I was walking back to the parking lot when I saw a shadowy figure waiting for me. I stopped, and a man dressed in a shabby top hat and a tailcoat worn over a bare chest sauntered toward me. He was carrying a cane with a silver skull for a knob, and there was a chicken foot sticking out of his hatband. His black skin gleamed as if it had been oiled, which it probably had been.
“Dude,” I said.
He didn’t respond.
I sighed, then said, “I see you, Papa Philippe.”
“Dodie Kilburn,” he said in a husky voice, “I hear you raised a man for no good reason.”
“Says who?”
“The loa be telling me.”
“Don’t the loa have better things to do?”
“They do,” Philippe said, dropping out of his voudou patois, “but Margery doesn’t.”
“I should have known.” Margery, the woman who ran the office of the Order, knew the business of every houngan in the Atlanta area. “Then she should also have told you that I had an excellent reason to bring Gottfried back.”
“Actually, I should have heard it from you, what with being your sponsor.”
“Since when do I have to get approval for a job?”
“Since you took one that three other houngans turned down.”
I had wondered about that—it wasn’t like I had clients busting down my door. Most newer houngans get referrals from established ones, but most older houngans think I’m a flake. “I don’t know what their problem was, but I did my homework. The next of kin signed off on it, and the job fits Order guidelines.”
“Bringing back a world-famous architect to fix a house?”
“It’s a special house, like one of Frank Lloyd Wright’s houses.”
He didn’t look impressed.
“And it’s for charity.”
No response.
“Am I in trouble with the Council?”
“There’s been some talk, which could have been avoided if I’d known ahead of time.”
“I’m sorry—the client was in a hurry, and—”
“And you haven’t had much work this month.”
“No, not so much.” I hadn’t had much the month before, either. If things didn’t improve, I was going to have to either go work with my father’s insurance agency or go work for another houngan, which would probably mean doing the whole voudou queen thing, including trying to make Dodie sound appropriately exotic. If I’d had any dealings with the loa, I’d have sacrificed my autographed photo of the cast of The Big Bang Theory to get them to throw more work my way.
Philippe said, “Just give me the details.”
I told him what Mrs. Hopkins had told me, that a supporter had left a dilapidated mansion to the Stickler Syndrome Research Foundation in his will, and how she’d gotten the idea of reimagining the place in order to sell it for mucho bucks. Somebody knew somebody who knew somebody who knew Gottfried the architect and talked him into taking on the job pro bono. Unfortunately, midway through the project, Gottfried fell down a flight of stairs at his condo and broke his neck, which left the project in limbo.
“Couldn’t somebody else finish the job from his plans?” Philippe asked.
“Gottfried wasn’t big on planning. They had some rough sketches, but Gottfried is famous for adding things as he goes, and without all those special touches, they won’t be able to get nearly as much money. Not to mention the fact that Gottfried started the crew doing some things without telling them what he was aiming for, so there’s all kinds of work half-finished. They really do need him.”
“And he’s willing to do the job? You asked him?”
“Duh!”
“Okay, I think I can spin it the right way. But if you get another job like this one, please run it past me first.”
“You bet.”
“ ’Cause Papa Philippe think you make master houngan someday if even it kill you—if it do, he be bringing you back hisself.”
THE APPRENTICES HAD Gottfried all ready to go when I got back to Revenant House the next morning, and they had found him a pair of khakis and a polo shirt to wear instead of his burying suit. Though he told me good morning when he got in, he didn’t say anything else for most of the drive. I took that to mean that he was ready to hunker down and work.
The house he was working on was part of a gated community in Dunwoody, one of the pricier Atlanta suburbs, and the security guard didn’t look impressed by my beat-up car. Then he saw Gottfried and did a double take before letting me drive into the Emerald Lake development.
The town houses and lawns looked nauseatingly perfect, and Gottfried must have agreed, because he blurted out, “Cookie-cutter crap.” I saw several signs proudly proclaiming that Emerald Lake was a Von Doesburg development, which explained why the man had been at the cemetery the night before.
The mansion being renovated was at the end of a road, right on the lake, and obviously predated the cookie-cutter crap. It had three stories, wide white columns, a balcony on the second floor, and a veranda that stretched all across the front of the building. There were tarps and piles of supplies everywhere and a Dumpster in the middle of the front yard, but I could see it was going to be a showplace. No wonder Gottfried had been willing to come back to finish.
As soon as I parked, Gottfried got out and started walking toward a trailer parked on the edge of the lot, so I followed along. A sign on the door said CONSTRUCTION OFFICE, and when Gottfried opened it, we saw the four people from the previous night plus another guy.
“Good morning, Gottfried,” Mrs. Hopkins said, but Gottfried went right past her to go to the desk and start flipping through papers.
“Well!” said the newcomer, a scrawny man with his nose hiked up in the air.
“Dodie,” Mrs. Hopkins said, “this is Theo Scarpa, the president of the Emerald Lake Homeowners’ Association.”
I said pleased-to-meet-you.
“Mr. Scarpa has some questions about . . .” She glanced at Gottfried. “About your work.”
Scarpa sniffed, and at first I thought it was a comment on me, but then realized he was checking to see if Gottfried stank of rotting flesh.
I said, “No, he doesn’t smell. In fact, revenants smell better than most living people.”
“I see,” he said, as if suspecting a hidden insult. “Sorry, but this is my first experience with this kind of thing. Can you tell me how you expect him to be able to finish a renovation this complex? It’s my understanding that a revenant has limited mental capacity.”
“It’s not that his capacity is limited—it’s just very focused. Gottfried is just as capable of finishing this house as he was when he was alive. The difference is that he no longer has any interest in anything other than this task.”
“But he’s got to modify his plans to fit into our development,” he said, waving a handful of papers at me. “How can he do that?”
“This house predates the development,” Gottfried’s assistant, Elizabeth, said. “You should be modifying those trashy houses to match his work.”
The two of them started in on each other, ignoring Von Doesburg when he tried to calm them down. I said, “Mrs. Hopkins, if you want my advice, I’d say to let Gottfried get to work.”
“That’s an excellent idea,” she said. “C.W., why don’t you take him out to the house?”
The construction chief nodded and said, “Come on, boss, and I’ll show you what we’ve done while you were gone.”
“Gottfried, I’ll be back this evening to take you back to Revenant House,” I said, but he didn’t even pause. As I’d told Scarpa, his attention was all on the house. I checked with Mrs. Hopkins to see what time I should pick him up, and left her to handle the bickering.
It was at about three thirty that afternoon when I got that panicked call about Gottfried being dead. Again.
FOR ONCE I was glad I didn’t have any other jobs going so I could drive over there right away. A bunch of men wearing tool belts were standing around, and when I got out of my car, Elizabeth came running over to nearly drag me inside the house.