Home For the Haunting: A Haunted Home Renovation Mystery (3 page)

Ignore it, Mel. You’ve got dry rot to deal with.

What does it say about my life when
rot
was a pleasant alternative?

I
n today’s world, in San Francisco at least, it seems most folks can barely figure out how to reglue the little felt pads to the bottoms of their chair legs. Asking them to re-roof a house was out of the question. Which meant that the volunteers with actual handyman skills were like gold.

Two such volunteers were working diligently under the kitchen sink while a tall woman standing nearby handed them tools and offered suggestions.

“Hi, I’m Mel, the house captain. Thank you so much for being here today—we really appreciate it.”

“I’m Hubert, but I go by Hugh . . .” said the first man to extract himself from the cramped cupboard under the sink, where he was accessing the pipes. Though he seemed polite enough, Hugh’s eyes did not meet mine; instead, he looked at everything in the kitchen but me, as though his thoughts were somewhere else.

“Mike,” said the other man with a nod.

None of us offered to shake hands—plumbing doesn’t lend itself to that kind of customary greeting.

“So, what did you find?”

“I think . . .” Hugh said, speaking deliberately, “that there was perhaps a leak under the sink, a slow leak . . .”

“I’m Simone,” said the woman, who then proceeded to finish Hugh’s sentence for him. “It’s a leak that’s gone unnoticed, or simply not fixed, for years. Water appears to have gotten into the subfloor.”

That wasn’t good. Drips led to wet wood, which in turn led to dry rot, an oddly named condition that could spread through healthy wood like a cancer. I inspected the subfloor and instructed the volunteers to remove the wood back to the studs. I was relieved to see that the joists were not affected. Once the dry rot had been removed, they could repair the leaky plumbing, replace the framing and floor, and lay down protective laminate over the plywood. Monty’s kitchen would be good as new.

“Sounds just peachy,” said Simone. “Unfortunately, Hugh and I have to leave for another engagement. At least we figured out the extent of the problem, but we won’t be able to stay and help fix it.”

“No . . .” said Hugh, his gaze focused on the on the sink. “We won’t.”

I nodded, my jaw clenched in frustration. We asked volunteers to commit to at least one full day of work, but there really wasn’t anything we could do if they refused.

“I think I can handle it,” Mike said. “I’ll need a couple of helpers, though.”

I thanked him for stepping in and corralled a couple of unskilled but willing volunteers from a local high school’s service club who said they didn’t mind getting dirty. With luck, they would be helpful and learn something about home repair.

From overhead came the sound of loud banging and a crash, but I wasn’t too worried. I knew the leader of the roofing crew. He was a stickler for safety, and he was working with a handful of semiskilled workers from the local fire department. Still, I thought I should probably check, just in case. On my way outside I looked in on the progress being made in the master bedroom by the painting crew. A church group was cleaning the surfaces and taping off edges meticulously. I appreciated the effort, but experienced painters knew better than to sweat using too much blue tape or plastic sheeting. Still, the cardinal rule of directing volunteers was to let them work at their own pace. It was good of them to be here at all, and for many it was their first time on a worksite.

“Mel, do you think someone could get those children to stop singing that little ditty?” asked a middle-aged woman on a ladder. “It’s very . . . disturbing.”

I listened. Through the open window came the notes of a song I remembered from childhood. “
Lizzie Borden took an ax . . .”

But although the notes were the same, the lyrics had been changed:

Sidney Lawrence grabbed a knife,

Killed his daughter, then his wife . . .

I glanced out the window and saw a group of tweener kids walking past the big house next door.

“Let me see what I can do,” I said, thinking to punt to Luz, who had a natural authority that young people responded to. But she had her hands full handing out shovels and plastic bags to the frat boys, so, though my time would have been better spent on construction, I headed out to chastise some children.

“Hey, guys,” I said as I found the little gang of mini-hoodlums: slouching, wearing baseball caps and oversized clothing. Four boys and one girl. They couldn’t have been more than eleven, still dewy and plump with youth. “Can it, will ya?”

“What’re you doin’?” demanded the apparent ringleader. He was short and chubby and wore glasses.

“What’s it look like we’re doing?” I responded in the same tone, waggling my head a little. I had helped raise my stepson, so I wasn’t intimidated by this age group. The kids, predictably, responded to my challenge.

“Looks like you makin’ a mess,” the ringleader said.

“Yeah.
Big
mess,” echoed another.

“Of course we’re making a mess. Can’t make an omelet without breaking a few eggs.” I winced as another of my father’s favorite expressions left my lips. Did people even
say
such things anymore? Or was I now the epitome of lame, one of those grown-ups who still used words like “groovy”?

“We’re making our community a nicer place to live. Better than hanging around singing about murder. What’s
that
about?”

“It’s ’cause of the Murder House,” the ringleader said, as the others looked at me as if to say, “What else?”

“Murder House?”

“That one right there,” he said, gesturing to the large Art Nouveau house next door. It stood silent and menacing, flanked by tall palm trees whose spiky fronds waved serenely in the breeze. Years ago, it was in vogue among California’s wealthy residents to plant palms around their posh homes. Today, a row of mature palm trees often signaled the site of a fine historic building. This house was different from the small bungalows surrounding it, I noted, but that wasn’t unusual. Historic neighborhoods often boasted one fine house among many smaller ones, which were built later when the original owners sold off the original acreage, parcel by parcel.

Don’t ask, don’t ask, don’t ask
, a little voice inside my head kept saying.

“What about that house?” I asked.

“Long time ago . . . ,” the ringleader said dramatically.

“Yeah, long ago,” another child chimed in.

“. . . a man murdered his family in that house. His
whole
family.”

The other children nodded.

“Kids, pets, even the pizza delivery guy.”

“Yeah,” the girl continued. “One of the kids tried to escape—”

“He climbed out the window!” a redheaded boy missing two front teeth added.

“Yeah, he fell!” the girl continued.

“And broke his neck!” the ringleader concluded. “Everybody died!”

“Not everybody,” the girl said. “The boy got away.”

“And a girl got away.”

“A boy and a girl got away.”

“Yeesh,” I said, hoping they were exaggerating. “Lizzie Borden only killed two people, and we thought
she
was bad.”

“Who?” The kids stared at me.

“That song you were singing? We used to sing it about Lizzie Borden.”

They gave me a skeptical look.

“You sayin’ it’s a remix?” the ringleader asked.

Modern music loved to piggyback on the old standbys. Why not kids’ rhymes, too?

“Never mind,” I said. The last thing these kids needed was another grisly tale to excite their imaginations.

“What are your names, anyway?”

“I’m Kobe,” said the ringleader.

“I’m Kaitlyn,” said the girl.

“Ryan,” said the redhead.

“I’m Mel. Nice to meet you all. Now I better get back to work.”

“It don’t look like you’re workin’,” said Kobe.

“That’s because I’m the supervisor.”

He looked at me askance. “You’re sayin’ supervisors don’t gotta work?”

“Oh, we work. We work plenty. But it’s a different kind of work. Instead of doing it all myself, I tell other people what to do. I coordinate things.”

“You mean you order people around.”

“Okay, yep, I order people around. Plus, I get paid more. Not on this job, where nobody’s getting paid. But in real life, the super does less work and gets paid more.”

The kids seemed mesmerized; apparently, this had never occurred to them.

“That’s why you have to stay in school,” I said, launching into a public service announcement. “That way you get the good jobs and get paid more.”

Okay, it was a bit simplistic, but overall it was a pretty good assessment of how the world worked.

“So tell me more about the house next door.”

“Not much more to tell, ’cept it’s haunted now.”

“Mmm,” I said. “So you say there was a man and a woman? How old was the daughter?”

Shrug. “I dunno, not a kid.”

“A teenager?”

“I guess.”

“What did she look like?”

He looked at me askance. “Geez, lady, you seem kinda into it. Prob’ly there’s a YouTube or somethin’ if you’re that curious.”

How could I explain that I wasn’t some gruesome thrill seeker, but was only trying to identify the ghostly face I’d seen in the windows? But he was right—it would be better to just look it up online. A murder-suicide was bound to have made the news.

“When did all this happen?” I asked.

“Dunno. Long time ago. In the eighties. Can we have a bagel?” he gestured to the table laden with food donated by local businesses or baked by volunteers: bagels and cream cheese, Blue Bottle coffee, chips, energy bars, cookies. Luz and Stephen had not only begged and cajoled any number of local businesses into donating food and drink but had also organized a schedule of cookie drops. Folks who wanted to contribute but couldn’t dedicate the whole weekend baked cookies and dropped them off every hour, on the hour. My team might be falling behind on the actual construction, but we were hands down the best-fed group in the program.

“Or cookies!” suggested Ryan.

“The food’s for the volunteers. You have to work for it.”

“What we gotta do?” asked Kobe.

I eyed him and his motley crew. Technically, only those fourteen years and older were allowed on the jobsite, and strictly with a release form signed by their parents. But there was a lot of debris in the front yard of the house that could be tossed into the Dumpster. . . .

I glanced at Luz, who was signing out a circular saw. Luz hadn’t known a monkey wrench from a Phillips screwdriver when she started, but she was a quick study. And since she’s naturally bossy, in addition to being Tool Czar I had her check everyone in, get them to sign waivers, and assign them to work teams.

She saw me pointing, pursed her lips and shook her head.

“Tell you what: You guys check in with that nice lady over there”—I pointed to Luz—“and she’ll give you T-shirts and work gloves. You clean this yard up for me, put all this stuff into that Dumpster. Then you can help yourselves to snacks.”

They looked at one another, and Kobe shrugged. “’Kay.”

“Hey,” I said to their backs as they descended upon a grumpy-looking Luz. “No more Murder House rhyme—you get me?”

“We only sing it when we go past the house,” Kaitlyn said shyly. “It’s so the ghosts of the people who died won’t get us. But that’s not the worst.”

Don’t ask, Mel. Don’t you dare—

“What’s the worst?”

Kaitlyn hesitated, glancing around as if fearful of being overheard. I leaned toward her and she whispered. “The ghost of the
dad
who
did
it.”

I blew out a breath. Try to do a good deed and what did I get? A drunken fraternity, a bunch of hoodlums in training, and ghosts next door. I was willing to bet my dad didn’t have ghosts next door to his project house. Of course, if he did he’d never know it. My sensitivity to ghosts came from my late mother.

I walked Kaitlyn over to where the other kids were encircling Luz and donning bright purple T shirts.

“Hel-
lo
,” Luz said, her gaze meeting mine over their heads. “No one under fourteen, ring a bell?”

“They’ll stay here in front. They’re going to clean up all that stuff; then they get snacks, same as the other volunteers. And then, when they’re fourteen, maybe they’ll come back and help us out, and maybe learn some skills, like building a handicap ramp. Right, guys?”

“Why I want to build a handicap ramp?” Kobe demanded.

“Because it’s better than flipping burgers,” said Luz, still glaring at me. “Watch and learn, you guys. You could do worse than a construction job.”

I noticed a blond frat boy peering through the window of the neighboring house—the Murder House—his hands cupped around his face to block out the light.

“Hey, Peeping Tom, let’s leave the neighbors alone, shall we?” I called out.