Read Dead Bolt for Free Online

greeted us.
    “Hey, Bill,” Caleb replied. “Hey, Stan.”
    “Caleb, my man, long time no see. What’s up?” Stan replied, rolling over in his wheelchair.
    A couple of years ago Stan Tomassi had one moment of sloppiness and slipped off a second-story roof, fracturing several vertebrae. Single and alone in the world, he had no one to care for him when he was released from many months in rehab. So Mom and Dad built a ramp onto the old farmhouse, revamped a downstairs room to Americans with Disabilities Act standards, and moved him in. Not long afterward Mom passed away, and Stan helped my dad through the dark times. Now the two men were like an old married couple: bickering good-naturedly over politics, sports, and what to watch on the massive big-screen TV.
    Stan and Caleb did an Oakland-style hand slap, up high, down low, fist bump, finger clench. Then Stan handed me a freshly made margarita.
    “Thanks, Stan,” I said, leaning over to give him a hug.
    “Smells good,” I said, kissing my dad on his whiskery cheek. He smelled of gravy and tobacco. “We having salad tonight?”
    “Nope. That rabbit stuff you get at the farmers market is a rip-off. This is real food. It’ll put hair on your chest.”
    Caleb and I shared a smile. When Caleb was younger, he would always reply, worried, “But I don’t want hair on my chest!”
    “How’s work, babe?” Dad asked. “Caleb, the table needs setting.”
    “I might have hit a snag in the Cheshire House project,” I said, watching as Caleb took four mismatched plates from an antique pie cupboard. The plates reminded me of my mother, who always insisted she would never have a matched set of china because she didn’t want her children to live in fear of breaking one. “Katenka Daley seems to think that we’re stirring up some trouble with our renovation work.”
    “Trouble with the neighbors? Told you those Union Street folks were touchy.” Dad deftly transferred a pot roast onto a big platter, then surrounded it with piping hot potatoes, caramelized pearl onions, and glazed carrots.
    “No—actually, yes. One guy in particular—an upholsterer. Looks like he’s been there a long time. Emile Blunt?” My dad and Stan had worked high-end construction in San Francisco for so many years that they knew a lot of people.
    Dad shook his head and glanced at Stan, who shrugged.
    “Doesn’t ring a bell. I take it he’s a PITA?” PITA was code for pain in the ass. It was a useful term on job sites.
    “You could say that. I might ask you to talk to him at some point,” I said. “I have the sense an old coot like you would understand him better than I.”
    “‘Old coot’? How d’ya like that?” Dad said to Stan, pretending to be outraged, but enjoying the teasing. He pulled a pan of hot rolls from the oven and transferred them, barehanded, to a cloth-lined basket, singing “Hey hot ho hot” and silently whistling. I used to think his reaction was silly, until Caleb pointed out I do the same thing.
    “By the way,” Dad said, “you should take Dog with you tomorrow. I got him a new supply of carsick pills.”
    “You want to come to work with me, Dog?” I asked.
    The mellow canine glanced at me and flicked his tail, a duty wag, before his soulful brown eyes—and full attention—slewed back to the roast sitting atop the counter. When I first saw the dog—a skinny, scraggly, stray brown mutt hanging around a work site—I figured he was a construction pup. But no one ever claimed him, and once I brought him home and fed him, I didn’t have the heart to kick him out. Besides, he was the only living creature—besides me—who had seen the ghost that used to follow me around.
    Maybe I should let him look through Cheshire House tomorrow, see how he reacted.
    Anyway, now Dog was my construction pup. There were only two problems: First, he was yet another speed bump in my long-term plan to run away to Paris; second, the poor canine tended toward