Keeper of the Castle: A Haunted Home Renovation Mystery

by Juliet Blackwell

  “Well, you gotta do what you gotta do, babe,” said Dad.

  I had to admit, he didn’t appear exactly broken up over the prospect of my being away for a while. I supposed it was possible I had become a bit annoying, what with nagging him to eat organic vegetables and to stop watching so much TV.

  Probably we could both use a little time apart.

  “But I don’t know. . . .” Dad trailed off, his attention seeming as divided as Caleb’s usually did. He kept fiddling with his new smartphone. “Maybe if you’re gonna go on up and stay at Elrich’s house, you should take a gun, just in case. You’re a good shot with that Glock.”

  “Um . . . okay.”

  He looked up, surprised. “You’re getting smart now, are you? Change your mind about gun control?”

  Stan, who had a few decided opinions about gun control, gaped at me.

  “No, no, it’s nothing like that,” I said. “I just . . . Just in case, it might not hurt to have a little extra protection.”

  “You think you’ll be in danger?” asked Stan. “Mel, no job is worth putting yourself at risk.”

  “No. Not really. Not at all. I’m just . . . I thought it might be a good idea. Considering my track record. Besides, Graham will be there, so I’ll have plenty of protection.”

  “Still . . .” Dad trailed off again. This was not like him.

  “What are you doing?” I demanded, annoyed.

  “This ‘smart’ phone isn’t near as smart as a person would hope.” Dad only recently, and quite reluctantly, had upgraded from a flip phone. He had been waiting to make sure it wasn’t just a fad, he explained. Now that he had bought the newfangled device, he appeared to be enamored with its many features and apps. “I’m trying to look up directions to the barbecue.”

  “Dad, you’ve been going to Garfield Lumber for thirty years,” I pointed out. I felt a sudden stab of worry. Dad wasn’t that old, was he? “You need to look up the directions?”

  “Don’t be ridiculous. I just want to hear the voice tell me how to get there. See if she’s right. I like her voice. Sounds like a real nice gal.”

  Caleb rolled his eyes but smiled and held out his hand. “Here. Give it to me, Bill. I’ll show you.”

  “Okay, everybody ready?” I asked, wanting to get the show on the road. “Shall we take the van?”

  Stan was in a wheelchair following a construction accident years ago. It was best to take the specially outfitted van so he didn’t have to get out of his chair.

  “Sure,” Dad said, tossing me the keys. As we were climbing in—he, Caleb, and Dog in back, Stan riding shotgun—he asked: “Hey, when are you and Graham gonna make me a grandfather again?”

  Stan hooted with laughter.

  Wow. That was out of left field. I was just beginning to inch past my I-hate-all-men phase; no way was I ready to move on to procreation.

  “You’ve got Caleb,” I said, trying to ignore the strange butterfly sensation at the base of my throat. “That’s all I’m guaranteeing at the moment.”

  “Well, now, I guess he’ll do just fine,” Dad said.

  Caleb pretended to be absorbed in programming Dad’s phone, but when I glanced at him in the rearview mirror, I could tell he was smiling.

  “Hey, Bill,” Caleb said. “What do you call a ridiculous old man?”

  “I give up. What?”

  “A fossil fool.”

  Dad chuckled.

  Garfield Lumber’s stale hot dogs and cheap beer had never tasted better to me.

  Unfortunately, construction workers are big on lame anecdotes; after Dad blabbed about what had happened at Wakefield, I spent the rest of the evening listening to jokes that culminated in dead building inspectors.

  Maybe it was just too soon, but I didn’t find them at all amusing.

  Chapter Four

  After a day of soul-searching, I told Stan to cash Elrich’s check.

  We needed the money. But, as usual, it was more than that. The chance to work on this kind of historical building didn’t come around every day. I’d worked with a few eccentric billionaires in my time, but this was the only one who had decided to import an entire monastery. It was extraordinary, and despite its echoing sadness—or could it be because of it?—Wakefield fascinated me.

  In any case, I made arrangements for Raul to oversee our existing San Francisco projects, packed my bags—with my bathing suit—and Dog’s food, bowl, and leash, put a Pink Martini disk in the CD player, and headed for bucolic Marin County, north of San Francisco.

  Unfortunately, I made the mistake of driving up to Elrich’s decorative wrought-iron front gate instead of the far more utilitarian construction entrance a quarter mile down the road.

  A dozen picketers lined the way, carrying signs and shouting at me to turn back.

  As I waited for the gates to open, I had to fight the urge to explain myself to the protesters; normally, I respected picket lines. Most of the signs appeared to be about employment issues with one of Elrich’s smaller subsidiary companies. A few apparently didn’t like his contributions to particular political causes.

  But there was one protester who stuck out: He was wearing a kilt with a thick leather belt, boots with tassels at the top, and a tartan cloth flung over one shoulder. He had the sandy-haired good looks of a poet, with romantic bright blue eyes and a boyish face.

  His sign demanded REPATRIATION OF THE WAKEFIELD STONES.

  Huh.

  “What do you think, Dog?”

  Dog’s head lolled over toward me. He thumped his tail, and then his head rolled back toward the protesters.

  “I’m only asking because one of them appears to be in costume. You don’t see that every day.”

  The gates swung open, and I started to edge my car through the crowd. One pretty young woman banged on my hood.

  “Hey!” My boxy Scion was a working car and was hardly pristine, but physical contact seemed over the line. “Back off.”

  “Why are you crossing the picket line?” she demanded.

  “I don’t work for Elrich Enterprises,” I said. “I have nothing to do with his company.”

  “What are you doing here, then?”

  “That’s really none of your business.”

  “She’s working on the new construction,” said the man in the Scottish costume. “Let her be.”

  “She is? How do you know?” demanded the young woman.

  Their attention diverted, I drove through the gates, which swung shut behind me. A glance in the rearview mirror told me the protesters did not try to follow.

  My tires crunched and popped as I proceeded slowly along the long, yellow, crushed-granite drive. After nearly a quarter of a mile, the drive formed a loop around a fountain in front of Elrich’s beautiful two-story grand Victorian home.

  Painted in various shades of cream with gold gilt trim, the massive Victorian was fronted by an ample porch. The building formed a U shape around a courtyard, at the center of which was a melodious fountain. A round turret was accessed by winding stairs, and a balcony featured a finely crafted wrought-iron railing.

  I looked down toward the building site for the soon-to-be Elrich retreat center. The way Wakefield was situated on the hill, it really did seem like Ellis Elrich fancied himself a modern-day reincarnation of the famous but controversial newspaperman William Randolph Hearst.

  It was hard not to draw the comparison: Like Elrich, the newspaper magnate lived in a grand home high on a hill overlooking the ocean—though Hearst’s Castle down the coast at San Simeon was much larger and grander than Elrich’s house. But it was the circumstances of the construction that really brought home the similarities. Hearst was in the habit of buying entire buildings, having them disassembled, and shipping them to the United States to be reassembled for his various interests. It was the sort of outrageous yet inspired thing only the extremely wealthy and rather flamboyant could pull off.

  “I was thinking about taking a vacation at a Club Med,” I mumbled to my canine
companion. “But I guess this is pretty close.”

  Dog agreed. He didn’t talk or anything, but I could tell by the way his head lolled.

  The home was gorgeous and seemed welcoming, but as I parked, I had second thoughts about being here without Graham.

  And in fact, he hadn’t been pleased when I called to tell him I’d had a change of heart. How ironic that in the end, the one most opposed to my getting involved in the Wakefield project was the one who had tried to entangle me in the first place.

  “I don’t like it,” Graham had said on the phone last night.

  “Which part?”

  “The part where you’re working for Elrich.”

  “I thought that was your grand plan when you introduced me to him. Now you’re changing your mind?”

  “That was before a man was killed.”

  “You don’t seriously think Elrich did it?”

  “No, but I’m not convinced Nolan did it.”

  “Okay . . . but why should I be worried? I mean, McCall was a building inspector. No one likes building inspectors.”

  Graham, a former building inspector for California Office of Safety and Health, or OSHA, didn’t deign to reply.

  “Seriously, though, maybe it was an accident. McCall seemed like the type to poke his nose into everything. Who’s to say the bag of mortar didn’t slip off that big pile?”

  “That seem logical to you?”

  Not really. “I’m just saying that since we don’t know what happened to McCall, there’s no reason to let it affect my business decisions.”

  “Listen, Mel, at least wait until I get back to town. We’ll move into Elrich’s place together.”

  “There’s a meeting tomorrow with Florian Libole, and I don’t want to miss it. It’s just one night, Graham. Even I don’t manage to attract problems that quickly. It’s like I was telling Dad and Stan: This place has already experienced one murder, so I figure we’re safe for a while.”

  “I’m beginning to worry about you.”

  “This is why you like me so much, though, right? I keep you guessing.”

  “No, actually, that’s not why. Not even close.”

  I was too smart to take that bait. I thought about telling Graham that I had borrowed my dad’s Glock, but rejected that on the theory that in this case, discretion would be the better part of valor. Somehow I didn’t think knowing I was armed—without a license or carry permit—would make Graham feel better.

  I left my car in the shade, rolled down the windows halfway, and told Dog to be a good boy. I would come back for him after I checked out the scene.

  My suitcase banged as I rolled it up the steps to the porch, the noise mingling with the cheerful splash of the water in the fountain.

  I knocked on the large wooden door, checking out the architecture. Given decorative details like the fan light over the front door and the carved crests and angels along the roofline, I estimated the house was built around the turn of the twentieth century. The house’s aesthetics were well-done, but there were some visible issues: The wood siding was sagging and warped in spots, and there were cracks along the joints of the window lintels and sills. No big deal, but such issues needed to be addressed before they led to water damage and dry rot. Even with environmental risks like termites and carpenter ants, wood-frame buildings held up well in California’s temperate climate, but all aged structures required maintenance and repair from time to time.

  “Yes?” The woman who opened the door frowned, looking me over as if I were a trick-or-treater on the day after Halloween. She held a massive key ring in one hand, a large notebook in another.

  She was tall, strong-looking, and tanned a rich mocha brown, which was unusual in the SPF-soaked Bay Area. Her auburn hair was cut in an attractive style that brushed the tops of her shoulders with a feminine élan yet still managed to seem businesslike. A small scar under her right eye, and another that split her top lip, somehow highlighted her appearance. Her dress—short, chic, and cocoa brown with bright blue piping—reminded me of a chocolate Easter egg.

  But then again, I’m a little food-fixated. Dog and I have that in common.

  “Hi. I’m Mel Turner.”

  “You are Mel Turner?” she demanded, unsmiling.

  I nodded. “Nice to meet you.”

  “I’m Alicia Withers, Mr. Elrich’s personal assistant. He informed me you would be arriving and asked me to help you settle in.”

  “Oh, great. Thanks.”

  “I expected you to be a man.”

  “I . . . um . . .” I’m never sure how to respond to this sort of thing. I’m clearly not a man—at least, I hope it’s clear; otherwise I’d best get me to a beauty parlor—but my nickname and the fact that I’m in the trades tend to lead to these kinds of assumptions. However, upon visual confirmation, I would think people would figure it out without further explanation. “Sorry. I’m . . . not.”

  “So I see.” Clearly perturbed by this turn of events, Alicia looked me over once again.

  I glanced down surreptitiously. I endured a good amount of ribbing over my usual wardrobe, which included any number of spangled and fringed outfits not normally seen on construction sites. Or, really, anywhere outside of Mardi Gras or a costume party. But I’d spent so many years unhappily encased in proper, respectable (read: boring) clothes that upon my divorce I had embraced my sartorial freedom. I did have limits, though, and since I was arriving at an extremely wealthy client’s home, I hadn’t worn one of my offbeat outfits. Today I was wearing a simple patterned skirt, camisole, and cardigan sweater. I even wore sandals; I had been feeling a mite frisky-free—and feminine—without my usual steel-toed work boots.

  “So.” Alicia’s eyes narrowed and her mouth pressed tighter. “You’re with Graham Donovan?”

  “I, uh, we’re . . . Well, when you say ‘with,’ I mean . . .”

  “That explains a lot.” She let out an exasperated sigh, closed the door, and started off. “This way.”

  As I entered the tiled foyer and looked around, I experienced a kind of architectural dissonance. Elrich had mentioned that the interior and exterior didn’t match, but the significance of this hadn’t fully registered until the moment I walked in.

  The interior was right out of a Spanish Revival home: white stucco walls, beehive fireplaces, tiled floors. The heavy furniture was dark carved woods upholstered in rich brocades. I love Victorian architecture, and I adore the Spanish Revival style. But together . . . ? It made me think of going to the Gilroy Garlic Festival and trying their famous garlic ice cream. Separately, I’m a big fan of both. Together . . . they make me feel a little queasy.

  Amazingly enough, however, Elrich had not hired me to work on this house beyond making a few small repairs. I was here to finish building Wakefield.

  I followed Alicia past a lovely sitting room that overlooked a sparkling pool and the meadow leading down to the worksite, and down a spacious corridor. The key ring jingled as she walked.

  “Since I thought you were a man and a professional colleague, I assigned you your own room, here.”

  Alicia paused outside an open door made of heavy dark-stained wood, the hinges pounded iron.

  The room was decorated in a classic Spanish style: Heavy, carved dark woods stood in stark contrast to the snowy white stucco walls. In one corner was a raised beehive fireplace, its hearth doubling as a small bench. Colorful painted tiles covered the hood and hearth and made for a brilliant display. The bed was a large four-poster, adorned with a mound of satin pillows in a rainbow of deep hues. Hefty wooden candelabra in graduated heights marched along in front of the windows, topped with tangerine and ruby pillared candles. An antique trunk sat at the foot of the bed.

  I walked slowly around the room, taking it in. Dad was a big fan of old Westerns, and this house could have been a set for one of those movies. Except in reality, those old haciendas had probably smelled a lot like beans, livestock, and sweat. Here in Ellis Elrich’s house, everything was potpourri,
scented candles, and oranges. And as long as I ignored the fact that it was all wrapped up in a classical Victorian exterior, I could appreciate it.

  “This is beautiful,” I said.

  “I decorated it.”

  “It’s gorgeous. You’ve got a great eye.”

  Alicia shrugged. My compliment was sincere, but either she didn’t believe me, or she didn’t care. I was getting the distinct impression that Alicia and I were not destined to be besties.

  “Anyway,” she continued, “this was the room assigned to you. But if you’d rather share with Graham—”

  “No, no. Thank you,” I said. Whether or not Ellis Elrich was aware of my personal relationship with Graham, I preferred to separate business and pleasure. A jobsite romance had never been on my bucket list.

  She fixed me with a stern dorm-mother look. “It would be best if there is no late-night sneaking around. It’s very disruptive to the household.”

  “I assure you, I almost never sneak around late at night. So, Mr. Elrich mentioned that I could bring my dog with me. He’s very obedient. . . .” That was a bald-faced lie. Any and all attempts to train Dog had crashed and burned. Still, he slept eighteen hours a day and didn’t bother with much of anything but food and squirrels.

  “A dog?” Alicia’s voice scaled upward.

  “Mr. Elrich invited him. Personally.”

  “Will he need anything?”

  I shook my head. “I brought his food, and his bowls, and even a mat to set them on so he doesn’t make a mess. He’s all set. Okay if I bring him in?”

  She gave a nod and handed me a piece of heavy-stock paper with a printed itinerary. “Here’s today’s household schedule; the new one will be slipped under your door each morning. I would appreciate it if you would attempt to adhere to the hours posted. I have circled the events at which you are expected.”

  The schedule broke the day down into half-hour increments, with blocks of time marked off for meals, as in a full-service hotel. Ellis Elrich’s meetings were highlighted, during which, an asterisk noted, “household guests shall kindly observe silence.” Sherry hour was indicated prominently, to be held in the front parlor. My first obligation, circled in red, was a meeting with Ellis Elrich, his chief financial officer, Vernon Dunn, and designer Florian Libole, at ten. I felt as if I had been summoned to the Oval Office.