The Last Curtain Call

by Juliet Blackwell

  “You mean, like a double date?”

  “I get so nervous around him. It’s really weird. I thought maybe if you and Landon were there, I would be more . . . more myself.”

  I smiled. First the blushing, now the request of a favor. Luz must be falling in love, I thought. “We would love to. Landon likes any excuse to go out—you know how I am.”

  “You work hard, Mel, and there’s nothing wrong with that. Best he know what a homebody you are before you get married.”

  The antique rock on my hand glittered in the bar’s mellow lighting. Landon had given me the ring a few months ago, and I wore it whenever I wasn’t working with my hands. The sight of it still tended to surprise me.

  The bartender brought the tab and I grabbed it, wincing at the total.

  “By the way,” I asked the bartender as I signed the credit card slip, “do you know who did the restoration work on your Parrish mural?”

  “Local artist, name of Annie Kincaid,” he said, handing me a small brochure that explained the history of the mural and its recent restoration. “She’s good.”

  “Thanks.”

  Luz and I walked down the hallway toward the extravagant marble-lined lobby of the nine-story Palace Hotel. The original structure had been built in 1875, and had survived the 1906 earthquake but succumbed to the subsequent fire. It was rebuilt and reopened in 1909. The hotel stood directly across Market Street from Lotta’s Fountain, which had been gifted to the city by actress Lotta Crabtree. In the chaos following the great earthquake and fire, Lotta’s Fountain had served as a rendezvous point for separated families and friends.

  We paused in front of the hotel’s famous “Garden Court,” a huge, light-filled space topped with an elaborate multipaned skylight that reminded me of a sumptuous Victorian-style greenhouse. Here, well-appointed patrons enjoyed high tea or champagne brunch or wedding receptions.

  “Why do we never come here for champagne brunch?” asked Luz.

  “Because we’re always working, and don’t feel like spending three days’ salary on smoked salmon and a glass of bubbly.”

  “Oh yeah. Still, we should try it one of these days.”

  “We should.” I squirrelled away the idea for Luz’s upcoming birthday. Everyone should be invited to brunch at the Palace at least once in her life.

  As we walked out of the front doors, Luz declined my offer of a ride, since we were heading in opposite directions: She lived in the Excelsior District while I was heading east to the Bay Bridge, which led to Oakland and home. She called a Lyft, and we waited for it to arrive.

  “So, back to the squatters in the theater,” I said. “Once the police release the scene, I’ll need to go back and deal with them. Any suggestions?”

  “My suggestion is that you walk away from this job altogether, Mel. You don’t have to solve the mystery of the ghosts, much less the murder of a young woman. Leave it to the SFPD.”

  I nodded, and then persisted: “But seriously, about the squatters: any suggestions?”

  “For how to solve the problem of homelessness in San Francisco? I wish. Maybe call the police to run them out?”

  “I can’t just toss them out on the street,” I said.

  She raised an eyebrow.

  “And you couldn’t either, if you met them. These aren’t criminals, Luz, just idealistic artists. Enough with the tough attitude.”

  Luz let out a sigh. “As you know, this isn’t my sort of thing. But one of my colleagues studies homelessness and affordable-housing options. I’ll talk to him, see what he suggests.”

  “Thank you. And now, for the important stuff: Where shall we go on our double date?”

  She blushed again and looked adorable, though I refrained from saying so. Luz would have hated the thought. It didn’t suit her tough-girl-from-East-LA persona.

  “I have no idea,” she said. “Where do people go?”

  “You’re asking me?”

  “I’ll do some research online and get back to you on that,” said Luz as her ride pulled up. “We’re a couple of live wires, you and I.”

  We shared a laugh and a hug, and I watched as the car pulled away.

  I placed a call to Inspector Crawford, who didn’t answer. I left a message saying I hoped she’d keep me updated as to the status of things—which was entirely unnecessary, since I already knew she would tell me what she thought I should know if and when she thought I should know it. Finally, I called the hospital to check on Gregory Thibodeaux’s condition: He was under observation for the concussion, and relatives had been notified. Funny, it was hard to imagine Thibodeaux with relatives; he seemed as though he had walked off the pages of a fashion magazine.

  Time to track down my car and tackle the Bay Bridge traffic, not to mention face what awaited me at home. I hated to tell my family what had happened, though it probably wouldn’t take them by surprise. Tripping over dead bodies and encountering ghosts on a proposed jobsite, so what else was new?

  Just another day in the life of Mel Turner, renovator to the rich and the undead.

  Chapter Eight

  Forty minutes later, I pulled up to an old farmhouse in the Fruitvale section of Oakland. The neighborhood, true to its name, had once been full of orchards, and my dad’s clapboard farmhouse was one of the rare holdouts in an area now populated mostly by modest two-bedroom stucco bungalows. This was the house my parents bought when they had finally saved enough money to purchase a home of their own instead of camping out in the houses they were flipping. It had been a dream come true for my mother, and she had been so excited.

  Then, a few years ago, Mom had died suddenly and unexpectedly.

  That was when my dad lost it, and his old friend and office manager, Stan Tomassi, stepped in and told me, in no uncertain terms, that if I didn’t take over Turner Construction “for a few months” the family business would fold. At the time I was nursing the wounds inflicted by a painful, though long-overdue divorce from Caleb’s father, so running the company gave me something to do instead of just feeling sorry for myself. I moved back in with my dad and Stan, who had lived with our family ever since he had been injured in a fall from a roof. He now used a wheelchair.

  I draped the green dress Hildy had given me over my arm, circled around to the back of the house, and opened the kitchen door. A brown ball of fur barreled into me, wagging his tail so hard he smacked himself in the face repeatedly. I had found the abandoned mutt on a jobsite in Pacific Heights. He was starving, so I brought him home for “a day or two” to feed him and find him a new home.

  In an attempt not to get too attached, I simply called him Dog. But his temporary stay at Chez Turner had, entirely predictably, morphed into a lifetime commitment, and once it was clear Dog was part of the family, Dad insisted the pup needed a real name. We didn’t want to confuse him, so we changed his name to Doug. The pup seemed fine with the name change, but the humans proved more difficult, so now most people began saying “Dog,” then changed it halfway into “Doug,” resulting in Daw-ugh.

  I had simply reverted to calling him Dog.

  Dog was not the sharpest tool in the shed. He didn’t chase balls, he got carsick, and he wouldn’t go out in the rain because he hated to get his paws wet. In many ways, he was a bust as a dog. But his soft brown eyes were full of love, his loyalty was unquestioned, and—bonus!—he was the only one in the family besides me who could sense ghosts.

  We had fallen for him from day one.

  I gave Dog his fair share of pats and coos, then greeted Landon with a kiss, and my dad and Stan with hugs. As I took in the warm smiles of my loved ones, and breathed deeply of the aroma of home-cooked food on the stove, I was once again reminded of how incredibly lucky I was. Not only did I have an extraordinary new house to look forward to with my fiancé, but I had this home, where I was always welcome. I thought of Alyx being thrown out as a teen and wonde
red what that must have felt like, the betrayal of one’s own family.

  “New dress?” Landon asked. “I like it. Is that one of Stephen’s designs?”

  Stephen was an old friend who had grown up with a Vegas showgirl mother, and had a flair for designing sparkly concoctions like the one I was currently wearing. His designs had become a major part of my wardrobe. He was going to love this dress from Hildy.

  “No, I actually found it in the attic closet, at Landon’s End.”

  “Don’t you mean Mel’s Haven?” Landon said with a smile.

  We had been trying to come up with a name for our new house, since in my business one couldn’t just refer to “the house under remodel” and know what one was talking about. Using the street address seemed too pedestrian for such a splendid home. Plus, it was fun.

  “But seriously, this dress was in a closet?” Landon continued. “It seems to be in great shape.”

  “It does,” I said, holding it up and out and inspecting it. “Cedar does wonders. There’s one bad tear, but that can be mended.”

  “That’ll look great on you, gorgeous,” said Stan.

  My dad cast a jaundiced eye over it, snorted, and shook his head. He stirred the bubbling stew on the stove, mumbling something under his breath about “fancy-pants duds.”

  I thought, again, of Alyx. And of poor Isadora.

  And of myself. How was I going to tell my family what had happened?

  As if on cue, Stan asked: “So, how did the walk-through of the Crockett Theatre go?”

  “It went . . . okay,” I said.

  Everyone—even the dog—turned to stare at me. These guys had been with me through way too many close encounters with ghosts and murder not to recognize the signs.

  “What happened?” asked Landon, handing me a glass of Bordeaux.

  “It’s an amazing old theater. Have you ever been there, Dad? Stan?”

  “Long time ago,” said Dad. “So, what happened?”

  “I remember going there with mom when we were kids. She aided and abetted our escape from a jobsite one summer’s day. We watched a matinee and ate Red Vines.”

  Once again I used the warm memories to ground myself. It was helpful when facing ghosts, or heights, or the worried gazes of my loved ones.

  “What happened?” Stan repeated.

  “Ghosts?” asked Landon in a low voice.

  “Well, you know what they say about old theaters,” I said.

  “I told you there were rumors about that place,” said Stan. “Found a number of stories about it when I was researching its history.”

  “I’m gonna bet it was worse than ghosts,” said Dad, quietly. My Dad and I were different in so many ways, but he had known me from the get-go and could always tell when something was bothering me. “Might as well spill the beans, babe.”

  I sighed. “Okay, yes, I found a body.”

  “Already? You work fast. I’ll give you that,” said Dad, putting the spoon down too quickly and splattering the counter with gravy. His flippant words did nothing to disguise his concern.

  “It had nothing to do with me,” I said.

  “It never does, does it?” Dad pointed out.

  I let out a long breath. I had begun to wonder, recently, if death was somehow following me around—or if I was somehow following death around, which might be even worse. Either way, though, it was a very unsettling thing to think about.

  One thing was certain: I seemed unable to complete a major remodel anymore without coming across something, or someone, sinister.

  “Another jobsite, another body,” grumbled Dad, as though reading my thoughts. “Right?”

  “Well, now, I don’t know about that,” Stan said. “The Wachowski addition was completed without any bodies being discovered. The Garcia deck was, too. And the Cow Hollow place seems body-free.”

  “There you go,” Landon said. “Yet another example of how correlation does not imply causation. Basic statistics, really.”

  “Listen to the man of science,” Stan said, nodding. “It’s a coincidence, that’s all.”

  “Yeah, maybe so,” I said. “But something is going on.” I took a big gulp of my wine and told them everything that had happened this afternoon at the theater, including my encounter with the phantom usher, the Mighty Wurlitzer rising, and the discovery of poor Isadora’s body. “Oh, and the ghosts had these really wide-eyed, vacant stares, and they seemed to be watching us like we were part of the show . . .”

  The story was followed by a long silence.

  “That’s an image that’ll fester,” Stan muttered.

  “Gotta hand it to ya, babe,” Dad said. “You do have some interesting experiences.”

  “A little too interesting,” Landon said, frowning. “Mel, I don’t want you going back there without me.”

  “Landon’s right. Mel, in all seriousness,” said Stan. “We can still walk away from this job. I can’t forget what happened in that house in Pacific Heights.”

  Neither could I. Rolling around on a steep rooftop, fighting off a murderer determined to make me his latest victim, had left its mark.

  “Boy, I’m starving,” I said in an attempt to change the subject, my tone as upbeat as I could muster. “That stew smells amazing, Dad. Oh, by the way, I was thinking that when Caleb comes home on Sunday we should have Luz over for a film festival. She’s looking forward to one of your meals. Also, I might suggest she bring her new boyfriend along so you can check him out.”

  “This the quack in Chinatown?” asked Dad as he started washing lettuce for a salad.

  I let out a long sigh. “He’s not a ‘quack,’ Dad. He’s a doctor of acupuncture. It’s an ancient medical system, thousands of years old.”

  “And it’s helping Mel with the phobia,” said Landon. “So I say we give him the benefit of the doubt.”

  “Thought you were a man of science!” Dad said, because he loved nothing better than a good argument.

  “Science requires an open mind,” Landon replied. “So far, the weight of the evidence for the benefits of acupuncture is compelling.”

  “Better be careful there, Landon,” Dad said. “Keep your mind too open, you never know what might crawl in.”

  “So anyway,” I said, because when Dad got wound up he could argue for hours, and wasn’t above switching sides if necessary to continue the argument, “I told Luz we’d join them for a double date, Landon. Maybe this Saturday?”

  “Splendid. Where shall we go?”

  “Luz is doing some research into the matter. She’ll draw up an itinerary, if I know her.”

  Dad handed me a knife and said, “Make yourself useful and chop some onions.”

  I did as I was told.

  “Police tell you when they’ll release the scene?” asked Dad.

  “Soon, I hope. It wasn’t . . . I mean, it didn’t look like it was terribly violent or anything. With luck they’ll find an old boyfriend who flipped out or something along those lines.”

  “Yes, that would be lucky,” said Stan, and I couldn’t tell whether he was joking or not.

  “Hey,” I said to steer the conversation away from murder, “have any of you ever heard of a silent film actress named Hildy Hildecott? From the twenties, I’m guessing.”

  Stan shook his head. “All I know is . . . dunno, maybe Rudolph Valentino? Or Charlie Chaplin?”

  “Same here,” said Landon. “And Clara Bow.”

  “How about a Charlie Chaplin movie night when Caleb’s home?” I said.

  “Count me in,” Stan said.

  “I’ll make the popcorn,” Dad offered.

  “And I’ll bring the wine,” Landon said. “There’s a nice little Sancerre I’ve been meaning to try.”

  “Wine and popcorn?” Dad said. “Oh so Continental.”

  Movie night was a
cherished tradition at the Turner-Tomassi house. It started in the days of renting VHS tapes, when we had to remember to “Be Kind—Rewind,” progressed to renting DVDs and Blu-ray Discs, and now involved downloading films from a streaming service. Over the years, the family television had gotten steadily larger, and a few months ago Dad and Stan had gone in together to purchase a monster eighty-five-inch ultra-high-definition “smart” television with a surround-sound audio system that took up one whole corner of the spacious living room. I liked to tease them about spending so much money on high-tech gizmos, but the truth is, it made movie night pretty special.

  It occurred to me that when Landon and I finally did finish renovating our house—Turner Gardens? Demetrius Manor?—spontaneously gathering for dinner or a movie would no longer be possible; instead, we would have to plan our family get-togethers. The idea of once again having my own place was exciting, but there was sadness, too, at the thought of leaving the warmth of this home, this haven. Still, I was no longer the scared, wounded, unemployed woman going through a divorce that I was when I first limped back to my father’s house, what seemed like a lifetime ago. It was time.

  Also, it was downright embarrassing sleeping with Landon under my dad’s roof.

  “Recently someone told me that Charlie Chaplin filmed The Little Tramp right here,” Landon said.

  “Right where?” Stan asked. “In Oakland?”

  “In Fremont.”

  “In Fremont?” I asked. I knew Fremont as a BART stop, or as a rather nondescript city of suburban developments that scarcely registered as I blew past it on the 80. “What are you talking about?”

  “Ever heard of Niles Canyon?” Dad asked. “It was the name of a town that was later incorporated by Fremont. It was an important train stop in its day. Essanay Film Manufacturing Company had a studio and a back lot in Niles Canyon, and Chaplin filmed his iconic The Little Tramp there in 1915.”

  “I had no idea. How did I not know this?” I asked.

  Landon flashed me a wink. He knew I prided myself on being a Bay Area Native—there weren’t a lot of us—and it galled me not to know something like this.