The House on Tradd Street

by Karen White

  Jack shrugged. “Sometimes I watch Yvonne’s grandkids when she’s doing research for me.”

  I couldn’t reconcile the playboy image I had of Jack with that of him sitting on the floor with little children, so I turned the conversation back to where it had begun. “I’m thinking the whole break in Robert and Gus’s relationship was manufactured to distract the Longos from looking closer at Gus and his associates for answers.”

  “Good deduction, Dr. Watson,” Jack said, his trademark killer grin on his face. “You know, we work so well together, we should do this again.”

  I sent him what I hoped was a scathing look of disbelief. “I think I would almost rather slice off an appendage with a pocket knife and without anesthesia than suffer through the agony of these last months again.”

  He looked genuinely hurt. “Was it really all that bad?”

  I thought back to all that had happened since we’d first met, and knew that I couldn’t honestly say that it had been. If I were to be completely up front with him, I would have to tell him that I hadn’t laughed as much in my whole life as I had in the last few months, and that seeing my hard work on the restoration of the house come to fruition had been one of the big highlights of my life so far. Even being forced to face my ghosts had been an illuminating experience, and most likely something that wouldn’t have happened if I hadn’t met Jack Trenholm. I smiled to myself. Either I’d had a rather sheltered life, or I really had been enjoying life for the first time—and I had Jack to thank for most of it. But then again, he had lied to me, and if I didn’t think too hard about it, I could also blame him for me being so determined to go after Marc Longo. So I hedged my answer.

  “Not all of it, of course.”

  He pursed his lips and nodded. “I’m assuming you’re not blaming me for the Marc Longo fiasco, too.”

  “I told you that I didn’t want to talk about it.”

  He flipped on his blinker and changed lanes in front of an SUV filled with children in soccer uniforms and driven by a harried mom drinking from a Starbucks cup. “I know. I’m sorry. All that I’m going to say about the whole disaster is that at least you didn’t sleep with him.”

  I remained silent but felt my cheeks flood with warmth.

  He looked at me with an expression that was a confused mix of horror and surprise. Somebody honked, and Jack jerked the car back into the middle of his lane. “That sonuvabitch,” he muttered under his breath.

  We spent the rest of the trip in a strained silence punctuated briefly by polite conversation and potential words for our ciphers, all endeavors turning up nothing more than frustration. We arrived back at the house on Tradd Street a little past ten o’clock that night. All of the lights were off, and I was pretty positive I wouldn’t have considered going into the house if Jack hadn’t been with me, although I would never tell him that.

  As we walked through the garden gate, Jack stopped me with a hand on my arm. “Do you hear that?”

  I listened to the quiet night, and there amid the hum of distant traffic was the distinct sound of a rope swing creaking against tree bark. I smiled in the darkness. “Yes, I hear it. It’s Louisa and Nevin. They’re letting us know that they’re there.”

  “Oh,” he said, and I thought I felt him shudder next to me.

  “They won’t hurt you, you know. They know we’re trying to help them. Besides . . .” I hesitated, trying to remember what Nevin Vanderhorst had told me.

  “Besides what?”

  “Well, Louisa only appears to those she approves of. So far, that would be me, General Lee, the plumber, and you.”

  “The plumber?” he asked.

  “Yeah. He’s seen her, too.”

  “I’m honored,” Jack said as he climbed the steps to the piazza before pausing by the front door. “Do you feel that?” he asked.

  I nodded, my teeth chattering. The temperature had dropped about twenty degrees between the time we’d entered the gate and climbed the piazza steps. “I think we’ve got company.”

  “The good kind of company?” he asked nervously.

  I shook my head. “No. If it were Louisa, we’d smell her roses. If you just feel cold and nervous, it’s . . . the other entity I’ve seen several times. He’s not very nice.”

  His white teeth glowed eerily in the moonlight. “Great. So what do we do?”

  “You just keep telling yourself that you’re stronger than he is, and that works most of the time.”

  “Most of the time? What about the rest of the time?”

  “Then he sets the house on fire and traps you inside.”

  There was a long pause. “So why are we standing here, trying to get in instead of getting the hell out of here?”

  I took a deep breath. “Because now I know his strength. Before, I was trying to ignore him and Louisa no matter how much they tried to get my attention. That’s been my MO for a long time—ignore them and eventually they’ll go away. But now it’s personal—I need to listen to them. And right now the bad guy is telling me to leave. Which means, of course, that we need to go inside. There’s something in there he doesn’t want us to find.” I straightened my shoulders. “We just need to pay attention and not get separated. And if you smell roses, that’s good—it means Louisa’s there and the bad guy can’t hurt us.”

  “Do you know who he is?”

  “I thought at first that it might be Robert. But Robert wasn’t evil, and this guy is definitely a bad SOB. Now that I know that Joseph Longo was killed in this house, I think I can make a pretty good guess that it’s him.”

  “Ah, well, that makes it easier, then.”

  “It does?”

  “Yeah. Picturing how you’re going to pulverize a guy who tried to kill an innocent little boy makes your adversary a little easier to deal with—ghost or not. It all comes down to: I’m the good guy and he’s the bad guy. And that’s all I need to know.”

  I held up the door key, the glint of streetlight on the metal like a hypnotist’s pendulum. “Are you ready?”

  “Let’s roll,” he said quietly as I found the keyhole and turned the key.

  To our surprise, the door opened without resistance. I quickly walked inside and slid my hands over the wall until they hit the light switch. I was grateful for the glow of yellow light that fell on us. I glanced around in surprise. Apparently Mrs. Houlihan had been very busy in my absence. The grit and dust that had coated every surface had been removed, leaving sparkling wood and glass and the distinct smell of floor polish.

  “It’s not cold anymore,” Jack remarked.

  “I think he knows that we’re not afraid of him. And that Louisa is near.”

  We both gravitated into the drawing room, where the grandfather clock chimed the half hour. We turned on all the lights we passed to erase the eerie darkness. I moved to the side window and peered out into the night to where the oak tree stood, and saw nothing. But I knew they were there, felt them watching and waiting. For what, I wasn’t sure.

  “Cerca Trova,” Jack said. He stood in front of the clock, the glass door over the face opened. “I knew I’d seen those words before. They’re here—written on one of the signal flags. I probably forgot where I’d seen it because it’s not always visible.”

  I moved to stand by his side. “Those were the words in the first letter to Nevin. Seek and ye shall find.”

  “But we’ve examined every inch of this clock, and I’ve found the secret compartment.” Jack thought for a moment. “Does that mean that they’re gone, that the three missing diamonds were gone before Robert ever found the hiding place?”

  “I don’t know. And we won’t know unless we can figure out the ciphers.”

  Jack continued staring at the clock face, his brow furrowed in concentration. I was about to suggest that we go upstairs to bed when I heard a scratching sound, like pencil on paper. Or fingernails on plastic.

  “Do you hear that?” I asked.

  Jack nodded. “Mice?”

  I shook my head. �
�No. Termites, yes. Rodents, no.” I moved to where the sound seemed to be getting louder. It was coming from the wall next to the clock, where the long draperies had once covered Nevin’s growth chart. It was now protected by a thin sheet of Plexiglas, and as I kneeled in front of it, the scratching stopped. I carefully examined all the measurements written on the chart, looking for something unusual, as my gaze traveled upward until I’d reached the top and I stopped, my breath stuck in the back of my throat. There, in Louisa’s careful handwriting were the initials MBG. My best guy.

  I straightened, my heart pounding rapidly. “Jack, what did Robert say in that first letter to Nevin, something about his mother. Something about what she called him.”

  “Yeah, yeah: ‘Remember what your mother called you.’ Why? Are you thinking of something?”

  “My best guy—that’s what she called him, remember? It’s written right here on the wall.” I knelt on the floor and pulled out the notebook, which I’d almost filled with failed keywords, and opened to a fresh page. Quickly, I wrote down the letters of the alphabet and then below it the words “MY BEST GUY” directly under it, omitting the last “Y” and following the phrase with the alphabet starting with the letter “A” and moving on toward “Z” without repeating any letters.

  Jack knelt next to me and began to repeat to me the string of thirty-two letters we had both memorized by sheer repetition from the clock’s cipher. After I’d written them down in a line, I took a deep breath before looking back at the pad of paper. Slowly, I began filling in the letters from the new keyword alphabet: A,T,M,I,D,N,I,G,H,T,S,T, A,R,S,S,H,I,N,E,L,I,K,E,D,I,A,M,O,N,D,S. I looked down at what I’d written and read it out loud. “At midnight, stars shine like diamonds.” Our eyes met. “Oh, my gosh,” I said as we scrambled up together to go examine the clock.

  Jack opened the clock face again. “At midnight . . .” He turned to me. “Remember the photos from the film roll? The one of the grandfather clock shows both hands pointing to twelve.”

  “But we’ve both been in this room at midnight more than once, and nothing happened.” I fought back my disappointment. “Do you think we can move the hands now to force them both on the twelve and see what happens?”

  Jack glanced at his watch. “It’s a little past eleven o’clock now. I don’t want to do anything that might alter whatever is supposed to happen. Why don’t we get ready for bed and meet back down here at midnight?”

  I nodded, understanding his caution but not being able to completely override my impatience. We grabbed our bags, and Jack allowed me to carry the Dora the Explorer overnight bag. I assumed he thought it was because it contained the diamond, but it was more to do with the letters, and the last words of a father to his son that were never read. The tragedy of their story weighed heavily on me and finding out the truth had not ended their story. I felt their hidden presence in the house now, watching us as we climbed the stairs. I stopped at the top, feeling as if I could touch the anticipation that seemed to swell and pulsate around us.

  “Do you feel that?” I whispered.

  Jack shook his head. “Feel what?”

  I frowned, trying to identify the sensations that were brushing against me and rubbing my skin. “They’re watching us. Waiting.”

  “Who’s they?” he asked, impressing me with the firmness of his voice.

  I listened to the whispers that were growing stronger now. “Louisa. Nevin.” I paused, feeling the flesh crawl down my back. “And Joseph.”

  The lights flickered and dimmed, then flicked back on again. “I’m stronger than you. I’m stronger than you,” I muttered under my breath.

  Jack put his hand on my elbow and guided me down the hall to my room. “Keep saying that, okay? It makes me feel better.” He pushed my door open and flipped on the switch. “I’ll stay here while you get ready for bed, and then we’ll go downstairs together to wait.”

  I was too relieved to argue with him about my privacy and the house rules that included him never being allowed to step foot in my room. I went into the bathroom and washed my face and brushed my teeth before throwing on a pair of sweats and my bathrobe. I avoided looking in the mirror, afraid of what I might see behind me.

  When I came out of the bathroom, Jack was sitting on my bed, a large book opened on the bedspread in front of him. At first, I thought it was one of Louisa’s albums, but when I got closer I saw that it wasn’t.

  “Where did this come from?” he asked, showing me the cover. I read the title: Ciphers and Codes of the Ancient World.

  I shook my head. “I’ve never seen it before.”

  “But it was on your bed.”

  My eyes widened. “But I didn’t put it there.”

  “Then how did it get here? I’m pretty positive it wasn’t with the rest of the cipher books in the attic, because I’ve gone through all of those and this one wasn’t with them.”

  “Welcome to my world,” I said as I sat down on the bed on the other side of the book. “From past experience, I would have to say that somebody wants us to see it.” We looked at each other, and I became aware that we were alone in my bedroom and on my bed. I watched a small flicker pass through his eyes and thought he might be thinking the same thing.

  Abruptly, I stood and pulled the desk chair over beside the bed. “Have you found anything yet that looks promising?”

  His eyes took in my robe and sweats before returning to the book and flipping a page. “Not yet, but I only just started. Maybe it’ll give us another way to decipher the word ‘midnight,’ just in case . . .” His hands froze on the opened page.

  “What is it?” I asked, standing to look over his shoulder.

  He held the book up. “This,” he said, pointing to a picture of a grid that consisted of five columns and five rows. Outside the top row and beside the far-left column were the numbers one to five, in order, and inside the grid, starting in the top left box, was each letter of the alphabet, with “Y” and “Z” sharing the last box. “It’s called a polybius checkerboard. I saw it before, in one of the other cipher books, but I dismissed it as being too easy.” He sent me an apologetic look. “I forgot what you said about the ciphers being used to keep the secrets away from prying eyes—and not to stump Nevin.”

  “But how does this work, Jack? If we’re trying to find another meaning for the word ‘midnight,’ it will transpose into a number, not another word.”

  He took a pen out of his jacket while shaking his head. “Wrong cipher, Mellie. This is a substitution cipher that transposes numbers into letters. In other words, the code is a series of numbers that, when solved, becomes a word.”

  “Oh, right—the fountain!”

  “Exactly,” he said. “Do you remember the numbers?”

  I nodded. “Yes—but not in any particular sequence.”

  “Not a problem—there’s only three of them, and we can sort them out if we need to.”

  I closed my eyes, recalling the Roman numerals etched into the side of the fountain. “Forty-one, forty-three, and twenty-four.”

  I watched as he solved the first number, XLI, by finding the number-four row first, then moving across to the number-one column and writing down the letter in the corresponding box—“P.” He continued this same pattern for the other two letters, coming up with the letters “R” and “I.”

  “P-R-I?” I asked.

  Jack stared at the letters he’d written down, understanding clear on his face. “You have to move the only consonant in the middle for it to make sense.”

  I looked at the letters again, instantly eliminating the first word I came up with and finally settling on “RIP.” I sat back down on the bed. “Rest in peace,” I said quietly. “That’s what you usually find on a tombstone.”

  “Yes, it is,” Jack said, placing his pen down on the book. “I guess we know where Robert and Gus put the bodies, then.”

  “And why the fountain’s never worked—it’s probably not even hooked up. Robert built the fountain as a monument to his w
ife, but was afraid of workmen finding the bodies if they ever dug deep enough to install water pipes.” I shook my head, remembering the times I’d been in the garden and felt Louisa’s presence. And now I knew why.

  “We’ll need to call the police,” Jack said.

  “I know.” I frowned, uncomfortable with the peace of the garden being destroyed, even if just temporarily. “Can we wait until morning? I think Louisa likes it there. I’d like to give her one more night in her garden.”

  “Sure.” Jack turned his head. “Hey, do you smell that?”

  The pungent odor of fresh roses enveloped the room, filling our nostrils with their sweet scent. “Yes,” I said, smiling. “I think Louisa’s saying thank you.”

  The clock began chiming downstairs and Jack stood. “It’s a quarter till. I think we should go downstairs now so we don’t miss anything.”

  I nodded and followed him to the door. We had almost reached it when it slammed shut in front of us. Jack leapt for it and tried to turn the handle. “I think it’s locked. Do you have the key?”

  “No,” I said, smelling that other odor now as it mixed with that of the roses.

  “God, where is that smell coming from?” Jack asked, scrunching up his nose. “I’ve smelled it before, and I never expected to smell it again in my lifetime.”

  “What is it?” I asked, almost gagging as the scent of the roses was completely obliterated by the foul odor.

  He stared hard at me for a long time, and I recalled what I’d read about his military service, and I wished I hadn’t asked. “It smells like dead bodies that have been left out in the sun. It’s a smell you don’t easily forget.”

  I turned away and closed my eyes to make them stop stinging. “He’s trying to scare us. Don’t let him or he’ll win. And remember that Louisa is on our side.” It was scant comfort, but it was all I had to offer.

  Jack turned the handle and tugged on the door. At first it wouldn’t budge, and then suddenly the force holding it shut let go, sending Jack flying backward into me as the door gave way. The lights flickered again and Jack reached for my hand. “Don’t let go of my hand, Mellie. He wants us separated.”