Home for the Haunting(11)

I should be able to finish up next week, I reassured myself once more, without too much trouble.

Unless, of course, I was embroiled in yet another murder investigation.

Which I wouldn’t be, since the woman’s death had nothing to do with me or my project.

Monty confirmed to the police that although he had occasionally used the portion of the shed that faced his yard, it was actually on the neighbor’s property. Which meant the crime scene was the neighbor’s problem—yet another tragedy related to the Murder House.

Junkie or no, the poor woman’s death was shocking, sad, and unsettling.

But what really bothered me were the faces I kept seeing in the windows of the hulking, vacant house next door. Did those ashen, flickering countenances belong to the long-ago murdered family?

And . . . did they have something to tell me?





Chapter Four




Sunday morning, I made a leisurely—some might say slothful—arrival at my dad’s jobsite, the sweet little cottage belonging to Ms. Etta Lee.

The project was humming along smoothly, while mine was covered in DO NOT CROSS police tape.

I stood for a moment, staring at it glumly. I should be hiding in the Port o’ Potty to get away from my volunteers, not helping my dad complete his project. Worse still, the suspension of the work meant I had lost our bet to see who would finish first and now faced an entire week of NCIS reruns.

As I viewed the scene from across the street, Monty’s suggestion that his house was an outbuilding of the Art Nouveau house made sense. Monty’s home had been built earlier than the others on the street, and though it didn’t share the exquisite lines of the main house, neither did it have much in common with the stucco bungalows, which were typical of those built in the forties. These postwar homes typically opened onto a combination living room/dining room, which led to a kitchen and back door; a side hallway led to two small bedrooms with a bath in between. Compact yet cozy, the small bungalows were snug and neat, and when first built had been priced to sell to working-class families.

Monty’s home, in comparison, was much more interesting than Mrs. Lee’s, with multipaned windows and odd nooks and crannies indicative of a custom design. I wondered if it had originally served as the caretaker’s home.

The Murder House must have been incredible when it was first built. I itched to take a peek inside. My eyes rested on the blue front door. A large, heavy-looking knocker hung on it. It was hard to make out from here, but it looked like knockers I had seen in Europe, with a hand holding a ball . . . I started over to take a closer look.

“Mel!” called my father. As he approached, I noted his distinctive Dad scent: the faint aroma of tobacco—he claimed he didn’t smoke, but he wasn’t fooling anyone—mixed with automotive grease and food. Today, it was onion from the omelet he had made this morning—the one I missed out on by choosing sleep over breakfast. “Glad to see you’re still with us.”

“Hey, the cops shut down my project, remember? I can sleep to a reasonable hour every once in a while.” I winced at the defensive edge in my voice. Like it or not, I had inherited my father’s early-to-rise work ethic. If I wasn’t up at five in the morning getting ready for work, I felt like a slug.

“I gotta hand it to you, Mel. You do have a knack for being in places where people die. Kind of like—what’s her name? Typhoid Mary.”

“Gee, thanks, Dad,” I said, annoyed. “I am not a Typhoid Mary. The police said the woman had been dead since before we arrived. It had nothing to do with me.”

“Seems to me I hear that phrase a lot these days,” said Dad. At the look on my face, he had the good grace to change the subject. “Did you get breakfast? We’ve got doughnuts.”

“Thanks. I had a latte.”

Dad rolled his eyes. He believed in the power of breakfast, even if it consisted only of fried dough drenched in icing and served in a pink cardboard box. A pragmatist, Dad had also arranged for a couple of boxes of Blue Bottle coffee and gallons of Jamba Juice for the jobsite. I felt myself relax just knowing that hot coffee was nearby if I needed it. Maybe he was right: I was becoming a caffeine addict.

Dad and I love and cherish each other. We also drive each other crazy. Dad is former military, a tough guy who believes in hard work, beer, and football. Oh, and firearms. And because the fates like to mess with us mere humans, this man’s man had fathered three daughters. He adored each of us, but he had taught us while were young to ride motorcycles and shoot guns. He also dragged us from one construction site to another, hoping to pass on the construction genes.