He raised an eyebrow. “When the tabloids got hold of it, you can imagine. One of the bankrupt investors shot himself. The man with the illegitimate child did not kill himself, but he was ruined, and the woman involved overdosed on Laudanum shortly thereafter, though it was said to be accidental.” His voice gave me his opinion.
“And the one with the gambling debts?”
“Drowned in a boating accident,” Alistair replied, “or so the family claimed. Although the water was calm that day and he was an experienced yachtsman.”
“Uh huh,” I replied skeptically. “Did the families object to the museum’s dredging all this up?”
Alistair brightened. “No. We haven’t said anything that isn’t a matter of public record, and as for the questionable pieces, we just present the facts and let readers draw their own conclusions. The family of the man who shot himself died out in the next generation—no male heir to carry on the name. The others either moved away or faded into obscurity.”
I remembered the ghosts from Hampton Park the night before, and the way the Archive display gave me the heebie-jeebies. “Anything else salacious happen at the Expo?”
Alistair gave a wave of his hand. “Oh, the usual. Crime went up—muggings, vandalism, public drunkenness—people skipped town, made questionable business deals, even a bar fight that might have spawned an honest-to-goodness duel. But nothing like what happened in Chicago.”
I lingered for a moment as Alistair moved off toward the next display, trying to see if I picked up any of the resonance I felt at the Archive or in the park. I didn’t see the shadow. But I did pick up an uneasiness that made me jumpy. Peering into the case of memorabilia, I saw a souvenir watch, a few more coins and engraved silver spoons and two admission tickets along with a train pass that had never been punched.
“Alistair? What’s the story about the items here?” I asked, unsure why it was important and at the same time, certain that this meant something.
He retraced his steps to stand beside me. “There’s no particular story behind anything except the train ticket. That belonged to Harris Jubal Tomlinson.”
I glanced up. “The cotton Tomlinsons?”
Alistair nodded. Tomlinsons were still prominent in Charleston, though not perhaps at the level they had been a hundred years ago when their cotton plantation provided a quarter of the state’s output. “Yes. He was the natural choice to be the host at the Expo’s Cotton Pavilion, squiring the out-of-towners around, showing off the place. By all accounts, a very sharp young fellow, educated at William and Mary, a savvy businessman, and a natty dresser,” he added with a chuckle. “That’s his photo on the wall.”
I moved away from Alistair to gaze at the image. Harris Tomlinson looked to be in his early thirties. He exuded confidence and privilege, yet something about his stance suggested he wasn’t completely comfortable. Harris was a good looking man, blond, tall, and fit, wearing an expensive suit that showed off broad shoulders and a trim waist. “What about the train ticket?”
“Tomlinson was due in Atlanta for an important business meeting the day after the Expo closed. The meeting was critical to his family’s interests, and the other parties were some of the movers and shakers of their day. Tomlinson never showed up.”
“So the train ticket—”
“Never used,” Alistair replied. “The family loaned it to us. There was a hullaballoo in the papers, as you might imagine. All kinds of conjecture, reasons why he might have skipped town-or left the country. But nothing stuck. No evidence of foul play. No fraudulent business dealings, no suggestion that he was being blackmailed—nothing.”
I frowned. “A man like that doesn’t just walk away without a good reason.”
Alistair shrugged. “No body was found, and no one ever claimed to see him again.” He met my gaze. “Then again, a man of Tomlinson’s means might be able to engineer his own disappearance better than most.”
I knew from hearing Sorren talk about some of the vanishing acts he had to pull in his long, undead existence that having means certainly helped make it easier to assume a new identity. But when I turned my attention back to Tomlinson’s photo, I didn’t get the sense that this was a man ready to turn his back on everything he knew. He looked like the world was his oyster.
“Do you know anything else about Tomlinson?” I asked. Something about the long-ago disappearance caught my attention, and I learned long ago to pay attention to hunches.
“I don’t, but Rand might.” Alistair glanced up as a young man in his early twenties crossed the back of the exhibit room. “Rand? Can you come here please?”
Rand brushed a lock of blond hair out of his eyes. “Mr. McKinnon?”
“This is Cassidy Kincaide, from Trifles and Folly—the antique store on King Street. She’s got some questions about the Tomlinson exhibit.”
“Sure. I mean, nice to meet you.”
I smiled, trying to put Rand at ease. “I was intrigued by the Tomlinson story. It seems so… unusual. Did you have any other materials that didn’t get used in the display?”
Rand thought for a moment, then nodded. “The family gave us a whole box of personal items. I think they were grateful he was being remembered. It’s down in storage, but if it’s okay with Mr. McKinnon, I can get it for you, and you can sign it out.”
“Cassidy’s a donor, a patron, and a friend, Rand. She has my permission to borrow whatever she needs.”
I smiled my thanks. Rand nodded. “All right then. I can have it ready for you tomorrow morning if that’s okay.”
“That would be fine,” I assured him. “Thank you,” I added, directing my comment to Rand and Alistair. Rand ducked his head in acknowledgment, then went back to what he had been doing as Alistair continued his tour.
“Interesting,” I commented, and let Alistair lead me to the Chicago display. Exhibit walls papered with big newsprint told a grisly tale. “Murder House.” “World’s Fair death toll rises.” “Fiend’s Victims Still Uncounted.”
“Dr. H.H. Holmes, aka the Devil in the White City,” Alistair said. “Born Herman Webster Mudgett. Built a rooming house that was actually a fancy killing box. Secret rooms, trapdoors to dispose of bodies, special equipment to gas or incinerate his victims. He was executed for twenty-seven murders, but experts think he might have killed as many as two hundred.”
I felt a sick twist in my stomach. In a glass case, a faceless mannequin wore a man’s spectacles, top hat, and dark black suit. “Someone actually kept his clothing?”
“That’s the suit he wore to his trial. It’s on loan from the Serial Killer Museum in Los Angeles.”
“Serial Killer Museum?”
“It’s L.A. There’s a market for everything, I guess.”
I stayed at least four feet away from Holmes/Mudgett’s suit, and even so, I fought the urge to squirm. Such a sense of darkness emanated from the clothing that I was amazed anyone could stand to be in the same room for long. Malice exuded from the clothing, strong enough that I almost expected to see a green churning fog like movie special effects. The resonance was strong enough that I had trouble breathing. The clothing didn’t trigger visions of the victims; it revealed the man who did the killing. Smug. Convinced of his superiority. Completely unrepentant.
I’ve been in the presence of some really evil sons of bitches—vengeful ghosts, blood-crazed monsters, even a demon or two. Mudgett’s resonance ranked with the worst of them.
“I need to get back to the shop,” I said abruptly and knew I wasn’t fooling Alistair.
“Of course,” he said, guiding me away from the exhibit with a barely-there hand on my elbow like he was afraid I might collapse. Unfortunately, before I had a more solid grip on my Gift, I had given him good reason for his fears. Now, I didn’t feel so much like passing out as I did like I needed to retch, then take a shower with lye soap to remove the taint.
Thankfully, the oppressive blight of Mudgett’s resonance faded as we put distance between ourselves and the display.
Even so, now that I knew what it felt like, I was surprised it hadn’t hit me when I first walked into the room. It didn’t completely leave my awareness, and while nothing made me think the taint was sentient, it felt like a stain inside me, where I couldn’t wash clean. I knew that if I ever went to L.A., the Serial Killer Museum would not be on my list of things to do.
“You never did say to what I owed the pleasure of your visit.” Alistair gave me a canny look as we reached the main lobby. He’s got a mind like a steel trap, and not just gets by him.
“Mrs. Morrissey showed me around the Archive’s exhibit,” I replied. “The two complement each other well.”
“It’s not an accident. We probably talk by phone every other day,” Alistair laughed. “We do our best not to duplicate, or steal each other’s thunder. Her focus is very local, while we try to connect Charleston to the grand scheme of things.” His eyes narrowed. “And you’ve dodged my questions, Cassidy.”
I fidgeted, knowing he had caught me. “Mrs. Morrissey likes to get my take on new displays before they open to the public.” I grimaced. “There have been a couple of notable incidents where things got a bit too lively.” I wasn’t going to bring up Nephilim or old vengeful judges. Nope, not going there.
“A wise strategy,” Alistair agreed. “I might have to do the same. What did you make of it, Cassidy? Are we posing a danger to the public?”
“I don’t think so,” I replied. “If anyone else with a little psychic mojo wanders in, they might get more than they bargained for, but I don’t think anyone else will notice.” I managed a wan smile. “I’m not worried about anyone getting possessed or going ‘Redrum’ on you.”
“That’s a relief.” Alistair’s laugh made me think he wasn’t completely joking.
When I got to back to Trifles and Folly, a few busloads of tourists kept us too busy to talk. I mulled over what I had seen at both the Archive and the museum and tried to make sense of the heightened ghost activity at Hampton Park. Something didn’t add up, and I doubted the ghosts were confused, which meant we were missing a piece of the puzzle, an important piece.
“I know you’ll be very happy with your teacups,” I assured a customer, carefully wrapping the fragile porcelain set of four gold-rimmed cups decorated with violets.
“They’re just like the ones my grandmother had,” she assured me, looking thrilled at the purchase. The day-to-day conversations with customers in the shop are so far away from the saving-the-world stuff we really do that sometimes; it’s a little surreal sometimes. I watched the lady nestle the package in the crook of her arm and head out, sublimely unaware that ghosts, demons or supernatural big bad uglies went bump in the night. And if Teag, Sorren, and I continued to do our job well, she and all the other people would never be any the wiser.
“I looked up a few things between customers,” Teag murmured as he slipped behind me to take down a blue vase from the shelf. “I’ll fill you in later. Still on for dinner?”
“Wouldn’t miss it,” I assured him.
We didn’t slow down until I turned the key in the lock at the end of the day. I slumped against the door, exhausted, but happy. “Wow. I think that had to be our best day in at least a month.”
Teag grinned. “We’re going to have to restock the shelves. Those bus tours don’t fool around. They come ready to shop.”
Sorren compensates Teag and me well for running the store, with extra for “hazard pay” as he calls our Alliance work. I know that Trifles and Folly is primarily a cover for smacking down supernatural bad guys, but the store has been in my family for over three hundred years, and it’s a point of pride for me to run it well and turn a profit, or at least make ends meet. Today’s sales went a long way toward making that happen.
“So what did you find?” I asked as I started moving the jewelry trays from the glass cases to the safe.
“I looked into the people who’ve gone missing in Charleston lately.”
“Do I want to know how?”
“Probably not.”
“Okay,” I replied. “Find anything noteworthy?”
Teag brought over trays from the other side of the room. “More people than you might think get reported missing, even for a city the size of Charleston. Of course, some of those are more misplaced than missing—sleeping off a bender, staying with a friend without telling anyone, going on an impromptu road trip. And some are pretty obviously runaways, so no supernatural element there. But when I accounted for all of that, I still came up with two people missing since the Archive and the Museum started to put their displays up. Peter Morrill and Jon Werther.”
He pulled up some pictures on his phone. “That’s Morrill,” Teag said, pointing at a young blond man. “And that’s Werther.” The chubby dark-haired man didn’t look familiar, but I knew where I had seen Morrill before.
“He’s the one I saw in the vision at the bandstand,” I said. I pushed a lock of hair out of my eyes and closed the safe, then set the lock and leaned back against the heavy steel door. “Anything in common?”
“It took me long enough to get that far since I only had a few minutes at a time thanks to the tourists,” he replied. “I’ll look for connections tomorrow.”
I filled him in on what I had seen at the Archive and Museum, as well as the reactions I’d had to the displays. “I can’t shake the feeling that pulling all the items together for the exhibits has stirred something up,” I told him. “Hampton Park had enough orbs that it looked like a firefly swarm.”
“And you didn’t find anything out that uncovered a big, sordid scandal to account for it?” Teag asked.
I shook my head. “Not yet. And given the focus of Alistair’s exhibit, I think he’d have been all over it if there had been anything noteworthy. Just a couple of suicides and some sordid business dealings.”
“Not enough to make so many ghosts edgy enough to haunt the park,” Teag mused. “Have you talked to Sorren?”
“He should be back soon. Maybe he’ll remember something that didn’t make it into the newspapers.”
“I have a couple of leads that might or might not turn out to be something,” Teag said. “And I’ll look into the guy you mentioned from the exhibit. I’ll let you know what I find out when you and Kell come over.”
He walked me out to where my RAV4 was parked. I missed my zippy little Mini Cooper, but I needed more cargo room for hauling boxes and the occasional body. “See you tonight,” I said with a wave.
“Whatever you’re cooking smells delicious,” Kell groaned as Teag welcomed us into the house he and Anthony shared. Teag clapped Kell on the shoulder, gave me a quick hug, and took the bottle of wine I held out.
“Anthony’s in charge of the pasta. I’m doing the appetizers and salad, so I’d better get back to the kitchen,” Teag said with a grin, and I realized he was wearing an apron that read “kiss the cook.”
We followed him toward the source of the smells that made my stomach growl. “Hi Cassidy! Hi Kell!”
We returned the greeting and settled in at the kitchen bar. Teag poured wine and handed us each glasses. He came up behind Anthony, who was stirring a pot of sauce on the stove and laid one hand on his hip, reaching around with his right hand to place the goblet of wine on the counter. “Looks good enough to eat,” he murmured, just loud enough for us to hear, a wicked grin on his face.
Anthony cheeks reddened, just a bit, as Teag intended. “Don’t distract the cook,” he replied, though he didn’t seem to mind.
“Get a room, you two,” Kell teased. Anthony stopped stirring the sauce long enough to flip Kell off.
Kell laughed. “Some things never change.” He turned to me. “Anthony lived down the hall from me freshman year at college. I expected a pre-law student to use a lot of big words, but he tended more to gestures.”
“Got the point across just fine,” Anthony replied without looking up. “You somehow always had movie marathons with lots of loud explosions when I had tests to study for.”
&nb
sp; “You were pre-law,” Kell replied. “You always had a test to study for. Your study team kept taking over the common room and plastering the whiteboard with morgue photos and Latin.”
Anthony gave an exaggerated huff. “Introduction to Forensics, and Latin 101. Had a professor that would throw in the occasional dirty poem in ancient Latin to keep us interested. For some reason, that’s what I remember best.”
“Not surprised,” Teag laughed, intentionally bumping Anthony’s shoulder as he reached for the salad tongs. Anthony stood just a little shorter than Teag, with short blond hair and blue eyes. Even relaxed and at home, he had a GQ vibe, with a button-down shirt open at the throat, untucked over dark jeans that might have been ironed. Teag wore a concert t-shirt over ripped jeans, his brown hair long enough to tuck behind an ear on one side. Anthony was legacy Charleston blue-blood. Teag was a former struggling grad student. They couldn’t have been more different, or more perfect together.
“Munchies are served,” Teag announced, bringing in a tray with olives, cheese, crackers, and some flaky triangles I recognized as spanakopita. “Don’t be too impressed. The Greek stuff came frozen.” He snagged one as he set down the plate and fed it to Anthony, who was in the process of folding the pasta into the finished sauce.
“Where’d you get the recipe?” I asked. “It smells wonderful.”
“Cooking show,” Anthony confessed. “They’re a guilty pleasure. After I get home from the office, it’s nice to watch something where the biggest decision is olive oil or canola.” Anthony was a rising star in his family’s law firm, with a solid South of Broad clientele. With his good looks and his career, Anthony was quite a catch, but what I liked best was that he was crazy in love with Teag enough to stick around even after he found out the whole bloody truth about what we really do.
A few minutes later, we sat down to a feast. “Everything looks as good as it smells,” Kell said, taking an exaggerated breath.
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