Home For the Haunting: A Haunted Home Renovation Mystery (2 page)

Y
ou know your job is tough when you find yourself escaping into a Port o’ Potty for a minute alone.

The blue outhouses are indispensable on a jobsite and, like the old joke about growing old, are a darned sight better than the alternative. But they’re not normally a place I choose to spend much time.

Today, however, I found myself lingering within one. Warmed by the early-spring sunshine, the bright blue potty reeked of hot plastic and a sickly sweet air freshener but offered me a few minutes’ respite from the steady barrage of questions and demands from the dozens of eager but unqualified volunteers I was directing.

“Mel, was I supposed to apply a coat of primer before painting?”

“I think I stepped on a rusty nail. Is that bad?”

“Mel, there’s this thing inside that’s marked ‘Biohazard.’ What should I do with it?”

“Where’s the dust mask/safety glasses/respirator/first-aid kit?”

“Is this mold toxic? Do I need a lawyer?”

“Um . . . Mel? You should probably come see this.”

Running a renovation project involves answering a lot of questions, and since I renovate houses for a living, I’m accustomed to fielding rapid-fire inquiries about building details, design issues, and bureaucratic snafus. Usually, though, I work with professionals who know which end of a miter saw is up.

Today’s project, I now realized, was as much about wrangling a horde of well-meaning volunteers as it was about home repair.

A few months ago, in a burst of charity inspired by a champagne-fueled New Year’s resolution, I volunteered to help a local organization that renovated the homes of the elderly and the disabled. It is a wonderful cause, and seemingly tailor-made for me, Mel Turner, the general director of Turner Construction. I figured I would show up a few weekends a year, tools in hand, go where I was pointed, and do as I was told. By the end of the project, my conscience, and someone’s house, would be ship-shape, and I could relax for another six months or so until the next project came along.

As with so many of my life plans, it didn’t exactly work out as I’d anticipated. Ashley, the perky and deceptively shrewd recruiter at Neighbors Together, took one look at my business card and appealed to my vanity. Merely volunteering my labor was a waste of valuable and
rare
expertise, she suggested. Wouldn’t it be a better use of my talents if I agreed to be a house captain? That way, Ashley insisted,
“You can more fully experience the joy and unique sense of accomplishment that comes from giving of one’s self, working with a homeowner in need, overseeing the project from beginning to end, and supervising the eager volunteers.”
I think she probably knew she had me there, but, not willing to leave anything to chance, she finished with
“Imagine turning a loving grandmother’s house from a daily nightmare into a warm and safe home sweet home, as only someone with your impressive skills can.”

I’m such a patsy. I fell for it.

I spent the next several months inspecting the project house, prioritizing repairs and improvements, and gathering materials in preparation for this project weekend, when a group of volunteers descended upon a modest two-bedroom cottage on a quiet street in San Francisco’s Bernal Heights. The scene was reminiscent of an old-fashioned barn raising: folks swarming over the place like ants as neighbors strolled over to watch and kibitz. The untrained volunteers would accomplish an astonishing transformation in one short weekend because even though most had never held so much as a paintbrush, many pairs of hands could be turned to good effect when directed by a house captain who knew her business.

And this house captain had been up since four a.m., organizing food for the volunteers, gathering tools and the blueprints for the wheelchair ramp, checking on the arrival of the Dumpster and the Port o’ Potty, and running around town picking up last-minute supplies.

And if all that weren’t enough to occupy my mind, I was also focused on ignoring the big, abandoned house next door . . . where pale, flickering faces kept appearing in the windows, their breath leaving foggy traces on the panes of glass.

Ghosts. Again.

Why does every interesting building in San Francisco seem to be infested with ghosts?

Ignore them, Mel
.

I knew they weren’t figments of my imagination. Like it or not, I seemed to have a knack for attracting souls from beyond the veil. Besides, Dog kept staring at the house, too, barking up a storm.

I had found Dog, abandoned and starving, on a construction site some months ago. Despite my initial reluctance to accept more responsibility, we wound up adopting each other. It wouldn’t be so bad, I thought: He could ride around with me during the day, come to jobsites and hang around, be my constant companion. Mel’s best friend and all that. But then it turned out Dog got carsick, and had a tendency to wander off when I wasn’t watching. He didn’t play ball, catch a Frisbee, or fetch sticks. He wasn’t much of a dog, really, as dogs go. My whole family adored him.

But, like me, he appeared able to see—or hear, or maybe smell?—ghosts.

This morning, Dog’s barking got so bad I had to confine him to the car. The canine lovers in the crowd kept visiting with him through the half-open window, sneaking him snacks, and glaring at me for being mean. Luckily, as an experienced general contractor, I wasn’t fazed by dirty looks.

And, in any case, the ghosts next door were
not
my problem; not today. Today I had three dozen volunteers to coordinate and put to work before their enthusiasm flagged, plus a house with peeling paint, a warped roofline, and a sagging porch to repair and spruce up, a wheelchair ramp to build so the disabled homeowner would no longer be a virtual shut-in, and one weekend to do it all.

Which explains why I was hiding in a plastic outhouse. I needed a moment to steel myself to ignore the neighboring spirits.

“Sooo,” my friend Luz said, catching me as I emerged from my ignominious Port o’ Potty break. She was clad in the bright yellow T-shirt of the “Tool Czar” because, by gosh, if I’m going to sink into the quicksand of do-good volunteerism, I’m taking my friends and family down with me. In fact, after my father razzed me one time too many about “giving away” my services, I had goaded him into signing up himself. As the (unofficially) retired founder of Turner Construction, Dad brought a wealth of construction know-how to Neighbors Together, and Ashley had swiftly appointed him house captain for the renovations of the sweet rose-covered bungalow across the street—a project that appeared to be humming along quite nicely, darn it all.

We had a friendly rivalry going: Team Mel vs. Team Bill, Turner vs. Turner. Whoever finished first won control of the television remote for one full week. If Dad won, he swore he would watch repeats of
NCIS
from dusk to dawn. If I won, I vowed to keep the normally blaring television turned off.

The stakes were high.

I had also strong-armed my friend Claire, a landscape architect, into running a yard crew. She was gleefully barking orders to a group of New Age Berkeley types planting a drought-friendly garden of native California grasses and flowering bushes. My buddy Stephen, a clothing designer by aspiration and a barista by trade, was the project’s health and safety coordinator. I considered it perfect casting: Stephen was a world-class hypochondriac who fussed over the smallest splinter with a wad of gauze and Neosporin. He also roamed the jobsite slapping gobs of sunscreen—donated by a civic-minded local drugstore—on necks and noses. Although it was only April, the sun shone fiercely on the jobsite, which meant reminding everyone to keep hydrated as well.

“The frat boys have arrived,” Luz said, nodding toward the street, where half a dozen young men in UC Berkeley T-shirts and Bermuda shorts lounged against a huge SUV. Others were stretched out on the dry, brown, sorry excuse for a lawn, apparently napping.

“Oh, good. They were supposed to be here two hours ago.”

“Yeah, well . . . ,” continued Luz, “I hate to be the one to tell you this, but half of them appear to be hung over. Drunk frat boys—what’re the odds?”

“Isn’t the fraternity here to do community service because of an alcohol infraction?”

She grinned. “Gotta love college students.”

“If half are hung over, what about the other half?”

“Still drunk.”

“Let me get this straight: You’re saying my dad’s assigned the engineering students, the Eagle Scouts,
and
Turner Construction’s finest, while
I
end up with drunken frat boys and a sorority of girls more interested in fashion than construction?” I washed my hands with the hose in the jury-rigged stand on the lawn and clamped my mouth shut to keep from repeating one of my father’s favorite sayings:
No good deed goes unpunished
.

“And this surprises you how, exactly?” asked Luz, lifting one eyebrow. “He’s a crafty old coot, your dad.”

She was right about that. While I had been busy wasting time working for a living, Dad had cozied up to the Neighbors Together point person and nabbed all the skilled volunteers. I’d been so consumed with bringing to conclusion several of our company’s paying projects that I hadn’t noticed when he had also convinced our best construction workers, even my stepson Caleb, to join his team.

I’d been lucky to get Luz. She was my best friend, but she and my dad adored each other, and at times I suspected he liked her better than he did me. Fortunately, my semi-sort-of boyfriend, Graham, was out of town. I’m not sure I would have liked the outcome had his loyalty been tested.

“Hey, Mel?” Monty Parker, the homeowner, rolled up to the front door, two large, scroungy-looking dogs of dubious ancestry attached by leashes to his wheelchair. After a motorcycle accident had paralyzed the forty-one-year-old a few years ago, he had lost his job and couldn’t afford to maintain his home, much less build an access ramp or make other necessary modifications to adjust to his new circumstances. That was where Neighbors Together came in.

I felt for the man, but my stomach clenched at those two little words: “Hey, Mel?” I’d heard them so often the past few months.
“Hey, Mel? What do you think about building a small deck out back when we make the ramp so I could sit outside and watch the world go by?” “Hey, Mel? I hate to ask, but would you change these lightbulbs?” “Hey, Mel? I heard maybe some of the other families are getting new linoleum for their kitchens.” “Hey, Mel? My dogs could really use a flea bath; think you could put a new tub in the bathroom?”

Today, Monty was trying to be helpful by relaying questions from the volunteers. But he was driving me crazy. Not for the first time, I wondered why my father got sweet Ms. Etta Lee, who was accommodating and grateful and baked him fresh cinnamon cookies, while I was stuck with the needy, grasping Monty.

“Hey, Mel? The folks fixing the kitchen sink found a problem,” he said. “Maybe dry rot? Hey . . . are those boys taking a nap on the lawn?”

“Not for long, they aren’t,” answered Luz.

“Tell the kitchen crew I’ll be right there,” I said to Monty, then spoke to Luz in a low voice. “Whatever you do, don’t let those frat boys near the power tools.”

“They’re on the schedule as the painting crew,” said Luz, flipping through the sheaf of papers on her overstuffed but organized clipboard. “We’re slated to finish the exterior painting today. Not sure the boys are really up for that. How about we leave it to the sorority girls—they’re not quick, but at least they’re sober—while I find something else for the boys?”

“Any ideas?”

“Well, I was thinking . . . Monty has those two big dogs. Before we can do any work out back, somebody needs to clean things up. What do you say I put the frat on pooper-scooper duty? Make them the Kaopectate Krew.”

“You, madam, have a mind of rare and infinite beauty.”

“So true. You should tell the promotion and tenure committee.”

“How’s that going?”

The committee was ruminating on Luz’s promotion to full professor of social work at San Francisco State University. Luz was a dedicated teacher, a brilliant scholar, and an astute judge of human nature . . . but her interpersonal skills could stand some adjustment. When it came to tolerating fools, Luz had about as much finesse as a demo crew.

“Let’s just say I’m considering applying to be a sorority mother. According to the girls, there’s an opening at their house. Anyway, after the fraternity finishes doggie doody duty, I thought I’d get them to clean out the old shed.”

“ Great. Keep an eye out—Monty says he has no idea what’s in there, so there may be something we can repurpose for the renovation. Could be a real treasure trove. Be sure to explain to them what constitutes hazardous waste, since they’re also likely to find some old paint or gasoline cans.”

“Will do,” Liz said, then turned toward the fraternity members. “Yo, boys!” she bellowed, and I saw more than a few wince. “On your feet and follow me! Fall in!”

If the gig as a sorority mother didn’t work out, I mused, Luz could always join the Army. She was a natural drill sergeant.

I heard Dog barking again.

Before I could stop myself, I glanced at the house next door. There, in the window, was a ghost of a woman, her pale countenance as clear as you please, spectral breath leaving traces on the windowpane. She looked straight at me, as though yearning, seeking . . . something.