If Walls Could Talk (15 page)

“You’re the second person to ask me about police in the space of a minute.” He shook his head and looked at us, one after another. “What’s going on?”

“Kenneth was injured sometime after the party,” I said. “He died of his injuries at the hospital.”

“Seriously?” Zach asked.

I nodded.

“What happened?”

“That’s what we’re trying to figure out.”

“We’ll need your contact information,” said Graham. “The police—or I—might need to talk with you further.”

Zach reached into his jacket pocket, and my hand with the gun rose again.

“Whoa! You are jumpy, aren’t you? I was just going to hand you my card.”

“Sorry,” I said, relaxing.

He pulled out a small leather case and extracted business cards, which he handed to Graham, Luz, and me.

“So what are you three, then? Investigators?”

“I’m just an innocent bystander,” said Luz. “I came along for the free lunch.”

“I’m the contractor on the job,” I said.

Graham gave me a pained look.“
I’m
the investigator.”

“Uh-huh,” Zach said, sounding rather unsure of our little gang. “Give me a call if there’s anything I can do. I left the party before anything violent took place, but if I can clarify anything, I’m happy to.”

“I imagine SFPD homicide will be in touch soon enough,” said Graham.

Zach nodded but still studied me. His sad, long-lashed eyes held mine for a beat too long, making me wonder whether he was trying to seduce me, or convince me of something . . . or whether it was just his way.

Finally he nodded to us all and left through the still-open front door.

“
Damn
, girl,” Luz murmured, sizing me up with a crooked grin. “You see the way he was looking at you?”

“Men are intrigued by women holding guns,” I said. “Don’t ask me why.”

“Mmm,” she murmured, raising an eyebrow. She looked at Graham. “You, too?”

“I find anyone holding a gun more frightening than intriguing, regardless of gender.” He glanced down at the gun, then up at me. “So, Mel, you’re packing heat these days?”

“No, we just found it . . . and then Zach startled us. I guess it was a reflex reaction.”

“You ‘found’ it?”

“In the dumbwaiter.” I nodded toward the kitchen.

“Could I have it, please?” He held his hand out to me. I laid the weapon in his palm.

With his other hand, he whipped a plastic bag out of his satchel.

“You’re collecting evidence?” Luz asked.

Graham didn’t answer.

“You’re a cop?” Luz continued.

“Not exactly. I’m with Cal-OSHA.”

“Aaah,” she said with a smile and an obvious glance in my direction. “You must be the famous Graham Donovan, in the flesh. What a pleasure. And I mean that.”

Graham ignored Luz’s blatant insinuation, but I imagined he noticed my burning cheeks. I could feel his eyes on me. Despite everything, despite ten years, part of me still felt like a gangly young woman in front of him.

“What are you doing here, Mel?”

“I was in the neighborhood and I heard the scene had been released. Since the crime tape was down . . .”

“You just waltzed on in.”

“Seems to me that if it’s no longer a crime scene, I have more right than you to be here,” I said, awkwardness ceding to irritation. “After all, this is private property and I’ve been contracted by the owner. So the real question is, what are
you
doing here?”

“I wanted to check out one more detail for my report. And as far as I know, the scene has not been officially released.”

“Inspector Lehner called me a couple of hours ago to tell me it was.”

“Lehner called you? Directly? I find that a little hard to believe.”

“What, you think I’m making this
up
?”

Graham didn’t answer, but I could see a muscle working in his jaw as though he were biting back words. Our gazes held a beat too long.

“
Well
,” Luz put in, “guess I should be running along. Let you two professionals work out the details of construction schedules and murder investigations and whatnot.” She turned and held her hand out to Graham. “Graham, great to meet you. I’m Luz Perez, by the way. L-U-Z, rhymes with ‘juice.’ It was a real pleasure. I’m sure I’ll be seeing you around.”

As she walked toward the door she turned back toward me, rolled her eyes over toward Graham, then held her hand up to her ear in the universal sign for a phone while mouthing,
Call me
.

Unable to stifle it, I returned her smile.

“You want to tell me what’s going on?” Graham asked.

“I wish I knew. Is it . . . Do you know whether the cops have decided as to whether they think it was accidental or intentional?”

“I can’t discuss it with you, Mel. We’ve been over this already.”

“But you’d only still be here if they thought it might be accidental, right? Wouldn’t SFPD homicide just take over if they were putting together a murder case?”

He gave me a curt nod.

“And since you’re still here . . .”

“I’m unclear on what part of ‘keep out of it’ you’re not understanding.”

“The part where a friend of mine is in jail for a crime he didn’t commit. The part where you’re still here investigating as though it were an accident, while Matt is sitting behind bars pending homicide charges. So was it an accident or murder? And what are you doing here if the police have released the scene?”

“I just wanted to take one more look before it’s cleaned up.”

“Apparently you’re a little late.”

He gave me a questioning look.

“Zach said it was cleaned up already.”

“By whom?”

“Maybe the police?”

Graham shook his head. “They don’t do that in private residences. It’s up to the homeowner to call in a crime scene cleanup service, or just do it themselves.”

“Oh. Right.”

“How sure are we that that Malinski fellow wasn’t cleaning it up for his own reasons?”

“Zach? He’s just the photographer.”

“That’s a guarantee of innocence these days?”

“No, but . . .”

“Ever think that you might have caught him red-handed and he made up a quick story?”

“Actually, it never occurred to me.”

“If you’re going to hang out with criminals, you should start thinking like one.”

“I
don’t
hang out with criminals, by and large.”

“So this case is an exception to the rule?”

“Very much so.”

“Good. Keep it that way.”

“Do
you
hang out with criminals?” I couldn’t help but ask.

He gave me a scornful look but didn’t answer. “I’m going to take a look upstairs. I suggest you go do something useful—as far from here as possible.”

“I’ll come with you,” I said, and trailed him upstairs.

Not only was I curious as to what the hell was going on; not only did I want company while in this possibly haunted house . . . but I was also beginning to remember how much fun it was to pester Mr. Stick-in-the-Butt Donovan. Maybe ten years had not softened his know-it-all mien after all.

Also, I enjoyed the view as I followed him up the stairs.

I paused when we reached the second-floor landing, steeling myself before going into the room that had held the saw and the bloody evidence of Kenneth’s fatal injuries.

Graham paused in the doorway and swore.

“What a god-awful room,” he murmured.

“Hadn’t you seen it before?” I asked as I joined him.

“Sure, but that was with the tarp down, the saw set up, and blood everywhere. In its own, less macabre way, this is even worse.”

I smiled. Those of us into home design found truly ugly rooms as painful as an off-key concert was to a trained musician.

My amusement faded as I heard the rattle of a newspaper, clear as day. In the room with us. I glanced around. Nothing.

But I saw that the room had indeed been cleaned up.

The circular saw had been removed, along with the other construction-related items; the blood spatter had been washed from the walls and fireplace. A dark reddish brown stain on the rug was the only evidence of what had gone on; otherwise, the room looked as it had the first time I had seen it during the original inspection: an old-fashioned “man cave.” A worn, dirty Oriental rug was set out in front of the monstrous, lumpy fireplace made of river rock, shells, and tumbled glass; a blackened railroad tie served as a mantel. Built-in bookshelves were flanked by the kind of cheap mock paneling bought at home improvement stores.

“Do you smell something?” I asked Graham.

“Yep. The overwhelming scent of Pine-Sol cleaning solutions.”

I smelled that, too, but what surprised me was fresh pipe smoke. I had the sensation that if I turned around fast enough, I would spy someone relaxing in a faded club chair, indulging in an after-dinner smoke. I glanced around, paying special attention to my peripheral vision, just in case. Still nothing.

“Any decent professional crime scene cleanup team would never have left a bloodstain like that on the rug,” said Graham.

“They can get that sort of thing out?”

“If not, they’d dispose of the rug. They even take up floorboards if the blood has soaked in too far. They’re supposed to get rid of all traces of what went on.”

“Do you hear paper rustling?”

He paused to listen, then shook his head. “Must be the neighbors.”

“It sounds like it’s right here in the room with us.”

“This place probably has rats. I wouldn’t be surprised.”

“Maybe,” I said.

“Where did you see Kenneth?”

I whipped around, expecting Kenneth’s apparition, before realizing that Graham was referring to the other morning when Matt and I found Kenneth, still alive. I took a deep breath; I was feeling a bit jumpy.

“We were in the room down the hall. . . .”

“According to your statement,” Graham prompted, “Kenneth came after you and Matt Addax with a nail gun?”

“He managed to squeeze off one round, but that was it. I think he was out of his head by then. Blood loss.”

“Show me.”

We walked down the corridor to the next room, which was a shambles. Much worse than the day after the party. Wallboard was ripped off the walls every which way; even floorboards had been taken up here and there.

“Matt and I were in here, but it didn’t look this bad.”

Graham nodded. “I went through this whole place yesterday. Someone’s been in here since then. So, the crime scene room has been cleaned up, but this room has been torn apart. Almost as though someone was looking for something, as well as covering up a crime scene.”

“I take it you’re not buying the ‘Kenneth did himself in’ argument?”

“Tell me what happened with Kenneth when you found him.”

“I wrote it all in the report.”

“Indulge me.”

“Matt was standing about where you are,” I said as I moved toward the wall where the wallboard had been hung crooked. “I was over here, crouched down.”

“What were you doing?”

“I thought I saw something in the wall.”

“Something? Like what?”

“I couldn’t really tell. It looked like a box, but I couldn’t reach it. Probably nothing. You know how old houses are—some worker’s lunchbox, maybe. Maybe just a bundle of old newspapers.”

“Did you mention this to the police?”

“Frankly, it didn’t occur to me. It sort of slipped my mind, given . . . the situation.”

He moved over to the spot. We flipped on our respective flashlights and crouched to peer into the large hole in the wall.

“I don’t see anything,” Graham said.

“I know. I dislodged it when I tried to get to it, and I managed to push it so it fell down through the joists.”

“Let’s open this thing up so you can crawl in there.”

“Me? Why don’t
you
crawl in there?”

“You’re smaller. And you’re the one who forgot to mention this to anyone. And besides,” he added quietly, “now that I’m Cal-OSHA, you have to do what I tell you.”

“Y
ou say that as if you were the embodiment of the whole agency. You’re not
actually
Cal-OSHA, you know. Much less God.”

He smiled. “Close enough in your world,” he said as he grabbed the edge of the wallboard with both large hands and pulled.

In the old days, wall surfaces were created by nailing thin slats of wood, called lath, to two-by-four studs and topping these with thick layers of plaster—a kind of cement mixture blended with binders such as horse-hair, straw, and sand. Old-school plaster is
tough
. In contrast, modern wallboard—in which powdery gypsum is pressed between two pieces of heavy paper—is about as difficult to cut through as a slice of toasted focaccia. That was why people could put their fists through modern walls in fits of anger—it was akin to Captain Kirk picking up those huge cardboard “boulders” on the old
Star Trek
television show.

Graham snapped half the board off the studs, then kicked off several other large chunks, leaving a gaping opening in the wall.

I held my miniflashlight in my mouth and crawled into the dark space beyond, balancing on the joists rather than on the surface at their base, which made up the first-floor ceiling. The lath and plaster ceiling wasn’t meant to be walked on; the plaster would crack at best, or one’s foot could go right through to the room below.

“Anything?” Graham asked.

“Umm mmfingmm,” I answered around the flashlight. So far, nothing but the cobweb-strewn recesses typical of the inner walls of any house. But toward the outer wall of this house, the ceiling fell away along the contours of the tray ceiling below, creating a well. I lay on my stomach, trying to balance on the beams.