Home For the Haunting: A Haunted Home Renovation Mystery Read online

  Praise for the Novels of Juliet Blackwell

  The Haunted Home Renovation Mysteries

  Murder on the House

  “A winning combination of cozy mystery, architectural history, and DIY with a ghost story thrown in . . . this well-written mystery has many different layers, offering something for everyone to enjoy.”

  —The Mystery Reader

  “Juliet Blackwell successfully blends house renovation and ghosts in . . . this delightful paranormal mystery.”

  —Lesa’s Book Critiques

  Dead Bolt

  “Juliet Blackwell’s writing is like that of a master painter, placing a perfect splash of detail, drama, color, and whimsy in all the right places!”

  —Victoria Laurie, New York Times bestselling author of the Psychic Eye and Ghost Hunter Mysteries

  “Cleverly plotted, with a terrific sense of the history of the greater Bay Area, Blackwell’s series has plenty of ghosts and supernatural happenings to keep readers entertained and off-balance.”

  —Library Journal

  “Smooth, seductive. . . . Fans will want to see a lot more of the endearing Mel.”

  —Publishers Weekly

  “This is a great ghost book . . . a strong second entry that is developing the characters and laying a solid foundation for a strong series. If you enjoy some spooky with your cozy, this will delight you and have you anxious for more.”

  —Mysteries and My Musings

  If Walls Could Talk

  “A riveting tale with a twisting plot, likable characters, and an ending that will make you shudder [at] how easily something small can get totally out of hand. [It] leaves you wondering what you just saw out of the corner of your eye . . . a good, solid read.”

  —The Romance Readers Connection

  “Ms. Blackwell’s offbeat, humorous book is a fun, light read. . . . Mel makes a likable heroine. . . . Overall, a terrific blend of suspense and laughter with a dash of the paranormal thrown in makes this a great read.”

  —TwoLips Reviews

  “Kudos and high fives to Ms. Blackwell for creating a new set of characters for readers to hang around with as well as a new twist on the ghostly paranormal mystery niche. I can’t wait to see what otherworldly stories Juliet has in mind for us next!”

  —Once Upon a Romance

  “Melanie Turner may well be one of the most exciting, smart, and funny heroines currently in any book series. . . . There’s enough excitement to keep you reading until late in the night.”

  —Fresh Fiction

  The Witchcraft Mysteries

  Tarnished and Torn

  “Blackwell has another winner with the fifth installment of her Witchcraft Mysteries . . . a great entry in a really great series.”

  —Romantic Times

  In a Witch’s Wardrobe

  “Funny and thoughtful. ”

  —The Mystery Reader

  “Another engrossing story by an author with marvelous storytelling skills.”

  —Lesa’s Book Critiques

  “A really entertaining read. . . . I look forward to the next installment. ”

  —Cozy Crimes

  “[Blackwell’s] writing is creative and wickedly imaginative.”

  —Once Upon a Romance

  “A wonderful paranormal amateur sleuth tale. . . . Fans will enjoy Lily’s magical mystery tour of San Francisco.”

  —Genre Go Round Reviews

  Hexes and Hemlines

  “This exciting urban fantasy murder mystery . . . is an entertaining paranormal whodunit. . . . [Lily’s] familiar, Oscar, half goblin-gargoyle, becomes a cute potbellied pig who adds jocularity to the fast-paced story line as part of the quirky cast (benign, kind, and evil) that help make this spellbinding tale a fun read.”

  —Genre Go Round Reviews

  “Hexes and Hemlines carries you along with an unconventional cast where nothing is out-of-bounds. Extraordinarily entertaining.”

  —Suspense Magazine

  “This is a fun and totally engrossing series that hooks you instantly and makes you want more. . . . I love the mix of vintage clothes, magic, and a lingering possibility of romance combined with mystery.”

  —Fang-tastic Books

  “Juliet Blackwell has created a series that will appeal to mystery fans as well as paranormal enthusiasts.”

  —Debbie’s Book Bag

  A Cast-off Coven

  “If you like your mysteries with a side of spell-casting and demon vanquishing, you’ll enjoy the second title in Blackwell’s Witchcraft Mysteries.”

  —Romantic Times

  “This awesome paranormal mystery stars a terrific heroine.”

  —Genre Go Round Reviews

  Secondhand Spirits

  “Juliet Blackwell provides a terrific urban fantasy with the opening of the Witchcraft Mystery series.”

  —Genre Go Round Reviews

  “An excellent blend of mystery, paranormal, and light humor, creating a cozy that is a must-read for anyone with an interest in literature with paranormal elements.”

  —The Romance Readers Connection

  “It’s a fun story, with romance possibilities with a couple hunky men, terrific vintage clothing, and the enchanting Oscar. But there is so much more to this book. It has serious depth.”

  —The Herald News (MA)

  Also by Juliet Blackwell

  HAUNTED HOME RENOVATION MYSTERIES

  If Walls Could Talk

  Dead Bolt

  Murder on the House

  WITCHCRAFT MYSTERIES

  Secondhand Spirits

  A Cast-off Coven

  Hexes and Hemlines

  In a Witch’s Wardrobe

  Tarnished and Torn

  HOME FOR THE HAUNTING

  A HAUNTED HOME RENOVATION MYSTERY

  Juliet Blackwell

  OBSIDIAN

  Published by the Penguin Group

  Penguin Group (USA) LLC, 375 Hudson Street,

  New York, New York 10014

  USA | Canada | UK | Ireland | Australia | New Zealand | India | South Africa | China

  penguin.com

  A Penguin Random House Company

  First published by Obsidian, an imprint of New American Library,

  a division of Penguin Group (USA) LLC

  Copyright © Julie Goodson-Lawes, 2013

  Penguin supports copyright. Copyright fuels creativity, encourages diverse voices, promotes free speech, and creates a vibrant culture. Thank you for buying an authorized edition of this book and for complying with copyright laws by not reproducing, scanning, or distributing any part of it in any form without permission. You are supporting writers and allowing Penguin to continue to publish books for every reader.

  OBSIDIAN and logo are trademarks of Penguin Group (USA) LLC.

  ISBN 978-1-101-62684-9

  PUBLISHER’S NOTE

  This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, and incidents either are the product of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously, and any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, business establishments, events, or locales is entirely coincidental.

  Version_1

  Contents

  Praise

  Also by Juliet Blackwell

  Title page

  Copyright

  Dedication

  Acknowledgments

  Chapter One

  Chapter Two

  Chapter Three

  Chapter Four

  Chapter Five

  Chapter Six

  Chapter Seven

  Chapter Eight

  Chapte
r Nine

  Chapter Ten

  Chapter Eleven

  Chapter Twelve

  Chapter Thirteen

  Chapter Fourteen

  Chapter Fifteen

  Chapter Sixteen

  Chapter Seventeen

  Chapter Eighteen

  Chapter Nineteen

  Chapter Twenty

  Chapter Twenty-one

  Chapter Twenty-two

  Chapter Twenty-three

  Chapter Twenty-four

  Chapter Twenty-five

  Excerpt from A Vision in Velvet

  About the Author

  To Bee Green Enos,

  Amiga verdadera.

  We will always have the snuggery!

  Acknowledgments

  Every book published depends on the time, talent, support, and hard work of many people. Thanks are due, as always, to Kerry Donovan, Jim McCarthy, and Kristin Lindstrom for being such advocates for me and for my work. Also, to all the copy editors, artists, and assistants who made this book a reality.

  I thank the Rebuilding Together organization and its clients for teaching me so much about organizing volunteers, as well as for giving me so much hands-on construction experience. Special thanks go to my cocaptain, Shay Demetrius, Bruce “I’ll Do It” Nikolai, Suzanne “Safety” Chan, Anna “Tool Czar” Cabrera—as well as to the dozens of volunteers who showed up for work weekend—for all their energy and hard work.

  As usual, my sister Carolyn was an indispensable reader/cowriter for this book. She and I shared many a laugh over the sibling rivalry in Home for the Haunting, though our own relationship is one of unflagging support and true friendship. You are such an important part of my writing. I can never thank you enough.

  Thanks, as always, to the ever-encouraging writing cabal: Sophie Littlefield, Rachael Herron, Nicole Peeler, Gigi Pandian, Victoria Laurie, Mysti Berry, Adrienne Miller, Cecilia Gray, Lisa Hughey, and L. G. C. Smith. What would I do without you? To my neighbors and all the members, near and far, of the Mira Vista Social Club: J. C. Johnson, Pamela Groves, Anna Cabrera, Mary Grae, Karen Thompson, Susan Baker, Jan Strout, Bill Logan, Brian Casey, Claudia Escobar, Kendall Moalem, Wanda Klor, Antonio Jimenez, and Gomez Gomez for their unflagging friendship.

  To my father, who is the inspiration for Mel’s dad; and to my sister Susan for all her support. And thanks to my son, Sergio, for making me so proud to be called Mom. And finally, merci à Eric for putting such a song in my heart.

  Chapter One

  You 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 sagg
ing 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.