The Christmas Spirits on Tradd Street

by Karen White

  I backed away quickly, unwilling to wait for whatever it was to show itself. I continued to walk in reverse until I reached the doorway, not brave enough to turn my back on the window. I saw her then. Eliza. She stood by the bedpost, staring at it as if she were as surprised by the bees as I was.

  I remembered Jack telling me to ask Eliza about her brooch. I knew it didn’t usually work that way, but I was tired of waiting for the message to come to me. I wanted to be left alone, to focus on Jack and our family and my career again. To resume normal lives that didn’t involve swarming bees, specters haunting the backyard, and reporters asking questions I didn’t want to answer.

  Eliza was more shadow than light, but the green of her dress gleamed like an emerald in the moonlight, the sparkle of the jeweled brooch on her bodice winking at me. “Eliza.” I kept my voice light, mingling it with the buzzing of the bees, not wanting to scare her into vanishing.

  She looked directly at me. At least I sensed that she was looking at me. I wasn’t sure—her face and body were swathed in shadow—but I felt her gaze on me. Despite the darkness that enshrouded her, the jewels on her brooch seemed lit from within, small beacons of light. I felt compelled to look at it, to notice something. I squinted out of habit but was close enough to see the shape of the bird, the fanned tail. The four stones seemed to mock me as I struggled to understand what Eliza was trying to tell me.

  “What is it?” I whispered. “What do you want me to see?”

  Lies. For a moment it was if the buzzing of the bees had mimicked the sound, the cold breath of a corpse washing over me as the word swirled around the room telling me that it hadn’t been.

  “Eliza?” I whispered, but she was gone, along with the bees and the buzzing and the smell of gunpowder. I waited for a moment, attempting to catch my breath, and then, with trembling hands, I reached for the door and left the room, gently latching the door closed behind me. I spotted the light in the foyer and ran down the stairs, knowing Jack was on the other side of that light and could make it all better.

  Jack’s study door was open, the green-shaded banker’s lamp on his desk giving pale light to the room. I stopped on the threshold, breathing heavily, not seeing Jack at first. Yet I definitely smelled . . . pipe smoke? “Jack?” I called, hoping another ghost wasn’t waiting for me. One per night was more than enough.

  “Over here.”

  My gaze followed the voice, stopping at the corner behind the piano where Amelia had placed a lovely leather Chesterfield chair and ottoman, for times when he wanted to read quietly or just think in his office. I rarely saw him use them, as he did most of his thinking either walking around the room or sitting at his desk. But he was sitting in the chair now, in the near dark, his feet on the ottoman. And smoking a pipe.

  I had so many questions that it was hard to pick one to start with. “Why are you smoking a pipe?” I managed.

  He took it from his mouth and looked at it as if surprised to see it. “I know you disapprove of cigarettes, and cigars stink, but I thought you’d be okay with a pipe. My grandfather left me his collection when he died, and Mr. Vanderhorst was kind enough to leave several tins of tobacco in the freezer.”

  “But you don’t smoke.”

  He shrugged. “No, I really don’t. But I didn’t want to start drinking again, and smoking was the next best thing. And it worked for Sherlock Holmes—he always smoked a pipe when solving complex puzzles. Besides, after I’m gone, the pipe smoke will let you know that I’m hanging around.” He offered a half smile.

  “Don’t say that, Jack.” I wasn’t sure if my concern was more over him mentioning his death or over his need for a drink. I walked across the room and stopped near his chair. “What’s happened?”

  A crease formed above his nose as if he was trying to remember. “Well, for starters, when I woke up at three in the morning, the first thought in my head was that I needed a drink.” He took a long puff from his pipe, then coughed a little. “It’s been years since I had that thought first thing.” His eyes met mine, and I felt the heat of his gaze. “I usually have better things to think about when I wake up.”

  A flash of heat spiraled up from my core, nearly making me dizzy as it reached my head. He’d had that effect on me since we’d first met. I took a deep breath. “Has something happened?”

  “Do you want the good news or the bad news first?”

  “Let’s start with the good news,” I suggested, thinking in the back of my head that maybe I could distract him from telling me the bad news.

  “I heard from Steve Dungan, my architect friend. He finally looked at the building plans for both mausoleums, examining all the measurements, comparing the width and length of all the walls, the angles of the triangle that forms the structure, looking for any differences.” He sucked on the pipe, his eyes closed briefly. When he blew out the smoke, I smelled a not-unpleasing mixture of sweetness and spice.

  “And?” I prompted.

  “He found only two changes from the original. The first is that the original mausoleum had spaces for ten crypts, not just the three that are there now. The other thing he noticed is that the second mausoleum is exactly two brick widths taller than the first.”

  I thought for a moment. “The row of bricks with the strange markings is two bricks wide. Which tells me that the whole purpose of rebuilding the mausoleum was to add that double row.”

  “Yeah, so that might be the reason why the first mausoleum was demolished and replaced with a nearly identical one two years later. Hopefully we’ll figure out what the reason was when we finish the puzzle on Jayne’s dining room table.” He raised his eyebrows. “Maybe you can ask the ghost of Sherlock Holmes for help on that one for me?”

  I frowned. “You do know he’s a fictional character, right?”

  Jack leaned his head against the back of his chair and looked at me through half-closed eyes. “Sure. Just trying to keep my fantasy world intact so I can still write books.” He tilted his head slightly. “You look real sexy with your hair like that—all rumpled from sleep.”

  I smiled, glad not only that distracting Jack was going to be easier than I’d thought, but also that I didn’t have to listen to the bad news. I took a step closer, his eyes following me.

  “And then there’s the bad news,” he said, and I stopped.

  He lifted his head. “I made the mistake of checking my e-mail instead of trying to go back to sleep. My brilliant editor, whom I’m beginning to believe really must be a twelve-year-old boy in disguise, told me that in a marketing meeting where all the powers that be discuss what to do with problem children—books they don’t know how to market, that is—the brilliant suggestion had been made to convert my next book into a graphic novel.”

  “A graphic novel? What’s that?”

  “Basically? A cartoon. They’re going for that younger market.”

  “But your book is about a mentally ill mother with Munchausen syndrome by proxy who kills her daughter. Not sure how that would translate into a cartoon.”

  “Bingo. You don’t know how refreshing it is to hear the voice of reason. It’s rare in the publishing business, apparently.”

  “But they can’t do that if you don’t agree to it, right? And if you don’t, you’ll just find another publisher.”

  He barked out a laugh, a dark, ugly sound. “If it were only that easy. If there’s such a thing as being blackballed, that’s what would happen to me. Nobody is taking my phone calls or returning my e-mails. I couldn’t find a new agent right now unless I could prove I was the reincarnation of Margaret Mitchell. It’s like I’m the plague and nobody wants to be infected.”

  I sat on the edge of the ottoman, unsure of my role. He was always the one with the answers. The first person I ran to. It was hard to reconcile the accomplished man with the chiseled face and piercing eyes with this man referring to himself as an infectious disease. For an
instant I considered looking past this moment to the next, of closing my eyes to a problem I had no idea how to solve and telling him what I’d just seen upstairs, hoping that answering the question of Eliza would make him forget about his own.

  But I couldn’t do any of those things. Because Jack needed me. Needed me to be strong and to shoulder some of the problem solving on my own. I had a small fantasy where I figured out what Eliza was trying to tell me tonight and it was the key to everything. I imagined solving it all and handing it to Jack and him immediately turning it all into a bestselling novel. Maybe that’s why my grandmother had called. To tell me I needed to take care of things, to protect Jack while he dealt with his personal demons.

  Placing my hands on his leg, I leaned forward and said, “This is all temporary, Jack. You’ve got a great book already written, and the idea for another one—you’re not out of the game. Not by a long shot. You’ve got a respected body of work and that alone speaks volumes.”

  He blew out a puff of smoke, temporarily obscuring his face. “I want to believe that. You have no idea how much. But, Mellie, my career is my identity. I’m a writer. A bestselling author. Without that, who am I?”

  I leaned closer. “You’re a father, a son, and a husband. And you’re damned good at all three of those roles, and those are a heck of a lot more important than anything else.” I tried to think of what else might jolt him from his despondency, but I was woefully lacking in the ability to give a pep talk. As an only child and a single woman for most of my adult life, I hadn’t learned that skill. Maybe, just this once, I’d revert to the old Mellie and pretend that Jack’s despondency didn’t exist. It was simple, really. I just wouldn’t allow it.

  “Do you mean that?” he said, his voice smoky.

  I stood, took the pipe from his hand, and placed it in a crystal ashtray on the table next to him. Then I straddled his lap, his hands moving under my robe and resting on my waist. “I do. I couldn’t pick a better father for my children. I am also hopelessly and ceaselessly in love with you, Jack Trenholm. Whatever profession you choose.”

  His hands caressed my sides through the thin fabric of my nightgown, doing wild things to my nerve endings. “Show me,” he whispered in my ear.

  So I did.

  CHAPTER 24

  When I got home after work the next day, I threw open the door to the piazza, intent on rushing upstairs to Nola’s room to see any lingering evidence that Eliza or the bees had been there the previous night. I’d been running late for work that morning and both Sarah and JJ had been out of sorts, begging to be held, and I hadn’t had the time to investigate. I stopped short at the sight of Greco hanging a Christmas wreath on the front door. I walked more sedately toward him, then stood back so we could both admire it.

  “What happened to the wreath that was there? I made it, you know. At the workshop I ran benefiting Ashley Hall.”

  Greco stepped forward to rearrange a strand of holly berries and adjust the enormous, intricately knotted red velvet bow. “Oh, it’s in there. I loved your color scheme—you did a nice job of that. It just needed a bit of . . . zhushing.”

  “Zhushing?”

  He nodded. “It’s a technical term designers use that means ‘adding to’ or ‘expanding.’ In layman’s terms, it’s taking something skimpy and inelegant and re-creating it as something a client might actually be proud to have in her home. Or to hang on her front door.”

  I probably should have been offended, but he was annoyingly right. Compared to this elegant and gorgeous confection, mine had been a puny impostor. Even Jack had had a difficult time coming up with a convincing compliment. Nola had just called it sad.

  I peered closely at it. “So my wreath is somewhere underneath all this . . . zhushing?”

  He nodded. “Yes. Somewhere very deep.” He turned around to indicate the glass hurricane lamps that lined the perimeter of the piazza. “And I switched out your luminaries. I didn’t think paper bags were the best look, and the fake candles inside looked, well, fake. I found these electric candles that not only appear real but aren’t nearly as tacky as some of those less expensive ones.”

  I started to protest, but he held out his hands. “My treat. Your mother and mother-in-law are being so generous with the redo of Nola’s room that I felt I needed to up my game a bit. I hope you don’t mind.”

  I looked at the hurricane lamps, each one spotless and sporting an ivory candle in a brass candlestick. It was impossible to tell the candles weren’t real. “Do the flames flicker like actual candles?”

  Greco looked offended. “Of course. They’re also on timers so that they turn on at dusk and turn off at sunrise. The best part is that Dr. Wallen-Arasi approves. She says they look like the sort of lighting they had during Colonial times, so they will be appropriate for the progressive dinner—and safer than real flames. She actually likes them so much that she wants more to be placed throughout the entire house so there won’t be a need for more obviously electric lights the night of the dinner.”

  “Great,” I said, picturing diners stumbling around my house in the near dark, the spirits rousing due to the lack of bright lights to deter them. I looked up at him. “Did you say Dr. Wallen-Arasi? Did you see her?”

  “She’s inside. She arrived about twenty minutes ago and I let her in. I hope you don’t mind. She didn’t see the replacement window brochures on the hall table, if that’s what you’re worried about. Although I’m not sure I shouldn’t have mentioned them to her, since everyone knows repairing your historic windows is much more economical in the long run.”

  “Thanks, Greco. And if you’d like to pay for the repairs, I’ll ask Nola to start one of those GoFundMe accounts and let you know.”

  He picked up two shopping bags from Hyams Garden and Accent Store, several boughs of fresh pine poking out of the tops. “I’m going home to make potpourri with these, and I’ll bring it tomorrow inside some of my vintage silver pomander balls—all very kosher, as I explained to Dr. Wallen-Arasi. Nothing on the inside or outside of my potpourri isn’t authentic to the Colonial period.”

  “That’s a relief.” I pretended to wipe sweat off my brow. I was fairly certain that Greco knew about my lukewarm feelings toward authenticity when it came to the bottom line. I was all about the bottom line and convenience. I think he appreciated this and might even have been enjoying his role as referee between Sophie and me. “Did they even have potpourri back in the day? I thought that was more of a modern invention by stores like Abercrombie & Fitch to get people to come inside.”

  He stared at me for a long moment, and I wondered if his eyes looked funny because he was trying very hard not to roll them. “No, actually. Potpourri has been around since early civilizations. I think its usage correlates to the level of hygiene practiced by humans of the time period. In Colonial days, with no running water and certainly very rarely heated, people didn’t bathe much, especially in the winter. Try to imagine body odor on top of that of wet wool, and you can perhaps come close to what it must have smelled like in the average home. Hence potpourri.”

  It was my turn to stare at him. “I didn’t know that, and I might even have been happy continuing in my ignorance, but thank you.”

  “You’re welcome.” He twisted a blue cashmere scarf around his neck. “By the way, that word that was scratched into the wall that I sanded out is back again. I wanted to let you know that I’m aware of it, and I’m on it.” He smiled, touched his forehead in a mock salute, then walked toward the piazza door.

  “Thank you,” I said to his retreating back, amazed that he was more concerned about concealing the word than why it was there or what it might mean.

  I glanced at my watch, then hurried through the front door, letting it slam behind me. I had quickly taken off my coat and hung it up, buttoning every single button because that’s the way it should be done, when I turned around and nearly ran into Jayne.


  “Sorry!” I said. “I was running a bit late and then stopped to chat with Greco outside. But I’m here, so you can leave now. Twins good today?” I thrust my hand into the closet and grabbed her coat, having to unbutton only the top button.

  “Little angels, as usual. That Sarah is running all over the place and babbling up a storm. JJ prefers to be carried everywhere and to build stuff with whatever he can find. Hard to believe they’re related, except they both look like Jack.”

  “Hard to believe,” I repeated, placing my hand on her shoulder and gently propelling her to the door.

  “They’re catnapping in their cribs, so they should be good for another thirty minutes or so.” She looked at my hand on her shoulder, then into my eyes. “Why are you so eager to get rid of me?”

  I looked past her toward the small carriage clock on the table in the foyer and walked a little faster. “I’m not trying to get rid of you, but didn’t you say you had to leave a little earlier today? That’s why I rushed back.”

  She stopped. “It’s not an emergency or anything, Melanie. I’m just going to see Anthony in the hospital.”

  I paused with my hand on the doorknob. “He’s in the hospital?”

  “Yeah—they’re not sure what’s wrong with him. It’s some kind of virus, they think, but they can’t figure it out. He can’t keep down any food or liquid, so he’s hooked up to an IV.”

  I met her concerned gaze. “And he’s been that way since we were all in the cemetery?”

  She nodded. “I think he’s . . . susceptible to evil spirits. Remember his car accident?”

  “But I thought Marc had done something to his car.”

  “Could be, but he did tell Thomas he saw someone or something in his backseat right before the accident, and then he was pushed down the stairs when he was alone in the house, and now this. I can’t imagine how Marc could cause Anthony to be this sick. I’m thinking the negative presence we keep sensing is having an effect on Anthony because he’s trying to dig for answers that whatever it is doesn’t want him to find.” She took a deep breath. “I’m going to tell Anthony he should move into my house when they stabilize him enough to release him from the hospital. It’s a big house, and I’ll be there to make sure nothing happens to him. And he’ll be away from the cemetery.”