by Eva Gates
“So folks say. Parts of this area went back and forth between the armies in the early months of the war before the area finally fell to the Yankees in the summer of 1862.”
“Were your ancestors here at that time?” Grace asked.
Curtis sat a bit straighter in his chair. “My many-times-great-grandfather was an important man in the Confederate army. My family’s very proud of his record of service. And,” he said, winking at her, “some that’s not on the record, but should be.”
Mrs. Fitzgerald smothered a laugh, and Curtis glared at her.
“Journey to the Center of the Earth was written two years later,” Charity said. “Do you think that’s just a coincidence?”
“Yes,” I said.
“Where there are armies,” Curtis said, “there are always camp followers and deserters, looking for opportunities to loot whatever they can get their hands on.”
“What rubbish.” Steph was a defense lawyer, in partnership with my Uncle Amos. Steph loved nothing more than a good argument. “What sort of treasure would a nineteenth-century fishing or farm family have had? A chamber pot? Great-grandma’s milk churn?”
“It’s true the Outer Banks was a mighty poor place back in those days,” Mrs. Fitzgerald said, “but moneyed families spent their summers here, even then.”
“That’s right,” Curtis said.
“All this speculation means absolutely nothing,” Theodore said. “We don’t know what the page says, and we probably never will.”
“Whatever,” Curtis said. “Let’s go, babe.”
Diane put away her phone. “Maybe it’s a jewel, like in Titanic,” she said to Curtis. “The Heart of the Ocean, it was called. That would look nice on me, don’t you think?”
“Then again,” Louise Jane said, “maybe we don’t want to find it. We have to consider that it might be cursed. Did the curse get Jeremy Hughes?”
“I’ll mention that to Sam.” CeeCee Watson’s back was to Louise Jane, and she threw me a wink. “He’s always interested in your theories.”
“And so he should be,” Louise Jane replied as the group clattered down the spiral iron staircase.
So offended was Charles at having been ignored, he didn’t even bother coming out to say good night.
Chapter Fifteen
Precisely at twelve noon on Thursday, I marched into town hall, heading for the mayor’s office.
“Is he in?” I asked his assistant.
“He is, and nothing came up. His calendar’s free for the rest of the afternoon.”
We smiled at each other, co-conspirators.
She picked up the phone on her desk. “Connor, someone’s here to see you. I tried to get rid of her, but she’s a determined one and won’t take no for an answer.”
I leaned over the desk and spoke into the receiver. “I can be stubborn that way.”
“Lucy?”
“The one and only.”
“Come on in.”
“I happen to know,” I said after I’d returned his kiss, “that you’re free all afternoon. Come with me.”
“Where are we going?”
“Not telling,” I said. “Think of it as a kidnapping.” I took his hand and led him out of the office.
“Have a nice afternoon,” his assistant called.
“Are you in on this?” he asked her.
She only smiled and turned her attention back to her computer.
I had today off, and the weather forecast said this would be the final day of the intense heat. First thing this morning, I’d checked with Connor’s assistant to see if he was free this afternoon, and she told me his last meeting ended at eleven thirty. I told her what I was planning, and she promised to alert me if something came up. I had a fully loaded picnic basket and a blanket in the trunk of my car, and we were going to the beach.
Connor picked a Boston Red Sox ball cap off the front seat and was about to toss it in the back, but I said, “You’ll want to wear that.”
“I will, will I?”
“Yes, you will. You’re going to be hot in that suit, I’m afraid, but I don’t happen to have a man’s bathing suit lying around my apartment.”
“You’re forcing me to leave the office on a Thursday afternoon and go to the beach?” he said with a laugh. “Diabolical.”
I gave him a smile and was pleased to get a giant one in return.
When we got to Coquina Beach, I opened the trunk and showed him the picnic basket. He carried it over the dunes, and I followed with the blanket and an umbrella. We found a quiet spot and set ourselves up. Connor sat down and pulled off his shoes and socks. He’d left the suit jacket and tie in the car. While he made himself comfortable, I poured icy-cold lemonade into plastic glasses and laid out our lunch. I’d stopped at the market and bought a selection of cold meat and cheese, along with some fresh fruit, and then at Josie’s for sandwich buns and something for dessert.
We clinked glasses and took our first sips. I kicked off my sandals and tucked the skirt of my sundress under my legs.
Connor began to assemble his sandwich. “You can kidnap me any day, Lucy Richardson.”
We ate our lunch and watched the activity on the crowded beach. The waves along this stretch of the coast can get high, making swimming dangerous, but today the ocean was calm, and people splashed and played in the surf. Further down the beach, multicolored kites swooped low over the water, searching for a breeze.
“Are you still planning to come to the fair on Sunday?” I asked.
“I am. It sounds like fun. It’s supposed to be a lot cooler, and that should help get people out for a day in the sun. Tomorrow I’m scheduled to spend the day at my practice.”
Connor was a dentist. He intended to complete this term as mayor and then return full-time to his profession. Meanwhile, he opened the office one day a week, for long-standing patients and some pro bono work.
“Were you disappointed at book club last night?” he asked. “Not getting into much of a discussion about the book?”
“More like I’m sick and tired of that blasted code page. Every time I swear I’m never going to look at it again, I find myself looking at it again. Maybe it is cursed, like Louise Jane said. And the curse is that the reader is condemned to search forever for the solution. A librarian’s version of The Flying Dutchman.”
“It might be unsolvable,” he said. “Particularly if it’s not in English.”
“Even if it is in English, we can’t seem to do anything without the key. Professor McClanahan called me this morning and said he’s making no progress. He’s got a whole bunch of degrees in linguistics, so if anyone can solve it, it should be him. They must have code-breaking computer software somewhere. Maybe military intelligence or the CIA could help us with that.”
“You could always ask Sam. Although I don’t think the CIA would be prepared to offer you much help with a woman’s diary that’s a century and a half out of date.”
“We can’t even argue that it would provide a clue in the murder case. Deciphering the code isn’t going to be any sort of help with that. Unless, I suppose, the killer manages to figure it out and … does whatever the code leads him or her to do.”
“Assuming it leads to something and wasn’t just a couple of lovers planning an illicit rendezvous.”
“Or a Civil War spy’s report.”
“That’s probably the most believable scenario of them all,’ Connor said. “If it’s that, it would have considerable interest to historians, if no one else.”
“What’s this about Curtis being a Civil War buff? I didn’t know that.”
“Neither did I,” Connor said, “but there’s a story there. He was bragging about his ancestor, and Mrs. Fitzgerald was having none of it.”
“Imagine that,” I said with a laugh. “A Southerner bragging about his ancestor.”
“I must confess, I might have done it a time or two myself. Pass me one of those squares, will you? They look delicious.”
“Josie calls
it dream cake. It’s a family recipe. I remember it from my childhood summers.”
He bit into the buttery pastry, and a look of pure delight crossed his handsome face.
I had a slice of the cake too, and we munched in blissful silence. We sat on the beach for a long time, sipping the last of the lemonade, nibbling grapes, watching kites alternatively dancing in the air and struggling to remain aloft, and people enjoying the hot sun and the cool water, and talked about nothing much at all.
“As much as I hate to say it,” Connor said eventually, “I need to get back. I have some reports to get finished for Monday meetings, and I won’t have time over the weekend. Not if I want to get to the Settlers’ Day thing.”
I stretched and reluctantly began packing up the remains of our picnic.
“What’s your role on Sunday?” he asked as he folded the umbrella.
“I don’t have one. And I’m thrilled about that. I’d like to just enjoy it, although I’ll probably get roped into helping set up chairs or supervising kids in the construction zone.”
“Weather’s about to turn.” He pointed out to sea, to a line of fluffy white clouds as threatening as marshmallows, gathering on the far horizon. “Storm coming.”
“If it breaks this heat before Sunday,” I said, “that’ll be very welcome. We don’t want people collapsing on the lawn from sunstroke or heat exhaustion.”
I took Connor back to town hall and then drove home full of a warm, happy glow.
* * *
My warm and happy glow didn’t last until the end of the day.
“A séance,” Louise Jane said.
“A what?”
“A séance. I will attempt to contact the spirits and ask them what happened the night Jeremy Hughes died and the pages from Mrs. Crawbingham’s diary disappeared.”
Thunder rumbled faintly in the distance. The storm Connor had predicted was almost here. “You mean you want to do that now?”
“Yes.”
“Here?”
“Yes.”
“Bertie wouldn’t like that.”
“Bertie isn’t here, is she? And you can do what you want in your own apartment on your own time, can’t you? As long as it’s not illegal.”
“I don’t know,” I said.
“Fortunately, I do.” Louise Jane gave up waiting for me to invite her in and simply marched past me. “Come along, everyone. Upstairs.”
Theodore Kowalski and Grace Sullivan followed her, both looking sheepish. As well they might.
“She told me this was all arranged, and you were okay with it,” Theodore said.
“I should have realized this was some sort of trap,” Grace said.
“Louise Jane can be very persuasive,” Theodore said.
“No kidding,” Grace said.
“No kidding,” I said.
“Even if this works,” I called to Louise Jane’s retreating back, “try getting that evidence admitted in court.”
“It will give you the clues you need to continue investigating,” she replied without turning around.
“Me? What does this have to do with me? I’m not investigating anything. I’m not involved.” I slammed the door shut on another peal of thunder and hurried after her.
It was ten o’clock at night, and I was not exactly ready for company, as I’d put on my pajamas and was reading in bed before switching out the light. Charles, who is always ready for company, bounded up the stairs ahead of my visitors. He’d been delighted when the doorbell rang and Louise Jane had demanded I come down.
I should have stayed in bed. Louise Jane hurried after Charles, and the rest of us scrambled to follow. When she reached the fourth floor, she flicked the light switch, plunging the stairway into darkness.
“Hey, I can’t see!” Theodore cried.
“Take my arm,” Grace said.
“Can you see anything?
“No, but if I fall over the railing we’ll plunge to our deaths together,” she muttered.
I hadn’t bothered to lock the door to my apartment when I left, and Louise Jane simply opened the door and walked in. A sliver of light slipped out to touch the stairs, and Theodore and Grace scrambled to reach the landing before it disappeared.
“As we all know, the spirits of at least one, perhaps more, Civil War era solders live in the lighthouse,” Louise Jane explained when we were gathered in a circle. Just as well she told us to sit on the floor: I don’t own four chairs.
“They do not,” I said. “I live in the lighthouse. No one else.” Charles leapt into the center of the circle. “And Charles, of course.”
“Mustn’t forget Charles.” Grace gave the big cat a hearty scratch behind his ears.
Louise Jane rummaged in her enormous bag and brought out a candlestick, a white pillar candle, and a lighter. She set them in the center of our circle and lit the candle. “Lucy, turn out the light.”
“Don’t wanna.”
“The sooner we get this done,” she said, “the sooner we’ll leave.”
“Oh, for heaven’s sake.” I sighed and pushed myself to my feet. I switched off the overhead light, and the room was plunged into near darkness, the only light coming from the flickering yellow flame of a single candle, which didn’t reach the far corners of the room. Not that, the walls being rounded, my apartment had any corners. Before my visitors arrived, I’d pulled the drapes closed. They were thick enough to keep the light from the great 1000-watt bulb at the top of the lighthouse tower, designed to be seen thirty miles out to sea, out of my room. The stone walls at this level are four feet thick, but we could hear the rumble of thunder as the storm drew closer.
I resumed my place in the circle, between Grace and Theodore.
“Shoo,” Louise Jane said to Charles. Charles did not shoo, so she gave him a poke in the ribs. In return, he gave her a nasty glare.
“Lucy, you’ll have to move the cat,” Louise Jane said.
“He’s not in the way.”
“Of course he’s in the way! He’ll knock over the candle or make a noise at the exact moment I need complete silence.”
“Maybe our ghost is allergic to cats,” Grace said.
“That might explain why Lucy has never seen him,” Theodore said.
“That he’s not real is a better explanation of why I’ve never seen him,” I said.
“Lucy! Move the cat!” Louise Jane was rapidly losing what bit of patience she still had.
As she’d said, the sooner we got this over with, the sooner they’d be gone. Louise Jane was always trying to convince me that the library in general, and my room in particular, was haunted. She had plenty of stories—Civil War soldiers; laborers killed during the building of the lighthouse; a lightkeeper’s small son, who fell from the upper levels; Francis, the young bride trapped in a loveless marriage to a cruel old man; a 1990s-era librarian. I didn’t think even Louise Jane believed that last one.
Whether she believed in the others, I was never sure. Louise Jane prided herself on her reputation as a keeper of Outer Banks stories and legends. When I first arrived here, she wanted me gone. Out of the Lighthouse Aerie, out of the Lighthouse Library, and out of Nags Head. But after a year, with no sign of me rushing back to Boston, I thought she was beginning to accept my presence.
Was she truly trying to communicate with ghosts tonight? Did she want to brag to an interested audience that she had? Or did she want to scare me into fleeing into the night and never coming back?
I scooped Charles up and carried him, protesting every step of the way, to the door. I opened the door the moment another peal of thunder sounded, and a flash of lightening lit up the stairwell. I put the cat on the floor of the landing, blocked his attempts at reentry, and slammed the door. I then returned to my place in the circle, trying to shut my ears to his plaintive cries.
“No one say a word.” Louise Jane held her arms out to either side of her, palms up. I assumed we were all supposed to hold hands, so I took Grace’s and Theodore’s. I closed my eyes
. It might have been spooky—the dark night broken only by the flickering flame of a single candle; the feel of my friends’ hands resting in mine; the four of us quiet and serious, making no sound except for our breathing; the approach of the storm, coming ever closer.
It might have been spooky—if not for the continuing cries of Charles wanting to come back in and join the party.
Despite all Louise Jane’s attempts to make me believe the library was haunted, I’d never felt anything the least unworldly here. Perhaps more to the point, neither had Charles. And they say, don’t they, that animals have a strong awareness of the supernatural? If there is a supernatural.
I’d experienced something, I didn’t quite know what, over Halloween. It hadn’t been part of Louise Jane’s stories—she hadn’t even been aware of what I’d experienced. What I thought I’d experienced at any rate.
But that was then, on the night when they say the veil between the worlds is at its thinnest, and everyone was talking about ghostly happenings and reading stories of the supernatural. I’d been able to convince myself I’d imagined it all.
I let out a little cry of surprise and gripped the hands I was holding harder as Louise Jane broke into my thoughts as she began to speak. Her voice was slow and deep, the words almost musical in their pace and rhythm. “We are here seeking answers. A man died here, between these walls, less than a week ago, but the origins of the mystery lie in our past. They lie in your past. Perhaps in your present.”
All was quiet except for the sound of our breathing. Charles had given up trying to talk his way back in and had gone downstairs in search of sustenance. Minutes passed, or it might have been seconds, before Louise Jane spoke again. “Is anyone there? Sergeant O’Leary? You were here in the great War Between the States.”
“Who’s Sergeant O’Leary?” Grace asked.
“Shush,” Louise Jane snapped. “We need complete silence here.” We all breathed. I had no idea people could breathe so loudly. Theodore’s hand was clammy in mine. I resisted the urge to let go and wipe my hand on my pajama legs. At long last Louise Jane spoke again. “What secrets are contained within that journal buried beneath these walls? Why was that journal buried beneath these walls?”
