Murder on the House: A Haunted Home Renovation Mystery (Haunted Home Repair Mystery) Read Online Free PDF

house to win a renovation contract?
    Nope. Nuh-uh. No way.
    I have my pride.

Chapter Three
    W ho was I kidding? I have no pride.
    My best friend, Luz, drove me to the Bernini estate the following Saturday evening. Luz was originally from East LA, had clawed her way through college and grad school through sheer grit and determination, and was now a professor of social work at San Francisco State University. She wasn’t daunted by much of anything . . . except ghosts. And clowns.
    “Sure you won’t join us?” I teased. “It’ll be fun. We’re going to order pizza.”
    “Tempting as that offer is,” she said, “it’s not sufficient incentive to risk being eaten by ghosts.”
    “I think you’re mixing up ghosts and zombies.”
    “Whatever. I still don’t understand why you’re doing this.”
    “This is the way to get the job. Besides, getting away from Dad’s House of Testosterone isn’t the worst idea in the world.”
    Through a quirk of fate, I live in a big old farmhouse in Oakland with my father, an old family friend named Stan Tomassi, and a former stray dog—male, of course—that has yet to be named. Lately my stepson, Caleb, has been spending a lot of time with us, hanging out with the boys.
    I love them all, but this had not been the plan. After my divorce a few years ago, all I wanted was to move to Paris and hide away from the world for a decade or two. I had a vision of myself as a romantic, hauntingly thin woman of mystery who occasionally emerged from her Left Bank atelier only to wander the Champs-Élysées, eat a soupçon of glace à la cerise ,and entrance a few handsome Frenchmen before disappearing into the Parisian fog to return to her exquisitely solo pity party. That had been the plan.
    Instead, my mother passed away suddenly, my stunned and grieving father fell apart, and before I quite knew what was happening, I had taken over the reins of the family business, had moved into my father’s house, and was living, working, and breathing in the male-dominated world of construction. And if anything, I’d gained ten pounds over the last couple of years.
    At times I was a little grumpy about it all.
    “I understand wanting to take a break from the boys,” Luz continued. “But if you ask me, a ‘break’ should involve mai tais on a foreign beach somewhere, not spending the night in an alleged haunted house.”
    “It’s more than ‘alleged,’” I said as we pulled up to find my friends Stephen and Claire leaning against her red Toyota truck, whose magnetic door panels read CLAIRE’S LIVING THINGS . “From what I witnessed the other day, I think it’s pretty much fact. This is one genuine haunted house.”
    As soon as we’d parked and joined them, Claire took a bright orange Tootsie Pop out of her mouth and gestured with it. “Cool house. Didn’t know they grew ’em this big in this part of town.”
    “What’s with the candy?”
    “Want one? I’ve got plenty.”
    “No thanks.”
    “Oral fixation.”
    Stephen shot her a questioning look.
    “I’m trying to quit smoking,” she explained in a scratchy, deep voice that sounded as though she’d gone through a pack a day since puberty. “And just for the record, New Year’s resolutions blow.”
    Claire was petite and flat-chested, tattooed, and wore “steampunk”-inspired clothing, which, she explained, was sort of a mix of punk, Goth, and Victoriana. Her straight dark hair and slightly almond eyes hinted at a mixed Asian heritage, but she’d never volunteered the information and I hadn’t had the guts to ask. Despite—or perhaps because of—her diminutive size, she drank and swore like a sailor on shore leave after six months at sea. Claire was also a gifted landscape architect, and surprisingly good at intuiting clients’ needs and coping with their sometimes unreasonable whims. I’d invited her to come along tonight in part so she could check out the gorgeous gardens of the Bernini estate, but also because of