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fancy that idea, what makes you think so?”
    “You seem very . . . erudite.”
    “Wouldn’t a maths—
math
—professor also be erudite?”
    “I suppose so. It’s just . . . never mind.”
    Traffic feeding onto the Bay Bridge did its usual rush hour stop-and-start tango, but once we made it onto the bridge itself we moved along at a good clip. Twenty minutes later we had arrived at the Claremont, a massive old hotel painted a pure white perched on the side of a hill in Oakland. Because it is located near the University of California many assume the Claremont is in Berkeley, but it is in fact a historic Oakland gem.
    I pulled up in front of the main hotel entrance and turned off the engine, waving away a doorman who came to open my door.
    “Do you want me to come in with you, help you get settled?” I cringed as the words left my mouth. Landon wasn’t a young foreign exchange student; he was a grown-up college professor.
    “I’ll be quite fine,” he said as he got out of the car. “Thank you for the ride.”
    “Landon,”
I called, and he ducked his head back in the open door. “If I were you I would stay away from room four twenty-two. Just in case.”
    “And why might that be?”
    “Supposedly a ghost of a little girl hangs out in that room.”
    He looked incredulous. “And you know this how, exactly?”
    I shrugged. “I can neither confirm nor deny the veracity of the haunting, but I hear things. Might make it hard to sleep, is all I’m saying. You’ve already had one shock today.”
    “Thank you, Ms. Turner. I shall take your words to heart. It has been . . . very interesting to meet you.”
    And with that, Professor Landon Demetrius III hurried into the hotel.
    •   •   •
    I headed across town to Oakland’s Fruitvale neighborhood, where I live with my father, my ex-stepson Caleb, and our old family friend Stan Tomassi in a big old farmhouse. It was by far the largest home on the block, and at one time was surrounded by orchards until, one by one, the fruit trees were forced to yield to developers. Small houses sprung up, closely packed together. It was the kind of neighborhood, rare in urban areas, where working people raised their families and knew their neighbors. On weekends Fruitvale’s old men—including my father, Bill Turner, the founder and erstwhile head of Turner Construction—hung out in their driveways fixing old cars and “shooting the breeze” with whoever passed by, while packs of kids played games in the street. People here hung their laundry out on clotheslines, mowed their ownlawns—such as they were, given California’s drought—and looked after their own kids.
    Fruitvale was a stark contrast to the neighborhoods Turner Construction typically worked in, where the only people visible on the street were the ones who couldn’t afford to live there: the gardeners, the nannies, and the housecleaners.
    Living with my father hadn’t exactly been part of my life’s plan, and moving out remained one item on my very long to-do list. But there was no denying that this neighborhood, and this old farmhouse, welcomed me home with the warmth and comfort of a hug. Never was this more appreciated than on the days I stumbled upon dead bodies.
    And most welcoming of all was the shaggy silhouette of Dog’s head in the living room window. I could hear him barking through the glass, which was his way of greeting his loved ones.
    Dog was a stray I picked up from a jobsite, and in an effort not to further complicate my life I had refused to name him. As though that would help keep him from becoming a member of the family. That ship had long ago sailed, and Dad had decided it was high time we give Dog a real name. I had argued that since he now answered to Dog, and had a profoundly limited vocabulary—
cookie, walk, Dog
—it would be best not to confuse the poor canine any more than he already was.
    So Dad alighted on the name Doug. “It’s close enough he won’t get