“Suzanne White. You are accused of poisoning your husband and your neighbor! Is this true?”
The barrage of food abruptly ceased. I slowly got to my feet and looked around.
“Mrs. White? May I call you Suzanne? Please talk to me, Suzanne. I want to hear your side of the story.”
And she appeared. The image was flickering, like a ghost one might see in a movie. As though she was having a hard time manifesting, possibly because she had used up a lot of her supernatural energy throwing food at me.
She was a pretty woman in a simple blue dress and a starched white apron. Her short brown hair was set and she wore bright red lipstick. She reminded me of photographs of my grandmother in her kitchen, back when proud housewives used to dress up to cook.
Mrs. White looked decidedly peeved.
“Look at this mess!” she exclaimed, reaching for a sponge.
“Don’t blame me,” I said. “Don’t you remember? You did this.”
No answer. She had her back to me, scrubbing the sink.
Now what?
“Mrs. White. Do you know that you died? You are no longer of this world. It is time for you to leave, to move on. Get out of here.”
Her scrubbing became even more frenetic. When she spoke, it was as though she were talking to herself.
“I’ve got to get everything just so. The kitchen is the soul of the home. The kitchen must be spotless and don’t let the pie burn or I’ll beat you to within an inch of your life!”
The aroma of apple pie ceded to the stench of smoke, and Suzanne disappeared.
“Suzanne? Mrs. White? Please listen to me.” I lit the sage bundle and started to walk around the kitchen, smudging the corners. I had no idea if this would have any effect, but it gave me something to do. “I think you’ve done some things you aren’t proud of, but you don’t have to be afraid anymore. Your life was difficult, but it is over now. Your body no longer exists, your life here has ended. Do you understand me?”
Something rattled in the cupboard over the refrigerator again. This was the cupboard Eddie told me he couldn’t open. I took a hammer and chisel out of my toolbox.
My father always warned me against climbing on chairs, but I didn’t have a lot of choice. I dragged one of the kitchen chairs over to the refrigerator, stood on it, and reached for the cupboard doors.
I was doused with a cold liquid from behind and teetered on the rickety chair, but I tried to ignore it.
The cupboard doors had been painted shut with several thick coats of paint, and clearly hadn’t been opened in years. I jammed the tip of my chisel into the crack between the cabinet door and the frame, and hit the end with the hammer. The paint in the crack began to split, and I moved the tool over an inch. After several minutes of this—during which I tried my best to ignore the things Suzanne White was throwing around the kitchen—I was able to apply enough force to pop the cabinet door open.
Inside were several metal canisters, labeled SUGAR, FLOUR, COFFEE, TEA, and BAKING SODA. They were old, blackened with dirt and grime.
“Hey, Suzanne. Were these yours?”
The havoc in the kitchen ceased and Suzanne reappeared, wringing a dish towel in her hands. “Mustn’t open those!”
“Is this what you’re trying to hide?” I carefully stepped off the chair and placed the sugar canister on the counter. I used the chisel to pop the top off. Inside was a substance that, as far as I could tell, was regular old sugar. A little caked and lumpy, but otherwise white and crystalline.
Suzanne’s eyes were huge, as though terrified. If she really had poisoned her husband and a neighbor, could one of these canisters hold the poison? It would take a little lab work to figure it out, and since Suzanne White was long gone, I wasn’t sure I was willing to pay to find out the absolute truth.
“How about I get rid of these?” I offered, getting back up on the chair and bringing down the rest of the canisters. Behind them, in the far back, was an ancient package of rat poison. “And . . . the rat poison?”
“I—” Her eyes were huge, and she looked mortified. “I’m so sorry, I’m so so so sorry! Please, I’ll clean the kitchen, I’ll make it spotless, I won’t burn the pie. . . . Please!”
“Mrs. White,” I said in the firmest voice I could muster, while still trying to sound sympathetic. “Listen to me, Suzanne: You will no longer clean this kitchen. I know your secret now, so you don’t have to worry about it anymore. No more pies, you understand? You are free. I will take care of it, I will clean it, I promise. I will clean up everything, even the cupboard over the refrigerator.”
Slowly and deliberately, the ghost reached behind her waist and untied her apron. She hung it on a hook by the sink. She smoothed her hair and her skirt, and stalked out of the kitchen.
And disappeared.
Chapter Twenty-eight
“What the hell happened to you?” Dad asked as I emerged from the cottage. I had been doused with flour and milk and a variety of condiments, and I had egg in my hair. But I was smiling.
“Are you okay?” asked Venus.
“Yeah, you look pretty bad,” said Caleb.
“Yes, well, what can I tell you? This ghost busting is a messy business.”
Nonetheless, I was triumphant. I felt as though Suzanne White had moved on, which meant that I set out to rid the apartment of a ghost, and I had succeeded. And there weren’t even any bodies associated with this place. Other than those long dead, that is.
“I think she’s gone.”
“You mean gone, gone?”
I nodded. “Put up a bit of a fight, but I think she had been hiding her supplies in that cupboard over the refrigerator. I brought the things down, told her I would take care of them, and then told her to leave. And she did.”
“After covering you in foodstuffs?” asked Stan.
“She was trying to make herself known. Ghosts don’t have much choice as to how they communicate with the living. They can’t manipulate things the way we do, so sometimes it’s . . . unexpected.”
As I spoke, I thought about the Crosswinds ghosts. When Peregrine was yelling at me, was he trying to protect me? To get me off the roof for my own good? Could he be trying to keep me from discovering something dangerous in the darkroom?
“Looks to me like this particular ghost was pretty good at manipulating things,” Dad snorted.
“So what do we do now?” asked Carmen.
“I’ll meet you guys here tomorrow and we’ll do some cleaning. Not just regular cleaning—and there’s a big mess in the kitchen, I have to warn you—but also spiritual. We’ll use the smudge bundle, and sweep everything outside and then burn the broom. And ring a bell in all the corners.”
“What’s with the bell?” asked Luz.
It struck me as funny that the gang went along with the crazy ghost who throws food but drew the line at ringing a bell.
“Some people say it breaks up old energy, making it easier to dispel. Not sure if I believe that, but it couldn’t hurt.”
“I don’t know if I even want to go back in that place,” murmured Carmen.
“Yeah,” Caleb said, nodding sympathetically. “It’s creepy.”
“That’s why we’re doing the spiritual cleansing. It gets rid of all that weird juju, and then you can fill up the apartment with the joyful vibrations of youth.”
They continued to look at me like I was suggesting they play with doggy-doo-doo.
“Tell you what, guys, you wanted my help. It’s the middle of the night, I look and feel like a baking experiment gone horribly wrong, and I’m suggesting we be sure this place is clean and ghost-free by taking a few extra steps. And besides, do you have any idea how hard egg is to clean up once it’s dried on?”
“In that case, why don’t we take care of it tonight?” suggested Luz. “Why wait until morning?”
Because some of us habitual
ly get up at five a.m., I thought. But Luz was right: The students were clearly night owls, and there was no time like the present.
“Well, Stan, I think our work here is done,” said Dad.
“You’re not going to help with the cleanup?” I teased. “I thought you were my backup.”
“We were,” said Stan. “And we fulfilled our job description: You have emerged from the fracas battered but not dead. Get it? Battered? Flour, milk, and egg . . . ?”
I groaned. “What is it with the puns lately? Okay, fine, go home you two, and get some sleep. If I’m not mistaken there’s a pretty messy kitchen to clean up at home, as well.”
Luz and the students got started in the kitchen while I took a few minutes in the bathroom, trying to rid myself of the worst of the food residue. After that, it took us over an hour, but Diego hooked his iPod up to speakers and the kitchen cleanup was actually fun. Caleb and Carmen were whispering and giggling, Sinsi rocked a karaoke version of “Total Eclipse of the Heart,” and Eddie turned out to be a scrubbing machine.
We ended the process by turning off the music and reclaiming the house, sweeping out every room as the students proclaimed in loud voices that this was their place, and ringing the bell in each corner. Finally, we burned the broom in an old barbecue pit in the tiny backyard.
By the time we had finished it was nearly two in the morning, and as we gathered around the fire pit I wondered if the neighbors would see and wonder if a coven had moved in.
Gazing at the fire, Luz said, “Shouldn’t we say something? You know, to her memory?”
“She killed two people!” said Sinsi.
“Allegedly,” I felt compelled to say. “Not to excuse what she might have done, but I think she had a tough time of it. She was tortured by her fears—from what she said, her husband might have been abusive—and then maybe her guilt. Plus, she’s been trying to make sure no one accidentally got into her poison stash,” I said, thinking of the canisters sitting in a cardboard box in the back of my dad’s truck. He had promised to take them to the hazardous waste dump on Monday.
I wasn’t certain Suzanne White was sorry, or that she even fully comprehended what she had done—assuming she was guilty as charged. All I knew for sure was that it had happened a long time ago, and whatever judgment Suzanne White would be subject to was not an earthly one. At the very least, I thought, I had helped her move on to a place where she could face the consequences, or come back and try again, or whatever the next step was for us.
“Suzanne White,” I intoned. “May you move on and find solace, peace, and serenity, and the opportunity to right whatever wrongs you may have committed.”
“In a galaxy far, far away,” added Diego.
“Amen,” we said in unison.
• • •
“So what do we do about the landlady?” Luz asked around a yawn. It was two thirty in the morning, and we were sitting in her car chatting. Claiming that stress made her hungry, Luz was eating one of the dozen tamales my father had wrapped up for her to take home.
At the moment I was certain I would never eat again; though I figured that sensation would wear off tomorrow right around lunchtime.
“Tell her if she doesn’t sign an extended lease at the current low rate we’ll sic the ghost on her. Tell her I’m a professional, and I say ghosts aren’t put off by post office boxes.”
“Hmm. All right, I’ll send her a note tomorrow. And I will threaten her with ghosts.” She took a swig of mineral water. “Now that is a phrase I never thought I’d utter.”
“Luz, my friend, we’ve been through a lot together.”
“Meaning?”
“You should tell me about your ghost experience. Because I know something happened to you. And if you don’t tell me . . . I’m going to take home all the tamales.”
“Your dad would kill you, and then bring them back anyway.”
“True.”
There was a long pause. I gazed out the window, but there was nothing to see at this hour, even on a Saturday night. The bars in San Francisco close at two, so the only folks on the streets were working the swing shift, or sneaking into after parties, or up to no good. But Mermaid Cove Court was quiet as a tomb.
Finally, Luz said, “When I was little, I was really close to my grandmother, my abuelita. She got sick, but no one told me.”
“How old were you?”
“Five, maybe? Or six, I guess. . . . I was in the first grade. The thing is . . . I kept seeing her. She would come after school to meet me at the gate, and walk me home. I was so happy to see her, she used to have trouble walking but now she was able to go everywhere with me. One day we went to the park, and had long conversations about life, and her favorite flowers—lilies of the valley. It was all in Spanish, which was why I thought other people couldn’t understand her. And when these older kids tried to beat me up, she intervened and they ran away. She was my hero.”
I smiled. “Grandmas are the best.”
“I adored her,” she said with a nod. “But when I came home, my mother and a bunch of my aunties and cousins and neighbors were there—they had been looking everywhere for me, they thought I’d gone missing. I told them abuelita had taken me to the park, that she was much better now. They started crossing themselves, and one of the neighbors called me a bruja, a witch.”
She had tears in her eyes.
“Then, my cousin turns to me and says, ‘Abuelita died, dummy.’ Apparently she had died the weekend before. They thought I was too young, so no one told me. When I insisted I had just been with her, they told me I had seen something evil, unnatural.”
I wanted to reach out and comfort Luz, but knowing her as I did, a hug would be exactly the wrong thing to do right now. “That must have been pretty traumatic.”
“My mother was shaken, I could see that. She didn’t know what to think. But in the end I learned my lesson: When abuelita appeared to me again, I ran away, screaming and crying. I learned to be scared, I suppose.”
“This is hard stuff to comprehend, Luz. Everybody has a different take on it, depending on their religion, their life philosophy, the way they’re raised. . . .”
“I know, but—I’ll never forget the look in her eye when I ran away from her. It was like I broke her heart. Now, seeing what you do with spirits, I wonder . . . Do you think she was looking for help?”
“It’s hard to say. Probably she just wasn’t ready to leave you.”
“And I screamed and ran away.”
“Don’t be so hard on yourself, Luz. You were only a little girl. Don’t you think your grandmother understood? And if you haven’t seen anything since then, you probably don’t have a particular sensitivity. It’s likely she manifested because she hadn’t had a chance to say good-bye to you.”
She nodded and finished off the tamale, the emotional upset apparently having no effect on her appetite.
“Hey, I have an idea,” I said.
“Like your father would say: That’s serious trouble.”
“Cute. You and he really are quite the pair. Anyway, want to join me on a stakeout one night soon?”
She groaned. “I just spent tonight going up against a kitchen ghost! Wasn’t that enough to redeem myself?”
“Since I was the one getting egged, no, I don’t think it was enough. Also, I got the students out of your house, so you owe me one.”
She let out a big sigh. “I don’t like stakeouts. I always wind up having to pee. Guys have a definite advantage in that regard.”
“True. But nonetheless, I will pick you up Monday night, nine-ish? Just don’t drink a lot beforehand.”
• • •
When the phone rang the next morning, I let it go to voice mail. After all, it was Sunday. My crews had the day off, so theoretically so did I. Although, since I work for myself, and the office is in the house, I often wound up s
pending Sundays catching up on paperwork that didn’t get done the previous week, and anticipating the schedule for the next.
But last night, when I crawled into bed well after three in the morning after ejecting a kitchen ghost from the Mermaid Cove apartment and standing in the shower for a half hour trying to get egg out of my hair, I had decided that I wouldn’t work this Sunday. It had been an exhausting week. In addition to my construction work I’d confronted two ghosts and almost been killed and felt attracted to a man other than my boyfriend.
I needed a day off.
Too bad said boyfriend wasn’t flying in from New York until tomorrow night. I could only imagine how pleased Graham would be if I suggested we take in a matinee or pack a picnic. As I lolled in bed and tried to convince myself to go back to sleep, I thought about going to the beach. I lived in California, after all. People did things like that.
The phone rang again. Don’t look don’t look don’t. . . . I couldn’t stand it. I opened one eye and checked the screen: Annette Crawford.
Dammit.
“’Lo,” I croaked.
“I thought you were an early riser.”
“I am, normally, but last night was a little . . . active.”
“Hold it right there. I really don’t need to hear about your sex life.”
“Believe me—it wasn’t that kind of active.”
“Did somebody try to kill you again?” she asked, her voice taking on a serious tone.
“I wouldn’t have put it past her, had she been able. She threw eggs and stuff at me. And a pie.”
Annette chuckled. “Who was this? One of the Flynts? Let me guess: Lacey?”
“No. It was a ghost at that apartment complex I told you about.”
“I thought you told me ghosts couldn’t hurt you?”
“She didn’t hurt me, exactly. . . .”
“But they can throw things?”
“As I think I’ve made clear, I don’t really know what the ghost rules are. But this one did, indeed, manage to throw foodstuffs. But what I’d like to focus on is that she’s gone now, and I didn’t find a single body. She probably killed a couple of people, but it was a long time ago.”
Give Up the Ghost: A Haunted Home Renovation Mystery Page 24