Revealing the Dead Read online

  She headed for the kitchen and starting inventorying the fridge, thinking about dinner.

  Chapter 6

  Tuesday

  Over breakfast Abby mentioned casually to Ned that a plumber was coming that day. “Is something wrong?” he asked, without great concern.

  “No, this is the first step in working on our Master List. Or should I say Mistress List? I decided you’d be the better person to deal with wiring, so I claimed plumbing. Does that work for you?”

  “Sure. Not that I plan to do any of my own wiring, but I can stand there watching and looking intelligent and making brilliant comments like ‘Does that doohickey connect with the thingamabob?’”

  Relieved that he didn’t seem troubled by her decision—and after chastising herself for making outdated sexist assumptions—she countered, “Gosh, and here I thought wiring was all about connecting the male and female parts.”

  “Ha,” Ned said. “So when is this person coming? Or should I ask first, who is this person and how did you find him?”

  “I asked your mother for a recommendation when we had lunch yesterday. Family business, local, and she’s worked with them in the past, although they may have moved on to the next generation by now. The guy I talked to sounded older. He’s coming by this morning.”

  “What do you want him to do?”

  “Give everything a once-over and tell me where we might have problems and/or need to do something. Then I thought, why don’t we start with the powder room?”

  “Why that?”

  “It’s small, it wouldn’t take long, and it definitely needs work.”

  “I agree. I can’t recall the last time I used it—I simply don’t fit in the space. Do we want to keep it?”

  “Depends. It’s most likely not original to the house, but it’s useful to have the basic necessities downstairs, rather than running up and down. I’ll see if the guy has any good ideas. Maybe there’s a way to shoehorn it in next to the washer and dryer.”

  “Just don’t knock down any walls until we’ve talked about it, okay?”

  “Of course, my lord and master. I wouldn’t dream of making such an important decision without consulting you.” She batted her eyelashes.

  Ned grinned at her. “You are kidding, I hope.”

  “You think?” Abby grinned back. “And I’ll even make sure we keep at least one toilet working, unless you’re eager to dig an outhouse in the yard.”

  “Not likely.” Ned stood up. “I’ve got to head to work. You can give me the full report over dinner. Which I’m cooking, right?”

  “Yup.” Abby intercepted him on his way to the door and planted a kiss on him, one which, as usual, lasted longer than either of them had planned. Would this electricity between them ever fade? Did she want it to? Not yet! “I’ll make sure the water stays on. Have a good day, dear,” she said sweetly.

  Ned snorted as he walked out the door. Abby went back to the kitchen to wash the few dishes and wait for the plumber.

  The plumber arrived five minutes early. As Abby had guessed, he looked to be at least sixty, fairly chunky through the middle and grizzled on top. He also looked very no-nonsense. “You Ms. Kimball?”

  “I am. Come on in.” She held the door as he entered. He wasn’t carrying any tools, but he did have a pocket-size notepad in his hand. “You’re Mr. Maguire?”

  “Call me Jack. How’d you find me?”

  “I asked”—Abby struggled with how to define Sarah, because calling her ‘the mother of my sort-of partner’ sounded ridiculous—“a friend of mine for recommendations, and she said she’d worked with you in the past. Sarah Newhall, outside of Concord.”

  “Oh, yeah. Colonial, well-maintained. Needed some upgrades. It must’ve been five, ten years ago. So I guess everything’s still working, if she recommended us. My grandfather started the business, and my son Bill’s working with me now. What’re you lookin’ for here?”

  “You want some coffee? Or maybe I should ask, do you have a few minutes to talk? I’d like to outline what I’m thinking, and you can tell me what’s possible and what’s ridiculous.”

  He smiled for the first time. “Coffee sounds great—I don’t have anything scheduled until after lunch. Most people don’t jump into big house projects just before the holidays. Don’t tell me you want the whole place done over by Christmas?”

  “No, nothing like that. I just want your opinion about what really needs doing, what can wait, and maybe a few ideas about moving some things around. No schedule yet—you tell me what’s practical.”

  He followed her into the kitchen, where she poured a mug of coffee and stuck it in the microwave for a minute. When she handed it to him, he was studying the kitchen with a critical eye. “Milk? Sugar?” she asked.

  “Nah, black’s fine. I was right—I thought I’d been here before. Who’d you buy it from?”

  “Actually I don’t know. My, uh, partner bought it about ten years ago, but we’ve never really talked about the house’s history.”

  “Huh. That woulda been when my dad was still running the shop. I can look up the records when I get back to the office. You don’t get freaked out by the cemetery behind?”

  “No. I like cemeteries.”

  “Quiet neighbors, eh? So, what’re you thinking?”

  Jack drank his coffee and listened while Abby outlined her ideas. When she finished, she said, “So, what do you think?”

  “I’ll tell you up front I’m happy you don’t want granite and marble and lots of shiny metal. You want to maintain the fixtures pretty much the way they’ve always been, but you want the invisible working parts to keep working. That about right?”

  “Yes, exactly. I’ve got some questions about the laundry area and the little bathroom under the stairs, but they’re both later additions. I have no idea if they were done right, and neither one is very easy to use. If you’ve got any ideas, I’d love to hear them. Where do you want to start?”

  “Basement first. If that’s not done right, you’re gonna have problems. Got a flashlight?”

  “On the basement stairs.” Abby led the way to the basement but let him go first down the rickety—and no doubt original—stairs. He grabbed up the heavy-duty flashlight along the way.

  Jack paused at the bottom, pointing the light around and muttering to himself. “Mostly copper, looks pretty good. New stuff looks like crap, though.” He turned to Abby and said in a louder voice, “Your WC and laundry are toward the back there, right? See the PVC? Shoddy job. Maybe the owners did it themselves, on the cheap. Nowadays you’ve got to have everything officially inspected, and this wouldn’t pass now.”

  “So if you did anything, you’d have to tear that stuff out anyway? Because there’d be an inspector coming?”

  “Right. The copper stuff looks okay, but I’ll have to check upstairs, see if anybody messed with it. Let’s go look at what’s going on with the ground floor.” He turned and marched back up the stairs, and Abby had no choice but to follow him. “Laundry’s behind the kitchen?”

  “Yes.” He would have seen the piping so he already knew where he was going. He reached the laundry closet—for that was about the size it was—and muttered again. “No pan, sloppy. No problem with the washer draining?” he asked Abby.

  “Not that I’ve noticed.”

  “Show me the WC, then.”

  Abby had to direct him to that. It was a mingy little room, with barely room for an ordinary person to stand up inside. Now that she looked at it critically, she could tell the wallpaper dated probably from the 1950s or 1960s, and was peeling in a few places. Definitely not a professional job. There were linoleum tiles on the floor, some of them curling up at the corners. “Does this room have a damp problem?” Abby asked Jack.

  “Maybe. Not a leak, but not any ventilation either. Leave the door open when you can.”

  “It’s not part of the original plan, is it?”

  “Nah.” Jack sounded disgusted.

  “Was there always a
space here? And what could it have been?”

  “I’d have to take some things apart before I could say for sure. Storage maybe. You know, boots and umbrellas, that kind of thing. You wanna find out?”

  “Actually, yes. If you can stop short of tearing the whole thing apart.”

  “I can poke around a bit. But I’d recommend redoing the pipes, no matter what you decide.”

  Abby thought for a moment. “Oh, heck, we don’t use it much anyway. Take it all out—we’ll manage.”

  “You sure?” When Abby nodded, Jack said, “I’ll go down, cut off the water. The rest of your fixtures will be okay, ’cause they’re on different lines.”

  Abby hoped fervently that the man knew what he was doing. “Let’s do it.”

  Abby backed out of the tiny room to let Jack pass. He had to go out to his truck to get his tools, but when he returned Abby listened as he clomped down the cellar stairs. Noises she couldn’t identify came next, and then the WC rattled in place. Five minutes later he returned. “Lemme get the toilet out—that’ll take a wrench. You wanna save it?”

  “Reuse it? Not really.”

  “Okay, then, it goes out. I’ll take it with me—mebbe somebody else can use it.”

  “Fine.” Abby backed away because there was no way Jack could crouch in the space and detach the toilet if she was in the space. It didn’t take him long.

  “Sink’s next,” he said. “Cheap prefab cabinet—you want that to go too?”

  “Yes.” Abby was beginning to feel powerful. She was making things happen, tossing things out, knowing that she could make the space better. She leaned against the wall opposite the powder room door in the hallway, waiting. Jack hauled out the cabinet and deposited it on a tarp he’d laid down to protect the floor.

  “Won’t take but a minute to peel off the paper and the tiles, see what’s under ’em.” He was doing that even as he explained to her. He pitched out the floor tiles one by one. “Yeah, like I thought. Floors original, the wood parts, but they had to cut a hole through for the toilet drain. The pipes for the sink went through the wall behind instead of the floor. The stuff behind is just cheap sheetrock—mind if that goes?”

  “Nope,” Abby said, not moving. More tearing and the screech of nails ensued, and Jack passed chunks of wall out to her. Abby laid them on the tarp as well.

  “Jeez, these guys were sloppy,” Jack commented. “Left a wrench in the wall.”

  She could see him lean forward to retrieve it, and then suddenly he went still for a moment. “Holy crap!” he exclaimed, and Abby heard the metallic clunk as the tool fell to the floor.

  Jack backed out of the space, shaking his hand. “You run into a wire?” Abby asked anxiously.

  “Don’t see one—the only ones to this space run through the ceiling. But I sure as hell felt something when I grabbed that wrench. Lemme look at it again.” He reached for it where he’d dropped it—but he all but tossed it away immediately. “Damn,” he said softly, looking down at it.

  Abby looked at where it had been lying on the tarp. Nope, no wires in sight. So what was the problem?

  Jack was still staring at it. “I’ll be damned, that was my grandfather’s. He always marked his tools. But this mess sure as hell wasn’t his work. What’s it doing here?”

  “Somebody playing a joke on him?” Abby suggested. “Hiding his stuff?”

  She reached out to touch the wrench, but Jack grabbed her arm. “There’s something funny about it—I’d stay away from it for now.”

  She turned to face Jack. What had him so spooked? And then she had a disturbing thought . . . could he? No. Not possible. Not a random guy who just happened to be in this house. “Maybe it was just static electricity? We get a lot of that in the house, especially when the heat’s on. If I’m right, it won’t give me a jolt.” Before he could stop her, she bent and picked it up. Yes, just an ordinary wrench. She held it out toward the man standing in front of her, who looked at it as if it was a snake. “Take it.”

  Jack reached out tentatively and touched it with one finger, and pulled back his hand quickly. “How’d you do that?”

  How on earth could she explain to this stranger? “I didn’t do anything. Are you feeling all right? Maybe you’re coming down with the flu or something. That can make people feel peculiar.”

  “It wasn’t the flu. But maybe I’m coming down with something else. I think I’ll go home now. I wouldn’t want you to catch whatever this is.”

  Too bad I’ve already got it. “That’s probably a good idea. Look, when you want to talk about what we can do about our plumbing, just give me a call. I’m usually around. No rush.”

  “Yeah, right. Maybe tomorrow.”

  “Do you want to take your grandfather’s wrench with you?”

  “Uh, no, not right now. Maybe later. Nice meeting you.” He all but ran toward the front door.

  Abby followed more slowly and shut the door behind him. That encounter certainly hadn’t turned out the way she had expected, and she wondered if she’d ever see Jack Maguire again. And if he did return, how she could explain what had happened.

  She hoped his grandfather hadn’t left any more tools behind.

  Chapter 7

  Tuesday

  Abby’s experience with Jack Maguire had left her unsettled. Sure, it had taken her some time to get used to strange and unexpected experiences—and a charged wrench would qualify—but she had given little thought to how it would affect someone who was totally unprepared for it. What had actually happened?

  What did she know? She was going to guess that Jack’s grandfather had done some work on this house and had left the wrench behind, either by accident or because someone had stolen it from him and hidden it. But what would have “charged” that wrench? Was there some crime or tragedy involved? Or had the grandfather simply had a lot of “power”? But if that was the case, why hadn’t Jack ever run into it before?

  Was the grandfather still alive? Unlikely, given when he had arrived in Massachusetts. That was a question she could probably answer for herself, with a little exploration online, and she was quickly proved right. James Maguire had died not long after Jack was born, following an unfortunate accident at a renovation project he had been working on. The details of the project were not given, and Abby hoped that it wasn’t this house—although she couldn’t think of any project in this mid-sized Victorian that could have proved fatal, unless the poor man had flung himself off the roof.

  Then there was the question of the “shoddy work” that Jack had pointed out. It would be awkward to ask whether that was his grandfather’s work; she would prefer to think that the homeowners, whoever they were, had hurried through the job after James had died—on another project, please. But still, the wrench had been left—actually, hidden—in the house, and the wrench seemed to be the catalyst. The obituary in the local paper gave no additional details about James’s death. The list of “survived by” relatives was not long: James’s wife, his son John, and three grandsons.

  What was she supposed to do? She’d complained to Ned that she couldn’t find enough people who shared this sensitivity, yet here when she was unexpectedly confronted by one, she had no clue how to proceed. Jack had clearly been scared, but she couldn’t just sit him down and explain that somehow the wrench he had found was conveying a message from his long-dead grandfather. Except she had no idea what the message was. Even if she could coax Jack back into the house, the moment she started talking about communicating with the dead he’d be out the door. And heaven only knew what he’d tell his other clients about the crazy lady in Lexington. She would definitely prefer to avoid that.

  She was still poking around online, not sure what she was looking for, when Ned came in. “I was thinking pork chops for dinner,” he informed her, “if that’s all right with you.”

  Abby had to pull her thoughts back to the present before she could answer. “Pork chops? Sure, fine.”

  Ned came further into the room. “Abby, why
haven’t you turned the lights on?”

  She looked around her and realized the room was dark. “I was looking some things up, and I guess I lost track of time. Need any help in the kitchen?”

  “Why don’t you come sit and keep me company? Would you like a glass of wine?”

  Abby stood up and stretched. “That sounds good—I think I forgot to eat lunch.”

  Ned came closer and laid his hands on her shoulders. “What’s wrong?”

  “With me, not much. But I had a kind of unexpected experience with the plumber today.”

  “Then come tell me about it.” He led her into the kitchen and poured two glasses of wine, handing her one. “What was unusual about it?”

  Abby debated with herself whether to tell the story in order, leading up to the big reveal, or to cut to the chase and start with the finding of the wrench and Jack’s reaction to it. She took a sip of wine and decided on a middle course.

  “The plumber—Jack Maguire—arrived a few minutes early. I explained what I was thinking about, and then we walked through the house, starting with the basement. He was thorough, and practical. He said the later plumbing, to the loo and the laundry, was badly done, so I told him to go ahead and take out the fixtures in the powder room, and then we kind of got into it and he stripped off the plaster and sheetrock, and the floor tiles. And then he found an old wrench inside the wall, like it got left behind. He thought he recognized it as belonging to his grandfather, but when he picked it up, he dropped it like a hot potato. And it scared him.”

  “And your conclusion was?” Ned asked carefully.

  “That he felt some kind of link with his grandfather. I held the thing and I didn’t get anything from it. But when I handed it to him again, he could barely touch it.”