Keeper of the Castle: A Haunted Home Renovation Mystery

by Juliet Blackwell

  My mind reeled. What had I gotten myself into? I didn’t even know what half those things were. It looked like someone would be hitting the books at night to get up to speed with her medieval building project.

  “A, um, ‘piscine’? Would that be a . . . pool?” Hard to imagine monks taking a dip on the chilly coast of Scotland, but one never knew.

  “Don’t be silly,” said Florian. “A piscine was a special room reserved for washing the goblets and plates used for saying Mass.”

  “Oh, I see.” Just as I thought, being a monk wasn’t much fun.

  “Notice the cresset lamps and the hunky punks.”

  “I’m sorry. The what?” I was starting to wonder if Florian was pulling my leg. Was I being hunky punked?

  “Cresset lamps are indentations in the stone, into which oil was poured and a wick was placed. Some were portable, and used to awaken brethren who dared fall asleep during midnight Mass. And hunky punks are carved little squat fellows, often with funny faces. They have no purpose I can see, but they are entertaining. I have more in the warehouse.”

  “Like gargoyles?”

  “Something like that.”

  He led the way outside to a rough patch of land that was ringed by a temporary wood security fence. Foundation stem walls had been laid around it.

  “This area will be surrounded by a colonnaded walkway, called the promenade. The second story was where the monks copied books. Before the invention of the Gutenberg printing press, all books were written out and illustrated by hand. It was a primary occupation of the brethren.”

  I nodded. This much, I did know.

  “Mr. Elrich would like to utilize those spaces as guest bedchambers, each with its own en suite. The cloister surrounds an herb garden, called a garth. We will plant the garth with traditional plants. We’re to consult ‘Harper’ in the matter.”

  The way he said the name left no doubt as to his opinion of her.

  “Harper?” I asked.

  “Harper Elrich.”

  “Is that Elrich’s wife?”

  “He isn’t married. It’s his daughter.”

  “Oh, I see. Is she a landscape designer?”

  He sneered. “In her dreams. But as you know, the client gets what he wants. Especially this client.”

  Next Libole led the way into the refectory, otherwise known as the dining room. It was attached to a large space that would become the kitchen. Libole handed me paperwork showing the proposed floor plan, as well as receipts for the industrial-sized refrigerators, freezers, cookstoves, and other appliances that had already been ordered according to the instructions of the chef, Jean-Claude Villandry.

  I slowed my pace when we neared the round room, where I’d found McCall’s body. As Libole had mentioned, it was still cordoned off with yellow police crime scene tape. It felt somehow comforting to know that Elrich’s influence didn’t extend to compelling the police to set aside a proper homicide investigation for the sake of the Wakefield Retreat Center.

  But now that I saw this room without being distracted by ghosts or a dead body, I realized that not only was the room incomplete, but these stones were unlike the rest of the monastery.

  “Why are these stones different?” I asked, looking in the doorway.

  Libole shrugged. “Different quarries, perhaps. And as you know, parts of the building were built at different times, sometimes centuries later.”

  “These stones appear to still have bits of plaster on them. Were the walls often plastered, back in the day?”

  “Apparently so,” he said, his tone making clear what he thought of questions with self-evident answers. “Again, they were probably from a different time.”

  “There are several pigments,” I said as I looked more closely, then stepped back to get the big picture. “Almost as though there was a mural here. But I don’t think the stones are placed properly or we might be able to make out the painting—”

  “It’s lost to us.” Libole waved a hand in the air, impatient. “There’s far too little of it remaining to interpret what used to be here. But I will say the people of the time believed very firmly in hell and divine retribution, and many of these walls would have been covered in frescoes depicting such horrors. Best to have it replastered, perhaps by a fresco artist who can re-create something typical to the period. I have been visiting monasteries from the same era, ones that have been preserved or artfully restored, and I have notes as to appropriate themes.”

  “I’d love to look at your ideas, of course,” I said. “And I know a muralist who does wonderful work. Though obviously we’re putting the cart before the horse. We still don’t have the electrical roughed in, much less dictating final wall finishes and the like.”

  “Of course.”

  Giving in to temptation, I reached into the room to drag my fingers across the ragged bits of plaster clinging to the stone: In some places it was shiny and smooth, cold but inviting to the touch; in others it felt ready to crumble under pressure.

  Just then I felt a sudden wave of hunger and sadness overtake me. I was so ravenous I felt faint, so sad I had to fight back tears.

  “Do you know what this room was used for?” I asked, taking a deep breath and trying to tamp down the sudden sensations.

  He paused so long I thought he wasn’t going to answer. “Not really. It was probably merely another sort of storage room.”

  “It’s an unusual shape, isn’t it? Are there a lot of round storage rooms?”

  “Not really, not at that time. Now, I’d like to hear your opinion about a problem we’ve been having. . . .”

  He led the way outside to a stone outbuilding with walls constructed only a few feet off the ground. Several men stopped their work when we arrived, leaning on their shovels and pickaxes.

  They fixed me with a steady gaze. It dawned on me that this was a test, for which I was unprepared. Luckily, I was no novice.

  “So this area won’t have a new foundation laid for it?” I asked. “You’re laying these stones directly on the ground?”

  “It’s a low outbuilding,” said Libole. “Mr. Elrich would prefer to have authenticity preserved wherever possible.”

  “A stone foundation won’t pass code in earthquake country,” I pointed out.

  Libole actually rolled his eyes. “Code again? You are worse than a building inspector—you know that?”

  Those were fighting words on a jobsite, but I wasn’t about to take the bait. I’d been living with my father for years. Crotchety old men didn’t faze me.

  “Just fill me in on the work-arounds,” I said.

  One of the men started detailing the bracing and connecting they’d done to be sure a stone foundation would function properly in earthquake country. The bracing wouldn’t be adequate for a larger structure, but it should suffice for a small outbuilding.

  Still, it seemed like a lot of extra work just to avoid pouring a simple concrete foundation and stem walls. But then again, I supposed it made sense to keep the historical feel as much as possible in areas where there was a little leeway.

  “Here’s the problem,” Tony said as he joined us, his silver earrings sparkling in the sunshine. Back in the day, when I used to follow my dad around as a kid, it was rare to see long hair, much less tattoos, on the jobsite. Construction workers were, by and large, a conservative lot. But times had changed. “See this chalky residue? It keeps happening, and we can’t figure out how to stop it.”

  “This is pretty standard stuff for an old stone building,” I said. “It’s a problem of capillary moisture and subsequent efflorescence.”

  “Right,” said Tony. “That’s what I was thinking.”

  “Stone wicks moisture up from the ground,” I explained. “No big deal in the Southwest, or even more inland areas of California, but in a place like this, on the coast? There’s so much moisture in the ground and air, we’ll be fighting chalky residue forever.”

  “What about a plastic membrane base of some sort?”

 
; “I don’t think we need anything that complicated. In a building this size, a stainless steel flashing would be sufficient.”

  There were some subtle nods among the men. I had passed this simple test. I was sure there would be other, much more difficult ones, but for the moment I would take what I could get.

  As much as I enjoyed the history of the building, I felt relieved when we came to the end of our walk-through, emerging from the shadows of the stones out into the sunshine of the late afternoon. Once outside, I felt brave enough to ask Libole the question that was weighing on my mind: “Would a woman ever have been brought into the cloisters?”

  “A woman? Never.” Libole shrugged. “There were, however, guest accommodations separated from the monastic cloisters, sometimes quite sumptuous. Because of our space and locale, we have moved such chambers closer to the monastery, when in fact there would have been more of a distance.”

  “So a woman might have stayed here, but outside the cloister where the monks lived?”

  “A noblewoman, with her entourage, quite possibly. There were no hotels in those days, so nobles were offered shelter on their journeys.”

  Whereas the peasants could shiver in the cold, I thought.

  I took another look around at the great piles of stones yet to be used. One group appeared different from the others.

  “These . . . these are from the round room?”

  “Perhaps,” said Libole. “Or from a similar part of the structure, yes. From the same era.”

  Out in the sunshine, I could see things more clearly. Much of the plaster was tinted with typical shades for old frescoes: ocher, terra-cotta, the colors of pigments taken from the earth. All were pale, and other than a curl here or a line there, it was impossible to make out what the picture must have been. But I was now sure they had once constituted a mural.

  There were also flecks of something decidedly modern: bits of bright blue chalk here and there, as though the stones had once been marked. The stones reminded me of something, but I couldn’t put my finger on what, exactly.

  “You mentioned that many of the stones have gone missing?”

  “Cretins, Ms. Turner.”

  “I’m sorry?”

  “We are surrounded by cretins. Villagers dragged pieces away to build farms and whatnot. I have been forced to search high and low, but finally found an adequate quarry to replace what’s missing. As luck would have it, the quarry was not in the hills of Italy or the mountains of Afghanistan. Oh, no. It was in Texas.”

  “Well, that will save on shipping costs.”

  “We have a veritable legion of stonecutters working with us. We needed so many that we brought them in from several countries. They’re staying at local hotels and motels and bed-and-breakfasts.” Libole let out a long sigh. “As I’m sure you realize by now, much of this process is being invented as we go along. The monastery was too far gone to re-create it exactly as it was, though we can, at the very least, bring authenticity and veracity to the project through proper study and research.”

  Libole was undeniably brilliant, but he was also a pompous priss. He served as a reminder not to be so self-important when I indulged in one of my spiels about reusing old lumber or finding just the right stained glass for a curved stairwell window.

  “I say, isn’t that your dog?” Libole asked.

  I looked over to see an empty leash lying on the ground, then caught a flash of the brown plume of a tail as Dog disappeared into the building.

  Dammit.

  Chapter Seven

  He would probably be okay; construction workers were notoriously canine friendly. But Dog wasn’t the sharpest tool in the shed. He had his charms—chief among them that he saw ghosts, just as I did—but common sense and keeping out of harm’s way weren’t among them.

  “Sorry. I should go after him, make sure he doesn’t get into trouble.”

  “Certainly.”

  The chapel was empty except for a trio of men on scaffolding, carefully placing a stone corbel at the top of one wall. I hurried through a series of chambers until I emerged at the vestibule where I had seen Larry McCall’s ghost two days ago.

  Dog was sitting attentively, wagging his tail the way he did when someone was offering him food, with the excited pseudo-patience of a hungry dog.

  I searched the dark stone walls, checking out my peripheral vision. Just in case.

  “Hello?” I ventured.

  A slight echo, “o . . . o . . . o,” was my only response.

  An eerie light was shining from the next room—the round room. The room that had been empty of everything but bags of mortar only a few minutes ago.

  I crept along and peeked through the vestibule, into the round room.

  The crime scene tape lay limp on the floor. Food had been laid out on a plank supported by bags of mortar. An apple, a sandwich, a bag of ranch-flavored Doritos. A cup of coffee, still steaming. And several small tea candles.

  What in the world?

  “Are you quite all right?” came Florian’s voice from behind me.

  I jumped at the sound, then stood with my hand over my pounding heart. “Sure. Yep, I’m great.”

  “Did I scare you?”

  “Just a tad.”

  “Don’t tell me you’ve been listening to the ghost stories.”

  “I may have listened to one or two, yes.”

  “Surely you don’t believe in such things?”

  “I take it you don’t?”

  “I’m a realist, my dear, not a fantasist. A building this old, well, it’s seen its share of history. War, love, famine, birth, disease, the drama of human life. I will grant you that such goings-on can give a historic building a certain je ne sais quoi, a sense of something other, another place and time, the way a new building never can. But ghosts? Tsk-tsk.”

  His eyes flickered over the food.

  “Is that an . . . offering?”

  “Sure looks like it.”

  “This is ridiculous. The men have been taken in by that ghost story as well. Doritos.” Libole tsked again.

  “Doritos do seem like an odd choice, but ranch flavor . . .”

  “It’s idle heresy.” And with that he stepped into the room and dashed the food and candles to the floor. Then he stormed out.

  I remained in place, shocked. The odd altar and food offerings, the mess Libole created on the spot where McCall’s body had lain just two days ago—the whole scene felt bizarre, unseemly.

  As I hesitated, I noticed Dog’s panting started to cause clouds in the air. A wave of cold air, then a bone-deep chill, enveloped me.

  “Let’s . . . get out of here,” I whispered to Dog. Dragging him by the collar, I could have sworn I felt something behind me. Something more than cold, something . . .

  Don’t turn around.

  My hair was in its usual ponytail, leaving my neck vulnerable to ghostly exhalations. . . .

  And then I felt something much worse. That same sensation of hunger: deep, aching hunger pangs so strong that for a moment I almost doubled over. And on top of that, a gut-wrenching sadness.

  Don’t turn around.

  Dog yelped.

  Then we ran.

  * * *

  Outside, the sun shone, the sky was filled with puffy white clouds, and a peaceful Pacific Ocean sparkled in the distance. A small army of men bustled around the jobsite. My ears were assaulted by a cacophony of stone being cut, compressor motors pounding, a pneumatic drill whining, the noises blending into a comforting symphony of organized chaos that reminded me of being a kid, working with my dad. The smells of the jobsite were soothing to me, too: sawdust, axle grease, and fresh concrete. Here at Wakefield those scents combined with eucalyptus and the briny ocean air.

  I leaned over, hands on my knees, and took a few minutes to soak it all in, trying to get my bearings. Dog, quicker to rally than I, trotted over to lift his leg on a tuft of grass.

  Libole was nowhere in sight. I saw Tony, the foreman, studying blueprints at a ma
keshift table made of planks laid over sawhorses.

  “Tony, talk to me about food going missing.”

  “Not much to tell,” he said with a shrug. “Just that: Guys are losing things from their lunches.”

  “Their whole lunch pails, or . . . ?”

  He shook his head. “Just stuff out of them. Like an apple or a cookie, like that. You know, the kind of thing that happens in grade school? But it’s rare on a jobsite, right?”

  I nodded. “Could this be a practical joke of some sort?”

  “I doubt it. No one’s sitting back and laughing—if that were the case the guys’d be finding their sandwiches behind the walls; you know the drill. Guy opens up a wall, finds a shrunken head.”

  On my debut job for Turner Construction, the guys had placed a full skeleton behind a wall I was about to open up. That was how I knew they liked me.

  “It’s got to the point where guys are keeping their stuff locked up in their trucks,” Tony continued with another shake of his head. “Not only is that inconvenient, but it’s a damn shame when you can’t trust a member of a crew; you know what I’m saying? Hey, speaking of that, have you heard anything more about Nolan?”

  “No, sorry.”

  “I still can’t believe it. I worked with the guy for six months. I mean, what a shock, right? And that it happened right here, so fast . . .” He let out a loud breath. “I tell you what. I think this place might be cursed.”

  “Cursed?”

  “Like . . . like the guys were talking about ghosts, or whatever? We’ve all seen some stuff. . . . I don’t really know if I want to stick around. It might not be worth it.”

  I couldn’t afford to lose good workers, not with the timeline Elrich was insisting on.

  “We need you, Tony.”

  “I know, you’re new on the job and all. I mean, I’m not gonna bail right away. I’m just . . .” He left off with a shrug.

  “I know things feel unsettled,” I said. “But give me a few days and we’ll see if we can get things back to normal. Okay?”