by Karen White
Rebecca had started to say that maybe things were going to work out for the best after all, but I’d hung up on her before I could say that things working out for the best would be that the accident had rendered Marc sterile so that he couldn’t spawn little Marcs.
“Nola’s pretty shaken up,” Jack said. “We’re really fortunate that no one was killed or seriously hurt. I don’t think she will ever voluntarily get behind the wheel of a car for the rest of her life. She told me that all she wants for Christmas is a prepaid Uber account.”
I leaned over to my open laptop, where the Christmas spreadsheet was displayed on the screen, before typing “Uber gift card” under Nola’s name. “I can’t say I blame her. I once rear-ended a CARTA bus on Meeting Street because I’d been distracted by the cutest pair of shoes worn by a woman on the sidewalk—so it technically wasn’t my fault, but it took me weeks to be comfortable behind the wheel again.”
Jack blinked at me a few times without saying anything before returning to his labeling.
“Louisa was there,” I said softly.
“Louisa Vanderhorst? I thought she’d gone to the light, or wherever it is you send restless spirits.”
“She did. But she comes back whenever she thinks she needs to protect us. I saw her and smelled the Louisa roses. I’ve actually been smelling them a lot lately. As if she knows something we don’t.”
Jack frowned. “It would be helpful if she could be a little more specific. We might have seen this whole fiasco coming.” Before I could explain to him that it didn’t work that way, he continued. “They’ve suspended Nola’s driving permit, so her not wanting to drive isn’t really an issue right now anyway. She was definitely at fault since she was the one apparently speeding backward out of the driveway when Marc drove past, so the fine will be pretty hefty. She and I both agreed that it will come from her royalties from the Apple song commercial,” he said, referring to her extracurricular hobby of writing music for other artists and for the occasional jingle. It’s what had saved our Tradd Street house once before.
I took a deep breath, forcing myself to confront the elephant in the room. “So, that’s it, then? They’ll bring their film crews in and we won’t lose the house, right?”
Jack put down the labeling gun and turned to me. “Do you remember what I told you outside in the garden on the day we were married?”
I nodded. “About how you wanted to live here for the rest of your life and see your children grow up here?”
“Yes. That’s all I’ve ever wanted. You and me, our family, here. And I cannot—will not—allow Marc Longo to take it all away from us. I’d rather die than see that happen.”
I grasped his hands. I had a sudden flashback of Rebecca telling me about her dream. Of an unknown man burying Jack alive. “Don’t say that, Jack. Don’t ever say that.”
His lips twitched in a small grimace. “It’s not that we couldn’t continue our relationship, you know.”
“Jack . . .” I said with warning.
“Yes, they’re going to film Marc’s movie in our house,” he said grimly. “We don’t have much choice. In the meantime, I’ve rescheduled our meeting with Yvonne for tomorrow. We’re going to dig through every piece of paper and we will find something. I know we will. I’ve sent a copy of the mausoleum drawings to an architect friend of mine, Steve Dungan, to look at to see if there’s something I can’t see with my untrained eye. There’s a different date at the bottom of each one, so I’m hoping he can compare them and tell us what’s different, maybe explain why the first one was built and then rebuilt only two years later.” He squeezed my hands. “We’re a good team, Mellie. If we work together, we can’t lose. In the meantime, we’ll pretend our tails are between our legs and we’ve given up.” He reached his hand behind my neck and gently drew me toward him. “Two can play this game, and things are about to get dirty.”
I kissed him, but my thoughts remained on Rebecca’s dream as an icy chill skittered across my skin like someone walking across my grave.
CHAPTER 14
I loved the way Charleston dressed up for the holidays. From the light-bedecked spans of the Ravenel Bridge and the wrapped trunks and fronds of the palmetto trees in Marion Square to the streetlights on King Street masquerading as gentlemen sporting wreaths with red bows around their necks, nothing put me in the spirit of Christmas more than walking through the streets of my city. I always waited with a child’s anticipation for the giant Santa hat to be placed on top of the turret of the house on the corner of Tradd and Meeting Streets. But as Jack and I drove to our appointment with Yvonne downtown, I barely noticed the red bows and greenery sprouting from most doors and iron gates. I was much too preoccupied with spirits other than the Christmas kind.
As usual, Jack had no problem finding parking near the Addlestone Library on the College of Charleston campus, where the South Carolina Historical Society archives were now housed. Yvonne Craig, long past retirement age, had turned down incentives to retire and instead had moved the few miles to the new location along with her precious documents. When she’d announced her decision, Jack had told her that she was one of the most important treasures found in the archives, and followed the compliment with a kiss on her soft pink cheek. I’d thought she might pass out.
Jack carried the shoebox of documents we’d received from Anthony, and I held the folder of misfiled materials Yvonne had given my dad. We’d already combed through all the papers, reading and then reading them again without seeing anything that caught our attention as being something we should investigate further. I supposed the cost of nails and sugar on an eighteenth-century plantation might have historical significance, but did not necessarily contain the seeds to overcome the goiter on the necks of our well-being, Marc Longo.
Neither Jack nor I was willing to believe that there wasn’t anything in those files that might lead us to any more hidden treasure. Or at least something that might be valuable enough to protect us against Marc’s next assault. We might be in a temporary truce now, but we weren’t naïve enough to believe that Marc wasn’t out there waiting to pounce like some feral cat outside a mousehole.
Our hopes were pinned on the indomitable Yvonne. She’d gleefully accepted the scanned documents Jack had sent her the previous day to go over before our meeting, just in case we’d missed something; she claimed that at her age she didn’t sleep much anyway. Besides, she’d said, she was hoping she could be instrumental in showing karma the way to Marc’s front door.
As we walked through the doors of the Addlestone Library, Jack’s face was grim, the dark smudges under his eyes making them appear more blue. Along with the dark stubble on his unshaven jaw, those smudges made him look like a marauding pirate on a mission, and I was glad that I was on his side. And in his bed.
I could only wish I looked that good when I hadn’t slept. Jack hadn’t come to bed last night, wanting to go through the files one more time, and all morning he’d been so preoccupied that he hadn’t even noticed the new labeling system I’d given his sock drawer during my labeling frenzy the previous day.
“There’s one thing I don’t understand,” he said, pausing inside the enormous glass rotunda where the previous summer the full skeletal remains of a T. rex had been on display. I’d wanted to bring the children, but Jayne said they were too young, and Nola had added that Sarah would be petrified if it started talking to her.
“Just one?” I asked, not meaning to sound sarcastic.
Not that it mattered. Jack’s face remained grim and I wasn’t even sure he’d heard me. “We know Marc wants our house. He’s admitted as much. So why not just sue us outright so we have to sell the house, and then they could film to their hearts’ content? Why make us believe that they’ll accept the insurance payout for the accident in return for the rights to film inside, and just let it go?”
We headed toward the third floor, where Yvonne said we’d find her
in the historic archives’ reading room. We walked slowly as we contemplated the implications. “Good point,” I said. We stopped walking and our eyes met. I swallowed. “Unless he needs us.”
Jack nodded. “Exactly what I was thinking. He must believe there’s something valuable hidden in the house that he has yet to find. And he’s hoping we’ll lead him to it.” His face darkened. “We just can’t afford to let him get there first.”
I nodded, the unease I’d felt before now blossoming into a full panic. There was no doubt in our minds that Marc had orchestrated Jack’s current situation with his publisher, so he was aware how vulnerable we were. Nola’s accident must have seemed like an answer to Marc’s prayers.
I could almost see the pall of gloomy thoughts surrounding Jack as we entered the reading room, with its dark wood tables clustered in the middle, each one with a reading light. The white walls were crowded with black bookshelves, the tan carpet a sponge absorbing our footsteps.
I spotted Yvonne, wearing her signature rose petal pink and her rope of pearls, emerge from the other side of the room. It was odd seeing her in a place so modern, with lots of glass and concrete, instead of against the backdrop of the centuries-old Fireproof Building, where she used to work. She was frowning as she approached, something else I wasn’t accustomed to, her hands outstretched toward me.
“Aren’t you both a sight for sore eyes?” she said, accepting cheek kisses from both of us. “I don’t think I’ve seen a person over twenty-five all week. I’ve actually begun to feel my age—especially against all this . . . newness.”
The library was a recent addition to the campus and was a far cry from the elegant balustrades, Ionic columns, and fine architectural details of the Fireproof Building. “It certainly is newer,” I agreed, pushing down the Sophie-like thought that the historical archives had no business sleeping beneath concrete and glass.
She sighed. “Yes, that’s true.” She grinned at Jack over the rims of her bifocals. “But as we all know, youth can be overrated.”
Jack grinned back, and I was relieved to see a bit of the light return to his eyes. “And I hope you can prove that, Yvonne, by telling me you found something.”
“I do believe I have,” she said, leading us toward a table near the back of the room.
Jack let out a breath. “Thank goodness. Because if you didn’t have anything new for us, we’d have to resort to our Plan B.”
“We have a Plan B?” I asked.
“Not yet,” he said, placing a hand on the small of my back as we followed Yvonne through the maze of mostly empty tables.
She indicated that we should sit down at one of them where a thick folder rested, causing my heart and stomach to jump in unison. Jack slid the shoebox toward Yvonne. “Here are the documents that were taken from the archives. We’ve already talked to our detective friend, who says that even though we’re pretty sure Marc Longo took them, it’s all circumstantial. But if I were you, I’d put his face with a line going across it on a poster near the entrance to the library.”
“And these,” I said, placing my own folder in front of me, “are copies of the papers you gave my dad that had been misfiled in the garden papers for the Tradd Street house. They’re a jumble of things but include building plans for both mausoleums at Gallen Hall Plantation. The best thing about these documents is that we’re fairly certain Marc Longo hasn’t seen them because they were filed in error separately from the other documents.”
I felt as if we were playing a game of poker, each of us carefully laying out our cards, with Yvonne our clever dealer. Beaming at us from behind her bifocals, she opened her own folder but kept her hand over the paper on top. “In addition to going through the documents you sent, I did a little digging on my own.”
She slid the top page toward us like a dealer in a casino, still covering it with her hand. “From what Melanie told me on the phone, Marc has seen, and possibly destroyed, an appointment diary once belonging to his grandfather, Joseph Longo, and in it, a picture of a drawing Joseph copied from a letter he’d found in the Vanderhorst home during a party.” She looked at me for corroboration, her eyes bright and shiny like those of a surgeon getting ready to cut.
I nodded.
“Marc’s brother also told you that in the archives that Marc stole and then”—she paused, as if in remembrance of a dearly departed loved one—“destroyed, he found a letter dated 1781 stating that a French visitor was coming to lay a wreath on the tomb of the Vanderhorsts’ beloved daughter, Marie Claire. I’ll keep looking, but sadly, I can’t find a copy of it or any other corroborating documentation about any visitors in 1781 to Gallen Hall. Either it doesn’t exist or Marc has already found and destroyed it.”
“But the Vanderhorsts at that time didn’t have a daughter,” Jack said.
“Precisely,” Yvonne said, finally lifting her hand from the paper. “This next part was easy. Here in the archives we have several tomes dedicated to various Charleston families—the original land-grant Charlestonians, who many still believe are the only true Charlestonians. We’re quite proud of our bloodlines, although some aren’t as blue as we’d like to think.” She winked. “Fortunately, the sheer number of sources makes it rather easy to find family trees and biographical information about them.”
We looked down and saw a photocopy of a biography taken from what appeared to be an ancient textbook. “This young woman Elizabeth Grosvenor—known as Eliza to her friends and family—wasn’t a daughter but did live with the family at the time as Mrs. Vanderhorst’s ward. Her mother and Mrs. Vanderhorst were distant cousins, and when young Eliza was orphaned, she came to live with the Vanderhorsts at their plantation known as Gallen Hall. She was still living there in 1781, the year the letter was written.”
Jack reached for the shoebox and began riffling through the contents before he pulled out a thin piece of paper, holding it out triumphantly. “I knew I recognized the name. Eliza was the one who purchased the first peacocks on the plantation. This is a purchase order for three pair, and her name appears at the bottom.”
“Well done,” Yvonne said, smiling at Jack as if he were her protégé.
I looked down at the paper Yvonne had given us; at the top-left corner there was what appeared to be an image from an oil painting, but the copy had all but blacked out her face.
Yvonne saw what I was looking at and explained, “The original portrait of Eliza is hanging at Gallen Hall. Of course you can’t see it here, but she was reputedly a real beauty. She left many broken hearts in her wake, both British and American.”
“An equal opportunity heartbreaker,” Jack said, examining the smudge of black ink as if to see beneath it.
“Hers was the first body to be interred in the second mausoleum,” Yvonne continued. “The first mausoleum remained empty until it was demolished. The first of three bodies interred in the newly built one, all in the same year—1782. To this day, they are the only three bodies in the mausoleum, and there were no further burials in the cemetery after that year, although the house was inhabited for more than two centuries afterward.”
“So sad,” I said, squinting at the larger print of her birth date on the bio: 1758. I recalled all the ways Sophie had told me a person could reach an early grave back in the days before antibiotics. “She was only twenty-three. Was it illness?”
Yvonne shook her head. “There’s nothing in the official record—which made me curious, of course. So I went back through the papers in the shoebox and found a letter from Carrollton Vanderhorst, the owner of Gallen Hall at the time, to the reverend at the local church about a substantial donation in return for a favor.”
Jack nodded eagerly. “I remember seeing that—something about requiring a particular area in the cemetery to be set aside for a new mausoleum, and asking the reverend if he could make it happen.” He began flipping through the papers again, finally pulling out a yellowed piece of thin
paper, delicate ink strokes scratched on one side. “Here it is. ‘In such circumstances, whereby church dictates a soul cannot be buried in consecrated ground, my heartbroken wife and I implore you to do whatever is necessary to allow a place where a soul might find peace, despite an unholy demise.’”
“When I read that,” Yvonne said, “I could think of only one thing.”
“Suicide,” Jack said quietly.
Yvonne nodded. “Yes, very tragic. Especially since she was beloved by the Vanderhorsts enough that they would make sure she was interred in the family cemetery. There’s nothing mentioning suicide anywhere, of course, because that would have been a terrible scandal. There’s simply no reference to what she died from, but back then dying young wasn’t as rare as it is now.”
“Why should Eliza be important to us?” I asked.
Yvonne said, “I wasn’t sure at first, either, so I kept digging. Jack mentioned that there were two mausoleums built in the same place, two years apart, and I saw the plans you sent me. So far, I haven’t seen anything that might explain why they tore down the first one, or what that cryptic message about a ‘Marie Claire’ might have meant. Except . . .” She slid another page in our direction.
Whoever had printed this page from what appeared to be an army supply journal had made sure that the font size had been blown up enough so I could read it. Not that it mattered, because it appeared to be only a list of four items: cognac, feathers of goldfinch, kitchen maid, Burgundy wine. “What is this?” I asked.
“Do you know who the Swamp Fox was?” Yvonne asked.
“Of course,” Jack said.
“No clue,” I said simultaneously.
We exchanged a quick glance before returning our focus to Yvonne.
