Keeper of the Castle: A Haunted Home Renovation Mystery

by Juliet Blackwell

  My knock was met by a pretty sixtyish woman with long gray hair worn in a braid pinned on top of her head. She asked us to call her Amy, and before we got past the first rack of plaid shawls, she told me how much she had enjoyed her talk with Stan and asked me if he was single.

  “As a matter of fact, he is,” I said. “He’s a great guy.”

  “He sounded like it,” Amy said with a sweet smile. “He mentioned that you’re working on a re-creation of a monastery in Marin?”

  “It’s a re-creation in the sense that we’re putting the old place back together, but it’s the original building.”

  “Oh, my. How about that?” She brought out several books and laid them on the counter. “Stan gave me the name, so I looked it up last night.”

  “This is great,” I said, anxious to see if any of the volumes could answer my questions. There were a couple of old photos of the Wakefield monastery, mostly black-and-white, not nearly as clear as the ones Florian Libole had shown me. There was a brief paragraph that didn’t say much beyond what Libole had already told me.

  After I had exhausted all the references to the monastery, I looked up, deflated. Caleb was poking around at the back of the store, perusing a collection of decorative knives and daggers. Leave it to him to find the one dangerous thing in such a wholesome shop.

  “You look disappointed,” said Amy. “The information isn’t helpful? What were you looking for, exactly?”

  “If only I knew. I guess I was hoping for something more personal, maybe about the monks who lived there, that sort of thing. I mean, this is probably a really stupid question,” I began, thinking I should find an expert on Scottish history at a university and wondering if Luz might be able to point me in the right direction. “But, for instance, did knights live in monasteries?”

  “No, of course not,” said Amy. “However, this particular monastery served as a kind of inn for passersby of importance, the aristocracy, that sort of thing.”

  I nodded. “And there are no . . . ghost stories, nothing like that?”

  “No. But there is a wonderful ghost story associated with another monastery, not far from Wakefield.” She pulled a well-read copy of Scottish lore out from a desk drawer. “This book’s not for sale, I’m afraid. But it tells the legend of the curse of Eochaidh and Sidheag.”

  “Now we’re talking.” I wasn’t even going to try to repeat what she’d just said.

  “There was a noble lady who had taken refuge at Eochaidh Monastery. Her family was trying to hide her from a powerful laird—that’s Scottish for “lord”—who wanted her hand in marriage.”

  Amy turned the book toward me; it was splayed to show woodcuts of a lady in a procession, medieval structures behind her. The noblewoman was dressed in finery, with a dozen horses, and a man with a broadsword was standing nearby. She tapped on his picture.

  “She was protected by a great warrior, named Donnchadh MacPhaidein.” She continued, reading aloud: “‘He was a man of uncommon height and strength, whose loyalty knew no bounds. He vowed to protect his ward even unto death.’”

  Well, Donnchadh MacPhaidein, we meet again. “And what happened to him?”

  “He died defending her. He held off a small army ‘with the strength of ten men.’ They say he was in love with her, which is why he fought so bravely.”

  “Until he was killed.”

  “I’m afraid so. And ever since then, the place was cursed. MacPhaidein’s ghost would attack any man who ventured in—though he spared the women. The villagers started tearing it down over time, hoping to get rid of the spirit, but still he roamed the ruins.”

  “Was the noblewoman Spanish, by any chance?”

  “No. No, of course not.”

  “And was she killed as well?”

  “No. She was abducted and forced to marry the laird.”

  “How sad.”

  “It is, yes,” said Amy with a shrug. “Of course, she went on to live a noble life and gave birth to several sons. So . . . I don’t know. It’s hard to see those days with modern eyes, I think. Everything was so different then; you were pretty lucky not to starve to death as a peasant, or die in war or plague, or be starved out in a siege.”

  “I suppose that’s true.”

  “This is interesting,” said Amy. “The lady was referred to as cuach, which translates, roughly, as ‘the vessel.’”

  “Excuse me?”

  “The ‘vessel.’ Which shows how women were thought of back then. She was considered to be the vessel for the next generation, her bloodline associated with greatness.”

  “So, just to recap: Donnchadh MacPhaidein, a large man with a broadsword, was killed while defending a woman known as the vessel, and ever since has been said to haunt the ruins of the monastery?”

  “After putting up a heck of a fight, yes.”

  So maybe the vessel wasn’t an actual treasure at all. Maybe it was a woman who had lived, and died, centuries ago. The one Donnchadh had died defending.

  It would break Donnchadh’s heart to know he had failed. Perhaps this was what kept him around, knowing somehow that he had failed in his duty; he couldn’t let go of his charge. I wondered if it would help him to move on if I told him what had happened. How could a poor, despondent knight be made to understand he no longer had a duty to protect anyone?

  And who the heck was the sad, hungry ghost, then?

  “But . . . you say this tale refers to another monastery, not Wakefield?”

  “Yes. It was a place on another island, not too far away—by modern standards, of course. The Isle of Inchcolm, in the Firth of Forth. But those isles are full of similar ruins.”

  “You’re saying the monastery on the Isle of Inchcolm in the Firth of Forth isn’t Wakefield?”

  “That’s correct.” Amy perused the photos in the book and shook her head. “Compared to others of their time and place, neither of these monasteries was operational for very long. And the isles were too out of the way to be critical for nation building, or anything historically significant like that. I imagine that’s why the state allowed Wakefield to be hauled away to Marin County, of all places.”

  “I suppose you’re right.”

  “Could I . . . ? Would it be possible to take a tour sometime? I would love to see it.”

  “I don’t see why not,” I said, and handed her my card. Dad and Stan were asking about it as well—maybe I could have them all come by on the same day. Who knows? Maybe Amy and Stan would hit it off in person as well as they did on the phone. Just call me Mel Turner, Matchmaker. But . . . it would be better to rid the place of ghosts first. “I’m working on a few urgent projects right now. But maybe in a week or two, when things settle down a bit?”

  “Perfect,” Amy said, looking around the store. It was now officially opening time, and the store wasn’t exactly jammed with eager customers clamoring for Scottish paraphernalia. “I can come anytime, really.”

  Before leaving, I bought a tin of shortbread, some tea, a plaid scarf for Graham, and some little decorative golf balls.

  “Who are the golf balls for?” Caleb asked as we walked back to the car.

  “Elrich must like golf, right? I mean, don’t all rich people like golf?”

  “My dad doesn’t like golf.”

  “He’s wealthy, but he’s not stinking rich like Ellis Elrich is rich, if you know what I’m saying.”

  “Don’t mention that to Valerie,” Caleb grumbled. “She’d freak out. She’s already talking about a debutante ball for the baby.”

  “What if it’s a boy?”

  “I know, right? So why are you buying presents for Ellis Elrich, anyway?”

  “I’m not, really. I just wanted to buy something from Amy. She was so nice to do all that research for me, and I felt bad. I get the sense she doesn’t make a lot of sales.”

  He nodded. “So your ghost was killed trying to protect some lady?”

  “How did you know there was a ghost on my site?”

  He gave me an
incredulous look. “Seriously?”

  “Yeah, you’re right. There’s a ghost.”

  “He’s a real knight?”

  “I guess so. Or a guardian, anyway. He carries a huge broadsword; that much is true.”

  “Is he . . . friendly?”

  “I wouldn’t say friendly, exactly,” I said as we climbed into my Scion. “It’s more like he doesn’t see me as a threat, ’cause I’m a girl.”

  Caleb started laughing, and as I pointed the car toward the freeway entrance, I joined him.

  * * *

  I dropped Caleb off at the Golden Gate Park police station, forcing myself not to walk him in as though he were a toddler.

  After leaving the kitchen last night, I’d overheard Dad’s stern voice giving Caleb a talking-to. And this morning Dad informed me at breakfast that he would pick Caleb up this afternoon, and Caleb was going to spend the next few days with him and Stan at the house. He would make sure he got to community service until things were put right in Golden Gate Park. Caleb had called his dad and worked it out.

  I felt guilty for handing off the responsibility to my father, but Dad would be much more effective than I in this situation. Besides, he was retired and had the time and attention to spend on a boy who needed help. Whereas my current to-do list was a little long.

  Before heading to Olivier’s shop, I wanted to follow up on those stones behind the Japanese Tea Garden. True, it had been many, many years since I had last seen them, but ever since I’d spied that pile of stones at Wakefield, the memory of them had been niggling at the back of my mind. And since I was already in Golden Gate Park, it would be a quick detour. As if the fates were smiling on me, I found a free parking spot on the street not far from the de Young Museum.

  I located the clearing behind the fence, but the area was now cleared out. No surprise there; it had been a few years. But the ground seemed freshly trampled, with no saplings and just a few young weeds. Small stones and gravel in the same golden gray hue as the stones littered the ground.

  An impossibly old man was raking the sand in the Tea Garden.

  “Excuse me, sir?” I said, speaking to him through the cyclone fence. “Do you remember a pile of stones that used to be here?”

  He nodded.

  “Really? Do you know what happened to them?”

  “They cleared them out a year or so ago.”

  “Who did? Do you know?”

  He shrugged.

  “Do you happen to know where they came from originally?”

  He shook his head and continued with his meticulous task. The tines of the rake left parallel lines in the smooth sand, the lines drawn in careful swirls and shapes that suggested the flow of water. Or so it seemed to me—I supposed it was open to interpretation. The man was methodical, meticulous, raking over his own footsteps, ensuring that each sweep of the tines overlapped so that the individual strokes were indistinguishable. I wondered how long it took him and how often he did it . . . and whether some rogue squirrel would come by and ruin in two seconds what had taken him all morning to accomplish.

  The man’s calm absorption in his task reminded me of Ellis Elrich stacking his smooth round stones. I would never be able to live my life with a Zen approach—I was more the carefully choreographed chaos type—but I was starting to appreciate how mesmerizing this sort of thing could be.

  The man looked up from his raking, mistaking my silence for expectation of more information.

  “You could probably ask the Parks Department. I imagine they keep records.”

  “Okay, thanks. The, um, raking is really beautiful,” I said, and turned to leave.

  “Thank you. And good luck. Those were beautiful stones.”

  * * *

  Two people sat behind the counter at the Parks Department: One looked like the stereotype of a sweet grandma, complete with white bun and mother-of-pearl half-glasses on a gold chain; the other a young man with pearl stud earrings in both ears, a buzz cut on the sides with his hair longer on top, and heavy black spectacles. He wore skintight black jeans and tennis shoes with no socks. He was adorable in an androgynous way, which, I supposed, was the point. His name tag read CUR.

  “Your name’s ‘Cur’?” I asked. Grandma would have been my first choice for information, but she was already helping someone.

  “Yeah.”

  “Oh. Cool. So, I’m wondering about the old stones that used to be behind the Japanese Garden.”

  “They weren’t of any use to anyone,” Cur said, glancing over at Grandma.

  “I imagine they weren’t. What happened to them?”

  “City sold them.”

  “Who bought them?”

  “We can’t go around giving out that kind of information.”

  “You can’t?”

  He shook his head, glancing at his coworker once again.

  “Do you have any pictures of the stones, by any chance?”

  “I don’t think so. It might be in the file.”

  “And would you have this file here somewhere . . . ?”

  Another glance over at Grandma. Cur shook his head. “No.”

  After years of dealing with bureaucrats, I had learned that nine times out of ten “no” didn’t mean “no.” Sometimes it meant I wasn’t asking the right question and needed to rephrase. Sometimes it meant they didn’t know the right answer and couldn’t be bothered to find out. Sometimes it meant what I was asking would take time and effort, and they didn’t feel like doing it. Patience was required to figure out what “no” really meant.

  “So, if a person needed this information, how would she go about getting it?”

  “Well, if you insisted, you could fill out a request-for- information form.”

  “I would love to do that.”

  “They’re really long.”

  “I don’t mind.”

  He let out a long breath of exasperation but opened a huge file cabinet and started rifling through the hanging folders within the drawer.

  “No one was using those stones,” he grumbled. “A few were used for landscaping, but then someone got uptight about that ’cause they were historic and everything. But it was well within the rights of the city to sell them.”

  “I’m not arguing that,” I said. “I’d just like to know who bought them.”

  “Why?” he asked as he finally pulled out a manila folder, put it atop the file cabinet, and extracted a three-page form, which he handed to me.

  It really wasn’t any of his business. But I doubted Cur was any sort of threat, and as Inspector Annette Crawford always liked to remind me, sometimes witnesses don’t realize that tiny little details are important. He might not know what he knew.

  “I’m researching the history of such things. Do you happen to know where the stones came from originally?”

  He shook his head.

  “Do you know anything more about them? Anything at all?”

  “Nah.”

  I took a seat in a beige plastic chair and filled in the form, though much of the information didn’t pertain to what I was asking. But bureaucracies followed their own internal logic; no sense in fighting the Parks Department.

  When I brought the form up to the counter, along with a five-dollar check for processing, Cur took them and told me someone would be in touch.

  “So, like, why’s everyone so interested in these stones? They’re there, like, for decades and no one cares, and now everyone’s interested all of a sudden.”

  “Who else has asked about them?”

  He shrugged. “Some old guy in a suit, just last week, maybe the week before.”

  “Did he leave his name?”

  “I guess it’s on the form. But I remember he tried to get out of paying the processing fee, ’cause he was with the Marin County Building Department.”

  Chapter Twenty

  As I drove across town to Olivier Galopin’s ghost-busting store in Jackson Square, I kept turning things over in my head. If Amy was right about the legend .
. . then was Wakefield even Wakefield, or had Libole bought some other monastery he was trying to pass off as Wakefield? Had he then used some of the old stones from Golden Gate Park to fill in missing parts of his pseudo-Wakefield? And if so, why was he keeping it such a secret?

  And was Dad right to wonder? Could each source of stones have its own ghost attached? That would explain why they couldn’t understand each other. And . . . if the “vessel” was a woman and not a precious goblet as Kieran assumed, then there was no treasure to be found. And yet people had been attacked over it. Unless they had been assaulted for another reason entirely?

  It was a good thing I’d slept well last night, because this was making my brain hurt.

  And it made me want to get into that warehouse more than ever. I hoped Alicia was able to locate the address soon.

  Olivier Galopin’s Ghost-Busting Shoppe had made a big splash when it opened not long ago, and business was still booming. Olivier supplemented his storefront sales by giving classes on detecting spirits, and interest in the ghost world was strong in a town like San Francisco. No need to import spirits from Scotland—there were plenty of locally sourced specters right here.

  After swapping hellos and getting caught up—I told Olivier about Graham—we got down to the nitty-gritty.

  “Do you think a spirit could have done that kind of damage?”

  “As I believe you know, there is still considerable debate as to how much physical harm ghosts are capable of inflicting. They seem to specialize in terrorizing people, even when they’re not trying to, rather than causing physical harm. Though there have been numerous instances of touching, even a quick shove at the top of the stairs, that sort of thing. But striking someone over the head with a tool of some kind, hard enough to kill or wound . . . ? I’ve never heard of a documented example of that. That happens in the movies, not real life.”