"So," he said, glancing at Jack with his dark, heavy-lidded eyes, then fixing them on Lyle. His voice was lightly accented. "You wish to know about the house you bought, Mr. Kenton. Why is that? No trouble, I hope?"
"We took some damage from the earthquake," Lyle said.
"Serious?"
"Just some minor cracks."
Minor? Jack thought. A cellar floor cracked in half isn't minor.
But he caught a quick glance from Lyle that he read as, Let me handle this.
"The reason I'm here," Lyle went on, "is that we've been hearing strange noises in the house lately. Voices… but no one's there."
Kristadoulou nodded. "Lots of people think Menelaus Manor is haunted—not because they've ever witnessed anything, mind you, but because of its history. I hope you remember that I told you all this before you bought it."
Lyle raised his hands. "Absolutely. I'm not here to complain, I'm here to try and understand. I need more in-depth information on the house's history. I mean, if Menelaus Manor 'went wrong' somewhere along the way, I'd like to figure out where. Who knows? Maybe I can fix it."
"'Went wrong,' " Kristadoulou said. "An interesting way of putting it." He leaned back—the only direction his gut would allow—and stared at the ceiling. "Let's see… if anything 'went wrong' with the Menelaus house, I'd say it happened during Dmitri's ownership."
"Who's Dmitri?" Jack said.
"Kastor Menelaus's only son. Kastor built the place back in the fifties. That was when Astoria was known as Little Athens, a bit of Hellenic heaven in the heart of New York because of all the Greeks who moved here after the war. I arrived after the house was built but I know something of the family. Dmitri, he was younger than me, so we never socialized, but even if we were the same age, we wouldn't have mixed. A strange one, that Dmitri."
"How strange?" Jack asked. "Strange cults? Strange beliefs?"
Kristadoulou gave him an odd look. "No. I mean he was always keeping to himself. No girlfriends, no boyfriends. If you happened to see him at a restaurant, he was always alone."
Jack had been hoping for some indication of involvement with the Otherness. Or maybe with Sal Roma, or whatever his real name was. He'd also been on the lookout for one of Roma's cutesy anagrams—the last Jack had recognized was "Ms. Aralo"—but Dmitri wasn't one. Not even close.
Lyle said, "Why do you say the house might have gone wrong during Dmitri's ownership?"
"Because of his renovations. Old Kastor died in 1965. Cancer of the pancreas. After Dmitri inherited the place—his mother had died in '61—he came to me for advice. I was working as an agent for another firm then and he wanted me to recommend carpenters and masons to redo his basement. He hired a couple off the list I gave him. I felt somewhat responsible so I stopped in every so often to check on them—make sure they were doing a good job." He shook his head. "Very strange."
Gimme, gimme, gimme, Jack thought. "How so?"
"He was lining the basement with these big granite blocks he'd imported from Romania. He told me they came from what he called 'a place of power,' whatever that means. He said they'd originally been part of an old dilapidated fortress, but if you ask me, I think they were from a church."
"Why's that?" Lyle said.
"Because some of them were inlaid with crosses."
Jack glanced at Lyle and saw him sitting ramrod straight in his chair.
"Crosses? What kind?"
"Funny you should ask. They weren't regular crosses. They were almost like a capital T with the crosspiece brass and the upright nickel."
"Tau," Lyle whispered.
"Exactly!" Kristadoulou said, pointing a knockwurst digit at him. "Like the letter tau. How did you know?"
Lyle's eyes shifted toward Jack. "We've spotted a few around the house. But let me ask you about those blocks with the tau crosses. Do you think they might have come from a Greek Orthodox church?"
Kristadoulou shook his head. "I've traveled a lot, been in many, many Orthodox churches, and I've never seen any crosses like that." Another head shake. "Bad business stealing church stones. It's like asking for trouble. And that's just what Dmitri got."
"You mean his suicide," Jack said, remembering this from when Gia had read to him from Lyle's brochure.
"Yes. He'd just been diagnosed with cancer of the pancreas. He'd seen how his father suffered. I guess he couldn't face that ordeal, so…"
"When was that?" Jack asked.
"Nineteen ninety-five, I believe."
Owned the place for thirty years, Jack thought. The span covered the year Tara Portman disappeared. Dmitri had to be involved.
"Dmitri didn't bother to leave a will," Kristadoulou went on, "and that caused problems. With no children or wife, the estate wound up in probate. After years of legal wrangling Menelaus Manor went to one of Dmitri's cousins who wanted nothing to do with it. He called me and told me to sell it as soon as possible."
"And Dr. Singh bought it, right?" Lyle said.
"Only after lots of other potential buyers passed it by. The cellar was the sticking point. All those strange granite blocks I mentioned. And speaking of those blocks, when I inspected the house before putting it on the market, I went down to the cellar and noticed that all the crosses had been removed."
"Any idea why?"
"No more idea than why he left a dirt floor."
"Wait," Jack said. "Dirt floor?"
"Yes. Can you imagine? Dmitri went to the expense of importing all those blocks, and then didn't finish the floor."
Maybe because it makes it lots easier to bury things you want no one to see, Jack thought.
"The nephew was unwilling to sink in any money for renovations so we kept lowering the price. Finally a vascular surgeon named Singh bought it for a song."
"A rather short song, as I recall," Lyle said.
Kristadoulou nodded. "He and his wife modernized the interior and refinished the basement with paneling over the granite blocks and a concrete floor. One day he doesn't show up for surgery or his office. Police investigate and find him and his wife in bed with their throats cut."
Jack remembered that too. "Who did it?"
"No one was ever caught. The police didn't even have a suspect. Whoever did it left not a clue."
"No wonder people think it's haunted," Jack said.
Kristadoulou smiled. "It gets worse. The executor of the Singh estate directed me to sell it. I thought, a suicide and a double murder—I'm never going to sell this place now. But lo and behold, this young couple walks in and wants to buy Menelaus Manor."
"In spite of its history?" Jack said. "Or because of it?"
"You must understand," Kristadoulou said, patting his belly. "I didn't delve into the Loms' motivations, because I didn't exactly dwell on the house's history. It was not what you'd call a selling point. I remember Herb, he was the husband, saying that he wasn't the superstitious sort, but it was his wife Sara, a pretty thing, who seemed to be pushing the deal. They were planning on adopting a child and wanted a house for the family to live in. So, I sold it to them." He leaned back again and gazed toward the ceiling. "I wish I hadn't."
This was the point where Gia had refused to read him any more of the house's history, calling it "sick."
"Don't tell me," he said. "Someone slit their throats too?"
"Worse," Kristadoulou said with a grimace of distaste. "They'd been moved in only a short while when the little boy they'd just adopted was found horribly mutilated in the upstairs bedroom."
Jack closed his eyes. Now he understood Gia's reaction.
"Any reason given?"