Keeper of the Castle: A Haunted Home Renovation Mystery by Juliet Blackwell

signs appeared to be about employment issues with one of Elrich’s smaller subsidiary companies. A few apparently didn’t like his contributions to particular political causes.
    But there was one protester who stuck out: He was wearing a kilt with a thick leather belt, boots with tassels at the top, and a tartan cloth flung over one shoulder. He had the sandy-haired good looks of a poet, with romantic bright blue eyes and a boyish face.
    His sign demanded R EPATRIATION OF THE W AKEFIELD S TONES .
    Huh
.
    “What do you think, Dog?”
    Dog’s head lolled over toward me. He thumped his tail, and then his head rolled back toward the protesters.
    “I’m only asking because one of them appears to be in costume. You don’t see
that
every day.”
    The gates swung open, and I started to edge my car through the crowd. One pretty young woman banged on my hood.
    “Hey!” My boxy Scion was a working car and was hardly pristine, but physical contact seemed over the line. “Back off.”
    “Why are you crossing the picket line?” she demanded.
    “I don’t work for Elrich Enterprises,” I said. “I have nothing to do with his company.”
    “What are you doing here, then?”
    “That’s really none of your business.”
    “She’s working on the new construction,” said the man in the Scottish costume. “Let her be.”
    “She is? How do you know?” demanded the young woman.
    Their attention diverted, I drove through the gates, which swung shut behind me. A glance in the rearview mirror told me the protesters did not try to follow.
    My tires crunched and popped as I proceeded slowly along the long, yellow, crushed-granite drive. After nearly a quarter of a mile, the drive formed a loop around a fountain in front of Elrich’s beautiful two-story grand Victorian home.
    Painted in various shades of cream with gold gilt trim, the massive Victorian was fronted by an ample porch. The building formed a U shape around a courtyard, at the center of which was a melodious fountain. A round turret was accessed by winding stairs, and a balcony featured a finely crafted wrought-iron railing.
    I looked down toward the building site for the soon-to-be Elrich retreat center. The way Wakefield was situated on the hill, it really did seem like Ellis Elrich fancied himself a modern-day reincarnation of the famous but controversial newspaperman William Randolph Hearst.
    It was hard not to draw the comparison: Like Elrich, the newspaper magnate lived in a grand home high on a hill overlooking the ocean—though Hearst’s Castle down the coast at San Simeon was much larger and grander than Elrich’s house. But it was the circumstances of the construction that really brought home the similarities. Hearst was in the habit of buying entire buildings, having them disassembled, and shipping them to the United States to be reassembled for his various interests. It was the sort of outrageous yet inspired thing only the extremely wealthy and rather flamboyant could pull off.
    “I was thinking about taking a vacation at a ClubMed,” I mumbled to my canine companion. “But I guess this is pretty close.”
    Dog agreed. He didn’t talk or anything, but I could tell by the way his head lolled.
    The home was gorgeous and seemed welcoming, but as I parked, I had second thoughts about being here without Graham.
    And in fact, he hadn’t been pleased when I called to tell him I’d had a change of heart. How ironic that in the end, the one most opposed to my getting involved in the Wakefield project was the one who had tried to entangle me in the first place.
    “I don’t like it,” Graham had said on the phone last night.
    “Which part?”
    “The part where you’re working for Elrich.”
    “I thought that was your grand plan when you introduced me to him. Now you’re changing your mind?”
    “That was before a man was killed.”
    “You don’t seriously think Elrich did it?”
    “No, but I’m not convinced
Nolan
did it.”
    “Okay . . . but