Give Up the Ghost: A Haunted Home Renovation Mystery

by Juliet Blackwell

  I imagined Flora standing stiffly in her costumes, trying not to move, acceding to her father’s wishes even while plotting her own escape on her eighteenth birthday, when she would come into her inheritance. Fleeing during a celebratory ball marking the announcement of her engagement to another rich man.

  Peregrine didn’t materialize on the roof, nor was he scowling from the other side of the skylight when I went back down. But I thought of him throwing Landon and me out of his darkroom the other day.

  Was there something he didn’t want us to see?

  I climbed down the spiral stairs, and descended to the huge foyer, where I had left my bag. Inside was the framed photo of Flora from Chantelle’s apartment, along with the manila envelope Karla had given me. With these in hand, I crawled through the hole in the wall, moved the lamp shade until I heard the click of the mechanism releasing the bookcase, and then pushed. It opened a little easier this time, loosened up from our last trip through.

  I shone my flashlight as I made my way through the cobwebby passage. It dawned on me that I hadn’t talked to Andrew about what to do about the false walls and secret staircases and darkroom. Should I try to incorporate them into the remodel? Maybe Karla was right, after all: Maybe it was absurd to try to reclaim Crosswinds. It was too far gone; unless Andrew was willing to spend another year and a lot more money there was no way to return it to its former glory.

  That was a depressing thought.

  When I got to the darkroom I lingered in the passageway for a moment. The rational part of my brain knew that the ghostly yelling couldn’t actually harm me, but my gut didn’t seem to be getting the message.

  Peregrine Summerton frightened me when he yelled. His anger and despair felt immediate, and overwhelming.

  But now the darkroom seemed quiet. The dusty old canisters and jars, the cobwebs, the photos hanging on the rope, the ancient camera on the tripod—all was still. The room looked just the same as it had the other day and, rather like in Suzanne White’s kitchen, all the things that the ghost had knocked over and scattered had been put back in order.

  I stepped into the room. “Mr. Summerton? I’d like to talk to you.”

  Turning around slowly, I searched my peripheral vision, looking for his apparition. I had been buoyed by my success with the ghost of Suzanne White and it occurred to me that maybe, just maybe, I was getting better at calling spirits.

  Or not.

  “Mr. Summerton? Please try. . . . I brought back some more of your photographs. I want to help you.”

  Another moment passed. Nothing.

  I set the framed photo on the counter, and then took out the contents of the envelope, splaying the photos in an arc. They showed Flora as a proper Victorian lady, Flora as a tavern wench, Flora as a goatherd. I still had a few more photos of Flora in my jobsite file, so I made a mental note to bring those back next time I came.

  I started searching through cabinets and stacks of old photographic plates and papers. The only problem was, I didn’t know what I was looking for.

  But finally I unearthed an old ledger that reminded me of Dingo’s big book of hauntings. And just as with Dingo’s book, this one was stuffed with yellowed newspaper clippings and random advertisements, mostly regarding photographic equipment.

  The paper was so fragile it crumbled, so I took care to turn the pages with the gentlest touch of my fingertips along the edges.

  Peregrine’s handwriting was shaky and hard to read, and the ink was faded, but I could make out several of the entries: notations on experiments with different chemical baths for his photographs, and lists of costume ideas for Flora: Peasant Girl, Southern Belle, Dance Hall Girl.

  And there were other, more telling notes.

  She is too much like me. When she hears the wind shift, she clambers up to watch the sea. It is indecent for a girl. The things she says . . . She is twice the man my boys should be.

  And:

  I feel almost as if this camera, these photographic renditions might capture her, hold her here. Otherwise, she will slip through my fingers. I fear for her. What will the world make of my girl’s unseemly bravery and independence? She will be destroyed.

  And finally:

  She has gone. Fled. And I have only myself to blame. Along with her go my political aspirations, my best hopes for the Summerton family. And the very finest part of me. Her mother is distraught and treats me with silence. I am left with my photographs—that is all.

  While I read, I realized I could hear the strains of a waltz. And a man’s anguished voice.

  It wasn’t Peregrine. This was yet another old man. I closed the ancient journal and made my way along the passageway and down the stairs. I stood on my tiptoes and pressed the brass lever to open the door, and stepped into the exercise room storage closet.

  Cautiously, I opened the door to the Pilates studio.

  George Flynt was standing by the window, his head in his hands, moaning loudly.

  “Mr. Flynt? Are you all right?” I asked as I approached him.

  When he looked up at me, his eyes looked wild. His gray hair was askew, he appeared unshaven.

  “Where did you come from?” he asked, twisting around to look around the room.

  “I was upstairs, on the roof. Installing the weathervane. I found the original.”

  “Oh,” he said, underwhelmed.

  “I apologize. I think I’m intruding. I’ll go.”

  He let out a sound of despair. “Do you have any idea how much the Flynt name means to me? Do you? I’ve spent my entire life building my fortune, my reputation. I came from nothing—you know that? Not like my son—I gave that boy everything, but it turned out it was too much. Silver spoon in his mouth did him no damned good. So I went the other way with the grandkids, and where did that get me?”

  When I first saw him, head hanging low, I thought he was a distraught old man. But now I wasn’t so sure.

  “I think I’ve intruded on your privacy,” I said. “I’ll just go—”

  “You damned psychics. First Chantelle, now you. And if you’re so good at reading minds, I guess you know what I’m doing here,” he said, walking toward me. He was between me and the doors. I could probably take him, but what if he had a weapon? I backed up slowly. “Mason tells me you and that computer genius from England hacked into my business accounts.”

  “I don’t know anything, believe me,” I said, my mind racing. He had nearly backed me into the corner. “And I’m no good at computers. Truly wretched. Hacking’s wrong, isn’t it? Illegal, even. I mean, it’s hard to know the intricacies of such things, but really—”

  As he loomed toward me, I shoved him, hard. He wasn’t a large man, and he was elderly. He stumbled backward.

  I ran into the closet and slammed the door, then rushed into the tunnel, closing the door behind me. Unless George was superstitious enough to believe I had somehow mastered the skills of disappearing, he would quickly figure out the secret passage. I had a few minutes, tops.

  It was enough. It would have to be.

  I could hear the weathervane, and the sound of the waltz, which didn’t surprise me—this sort of thing was probably stirring up old Peregrine’s ghost. Violence had a way of doing that.

  As I rushed through the dark hallway I pulled out my phone and tried to call 911 but I didn’t get any reception. Dammit.

  Cobwebs stroked my face, and I tripped over an errant bit of trim as I raced through the dark corridor. Finally I found the back of the bookcase at the foyer, and shoved as hard as I could.

  It swung open and I lost my balance, falling flat on my face.

  I had to hurry. Chances were good old man Flynt had either figured out the secret passage, or was even now racing up the stairs. The only thing I had in my favor was his advanced age.

  I scrambled to my feet and climbed through the hole in the sheetrock,
only to realize that Mason was standing in the foyer.

  “Mason! Your grandfather—”

  “He’s a mean old coot, isn’t he?” Mason said. “He fired me today, and disowned me. Can you believe that? His own grandson.”

  Realization was dawning, and it wasn’t looking good.

  “But unless I’m mistaken he hasn’t had a chance to tell anyone. Nor will he.” Mason looked around and casually pulled a gun out from under his jacket. “Speaking of Grandpop, have you seen him? He was supposed to meet me here. To ‘talk.’”

  “I have, yes,” I said. “He’s up on the fourth floor.”

  “Liar,” he said quietly. “He has a hard time with the stairs. Arthritic knees. And he’s claustrophobic, afraid of elevators. You believe that? A captain of industry, but he’s scared of elevators. Hey, that’s not a bad idea—thanks!”

  Ugh. I hated to think what idea I might have given him. I had pegged George as a nasty piece of work, but it was friendly, peacekeeping Mason all along.

  “You know, Mason,” I began. It occurred to me to point out that he couldn’t possibly track down everyone who might know about his crime in order to kill us all; that would have been quite the bloodbath. “I’m not the one who uncovered the embezzling of Tempus. I think Egypt—”

  “Egypt?” Mason swore a long streak. “I took care of her.”

  So much for using logic when facing a murderer. When would I learn?

  “You want to hear something funny?” Mason asked.

  “Sure. You bet,” I said, hoping to stall until something, anything, came to mind. I thought about making a grab for the gun but while I’m no waif, Mason was a healthy young man. He probably had me in the pure strength category. And it was just too easy for him to pull that trigger.

  “I thought you could read my mind, like Chantelle did, so I followed you to that salvage yard. But I finally realized you didn’t know anything, you were so clueless when you came to Tempus. Just a clueless idiot, like the rest of them.”

  “Well, now, that’s true,” I started to say when I realized I heard the sound of a waltz coming through the wall, and the squeaking of the weathervane spinning overhead. A faraway door slammed, and the lights blinked.

  A worried look passed over Mason’s pleasant features.

  “What are you doing? Stop it.”

  “I’m calling out to Chantelle,” I lied. As I said it I decided it wasn’t half bad, as far as ideas for not getting killed went.

  “Stop it!”

  “She’s already on the other side, Mason. As you know better than anyone, since you put her there. And I gotta say, she isn’t very happy about it.”

  He started looking around him.

  I rolled my eyes skyward and held my hands out to my sides palms up, thumb touching forefinger, as I’d learned in that infernal yoga class.

  I don’t know any actual spells or chants, so I took a chance that he wasn’t bilingual, and started rattling off the names of tools in Spanish: “Destornillador, herramienta, Chantelle. Llave inglesa, hilo de plomada!”

  “Stop that! What are you doing?”

  “Calling on Chantelle, of course,” I said, closing my eyes and continuing to chant: “Martillo, piquet, Chantelle. Sierra circular!”

  “That’s crap! You said you can’t do stuff like that.”

  I opened one eye. “I said I could talk to the dead, and I can. Chantelle couldn’t tell me who killed her, but she sure as shingles can show up right now and give me a hand.”

  Someone was coming down the staircase.

  Mason whirled around and fired off a shot.

  Chapter Thirty-one

  The bullet had no effect on Peregrine Summerton, who stood looking as full of rage as ever—though now that I’d read his journal, I thought I saw deep sorrow in those ghostly eyes.

  At that moment George Flynt emerged from the stairwell from the ground floor. He was pulling himself up with help from the rail, yelling, “Mason, stop!”

  Mason fired at Peregrine again, but hit George, who went down like a sack of potatoes.

  “Damned old man!” I wasn’t sure at first whether Mason was referring to Peregrine or George, but then he clarified: “Everyone else at school had a trust fund, but I have to work every damned day of my life?”

  “Listen to me, Mason,” I said. “Hey! Only your grandfather knows about the embezzling, right?” That was a blatant falsehood, since Annette told me the police were already investigating this angle. But I was desperately trying to think of some way of distracting him, so he didn’t shoot again and hit his target. “I can fix this!”

  “Fix it, how?”

  “Up in Egypt’s room she has all that high-tech equipment, she knows about what was going on, right? Well, I happen to be a computer genius myself. Remember? You told your grandfather I hacked into the computers at Tempus.”

  “I was lying when I said that. I was hoping he’d go after you.”

  “Okay, but it happened to be true. Let’s go up there, and I can wipe away all traces of the evidence. How hard could it be?”

  He studied my face, as though trying to decide whether or not to believe me.

  “You mean like Dad did, when he hired Egypt to wipe the Internet of all the references to Crosswinds being haunted?”

  “Exactly. That’s exactly what I mean. Look how successful she was, and we’ll do the same.”

  I didn’t have much of a plan. But old cranky-pants Peregrine had disappeared, darn the man, and I didn’t know how badly George was hurt. If I could get Mason away from him, maybe George could call for help. And maybe I’d see Peregrine again and freak Mason out, or I could trip him as we climbed up the stairs, or I could send a computer message for help, or . . . something.

  “Come on, Mason. I understand how you feel, you’ve been working so hard and it just doesn’t seem fair. You know what? My dad’s just like that: No matter how hard I work it’s just not good enough.” I was working on my lying skills. “But we’ll go take care of things, and then you won’t have to worry.”

  I wasn’t kidding myself. Mason had been cold-blooded enough to knife Chantelle at close range because he thought she read his mind. He would dispatch me just as dispassionately as soon as I was no longer useful.

  I had my own cell phone in my pocket, but I couldn’t manage to dial 911 without looking. And it would be too risky to take it out.

  “All right,” said Mason. “But I have to do something with Grandpop.”

  Grandpop opened his mouth, no doubt to say something sneering and dismissive. Behind Mason, I held my finger to my mouth in the universal “shhh” sign and widened my eyes. Now would be the time to shut the hell up, old man.

  “How about we tie him up?” I suggested. “He’s so old and he can barely walk and you shot him. Let him bleed out right here.”

  “You think?”

  “I don’t think you should risk another gunshot. Not in this neighborhood. Somebody’s bound to hear and call the cops.”

  “Good point. Okay. Use that drapery cord and tie him up. Tightly.”

  I took the cord over to where George sat on the floor. He was fully conscious, and I didn’t think he was in any danger of bleeding out, as his white shirt showed only a small red stain.

  “Sorry,” I whispered as I crouched and started tying his hands. “Are you okay?”

  “My golf game will be shot to hell,” he muttered. “But I think it’s a flesh wound.”

  “Oh, and sorry for knocking you down earlier.”

  He snorted.

  “Stop talking!” Mason said.

  But as I finished tying the knot, I leaned in and whispered, “Fake a heart attack.”

  George immediately started hyperventilating and as I was pretending to tie up his hands, moaned and keeled over.

  “What happened? What did you do?�
�� asked Mason, as though worried I had just hurt his beloved Grandpop.

  “I don’t know,” I said. “It’s . . . probably a heart attack. All this stress.”

  Mason nodded slowly. “It’s hard to believe, someone like him, you think he’ll go on forever but he’s mortal like the rest of us.”

  “That’s true. We should probably call nine-one-one, get the paramedics here.”

  “Are you crazy? If he dies now, I won’t have to deal with him later.”

  It had been worth a shot. George lay on the floor, convincingly pale and inert. Part of me feared he’d had a real heart attack, but whether the family scion was alive or dead wasn’t the biggest of my problems at the moment.

  Mason moved in and checked to see that the cord was tied tightly enough. He nodded.

  “Good job. Now, hand me his cell phone. And yours too, now that I think about it.”

  I set my hopes on tripping Mason as we mounted the stairs to the fourth floor. Or maybe Peregrine would be helpful for once and scare the crap out of the man with the gun, or throw a pie or something.

  “Here, let’s use the elevator,” said Mason in that friendly tone I was used to. As though he just wanted to spare me the exertion of the stairs.

  “I’d rather use the stairs.”

  “What, claustrophobic too? What is it with you people? Time to face your fears, young lady.”

  He gestured with the gun and I headed to the elevator, which was small, making for a very tight fit. Mason and I were basically chest-to-chest in there.

  I was trying to avoid his eyes.

  The doors opened at the fourth floor, and Mason scanned the scene before allowing me out.

  “Okay, let’s go.”

  Egypt’s door was locked, as usual. Mason rattled the knob, in a way that reminded me of his father trying to get in, just a few days ago, the first time I set foot in this haunted mansion.

  “Dammit. Why would she lock it?”

  I had to laugh. Until he raised the gun in my direction.

  “I’m sorry, Mason. It’s just that your father said exactly the same thing, the first time I took a tour of the house with him. I think you’re more like him than you know.”