Keeper of the Castle: A Haunted Home Renovation Mystery (16 page)

As I reached the chapel, I heard a thudding noise, and then silence.

Donnchadh had disappeared.

But Graham lay sprawled on the floor.

“G
raham!
Graham, are you all right?” I ran to kneel beside him. His eyes opened for a moment before they fluttered closed again.

There was blood oozing from a wound on the back of his head. I grabbed for my cell phone, only to abandon it when I remembered these damned stones prevented it from working.

I laid his head down on the cement as gently as I could and ran for the door, yelling the whole way.

Several men had been packing up their gear and climbing into their trucks. They ran to the chapel to help. One grabbed the first-aid kit, and another called 911.

“What happened?” asked Tony. “It was that thing, wasn’t it? The ghost?”

“I don’t know. I . . .”

“Elrich has a helicopter,” Miguel said quietly. “It looks bad.”

“Great idea. I’ll go outside and call him,” said Tony.

As we waited, we did our best to stanch the flow of blood. Graham wasn’t responding. Miguel’s words rang in my head: “It looks bad.”

After an agonizingly long time, Ellis’s bodyguards arrived. The men loaded Graham carefully onto a strong board, strapped him down, and carried him as quickly as they could without jostling him. I trotted along behind them, up the hill to the helipad, where the chopper was already warming up.

Ellis met us at the helicopter. “I’ve called Marin Hospital; they’re expecting him. Dr. Petralis is the best in the business for head injuries, and he’s on his way. I’m flying him in from LA.”

I nodded, unable to speak for fear of crying. I was so grateful I hugged him. Ellis held me close for a moment, then patted my back.

“He’ll be in good hands,” he yelled so I could hear over the helicopter blades. “Go. I’ll take care of everything here.”

“Dog—”

“He’ll eat well tonight. No worries. And I’ll send the men home. We’ll suspend work for a day, with pay. Just take care of Graham and let me know what happens.”

*   *   *

I’m well schooled in first aid. Construction is a dangerous field, and my father had my sisters and me resuscitating Annie the Dummy when we were still in Girl Scouts—or, in my case, still ducking out of Girl Scouts. So I knew there isn’t much to be done for a head injury except stop the bleeding. If the brain swelled, surgeons would have to operate to relieve the pressure before brain damage set in. If the brain didn’t swell overmuch, you waited and hoped everything got back to normal once the skull stitched itself back up.

Not that I wasn’t grateful for Ellis calling in his head- injury expert, but I already knew it was pretty much that simple. Of course, if Graham was going to need brain surgery, I wanted the best in the world operating on him.

Two hours later, I was pacing the floor in the trauma waiting room when my best friend, Luz Cabrera, walked in.

“Luz? How did you . . . ? I mean . . .”

“You dropped your cell phone at the construction site,” she said. “I called to say hi, and Ellis Elrich answered. Could have knocked me over with a feather.”

“He told you what happened?”

She nodded. “He said you could probably use a friend right about now. And get this—he offered to send a limo to pick me up. I told him I would drive myself, but he still sent a guy named Buzz with your phone to meet me.” She dug around in her expensive purse and handed it to me. “And he says to tell you Buzz will be outside with the limo in case you need a ride somewhere.”

She hugged me, and I broke down and cried as soon as her arms were around me.

“What are the doctors saying?” Luz asked after a long while. “Do you have any news?”

I shrugged and tried to pull myself together. “It’s pretty much a waiting game at this point. They’re watching to see if the brain swells. If it does they’ll have to operate.”

She nodded. “And if it doesn’t . . . ?”

“They can’t do much more than wait and see. And send the poor guy for CAT scans and PET scans and a million X-rays. Assuming he heals from the head injury, he’ll probably die from radiation sickness.”

Luz smiled at my weak attempt at humor.

“Has he . . . ? I mean, is he conscious?”

I sniffed loudly and shook my head. “Not really. He goes in and out, but nothing seems to register. Dr. Petralis says that’s par for the course for this sort of thing.”

“He a good doctor?”

“He’s supposed to be the best. He just arrived and is examining Graham now. Ellis flew him up from LA.”

“I tell you what: You are dealing with a better class of client these days. It must be nice to have more money than God.”

I nodded, thinking of what Ellis had said to me: that he would trade it all for one more day with his late daughter.

Luz urged me over to a bank of seats that were surprisingly plush and comfortable. On the other side of the large waiting room, an extended family was watching something on the overhead TV, but here it was blessedly absent of people and of the incessant noise of the TV set.

Luz filled a paper cup from the watercooler and brought it to me. I took a long drink and tried to pull myself together. She sat beside me, her arm wrapped around my shoulders. Luz wasn’t normally one for physical demonstration; this was a big deal for her.

“So, what happened?” she said softly.

I took a deep, shaky breath, then blew it out slowly. “I’m not exactly sure, but it’s possible a ghost scared him so badly he fell and hit his head.”

“A ghost?” Luz raised one eyebrow.

Ah, my old friend. Somehow it was more comforting when she looked at me as if I’d lost my mind than when she was uncharacteristically solicitous.

“The men on the crew were scared by something in the cloister. I went in to investigate and found a despondent knight. I mean, I guess he’s a knight. A warrior of some sort. I’m not really up on my Scottish history.”

“Okaaaaay. And he tried to kill you?”

“No. I think . . . I don’t think he’s the type to try to kill women.”

“Well, at least there’s that.”

I nodded. “Kieran says he’s part of a curse. . . . He carries a broadsword.”

“Who’s Kieran?”

“A Scottish guy.”

“A Scottish ghost guy?”

“No. He’s hoping to repatriate the building, or at least the treasure, to Scotland.”

“There’s a treasure now?” she said, her voice sardonic. “Any chance there are pirates involved?”

“I know it sounds crazy, Luz, but it may be true. I think this ghost may be guarding something.”

“Wait a minute. Let’s back up for a second. When you told me about taking this job a few days ago, you said the ghost was a woman in red.”

“Yes, that’s what I saw originally. But now there’s a guy.”

“A Highland warrior.”

“I don’t actually know that much about Scottish history. For instance, I have no way of knowing whether he was Highland or Lowland, because I don’t even know what that refers to. But the warrior, I’m pretty sure we can go with that. He was covered in scars, and he was huge, and . . .”

“I’m envisioning Mel Gibson in
Braveheart
. Does he have a mullet, too?”

“I didn’t notice. But this guy’s a
lot
scarier.”

“Okay. Let’s come back to that. So the ghost went after Graham?”

I nodded. “Donnchadh and I—”

“Who’s Donnchadh?”

“The ghost.”

“You two are on a first-name basis?”

“We introduced ourselves.”

“Well, of course. Death is no excuse for forgetting one’s manners.”

“We were talking, and then Graham came in looking for me. I can’t tell you what it’s like when Donnchadh goes after someone—it’s a complete transformation. He turns so fierce and charges forward with his sword.”

“And then what happened? I thought you always talk a big game about how ghosts can’t actually hurt people.”

“That’s what I thought. What I still think, actually. Maybe . . . I think Donnchadh scared Graham and he lost his footing, and fell and hit his head on the cement floor.”

Luz looked thoughtful. “I guess that’s possible. It’s hard to imagine a man like Graham tripping over his own shoelaces, though. He’s gonna be pissed with himself when he wakes up.”

I’d had the same thought. Nothing like adding insult to injury.

“The doctor’s here,” Luz said softly as Dr. Petralis walked in and headed for us. He wore a huge gold Rolex and had a fake tan and slicked-back hair. All in all, he looked like a self-described “swinger,” the kind of man who tried to convince women many years younger than himself to be his lucky charm at the Vegas craps tables and then plied them with free drinks.

But I was going to have to trust Ellis on this; the doctor didn’t have to be to my taste, just so long as he was the best in the business and could help.

Petralis gave us the lowdown on Graham’s condition: As I had thought, this was a wait-and-see situation. So far, surgical intervention was not indicated. But it would
take twenty-four to forty-eight hours to know if he was in the clear.

Afterward, we went in to visit Graham, now in a bed in the ICU.

I noticed his eye sockets were swelling and turning blue. “Is that normal?”

“Of course not. A fractured skull is not normal,” said Dr. Petralis.

“No, I understand that. I mean, is that normal for a skull fracture?”

“Hard to say.”

“I guess I was assuming it was your job for you to say, one way or the other,” I said, feeling my ire rising.

Luz stepped in to rescue the situation. “What Mel is asking is: Is swelling around the eye sockets consistent with this sort of head trauma?”

Dr. Petralis looked at Luz with interest.

“Yes. It happens. They might turn blue, then black. We call it panda markings.”

“And that means . . . ?”

“It’s the result of internal bleeding. Could go either way. It’s a bad sign because internal bleeding is never good, but it might mean the blood isn’t staying on the brain, which is a good sign. In general, I think it’s more positive than negative, in terms of brain injury.”

“Híjole,”
said Luz with a shake of her head. “I can’t believe simply hitting your head on the floor could cause this sort of injury.”

“On the floor?” asked the doctor.

“We think he was startled by something, tripped and hit his head on the floor,” I said.

Petralis shook his head. “This injury isn’t consistent with a fall.”

“It isn’t?”

“The angle of the blow indicates your friend was attacked from behind, by something heavy, which struck his skull at a downward angle. A blunt instrument of some kind. Looks to me like someone tried to kill him.”

*   *   *

Dr. Petralis left after that pronouncement, murmuring something about checking in later, and Luz turned to me.

“Could someone have been hiding in the chapel, without your seeing anything?”

I thought back to those panicked moments. “I suppose so. I ran into the chapel after Donnchadh, but there was probably enough time for someone to run away, or hide. Under the circumstances, I doubt I would have noticed someone hunkering down behind a pile of stones.”

“But why would anyone want to hurt Graham?”

“That’s the ten-thousand-dollar question. Unless . . . Graham had just returned from talking to the widow of McCall, the building inspector who was killed. We were trying to figure out if Larry McCall might have known something, figured out something that would have led someone to murder him.”

“Wait, wait,
wait
. I thought the police had his killer under arrest, that it was a crime of passion, a case of anger run amok.”

“That’s what they seem to think. They have Pete Nolan, the general contractor who was running the job, in custody. But whether Nolan’s the killer . . . I guess I’m not convinced.”

Luz looked at me with worried, angry eyes. “So, are you thinking maybe Graham learned something from the widow? Something incriminating, or . . . something about a treasure? And that’s why he was hurt?”

I nodded.

“Don’t take this the wrong way, Mel, but that seems rather far-fetched. I mean, if the building inspector knew about a treasure, why wouldn’t he have done something about it? And if the killer is after the same treasure, why doesn’t he just unearth it and run away? Why hang around attacking people, and in the process, risking exposure?”

“I have no idea. All I can think is that it’s not that easy to get to.”

“But you think maybe the widow knows something and told Graham?”

“That’s all I can think of. And there’s one way to find out.”

“I’ll go with you.”

“No, Luz.”

“Seriously, Mel, what makes you think you can go talk with her safely if Graham couldn’t?”

“Because everyone knew Graham had gone to speak with her.” I thought back to that crazy scene after the room collapse, with Ellis and his entourage looking over the site, plus Tony and Jacek and most of the men gathered around. Graham and I had spoken openly about where he was going, right there in front of everyone. “I’ll be more discreet from now on. Surely, if the murderer’s really out there, he’ll assume I’m with Graham right now. In fact, come to think of it . . . I suppose that could be why he did it. To get me out of the way.”