If Walls Could Talk: A Haunted Home Renovation Mystery (Haunted Home Repair Mystery) by Juliet Blackwell

Author:Juliet Blackwell
Language: eng
Format: mobi
Tags: Ghost stories, Mystery & Detective, Fiction, Dwellings - Remodeling, Mystery fiction, General, Remodeling, Dwellings
ISBN: 9780451231819
Publisher: Signet
Published: 2010-12-07T00:27:06+00:00

Later I had to admit that dinner was . . . fun.

Graham was at his most charming, teasing the boys and accomplishing the nearly impossible by coaxing them into actual conversation, with whole sentences. They talked baseball statistics and music while we enjoyed Dad’s famous Southern-fried chicken and garlic mashed potatoes. Over Bakesale Betty’s apple pie à la mode for dessert, Stan, my dad, and Graham traded stories and memories with the ease of old friends.

I skipped the pie and took refuge in the office for a few moments, feeling the need to lose myself in my work. I called Nico one more time—still no answer. Then I spoke to Raul and let him know about starting Matt’s job. I arranged to shift several of our workers over to Vallejo Street tomorrow morning so I could orient them. Before we hung up, I asked him whether he’d gotten through to Nico yet.

“Not yet. He hasn’t answered my messages.”

“You don’t happen to have any alternate numbers for him, do you? His home, maybe?”

“No, sorry. It does seem strange that he hasn’t called,” Raul said. “By the way, Katy says she has to take some time off for finals.”

It frustrated me that I had only one woman on the job these days. Katy was a good worker and I was hoping she’d stay with us a while, but she was a student, with an erratic schedule. I had lost the last woman in my employ to the trades—she was now a journeyman plumber, working union jobs in big housing developments, mostly—and the one before that to motherhood. Not that I blamed women for wanting to start families, but it was tough to break out of the men-only construction tradition when females were the ones who got pregnant. The job site was a dangerous place to gestate.

I would love to have a whole team of women working on my sites. In my experience they tended to be conscientious, clean, and organized, like the best male employees. The only problem was their general desire to be anywhere but on a construction site with construction workers. It was something of a Catch-22.

Still, as Luz liked to point out, I talk a big game, but I really like men. Especially the good guys that I worked with. Speaking of good guys . . .

I searched Stan’s desk drawers and dug up the old office Rolodex. Finally I hit pay dirt: Nico’s contact information card included a number for one of his nephews, who went by the name of Spike. I called him.

“I haven’t been able to get hold of your uncle Nico. Is everything okay?”

“Not exactly,” Spike said. “He’s in the hospital.”

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