Happy Medium: (Intermix)

Also by Meg Benjamin

Medium Well

Medium Rare

Happy Medium

Meg Benjamin

I
NTER
M
IX
B
OOKS
, N
EW
Y
ORK

INTERMIX BOOKS

Published by the Penguin Group

Penguin Group (USA) LLC

375 Hudson Street, New York, New York 10014, USA

USA • Canada • UK • Ireland • Australia • New Zealand • India • South Africa • China

penguin.com

A Penguin Random House Company

This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, and incidents either are the product of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously, and any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, business establishments, events, or locales is entirely coincidental.

HAPPY MEDIUM

An InterMix Book / published by arrangement with the author

PUBLISHING HISTORY

InterMix eBook edition / January 2014

Copyright © 2014 by Meg Benjamin.

Excerpt from
Medium Well
copyright © 2013 by Meg Benjamin.

Penguin supports copyright. Copyright fuels creativity, encourages diverse voices, promotes free speech, and creates a vibrant culture. Thank you for buying an authorized edition of this book and for complying with copyright laws by not reproducing, scanning, or distributing any part of it in any form without permission. You are supporting writers and allowing Penguin to continue to publish books for every reader.

All rights reserved.

No part of this book may be reproduced, scanned, or distributed in any printed or electronic form without permission. Please do not participate in or encourage piracy of copyrighted materials in violation of the author’s rights. Purchase only authorized editions.

For information, address: The Berkley Publishing Group,

a division of Penguin Group (USA) LLC,

375 Hudson Street, New York, New York 10014.

eBook ISBN: 978-1-110-62256-8

INTERMIX

InterMix Books are published by The Berkley Publishing Group

and New American Library, divisions of Penguin Group (USA) LLC,

375 Hudson Street, New York, New York 10014.

INTERMIX and the “IM” design are trademarks of Penguin Group (USA) LLC

To my stalwart hubs, Bill, for putting up with both my writing and my ghost obsession. To my stalwart critique partner, Teri Wilson, for putting up with all my sighing. And to my editor, Cindy Hwang, and my agent, Maureen Walters, for all their help.

Chapter 1

“Son of a fuckin’ bitch.”

Ray Ramos managed not to kick the baseboard or punch the wall. Given that he was wearing steel-toed boots, kicking the baseboard could leave a sizeable dent. Punching the wall could conceivably break a couple of fingers. He probably shouldn’t damage either the house or himself. That left cursing, which he did lustily.

However, he had to admit he felt like breaking something right then, like maybe his partner Kevin’s skull.

The whole molding, the whole mother-effing molding in this room, was ruined. He’d have to pull it down, find some new molding that worked in the space, paint it, and then reattach it. This in addition to yanking off the pressed-wood paneling some freakin’ fucktard had seen fit to install on the far wall, probably sometime in the seventies from the look of the stuff.

And then there was the ceiling medallion, a beautiful piece of plasterwork. Or it had been beautiful until some other fucktard had decided to install a ceiling fan through it. He’d have to remove the ceiling fan, then take down the medallion and see if the edge that had been damaged when the fan was hung could be repaired. And if it could, he’d have to fix it, probably by making a cast from one of the other edges and recreating the parts of the medallion that had been destroyed.

And then, of course, there was the wallboard all through the house. The mother-freakin’, God-blessed wallboard. Scarred and dented with occasional holes. It looked like he’d have to pull it down in every bedroom and a couple of rooms on the first floor as well. Then he’d have to replace it and paint it.

And all of this would take time.
More
time. Time he hadn’t planned on spending on what was supposed to be a relatively quick turnaround. If Kevin had been in the room, Ray would have relieved him of some surplus teeth for managing to miss two-thirds of the crap that would need to be taken care of around the place before they could even hope to sell it.

It’s perfect, Ray, just what we need. Seriously underpriced. On a block that’s being renewed. We grab it, do the renovation, flip it. Five, six weeks tops. And presto, we’re into the San Antonio market.

He should have known better than to listen to Kevin’s estimation rather than trying to get his brother’s opinion. Danny, the real estate guru, was on vacation for a couple of weeks, but Ray knew he should have waited for him to get back. Instead of letting Kevin convince him the house wasn’t a freakin’ money pit where dreams went to die.

In reality, of course, he couldn’t blame Kevin entirely for this disaster. Ray had done a quick walk-through himself. He’d seen the windows with missing sash chains and damaged hardware. He’d noticed the scarred wood around some of the doors. He’d even seen the wood paneling and the crappy wallboard.

But he’d let himself listen to Kevin’s siren song, mixed in with his own sirens, all of them singing “Walk Right In, Sit Right Down, Make Some Cash.”

Now that he’d had a day to inspect the house more carefully, he figured they could pretty much kiss that earlier five– or six-week estimate goodbye, even if he spent all his time here. The work would take at least two months, possibly more if they wanted the house to be in optimum shape. And he didn’t have two months to spare. Not if they wanted the firm of Ramos and Dubinski to stay solvent.

Ray blew out a breath, rubbing the back of his neck. The house still had some definite pluses. It was structurally sound, they knew that for a fact. It had solid central heat and air, which wasn’t true of all the houses in the King William District. And Kevin hadn’t been wrong about what was happening on the street. Houses on other lots had already been renovated and were going for the kind of money that made visions of dollar signs dance in Ray’s head.

Kevin was supposed to be handling their main office, thirty miles away, in Boerne, where he and Ray had started the business two years ago. But they both knew Kevin couldn’t handle all the jobs that came in. Kevin was great at the real estate side of things and a wizard at finding buyers. But Ray was the one who turned the houses they bought into places where people might actually want to live. When it came to renovations, Ray was the man.

They’d done well in Boerne. Ray liked Boerne. Ray would have been satisfied to keep their operations entirely in Boerne. But Kevin wanted San Antonio. And Kevin Dubinski was not only his partner. He was the man who’d supplied their seed money, what there was of it.

Face it. If we want to expand, to grow, we need to have a foot in San Antonio and a foot in the Hill Country. Do a few houses in the historic neighborhoods and we’ll be set. Hell, your brother can put us onto stuff, can’t he?

Which was one of the problems. Danny could always put them onto stuff. Danny had wanted him to work in San Antonio rather than Boerne from the beginning. So had his mom and dad. Hell, for all he knew his sister, Rosie, might have been pining for him too. Ray was the one who’d decided he needed to make it somewhere else, without the family hanging over his shoulder—his mother bringing him enchiladas and his dad checking his balance sheets and his big brother and little sister critiquing every move he made. Of course, they still did that from time to time when he was thirty miles away in Boerne.

But Kevin had a point. If they wanted the business to expand in the region, they either needed to get further into the Hill Country or into San Antonio. And San Antonio was where they both knew the neighborhoods.

Thus the house, the perfect house, which was found after Kevin had spent the better part of a month checking out the possibilities. Part of an estate in the King William District that had taken years to settle. Unoccupied. Unwanted. Primed for a quick sale.

With molding that had been cracked and cut apart by previous owners. Floors that had been covered in shag carpeting by previous owners. Walls that had been hung with fake wood paneling and cheap wallboard by previous owners. Ray figured if he ever encountered those previous owners, he’d be fully justified in beating them about the head and shoulders with a pry bar.

But the reality was clear—if he wanted this house to be done in weeks instead of months, he’d need more cash for subcontractors. And cash was one thing Ramos and Dubinski were pretty short on at the moment. Kevin had sunk most of their “liquidity” into buying the house in the first place, and the idea of saddling the company with more debt to get the place up and running had little appeal for either of them. They needed what was left of their money to run the business in Boerne.

There were a few options. Ray could try doing some renovations simultaneously, doing a house or two in Boerne while he worked on the King William house when he had a chance. Of course, that would probably require him to clone himself since he didn’t have a second foreman he could rely on to keep the King William job running, but hey, it would be worth it, right?

Maybe he could sell something. His car. His blood. His spare kidney. He’d already sold the condo where he’d been living, pooling the money with Kevin’s to clear the King William house. They’d figured he could live at the house while he renovated it, use one of the upstairs bedrooms that wouldn’t be immediately affected by the dust and debris.

At least he’d managed to move some minimal furniture over from the condo—a bed and dresser, a couple of chairs, a kitchen table. And at least there was a functioning kitchen in the house so he wouldn’t be spending extra money on takeout.

There was even a storeroom where the previous owners had left some furniture that was too crappy to take away. He figured he could always drag some stuff out of there if he really needed extra places to sit.

Ray stared up at the molding again. For the life of him, he couldn’t understand why somebody had cut random pieces out of it. Maybe they were hanging pictures or something. Maybe they had some kind of weird compulsion. Maybe he should have noticed it when he first wandered through the house.

He sighed, rubbing his eyes. Yeah, he really should have noticed it. And the chipped wallboard. And the leaky window frames that would have to be replaced. And the damaged medallion. He just hadn’t paid attention.

So now here he was, living in his own private hell, hoping for a miracle. Maybe somebody would arrive with a fat check from the Texas Lottery Commission. Shit, might as well make this a high-functioning daydream. Make it a female somebody dressed in a cat suit like Scarlett Johansson and carrying a cold beer.

Now that really could make a shitty day turn golden.

***

Emma Shea turned her car up yet another street, trying to find the King William District. She had a map of San Antonio. She had a set of vague directions from the motel manager. She even had a GPS. What she didn’t have was an address, and right now she was pretty sure she’d been down this street before since she could see the Tower of the Americas again through the trees.

Her lousy sense of direction meant she usually got lost at least once per show on location. But in the other cases she’d been out in the countryside looking for something like a La Llorona sighting—phantom weeping women rarely appeared in town. It was flat-out embarrassing to get lost in the middle of San Antonio. Plus she could sense her hair frizzing in the humid heat. In another twenty minutes she’d look like somebody handing out crank pamphlets door to door rather than a production assistant for the highest-rated show on the network.

Of course, it was a small network.

She had to find some possible houses before Gabrielle arrived tomorrow evening at seven. Preferably several of them because Gabrielle would want choices, and they’d probably do more than one show from San Antonio, given the cost of bringing
American Medium
here in the first place. Plus, of course, Gabrielle wouldn’t want any building that had been done on any other show, which pretty much ruled out all the well-known haunted sites around town like the Menger Hotel.

Too bad. She would have enjoyed seeing Gabrielle take on Teddy Roosevelt, always assuming Teddy was interested in talking to her.

Emma had been rolling around the streets of San Antonio since early afternoon, looking for houses that were suitably bizarre. Of course
bizarre
wasn’t a word she’d use if and when she spoke to the homeowners.
Picturesque
was always good.
Atmospheric
worked too. What she knew not to say was
haunted
.

Because few people wanted to be told that their house was haunted even if the place looked like the second coming of the Addams Family. Not that it mattered one way or the other. So far as Emma could recall they’d never worked with a house that already had an established reputation for ghostly apparitions. Gabrielle claimed that this was because she always searched out houses that hadn’t been “exploited by other sources.” Emma figured it was actually because with houses that had no previous history of being haunted, Gabrielle could work up her own backstory, the more lurid the better. Or rather Emma could work it up since Gabrielle left that part of the production to her. Then Gabrielle could get rid of all the spirits she’d managed to find when no one else had a clue that they were there.

But the whole process would only work if Emma could locate the right house, or houses, for Gabrielle to visit. Houses that fit the popular image of places that were haunted. Houses that looked like you might actually be caught dead there.

She’d already been through the area around La Villita, which was both too well kept up and too full of tourists to be useful. She’d cruised through Monte Vista and Mahncke Park, and found a couple of possibilities. The area around Fort Sam Houston looked promising. She only wished they could visit some of the historic officers’ homes on the Quadrangle, but the chances of that were roughly nil. She was pretty sure the US Army wouldn’t want to be associated with
American Medium
.

Now, as the afternoon shadows lengthened around the live oaks, she was headed for the King William District, the one area that everybody in town cited as the most likely to supply suitably spooky buildings. She’d figured she’d save it for last to give herself something to look forward to. Assuming she could find the place before it got too dark to see any buildings at all, spooky or otherwise.

She fumbled in her purse, pulling out her Ziploc bag of celery sticks. They looked a little dried out by this time of day, but beggars couldn’t be choosers. Particularly hungry beggars who hadn’t had any lunch. Not that she needed any lunch since the last time she’d checked she still had to shed five more pounds to reach goal weight.

She finally turned down South Alamo Street, going in the right direction for once. According to the brochure on the King William District she’d picked up at the motel, if she turned toward the San Antonio River, she’d move into the more prominent part of the district, the part with the oldest and most prestigious homes. In her experience,
prestigious
didn’t usually translate well to
haunted,
but
oldest
was definitely a plus.

She glanced up at the houses on either side of the street as she drove closer to the water. Several were multi-story with galleries stretching around the front and sides—sometimes on more than one level—with gingerbread trim, Grecian columns, crested roofs, and dormer windows.
Jackpot!

It reminded her of a cross between Dickens and
Dark Shadows.

Every house she saw looked like it housed a resident spirit. Or like it should have housed one. Throw in the cast iron streetlights, the spreading live oaks, the lush flower gardens surrounding most of the buildings, and you had the perfect setting for ghostly visitations. Or for suggestions of ghostly visitations, which was sort of the
American Medium
stock in trade.

Unfortunately, it didn’t look like the perfect setting for a visitation from Gabrielle DeVere. Realistically, Emma figured few of the homeowners on this street needed cash badly enough to allow a film crew from
American Medium
to trample through their oleanders. They’d be a lot more likely to run her off their property for even suggesting the possibility. And she had to admit, any ghosts who hung out in the houses she was currently driving past were unlikely to manifest anywhere in Gabrielle’s vicinity, given her tendency to find nasty details in their pasts.