The Christmas Spirits on Tradd Street

by Karen White

  I started to roll my eyes but stopped when I saw Jayne looking at them with adoration. I was thrilled my parents had found each other again and were so much in love. And, yes, our relationship with each other had a difficult past, but we’d moved so far beyond those old resentments and hurts. Or we should have. Even I recognized this. Maybe negative emotions were like bad habits, and I needed a twelve-step program to cure myself so I could move forward without all that baggage tethered to my ankles that kept me firmly planted in the past. I made a mental note to add that to the top of my New Year’s resolutions spreadsheet.

  “Great,” I said. “Everyone get bundled up. I’d rather take an Uber, but I don’t feel like arguing with Jack, who apparently enjoys the cold. We’ve got a long walk in the frozen tundra, but I understand there are warm drinks waiting.”

  “It’s not that cold,” everyone said at once as I wrapped my scarf around my neck twice and tucked my hair and ears under my knit cap.

  “Humph,” I said, shoving my gloved hands into the pockets of my coat and leading everyone out the front door.

  We’d made it only to the end of the drive before Jack’s phone rang. He looked at the screen and groaned. “It’s Harvey. I’m going to let him leave a message.”

  We’d left him and his crew at the house for the second night in a row, the previous night being a complete wash because none of their equipment would work for some reason. Nola and the twins had been forced to camp out at my parents’—a small price to pay, according to Nola.

  I frowned. “I think you should answer it. Maybe he’s just telling you he’s leaving forever and wants to know how to set the alarm.”

  Jack frowned back at me but hit ANSWER on his phone. I couldn’t hear what was being said, but the growing smile on Jack’s face told me it was good news. When he’d hung up, he put the phone back into his jacket pocket.

  “Are they done?” I asked.

  “Nope. First of all, he needed to complain about the man with his crack showing above his pants who was working in the dining room and wouldn’t leave.”

  “That’s Rich Kobylt,” I said. “He wanted to finish the dining room floor before Christmas so he could spend time with his kids, who will be home from college, and I told him he could take as long as he needed.” I grinned at the success of my plan.

  “And then he said the power kept going off but that the breakers were still in the on position and none of the other houses on the street were without their lights.” He sounded practically jovial now. “Then he said most of his crew ran out of the house after the lighting guy said he saw a woman standing behind him in the mirror in the front parlor, but when he turned around no one was there.”

  “Go figure,” I said, my smile matching his.

  He looked up into the clear night sky and put his arm around me, pulling me close. “Have I ever mentioned what a brilliant team we make?”

  “I think so. But I don’t think I’d ever get tired of you saying it.”

  We stopped on the sidewalk, allowing the others to walk around us as Jack bent his head to kiss me. “I think we’re on the home stretch now, Mellie. I think we’re right on the cusp of getting Marc Longo out of our lives forever.” He kissed me again. “We’re going to bury him alive.”

  He pulled me close to his side, walking fast to catch up to the rest of our group. “Still cold?” he asked.

  I nodded, unable to tell him that the trembling of my lips had nothing to do with the air temperature, and more to do with remembering Rebecca’s dream and how it hadn’t been Marc being buried alive.

  CHAPTER 21

  We stood in the elegant lobby of the Francis Marion Hotel beneath antique crystal chandeliers, soaring ceilings, and tall columns with gilt acanthus leaves on their capitals. The hotel had undergone a face-lift in the late nineties, winning a twelve-million-dollar restoration award from the National Trust for Historic Preservation and, more important, the approval of my friend (and sometime nemesis) Dr. Sophie Wallen-Arasi. The restoration team had brought the hotel back to its nineteen-twenties elegance, which, although beautiful, was one of the reasons I usually avoided this particular hotel.

  “Do you hear that?” I asked Jayne.

  “The twenties music?” She nodded. “Have you spotted the girl dancing the Charleston in midair where a table must have once been?”

  I almost didn’t turn, not wanting to attract the spirit’s unwelcome attention, but couldn’t stop myself. There was something about seeing unadulterated history as it had been lived, even in brief snippets, that was the one and only part of my sixth sense that I didn’t hate.

  The girl, not much older than Nola, had blond, bobbed hair peeking out of a net cap with dangling pearls over her ears. Her drop-waist dress and long ropes of pearls swung in sync with her kicking legs as she danced the Charleston, the low heels on her ankle-strapped shoes making soft thudding noises each time they landed on the invisible table.

  I wanted to turn away, but I couldn’t, because now her dance movements had slowed as she became aware that someone was watching her. That someone could see her. She stopped completely and slowly turned toward us so that we could see her entire face, including the dark bruise that covered one cheek and the red blood dripping from her nose and lips.

  We watched each other for a long moment, as if each was expecting the other to make the first move. “We should go,” I said softly to Jayne, who was also unable to turn away from the sad eyes of the flapper.

  “We could help her, you know,” Jayne whispered back. “Not right now, but later. We could ask the hotel to allow us access so we can find out what’s keeping her here and send her on her way.”

  “Send who on her way?” Thomas appeared at our sides with a glass of wine from the lobby’s corner bar in each hand.

  “No one,” I said, accepting a glass and taking a gulp. I felt Jayne’s gaze and recalled that her breakup with Thomas had been due, in part, to his insistence that she shouldn’t go public with her abilities. Doing a ghost cleansing in a public hotel lobby wasn’t a good way to keep our light under a bushel, I was fairly certain. I glanced back to where the flapper had been and saw only the beautiful lobby, filled with warmly bundled holiday shoppers eager for a fun evening in Charleston.

  “Rebecca,” Jayne said in answer to Thomas’s question, raising her own glass to her lips.

  “If she were here, I would definitely want to send her on her way,” I said, taking another sip, which I almost spit back into my glass when our cousin appeared as if conjured, looming behind Jayne in a pink fur coat and matching pink Uggs.

  “I didn’t expect to see you here,” I managed to say after I choked down my wine. “Seeing as how you need to get up so early tomorrow for the wreath-making workshop. I know how you like your ten hours of beauty sleep.”

  “True,” she said. “I like it but don’t need it, thankfully. No worries—I’ll be bright-eyed and bushy-tailed tomorrow morning at eight sharp.” She gave a little salute while I furtively glanced around for any sign of Marc.

  “Hello again,” Thomas said to Rebecca. “I don’t think I’ve had the pleasure of seeing you since we met at Cannon Green, at your husband’s book-launch party.” He gave a show of scanning the crowd. “Speaking of which, is Marc here?”

  I wondered if he was trying to give us a head start to find Jack, my parents, and our tickets before making a beeline out the back door.

  “Sadly, no. He was supposed to be, but he’s at Melanie’s house trying to calm down Harvey Beckner. Seems they’re experiencing a lot of equipment failure and they can’t get anything done. Harvey thinks it has something to do with inferior Southern infrastructure.”

  “I hope he said that out loud so anyone listening could hear,” I said.

  “Interesting.” Jayne’s face was expressionless. “What did Marc tell him?”

  Rebecca shrugged. “I’m not sure
. He’s been having issues with the battery on his phone—it keeps dying right after it’s charged. I could hear that Rich person in the background shouting at Harvey to keep his equipment off the newly repaired dining room floors, and then it cut out.”

  Jayne and I shared a glance. “So, Rebecca,” I said. “Don’t you think this is a sign that Marc’s not meant to be filming in my house?”

  “Oh, I don’t think he really cares about filming. . . .” She stopped talking, her eyes widening as she realized whom she was speaking to and what she’d just said.

  “So what does he care about?” I asked, stepping closer to her so that I could almost feel the pink fur tickle my nose.

  “It’s nothing—I didn’t mean to say that. Of course he wants to—”

  “Rebecca.” I cut her off. “If all the stuff you say about family being the most important thing to you is true, then you need to tell us what Marc is up to.”

  Her bright blue eyes filled with moisture. “But Marc is my family, too. And I love him. He’s kind and gentle, and not anything like the monster you think he is. He’s my husband.”

  Bile rose in my throat but I swallowed it down. “Well, the fact that you actually married him is your fault. And now his actions are partly your responsibility. Marc is trying to ruin my life—destroy my husband’s career and steal my house. I think it’s clear where your loyalty needs to lie.”

  She began tugging on the fingers of her pink knit gloves in a nervous gesture.

  “If he’s doing anything illegal,” Thomas said gently, “then you could be an accessory to a crime and punished accordingly. I don’t know if you watch television, but Orange Is the New Black is something you should be watching to prepare yourself for women’s prison. Where wearing pink isn’t an option. And I don’t think orange is your color.”

  Her eyes widened as her skin blanched. “You don’t need to threaten me.”

  “I’m not threatening you. I’m just giving you a heads-up.” Thomas crossed his arms as the three of us stared at Rebecca, waiting for her to break.

  She tucked her chin like a turtle taking a defensive stance. “It’s not illegal to take something that once belonged to you, is it?”

  “Like what?” I narrowed my eyes at her.

  She looked around discreetly before leaning closer and whispering, “A piece of paper.”

  “What kind of paper?” I asked, growing impatient. Behind her shoulder I spotted my parents and Jack crossing the lobby, and I was fairly sure Rebecca wouldn’t be as forthcoming in Jack’s presence.

  “Something he’d thrown in the trash at the plantation. But when he went to get it, everything was gone.”

  “You mean the papers from the historical archives that he stole and then threw away?”

  She drew her shoulders back defensively. “I don’t know anything about that, but I’m sure Marc wouldn’t have stolen anything from the archives. Maybe it was an accident and when he went to return them he saw that they were gone.”

  We all stared her down with the same dubious expression. “They were found in a garbage can, Rebecca.” I glanced behind my cousin to see that Jack and my parents had been stopped by a middle-aged couple and were chatting. I looked back at Rebecca. “Can you be more specific about the paper he’s looking for? Maybe I know where he can find it.”

  Rebecca pressed her lips together, contemplating, her eyes moving from me to Jayne to Thomas, then back to me. “It’s a drawing. The design matches what he thought was some kind of drawing in Joseph Longo’s diary. It was one of a bunch of papers in a folder he’d borrowed from the archives. He didn’t realize it the first time he saw it, but when he saw the copy of the diary drawing again recently, he was pretty sure it was a match.”

  “Where did he see it again?” Jayne asked.

  Rebecca sucked in a deep breath. “Marc thought he’d accidentally thrown out a bunch of the notes he’d gathered at the archives to research his next book.” She looked at us to see if we knew that he’d gone to the archives only because he’d learned Jack was working on a new book.

  We remained expressionless as she continued. “Anyway, the drawing and several other papers must have fallen behind his desk, because there they were when we had to move it when I decided he needed shiplap in his office. It’s all the rage now on that HGTV show—”

  “Rebecca . . .” Jayne interrupted, and I saw her watching my parents and Jack resume their approach behind us.

  “Anyway, he didn’t find anything he thought was important in those papers he’d borrowed from the archives, which is why he’d misplaced them, meaning to return them to the archives later, but when we found his own research papers behind his desk and he saw the diary drawing again, he had second thoughts. So he went back to the plantation to retrieve the box of papers from the archives and found it was missing.”

  “What kind of drawing?” I asked.

  Rebecca shrugged again. “It was weird—lots of scrolls and lines.”

  “Can you show it to me?” I asked quickly, but Rebecca had already stepped back and was smiling and greeting my mother while keeping a wary eye on Jack.

  “Rebecca,” Jack said. “Where’s your dog?”

  “It’s so cold out that I felt Pucci would be more comfortable at home. It was so sweet of you to ask.”

  “I wasn’t referring to Pucci,” Jack said with a smile that could rival glaciers.

  Rebecca frowned. “I just don’t understand how the two men I’ve had the most meaningful relationships with don’t like each other. I’m convinced that if we spent more time together—the four of us—we’d be the best of friends.”

  If her reminder that she and Jack had once dated hadn’t brought up my lunch, this last comment certainly would have. I was suddenly very glad that I hadn’t eaten anything yet, but the wine sloshed unhappily in my stomach.

  Jack continued with his glacial smile, his eyes focused on the ceiling as if he were actually considering her suggestion. Finally, he said, “Or I could dip myself in oil and light myself on fire. I imagine the outcome would be the same in either case.”

  Rebecca’s large eyes blinked slowly. Twice. “And what would that be?”

  It was Jack’s turn to blink. “Reaching the same level of fun.”

  Before she could think of anything else to say, Jack made a show of waving to someone across the room. “If you could excuse us, please? There’s someone I’d like Melanie and me to say hello to.” He smiled at the rest of the group. “We’ll be right back. And I’m sure Rebecca has a Christmas list of new sweaters and accessories for Pucci she needs to go buy, and we don’t want to keep her.”

  Without waiting for a response, Jack took my hand and began leading me across the room, while I attempted to make eye contact with Rebecca to let her know that we weren’t done talking. I had the distinct impression that she was avoiding my gaze, focusing her attention on rebuttoning her coat.

  I ran into Jack’s back when he stopped suddenly in front of an elegant older couple. The gentleman, wearing a proper felt hat like men had worn in the fifties, was helping a platinum-haired woman with her coat. After gently settling it on her shoulders, he handed her a soft-hued silk scarf from his own coat pocket and she smiled up at him as she placed it over her head.

  “Yvonne,” Jack said, and I did a double take, believing that Jack had been lying about seeing someone he knew so that he could get away from Rebecca.

  “Yvonne?” I repeated, almost not recognizing her out of context. It was as if I expected her to be surrounded by thick and dusty reference volumes wherever she went.

  “What a lovely surprise,” she said, accepting a kiss on her cheek from Jack and then me. Facing the man standing next to her, she said, “Allow me to introduce my beau, Harold Chalmers.” She glanced up at her date with sparkling eyes. “Harold, I’d like you to meet some of my dearest friends, Jack and Melanie Tr
enholm.”

  I was too surprised to speak for a moment as I realized that I knew very little about Yvonne’s personal life. I looked up at the tall, elegant man, scrutinizing him more closely than was warranted, my curiosity winning out over my good manners. Harold Chalmers’s eyes were a warm brown, the hair beneath his hat a George Clooney salt-and-pepper. There were lines in the corners of his eyes indicating that he probably laughed a lot and spent a good deal of time in the sun.

  I gave him my hand and he took it in a warm and firm clasp. “It’s a pleasure to meet you, Mr. Chalmers.”

  He chuckled, a low, deep rumble in this throat. “Please don’t make me feel older than I am. It’s Harold,” he said, squeezing my hand. “And may I call you Melanie? I feel as if I already know you after everything Yvonne’s told me about you. All good, I can assure you.”

  Jack pressed the heel of his hand against his heart. “But what about us, Yvonne? I thought we had something special.”

  Yvonne’s cheeks pinkened, making her eyes sparkle even more. She slapped at Jack’s arm with her gloves. “We do, Jack. But I think it’s best if we just admire each other from afar, don’t you?”

  “That’s probably best,” Harold agreed. “I wouldn’t want to challenge you to a duel for the lady’s favor. They once did that a lot in Charleston. In lots of places, I imagine, but quite a lot nearby in Philadelphia Alley.”

  I smiled and nodded, familiar with the thoroughfare. I’d made the mistake of going down the narrow bricked walkway only once and found myself watching in horror as two men dressed in eighteenth-century clothing stood back-to-back before pacing away from each other, pistols drawn.

  “No, sir,” Jack said, extending his hand to shake. He was smiling, but I saw him shooting furtive glances at the crowd around us.

  “Don’t worry,” I said. “Marc’s not here. Rebecca said he was still at the house, taking the brunt of Harvey’s anger over the sporadic power and equipment failures.”