A Client Not A Ghost
The stairs were original, which is to say they complained. The Lindemans had refinished them with the wrong stain, a honey tone that fought with the wainscoting, and the second tread from the top had a fine crack running lengthwise that somebody had filled and sanded and hoped for. I made a mental note. I make a lot of mental notes on jobs like this. Most of them never go anywhere. A few of them end up, eventually, as the reason I get paid.
The landing branched left and right. Left went to the master and what the listing called a "flex room," which was Anita's code for "used to be a nursery, currently holds a Peloton." Right went to the smaller second bedroom and, at the end of the hall, to a narrow door I had not seen in the photographs because Anita had been smart enough to take the photographs with the door closed. The door was painted the same sage as the siding. The knob was original, a little tarnished brass oval, and there was no lock on it, which told me it had been a servant's staircase once and had been left unlocked on purpose, probably by the Lindemans' general contractor, who had either been polite or been told.
I put my hand on the knob. I said, "I'm coming up now. It's Marce."
I did not say, *it's Marce from Coastal Bay*, because I have learned over the course of twenty-one years of this work that the dead do not, as a rule, care who is paying the bill. They