Home for the Haunting(28)

“It . . .” I trailed off. One of these days I was going to have to figure out a way to respond to people’s simple queries after I’d been involved in the discovery of yet another dead body. “It’s not quite finished yet.”

His eyes searched my face.

“No?” He knew how I was about finishing what I started. And Raul didn’t let a lot get past him. “You need my help after all? I’m happy to do it.”

“I know you are, Raul. No, there was a . . . We found a . . .” I blew out a breath. “The police shut down the project for a few days. A woman was found on the property—sort of. Actually, it might officially be the neighbor’s property. Anyway, that doesn’t really matter, does it?” I said to myself much more than to Raul. “What I mean to say is that we found a body.”

Raul was a quiet man, the sort who spoke only when he had something relevant to say. He nodded, still holding my eyes.

“You okay?”

“Yes, thank you. She had been deceased for a bit. I really didn’t have anything to do with it. It wasn’t like what happened here.”

He nodded thoughtfully. “That’s good.”

Raul and I hadn’t talked openly and explicitly about the whole ghost thing. When he started with this B and B project, I let him know there might be a few unexplained events in the house, and he accepted that in his usual calm manner.

“Hey, before you go, you should check out the friezes in the bedrooms. You were right about those antique borders.”

One of my favorite local architectural supply stores, Victoriana, had somehow unearthed a stash of original, hand-tinted wallpaper borders. They cost a fortune, but it was almost unheard-of to find original paper pieces rather than reproductions.

I peeked into the master bedroom, where the wallpaper hangers were just finishing up. Raul was right—the borders were perfect. They replaced a hand-painted frieze that had been irreparably damaged from a water leak.

The spaces above the moldings were perfect for such a decorative pattern. Looking at the moldings, I was reminded of the lovely interior design of Etta’s small house. Her simple wood moldings boxed off sections of the wall so they could frame separate portions of color or paper. I would check with the hangers to see if there might be enough leftovers to run the perimeter of Etta’s front room. Though her house was nowhere near as fine as the Bernini B&B, the wallpaper would suit it just as well.

After meeting with the clients and taking down a few more items for the punch list, I ran around town checking on our other current projects, including a personal favorite in the turret apartment of an old Victorian. It was tiny, but so lush and detailed it reminded me of a jewel box.

I grabbed a late lunch from a taco truck, and was on my way to the lumberyard to order supplies when my phone rang. The readout said Turner Construction. That was odd.

My phone rang incessantly: Calls about supply problems, worksite issues, permit glitches. Meetings set up and canceled. Disgruntled neighbors. It was one thing after another.

Stan knew this, so he almost never called me during the day. Instead, we would usually reconvene in Turner Construction’s home office at the end of the day, while my father prepared dinner.

“Everything okay?” I asked him.

“Oh yeah, sure. No big thing, but . . . we got an inquiry about a new job.”

“Oh . . . great.” I was surprised, but Stan knew I was a little worried lately about not having enough jobs in the pipeline, so maybe he wanted to cheer me up. “Who is it, and what’s the job?”

“That’s why I called. He was a little elusive on the phone, but he said it was urgent that he speak with you directly rather than give me any details. He says he met you the other day at the Neighbors Together site, and he wants to hire you to renovate his house. He, um . . . he also mentioned that his house is full of ghosts. His name is Hubert Lawrence.”

• • •



Call me overly curious, but within half an hour I was zooming up to a modern apartment building not far from North Beach.

“You’re here,” Hubert Lawrence said as I stepped off the elevator. He stood in his wide-open door at the end of the hall.

“I am, yes,” I said. I checked the clock on my phone. “We said two-thirty, right?”

“Yes, I believe we did.” Hugh stared at the taupe hallway carpet as though it would give him some further detail about the situation. “That’s exactly what we said.”

In the hustle and bustle of Monty’s worksite, I had barely noticed Hubert, and now I understood why. He seemed vague, barely there. Ghostlike, in fact. He had sandy hair and eyebrows that were an almost exact match with his fair skin, and his irises were so pale, they seemed to fade into the whites. He stood so still, he seemed almost ethereal.