Keeper of the Castle: A Haunted Home Renovation Mystery (9 page)

“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
.

H
e 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
tsk
ed 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 makeshift 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?”

He nodded.

“Did you hear about the memorial service tomorrow evening?”

“Yeah, I already told the guys. I feel bad, but the truth is, McCall was a real jerk. The way he ran around here with that Clipboard of Doom, like he got off on finding problems. You ask me, he was sort of asking for trouble. All due respect.”

“I’m not sure he meant to be a jerk. I mean . . . he was a building inspector. No one likes building inspectors.”

“I guess,” he said. Then he brightened up. “Hey, did you hear the one about the building inspector who walks into a bar with a rabbi?”

“Yup, I just heard it,” I said, cutting him off. “Good one.”

It really was too soon.

But as I walked away, I wondered about McCall’s
Clipboard of Doom. I didn’t remember seeing it with his body. What could have been on it? And . . . what had happened to it?

*   *   *

I spent the next few hours familiarizing myself with the men, the site, and the drawings but couldn’t bring myself to venture back into the cloister. Not yet. I wasn’t the only one a little nervous about the place: The men started packing up by six, anxious to get off-site before sunset. So far I’d seen plenty during the daylight hours; I could only imagine what went down after dark.

I decided I’d been brave enough for one day, so I gathered up the paperwork Libole had given me, grabbed Dog, and headed up the hill to the house. Dog sniffed around our bedroom while I put down his rug and his bowls. Once I brought out his bowls, I had to put something in them, of course. So I went to the car and lugged in a big plastic bin of dog food, topped by a bag of treats.

Dog devoured his food in approximately two inhalations, and I sat with him on his rug, petting him for a few minutes. Despite his propensity to carsickness—which was getting better now that we had been doing therapy—Dog had one very important trait of a construction hound: He fit easily into new environments.

Dog and I had found each other at the first construction site where I had seen a ghost. I hadn’t planned to adopt him—at the time I had been planning to move to France and fought against more responsibility—but Dog was so skinny and pitiful and . . .
abandoned
that I wound up taking him home. When it turned out he could see ghosts, just like I could, having him around made me feel less like a crazy ghost-seeing lady. Besides, Dad loved
dogs, and the pup had made our offbeat household—Dad, me, Stan, my semi-but-not-really-stepson, Caleb—seem more like a family, as beloved pets were wont to do.

It was pretty pathetic that we still hadn’t given the poor mutt a real name. It was still on our to-do list, but we hadn’t managed to find one we agreed on. In the meantime, Dog seemed to have learned his current moniker, and it was by no means assured that he would be able to learn a new one. Not the brightest bulb in the chandelier.

After a few minutes, Dog began to snore.
Not a bad idea,
I thought with a yawn. But I checked the clock: It was only seven thirty. If I started going to bed at this hour, I would be even more of a social pariah than I was already.

I made my obligatory evening phone call to Stan, and we went over the plan to take over Pete Nolan’s payroll and be sure the men were paid, as usual, this Friday. I also called Dad, but he didn’t answer. Instead he texted me:
Cooking. Spaghetti. ROTFLMAO. LoL!
Texting with Dad.
Oh, boy
. I was going to have to brace myself for this new aspect of our relationship.

Finally, Graham and I chatted for a while, and I assured him I was safe and sound. I didn’t mention what Libole had said, about stumbling into a nest of vipers.

While we spoke, I noticed one of the decorative tiles over the fireplace was loose. I picked at it a little, and it fell right off into my hand. The ones on either side of it were moving, as well. By the time the phone call was over, five of the historic glazed tiles were off the fireplace hood, and of course the plaster around them was crumbling. I would have to fix that. I’d bring my tools in tomorrow.

When I hung up, I looked past the swimming pool and down the hill, to the Gothic ruins glowing pink in the dying light of day. I supposed I could go for a swim, but that sounded awfully ambitious, and what if my splashing constituted what Alicia would consider disturbing the peace? Besides, I should use this evening to bone up on Scottish history in general, and the story of the Wakefield stones in particular.

First, I studied Florian Libole’s drawings, curious to see how he had envisioned updating this ancient building. A reinforced concrete envelope held the remains of the old cellars, and steel would be cleverly inserted into the antique stones to form a skeleton. Various small rooms would house modern essentials such as the furnace and hot-water heaters. The electrical and plumbing would be incorporated into new and existing troughs in the stone, or disguised by soffits when necessary. Libole was clever, I thought. He had earned his reputation.

Then I started reading through the history of the place, but my eyes lost focus. I was beat. I wasn’t up to thinking through deadlines and schedules, much less about despondent, ravenous ghosts.

Speaking of hunger, where was that snack bar, again?

I looked for the map of the house and the daily schedule that Alicia had provided, but couldn’t find it anywhere. I could hear my mother’s voice saying:
Melanie Ann Turner, you would lose your head if it wasn’t attached.

Okay, this house was big, but it wasn’t
that
big. Surely I could find my way to food. And the library—I’d love a good book to read in bed. I gave Dog a pat and slipped out.

Before I even got to the end of the corridor, I ran into
Vernon Dunn. He was big enough that it was awkward passing him in the hall. The overhead light shone down on his shiny bald spot and glinted off his aviator glasses.

“Hello, Mel,” he said with a smile. Or maybe it was a sneer; it was hard to tell.

“Hi, Vernon. I didn’t realize— Are you staying here as well?”

“Ellis likes to keep us all close at hand.”

“Oh, I see.”

“Florian is next to you.”

“Is he?”

“Next to your bedroom, I mean.”

“Ah. Anyway, I was just on my way to the snack bar,” I replied, wishing I weren’t here, or
he
weren’t here. Either way. Vernon gave me the creeps. Florian had mentioned a lack of poetry in the man’s soul, but something about the chief financial officer made me think he lacked other things, as well.

“You know, Ellis has reasons for wanting you so badly.”