Home for the Haunting(55)

“The cops want us to go.”

“They understand a welcoming kiss. Trust me.”

I leaned over, intending to give him a quick peck. Predictably, it turned into something much more, much deeper. I forgot myself for a moment, reveling in the feel and scent of him, as I tended to do whenever we kissed.

Graham was the first one to pull back. He smiled at me and let out a loud sigh.

“Guess you’re right; we’d better go before things get out of hand. The cops might not be that understanding.”

I pulled away from the curb, concentrating on negotiating the congested airport arrivals area.

“So, have you thought about what we were talking about before I left?” asked Graham. This was the real question I had dreaded. I was hoping he might have forgotten somehow. This was the reason, I was pretty sure, why I kept obsessing about my wardrobe and whether to park or do curb pickup. I’m pretty good at self-deflection.

“Um . . . I’ve been really busy.”

I stared straight ahead, but I could feel the heat of his intense gaze on my profile.

“Ghosts?” he asked.

What was I, a billboard? First Raul, now Graham. How did everyone know just by looking at me?

Finally, I shrugged. “It seems to be what I do.”

“I thought you did home renovation.”

“The ghosts seem to have other ideas.”

“Is this why you’ve been avoiding my calls?”

“I wouldn’t say avoiding, exactly . . .” He was right; I had been avoiding them. Maybe Cookie and I shared more than I’d like to admit.

“Please tell me there’s been no body count this time.”

I didn’t answer as I maneuvered the tricky series of shifting lanes and ramps that led back toward the freeway.

Graham blew out an exasperated breath.

“It had nothing to do with me this time, nothing at all. Also, I’m getting a little sick of having to explain myself all the time. I don’t know why this keeps happening to me. Maybe I’m like a death magnet or something. It’s not like I have much control over the situation.”

“I don’t suppose you would consider leaving this to the police?”

“For your information, this time the police asked for my help. Inspector Annette Crawford, remember her?”

Now it was Graham’s turn to be silent. He looked out the window onto the nothingness of this stretch of freeway, a sea of strip malls and identical-looking houses marching up the hills of Daly City and South San Francisco. Tourists are sometimes fooled into thinking SFO is located in San Francisco, but in fact it lies many miles to the south, in Burlingame. The ride to the city from the airport can take half an hour, or much more, depending on traffic. And the worst is that from this angle, San Francisco sneaks up on you rather than rising up like a world-class city. This would explain, I imagined, why so many movies show people arriving in San Francisco over the gloriously filmable Golden Gate Bridge, which in fact heads north, to Marin County.

“How was your trip?” I asked to change the subject. “Did you learn all sorts of new green techniques with which to torture me and my crew?”

Graham’s latest client was a mysterious, reclusive, extraordinarily wealthy fellow who was planning on reconstructing an entire small monastery he was shipping over from Scotland piece by piece. He had sent Graham to a green convention in Boston to learn new techniques to adapt the historic building to modern life.

“Yes, because my life is all about torturing you. Like, for instance, I’d like to know what’s going on with you and the ghosts and the body.”

“It’s a little complicated—”

“As usual.”

“Yes, as usual. So, I was doing my community project last weekend, as you know—speaking of which, this is actually great timing, because I have to go back this weekend and finish up. Would you be willing to come with me? I sure could use some skilled labor on the site.”

“Of course I will. In fact, I’m not sure I’ll let you out of my sight for a while, and certainly not around ghosts and bodies.”

“Only one body.”

“So far.”

“Anyway, a volunteer found a body in an outbuilding. She had been dead for a while before we arrived, so we weren’t implicated in any way.”

“And the ghosts?”

“They’re in the neighboring house.” And possibly the shed. But I was going to let that one slide.

“What do the neighbors’ ghosts have to do with anything?”

“The outbuilding may have been on their land, officially. And the deceased, Linda Lawrence, grew up in the house, and when she was just a kid, she witnessed her father kill her mother there.”