Give Up the Ghost: A Haunted Home Renovation Mystery

by Juliet Blackwell

  “Okay, I’m going to let that one go for the moment, because I have my hands full. Could you meet me at Chantelle’s apartment?”

  I groaned.

  “What, you have something better to do?” she demanded.

  “I was going to the beach.”

  “Which one?”

  “I hadn’t gotten that far with my thinking. It just seemed like something people do on their day off.”

  Another chuckle. “When’s the last time you went to the beach, here or any other place?”

  There was a long pause while I thought. “High school, maybe? No, wait—college!”

  “You are pathetic. You’re a workaholic, like me. Might as well face it.”

  I checked the clock and blew out a breath. “Okay, I can meet you there in an hour. Should I bring any special ghost stuff?”

  “Do you have any special ghost stuff?”

  “Not really. I accidentally dropped the EMF reader in the toilet, and I’ve never really gotten the hang of the infrared camera. But I could go by the ghost supply shop if you think it would help.”

  “Nah, it’s not that sort of thing. I just wanted your take on a few of the items we found at her place. If Chantelle decides to appear to you, great, but it’s not about that.”

  We signed off.

  Chapter Twenty-nine

  There was no one in the lobby when I arrived.

  “Gabe?” I called, then realized that the man probably didn’t work here twenty-four/seven. Probably there were other people on staff—and most likely one of them had run to park another guest’s car.

  Just then I sensed something out of the corner of my eye, an arm going up . . .

  I whirled around, dropping the bag I was carrying and crouching slightly the way I’d seen Landon do.

  But it was just Gabe in the small side corridor, doing some sort of Tai-Chi thing, apparently so focused he didn’t hear me come in or call for him.

  I took a couple of deep breaths and tried to relax. My heart pounded, and my bones ached. I don’t do well with too little sleep.

  “You okay?” Gabe asked, picking up the bag I dropped.

  “Sure,” I croaked, exchanging my keys for the bag.

  “S’okay,” he said with a shrug. “Everybody’s been on edge since the murder. Lot of blood.”

  Annette walked in. Her intelligent eyes flickered from my face to Gabe’s, then back to me. “Everything all right?”

  “Sure,” said Gabe.

  I nodded.

  “Let’s go,” she said to me, and Gabe watched as we got in the elevator.

  “I’m going to assume you checked him out?” I asked as the car sped silently up nine floors.

  “Gabe? Of course. We have a pretty good idea of when Chantelle was killed, because you called and talked with her, and her brother arrived at two fifty. Gabe was on the security cam the whole time, except when he ran for cars. I think he’s just weird.”

  “Is that a professional assessment?”

  “Yes, indeed.”

  “Oh, hey, these are for you,” I said, handing her the bag.

  “What is it?”

  “Tamales. Be careful, a couple of them have pineapple in them. I tried to stop it from happening, but I was outmaneuvered.”

  She smiled. “Thank you. I love tamales.”

  “So tell me what you want me to look for in Chantelle’s apartment.”

  “I’d rather not. I was hoping you could just see if you saw anything you found pertinent, first, so I don’t color your expectations.”

  The elevator doors slid open and we headed down the hall to the right. Crime scene tape had once crisscrossed Chantelle’s door, but it now hung down in limp strips.

  “That doesn’t bode well. . . .” Annette murmured, her hand hovering over the gun in her holster.

  She gestured to me to stay where I was, out in the hall, then stood to the side of the door, her back to the wall. She leaned over to turn the knob and pushed open the door.

  “SFPD,” she called. “Police! Anybody here?”

  Silence. Finally she peeked around the doorframe, then entered with caution, her gun drawn.

  “Police!” I heard her call again. I could hear a door opening and some muted thumping from inside the apartment. And then, silence.

  “Annette?”

  I peeked my head around the corner. When I didn’t see anything, I crept inside.

  “I told you to wait outside,” Annette said from behind me.

  I jumped. “I was . . . just making sure you were okay.”

  Her mouth kicked up in a half smile. “I’m the one with the gun, remember?”

  I nodded. “Did you find anything?”

  “No, but it looks like the place has been gone through. I gotta say, I don’t think this building has what you’d call a crack security team. There’s a camera in the lobby, but the ones on the back door and the garage weren’t working when Chantelle was killed.”

  The mess on the floor where Chantelle had lain had not yet been cleaned up. I had learned on my first murder scene that when a crime takes place on private property, it is up to the homeowners to bring in the crime scene cleanup folks. Sometimes they had to replace carpets and wallboard to get the bloodstains out. My early-morning coffee churned in my gut.

  “What do you suppose they were looking for?” I asked.

  “The same thing I was hoping you’d see,” she said. “Which is: I don’t know. I was hoping you might see something out of place, something that might serve as a clue.”

  We spent the next several minutes looking around, but saw nothing suspicious, nothing that might tell me anything.

  Neither did I see Chantelle. I had really been hoping she might appear, send a sign, throw a pie, anything.

  And then my eyes alighted on a silver frame hanging over Chantelle’s desk. It held a sepia-toned photograph of a young woman holding an Italian half mask up to her face. A little Post-it note stuck to the frame had the name, Flora, along with a series of dates, written in purple ink.

  “Every couple of weeks for the past few months,” Annette said, reading the dates on the note. “Mean anything to you?”

  “I think it’s possible that Chantelle saw Flora Summerton’s ghost walking on California Street.”

  “You wanna back up and explain that sentence to me?”

  I gave Annette the rundown, as best I understood it, of Flora, the hitchhiking ghost. “I saw her myself the other day, and it occurred to me that her favorite stretch of California is awfully close to Chantelle’s apartment. If Chantelle was as gifted a psychic as everyone seems to think, it’s not hard to imagine she encountered Flora’s ghost.”

  “So you think she finagled this job, somehow, to get into Crosswinds and figure out how to get Flora home? Seems rather convoluted, without a lot of payoff.”

  “When you say it like that, it does sound a little far-fetched. But . . . maybe it all just came together, like it was meant to be.”

  Annette looked worried. “I can handle the fact that we’re discussing ghosts as though we’re rational people, but you start throwing around phrases like ‘meant to be’ and I might have to strangle you.”

  “Got it. Annette, would it be all right to take the photo back to Crosswinds? I have a theory that one of the things that has stirred up the ghost there is that people have been removing these photographs.”

  She nodded. “Sure.”

  “Thanks. Anyway, I don’t really see anything else—”

  On a bureau was a bright batik scarf, full of Caribbean flowers. I picked it up, the silk soft in my hands.

  “This looks familiar . . . ,” I said.

  Annette nodded. “Egypt’s scarf, right? She has been high on the list of persons of interest.”

  “You think she was here, looking
for something?”

  “Could well be. Egypt and Chantelle, after meeting at Crosswinds, formed an interesting kind of partnership.”

  “Seriously? Chantelle certainly knew how to make friends and influence people. She must work fast; it wasn’t that long ago she did the reading on the house, was it?”

  “Almost a month. A lot can happen in a month.”

  “Do you think all this has something to do with allegations of embezzlement at Tempus?”

  “What makes you think that?”

  “Karla Buhner mentioned Stephanie was upset about it.”

  Annette nodded slowly. “And on top of that, someone hacked into the Tempus computer system.”

  “Was it Egypt?”

  “Not sure. But apparently she’s quite the computer whiz. She wouldn’t give us access to her room, though, and because of her association with Chantelle and Chantelle’s connection to the Flynts and Tempus, Ltd., I was hoping to get a warrant to take a look at her computers. But . . .”

  “But?”

  “She was found down by Fisherman’s Wharf. Hit and run.”

  “What? When?”

  “Last night. She’s in serious condition, hasn’t been able to talk to us yet. Witnesses saw a black truck, no markings. Only a partial license plate. Not much to go on.”

  I let that one sink in for a moment.

  “Who brought the allegations of embezzlement at Tempus?”

  “Official questions were raised during a routine audit, but there were whispers before that. It’s quite a moneymaking place, lots of cash changing hands, so it’s hard to pinpoint what’s going on. The Flynts have not exactly been cooperative. You’re right, by the way: that Stephanie is a piece of work.”

  “You talked to her again?”

  She nodded. “She tried spouting a bunch of Buddhist crap, but lost it when I pushed her.”

  I had to smile. “Buddhist ‘crap’?”

  “I’m just saying, if you walk the walk I respect you. If you use it as a shield to hide behind, it’s crap. Anyway, it turns out Andrew was having an affair with Chantelle. And get this: George and Chantelle appear to have had a brief encounter, as well. With what you overheard in the restroom, and what we found in her appointment book, they both fessed up.”

  “Hard to imagine of old man Flynt, isn’t it? He always spoke of Chantelle so . . . dismissively.”

  “She was a beautiful woman. And by all accounts, fascinating. I find those two factors go a long way when it comes to attraction.”

  “I see why they were attracted to her, but it’s harder to understand from her vantage point.”

  “Never underestimate the power of money.”

  “She was blackmailing them?”

  “No, actually. But she was using her influence—I’m gonna let you use your imagination as to what that entailed—to get in on the ground floor of Tempus, Ltd. Egypt was helping her to position herself as a spokesperson, and if everything went according to plan they stood to make some big bucks when the company went public.” She tilted her head and looked at me. “You think Chantelle had any special knowledge about it doing well in the IPO?”

  I smiled. “I think if her special sight worked that way, she wouldn’t have had to ask her brother for a loan.”

  “Good point.”

  “Speaking of that . . .” I had to ask. “What about Landon?”

  “Chantelle’s brother? His taxi from the airport arrived about four minutes before you did. Gabe verified that, and it was backed up by the security tape of the lobby. There’s no way Landon could have let himself in here, killed Chantelle, and gotten cleaned up before you arrived. Not with this amount of blood splatter.”

  My stomach lurched again. Not enough sleep and too much coffee and talk of blood splatter didn’t make for an easy morning. “Okay, good, if you’re sure.”

  She tilted her head and gave me a questioning look. “You have some reason to suspect Landon Demetrius that you haven’t shared with me?”

  I shrugged. “Not really. I mean, not as such.”

  “That means nothing to me. Spill.”

  “No, I mean it’s really nothing . . . just that I sort of like him.”

  “Like him?”

  “I mean”—I could feel my cheeks burn—“like him. I feel . . . attracted to him.”

  “I thought you were with Graham?”

  “I am. It’s not like I’ve done anything about it.”

  She fixed me with one of her intense cop looks. “So you’re saying that because you sort of like this guy . . .”

  “It made me wonder if he might be a murderer.”

  She gave me the lifted eyebrow treatment.

  “I’m just saying,” I tried to clarify. “It doesn’t seem totally out of the realm of possibility that I’d fall for the main suspect. You know, given that it’s me we’re talking about.”

  She seemed to be trying to stifle a smile. “You do give yourself a hard time, don’t you? Couldn’t it just be as simple as the fact that you like him, and maybe you and Graham need to have a talk?”

  “I suppose,” I said, noticing a huge crystal ball sitting on an elaborate stand on the coffee table and wondering, if I stared long enough into its depths, would it hold any answers for me? “Though things are rarely simple when it comes to me and mine.”

  We headed back down to the lobby. Annette told Gabe the apartment seemed to have been broken into and she was going to need to see the security tapes for the past several days. Annette was one of those people who never had to yell to get her point across. He blanched and apologized obsequiously, then ran for her car.

  “To be fair, if he’s running in and out, parking and retrieving cars he can hardly watch over the desk all the time,” I said.

  “Well, I’ll check the tapes and see if they tell us anything. Are you off to the beach, now?”

  “Yeah, maybe,” I said, though truth to tell I hadn’t planned for it when I left the house, so I had no picnic or blanket or anything. Still. I could head out to Stinson Beach, talk a walk along the cliffs, soak up a little sun if it was warm enough. . . .

  Gabe pulled up in Annette’s car, tires screeching.

  “Have fun at the beach,” Annette said. “And stay away from ghosts of shipwrecks past.”

  “You bet. Thanks, Annette.”

  Chapter Thirty

  Who was I kidding? I wasn’t going to the beach. I headed to Crosswinds.

  I still had the weathervane in my car, and my toolbox. On the one hand, I knew darned well I shouldn’t be traipsing around up on a roof by myself. It was against basic safety procedure.

  But on the other hand, I wanted to put this weathervane back where it belonged. It was the first haunted thing I had ever heard at Crosswinds, and what Nancy had said made sense to me: The vane seemed, somehow, magical.

  Maybe if I installed the antique and let it spin in the wind and squeak for real, Peregrine’s ghost would warm up to me a little and tell me something useful. Or perhaps Chantelle, if she was connected to Flora somehow, could manage to make contact with me here.

  Chantelle seemed like a force of nature; I wished I could have gotten to know her when she was alive. Not to mention that had I been closer to the psychic, I would have had a much better idea of who could have committed such a heinous crime.

  Egypt mentioned Chantelle had met with each of the Flynts separately when she did her reading at the house. What if one of them was embezzling from Tempus, Ltd., and Chantelle had intuited enough to figure it out? In the run-up to the IPO such allegations might have been devastating, right?

  I didn’t really know enough about big business to understand how that would work. In Turner Construction the principals—Dad, Stan, and yours truly—drew our salaries from the company, and shared any profits on a quarterly basis. If one of us was embezzling funds
it would reduce the others’ share of the profits, but it wouldn’t affect salaries unless the theft was extreme.

  But surely the bookkeeping for a company like Tempus, Ltd. was not nearly as straightforward as Turner Construction. Probably someone could have been skimming off profits for a very long time without getting caught.

  • • •

  Just as I pulled up to Crosswinds, I realized I had forgotten to make contact with Landon after the memorial service yesterday.

  I hesitated for a moment, then texted, Sorry I wasn’t able to say hello in person yesterday. Hope you’re doing well. Guess what! Found the weathervane!

  Then I let myself in through the front door, mounted the stairs, passed by Egypt’s still-locked door—saying a little prayer that she’d be okay—and climbed out onto the roof. I moved carefully, taking note of the varying slopes and treading carefully on the cantilevered eaves. Mounting the weathervane in its original position on the roof didn’t take much: I attached the Phillips head screwdriver bit to my power drill and used it to screw the bracing onto the peak of the roof, then attached the weathervane. It was a temporary job—I would ask Jeremy to build a new metal brace to make sure the vane could withstand whatever storm might whip in off the bay.

  But it would do for now. I watched happily as it spun around in the breeze. Looking out at the stunning view, I imagined Flora standing on the top of the turret, hearing the squeaking of the weathervane as she gazed out to the vast unknown of the world beyond the horizon.

  And then I imagined her father, Peregrine, scowling at her and yelling at her to come back in. So he could take more pictures of her? I imagined him trailing around after her, like those really annoying people at parties so intent on having a photographic record of everything that they ruin the evening.

  But this was back in the day, when taking a photo required a lot of equipment, and the subject had to keep absolutely still for the long exposure or the final result would be blurred.

  Again I thought of old movies from the Wild West, the popping sound of the old-fashioned flashbulb, the burst of smoke and fire.