Home For the Haunting: A Haunted Home Renovation Mystery by juliet blackwell

for a bed-and-breakfast in the Castro district. A
haunted
bed-and-breakfast, to be more precise. I had managed to spend the night in the place, and broker a deal with the ghosts, and catch me a murderer—sort of—several months ago, so Turner Construction won the bid on the project.
    This was not what one might call an “industry standard” for how to go about winning renovation bids . . . but whatever it took.
    Unlike the typical San Francisco Victorian, the Bernini B&B, as it was now called, was a Greek Revival with Italianate flourishes. We were painting the entire exterior in several different shades of cream, in keeping with the traditional monochromatic palette. Inside, it was fabulous: the new owners were committed to restoring the house and converting it into a charming inn without updating it cavalierly so as to strip it of its historic charm. We were modernizing things inside the walls: central vacuum, internet wiring, modern piping, heating, insulation, and electricity. And we were revamping some of the historic methods that still worked well and were, in fact, “green,” such as passive ventilation and the natural insulating effects of series of chambers that could be closed off from one another.
    But the real show was in the interior details. We had removed all the ancient plumbing fixtures and hardware, cleaned them up, fixed them, and brought them up to code. For those items that were missing, I scoured junk shops and salvage yards—and occasionally found things on the internet—from the same era. We had removed broken tiles and had them reproduced by an Arts and Crafts Revival tile factory. Warped oak floors were patched and repaired where possible, or replaced where necessary. Original lamps and sconces were removed and taken to an old man who worked out of his garage and could fix anything made before 1950.
    I knew if we worked hard enough, we had a shot at the AIA award for historic renovation. But, more important, I could feel the house coming back to life, blossoming under our care and attention.
    Long before I was introduced to the concept of ghosts, I had come to believe that historic homes—some much more than others—held whispers from the past, tiny wisps of energy from all the souls who had passed through their doors. I used to think I was just being silly, superstitious. Now that I knew about spirits . . . I still felt superstitious. And I was even more confused. Was it the houses that whispered to me, or the ghosts within?
    Not that it really mattered. Once I had accepted that I am, for better or worse, some sort of ghost talker, I was trying my best to roll with it. That was one factor that led to my signing up for my friend Olivier’s ghost-busting class. I felt like a fool, but I was learning a whole heck of a lot about things like electromagnetic waves and, believe it or not, theoretical physics.
    “Mel, good to see you. How’d that project go this weekend?” asked Raul, our lead foreman.
    Raul had volunteered to work with me on the community service
project, but I wouldn’t let him. He and his wife were already busy with helping to run a food pantry and afterschool tutoring activities through their church. He worked too hard as it was, and I needed him on site. A good foreman could make or break a project, and his presence on a job as complex as the Bernini B&B meant I didn’t have to be here every second myself. He felt so guilty about not helping out, however, that he and his wife had brought over tamales for the volunteers.
    “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.