The Christmas Spirits on Tradd Street

by Karen White

  “Need help?” she asked, moving toward her bedroom.

  “It’s all right . . .” I began, but she’d already squeezed in front of Jack, assessed the situation, and turned the knob. The door swung open. We stood staring into the space, unsure of what to say.

  The first thing I noticed was the scent of horse and leather, along with the lingering odor of gunpowder. I wrinkled my nose, wondering why it seemed so familiar when it shouldn’t, and recalled that I had smelled it recently. The second thing I noticed was that all the remaining furniture and bedding had been stacked on the rug, a teetering stepladder that reached the top of the posts of the antique bed. What looked like dried mud had been smeared on the walls and at first glance appeared to be random strokes and shapes. But when I looked closer I could see the individual letters formed a single word, splashed on the wall with fury and anger, the mud thick with hate. Betrayed.

  “Well,” Greco said, stepping purposefully into the room, hands on hips, and then turning around to inspect the carnage. “It looks like we have a lot of work to do here.”

  Jack, Nola, and I shared surprised looks before turning our gazes back to the designer. “You’re hired,” I said, and then, without thought, I hugged him.

  CHAPTER 8

  I sat in a plastic folding chair in an empty listing, passing the time with a box of dried oranges, jabbing cloves into them in the pattern Sophie had dictated for the pomander balls she wanted strewn in every wreath and centerpiece in every house for the progressive dinner. It was taking me longer than expected because getting the cloves evenly spaced was more challenging than I’d thought it should be, even using the pocket-sized ruler I thankfully had in my purse. It was also possible that I was dragging out the chore because of the extra pleasure I got in envisioning each orange as a voodoo doll of my former best friend.

  I was in no hurry to finish, since Sophie had so kindly stuffed the backseat of my car with boxwood cuttings that needed “conditioning” before we could use them in our Colonial-wreath-making workshop. “Conditioning” meant a lot of cutting, scraping, recutting, and soaking—four steps too many, in my opinion. I was hoping I’d have time to stop by a craft shop and buy plastic ones. A lot less trouble and they’d last forever. Hopefully, Sophie wouldn’t be able to tell the difference.

  This house was on State Street and belonged to a client whose listing I’d accepted only because I’d already sold them another home on Gibbes. I usually didn’t do open houses because even when I was supposed to be alone in the house, I never really was, and I found it awkward trying to explain my sudden outbursts of singing to unsuspecting home browsers.

  But this house was a relatively new (circa 2002) estate home—or, as Sophie referred to it, an aberration of architectural and historic sensibilities—built to loosely resemble the house that had originally been on the lot before being abandoned and then condemned by the city. I remembered how Sophie had dressed in black and wept whenever she passed the empty lot, then became openly hostile when she saw the opulent home being built in its place. It was a Charleston double house on steroids, according to Sophie, whose chief complaint was that the house was new. The owners, my clients, were a nice middle-aged couple from Boston who’d been happy in the house for several years until they heard that the most desirable location to own a home in Charleston was South of Broad. I didn’t agree, but a double commission wasn’t something I could ignore. Especially not now.

  I heard the front gate close and I stood to look through the window, expecting another Realtor and her clients for a second showing. I waited until I heard footsteps on the porch, then opened the door before they had a chance to hear the doorbell chime “Dixie.” The owners had thought it cute and that it might make their neighbors warm up to them. It hadn’t.

  “Anthony!” I said in surprise, taking in the crutches he was using because of a sprained ankle, the bruises on his face, and his arm in a sling—all apparently from the car accident.

  “Sorry,” he said. “I probably should have let you know I was coming. I called your office, and that nice Miss Jolly told me you were here.”

  Our receptionist was usually a better gatekeeper, but I was sure Anthony had used his considerable charm. I stood back and held the door open for him, watching as he looked around as if hoping to see someone.

  “Is your sister here?”

  “No—she’s watching my children. She’s our nanny.”

  He looked chagrined. “Of course. I was just . . . Never mind. I came to apologize for the other day, and hopefully make another appointment for us to visit the mausoleum.”

  I shuddered at the memory of my father and the dark voice that had erupted from his mouth like bile. “I’m not sure. . . .”

  “Someone messed with my car, Melanie. I know I won’t be able to prove it, but my steering wheel was like something possessed. I couldn’t control it—it was like it had its own mind. Like someone was controlling it remotely.”

  “What has this got to do with me going to the mausoleum?”

  “It’s Marc—don’t you see? He’s somehow found out what I’m up to, and he’s desperate for us not to find whatever might be hidden there.”

  I wished I could see, because then I wouldn’t have to consider the other very real possibility of what had happened to Anthony’s car. “No, I don’t. Marc is a jerk, but he’s your brother. I doubt very much that he would try to physically harm you.”

  Despite the chill outside and in the empty house, beads of perspiration dotted his forehead. I led him to the lone chair and he sat down heavily.

  “Sorry,” he said. “This whole thing has me . . . spooked.”

  Me, too, I almost said. “Can I get you some water?”

  He shook his head. “But thanks. I’ll really feel better if you say you’ll still help me.”

  I crossed my arms. “I think you need to tell me more than just ‘meet me at the mausoleum.’ I need you to tell me the whole story, okay?”

  Anthony placed his crutches on the floor, then leaned back in his chair and stretched his legs out in front of him. “When Marc bought the plantation, it was because he thought that’s where the Confederate diamonds were hidden.”

  “I knew that, but not why. What made him think that?” I asked, settling my gaze on one of the oranges and noticing that the spacing on the cloves was off.

  “Same reason everyone did at the time, I guess—all those rumors about the Vanderhorst Confederate ancestor who supposedly hid the diamonds. But when Marc was doing research for his book on our ancestor Joseph Longo, he discovered Joseph’s business diary at the Charleston Museum in the archives. Since he knew Jack was working on the same subject for a book, he tore out the pages. . . .” He stopped, a look of chagrin settling on his features. “And destroyed them, but there was enough there to make Marc believe the diamonds were somewhere on the plantation—or had been at some point before they were moved to your house.”

  Unable to stop myself, I picked up the orange with the errant cloves and pulled out my ruler. Anthony stopped speaking, and when I looked at him, I realized he was staring at me. “These are decorations for the progressive dinner. Haven’t you ever seen cloves stuck into oranges to make pomander balls?”

  He nodded slowly. “Sure. Just never with such . . . precision.”

  I frowned at him. “You were saying something about why Marc thought the diamonds were hidden at Gallen Hall.”

  “Right,” he said, forcing his gaze away from what I was doing. “Joseph had copied into his diary what looked like some kind of weird drawing, almost like a doodle. Apparently while at a party at the Vanderhorst home on Tradd Street, Joseph did some snooping and found a really old piece of paper with these odd scribblings in Mr. Vanderhorst’s desk, and Joseph copied them into his diary. Marc only showed the copy to me once—and I thought it looked like hieroglyphics, but Marc said that was proof the Vanderhorsts had hid
den something valuable on one of their properties. I mean, why go through the trouble of using codes if they weren’t hiding something valuable, right? Marc assumed it was the diamonds because of the story of Captain John Vanderhorst being entrusted with the diamonds after the war and then turning up in Charleston without them.”

  “Yes, well, we now know that Marc did, actually, have the diamonds and he hid them in my grandfather clock. So why does he think there’s something else that might be hidden in the mausoleum?”

  “Because when Marc found out that Jack was working on another book, he thought it could be a sequel, and Marc wanted to make sure that he knew everything and that Jack wouldn’t find anything new. So he went back to his notes and saw that on that same page in Joseph’s diary, he’d also copied the words ‘French treasure.’ Not sure what the ‘French’ part means, but ‘treasure’ is certainly clear. Marc thought the same thing. The Confederate diamonds weren’t from France, which is probably why he dismissed this particular notation when searching for the diamonds.”

  I bent down to look into the box of oranges, using my ruler to check the placement of the cloves. “And?” I prompted, feeling his eyes on me again.

  He cleared his throat. “Marc hasn’t figured out what the drawing means—I know that much. He didn’t ask for my help, either, because then he’d feel obliged to share any treasure with me. But that didn’t keep him from looking. He pretty much tore apart Gallen Hall and used metal detectors over all the floors and walls, looking for whatever might be a ‘French treasure.’”

  I’d finished with the oranges and begun to pace, picking up stray lint from the bare wood floor as I walked. “I’m afraid you’ve lost me. All the diamonds are accounted for. There’s no more treasure. And you still haven’t said what this has to do with the mausoleum.”

  He sat up and leaned his elbows on his knees. “You’re wrong. Maybe not about the diamonds, but definitely about there being another treasure hidden somewhere.”

  “I don’t . . .”

  He held up his hand. “Before Marc and I had our falling-out, we were in the library at Gallen Hall, smoking cigars and drinking bourbon. Marc never could hold his liquor, which is the only reason I can think of for him telling me this—and I seriously doubt that he knows he did, or he’d have burned down the house and everything else once it all belonged to me.” He stopped, rubbing his sore arm.

  “So what did he tell you?”

  “He said he had proof that there was more hidden treasure on Vanderhorst property.”

  I frowned. “So you think he found another diamond?”

  “No. He would have gloated about that for weeks. Several months ago when he found out that Jack was already at work on another book, he went to the archives where he’d found Joseph Longo’s diary and found personal correspondence belonging to the Vanderhorst family from 1781, which was during the occupation of Charleston, in case you weren’t aware.”

  I just nodded, not wanting to show that I had no idea to what he was referring.

  “He stole the letters from the archives, too, just in case they contained something Jack could use for his book. But when Marc read them, he found something else entirely.”

  I was seething now, on Jack’s behalf. We’d always known Marc was a weasel, but we’d thought we’d seen the bottom of his depravity. Apparently, we hadn’t. “What?” I prompted.

  “It was a mention that a room needed to be prepared for an important visitor from France who wished to lay a wreath on the tomb of the Vanderhorsts’ daughter, Marie Claire. Marc pointed out that the Vanderhorsts, like most of the colony of South Carolina at that point, were loyalists. And the French were bitter enemies of the British. So why would a Frenchman be visiting the Vanderhorsts? To lay a wreath on the tomb of a daughter who’d never existed?”

  Anthony raised an eyebrow. “Marc showed me the family tree—he was quite obsessed with the idea of more treasure to find and had made his own very complicated drawing—and the Vanderhorsts had six sons, only two of whom lived to adulthood. And let’s not forget the words ‘French treasure’ Marc had seen in Joseph’s diary.”

  I blinked. “So, between the drawing and the letter with incorrect information, he thought a treasure was hidden somewhere on Vanderhorst property? It seems a bit of a stretch.”

  “Yeah—so did finding the Confederate diamonds in your house.” He gave me a sardonic smile. “But there’s more. Marc thinks there’s a connection to the drawing with some of the bricks inside the mausoleum. Marc’s already dug around the floor of the mausoleum and searched and searched but come up empty-handed. He wanted to tear the entire mausoleum down to do a better search, but the preservation people put a stop to it. Apparently, it’s protected by the Archaeological Resources Protection Act, which requires federal permits for excavation or removal of material remains of past human life or activities. We can’t touch it. Not legally, anyway.”

  “But you’ve searched, surely.”

  Anthony’s eyes darkened. “I’ve tried. But there’s someone . . . something . . . keeping me out. That’s the weirdest thing—because I’d been inside the mausoleum many times in the past without anything strange happening. But then all of a sudden when I tried to enter to search one more time, things would . . . happen to me. I’d feel punches and scratches. And . . .” He stopped, giving his head a firm shake as if trying to remove a painful memory. “A stone lid on one of the crypts slid partially off and broke, and one of the pieces barely missed landing on my foot. Do you know how heavy those lids are? They don’t just slide off. I wanted to believe that I’d imagined it all, but there were purple bruises all over me.” He looked away for a moment before forcing his gaze back to me. “And I had bloody scratch marks on my back. Under my clothes. Like someone had raked their fingernails over bare skin.”

  I didn’t even try to pretend I had no idea what might have been responsible. “When was this?” My voice shook.

  “It started around the time we had all those heavy rains this past spring, remember?”

  Of course I did. That was when my back garden sank, revealing the hidden cistern. Unburying what had been covered for at least a century.

  I nodded, my thoughts running a marathon down different paths, trying hard to avoid the most obvious. “And you somehow found out that the nineteenth-century Vanderhorsts used some of the bricks from the mausoleum and old cemetery wall to build the cistern at their Tradd Street house.”

  “Yeah. By accident. Apparently, Marc hadn’t destroyed all the documents and letters he stole from the archives. He left a bunch of them in a shoebox in a garbage can. Luckily, when I discovered I was the hapless owner of a failed winery and took possession of the premises, I found the can in the carriage house. Apparently, whoever was in charge of taking out the garbage had forgotten this one bin.”

  He shook his head wearily, and I felt sorry for him, for having grown up with a brother like Marc Longo. He continued. “Feeling angry, and wanting some kind of evidence that Marc was doing something illegal, I went through the papers. There was a lot there, all stolen by Marc from the archives—nothing to do with him or any of his business dealings, sadly—and ready to go out in the trash. Which explains why I couldn’t find anything about the plantation when I tried to do my own research. That’s how I found out about the bricks. I read through everything—but it was just a bunch of ledgers with costs of all the building materials and furniture for both Vanderhorst properties, and a housekeeper’s journal about how much tea and sugar she measured out on a daily basis. The only thing interesting I learned was that there’d been an older mausoleum on the same site as the one that’s there now, but for some reason it was torn down and then rebuilt within two years of the original. They also replaced the brick wall that surrounded the cemetery with an iron fence at the same time. The Vanderhorsts were building a house on Tradd Street at the time—probably an earlier version of your house now—an
d the demolished mausoleum and wall would have been a cheap source of bricks.”

  I raised my eyebrows. “Why would they have done that? Is the new one bigger?”

  Anthony shook his head. “No. That’s the thing—they used the same blueprint both times. And it was practically brand-new. There were only three bodies interred at the time—all placed there in the same year: 1782.”

  I stopped pacing. “Please tell me that you still have the shoebox.”

  He picked up one of the oranges and began to examine it, and it took all my restraint to ask him not to touch any of the cloves. “Of course—I’m not like Marc. I could never destroy a historical document. That’s just . . . wrong.”

  I decided that I liked Anthony Longo a lot. “Can I see the shoebox?”

  He began tossing the orange from one hand to the other, and I clenched my teeth. “So this means you’re still in?”

  I was pretty sure I didn’t have a choice. There was no doubt in my mind that what was going on in his mausoleum was somehow connected to my cistern and the specter haunting Nola’s bedroom. I unclenched my jaw. “Yes. I suppose I am.”

  He smiled, then stood. “I’ll get out of your way, then. I’ll bring the box to your house whenever it’s convenient. Or I can drop it by your house now if Jayne’s there.”

  I frowned. “Why don’t you just bring it by my office? You can leave it with Jolly. She’s completely trustworthy.”

  He looked disappointed, but I owed it to my friendship with Thomas Riley not to encourage another suitor for Jayne.

  “And, Anthony?”

  He looked at me expectantly.

  “Don’t tell anyone I’m helping you with this. It’s not something I want people to know.”

  He gazed at me silently for a moment. “All right,” he said with a nod before hoisting himself up with his crutches, then walking toward the front door in the octagonal entranceway. Its scale wasn’t of the right period, in contrast with the rest of the house. I almost bit my tongue when I realized I’d started to think like Sophie.