Trifles and Folly 2

by Gail Z. Martin

  “Here’s hoping that it tastes as good, too,” Anthony said, but he smiled as if he was fairly certain we’d be pleased. One bite proved that suspicion to be true.

  “This is fantastic,” I said, savoring the taste and following a perfect bite with a sip of wine. Kell nodded his approval, his mouth too full to speak.

  We chatted about local news and friends in common, focused on polishing off the fabulous meal. “Did you hear about the preservation work, down by The Citadel?” Anthony asked. “Our firm’s been asked to handle the details. Half a block of old Victorian homes that have largely been neglected, getting re-done to their former glory.” He grinned, and I remembered that Anthony served on several preservation and architecture boards in the city. He and Teag shared a passion for history, among other things.

  “I’ve seen a little about that in the news,” I replied. “Sounds like a win for everyone. The neighborhood gets an upgrade, some fine old houses get rescued, and The Citadel gets some classy new office space.”

  Anthony nodded. “Some of the properties are in rough shape, so it won’t be easy, but I think in the long run, everyone will be happy. I’m heading over there later this week, so I’ll be able to tell you first-hand just what a mess we’ll have to clean up once I’ve seen the properties.”

  Finally, when dessert was over, and Teag poured more wine, we sat back, full and lazy. “Leave the dishes,” Anthony said to Teag, pausing only long enough to put leftovers in the fridge. “Let’s go into the living room.”

  Kell and I sat on one couch, and Anthony settled next to Teag on the couch facing us, one arm slung companionably over Teag’s shoulders, mirroring Kell and me. “So about those scandals...” Teag said with a raised eyebrow.

  “Am I going to have to recuse myself if I listen?” Anthony asked, only half-kidding.

  “You’re about a hundred years too late,” Teag replied. “Cassidy went to see the exhibits at the Archive and the museum about the World’s Fair, and that made me see if I could find some untold stories.”

  Teag spun the cover story for Kell’s benefit. Anthony looked skeptical as if he suspected there might be more to the issue, but if he intended to call Teag on it, he’d do it later. Kell grinned. “Scandal? Do tell!”

  Teag sipped his wine and leaned back into Anthony’s shoulder. “So the first bit of gossip I dug up was about Josiah Harcourt. He was quite the star of the Charleston fair, in the technology building. Had a model of a wondrous machine that he said would revolutionize textile manufacturing. People lined up for hours to see the model, which didn’t actually do anything except move a bit where it was connected to a steam engine. That was enough for investors, who practically got in a fist fight over who could give Harcourt the most money.”

  Teag warmed to the tale, enjoying his audience, flush with wine and dinner. “Harcourt moved into a big warehouse near the river, and rumors circulated that his competitors were trying to steal plans to his wonderful machine, so no one was allowed in while the equipment was constructed.”

  He leaned forward. “Here’s where it gets murky. Construction dragged on, lots of delays, and the investors started to get edgy. Then one night, the warehouse burns to the ground, destroying the machine and—so the record says—killing Harcourt.”

  “I’m guessing there’s more to the story?” I asked, leaning against Kell.

  Teag grinned. “Yep. Seems that no one could make heads or tails out of the slag in the warehouse debris, and no body was ever recovered. Harcourt’s investors lost their money and couldn’t sue the estate because all the funds mysteriously vanished from his accounts.”

  “So the whole thing was a scam?” Kell finished off his wine and set his glass aside.

  Teag nodded. “It gets better. Five years later, one of the investors happened to be traveling in Europe. He swears he saw Harcourt in Paris, alive and well. If so, Harcourt skipped town before he could be caught. No one ever heard from him, and the money was never recovered.”

  “I wonder how that lovely tidbit escaped notice,” I mused.

  “Perhaps because the Harcourt family is a donor to both the Archive and the museum,” Anthony replied, his tone as dry as the wine. “Descendants of Josiah’s brother, I believe. Since some of the investors who got burned were likely to have been some of the Charleston upper crust, that’s a second reason not to go picking old scabs. Old grudges aren’t easily forgotten.”

  I made a mental note to ask Teag if any of the investors took a dive off the roof of a building or met a similarly untimely end, qualifying them for the spook-a-palooza down at the park, but I’d wait until Kell and Anthony weren’t around to pursue that. “Good story. You had something else?”

  Teag nodded, and I knew he loved spinning his tales. “More of a tidbit than a full-blown story. Apparently, a New Orleans madam who went by the name ‘Revienne la Nuit’ laid claim to a large, fancy house a couple of blocks from the exposition grounds. There’s speculation that she might have received some funding from silent partners who were backers of the Expo. VIP visitors to the commerce pavilions got their visits underwritten in exchange for promises to bring new business to town. Gossip had it one of the visiting dignitaries died during a visit due to a bad heart.”

  Kell choked on his wine. Teag grinned wide. “I know, right? Good stuff! There were whispers that the cops were paid to look the other way, and that the city fathers got special treatment if they didn’t object.”

  “I refuse to confirm or deny anything,” Anthony said when we glanced at him for confirmation.

  “Well I don’t.” We all turned to look at Kell. “The current owners actually called in SPOOK because they were having ghost problems. There’s a B&B in that house now. Seems the spirit of a young lady appeared to several of the guests and tried to climb into bed with them. One gentleman actually checked out in the middle of the night, claiming he had been molested by a very forward ghost!”

  No one could top Kell’s story, so the conversation moved to other topics, and all too soon, the time came to head home. Kell and I thanked Teag and Anthony for the lovely dinner, promised to repay the evening in kind soon, and headed out. I glanced back to wave, smiling at the sight of the two of them framed in the doorway, Teag’s arm around Anthony’s waist, and Anthony’s arm around Teag’s shoulders.

  “They’re so darn cute together,” I murmured as Kell and I walked to his car. Kell snugged his arm around my waist and pulled me into a kiss.

  “Not as cute as you are,” he murmured, and I laughed.

  Kell fell silent as we drove away. “You don’t know how glad I am that Anthony found Teag,” he said after a few minutes. “Remember, I knew Anthony in college. He was going through a... rough patch then.”

  “Oh?” I counted Anthony among my closest friends, but his college days hadn’t come up much aside from his friendship with Kell and some fondly remembered sporting events.

  “I don’t think I’m saying anything I shouldn’t,” Kell said. “Anthony came out to his family about the time he left for college. His parents and most of his family was cool with it, or at least they didn’t give him grief. But his grandfather... that was another story. He was very fire and brimstone, and he was the senior partner in the firm.”

  “Ouch.”

  Kell nodded. “Yeah. Anthony already knew he wanted to be a lawyer, but the old man gave him a hard time about his ‘lifestyle.’” Kell’s disdain came through clearly in his voice. “Anthony cared about his grandfather, but some things aren’t negotiable, you know?”

  “I’m guessing they worked it out.”

  Kell winced. “Actually, the old man died of a heart attack Anthony’s second year in law school. He was planning to go to Columbia, practice up in the state capital. Then that happened, and his father took over as senior partner, and let Anthony know he was welcome as soon as he passed the bar.”

  “I’m sorry it had to happen the way it did, but glad that it ended up okay.”

  “Some of Anthony�
��s boyfriends weren’t my favorites,” Kell said with a grimace that told me he was understating his opinion. “I didn’t think they were good for him, or that they deserved him. He’s a really great guy. And then Teag came along, and they just seem so right together. He makes Anthony so happy.” Kell smiled, and reached over to give my hand a squeeze. “I like to see nice people find nice people and make it work.”

  I squeezed his hand back. “I like that, too. And for the record, Teag’s pretty over the moon about Anthony, too.”

  When we pulled up to the curb near my house, a familiar car sat nearby. Kell and I exchanged a glance, since I knew he recognized the gray Subaru, same as I did. “Were you expecting Ryan?” he asked.

  I shook my head. “No clue.” I checked my phone. No messages, no texts, nada.

  I opened up the door that leads to the front porch from the street. It’s a Charleston single house, with the porch—what Charlestonians call a “piazza”—facing an inner, walled courtyard, with the side of the house facing the street. Thanks to Lucinda, our friendly Voudon mambo, the door and wall is warded, so only friends may enter. I was surprised to find Ryan Alexander sitting on the porch, holding a cardboard box against his chest.

  “I’m sorry to surprise you like this,” Ryan said, glancing from me to Kell, aware that he had just ruined our date. “But I didn’t know what else to do.” He looked a little freaked out. Kell and I exchanged a glance.

  “What’s wrong?” I asked.

  Ryan looked up at me with wide eyes, far too pale. “Hypothetically speaking, if I discovered evidence of a felony while I was committing a misdemeanor, would I still be in trouble?”

  Ghosts and Misdemeanors

  Kell and I ushered Ryan into the house. Baxter yipped and bounced until Kell picked him up as I steered Ryan to the kitchen and put on water for tea. Kell took the box from Ryan and put it on the table, handing him Baxter instead.

  “Pet Bax. Therapy dog. Do you good,” Kell said. Ryan rolled his eyes, but he took Baxter and absently stroked his fur.

  “Sorry to interrupt,” Ryan apologized belatedly.

  “We’ll survive,” Kell replied, with a wink in my direction.

  “Go back to the part about the felony and the misdemeanor,” I said, getting three cups ready and measuring out the tea.

  Ryan took a deep breath, and Baxter seemed to sense his nervousness, because he nosed Ryan, as if to prompt him to go on. “So lately, the team and I have been going places that are slated for either tear-down or renovation, so we can see and document what’s there before it’s gone.” Kell and I nodded.

  Ryan is part of a group of urban explorers, adventurous—and sometimes reckless—rogue archeologists who spelunk through the ruins of modern civilization—abandoned buildings, drains, subway tunnels, bridges, maintenance conduits, and the like. Needless to say, these largely unsanctioned activities usually involve trespassing, if not a little breaking and entering, though ethical Urb-Exers like Ryan’s group take a hard line against looting and vandalism. They approach the wastelands of urban decay much like wilderness hikers, taking nothing but pictures and leaving nothing but footprints. So I was surprised at the box that Ryan had brought with him.

  “Okay. Go on,” Kell nudged when Ryan felt silent. Given their interests, Kell and Ryan often coordinated forays, with Kell putting Ryan’s group onto cool old ruins and Ryan calling in Kell and SPOOK when they found a place with signs of paranormal activity. Both of them tended to come to Teag and me for our input on history and antiques, and on more than one occasion for my gift.

  “There’s a block that’s going to be renovated, so we wanted to get in and document the properties before we can’t anymore,” Ryan said, gratefully accepted a cup of steaming tea as I pushed it toward him. Kell and I took our mugs and settled in at the table, waiting for Ryan to tell his story.

  “On an empty lot between old houses, there’s a well. It’s been bricked up for a long time, and probably went dry even before that. But the walls were in good shape, so Corey wanted to go down and see what was down there.”

  I’d met Corey. He seemed likely to climb anything just because it existed, so the thought of him rappelling into an old well didn’t surprise me, although it wasn’t my idea of a good time.

  “About halfway down, he found an old leather wallet caught on an outcropping. He picked it up, thinking it had gotten lost somehow, meaning to return it if we could. But then the farther down he got, there were more—”

  Kell and I looked at each other, then back to Ryan. “More wallets?” Kell asked, frowning.

  Ryan nodded and took a gulp of his tea. “Yeah. First just a couple, and then more. Corey thought that was pretty weird, and since the well’s going to get destroyed when the lot gets renovated, he figured there was no harm in bringing them up with him. We thought maybe there’d been a pickpocket, you know, taking the cash and ditching the ID. People might still want the wallets back.”

  “How were you going to explain finding them, without getting arrested either for theft or trespassing?” I asked, curious.

  Ryan gave me a sour look. “Stick it in their mailbox, put it through the mail slot, leave it on the porch—”

  “Okay, we get it,” Kell said. “So what went wrong?”

  “Corey picked up all the wallets he saw that hadn’t fallen apart,” Ryan said, looking too pale and his eyes too wide. Something had weirded him out. “He thought there might have been more at the bottom, but with the rain and debris, everything down there had rotted. Even so, he came back up with almost fifty.”

  I looked at him in surprise. “Fifty? That’s some pickpocket.”

  Ryan met my gaze. “It’s not just the number, Cassidy. When we opened them looking for ID, they’re all much older than we expected. None of them is newer than 1902.”

  “Fifty wallets—more, probably—from the same time period?” Kell echoed. Ryan nodded.

  A cold knot of dread tightened in my stomach. “Where was the well located?” I asked, hoping my suspicions were wrong.

  “A couple of blocks away from Hampton Park,” Ryan replied.

  Kell looked at me. “You’re thinking something.”

  I nodded, feeling sick. “The Expo was held in 1902.”

  “So maybe there were pickpockets,” Kell said. “Makes sense—lots of out of towners, big crowds. It’s the kind of place thieves love.”

  I nodded, but my gut suggested a much worse truth. “Let’s go through them,” I suggested. “We’ll make a list of who they belonged to.”

  Ryan looked at me as if I were nuts, and I had the feeling that he shared my suspicions. “Cassidy, even if those men were in their twenties when the wallets were taken, they’re long dead by now. That’s over a hundred years ago.”

  Kell watched me closely, coming to his own conclusions. “You think foul play? I mean, fouler than just theft?”

  “I hope I’m wrong, but that’s exactly what I’m thinking.”

  Ryan looked from me to Kell and back again. “Wouldn’t someone have noticed if fifty-plus men just disappeared? You’d think with the research the Archive and museum have done for their exhibits, someone would have picked up on that.”

  I remembered what Teag said at dinner, and shook my head. “Not necessarily. If they were from out of town, here for the Expo, who would notice? Their families would make inquiries—maybe if they knew they had come here, but what would the police have to go on?”

  “And even if the police did get questions, it might have been hushed up,” Kell speculated. “After all, the whole point of the Expo was to bring new business to Charleston and show off to the world. Wouldn’t do much for the city’s reputation if people disappeared off the streets.”

  We spent the next hour going through the old wallets, a sobering process. From the faded, damaged photos and identification, it appeared the wallets’ owners had all been young men in their twenties and thirties, and from the lack of pictures of wives and families, single. I wasn’t read
y to touch them and risk getting knocked on my ass, so Kell and Ryan handled the wallets, and I dutifully copied down names and addresses. The longer we worked, the more certain I became that these men and the others whose wallets had decayed at the bottom of the well met an early and tragic end.

  “All from out of town,” Kell confirmed as we compared notes.

  “No one would miss them right away,” Ryan said. “It’s not like people phoned home every weekend back then, and they weren’t updating on Facebook. They probably didn’t live at home, and it could be weeks before someone noticed they hadn’t gotten a letter lately.”

  “Families might not have even known they were going to visit the Expo,” I mused. “They could have come in on the train from Columbia or Atlanta or further, maybe from colleges, or for work. Schools or employers would have noticed if they didn’t come back, but they might not have gone out of their way to go looking for them.”

  “Wallets are one thing, but if someone killed them, where did the bodies go?” Kell asked.

  “Holmes,” I said, remembering the display at the museum.

  “Sherlock?” Ryan asked, confused. “Yes, I imagine he’d figure this out—”

  I shook my head. “No. H. H. Holmes. From the Chicago World’s Fair. The serial killer.”

  Kell frowned. “Couldn’t be. I read that book someone wrote about him. He got caught and executed before the turn of the century. He was dead by 1902.”

  “Copycat?” Ryan wondered aloud.

  “Maybe,” I murmured. I needed to put Teag to work tracking the dead men and pick Sorren’s brain to see what he remembered from having been in Charleston at the time. But I couldn’t really say that aloud. “Maybe it really is as simple as a pickpocket ring. If so, there should be something in the police archives, or somewhere. Even if the authorities kept it quiet, there should be a log of the reports.”

  “You really believe that?” Ryan asked.

  “No. But I hope I’m wrong.”