Dead Bolt by juliet blackwell Read Free Book Online Page A

compliance—”
    “Nothing stood out to you about the conversation?” she interrupted, and I guessed homicide inspectors weren’t the same division as the noise police. “Anything different this time?”
    “Only one thing: He told me he wanted to buy Cheshire House.”
    “Is it for sale?”
    I shook my head, feeling a sense of déjà vu. Last time I had encountered ghosts, at a once-palatial home on Vallejo Street, a mystery man showed up out of the blue, claiming he had purchased the house—though it wasn’t for sale. That had been a case of deliberate malfeasance, however. In this case . . . what could be the explanation? At least Emile Blunt hadn’t claimed he was buying the house, just the desire to do so. Heck, we all wanted to buy houses all the time, right? And considering how much he hated the construction process, Emile probably wanted to buy it simply to put an end to the noise. Still . . . it was hard to imagine he would have that kind of money stashed away in his broken-down upholstery shop.
    “Blunt mentioned that he had spoken with Katenka Daley, one of the owners, and that she had told him she was unhappy,” I continued. “He thought therefore she might want to sell.”
    “Does she?”
    “I don’t really know. I’m sure her husband doesn’t, but . . .” I trailed off. If I told the inspector the whole truth, she’d think I was nuts. I glanced at my dad, who was still standing within earshot.
    Inspector Crawford caught the look. She gave a subtle head-jerk toward a beige sedan and we walked over to stand by it, where we had a semblance of privacy.
    “You’re going to think I’m crazy.”
    “Try me.”
    “Yesterday Katenka confided in me that there might be . . .” I trailed off, looking into the homicide inspector’s serious, no-nonsense, sherry-colored eyes. No way this woman would believe a word of it.
    “Might be . . . what? Out with it.”
    “There have been some odd events taking place on the job site recently. Katenka Daley expressed the belief they might be caused by . . . spirits. In the house.”
    Crawford was silent for a full beat. “House spirits.”
    I nodded.
    “As in ghosts.”
    I nodded again.
    She cleared her throat, took a deep breath, and let it out slowly. Then she rubbed her brow.
    “Sometimes I hate my job,” she murmured. “Okay, owners of this place think they’re being haunted, which leads the deceased, the neighbor across the street who hates the construction noise, to think they’ll sell cheap. Did I get that right?”
    I nodded.
    “After your little run-in with the victim, what happened?”
    “I drove over to Clay Street to pick up my stepson.”
    “Can anyone vouch for you?”
    “My ex-husband’s wife, Valerie Burghart.” The idea of Valerie talking to the police about me didn’t exactly give me the warm fuzzies. Still, I gave the inspector her contact information. “And my stepson, Caleb, of course. He’s in school. And then we went home. To Oakland. We had dinner with my dad and our friend Stan Tomassi.”
    “Was your father home all night?”
    “Yes, of course he was.” Though I had experienced a momentary twinge of doubt when I first saw Dad at the scene of the crime, I felt a flush of anger at the idea that the inspector might suspect him of something like this.
    “You all had dinner together, but can you be sure he was in bed all night?”
    “I’m a light sleeper. As is Stan Tomassi, whose bedroom is on the first floor. One of us would have heard him leave.”
    “Your father tells me he owns several guns.”
    A small arsenal, to be precise. Please let all the guns be accounted for, I thought. I nodded in answer to her question.
    “All right,” Crawford said after eyeing me for another moment. A uniformed cop walked up and whispered something to her. She nodded and he left. “Anything else you can think of? Besides ghosts.”
    “No, nothing.”
    “Do you happen to have an employment address for your