“Johanna made her famous Oreo cookie ice cream dessert, so I hope you left some room,” Aunt Ginny said as she got up from the dining-room table and headed to the kitchen.
“I’ll help you dish it up,” Mom said, and my dread kicked up a notch. “Just stay there, Kayla, and entertain our guests,” she added as I stood, ready to give them a hand.
“I’ll get the coffee,” Jay volunteered, following them.
“Nice art,” Landon said as I retook my seat.
“What?”
My mom’s empty seat was at the end of the table, next to mine. Landon and I were seated across from Gary and Ez. Ez was chatting with Grandma at the other end, explaining exotic musical instruments made by the company she worked for.
“Nice art,” Landon repeated. “The paintings. Originals, right?” He gestured to the walls of the light and airy dining room, which had a large window that showcased the golden-hour sunlight and helped illuminate the colorful canvases that hung around us.
“Mom’s been collecting for years,” said Gary from across the table, since I was too deep in my thoughts to respond properly. “She’s always had an eye. Especially for picking up artists before they get famous.”
“And expensive,” Landon said.
Gary chuckled. “That too.”
“Hey, I’ve got some work for you on a project we’re doing on Merritt Island,” Landon said to Gary. “Big riverfront house. They want to gild the lily with some architectural foam. Fancy window trim.”
“Awesome. The art school never pays enough.”
“But you’re selling more of your ceramic work now, right?” I asked my cousin.
Gary smiled. “Yeah, it’s starting to pick up,” he said modestly. “I’m in a few galleries around town now, and I’ve scheduled a show in Miami.”
“Fantastic!” I said. Everyone knew Gary was a potter prodigy.
“As long as you have time for me, man,” Landon said. “They’ll pay well. I make it clear they’re getting the best.”
“Thanks,” Gary said.
I looked at Landon again in puzzlement. He was being so nice.
My roomie noticed. “What?”
“Never mind.”
Jay came in with a coffeepot and started filling our cups, followed by my mom and Aunt Ginny carrying trays of bowls stuffed with the decadent ice-cream dessert. I knew all about it because I’d watched Mom make it dozens of times. It had crushed Oreos drizzled with melted butter, vanilla ice cream, a caramel layer, whipped cream and nuts. If I had to rank the tastiest things in the world, this stuff would come a close second to Mr. Darcy in Pride and Prejudice.
But just when we had our first heavenly mouthfuls, my mom — who wasn’t eating her dessert, I noticed — cleared her throat.
The chatter and appreciative mmmm sounds ceased.
“It’s OK, Aunt Johanna,” Gary said, seeing her discomfiture.
“Whatever it is, we’re behind you a hundred percent,” Ginny said.
There were murmurs of support around the table, and I relaxed just a fraction. It was good to know everyone had her back. Our backs.
“Thanks, everyone,” Mom said. “I didn’t mean to get you all worried. There’s nothing wrong with me. Everything’s fine, really. What I have to say concerns Kayla most of all.”
“What?” I sat up straighter and dropped my spoon onto the table with a clatter. My vocabulary was extremely limited this evening.
“Honey,” she said, turning to me, “I wanted to do this in front of everyone here so you know that we’re all here if you need us.”
“What is it?” OK. Vocabulary getting slightly larger.
“I’ve heard from lawyers representing your father,” she said.
Her words seemed to echo in the room. Your father. “You’ve got to be kidding me. The Sperm Donor?”
Ez sputtered. Gary was also trying not to laugh. I could appreciate their amusement. My mother bringing up my father after my twenty-five years of blissful ignorance couldn’t get any more absurd.
“What does he want?” I continued. “It’s a little late to sue for custody, and I don’t want anything from him.”
“Currently, he doesn’t want anything,” my mom said dryly. “He’s dead.”
Oh. Oh.
Ez’s sniggering noticeably stopped.
“And you don’t really have any choice about him giving you something, because he already has, in his will.”
“Wait a minute. Wait a minute.” I stood. “Who is this guy?”
“Take it easy, honey,” Mom said.
An unexpectedly kind voice penetrated my confusion. “It’ll be OK, Kayla.”
Landon had stood next to me and spoke in my ear. He slipped an arm around my shoulders and eased me back into my seat. There was something warm and steady about him that calmed my pounding heart. Then something hot and electric suffused me that I really shouldn’t be feeling at all with my roomie, whose specialties included leaving empty beer cans on the kitchen counter and wet towels in the living room.
My mother’s face had a touch of pity about it as she gazed at me with those big, blue eyes. “He is — was Maximillian Kantera.”
“Holy shit,” Landon breathed next to me.
“Max Kantera?” Jay exclaimed. “Isn’t he on the art museum board?”
My Aunt Ginny nodded. “Was.”
“And one of the biggest developers in Bohemia,” Landon added.
“Does he — is he — ?” I had so many questions, and from the look on my mom’s face when she saw my hurt and confusion, I wondered if she had regrets about making this announcement to the whole gang.
“His family lives in Bohemia,” she said. “He’s married — no, he wasn’t when we met, but he’d been engaged to a society girl and didn’t tell me. He has three kids. And you. Four kids.”
“Not that I count.” I hated to be bitter, but I’d had years of practice.
“You count, sweetheart. I think maybe he had an idea that he’d try to do one thing to make things right. I had no idea, of course.”
“Well, what?” I asked. “What did he do?”
She sighed. “He left you Milkweed Mansion.”
There were a few gasps around the room, but I didn’t understand why until Ez squeaked out, “The goddamn haunted house?”
Chapter 3
Someone suggested we take our bowls of dessert and coffees into the living room, and in that more relaxed atmosphere, I was able to sit in a corner of the couch, eat my ice cream and process the news while everyone else chatted about Milkweed Mansion.
“So supposedly a woman died in there,” Ez said. “An unhappy wife killed herself.”
“I heard she was axed by her husband. As in literally,” Gary added.
“Gary,” Aunt Ginny admonished.
“Sorry,” he said sheepishly.
“I thought it was a young woman who died,” Ginny added in a more sensitive tone. “Poor thing.”
“Poor thing what?” I asked. “Does anyone really know what happened there?”
“I knew the last family who lived there,” Grandma said. “I went to school with their daughter in the early 1960s before they moved away and sold the property. She said there were always strange noises, but she didn’t think the ghost was malevolent. She said she didn’t know who it was.”
“So there is a ghost?” I was skeptical, but this wasn’t good news. “Great.”
Somehow Landon had ended up next to me again, and because my mom and my skinny grandma were crammed onto the couch with us, his jeans-clad thigh was snug against mine. His proximity was making me toasty. Or maybe it was because it was still summerlike in mid-September in Bohemia Beach. Summer didn’t really end here till late November.
But the AC was cranked, and the air was cool. It was my stupid roommate who was hot.
“When I was a kid, my brothers and I used to climb over the fence, sneak around the back of the house and try to listen for the ghost,” Landon said. “Usually we jus
t ended up with a bunch of sand spurs stuck to our clothes and to our dog Creampuff. A big golden. It took hours to get them all out.”
I shot him a look of disbelief. “Your dog was named Creampuff?”
“Blame my mom,” Landon said. “She’s the baker.”
“That property has to be worth something,” said Jay, ever the accountant. “It’s right there in Bohemia’s historic district on a bend in the river road, on a big lot full of mature oak trees. It overlooks the lagoon on a kind of cliff. Fantastic views.”
“Yeah, but have you seen the house lately?” Landon said. “It looks like 1313 Mockingbird Lane.”
“The Munsters,” I moaned. “I’ve inherited the house from The Munsters.”
Landon laughed. “Only the Munsters’ house was in better shape.”
“I guess you could knock it down,” Jay said.
“No!” the Fetheroles chorused. The Fetheroles being Grandma, Mom and Aunt Ginny (who was a Fetherole before she became a Gorski and then an unexciting Jones).
I was a Fetherole, but I didn’t chorus. “Why not?” I asked.
“It’s historic,” Aunt Ginny said.
“OK, OK.” I liked historic houses too, but I was also broke. “Is it on a national register or something?”
“No,” said Landon. “I don’t think anyone ever cared enough to make that happen.”
I huffed, making my light-brown bangs flutter. “And why not? Why the hell did the Sperm Donor” — Ez snickered again — “buy that house and just leave it neglected for — how long did he own it, anyway?”
“I think he had it for about twenty years,” Mom said. “That’s what the property records say. And I don’t know why he neglected it.”
“He invested in a lot of properties, not all of them well-maintained,” Landon said. “When my dad wanted to develop any choice piece of land on the west side of town, half the time he had to go through Max Kantera.”
I rolled my eyes. “And why didn’t he leave it to his real kids?”
Gary shot me a look that was a mix of encouragement and pity. “You’re real.”
“Are we sure?” Landon pinched my arm.
I jumped. “Hey!”
“See?” he said as the others laughed. “Definitely real.”
This was why he was annoying. Though those crinkles around his eyes when he laughed were kind of cute.
“Well,” Jay said. “Maybe I shouldn’t say — ”
“What?” I asked.
“Sometimes people will leave someone something so one heir doesn’t sue the estate with a claim for more. By citing you specifically in the will, he made it clear he knew of you and thought of you and was clear about his intentions.”
“So he left me a haunted house so he wouldn’t have to leave me anything else? What a fucking great guy,” I bit out.
There was an uncomfortable silence.
“I don’t know his reasons,” my mom said, her eyes a little watery now. “The property is beautiful and probably valuable, so I’d like to think he really did want you to have a legacy that meant something. Kayla, sweetie, you are as real and important to me as any person on this earth.”
Landon got up, pushed me toward the middle of the couch so I was next to my mom, and sat on the other side of me. I gave in to my mom’s hug and tried not to cry. It wasn’t her fault my father was an asshole.
When I’d recovered and the hug ended, Ez moved to the piano and started playing while we kept talking.
I still had a lot of questions. “Since I didn’t go to high school here, I don’t know the kids — my stepsiblings. I can’t believe I’m saying that. Anyone know them? Gary?”
“They were all in school behind me. Andy’s the younger one. Good guy,” Gary said. “He works at the space center now. The other two are fraternal twins, and you’ve never seen twins more different. Annabel is pretty cool. She’s still around, working for the family business. Max Junior is a tool.”
“Chip off the old block?” I asked.
“Maybe,” Gary said. “He ran with a loud, obnoxious crowd. Studied PR but was second-in-command for a while at his dad’s company.”
My undergraduate degree was in marketing, so we had that in common. “What does he do now?”
“Last I heard,” Landon said, “Max Junior had been pushed out of the developer business and was looking for a job. I had a little contact with him when my dad’s company worked with Max Senior. He was less than honest and sloppy with the details. He did everything he could to keep his sister from taking his place, but she’s been second-in-command for a while now and will probably make the company that much better now that her father’s gone.”
Her father. My father. My father, the Sperm Donor Developer Haunted House Proprietor.
Did I look like him? I didn’t get my mom’s red hair or freckles. My longish hair was light brown with hints of gold, and my eyes were hazel, not blue like hers. Though Gary had hazel eyes, so maybe those did run in the family. My real family, the Fetheroles.
My brain was still a jumble, but just hanging out and talking with these dear people actually had made the news a little more bearable.
“So what’s next?” I asked.
“Your father specified that he wanted the lawyers to tell me first about the house, so that I could tell you,” my mom said. “Now that you know, you can pick up the keys to the house anytime you like.”
“Yeah, but what am I going to do with a crumbling haunted house?”
“I can take a look at it with you, if you want,” Landon said. “I have tomorrow afternoon off.”
I turned around to look at him. “Why would you do that?”
“I build things,” he said, his velvet-brown eyes twinkling again. “I might come in handy. And I’ve always wanted to see a ghost. It’ll be fun.”
Fun? He had a funny idea of fun. But I didn’t want to visit a haunted house by myself, even if it was my house.
I nodded slowly, wondering who this generous guy was and what he’d done with my roommate. “You’d better bring a hammer. A big one.”
“All my tools are of more than adequate size,” he said, just loud enough that I could hear.
The corner of my mouth turned up of its own accord before I could quash my smile. I was struck with the idea that if anyone could make visiting a haunted house fun, it might be Landon.
Chapter 4
Milkweed Mansion was aptly named. I kind of liked the milkweed, with its orbiting butterflies. This place was butterfly heaven, with lots of wildflowers and thorny bushes in the scant sunny patches between the oaks and palms around the house.
I learned from the lawyer this morning that the nickname emerged after the property was essentially abandoned in 1962 and began its slow downfall in the hands of neglectful absentee owners, including the Sperm Donor, who picked it up for a song. Apparently ghost stories are not good for property values.
The once-grand mansion overlooked the Indian River Lagoon, which locals simply called the river. The wide stretch of sparkling water separated mainland Bohemia, where I lived now, from Bohemia Beach, where I spent my formative years.
The knotty old live oaks drooped over the weathered, rambling, two-story-plus Victorian as if they were protecting it from outsiders. The white paint on the clapboard siding was weathered and chipped with age, though an excess of faded gingerbread trim painted blue and light green held the promise of beauty.
The cone-shaped roof over a rounded section of porch on the southeast corner had damage to its tin shingles, probably from a long-ago hurricane. A tower on the next corner looked like a great place to lock up a madman. And an eclectic collection of weathervanes seemed to adorn every peak of the roof.
A decaying gazebo near the river edge of the property overlooked the lagoon with an air of shabby elegance, evoking garden parties and weddings. Surrounding the expansive, overgrown lot was a rusting, black, wrought-iron fence, and the metal gates didn’t look like they’d keep out a determined raccoon. T
he effect was one of stately gloom.
Landon had insisted on driving us over in his pickup truck — in case he needed any of those tools, he said with the faintest quirk of the mouth — and I’d reluctantly agreed. It was Friday, late morning, and I’d taken the day off. He said he’d finished his work earlier, though I learned as we chatted on the way over that he seemed to work weekends and odd evenings, too, whenever he was on a construction project that was behind deadline. He said he often supervised crews or dealt directly with clients but jumped in and did the hard work when necessary. So maybe he wasn’t partying all the time after all.
“And there’s all that networking on the golf course,” I remarked as we regarded the shiny chain and padlock on the gate. The lawyer hadn’t given me a key for the padlock.
“I hate golf.” Landon yanked on the chain. Solid.
“How can that be true?” I’d often seen him toting his clubs back and forth from the apartment. “And how can you hate golf with a name like Landon Putter?”
“Naming is destiny, I guess. My dad has stuffed golf down my throat my whole life. He says meetings are always better on the fairway.” Rocking jeans and a sinfully tight black T-shirt with a cartoon of a cute sea cow that said “My Patronus Is a Manatee,” Landon walked the few steps to the truck. He dug around in the back and emerged with bolt cutters. “He golfs every free minute. He watches it on TV. Even the office decor is pictures of famous golf courses. I keep telling him to buy some freakin’ art.”
I laughed. “Yeah, I know plenty of artists who could use the money.”
Landon clamped the tool on the fat links of the gate chain, breaking it apart. He unthreaded the links from the bars of the double swing gate and pushed it open. One side of the heavy gate creaked at the unexpected pressure and fell completely off, rusty hinges shattering. We both jumped back to save our toes from destruction as it clattered to the brick driveway. .
“Cha-ching,” I said, noting the first necessary repair in the small spiral notebook I was carrying.
“Let’s just hope your key works on the house.”
Bohemia Chills Page 2
