The Christmas Spirits on Tradd Street

by Karen White

  “You look so sexy when you’re being earnest,” Jack said, his lips twitching into a reluctant smile. He pulled me closer to him and kissed me.

  “Not to sound like Nola, but get a room.”

  We broke apart and looked over at Jayne, whose hands were firmly planted over her eyes, one on top of the other just in case there might be an opening she could peek through.

  “Actually, I need to get to work,” I said, my words dying as I recognized the Hard Rock Foundations truck pulling up in front of the house. “Did anyone else just hear the sound of a giant cash register sucking in all of our money?”

  Jack followed my gaze. “Why is Rich Kobylt here?”

  We heard the sound of Nola bounding down the stairs before coming to an abrupt stop outside Jack’s office door. “Dad? Can you drive me to school? It’s Mrs. Ravenel’s turn to drive, but Alston and Lindsey have to be at school early and I don’t so I said one of my parents could drive me instead.”

  Jack looked at his watch. “Don’t you have to be at school in twenty minutes?”

  She nodded. “Yes. So we have to hurry.”

  Jack sighed heavily as he reached for his car keys on his desk. “And you didn’t think to mention this yesterday?”

  “No, sorry. I forgot.” She hitched her backpack higher on her back, pulling her long-sleeve purple polo out of the waistband of her gray uniform skirt, then turned to me. “And Dr. Wallen-Arasi stopped by yesterday afternoon to look at the dining room floor again and asked me to tell you that Mr. Kobylt would be here this morning to give you an estimate.”

  Jack and I exchanged a glance, an unspoken agreement to let it slide. We were still so grateful she’d emerged physically unscathed from the accident that neither of us wanted to call her out about being irresponsible. We’d save it for another time.

  “Come on, Nola—let’s get in the van.” He gave me a brief kiss on the lips, said good-bye to Jayne and the twins, then left with Nola.

  “Great,” I said, sucking in my breath and mentally girding my loins. “I guess that means I need to go talk to Rich.”

  Jayne reached down to grab a hand of each toddler. “He went around to the back, so you might want to go through the kitchen. He probably wants to check on the progress of the cistern. Didn’t you tell him that you want it filled in by Christmas?”

  “Yep. Although I haven’t told Sophie because I’m afraid of what she’ll tell me.” I kissed JJ and Sarah, then headed out through the kitchen, grabbing my coat and a cup of coffee on the way out.

  Rich Kobylt wore a thick sweater that was long enough to cover his waistband, something for which I was eternally grateful. I didn’t think my stomach could handle the view of his backside without at least a cup of coffee in me.

  “Good mornin’, Miz Trenholm,” he called out in greeting.

  I closed the door behind me, my face stinging with the chill. “Hi, Rich.” I noticed he wore a large metal cross on a heavy chain around his neck. I was pretty sure I hadn’t seen it before. He must have guessed where I was looking, because he put his hand on it.

  “My wife gave it to me,” he said. “No offense, Miz Trenholm, but this garden gives me the creeps. You’d think finding a skeleton in the fountain and then again in the foundation would have sent me over the edge, but it’s this cistern that just makes my skin crawl. I feel like someone’s watching me whenever I’m in the backyard. My wife gave me this as a little extra protection.” He jiggled the chain.

  “That was nice of her,” I said, not able to think of anything else to say. Was there a proper response for when someone starts wearing a religious icon to protect them from your backyard?

  “Yeah, she’s pretty thoughtful.” Facing me again, he said, “So, I hear my friend Greco is working for you now. He’s got a funny way of dressing, but he’s a good guy.”

  I kept my face neutral. “He’s great. Very nice to work with. And definitely not easily spooked.”

  Rich’s eyes narrowed a little at my choice of words, and I bit my lip, wishing I hadn’t said that out loud. He faced the cistern, where Meghan Black and two other students were diligently picking at the bricked sides despite the cold. “Between you and me, this is taking a lot longer than I’d thought. If they don’t finish this week, there’s no way I’m going to be able to fill this in and make it disappear before your big party.”

  “Could you just get a bulldozer in here and cover it all up and we’ll call it an accident?”

  He stared at me blankly. “You serious, Miz Trenholm? Because I don’t think Dr. Wallen-Arasi would go for that.” He emphasized his words by shaking his head. “As a matter of fact, she’s nice and all, but I wouldn’t want to get on her bad side.”

  As a frequent victim of her bad side, I had to agree. “No, you certainly wouldn’t want to go there. So,” I said, eager to get away from the cistern and the pervasive scent of dead, rotting things that lingered despite the cooler air and Sophie’s assurances that anything dead would have disintegrated long ago. “You’re here to look at the dining room floor?”

  “Yes, ma’am. I understand you got some of those nasty wood-boring beetles.”

  “According to Dr. Wallen-Arasi, we do.” I put my hand on his arm and leaned closer. “Could you do me a favor, please? If it’s over a thousand dollars to get rid of them and repair the floor, could you get me an estimate on laminate floors? You know—the ones that look like wood but aren’t tasty to beetles?”

  He pursed his lips. “Dr. Wallen-Arasi won’t like that at all. Not one bit.”

  I stepped back. “True. But she’s not the one paying for it, is she?” I narrowed my eyes at him. “And if you breathe one word to her about what I just said, you’re going to need a lot more protection than that necklace. Do you understand?”

  His eyebrows shot up. “Yes, ma’am. I understand.”

  “Good. You go on inside. I have a quick question for one of the students first. I’ll join you in a minute.”

  He didn’t wait for me to tell him a second time. He’d almost made it to the kitchen door before he bent down to tie his shoe. I almost spit out my coffee and had to avert my eyes.

  Turning toward the cistern, I watched as Meghan Black, in the same cute black bow earmuffs and pink tool belt I’d seen her in before, bent forward with a tiny brush to wipe dirt from a protruding brick in the cistern’s wall.

  “Hello, Meghan?” I called.

  She continued with the brush and I noticed the wires from her earbuds snaking beneath the earmuffs. I moved to stand in front of her and waved my hands until she noticed me. She reached up and pulled out the buds and smiled at me. “Good morning, Mrs. Trenholm.”

  “Good morning.” I took a sip of my coffee, the liquid quickly growing cold. “So,” I said, indicating the deep hole in my backyard. “Are you all almost done here?”

  She looked horrified. “No—far from it. We’re finding things every day, but it does take time to make sure nothing is damaged when we excavate.” She moved closer to me, and I saw a pink and green Lilly Pulitzer coffee thermos on the ground next to a white blanket, on which what looked like junk lay in careful rows. “Look what we found this morning,” she said with excitement as she held up what appeared to be a broken piece of china. “It’s a broken piece of china!”

  “Fascinating,” I said.

  “I know, right?” Meghan carefully replaced the shard next to a nearly identical piece. “I think we might have an entire cup and saucer.” She moved her hand to something smaller lying on the blanket. “We found this bone, too,” she said, holding up something small and white as my throat constricted.

  Her smile fell. “Oh, don’t worry, Mrs. Trenholm. Actually, we’ve found a lot of animal bones—mostly chicken bones. Probably from buried garbage. You know what they say—one man’s trash is another man’s treasure.”

  She said it with so much enthusiasm th
at I had to smile. “Do you have a moment? I wanted to ask you about that photo you took. And the man standing near the cistern.”

  A visible shudder went through her, and I was fairly sure it had nothing to do with the wind. “I deleted it from my phone. Along with the photo of the face in the window upstairs.”

  This didn’t surprise me. I would have done the same thing if I didn’t know for sure that the spirits wouldn’t stay deleted. “No worries—you e-mailed them to me, so I have them on my phone, and you gave me printed copies, remember?”

  She nodded. “Yeah. You should probably delete the photos and tear up the prints, too. It’s not like I believe in that kind of thing, but it would seem to me that’s not something you should have hanging around your house.”

  “No doubt,” I said. “So, I don’t know how much you recall about the photo, but was there anything you noticed that was memorable about the figure?”

  “Apart from the fact that he wasn’t there in person and only showed up in the photo? That’s kind of hard to forget.”

  “Sure. But what do you remember about his clothing?”

  “Oh. It was definitely late eighteenth century.”

  “Are you sure? Because in the picture, it appeared he wore a cravat with folded collars.”

  “A lot of people can’t tell the difference between seventeenth- and eighteenth-century men’s fashions unless they study that kind of thing—unlike women’s fashions. You can always tell by the width of their skirts what decade of what century they’re from. Cravats were worn for decades overlapping the two centuries. But I know it was eighteenth century because I distinctly remember his hair was pulled back, like in a ponytail, and not cut short. That’s the main difference between the two centuries.”

  I’d been harboring a hope that this specter had nothing to do with the woman on the stairs or the soldier at Gallen Hall. Because then they would be separate entities, to be dealt with one at a time. But three eighteenth-century apparitions pointed in another direction entirely. “Was there anything else?” I asked, forcing myself not to hold my breath as I waited for her answer.

  She began to shake her head, but stopped. “I’ve tried to forget it, but there was something about his eyes. At first I thought they were just hidden by shadows. But then . . .” She stopped, looked at me. “But after printing the pictures and looking at them closely, it looked as if they were . . . not there.” Her brown eyes opened wide. “I hope I’m not scaring you, Mrs. Trenholm. It was probably just dirt on my iPhone. My mom has always said I have an active imagination, so I naturally made a smudge into a person. Because ghosts aren’t real.”

  “So they say,” I said. As if in afterthought, I said, “Did you ever do any work at the cemetery at Gallen Hall?”

  “Oh, yeah. When I was an undergrad, we went out there a few times with the FARO laser scanner in our digital documentation class to document the headstones. It was really fun.”

  “Sounds like it,” I said. “So, did you or any of your classmates ever . . . see anything there? Any dirt smudges on camera lenses that looked like a ghost?”

  She went very still. “Maybe.”

  “Maybe, yes?” I prodded.

  “Yeah. A bunch of us saw something once and everyone ran, including me. But I tripped—I’m a little clumsy—so I got a better look. He was standing by the mausoleum.”

  “Did it look like the same person that you saw here?”

  She took a moment, then nodded. “Yeah—it was definitely the same . . . thing. I know because there was a . . . stain or something on his shirt, where you could see beneath his jacket. It must have been unbuttoned or something, because I could see the white shirt underneath.” She rolled her shoulders as if to shake off the awareness of someone staring at her. “I don’t talk about it because I’d rather just forget it.”

  I forced a bright smile. “Totally makes sense. If I’d seen something like that, I’d want to forget all about it, too.” I finished my ice-cold coffee. “Well, thanks for speaking with me. I don’t want to hold you up, so I’ll let you get back to work. Have fun.”

  She nodded enthusiastically. “Don’t worry—I will!” She replaced her earbuds as I stepped away from the yellow tape and made my way back to the house, the awareness of someone watching me making my skin crawl. I entered the kitchen without looking back, content with telling myself it had been Meghan.

  CHAPTER 16

  I held the step stool for Veronica so she could place the angel at the top of the dining room Christmas tree. I hoped no one would notice that half of the angel’s yellow yarn hair and one of the felt wings were missing thanks to Sarah, who’d mistaken the angel-doll tree topper for a chew toy. I had no idea how she’d reached it since I’d had to put it in a closed box after she’d spotted it in the dining room, but it had managed to find its way into her crib. I wondered if Louisa might be exercising her indulgent-grandmother instinct postmortem.

  “Perfect,” Veronica said, stepping down from the stool. “I think all of the trees look lovely, but this is the prettiest in my opinion.”

  I stood back, admiring the effect of handmade dolls hanging from pine boughs, and strings of popcorn and pinecones wrapping around the tree. “My arms are so short. I’m glad you were here to hang the ornaments on the upper branches.”

  She smiled, but her eyes were sad. “Adrienne was five feet eleven inches by the time she was seventeen. She was always the go-to person for tree decorating or getting something off a high shelf. Everybody thought she played basketball or volleyball, but she wasn’t athletic at all. She preferred to read and play the piano. It was really unfair—all that height wasted.”

  “I bet,” I said, aware suddenly of her sister’s perfume settling in the air around us. I pretended to continue studying the tree while I tried to decide if I should say something. “I, uh . . . When I was in your house taking photos for Sophie, I ended up in the attic.”

  She looked at me without surprise. It was almost as if we were challenging each other to see who could pretend the longest that they didn’t see the elephant standing in the middle of the room.

  “I know. Michael told me. He said he thought you were only planning on taking pictures of the first floor.”

  “I thought so, too. But your house is so beautiful, I couldn’t stop. I hope you don’t mind me being so nosy.”

  Veronica shook her head. “Not at all. I hope you got what you needed.”

  She kept her eyes leveled on me, and I knew she wasn’t talking about the pictures. “I think so.” I stopped, then found myself feeling the need to say more. “I found the box full of Adrienne’s things.”

  “I know. I saw that her little heart pillow was missing.”

  My cheeks reddened. “I don’t know why I took it. I just sort of . . . panicked when I heard Michael and Lindsey come in the front door, and it seemed the logical thing to do at the time. If you’ll hang on a second, I’ll go get it. . . .”

  “No, please don’t. I think Adrienne must have wanted you to have it. Unless you have a habit of taking things from people’s houses.” She smiled so I wouldn’t take offense.

  “No, not usually. I just felt . . . compelled to put it in my purse.” I chewed on my lip for a moment, straightening a string of popcorn and pinecones. I wanted to get a ruler to make sure each strand was evenly spaced, but I was fighting the impulse. Jack said it was the only way I could get better, to fight that impulse for precision—unless I decided to become a Formula One mechanic or a brain surgeon.

  “Was the pillow important to Adrienne?”

  Veronica smiled. “Yes. Our mother made it for her before Adrienne went to college. Even though she was nearby, Mom said she wanted Adrienne to remember that she was loved.”

  The surge of perfume stung my eyes and I had to blink back tears. “Your poor mother,” I said, thinking of Nola and how it would feel if something happened
to her. I couldn’t go beyond that thought.

  “We were all devastated, of course, but especially our mother. I don’t think she really ever recovered.” Veronica brightened. “There was another box that we retrieved from her dorm room, full of clothes she’d made. She wanted to be a fashion designer—ever since she was a little girl. She was always making clothes for Mom and for me, and most of her friends. She was incredibly talented with a needle. I donated the clothes to a women’s shelter, knowing Adrienne would approve. It’s funny. . . .”

  When she didn’t continue, I prompted, “What?”

  Veronica shrugged. “You know how you said you felt compelled to take the heart pillow? I felt the same thing when I saw that box of clothes. It was like Adrienne was speaking in my ear.”

  She probably was, I wanted to say.

  “You still have the necklace, right?” she asked.

  I couldn’t tell her how I’d rediscovered it, so I just nodded.

  Still looking at the tree, she said, “I’ve been meaning to ask you for it, but I thought . . .” She stopped for a moment, lifted her hand to touch a small wooden nutcracker ornament wearing British regimental red. “But I thought that as long as you held on to it there was a chance you would agree to help us.”

  “Us?”

  Veronica met my gaze. “Adrienne and me. Michael just wants to put it behind us. But I can’t move on.” She lowered her voice to a near whisper. “I sense her near me all the time. I don’t think she’ll rest until we find out what happened to her. To punish the person responsible. Which means I can’t give up. It’s just that Detective Riley hasn’t been able to turn up anything new despite the necklace and what it might mean. We’re back to where we started before I found that box.” She shrugged but I heard the hitch in her voice. “You were my last resort. I don’t know where else to turn.”