Page 6

Chapter Six

The request for a meeting had come through the agency’s website, so Delia didn’t know quite what to expect from this Caleb Lowe. He was looking for an investment property of some sort and had hinted that it might be a cash transaction, so she was expecting someone maybe in their fifties or sixties, a man who’d already paid off his mortgage but still wanted to participate in the real estate market rather than socking his cash away in a mutual fund or a money market account.

Those expectations couldn’t have been more wrong.

He was maybe a year or two older than she was, with thick, messy dark blond hair, piercing brown eyes, and the face of a male model who spent most of his time in Europe but had decided to come slumming in Las Vegas, for whatever reason. Black leather jacket with a simple gray T-shirt underneath, faded jeans and black boots…a watch strapped to his wrist that looked unobtrusive enough but she knew must have cost at least five figures.

“Thanks for meeting with me,” he said as he reached out to shake her hand. He had a nice voice, too, one that was warm and mellow but not overly deep, and his handshake was firm without feeling as though it was going to crush her fingers.

“It’s no problem,” she replied. “Thank you for reaching out to Dunne and Dunne. Would you like to take a seat?”

She inclined her head toward one of the two chairs that faced her desk, and Caleb sat down while she resumed her perch in the leather office chair where she’d been sitting before he knocked.

“So,” she continued, “you’re looking for some kind of income property?”

“Yes,” he answered at once. “I’ve come into some money, and since I’m not interested in playing the stock market, I thought real estate might be the answer to making that money work for me.”

“Well,” Delia said with a professional smile, one she hoped wouldn’t reveal how much she’d love to sell this guy a house, “property is always a good investment. We’ve had some ups and downs, thanks to low inventory and then high interest rates, but the market has begun to correct itself over the past six months, so I think we’ll be able to find something that fits your needs and budget.”

As long as his needs weren’t too crazy and his budget wasn’t too low. Even Las Vegas’s expansive real estate market had its limits.

Leaning forward in his chair, Caleb replied, “I was hoping to get a deal on a distressed property, a place that doesn’t have anyone interested in it because of its…issues.”

For some reason, she had a feeling he wasn’t talking about foundation cracks or galvanized plumbing that needed to be replaced. “What kind of issues, Mr. Lowe?”

A glint entered his dark eyes. “You can call me Caleb. No point in being formal, right?”

Most of the time, her clients preferred to be on a first-name basis, but she never presumed. Then again, her first look at him had already told her that he didn’t seem to be the type to stand on ceremony.

“Sure, Caleb,” she said easily. “Did you want to stay within the Las Vegas city limits, or are you all right with looking in Henderson or Summerlin, places like that?”

“I’d like to stick with Las Vegas if possible,” he replied. “But I’m open to other options if we find the right property outside town.”

Well, that was something. Not that there wasn’t plenty of inventory in Las Vegas itself, but the broader the parameters, the better the chance of finding a house that would be the right fit.

“But it sounds as if you’re okay with a fixer-upper.”

He grinned. “Sure. I was kind of hoping to find a house that other buyers have avoided because of…well, let’s call it supernatural involvement.”

There it was. Then again, it wasn’t as if Delia had ever done much to hide her particular area of specialty, or otherwise her clients would have had a much harder time tracking her down. Heck, Las Vegas magazine had published a piece on her about eighteen months earlier.

“It looks like you’ve done your homework, Caleb.”

He settled back in his chair and crossed one leg over his knee. The black motorcycle boots he wore were scuffed, the jeans faded. If it weren’t for the Patek Philippe watch casually strapped to one wrist, he probably wouldn’t have looked like the sort of person who could afford to buy a house for cash.

But appearances…especially in the real estate business…were often misleading. In fact, Delia’s experiences had led her to believe that the worse off a person looked, the greater the chance that they had some serious cash on hand.

“I like to know who I’m working with,” he said, then shot her another of those disarming grins. “And sure, I’d be lying if I didn’t say that I’ve probably watched too many episodes of Ghost Hunter Adventures. It just sounded like it would be interesting to try purchasing a property that other people have avoided because it has a couple of ghosts who’ve decided to take up residence.”

She could disabuse him of that notion at least. “Most of the houses here in Las Vegas that have been proven to be haunted have only one ghost. It’s probably because there isn’t a lot here that’s more than fifty or sixty years old, so it’s not as if we have properties where multiple people have passed away on the premises.”

“But there are haunted ones.”

The note in his voice was almost pleading, sort of like a kid asking his parents to reassure him that Santa Claus was real.

“Oh, yes,” she replied. “More than you might think. Las Vegas is a big town, so it’s going to have its share of murders and suicides and overdoses.”

“So…ghosts only haunt a house if they’ve died violently?”

He looked genuinely interested, and Delia found herself smiling again.

Damn, he was cute.

“Not always,” she said. “There’ve been cases where one spouse has passed away and the other was still alive, and a spirit lingers because it doesn’t want to move on without their partner. And sometimes — sometimes they stay for reasons we can’t begin to guess.”

Like the ghost of the elderly woman who didn’t want to leave the condo that had been her home for forty years. She never did anything malicious, but if the new residents tried to set up the furniture in arrangements she didn’t like or hung pictures in places she didn’t approve of, everything ended up in a big pile in the middle of the living room.

Needless to say, that particular condo had buyers shuttling in and out until someone finally contacted Delia to help the woman move on. She’d been a stubborn ghost, refusing to listen to any of Delia’s persuasive arguments…until she finally explained that the home wasn’t hers anymore and that what the ghost was doing was next door to trespassing. The woman must have been the extremely law-abiding sort when she was alive, because as soon as she heard that interpretation of the situation, she promptly disappeared, never to be seen again.

“You can handle any of that, though, right?” Caleb asked. “I mean, what’s your success rate?”

“One hundred percent,” Delia said proudly, even as she thought, So far. “That doesn’t mean it’s not harder to dislodge some spirits than others, but eventually, they all realize that they’re not meant to stay here and vacate the property.”

“Sounds good to me,” he said. “So, what’ve you got in inventory right now?”

“None of the properties Dunne & Dunne are handling are haunted,” she replied.

Her mother had told her when she came in this morning that the Sunrise Manor house already had three offers on it…and besides, the ghost of the owner’s troubled son had obviously moved on, so Delia knew it didn’t fit Caleb’s parameters. And since she’d run into plenty of kooky requests — including a house with a basement for a dominatrix who wanted to work from home and several clients who insisted on specific house numbers because they were lucky — she wasn’t going to worry too much about someone who wanted a haunted house.

As his expression began to fall, though, she added, “But that doesn’t mean there aren’t a few here in Las Vegas. Let me get my folder on that.”

She turned away from him so she could lean down and open the file cabinet next to her desk. Maybe it would have been smarter to keep all this information online, but she liked having physical printouts of the various listings so she could hand them over to a client to look at more closely.

Inventory was always low after the holidays, but now, two weeks into the new year, things were beginning to pick back up a bit. Still, she only had two houses that she knew for sure were haunted, and two others that had sounded promising but which she hadn’t had a chance to personally investigate yet.

“I have these four,” she said, sliding the folder toward him. “All of them are single-family residences, which I assume is what you’re looking for?”

“I’d prefer it,” Caleb replied, dark eyes scanning each listing as he shuffled his way through the papers she’d provided. Then he paused and pushed one back toward her. “This place looks like it might work.”

He had a good eye, that was for sure. Located in Paradise Palms, the house was a mid-century gem — or at least, it would have been if it hadn’t been partially gutted, the flip unfinished.

“What’s the story?” he added. “Ghosts chase off the contractors before they could get the job done?”

Delia allowed herself a smile. “Something like that. The house was tied up in probate for a long time because the owner didn’t have a will. The heirs — the man’s niece and nephew, since he didn’t have any children of his own — finally sold it to some house flippers, but they only got partway through the reno before they abandoned the project, claiming that tools and supplies kept getting moved or hidden, and that work they’d done would be torn apart when they came back to the job site the next day. I guess once you’ve retiled the same bathroom three times, you’re ready to throw in the towel.”

“I can see that,” Caleb said, dark eyes glinting with amusement. “Have you tried to work with this particular ghost?”

She hadn’t, mostly because the listing agent, one Paige Loomis, thought that Delia’s ghost-cleaning side business was nothing more than an elaborate fraud.

Joke was on her, Delia supposed, considering the place had now been on the market for almost a year and the flippers who’d bought it were climbing the walls despite lowering the price multiple times. All it would have taken was Paige giving her a call — well, and paying a modest fee — and Delia could have taken care of the problem in an afternoon.

However, while Paige Loomis might not have approved of Delia’s methods, the other agent couldn’t prevent her from showing the property. If Caleb liked what he saw and decided to buy the place, then she’d come in, take care of whatever spirit had taken up residence in the house, and call it a day.

“No,” she said. “But that won’t stop us from taking a look.” She paused there, deciding she’d better be clear about what Caleb was getting himself into. “There’s a lot of value to be had in the place — once it’s fixed up, it’ll easily fetch at least a million, probably more. But it needs a ton of work. Have you ever flipped a house?”

“No,” Caleb said, looking cheerful. “Have you?”

“A few,” Delia replied. That was going on five years ago now, when it had been easier to purchase distressed properties, make some judicious improvements, and then earn a decent return on your investment. She and her mother had both decided, once inventory began to shrink and interest rates started to inch up, that it was better to get out of the flipping business and concentrate on just selling houses.

But even though the experiment hadn’t turned into a permanent sideline, it had still earned them a tidy chunk of change, and Delia knew she was much more familiar with the process than a lot of other real estate agents out there.

“Then you’ll be able to provide any advice I might need,” Caleb said, still appearing utterly unfazed.

She thought he might change his tune once he took a look at the place and realized he was going to have to drop at least another hundred grand just to get it put back together, but he was the client. That was his decision to make.

“All right,” she said, and scooped up the listings for the other three houses so she could return them to their folder. “Let’s go take a look.”

From the outside, the house didn’t appear too bad. Yes, the lawn was a dry yellow mess, the palm trees planted to one side desperately needed to be trimmed, and the tree to the right of the front walk had been neglected for so long that it was now more an enormous bush than anything else, but the house itself seemed all right, except for needing a new roof and some paint.

Inside, though…well, that was an entirely different matter.

“You weren’t joking,” Caleb said after she’d retrieved the key from the lockbox and let them inside. “It looks like they’ve been testing missiles in here.”

Immediately past the large double doors was a wilderness of exposed two-by-fours, stacks of drywall, and pallets of tile and flooring. The new stainless-steel appliances sat in the middle of the living room, looking forlorn.

“I’m not much for sugarcoating things,” Delia replied. No, she’d much rather a client knew the worst and made a decision based on all the available information rather than think they were inheriting a turnkey home.

Not that the best iPhone filters in the world could have made this place look like anything except the construction zone it truly was.

“Still….”

Caleb stood in the middle of the space, hands on his hips, and didn’t seem too daunted by what he saw. The flotsam and jetsam everywhere couldn’t hide the way the light streamed into the room from a pair of oversized sliders that opened onto the yard — a yard that backed up to a golf course, providing lots of green, relaxing views from every window at the rear of the house.

Nodding as he went, as if ticking off every project he detected, he headed toward the kitchen, which was another huge, empty space except for a refrigerator big enough to be used in a commercial kitchen, as well as a few pipes sticking out of the floor.

“Is that where the island is supposed to go?” he asked, pointing at the exposed plumbing, and Delia nodded.

“Yes. The plumbing and electrical have been roughed in and passed inspection, so at least you won’t have to deal with that. However, all the other rooms have been just as gutted and need to be rebuilt from the ground up.”

He was silent for a moment, dark eyes surveying the space. Once it was all put back together, it would be spectacular, thanks to the second set of sliding doors that opened from the breakfast nook and let even more light pour into the space.

“How much?” he asked, and Delia blinked at him.

“Well, they’re asking five-fifty, but I think we can talk them down, considering how long the place has been on the market.”

Caleb sent her a smile that was almost but not quite indulgent. “No, I meant to finish all the renovations.”

A bit of color touched her cheek, even as she told herself it had been an honest mistake. “Probably a hundred grand at least. A lot more if you want the place to be as authentic as possible.”

“A restoration versus a renovation?”

Delia nodded, feeling a bit more sure of herself now. “Right. The floors have all been pulled up, but you can see in the corners where it used to be terrazzo. It went out of fashion for a while, but now people who’re restoring these mid-century homes like to install the real deal if it’s in their budget. But even if you only did the ground floor and put in wood or luxury vinyl plank upstairs and down in the lower level, it would still probably double the flooring budget.”

A lot of people would have blinked or showed some sort of reaction at the thought of paying close to fifty grand for flooring, but Caleb only nodded, looking thoughtful. “How would that affect the resale?”

“Hard to say,” Delia replied. “Putting in terrazzo isn’t the same thing as adding a bathroom or a bedroom. A lot of the time, it comes down to what the buyer is looking for. But I’d probably recommend going with wood floors throughout, just because it’ll still look spectacular while appealing to a larger group of prospective buyers.”

He seemed content with that answer, because he only nodded again and then asked to see the upstairs.

So she showed him the rest of the house, which, as she’d already warned, was just as torn apart as the kitchen and the living room. However, he seemed impressed with the size of the place, which included four bedrooms and four bathrooms, along with that huge bonus room — or man cave, or kids hangout — on the lower level next to the garage.

“I can see the potential,” he said once they’d come back up to the main level. “It doesn’t feel very haunted, though.”

No, it didn’t. The whole time they’d been exploring the property, she’d allowed that sixth sense — or whatever you wanted to call it — to range outward a bit, trying to see if she could detect even the slightest wisp of a ghostly presence.

She hadn’t felt a damn thing.

That was the problem with ghosts, though. They didn’t always manifest when you wanted them to, and a place that could be absolutely rife with spirit activity for one family or group of people could be silent as the grave…pardon the expression…for another.

“Well, we’re just walking around,” she said lightly. “So the spirit might not consider us disruptive or a threat. I’ll bet if we started putting up drywall, we might experience something.”

The corners of Caleb’s dark eyes crinkled in amusement. “I’ll keep that in mind.”

“Let’s take a look at the backyard,” she suggested. “There’s a pool, but, like the rest of the house, it needs a lot of work.”

“But not as much work as digging a whole new one,” he replied, and she allowed herself a smile.

“No.”

They went outside through the slider in the living room, into a backyard that also needed a whole lot of love, from the dead grass to the shaggy palm trees.

But the yard was oversized in a way that yards rarely were these days, and with the property backing onto the golf course, whoever lived here would never have to worry about rear neighbors.

A stray golf ball every once in a while?

Probably.

Caleb had given the yellowed lawn only a brief glance before he headed over to the pool, which was located off to one side rather than directly behind the house. Delia wasn’t sure why the original builders had put it there, since these days most people liked to have the pool where they could see it from the main living space, but she doubted her client would want to spend the money to relocate it, not when he was considering the house as an income property and not his primary residence.

Now he’d paused near the edge of the empty pool, dark eyes keen as he surveyed the cracked plaster and the extremely dated blue-patterned tile that marked the perimeter.

“And those cracks aren’t a big problem?”

“They look worse than they are,” Delia replied as she walked over to stand next to him. “Get a decent team in here to resurface the pool and — ”

She’d been about to say, “It’ll be good as new,” but even as her lips parted, something behind her — something that felt like a pair of large, heavy hands — planted itself in the center of her back and pushed.

For one hideous moment, she thought she was going to tumble right into the deep end of the empty pool. But then Caleb’s hand wrapped around her bicep, hanging on tightly and yanking her away from the edge, back to the relative safety of the concrete surround.

An odd frisson moved up her arm at his touch, a sensation that wasn’t exactly unpleasant but was still unexpected enough that she took a step backward.

At once, he released her. “Didn’t mean to startle you,” he said. “I just figured you wouldn’t want to fall in there headfirst.”

“Probably not,” she replied, a little surprised by how much her voice shook.

“Did you lose your balance?” he asked.

That would have been the easy reply. Then again, he’d specifically chosen this house because he was looking for a property whose troubles were at least partially supernatural in origin.

“No,” she said, glad that she now sounded a bit steadier.

Caleb’s head tilted in question, and she gathered her breath.

“Something pushed me.”