

  “Lose something?” a voice from behind me said.

  I squeaked and flailed as I whirled around.

  “Sorry,” Landon said with a smile. “Absorbed in thought?”

  “Yes, actually,” I stood back and handed him the flashlight. “You’re taller than I am. Look in there and tell me what you see.”

  He peeked in.

  “There’s something behind here,” he said, rearing back from the wall a little and looking surprised. “It looks like . . . a bookshelf?”

  “That’s what I thought, too.”

  “Who in their right mind would wall over a bookshelf?”

  “Good question,” I said, peeking back in the hole. “And get this: It’s still full of books.”

  “Well, now, that’s just a travesty. There’s not a book in sight in this house.”

  “True.”

  “But then, I suppose if a person has his e-reader there’s really no need for actual books anymore.”

  I bit my tongue to keep from jumping down his throat. I might feel just a little attached to paper books. And from what I could tell, the books on the shelf looked very old: They were bound in leather, with titles in gold gilt.

  “Want to check it out?”

  “How do you propose to do that?” Landon asked.

  “Watch and learn, grasshopper,” I said as I grabbed a heavy mallet, swung, and hit the wall as hard as I could. A sizable gash opened up, sending dust into the air.

  “You can just do that?” Landon looked stunned. “Take a wall down, just like that?”

  “Didn’t win the handyman badge in Boy Scouts, huh?”

  “I wasn’t so much a Boy Scout as a member of Special Forces.”

  I smiled. “I’ll leave the terrorists to you, then. But walls I can handle. As long as you make sure there are no hidden pipes or wires, you can just bash on through. Modern wallboar
d is made of pressed gypsum, lined with very thin cardboard. This stuff will disintegrate and go back to the earth if you leave it outside in the rain. Very easy to break through.”

  I grabbed a hunk of the ragged edge and pulled, peeling off a good foot of wallboard.

  “Yes, I can see that,” said Landon. He grabbed a chunk and pulled, a pleased look coming to his face.

  “Pretty fun once you get into it, isn’t it? Old-style lath and plaster is tough, but this sheetrock is for sissies.”

  In fact, I thought, this might be one reason why Skip Buhner had simply gone up over old walls: It was simpler by far than completing the demo on tough old plaster. Simpler, and sloppier, and most likely not what Andrew Flynt thought he was paying for.

  Once we had opened a big enough hole in the drywall, I squeezed through. The original wall was set a few feet back. Overhead were original acanthus-leaf and dentil moldings, and at my feet a thick baseboard with an ogee trim met the floorboards. I took note: I could have a knife cut to re-mill these moldings and reinstall them all over the house—though back in the day, different moldings were often applied to different rooms, with the public areas by far the most elaborate.

  Then I turned my attention to the bookshelf. It stood about seven feet tall and five wide, and it was set back so the front of the shelves were flush with the wall. Made of what looked like solid mahogany, its ample shelves were fronted with old brass trim. There were sconces on either side, graceful bronze arms holding handblown glass globes made of amber glass—though one was cracked.

  Who puts a false wall up over a bookshelf?

  The books themselves were caked with spider webs and the grime of age and neglect, in addition to the fine coating of white dust from our impromptu demo project. Many of the leather bindings were so old they were crumbling, leaving a chalky yellow residue on my fingers. A quick perusal revealed there were histories of the Americas, a social register of San Francisco, a few slim volumes of poetry. Mark Twain and Emily Dickinson. And old novels: Ivanhoe, and The Hunchback of Notre Dame. And Mary Shelley’s Frankenstein; or, The Modern Prometheus, which seemed somehow extremely appropriate.

  Frankenstein made me think of my visit to Tempus, Ltd. I wasn’t wild about some of the side effects of aging I had witnessed in my own body, but trying to stop the hands of time just seemed wrong, somehow.

  Behind me, I could hear Landon pulling off more of the wallboard, making a hole big enough for him to crawl through and join me.

  I ran my hand along the spine of the ancient tomes. Sticking out from in between several of the books were more photos. I pulled one out. This time Flora was dressed as a peasant girl holding a water urn, her feet bare, her hair long and loose.

  Her haunting gaze, though, was unmistakable.

  Landon peered over my shoulder at the photograph. “She’s captivating, isn’t she?”

  I nodded. When I continued to stare at the photo, Landon said, “Is she significant to the house, in some way?”

  “I’m not positive, but I think so. Her name is Flora. Flora Summerton.”

  “She once lived here?”

  I nodded. “But the ghost I’ve seen in this house was an older man, probably in his sixties. I haven’t seen . . . her here. Flora.”

  I was debating if to confide in Landon about last night’s interaction with Flora’s hitchhiking ghost, when I realized I heard the strains of an orchestra.

  “Do you hear that?” I asked.

  He nodded. “Lovely. I do adore a waltz.”

  “Of course you do. But where’s it coming from? It sounds like it’s coming from . . . back here, doesn’t it? Behind the bookshelf? Is that possible? There can’t be another hidden wall behind this one, can there?” Skip Buhner was a lousy contractor, but even he wouldn’t be that lazy, would he?

  Landon was examining the bookshelf, his broad hands searching the edges and joints of the wood.

  “What are you looking for?” I asked.

  “At Cambridge there’s a bookshelf set back into the wall like this, and it hides . . .”

  “What?”

  “The entrance to a secret passage.”

  Chapter Nineteen

  “A secret passage? Seriously?”

  “The students are fascinated by it. As are a few of the faculty, I must admit. I may have gone through it once or twice myself.”

  I ran my flashlight beam along all the seams, looking for a trigger. “How do you get it to open?”

  “With the one in Cambridge, if you remove the right book, there’s a mechanism behind it that allows the shelf to slide open.”

  Our eyes met for a long moment. Then, as though of one mind, Landon and I started pulling out books. I went straight for Frankenstein, thinking it would be the most likely, but found nothing behind it.

  “I suppose it’s unlikely, isn’t it?” Landon said when our search proved fruitless. “I mentioned it, of course, but it’s not as though I know anything about such things.”

  “Of course it’s unlikely,” I said. “Just like chasing a ghost is unlikely, and the idea that your sister’s death was somehow connected to this house is unlikely.”

  “Excellent point.”

  The music continued, growing louder. Ta da da dan, dan, daaaan. . . .

  Landon started humming along, and I feared he might soon ask me to join him in a waltz.

  “Shame about the broken lamp shade,” he said, reaching up to look at the cracked glass on the sconce. When he rotated the glass to inspect the crack, we both heard a loud click.

  Our eyes met.

  “What just happened?” I asked.

  “To paraphrase the immortal Professor Higgins, ‘By jove, I think we’ve got it.’ Try pushing the bookshelf. Gently, gently.”

  I pushed the bookshelf gently, and it moved, just a smidgen.

  “Now what?” I asked.

  “Now let’s try pushing it not so gently.”

  Landon and I lined up and put our shoulders against the bookshelf. “Ready on three? Ready, steady, go.”

  The bookshelf resisted, and rusty hinges screeched.

  “This thing needs a little WD-40,” I grunted.

  “It probably hasn’t been opened for decades. Let’s try again.”

  A few more moments of pressure and the bookshelf had budged enough to create an opening we could squeeze through.

  The strains of the orchestra were louder now, clearly emanating from deeper in the dark passage.

  “You wait here,” I said. “I’m going to check it out.”

  “As if I would allow you to go in there by yourself,” Landon scoffed. “Pass me the torch so you can have your hands free to ‘check things out.’ I’ll be your backup.”

  “I seem to recall you weren’t a Boy Scout. Sure you’re up for this?”

  “You seem to forget I was in Special Forces. I’m up for this.”

  I carry a head-mounted flashlight in my toolbox, so I handed Landon the “torch” and strapped the headlight on.

  We went in.

  The passage was narrow, only a couple of feet wide. Thick cobwebs, furry with dust, festooned every corner. The air was musty, sepulchral, as though the space hadn’t been opened for many years. The walls were unfinished and made of rough lumber—some of it, I imagined, old-growth redwood brought down from the Mendocino coast, in the decades following the Gold Rush when San Francisco was a boomtown.

  Photographs were tacked to the wood here and there, the only decoration. They were all of the same young woman: Flora as a Grecian goddess, Flora as nymph . . . Flora as muse.

  We made our way along the tiny passageway, following the sound of the orchestra. Despite my earlier bluster, I was grateful to have Landon at my back. I remained hypervigilant to ghosts or spirits of any kind, but apart from the music there was nothing otherworldly. Only the odd sensation of
being in a secret passage that might well have been sealed up a century ago.

  The passage ended in a T. Landon shone his flashlight down the passage to the right, then to the left. He shrugged.

  “Eenie, meenie, miney, moe,” I chanted and went to the left.

  We descended a narrow flight of stairs to a small landing, where the passage came to an abrupt end.

  Landon cast his light around the walls and ceiling, but there didn’t seem to be any way out. I recalled the Flynts discussing their visit to the Winchester Mystery House, in nearby San Jose. Sarah Winchester, in an effort to appease the spirits of those killed by her late husband’s rifles, had built onto the mansion incessantly. Stairways led to nowhere, doorways opened onto brick walls, and secret passages led to dead ends, just like this one. They were intended to confuse the spirits.

  Could that be the case here?

  While I was pondering this, Landon continued searching every inch of the passageway. At last he reached up to an overhead beam, and pulled a small brass lever.

  The music stopped abruptly.

  “What did you do?” I whispered.

  “I pulled a lever. Maybe I shouldn’t have.”

  “Too late now.”

  “Try pushing on the wall.”

  I did as he suggested, pushing then pulling. Nothing. But I felt something give and tried sliding a section of wall to the left, and it finally budged, squeaking loudly.

  It opened onto an empty storage closet. I tried the closet door.

  We were in a huge room, the far wall covered in mirrors.

  “Where are we?” Landon asked.

  “The Pilates studio,” I answered, a little disappointed. It seemed only right that a secret passage lead to some fascinating hidden room or mysterious discovery. “Dog and I were here the other day.”