If Walls Could Talk (4 page)

“I’m Celia Hutchins, from next door,” said the taller of the two, the tennis bracelet and solitaires in her ears glittering in the bright afternoon sun. Her voice was husky, her tone refined. “This is my good friend Meredith; she lives across the street. We couldn’t help but notice the ambulance.”

Time to pull myself together.

“A man was injured—” I began.

“I have to say I’m not surprised,” inserted Meredith, neatly plucked eyebrows raised and manicured hand fluttering up to her cheek. She kept rocking up on her tiptoes, then back down. Lots of nervous energy. “The party seemed to be getting out of hand last night. That house . . . It’s just one thing after another. . . .” She trailed off with a shake of her head and a shrug of her slim shoulders.

“I don’t suppose either of you heard gunshots, or anything else out of the ordinary?” I asked.

“It was loud, lots of music and laughter, but nothing like gunshots, good heavens, no.” Celia shook her head. “Was someone shot?”

That was a tough one to answer without getting into gruesome details.

“I’m not sure . . .” I evaded.

“Is Matt all right?” Celia asked.

“Yes, he’s fine.”

“Matt really is a dear; he invited us over, but I must say, it wasn’t really my kind of party. I hire people to do that kind of thing. Speaking of which, is this your car?” She gestured toward my boxy red Scion, which had magnetic TURNER CONSTRUCTION signs attached to the front doors. “You’re . . . a builder?”

“We specialize in historic homes,” I said with a nod. Celia’s gray-green eyes swept over my colorful, low-cut dress. The men I worked with were accustomed to my wardrobe, but when first meeting with clients I usually took care to wear a conservative outfit consisting of a blazer and tailored slacks. Physically, I was a throwback to the pinup-girl era, with what my father’s cohorts would call a va-va-va-voom body. An extra fifteen pounds or so only intensified this effect. It was an extravagant look largely out of favor these days, most popular with long-haired bikers and truck drivers.

“How darling that you’re a woman,” Celia continued. “I’ve been wanting to have a room redone for our club meetings. We’re simply desperate for a good contractor.”

“Are you a lesbian?” piped Meredith.

“
Meredith
. Just because a woman is doing a nontraditional job doesn’t make her a lesbian.” Celia leaned toward me and spoke in a low voice, as though in confidence. “Not that it would be a problem if you were. My niece is gay and she’s a darling girl. An artist. Very creative.”

The last thing I wanted to do at the moment was to talk about my sex life, much less sweet-talk a client. Still, in my line of work one did not alienate Pacific Heights homeowners. I reached into my jacket and dug for a business card.

“Could I come back and take a look at your project tomorrow?” I said. “I’d be happy to give you an estimate, but this isn’t really the best time.”

“Of course,” Celia said, tucking my card into the front pocket of her fine linen slacks. “You know, Meredith and I weren’t at the party last night, but for the sake of appearances I sent my son, Vincent, over in our stead. He only stayed for a short while, but perhaps you’d like to speak with him.”

“Did he mention seeing anything odd?”

“He left when things started getting rowdy.” Celia’s gaze flickered down to my left hand. She smiled and met my eyes. “You’re not married?”

“I . . . uh . . . No, not at the moment.”

“I like your dress,” interrupted Meredith.

“Thank you. A friend of mine designed it.”

Meredith smiled. Her dark eyes watched me intently for a moment before shifting to look over my shoulder. I turned to see Nico and his two nephews muscling the grand piano down the front steps.

“What’s going on?” Meredith asked.

“Matt wanted to put a few things in storage,” I responded. “We’re removing the piano so it won’t get damaged.”

“I remember when Gerald brought in that piano. Do you remember, Celia?”

Celia nodded. “Gerald was an . . . interesting neighbor.”

“Have you lived here long?” I asked.

“Nearly thirty years—since my Vincent was just a boy. How time does fly.”

“I’ve been here twenty-five,” Meredith told me, gesturing to an elegant, multicolored Victorian a few doors down.

I watched as the portly police officer hurried down the stone steps after the movers, rushed over to his radio car, lifted his hand toward us in a brief salute, and left. As simple as that.

I’ve had very little interaction with the police in my life, so I’m not familiar with the standard process of inquiry. Still, it seemed as if there should be more to an investigation of such serious injuries, especially since there was no way in hell Kenneth had done such things to himself—was there? After all, he might be a creep, but he wasn’t a superhuman pain freak.

I felt another pang deep in my gut; I had never liked Kenneth, but he had seemed so defenseless, so very human, when I held him in my arms.

After agreeing to return the next day at noon to check on Celia’s project, I excused myself from the women. All I could think about at the moment was getting home and taking a long, long shower.

As I approached my car, my heart sank. The last place I remembered seeing my satchel was on the second floor, when Matt and I were confronted by Kenneth. I procrastinated for a moment by looking in the mailbox and gathering the letters and papers I found there: store circulars and several notices from the city. I tossed the junk mail in the recycling bin, put the rest of the mail in my car to pass on to Matt, and finally forced myself to enter the house.

I mounted the circular stairs with trepidation.

A blood trail stained the threadbare, gruel-colored carpet on the landing. I took a deep breath, pausing a moment, before giving in to ghoulish curiosity. Careful not to step on any evidence, I picked my way along the hall and entered the den.

A thick plastic tarp protected the floor and held building supplies: a small pile of two-by-fours, boxes of latex gloves and safety masks, a couple of bags of Fixall patching compound, and a stack of half-inch sheets of wallboard. The homemade fireplace formed an imposing presence along the far wall, otherwise covered in cheap paneling . . . and marred by a faint spray of red-black specks. Kenneth’s blood, I presumed. I swallowed, hard. A multipaned French door leading out to a fire escape also showed evidence of blood spatter.

Finally I allowed myself to focus on the table saw set up in the middle of the room. The machine was encircled by sawdust and blood, and the round, serrated blade looked as though it had been dipped in dark brownish red paint.

Bile rose to my throat; black spots danced in front of my eyes.

I sank to the floor, squeezed my eyes shut, put my head between my knees, and concentrated on breathing.

After several moments the nausea subsided.

I heard sounds. Scraping, a footstep. The whine of a saw? A distant scream?

I opened my eyes and looked up toward the table saw. In my peripheral vision, I saw someone in the doorway.

Kenneth. Bloodied but standing tall.

“K
enneth?
What are you—”

As soon as I looked straight at him, he was gone.

I glanced around. The room was as empty as it had been a moment before.

Pull yourself together, Mel
.

Kenneth had just been taken away in an ambulance; he couldn’t have been standing here in this room. Had I passed out? Was I dreaming?

I shivered. The air was cold. Frigid, even. So cold I could see my own breath.

I put my head back down on my knees.

Enough
. Too many thoughts of death and dying; far too much imagination. Post-traumatic stress, maybe.

Again, I thought of my mother’s death. Right after she passed away, while I was driving my father home from the hospital, she appeared in my side window, standing in the middle of the road. She disappeared as soon as I looked over, but I swerved and barely avoided slamming into the car next to me. When I asked my dad whether he had seen her, he told me I was nuts. And I had to agree with him.

Since then she would come to me from time to time, memories and thoughts of her so vivid I would have sworn she was standing beside me or whispering in my ear. Especially in that otherworldly moment between sleep and wakefulness, I could feel the smooth warmth of her hand on my forehead.

I always assumed that my sense of her continuing presence had to do with our closeness before she passed. In stark contrast, the only sort of emotional intimacy Kenneth Kostow and I could claim was a mutual dislike.

Besides
, I reminded myself,
he isn’t dead, just injured.
Gravely injured.

Grimacing, I looked down at the blood drying on the leather jacket.

Another deep breath.

“
Mel?
” called Nico, his voice floating up from downstairs and yanking me back to reality.

“Up here!” I called. “I’ll be right down.”

Nico had packed up the crate. I gave him the access code to my storage unit in a facility out near the Port of Oakland, which he noted in the tiny notebook he kept in his shirt pocket. I asked him to take the piano to my dad’s house. The garage/workshop was dry and heated, and Dad rarely used it as a workshop anymore, anyway. It was as good a place as any to store the beautiful instrument in the interim.

Waving good-bye to Nico and his nephews, I climbed into my Scion.

Before starting up the engine, I watched the chocolate brown dog joyfully chase a squirrel up a tree as I placed a few phone calls. It was Sunday, but running a construction business meant there was work to be done all day, every day. First I checked in with my foreman, Raul Hernandez, on the job we were finishing up in the posh neighborhood of St. Francis Wood; he assured me everything was set for the walk-through meeting with the clients scheduled for tomorrow morning. Then I returned several calls to subcontractors, addressing details regarding an etched-glass shower panel, a faulty solar-operated attic fan, and a shortage of copper piping.

Finally, I dialed Matt’s cell phone, hoping to find out how Kenneth was faring. No answer.

I sat for several more minutes, trying to pull myself together, before starting down Vallejo Street toward the bay. Still, my mind raced. Could Kenneth’s injuries truly be the result of an accident? I supposed stranger things had happened on job sites. And one never knew what shenanigans alcohol-fueled amateurs might get up to around power tools, which is precisely why I maintain such strict safety standards on my projects.

Demolition, or “demo,” looks like a free-for-all, and in some ways it is. It doesn’t take the finesse of finish carpentry, but there is an art to properly taking the walls back to the studs—especially in historic homes where preservation is key. Clearly last night’s efforts had been much more free-for-all than finesse.

And then this morning something nightmarish had occurred with Kenneth.

I snuck into the carpool entrance to the Bay Bridge right before official hours and crossed the double span toward the East Bay. Twenty minutes later I pulled up to a once-lovely old farmhouse undergoing renovation in the middle of the seedy but vibrant Fruitvale section of Oakland.

Home. For the moment.

I never thought I’d be the type to move back in with my parents, but after I left my husband and my mother passed away unexpectedly, I needed a temporary place to land, and my dad needed the company. Though we found each other’s political views mutually appalling and had head-butted throughout most of my youth, since Mom’s passing Dad and I had both honored a kind of pseudo détente.

A broken flagstone path led around the side of the house to the rear entrance, the one used by friends and family. The door opened onto a tiled mudroom, which in turn led to a roomy, old-fashioned kitchen currently redolent of spaghetti sauce—the kind made with ground beef and sausage and plenty of olive oil. My father had learned to cook as a teenager at an old resort in the Adirondacks, and he wasn’t about to change his ways in concession to newfangled health trends, high blood pressure and cholesterol be damned.

Dad stood at the vintage Wedgewood stove, happily arguing politics with his old friend Stan while stirring a pot of bubbling sauce with a long wooden spoon.

“Hey, babe,” he greeted me with a nod.

I kissed his whiskery cheek and caught a faint whiff of the twice-a-day cigarettes he secretly enjoyed out behind the detached garage.

“Smoking again, Dad?” I asked.

“Impossible,” he blustered. “I have no bad habits.”

Though he still loomed large in my imagination, my father seemed to have shrunk since my mother’s death, so with my boots on I stood nearly as tall as he. A plain white T-shirt hugged his workingman’s shoulders and taut but prominent beer belly; worn jeans sat low on still-lean hips.

“Nico and the boys brought the piano by already,” he said. “They stuck it in the garage. I hope to God you’re not trying to play that thing. Remember what happened with the flute.”

“It was a clarinet.”

“Sounded like an injured cat, you ask me.”

“And it was in the fifth grade. I think we should move on.”

Frowning, he looked me up and down and gestured with the sauce spoon. “What’s with the getup?”

By which I gathered my father didn’t approve of my wardrobe.

“She’s a breath of fresh air is what she is, Bill, you old codger,” asserted my father’s oldest friend, Stan Tomassi.

“Thanks, Stan.” I leaned over to give my defender a kiss.

“I especially like the beads,” he added.

“Stan, get Mel a drink,” commanded my father in his military voice. My father’s version of a martini was throwing some gin over ice. If he got fancy, he’d stick an olive in it and call it good.