by JL Bryan
Michael laid a hand on my back as he escorted me into the room. He looked down at me, one of his eyes hidden behind a black patch.
“Co-pirates,” he whispered, and I smiled. I felt glad to have someone to lean on while going out into this crowd. I wasn't in the mood for small talk, chitchat, chewing the fat, or otherwise pretending that Calvin hadn't collapsed the world beneath my feet. Part of me, a very large part of me, wished I'd jumped on Michael's idea about forgetting the whole thing and staying home.
“Why, Ellie Jordan!” gushed a voice with a distinctly Texan accent. Madeline Colt, general manager of the Lathrop Grand and our former client, emerged from the crowd. She wore a black cocktail dress and a very realistic-looking black tarantula clip in her platinum blond hair. “Aren't you just the prettiest little buccaneer in the room?”
“I think that title might go to my date. Do you remember Michael Holly?”
“Oh, yes.” Madeline took his offered hand but held it rather than shaking it. She looked up into his eyes in a very friendly way. Get yourself a hot firefighter boyfriend and you can deal with that look from other women every time you go out somewhere, too. “How could I forget that night? And the aftermath has been so hectic.”
“Are the fourth floor renovations coming along?” I asked. The top floor of the hotel had been closed for a century, and I'd more or less burned and then flooded that area in the course of clearing out the wicked ghosts up there. It wasn't entirely my fault, because it was a pyrokinetic ghost we were facing. That's my absolute least favorite kind, considering one of them murdered my family. I'd rather deal with a shapeshifting demonic—even one that takes the form of my best friend or my cat so it can get right up close before it claws my face off—than a fire-starter.
“We're remodeling it into six top-flight suites,” she said. “They should be ready before Christmas, and they will be the very best accommodations in town.”
“No more supernatural troubles?” I asked.
“If there are still any ghosts here, sugar, they're quieter than a church mouse at a golf tournament. Our only complaints have been from guests who want to see ghosts but don't. The news stories have drawn so many people.”
The Lathrop Grand had made a big splash in national news for a day or two. We'd found a concealed room filled with grisly evidence of the hotel's secret history. The bones and antiquated rusty implements hauled out of the old luxury hotel by the authorities made for prime news footage, especially accompanied by tales of ghosts and old murders, especially when the story broke at the beginning of October as Halloween season was creeping in.
“It sounds like business hasn't suffered much, despite the dead bodies and everything.”
“Oh, no, sugar. We've got more ghost tourists than ever, coming in from all over the world. We had to raise the ticket prices for the Halloween ball just to stem the demand. I don't have the heart to tell the guests all the ghosts have gone. Who knows? Maybe Abigail will come back for a visit. Her room's still here if she does.” Madeline winked.
“I'm glad it's going well.” I couldn't say the same about my own job. I almost asked her whether the Lathrop Grand was hiring. It had to beat whatever was coming at the detective agency with the new ownership.
“Oh, look, it's George Fountain,” Madeline said, her voice hushed. “He's one of the Black Diamond bigwigs. If you'll excuse me just jiffy-quick while I speak to my boss...”
“Of course. It was nice to see you, Madeline.” I almost called her Mildred after the bloody-girl ghost we were investigating.
“Oh, you, too, sugar. And you, honey.” She patted Michael's bicep and walked away toward a rotund man in a Brooks Brothers suit and elephant mask.
“So that was half the people I know here,” I said to Michael. “Let me know if you see Grant Patterson. And what's taking Stacey so long?” I checked my phone, but there was no message from her.
“I don't know about Stacey and Jacob, but I think I see Liberace over there.” Michael nodded toward a man in a glittered, gilted, powder-blue coat and huge white wig not dissimilar from the one worn by the ghost of Hiram Neville, only much larger, cleaner, and curlier, tied with a giant blue ribbon that matched the blue coat.
“Grant!” I approached with a smile of relief. I felt like a complete stranger here, although with everyone wearing masks, it was hard to tell.
“My dear,” Grant said, looking over my costume and then Michael's. “You look like a dangerous pair of ruffians.”
“That's exactly what we are,” Michael said, drawing out the are, in dorky pirate fashion.
“And you look ready to attend a ball far more extravagant than this one,” I said.
“If only one were available,” Grant said. He indicated the man beside him, dressed as Zorro, who looked to be around Grant's age or younger, maybe somewhere in his late forties or early fifties. It can be hard to estimate around a black Zorro mask. “Have you met my friend Jack Taylor? You may not recognize him in his traditional vigilante attire. He's fresh from protecting innocent Mexican peasants against their avaricious landlords.”
“I'm usually found playing the avaricious landlord instead of the hero, sadly.” Taylor shook my hand and Michael's. I did know Taylor, or at least his family, and they did indeed own a great deal of real estate around the city. He must have heard of me, too, because he added: “So you're the one who's inherited Calvin Eckhart's position, defending the city against all that goes bump in the night?”
“That's me.”
“I may need to call you,” Taylor said. “We have a few properties that could stand to be less haunted. And who is your pirate captain?” He looked at Michael with interest.
“We're actually co-pirates,” Michael said.
“The young gentleman is Michael Holly,” Grant said. “One of Savannah's finest.”
“I'm with the fire department, actually,” Michael said. “Not the police.”
“I have often found fireman to be a bit finer than police officers, in my experience,” Grant said.
“And you've had plenty of that,” Taylor said to Grant, who narrowed his eyes just slightly in response.
“I'm so glad you're here, Grant,” I said. “I feel a little out of place at these society things.”
“Society? What society?” Taylor looked around as though I'd just mentioned that a wild, rabid wolf was stalking through the crowd.
“Not Savannah society, certainly,” Grant told me. “The attendees I've met are mostly tourists, in town for the haunted holidays. They may be high-dollar tourists, but this ball is far too new and well-advertised to attract the old families.”
“Present company excepted?” I asked, looking from Grant Patterson to Jack Taylor, both of them belonging to lineages that could be traced back to eighteenth-century Savannah.
“Oh, yes, we have come precisely to escape the tedium of the usual crowd and embrace the joys of anonymous celebration with strangers,” Grant said.
“Really?” I grew more comfortable as I saw the crowd in a new light. They weren't a society where I didn't belong. They weren't a society at all, just an accumulation of travelers who didn't know anyone here any more than I did. I might as well have been a tourist from out of town myself. That thought made me smile, maybe at the idea of going on an actual vacation, which I hadn't done since my parents died.
“I like this party,” Taylor said, looking over the crowd with their masks and pricey clothes. Some danced near the stage, where the jazz band played a tune so fast I was amazed the dancers could keep up with it. Others cruised the buffet, where servers in formal black and white attire and animal masks served shrimp and oysters on silver. The ballroom's heavy curtains had been drawn over the floor-to-ceiling windows to create a darker and more private environment.
“It's very Masque of the Red Death,” Grant said. “Let's be sure to leave before thirteen o' clock.”
Michael accepted two champagne flutes from a passing waitress in a unicorn mask. He passed one to me. I
sipped and tried not to wince at the intensely sugary taste. I didn't want to look too uncultured if I could avoid it.
“Did you have anything else for me, Grant?” I asked. “Something to do with colonial-era farmers or horsemen?”
“Ah, as a matter of fact...you owe a debt of gratitude to one Ethel Wisenbaker of the Georgia Salzburger Society. She is in charge of the group's genealogical research. For a ninety-one-year-old, she's quite feisty. At any rate, she has been in communication with librarians at Franklin and Marshall College in Pennsylvania, which has an archive of Hessian-related materials, as well as the Hessisches Staatsarchiv in Germany...and we may have tracked down a name for your horseman.”
“No! How?”
“The Hessians occupying Savannah naturally developed relationships and communications with locals over time. These particularly included the Salzburgers who created the town of New Ebenezer—German immigrants. The town lay inland from Savannah, north along the river.”
“Close to where my clients live?” I asked.
“Your clients are a bit farther inland,” he said. “However, New Ebenezer, as a town full of Germans, would have been a natural stopping point for German deserters slipping away from Savannah. Many Hessian soldiers were impressed into service, you understand—young men drafted into the armies of their German princes back home. They weren't necessarily eager to die for any cause.”
“And our horseman was rumored to be a deserter,” I said. “The war was still in full swing when he was robbing people on the highways, and when he killed Mildred.”
“There was a particular detail that might be of interest. Colonel Friedrich von Porbeck, as you perhaps already know, was the Hessian commander in charge of Savannah. He wrote frequent reports to his masters in Germany, which have been archived. I have here one that may interest you.” Grant reached into his voluminous powder-blue coat and drew out a few sheets of paper neatly folded together.
I opened the pages eagerly, then frowned. They looked like faxes of photocopies of pictures of faded old handwriting. I had some difficulty reading it, and eventually determined that my difficulty stemmed from the fact that they were in German.
“Um,” I said. “Thanks?”
“Here, the officer recounts a case of a certain deserter,” Grant said. “Josef Bracke, a private who deserted along with others while out on patrol in 1780. The commanding officer listed six names besides Bracke's. Two were caught and executed, and four were never seen again by the Hessian officers, but Bracke was a special case. His body appeared some months later, dumped in a bag on the road outside the German settlement of New Ebenezer, with an unsigned proclamation that he'd been a thief and a murderer on the roads of Georgia and South Carolina. That was believable enough, as the roads had their share of bandits during the war, with no stable government to control them.
“So, in that missive you hold, the officer naturally derides the deserters and cowards, and he sheds no tears for Josef Bracke or any of the others. Bracke was identified by the other Hessians. His body had bullet holes and more than a dozen stab wounds; someone had really gone to work on him. Eventually he was buried with no marker, most likely outside the walls of the church cemetery in Ebenezer. Many people were hastily buried there during the war.”
“Outside the walls?” I asked, and Grant nodded, looking amused by the intensity of my interest. “And who brought Josef's body to the town? Why?”
“Whoever killed him, presumably,” Grant said. “As for the why—well, the Hessian was German, so the body was left at the only German town in the area. It could be as simple as that. Perhaps those who killed him hoped the body would be interred with some semblance of piety, but did not wish to foot the expense themselves.”
“Why? To keep the ghost from coming back and seeking revenge on his killers?” I asked.
“That is a possibility. You're the expert in supernatural matters.”
“What else do we know about Josef Bracke?”
“There doesn't seem to be a great deal to know. He was a peasant child in Germany, probably drafted into military service. He was nineteen when he died. The officer comments on the unusual nature of the situation. Hessian deserters, if not caught and killed, typically hightailed it out of state, usually trying to reach the much larger German community in Pennsylvania, where they could hope to blend in. But Josef was still in the area six months later.”
“Robbing travelers,” I said.
“So claims the note pinned to his corpse. The Hessians in the area were focused on maintaining the British occupation and patrolling the state in search of Patriot activity. Josef and his friends may have become well-acquainted with the roads, plantations, and traffic prior to their desertion.”
“Information that would have been useful during his later career as a highwayman,” I said. “So we might have identified Bloody Betty's killer, finally.”
“Pardon?” Grant asked.
“Mildred Neville,” I said. “We called her something else before we learned her real name. All of this fits with what the local history buff told us.” I winced as I heard the word buff escape my lips. “After Josef killed Mildred, Hiram Neville and his sons and neighbors and so on formed a posse and searched the roads until they found Josef. Either he resisted or they just killed him on sight.”
“Such a posse would have been easily created in those days,” Grant said. “Landowning males were expected to participate in regular patrols, primarily for the purpose of catching runaway slaves, sadly. Mr. Neville had only to rouse the existing local patrol to his cause if he needed assistance finding Josef.”
“Are all their conversations like this?” Jack Taylor asked Michael, with an amused smile curling under his Zorro mask.
“Yes, it's mostly stories of murder, betrayal, and war,” Michael said.
“How dramatic,” Taylor said.
“Ghosts can be total drama queens,” I told him. To Grant, I said, “I think this really helps complete the picture. Thanks. I just wish I could read German...” I frowned at the pages Grant had handed me.
“Oh, yes. There's another debt you owe Ethel Wisenbaker of the Salzburger Society.” From the interior pocket of his coat, he brought out two more folded pieces of paper. “Translated. And typed, on what I would guess to be an old Underwood typewriter, judging by the thickness and kearning of the letters.”
“Thank you!” I pocketed the English translation, feeling happy to have made some progress on the case. I would have to write a long thank-you note to this Ethel Wisenbaker.
That happy feeling soon faltered, though, when Supergirl arrived alone. I went to greet Stacey, who just looked worried and confused.
“Jacob had some kind of family emergency, but he said to go ahead to the party and he would catch up.” She looked around the crowd. “He's not here, is he?”
“Not unless he's hiding from me,” I said. “What kind of emergency?”
“I don't know. I hope it's not serious.”
“It can't be too serious if he's still planning to come.”
“I guess. He hasn't returned any of my texts since. It's been a few hours.”
“He'll be fine. Hey, Grant's here, and he has some news about our Hessian horseman...”
The band played on, and we waited for Jacob to arrive. Michael somehow convinced me to go out onto the dance floor. I don't know how; he must have slipped something into my champagne. I didn't really know what I was doing, but he guided me at every step, keeping time with the band, and he even spun me and somehow I didn't crash to the floor.
“What are you doing?” I asked.
“Dancing?” he asked, looking puzzled.
“Yeah, exactly. Did you go to dance camp or something? Since when can you dance like this?”
“Have we ever danced before?”
“That's not the point.”
“I had dance lessons years ago,” he said.
“I can't see you signing up for that.”
“They weren't ent
irely my choice,” he said. “I would have rather been out riding horses, or shooting rifles...”
“Right. Because you grew up on a dude ranch.”
When the song ended, I sent him to dance with Stacey instead, since her date still hadn't arrived and she was more into dancing anyway. Something was still off about Michael, but it wasn't something I wanted to dwell on tonight. He was recovering from a fever, I reminded myself.
I decided life might begin to feel more normal if I took a break and ate something. At the buffet, I picked up tiger shrimp, ultrathin slices of rare beef, and slivers of baby carrots cooked in butter. I don't know why they bothered to sliver the carrots; they were small enough to begin with.
Michael and Stacey remained on the dance floor, both of them looking cute and happy for the moment. I watched them as I stood and ate in a comfortable little shadowy nook where a tall potted plant kept me company. I didn't want to be here, but definitely didn't want to be alone with my thoughts, or my dread of Calvin leaving and throwing me to the sharks on his way out.
It slowly dawned on me that I seemed to be crawling toward a new low, between losing the people I had and feeling distant from those who remained. I had an urge to visit my parents' grave site—not so much the official one with the headstones, but the real one, where our house had once stood. I'd seen glimpses of their murderer, but never of my parents. I supposed it meant they'd moved on. That was always for the best, of course. Still, of all the ghosts I've seen, it would have been nice to have encountered one of theirs—maybe just once, long ago, before they'd left forever.
Watching Stacey in her red cape and high boots, I thought about how Supergirl, like Superman before her, had access to a couple of holograms of her dead parents so she could speak to them whenever she needed advice. Sounds pretty great to me. When I have difficult questions, all I have is my cat, and he never has any answers for me.
A cute-looking guy in devil horns and a tuxedo took my arm and tried to escort me toward the dance floor. I pulled away, mumbling something about having a horrible case of leprosy. He gave me an annoyed look but left me alone.