He looked uncomfortable, torn between being pleased and insulted.
“He seems like a good man,” I said.
“He slept with Chantelle. She rejected me but went for him? It’s like Grandpop always says: It’s all about the money.”
“Why did you kill her?”
“She read my mind, you believe that? When she came here to figure out what was going on with the ghosts. . . . I should have skipped that particular family night, but Mom insisted.”
“So she threatened you with exposure?”
“At first she wanted money, but I pointed out that was why I had to steal it, because I didn’t have any money. Not real money, because of Grandpop’s insistence on treating us like salaried employees. So she said she would keep quiet if I worked with her, got her in on the ground floor at Tempus in time for her to make a killing in the IPO.”
“And you were living up to your end of the deal, right?”
“I was! And I had to go up against Grandpop to do it. But then Egypt hacked in and figured things out and wanted part of the action, and now Grandpop . . .”
He shook his head, and I saw tears in his eyes. He swore and kicked the locked door, a frustrated little boy.
“If we can’t get in . . .” He let out a long exasperated breath. “I don’t know. I guess I shoot you now, then go take care of Grandpop if he’s still alive, and take off.”
The weathervane squeaked loudly overhead.
“Oh hey, that reminds me,” I said. “There’s a spare key to Egypt’s room up on the roof. She told me.”
“Up on the roof?” he frowned. “Why the roof?”
“Because Egypt wanted to keep everyone out of her room. She wanted a little privacy; can’t blame her for that.”
“Why the roof?” he repeated.
“Would you think to look for a key on the roof?”
“No, I guess not. Where is it?”
“Under the eaves. Want me to get it? There’s no way for me to escape up there, and I’ll come right back.”
“You could call to the neighbors for help.”
“But you’d just shoot me, so that wouldn’t do me any good.”
“I’ll go with you.”
Rats. Still, maybe George had managed to go for help. I had tied only his hands, so he could have run. Except that he was not a young man, and I’d pushed him to the ground, and then he’d been shot and he had bad knees.
Where the hell was Peregrine? Why couldn’t old cranky-pants show up when a person needed him? When he came down the stairs earlier, I had been sure he would be my salvation.
Instead, as we started up the spiral stairs, Mason at my back, there were photos of Flora on every other step. Flora dressed as an acrobat, as a wood sprite, as an equestrian. And beside her, in one of the photographs, was Chantelle. Dressed just like her, standing arm in arm.
“Did you notice the photos?” I asked Mason.
He had been stepping on them, apparently not caring.
“Destornillador, herramienta, Chantelle,” I started muttering. “Llave inglesa, hilo de plomada! Chantelle!”
“Stop that, or I’ll—”
“She’s already here, Mason, look! She’s here in the photos!” I picked it up and thrust it at him. He grabbed it.
“What? How—”
While he was distracted I shoved the skylight open and bolted through, then slammed it shut. I raced across the turret roof to the ladder and shimmied down, landing on the flat part of the roof.
Chapter Thirty-two
Mason popped up through the window and shot once, hitting an eave by my ear, splinters raining down all around me.
The weathervane spun wildly.
Mason started down the ladder. While his back was turned to me I threw myself at him, slamming his gun hand as hard as I could against the metal rung.
He dropped the gun and we both lunged for it, rolling on the roof. Suddenly there was another presence with us.
“Get off the roof!”
Finally Peregrine decides to show up, I thought, as Mason and I struggled, both of us with our hands on the gun. Mason didn’t seem to notice the ghostly voice, intent as he was on wresting the gun from me.
We were locked together, rolling on the slanted section of the roof, while he tried to use sheer force to turn the muzzle of the gun toward me.
There was no way he would miss this time.
I concentrated every ounce of strength on keeping the gun at bay. But the muzzle turned toward me, millimeter by millimeter. My strength was almost gone; I was outmuscled.
Suddenly Peregrine was right in our faces.
“What is the meaning of this?” he yelled. “And who is that man bleeding in my hallway?”
“Ahhhh!” Mason screamed, rearing back and letting go of the gun.
Without thinking about it, I fired. Mason looked stunned, and a bloom of red appeared on the shoulder of his shirt.
“Mason, I’m sorry,” I said, inanely apologizing to the man trying to kill me. “I’ll get help, wait—”
But Peregrine wasn’t waiting. He was berating Mason, putting his ghostly face right into Mason’s, giving him a dressing-down. “Leave me in peace! Leave me my photographs! They’re all I have left! Leave me my Flora!”
Mason backed away, crawling on the slippery roof tiles, making a whimpering sound.
“Mason, be careful, you’re going too far—”
One foot fell over the edge of the roof. There was nothing for him to hold on to; he splayed, belly-down, on the shingles, trying to keep from slipping farther. He looked behind him, surprise registering on his face.
Then he held out his uninjured hand to me. “Help me! Please!”
I looked around for something to hold on to. If I tried to help him up, would I be able to? Or would he pull me over the edge with him?
“Wait, Mason. Don’t move, let me—”
I whipped off my leather belt, attached it to the base of the weathervane, then held on to it with one hand while reaching to Mason with the other.
He reached up for me, and grasped my hand. I tried to pull him up, hoping he didn’t pull my arm out of its socket. The gun was still in my pocket and I tried to calculate how quickly I could get to it, once Mason was up and safe and, no doubt, newly homicidal.
I heard someone on the turret roof and twisted around to look.
“Landon!” I yelled.
No ladder for him. Swearing a blue streak, he leaped off the turret, clambered up one side of the roof until he was at the peak, near the weathervane.
He held on to the belt and with his much longer arms was able to easily reach Mason’s wrist, and pull him up far enough for Mason to get purchase on the roof tiles.
I let go, relief surging through me. My shoulder ached. I grabbed the gun and kept it trained on Mason, who was now splayed on the tiles far enough up to be out of danger.
“I swear, you really are like a bad penny,” I said, breathless. “What are you doing here?”
“You said you found the weathervane so I assumed, correctly, that you would want to install it right away. You didn’t return my texts so I thought I’d come over, see if you needed a little backup.”
“Maybe Chantelle wasn’t the only mind reader in your family.”
He gave a humorless laugh. “Could I ask you a question?”
“Sure.”
“Did you shoot the old man downstairs?”
I heard sirens in the distance and started to laugh in exhaustion. “Didn’t George tell you?”
“He seems to have passed out, but he’s alive. I called nine-one-one. Is he another culprit, then? I left him tied up, just in case.”
“No, this is Mason’s—”
At that moment Mason lunged at the gun in my hand. Landon launched himself at Mason, and the thr
ee of us rolled down the steep roof again. I nearly panicked when I felt my feet slip over the edge.
Landon grabbed my arm with one hand and an eave with another.
Mason kept rolling. He caught the rain gutter, and our eyes locked for an instant before he lost his grip and disappeared.
His bloodcurdling scream blended with the deafening sirens of emergency vehicles.
I squeezed my eyes shut. I was still hanging half over the edge, dangling four stories above the sidewalk. Only Landon’s white-knuckled grip kept me from sharing Mason’s fate.
“I don’t think I can . . .” I gasped. Upper body strength wasn’t my strong suit.
“None of that, now, General,” Landon said. “Hang on. We’ll do this slowly but surely.”
Inch by inch, he hoisted me up as I used every last bit of my energy to scrabble on the tiles until I was high enough that I could collapse, sprawl on my back, and catch my breath.
“Thanks for the hand,” I said, panting and blinking as I gazed up at the sun.
“Anytime,” Landon whispered, rolling over and leaning over me. He ran his fingers along my forehead, and his hand cupped my cheek, as though to be sure I was okay. “You truly are the most astonishing woman, Mel Turner.”
• • •
“Okay, let’s go over this again,” said Annette. I was sitting on the bumper of an ambulance with a blanket wrapped around my shoulders. An EMT was trying to get me to drink a cup of juice and Annette Crawford was peppering me with questions, but all I wanted to do was sleep. Adrenaline crash.
Also, I was desperately trying not to look toward the spot on the sidewalk where Mason Flynt had landed. The first responders had put up some plastic barriers and there were so many people standing around that I wouldn’t have been able to observe anything, anyway, but I still didn’t want to take the chance of seeing something I couldn’t later unsee. It was enough to have his final scream echoing through my head.
“When Chantelle came in to do the reading of the house, she took each family member in a separate room for privacy and gave them each a reading,” I said. “Andrew had to pay a lot extra for all of that.”
“Why would he have done that?” Annette asked.
“I think it was Stephanie’s idea. She thought Chantelle would be able to give them all special guidance from beyond. She couldn’t have known what would come of it all.”
“I hear Chantelle was pretty sought after,” said Annette.
I nodded. “Very exclusive. Anyway, I guess she really was able to read Mason’s mind, or maybe he just got himself worked up and let something slip.”
“I don’t suppose we’ll ever know that for sure.”
“I think you’re right.” I sipped my juice. It helped. “Meanwhile, Egypt, the computer whiz, had done some Internet work for Andrew, then stayed on as caretaker here and met Chantelle. Then she hacked into the company’s computers and got hard-and-fast proof of the embezzlement. Chantelle then pressured Mason into supporting her bid to become a spokesperson for Tempus, Ltd.”
“She was smart enough to think of her future, rather than focusing on the immediate payoff of blackmail.”
“But then Mason panicked when he realized his father had called in yet another psychic.”
“Who?”
“Mel Turner, at your service.”
“You’re a psychic?” Annette asked, raising her eyebrow. “I thought you could just see ghosts, sometimes.”
“True, but I guess it’s a kind of psychic ability.”
“Some might even say psychosis,” she said with a smile.
“Cute.” I hugged the blanket a little tighter around my shoulders.
“And Mason went to Chantelle’s on the day of her death to try to get her to call things off, to keep you out of Crosswinds. They had words, and he just lost it. Or . . . he clearly evaded the security cameras, so maybe he went there with the express intent of killing her. Another thing we’ll probably never know for sure.”
I nodded. “And then today, George seems to have figured out Mason was the one embezzling funds. I remember when I was at the Tempus offices, he told Lacey that her brother was handling the books for the audit.”
“George said you knocked him down.”
“My bad. He was pretty antipsychic in that moment, so I thought he was the killer. How is he?”
“He’ll live. The gunshot wound isn’t serious, and he’s a pretty tough old bird. He was yelling at the paramedics to ‘wrap him up so he could go home.’”
I smiled. “I’m glad. He’s got a very dysfunctional family, but I’m glad he’s not seriously hurt. Maybe they’ll all pull together now, learn to work together.”
Annette snorted in a pretty good impression of George Flynt. “And pigs will fly.”
“Anyway, I managed to convince Mason that George had a heart attack, and then got him to go up on the roof.”
“And what were you doing on the roof?”
“Looking for a key to Egypt’s room”—I yawned—“so I could go in and wipe the computers of all the embezzling info.”
One eyebrow went up. “How were you going to manage that?”
“I was playing it by ear. As it happens, once out on the roof Peregrine joined us, and we rolled around a lot, and then . . .” I cleared my throat and drank a little more juice. “And then Landon came and rescued me and Mason, and then Mason lunged at us again, and then he fell off the roof.”
“And somewhere in there you shot him.”
I nodded, but couldn’t speak.
“I’m going to assume it was self-defense?” she said very gently.
“Yeah,” I croaked. “I don’t even . . . What scares me is that I don’t even really remember doing it. We were struggling for the weapon, and the ghost appeared and scared Mason, and I shot him. Just like that.”
“It happens that way sometimes. The instinct for self-preservation is strong.”
I nodded.
“We’ll have to do a little more investigation, Mel, but I’m going to guess it will be declared self-defense. He forced you upstairs at gunpoint, and George Flynt and Landon Demetrius both attest to that.”
“Good.”
“You okay?”
I nodded.
“There are people you can talk to, you know. It might not be a bad idea. You’ve seen a lot; sometimes this sort of thing haunts a person. No pun intended.”
“Thanks, Annette. Right now I’d just like to go home and sleep, if that’s possible.”
“You’ve got it.”
Chapter Thirty-three
Graham flew in the next day. We had dinner plans.
All day, going from one job to another, I practiced: “Graham, you are a wonderful man, you deserve better. Graham, I don’t think I want to have children. Graham, I’ve met someone and even though nothing happened it feels as though something could and that isn’t right.”
As bad as I was at relationships, I was worse at ending one. At least when my marriage broke up I had good reason to despise my husband, so I could stomp around and call him names and be righteously indignant. But the last thing I wanted to do was hurt Graham. And yet, that was exactly what I was going to do. There was no way around it.
I offered to bring takeout to his place so we could speak in private. I picked up Ethiopian from one of his favorite restaurants and had it waiting for him when he arrived from the airport.
We ate and shared some wine, and dinner conversation mostly revolved around my chasing ghosts and nearly tumbling off the roof. I tried to downplay what happened at Crosswinds, since I still hadn’t quite wrapped my mind around the fact that I had shot a man, no matter how much he might have deserved it. And I couldn’t forget that sickening moment when I watched Mason slip over the edge of the roof, the terror in his eyes, his horrific scream, and the awful knowledge that his body
had slammed into the pavement four stories below.
At the time I had been so intent on not sharing his fate that I hadn’t dwelled on it, but the image kept coming back to me. Haunting me.
Mostly, I enjoyed making Graham laugh by recounting the phantom food fight at the Mermaid Cove apartment.
I was trying to work up my courage to begin The Talk when Graham said, “So, I have some big news.”
“Really? What is it?”
“I’ve been offered a great job. In Paris.”
“Paris?” I echoed. “Paris, France?”
“No, Paris, Texas. Of course Paris, France.”
He brought a small robin’s egg blue box out of his pocket and placed it on the table between us. Tiffany’s.
“Oh, no, no no no no,” I said. “Graham . . .”
He cocked his head. “I thought you’d be thrilled. You’ve been wanting to move to Paris ever since you got divorced.”
“Yes, but . . .” It’s true I’d been talking about running away to Paris ever since my marriage ended. Those fantasies had gotten me through some dark days, and the promise of that shining city propelled me forward, kept me sane. But now . . . I thought about Turner Construction and saving old houses and keeping my crew employed. And Dad, who wasn’t getting any younger. And Caleb, who would be going off to college soon. And Dog, who I couldn’t bear to leave, or to rip away from his current home. And Stan and Luz and . . .
A trip to Paris was one thing, but did I really want to move there?
The fact was that I had changed. Without my fully realizing it, I had moved on in my life not by traipsing off to Paris, but by staying in the Bay Area and reinventing myself, throwing myself into work I loved with people I loved, caring for others and being cared for. I didn’t want to move to Paris.
I didn’t want to move to Paris. Wow.
“You okay?” Graham was asking. “I have to say, in my mind this discussion went a whole different way.”
“I know. I’m sorry. I’m really sorry, Graham. You’re wonderful, and you had every right to think I would want to move to Paris with you. But . . . I don’t.”
Give Up the Ghost: A Haunted Home Renovation Mystery Page 27