The Christmas Spirits on Tradd Street

by Karen White

  The doorbell rang, announcing the arrival of the party-rental people, and Jayne, Mrs. Houlihan, and I got busy directing the placement of the six extra tables in the front parlor, placing a white tablecloth on each. I began putting the centerpieces on the tables and attempting to zhush them as Greco had taught me, but I stopped when I realized Mrs. Houlihan was going right behind me and redoing them. And making them look much better.

  Wonderful baking smells wafted from the kitchen while we worked, making it hard to concentrate. Mrs. Houlihan had insisted on adding to the caterer’s menu with her famed tomato bisque, topped with chilled shrimp that her husband had caught off of Edisto the past summer and she’d set aside and frozen “just in case.”

  She’d also persuaded me to allow her to gift our dinner guests with small bags of goodies, including her praline pecans, homemade truffles, lemon cranberry tarts, and spicy iced peppermint shortbread cookies. I’d yet to taste a single bite of any of it, as Mrs. Houlihan seemed to have a sixth sense where I was concerned, always facing the kitchen door as if expecting me each time I tried to sneak in for a sample. She claimed that I didn’t know what a sample was and every time she’d allowed it in the past, she’d had to make another batch of whatever it was I’d sampled. I denied it, of course, blaming it on whoever else happened to be in the house, but she never believed me.

  My mother arrived around ten, after going with my father to the gardening store for tarps for his beloved Daphne evergreen shrubs and camellias to protect them from snow. They were hardy, winter-sustainable plants, but Dad wasn’t convinced that his Southern beauties would know how to handle icy rain or a thick coat of snow. I’d called him on his cell, asking him to get more tarps than he needed because Sophie was concerned about the cistern and exposing anything old to the frigid cold. I’d bit my tongue before I could make a comment about how it wasn’t possible to make a piece of garbage less valuable, refraining from speaking when I reminded myself that we were friends.

  Nola came downstairs around the same time my mother arrived. Nola wasn’t an early riser, so I was impressed she made it downstairs before noon on a Saturday. Mrs. Houlihan placed a cup of tea in one hand and I put a spreadsheet in the other, and then waited another fifteen minutes for her to completely wake up and get to work.

  She began with helping Mrs. Houlihan and me set the small tables with a mix of the Vanderhorst Imari and my mother’s borrowed Cartier wedding china with the narrow gold edges, which blended beautifully with the other pattern. The mix and match had been suggested by Greco, and I shook my head in wonder at how I’d found him on a recommendation from his good friend Rich Kobylt of the low-slung pants and pickup truck.

  I continued to keep an eye out the window as we worked, constantly checking the weather outside and on my phone and occasionally turning on the Weather Channel for corroboration that it wasn’t going to snow before Sunday morning. My life’s mantra was that if it was worth doing, it was worth doing three times.

  Nola and I were folding napkins in elegant tepee shapes following Jayne’s directions—she’d apparently learned how to fold any material into any shape in nanny school—when Jack appeared at the top of the stairs. “Mellie?”

  I quickly dropped the linen square and took the stairs two at a time. He still looked pale and not at all well, but there was a little flush of color to his cheeks. “You shouldn’t be out of bed.”

  “Probably not,” he agreed, “but I think I just figured out what those colors mean.” He leaned into me and I put my arms around his shoulders. His knees seemed to bend a bit and I struggled to keep him upright. Jayne ran up the stairs and stood on his other side, slipping her arm around his waist.

  “Should I come up, too?” Nola called.

  “No, your aunt Jayne and I can handle this.”

  “But I was the one—”

  “Yes, you helped us figure out about the umber.” It was hard to forget since she’d been bringing it into every conversation since the previous evening. “And we’re grateful—but those napkins won’t fold themselves. You can borrow my ruler to make sure the sides are all equal—I left it on the table next to you.”

  Jayne and I carefully led Jack back to bed, although I had to move the notebook and about ten crumpled balls of paper off first. I frowned down at him as I adjusted the pillow beneath his head. “Did you work on this instead of sleeping?”

  The half grin he gave me was so devastatingly familiar that my anger quickly evaporated, as I’m sure had been his intention. “Maybe.”

  “Jack! How are you going to get better if you don’t take care of yourself?”

  “All I need to do is look at your beautiful face, and I immediately feel better.” He looked behind me to where Jayne stood, her arms folded. “How was that?”

  Jayne attempted to hide a smile beneath her frown. “Terrible. And Melanie’s right, Jack. You need your sleep.”

  I gave her a quick nod of gratitude. “Now go to sleep and we’ll talk later. We’ve got to get ready for the party.” I reached for the lamp, but Jack put a hand on my arm. “Let me show you first—and then I’ll go to sleep. Promise.”

  I slid the notebook out from under the pile of rumpled paper and handed it to him.

  “See,” he said, jabbing his finger at what appeared to be a lot of gibberish. “My mistake is that I thought this should be more complicated than it is.”

  “Like looking for zebras instead of horses,” Jayne said.

  “Exactly.” Jack sent Jayne an appreciative glance.

  As if guessing I had no clue what she was talking about, Jayne explained, “I used to work for a doctor and her family, and she told me that new doctors are always looking for the bizarre diseases when examining symptoms rather than considering the everyday, common-cold-type thing.”

  “Ah,” I said, looking at the jumbled words on the notebook.

  Jack coughed and I handed him a glass of water I kept filled on his nightstand. “So,” he said, “I spent a couple of hours going over all the code books I have to see if I could break this out. It’s only four words, and Nola had already done the hardest part, figuring out the color connection, so I figured I should be able to figure out the rest.” Jack paused a moment to lay his head back against the pillow and catch his breath.

  “Anyway,” he continued, “after a lot of wasted time, I just went back to the most basic of all codes—letter substitution and first letters. Looking for horses instead of zebras, so to speak. It’s pretty elementary, but I suspect that whoever came up with the original list of supplies thought it was a good enough coded hint that any additional cipher was just a precaution and didn’t need to be as involved.”

  I followed his finger down the page, where I saw his attempts at making words using various letter orders, then watched as he turned the page, where a single word was written in shaky block print. R-U-B-Y. “Red, umber, brown, and yellow,” I said out loud. “So simple, yet so diabolical when you’re looking for something so much harder.”

  Jayne rubbed her forehead. “So the French king gave the Marquis de Lafayette a valuable ruby to secretly give to someone—possibly a spy—at Gallen Hall to support the American cause. And I’m only saying ‘spy’ since the Vanderhorsts were loyalists, correct?”

  Jack nodded, as if the effort it took to speak was wearing on him. But I knew I couldn’t stop him at this point. Being tenacious and smart was one of the things I loved the most about him, and I knew it would be pointless to make him stop talking now and relax.

  The deep V above his nose suddenly cleared as his eyes widened with realization. “But not just one ruby,” he said excitedly. “Four. And what place better to hide valuable jewels than in a piece of costume jewelry? Remember the brooch Eliza is wearing in her portrait—the peacock. I’m sure it’s the same brooch I told you about from the vision Jolly had. It had four jewels in it.”

  Jayne nodded while I tried
to keep relaxed. Jolly had told me about her vision of the man with the brooch following Jack, but Jack hadn’t. Up until that moment, I’d still been waiting. But apparently he’d told Jayne. Part of me wanted to believe it was an oversight—he’d been sick and everything was so crazed right now—but part of me felt the old sense of being left out.

  “The jewels weren’t all red, though,” I said, remembering the portrait and the times I’d seen Eliza. I sounded bossy and realized this might be my attempt to feel relevant.

  “True,” Jayne said. She looked at Jack. “They could have been disguised, right? Maybe some kind of stain or watercolor paint?”

  Jack smiled with approval. “That’s what I was thinking. Stick multicolored jewels into a pinchbeck brooch, and nobody would know what they were hiding.”

  “Then where are the four rubies?” I asked.

  Jack shook his head slowly. “I know it has something to do with the mausoleum—the way it was destroyed and rebuilt two brick rows higher. It has to mean something. It can’t be a coincidence that it was rebuilt the year after Lafayette supposedly brought the treasure into the country.”

  “And the three people interred there have to be connected, too,” Jayne added. “Since they all died the same year that the treasure was supposedly delivered to Gallen Hall.”

  I sat down on the edge of the bed, suddenly aware of the signet ring I still had on my finger. It felt very warm, almost burning my skin with its heat. I remembered what my mother had said when she’d held it, the feeling of heartbreak, and the kiss Greco had received while wearing the ring. The wet boot prints after Greco had left. And I recalled, too, what Jolly had told me about the man following Jack, and the specter’s own broken heart.

  I looked up with a small gasp, knowing with certainty who the spy was. And the meaning of the word lies. More important, if I didn’t know exactly where the rubies were hidden, I knew where to look to find them.

  “What?” Jack asked, his eyes barely slits as he fought his exhaustion.

  “It can wait. We have a party to get ready for.” I stood and tucked the covers around him. “You get some sleep. We’ll talk more tomorrow.”

  “Mellie . . .” My name was a word of warning, but I pretended I didn’t hear it as I bent down to kiss his forehead, then ushered Jayne out of the room.

  “What was that all about?” Jayne asked as I led her to the stairs.

  “What do you mean?”

  “You gasped, and I don’t know if it’s because I’m psychic or because we’re sisters, but whatever it is you’re thinking, I don’t have a good feeling about it.”

  “The only thing I’m thinking about right now is this party and getting everything ready before the first guest arrives. And then we can figure out where the rubies are.”

  Jayne right behind me, I continued my hurried pace down the stairs, aware of her worried gaze following my every step.

  CHAPTER 32

  I clasped my grandmother’s pearls behind my neck, feeling odd to be doing it alone. Jack and my usual going-out ritual involved me lifting my hair and Jack lingering on the fastenings of my necklace, then finishing with a soft kiss beneath my ear. He was only in the adjacent bedroom, but I missed him as if he were in another country on an extended trip. I’d never seen him have so much as a cold, so to have him confined to bed for nearly a week was unsettling. It was as if the carousel we’d been riding had suddenly switched directions, and I couldn’t quite get my bearings.

  I stopped by the bedroom to see if Jack needed anything before I went downstairs. He was propped up on pillows so he could breathe better; pill bottles and a filled water jug sat next to him on the bedside table. He had a large textbook open on his lap, and I recognized it as Greco’s great-uncle’s book about spies.

  He watched me approach, that gleam in his eye only partially clouded with medicine. “You look beautiful,” he said.

  I sat down on the edge of the bed, making sure I avoided the trash can that was halfway filled with used tissues even though I’d emptied it only a couple of hours before. “Feeling a little better?”

  He nodded. “Mrs. Houlihan brought me up some of her tomato bisque and a plate of her cookies. I actually had enough of an appetite to enjoy them.”

  I looked around for the plate. “Did you eat them all? Or at least save me a crumb?”

  “Sorry—I ate every last bite. I’m sure there are more downstairs.”

  “Oh, yes. Tons. I’m just not allowed to have any.” I folded my arms.

  “You do realize Mrs. Houlihan works for you, right?”

  “Yes, but . . .” He was right, of course. Having been raised by a military father, I had an almost unnatural respect for authority, and going against her wishes always seemed a bit like insubordination. “It’s complicated,” I said. Changing the subject, I tapped the book in front of him. “Find anything interesting?”

  “Not sure. I’m trying to determine who the major players were in the peacock spy ring. Carrollton Vanderhorst, Lawrence’s father, was a known loyalist, but after the Revolution, he retained all of his lands on the Ashley River. Nothing was confiscated as punishment for supporting the wrong side.”

  “Interesting,” I said. “What about Lawrence?”

  “Defender of the Crown, through and through. A little fanatical about it—which could be why Carrollton kept his true beliefs secret from his son.”

  “Speaking of Carrollton, Greco’s uncle, the historian, says that father and son were estranged. And apparently Lawrence’s murderer came from Gallen Hall—two sets of footprints leading from the house, and only one returning. But no one was ever arrested.”

  Jack raised his eyebrows. “That certainly fuels the fire of the stories of how they were rooting for opposite sides.”

  I nodded. “And one more thing. St. Gallen was the patron saint of birds. I don’t think that’s a coincidence.”

  “Definitely not.” He leaned across the bed and picked up a photocopied page. “Yvonne faxed this to me this morning—Nola brought it up for me so I didn’t have to bother you. It’s from an architectural design book she found in the archives about Charleston’s cemeteries. There’s quite a large section regarding the mausoleum at Gallen Hall.”

  He handed it to me, but when he saw me squinting, he took it back. “Should I just paraphrase?”

  “My glasses are downstairs, just so you know. I was using them this morning to measure napkin folds.”

  He was silent for a moment before he continued. “Carrollton Vanderhorst was the one who had the original mausoleum built in 1780, as a family crypt, which is why there were ten niches in the original plan. But he’s also the one who ordered it destroyed two years later and had his son, his son’s fiancée, and the British soldier interred there. Carrollton planned the addition of the two rows as well as commissioned all of the wrought iron for the fence around the periphery, the front gate, and the mausoleum door gate. There were two more gates designed for the cemetery, but they disappeared after Hurricane Hugo in ’eighty-nine. The remaining iron fencing miraculously survived.”

  I squinted at the page, wishing I could see. “So there were three gates designed for the redo, but only the front gate along with the mausoleum door survived?”

  Jack nodded. “Apparently. Samuel Vanderhorst designed and made all of them. But there’s one last bit of info that I find the most promising.”

  He plucked his reading glasses off the collar of his pajamas and then reached under the heavy textbook to pull out a small leather-bound volume. “This rare gem was actually discovered by Cooper at the Citadel library. They have an impressive collection of books about South Carolinians with military backgrounds—of which Carrollton Vanderhorst was one. Apparently, he led several militias up in Virginia during the early years of the French and Indian War. George Washington himself referred to Vanderhorst as his ‘great strategist.’ When I re
ad that, the next part started to make sense to me.”

  He flipped the book open to where a clean tissue was being used as a bookmark. “Carrollton died in January 1783 of a”—he paused for a moment to find the correct wording—“‘bilious liver.’ Apparently he’d been ill for several years, so his death wasn’t unexpected. That’s why he’d had the original mausoleum built to begin with, along with a brick wall to surround the cemetery.” Jack’s gaze met mine. “So, let’s assume that Carrollton finds himself in possession of four valuable jewels for the patriot cause. But he’s dying, and whoever the spy was isn’t there to help him, and maybe he doesn’t know who to trust with the jewels. After all, Alexander and Lawrence have been murdered by a person or persons unknown, so there’s real danger if he’s found with the rubies. Remember, the genius military commander Washington referred to Carrollton as a ‘great strategist,’ so I’m thinking he’s pretty clever. So he figures a cunning way to hide the jewels and uses clues to lead the way just in case he dies before he can find out what to do with the rubies.”

  “Except maybe he was too clever, and no one did.” I thought of the drawings I’d given to Anthony, along with the photo of the gate insert and how now would be the time to share what I knew. “I . . .”

  Jack spoke at the same time, and I allowed him to continue. “Why would the ghost of a man holding the brooch—and I’m assuming it’s Lawrence since of the three buried in the mausoleum, he’s the only male who wasn’t a soldier—be at the cistern? It’s nowhere near Gallen Hall. Maybe he’s there protecting the jewels.”

  “It’s possible, I suppose. Even though this house wasn’t built until the earlier part of the nineteenth century, there was another house here before it, owned by the Vanderhorsts. When they tore down the first mausoleum and brick wall at the Gallen Hall cemetery, Sophie believes they probably used some of the bricks to build this cistern. People reused bricks all the time back then simply because it was more economical. So, a spirit connected to the old cemetery could possibly feel a connection to the cistern because of that.” I gave him a crooked smile. “Just because I see them doesn’t mean I understand them.”