Home for the Haunting(57)

“You’re not planning on selling, are you? After we just fixed up your house?”

He looked decidedly guilty. “No, of course not. That would be scummy, right?”

“Yes, it would be,” I said, unconvinced.

“So, you’re coming back tomorrow afternoon?” Monty said. I got the feeling he wanted to be rid of me.

“I’m going to try, if my schedule stays clear and I can get some help. I’ll let you know.”

Outside, I noticed Etta was working in her new vegetable garden. She leaned on her cane with one hand and dropped seeds to the tilled earth with the other. The process was slow and laborious, but even from a distance I could hear her humming to herself.

I crossed the street to join her.

“Hello, Mel! Beautiful day, isn’t it?”

“Lovely,” I said with a smile. “Could I give you a hand?”

“Oh, no, I’m fine,” she said. “Thank you for the offer, but you’ve already done so much.”

I looked at the vacant lot and wondered why it had remained empty for so long.

“Could I ask you something? Have you heard something about property values rising with a new research campus being built nearby?”

“Oh, I’ve heard the rumors,” she scoffed. “But you know, these houses are worth a pretty penny anyway. San Francisco’s an expensive place these days.”

“True.”

She waved a hand in the air. “Not that it matters to me anyway. What am I going to do—sell this place and move to a tropical island? What in the world would I do there?”

Etta’s laugh was infectious. I smiled. She was right; it was hard to imagine her anywhere but here amid her things.

“Who owns this lot now, do you know?”

“I have no idea,” said Etta. “Do you think it’s terrible I’m using it? It seems a waste, just sitting here all these years. Perhaps the original family still owns it, but doesn’t want to sell for some reason?”

“You said it was the site of the, um, ‘drug house’?”

“Yes, Joe Jacobsen was the name of the owner. We were friendly enough at first, but he got worse the more he drank. Gerry and I had a few altercations with him over the years, but we made sure our fence was strong and ignored him, mostly. The saddest part was that he let his kids run wild. I knew a couple of them from school and tried to intervene, but there really wasn’t much I could do. It was sad to see them grow up like that.”

“What happened to the children, do you know?”

“The oldest was shot and killed in a gang-related shooting before he was eighteen. The middle wound up over in San Quentin, and the youngest eventually disappeared, but he was already on drugs, so who knows?”

“You mentioned the other day that Sidney Lawrence was fighting with Joe Jacobsen. Do you know what about?”

She nodded. “Sidney wanted Joe to rein in his second boy, Dave. He was worried that Dave was a bad influence on his daughter Linda.”

“Dave’s the one in prison now?”

She nodded. “A guest of the state, as they say. He was . . . well, I always felt bad about Dave. I truly believe he had a good heart, but there was no denying that he was dealing drugs. Attracting all sorts of characters to the neighborhood. It only takes one bad apple to destroy the sense of a place, and this whole block went from being a family-focused, friendly area to one where there were petty thefts, screeching tires at night, that sort of thing. Even the occasional gunshot.”

“That must have been terrible to live with.”

“It was. Gerry was not happy; I’ll tell you that much. But our kids were already grown and gone, and we both worked so much, we weren’t around that much for the drama. And it’s possible we were more tolerant than some of our other neighbors.”

“Like Sidney.”

She leaned on her spade and shrugged. “When he and Jean found out that Dave was friendly with their daughter Linda, well . . . They found Linda with a joint one day and blamed it on Dave. And let’s face it—it was very likely she bought it from him. So Sidney had words with Dave, and then with Joe.”

“Did they respond at all?”

“They responded by harassing him more. The kids used to go bang that front door knocker all the time, just for fun. Now kids still do—they seem to think the place is haunted and they dare one another to run up and bang on the door.”

The sound of the knocker reverberated through my head, sending chills up my spine. The way it echoed through the closed-up house . . .

“So, if Sidney and Joe were feuding, are you suggesting . . . that Sidney had something to do with Joe’s house burning down and that Dave or his father went over that night and killed everyone in retaliation?”