The Diva Haunts the House Page 2

  Ray and I followed him up ancient stairs that creaked with our every step. Our presence triggered an automated ghost that flashed over our heads.

  Upstairs, I realized that Frank had knocked over the black pumpkin we’d placed in the recessed bookcase to the right. Sometime in the checkered history of the building, a skilled craftsman had built an arched top with glass doors over a cabinet. I opened a door and set the pumpkin straight before joining Ray and Bernie. All the rooms upstairs had been decorated as bedrooms for different ghoulish creatures. The first one we took Ray into was my personal favorite, the vampire’s bedroom.

  “When y’all asked if you could paint this room shiny gray, I thought you were off your rockers. Shoot, I’m no vampire, but I’d move into this room.” Ray covetously eyed a black and red smoking jacket Frank had hung on a valet.

  I loved the way dim lights reflected off the walls. Heavy red velveteen curtains shrouded the window to protect the vampire from any hint of daylight. My niece had found an oversized painting destined for the trash and transformed it into a portrait of a lovely woman, complete with two holes dripping blood on her swanlike neck.

  An old console had been repurposed into a bar. Frank had donated empty Vampire brand wine bottles and displayed them with elegant glasses. The opposite end of the bar featured burgundy martini glasses and a rack of test tubes, which the kids had labeled with blood types. A heavy walnut coat tree featured a cape with the opening tacked back to reveal a sumptuous blood red satin interior. A resident of Old Town had donated the clothes valet, along with the smoking jacket and black velvet slippers. My favorite part, though, was the dresser, where a gleaming manicure kit was displayed along with dental files.

  The next room belonged to a werewolf. He had left bloody bones and body parts lying around, but slept in a fancy dog bed. A room belonging to hairy spiders who had cocooned their next meals against the walls creeped me out. But I thought the most ghastly bedroom belonged to the axe murderer, who had mounted a collection of axes on the wall. His trunk was rigged to open and display fake decapitated heads.

  To raise the scary factor, we had scheduled at least one person to pose in each bedroom motionlessly and move when visitors were least likely to expect it. Frank had been our vampire bedroom attendant and now that he had bailed, I would have to find a substitute vampire.

  Lucky me—I would be the witch in the lair, located at the end of the looped tour. As the designated witch, I could keep an eye on the front door as well as any rowdy visitors.

  The doorbell rang and I went to answer it, leaving Bernie to show Ray the rest of the bedrooms. I took the back stairs down to the kitchen and passed through the witch’s lair, which featured a large display window that overlooked the street.

  The screech of metal on metal drew me to the window. A Hummer was parallel parking in front of the building, but the driver didn’t seem to care about hitting the cars around her. She backed up and tried again, a cigarette hanging loosely between her lips. Finally, even though the rear of the car stood out in the street, she cut the engine and stared straight at me, mere feet from the show window, all without touching the cigarette.

  I continued to the front door and opened it. Black branches arched over my head.

  “Is this the haunted house?” Although he wasn’t smoking, the man standing in front of me reeked of cigarette smoke. He wore his hair short, slicked back in a way that made him seem slimy to me, but I was willing to bet other women chased him. Slender, he dressed impeccably in Old Town style—khakis and an expensive designer shirt with a fancy logo sewn just below the shoulder. High cheekbones and full lips surely drew attention to him, but I was wary of the sultry eyes that flashed with dark energy.

  “Yes. Did you want to volunteer?” I hoped not, but I did my best to appear welcoming.

  He assessed me, making no effort to hide his critical gaze. I’d dressed in work clothes, comfortable jeans I could throw in the wash when they were dusty from toiling in the vacant building and a simple oversized mock turtleneck in a peachy color. I’d pulled my hair back into a ponytail and for fun, I wore dangling earrings in the shape of ghosts. Somehow, under his scrutiny, I felt as though I should have dressed more formally. I held out my hand, ready to introduce myself.

  Instead of placing his hand in mine, he plunked something hard into my palm. Without thinking, I pulled my hand back and whatever it was fell to the brick sidewalk, landing beside a giant pumpkin.

  He picked up the item, an annoyed expression on his face. “We found these in Blake’s room, hidden under his socks.” He opened his hand to reveal teeth—teeth with prominent vampire fangs jutting from them.

  I shrugged, clearly irritating him even more. The only Blake I knew of had volunteered to help but had never shown up. Before I could say that, the man launched into a tirade.

  “We don’t want him exposed to this sort of thing. Maggie doesn’t do vampires, and I will not stand for this kind of behavior.” He spoke with authority, his tone tinged with hostility.

  He’d obviously mistaken me for someone else. Maybe he was talking about a different Blake, not the kid who was supposed to help but hadn’t shown up. “I’m sorry . . .”

  “Look, Blake will be here this afternoon, but we will not have him playing out any ridiculous vampire fantasies. And another thing, I have tried, but I cannot reason with Natasha, so I have to come right out and say this as plainly as possible to you so there’s no mistake between us—keep that little tramp away from Blake! We’re certain that she’s the one fueling his interest in vampires.”

  Just who did he think he was? I felt terrible for the girl he’d called a tramp.

  I glanced at the woman in the car for a clue. There wasn’t much space between the house and the car, just an old red brick sidewalk. Although she remained in the Hummer, I could see her well. Her hair appeared to be naturally dark in contrast to my bottle blond, and she was painfully thin, while I needed to shed a few pounds.

  He studied me, holding the teeth in a palm that was extended toward me, as though he expected me to address them.

  “I’m very sorry, but I really don’t know what you’re talking about. Blake has not been here, there are no tramps, and I know nothing about the teeth in your hand.” I started to close the door, but he stepped forward and pressed a hand against it. His eyes narrowed. “You’re not the domestic diva in charge of the haunted house?”

  I couldn’t help grinning at the title of “domestic diva.” I still wasn’t used to it. I supposed I was one, but not in the flashy, in-your-face way that Natasha was. We’d grown up in the same small town, always competing with each other. She’d made a huge career of being a domestic diva and even landed her own local TV show about all things domestic. Somehow, along the way, she’d managed to end up with my husband, living in a house a few doors down from mine. In fact . . . I took another look at the woman in the car whose cigarette hung between her lips. With her thin figure and dark hair, she resembled Natasha.

  “I’m Sophie Winston. I am in charge here, but that doesn’t change the fact that I don’t know what you’re talking about.” I didn’t extend my hand this time, lest he put the vampire orthodontia in it again. “And you would be?”

  “Patrick Starski. I don’t want our Blake getting cozy with that homeless girl, Vegas. Blake will be along shortly, and I expect you to watch them like a hawk and keep them apart. There’s to be no involvement with vampires for Blake, either. His mother, Maggie,” he said, gesturing toward the car, “will not have it. Understood?”

  I understood all too well. My first instinct was to defend Vegas. She wasn’t homeless. The poor kid was living with Natasha and my ex-husband because her mother had absconded while her father was on military duty overseas. If anything, she needed our support and understanding. Patrick’s attitude made me bristle, not to mention the fact that we had plenty of work to do on the haunted house before it opened tomorrow, and I didn’t plan to babysit anyone. Plus he was fighting a hopeless
battle trying to keep his kid away from vampires. They were everywhere—books, movies, TV, billboards. It took some forbearance on my part, but I smiled and said, “We would love to have you help us. That way you could watch him yourself.”

  He saw right through my diplomatic response, and his coal eyes seemed to spark with anger. “I don’t need your snippiness. When I found out Vegas was involved in this project, I tried to get the school to pull Blake out, but that didn’t work.” His jaw twitched. “We all know everyone has a soft spot for people who remind them of their first love. I will not have him spending the rest of his life chasing cheap girls like Vegas.”

  “They’re twelve-year-olds,” I blurted. “And I am not babysitting. They’re here to work, but if you want to be a helicopter dad and hover over your baby, you’re welcome to stay and help us.”

  He pointed a long forefinger at me. “You have crossed the wrong man. People don’t mess with Patrick Starski.”

  TWO

  Dear Natasha,

  A coffin would be just the right touch for my Halloween display. I’m a decent crafter, but cutting plywood and building are beyond my skills. Isn’t there an easier way?

  —Afraid of Power Saws in Grave Creek, West Virginia

  Dear Afraid of Power Saws,

  Did you know that a coffin has a narrowed toe area, while a casket is rectangular? Either way, you can build one out of a large sturdy cardboard box, Styrofoam, or foam board. Cut the pieces, assemble with a glue gun, and paint. You can even use a sharp comb to create “wood” striations before painting if you like.

  —Natasha

  Patrick spun and ambled back to the Hummer, his chin in the air.

  I closed the door and returned to the front room, where I pulled the gauzy black curtain aside a hair to see better. Maggie cupped her hands around her mouth, trying to light another cigarette. When Patrick climbed into the car, she listened to him before launching into an outburst. His face contorted with such anger that I was frightened for her. She looked up at the windows on the second floor of the haunted house and swallowed so hard I could see the muscles in her neck tighten. Her gaze drifted down to the window where I stood, and I thought I saw fear. She put the car in reverse and hit the gas, nearly causing an accident when she pulled out without bothering to look for oncoming traffic.

  Now that I had met the dreadful parents, I was almost afraid to meet Blake. I was still thinking about them when I retrieved two four-foot-tall electric candelabra from the kitchen and positioned one on each side of the entrance to the witch’s lair.

  I plugged in the candelabra and stood back. Three orange faux flames flickered on each as though the wind was blowing into the house. The spiderwebs and bats that adorned them added to their appropriateness for the room.

  Bernie and Ray emerged from their tour to admire the candelabra. Bernie hooked a thumb over his shoulder. “We’re going to get the crowning glory for our favorite witch. Leave the door open, okay?”

  We had found a heavy black cat doorstop upstairs. I propped it in front of the door and returned to the front room to place a selection of potions on the counter where a cash register had probably stood for the candle shop. The kids had had fun printing labels in freaky letters and pasting them on colorful old bottles. I had eye of newt, dragon blood, bat’s toes, dried rat tail, peppered spider spit, and frog tongues. Those kids had let their imaginations go wild. I couldn’t believe they were lucky enough to get school credit for working on a haunted house.

  Their voices filled the foyer, cluing me in that it was already lunchtime and the Ghastly Guides had arrived to work. I wandered over to the door and watched the two boys and two girls in the foyer. I didn’t recognize one of the boys and guessed he might be Blake. No one noticed me. Preteen hormones practically danced through the air.

  Vegas and my niece, Jen, wore their hair long and loose, and the gleaming chestnut color was almost identical. But Jen was petite, like her mother, and still had a babyish face, while Vegas was growing into angular features. They wore miniskirts with tights, so similar that I was certain their outfits must have been a major topic of a telephone discussion the night before. Their mock turtlenecks resembled mine, only tighter. Who knew I was on the forefront of teen fashion?

  Deep in a typical twelve-going-on-thirteen conversation, they all spoke at once. They shrugged off their backpacks in the hallway. Jesse, a boy with lank light brown hair that fell into his eyes, dug into his backpack and withdrew a wrinkled sheet of paper. High cheekbones and a slightly pudgy face combined to give him a cute rascally look.

  Jen reached for the paper. “It looks like you slept with it.” It may have been a derogatory statement, but the lilt in her voice left no mistake that Jesse was special to her.

  He tossed his head to the side to sling the hair out of his eyes, and said simply, “Hey, Sophie.”

  Vegas, a pretty girl who had already shot past her classmates in height, chimed in, “Sophie, this is Blake. He’s late joining the Ghastly Guides because he’s on the tennis team and couldn’t come until practice was over. Doesn’t he have a sexy haircut? A lot of our friends volunteered to be spooky characters in the house, but you wouldn’t believe how picky they are about the costumes they might have to wear!” She held her hands up in a prissy manner like she was mimicking someone. “Oh! I couldn’t possibly be a mummy or a zombie, it might mess my hair!”

  They all giggled, and Blake said, “You crack me up when you do Heather.”

  I wasn’t sure about Blake’s haircut being sexy. His short nutmeg hair looked like an ordinary barbershop cut to me, but then I didn’t know much about boys’ fashion. I did notice, though, that Jesse wore baggy pants with a loose untucked shirt that matched his unkempt hairstyle, while Blake’s preppy shirt bore the Lacoste logo and was neatly tucked into khakis.

  “When we met at camp last summer, Blake’s hair was long enough for a little ponytail,” said Jen.

  “I thought that was a girls’ camp.”

  The girls giggled and Jen said, “It was, but the boys’ camp was just across the lake and we had boats.”

  Vegas flicked her long tresses over her shoulder. “Come on, Blake. I’ll give you the tour.”

  I watched the kids race up the stairs. The girls met last Christmas when Vegas and her father came to visit their cousin Natasha. While Vegas was spending Christmas with her dad, her mother disappeared. When her father returned to military duty, Vegas continued to live with Natasha and my ex-husband, Mars. She seemed to have adjusted to her new life, though I suspected she often put on a brave face.

  Jen lived in another neighborhood with her parents and went to a different school than Vegas, but the two sly girls had managed to wangle time off from school for participating in the haunted house. Whatever happened to being a candy striper and helping those in need, I wondered. Halloween fell on Saturday this year, perfect for parties. Jen and Vegas would be staying with me for the next couple of nights and the weekend—one long slumber party—while we worked on the house and opened it to the public. Jen’s thirteenth birthday happened to fall on October 31, which caused a great deal of consternation for my brother and his wife when the opportunity arose for a trip to Rome. After endless discussions, they decided to take the trip, because I promised to have a little Halloween birthday party for Jen, a few of her friends, and the volunteers at the haunted house after it closed.

  For part of their school credit, the kids were supposed to come up with a spooky story to tell about the haunted house. I hoped that the wrinkled sheet of paper that passed from Jesse to Jen meant they’d finally made some progress.

  Ray’s gravelly voice bellowed, “Out of the way, Sugar Pants!”

  I winced at being called Sugar Pants, but I knew Ray didn’t mean anything by it. He was a character and too old to change his ways.

  I scooted aside to make room for Bernie and Ray and the enormous black cauldron they carried down the sidewalk between them. Their faces beet red, they huffed and groaned as t
hey inched it up the front steps and inside the witch’s lair. Fortunately, the historic house had a huge fireplace, big enough for me to stand up in, that really was used for cooking at one time, though hopefully not by witches. The cauldron fit perfectly, as though it had been used there before.

  “Is that cast iron?” I asked.

  “Yes indeed, and it’s far superior to any modern plastic version,” grunted Bernie. “We’ll set dry ice in the bottom so that a fog will wisp out of it.”

  Footsteps, giggles, and occasional screams grew closer, and I looked up to see Jesse casing the room with Jen right behind him.

  “Witches just aren’t scary anymore. Well, maybe for little kids because they don’t know any better.” He flicked his hair out of his eyes with a head toss again.

  If I were his mother, he’d be taken for an immediate haircut. But, from the adoring way Jen gazed at him, I gathered the constant snapping of the head didn’t disturb her.

  “Jesse’s right, Aunt Sophie.”

  Gee, how did I know she’d agree with him?

  “How about ghosts?” I asked.

  Jesse snorted, and Jen flashed me an I-could-just-die-right-now-of-embarrassment look. “Ghosts are juvenile,” she explained with a disdainful shake of her head.

  As much as I’d have liked to ignore their opinions, they were very much our target crowd. “So what’s scary? Something Harry Potter-ish? A Hogwarts-like school?”

  “No!” they protested in unison.

  “Shape shifters.” Jesse held up his hands like claws and hunched over like an animal.