Ghosts of the Siege

by Steven Abernathy

  With that, it was settled.

  Chapter 18

  Jimmy was not scheduled to work that evening, so we decided to visit the antique store late the same afternoon, after giving the deputy time to sleep after his long shift the night before. We met on the Riverwalk just across River Street from the shop. Billy and I arrived first, and sat on a bench near a street entertainer who was playing soulful jazz on a saxophone. Billy was particularly taken with the music as the man played an artful rendition of a John Coltrane number. My friend was inhabiting my body, so it was not necessary for him to whisper to me, but he did so anyway.

  “I have never heard music such as this,” he said in an almost reverent tone. “It tugs at the heart strings. Why is that?”

  “It is called ‘blues’ music,” I answered. “I suppose it was created as a musical way to describe the hard way life has treated many people, filled with sadness and injustice. Coltrane is very good at playing the sadness and hardship of the blues.”

  “Coltrane?” Billy asked. “Is that the name of the musician who is playing? Do you know him?”

  I answered, “No, John Coltrane is the man who wrote the song and recorded it several years ago. This musician is very talented, but he is playing Coltrane’s music.”

  “I see,” my friend answered, “but recorded? What does that mean, beyond the definition I understand…writing down facts or figures?”

  Jimmy’s police car was bumping along the brick street as I opened my mouth to answer Billy’s question. He parked the car in a no parking zone directly in front of us and the question of recording was forgotten. I groped around in my pocket and fished out two dollars and some change, which I dropped into the opened saxophone case of the street musician. He nodded ‘thanks’ as he continued to play a sad song.

  I explained to Jimmy, who was in uniform for the encounter, that my spirit friend was inside me, but would probably remain there silently while we spoke with the proprietor. Jimmy looked at me with what I assumed to be learned police skepticism, or possibly just that of a person who was overwhelmed by disbelief in his own personal interaction with a ghost. We entered the store with no further explanation on my part.

  If the shopkeeper recognized me, she gave no indication of it. Nor did she display any reaction on seeing the deputy sheriff who accompanied me. A few customers were in the store, but they all seemed to be occupied browsing through the trinkets and antiques scattered throughout the room. We walked directly to the gaudy duplicate lamp/skull that was displayed on a shelf near the cash register. As I showed it to Jimmy and we spoke softly about it, the lady noticed our interest and casually walked over.

  “It’s quite a unique piece, isn’t it?” she said.

  “Not so unique,” I answered. “I was in here recently and we spoke briefly about this lamp. You told me you had the original skull at one time, but sold it when a customer made you a good offer.”

  She looked at me quizzically for a moment, before recognition showed in her eyes. “Oh, yes,” she said. “I remember. You were really interested in the original skull and wanted me to give you the name of the customer who bought it. I think I explained to you that I didn’t have that information, and you looked a little dejected as you left the shop.” She smiled and picked up the ghastly duplicate. “Have you decided the fake isn’t so bad? It’s very well crafted, you know.” Holding the base of the lamp, she raised it up to level with her eyes and slowly rotated it in a circle. “I can just see this magnificent lamp gracing a den or man cave. Pirate themed rooms are becoming very popular, you know.”

  At that point Jimmy gently took the lamp from her hands and placed it back on the shelf from which she had taken it. “We’re not interested in the duplicate, ma’am,” he said softly. Then, still softly so as not to be heard by the shop’s customers, he continued, “I’m investigating a wrongful death that happened here in Savannah, and the original of this,” he pointed at the lamp, “may be a vital piece of evidence. When did you acquire it and from whom?”

  Obviously shaken, the woman stammered for a moment before finding her voice and saying, “Could we talk about this in my office, away from the customers?”

  “Sure,” Jimmy answered. “Lead the way.”

  The proprietor took a few moments to find a young employee who was arranging items for sale on the second floor and ask her to man the register for a few minutes. That done, she led us to the back of the store and down a dark and narrow set of stairs to a subterranean private office which was remarkably well appointed. A large and ornately carved mahogany desk was arranged in one corner, obviously her personal work space. The desk was far too large to have been moved down the narrow staircase we had descended, and I did not see any other entrances to the room.

  The lady smiled when she noticed my interest and wonder regarding the magnificent piece of furniture. Whether she was just a naturally friendly and talkative woman, or possibly because she was nervously postponing any discussion of the skull, she was happy to explain the desk. Motioning to the ceiling above us, she said, “The building up there was constructed a few years after the end of the Civil War as part of the Factor’s Walk and associated offices related to the cotton industry. This room, however,” she continued while indicating the walls around us, “was dug at the base of the bluff back in the mid-seventeen hundreds, not too long after the founding of Savannah. This was a basement, with a fairly large wooden structure built above it to house materials and tools necessary to build a city and establish trade and a port. It was apparently a busy place, and the basement was used pretty much as I use it now…as an office to keep the business people out of the way of the important work going on above.” She laughed, showing a very pretty smile, as she concluded, “I know my employees seem more comfortable with their jobs when I am locked away down here cooking the books. I’m sure it was the same in the seventeen hundreds.”

  “And the desk?” I prompted her. “How did it get here?” I glanced at Jimmy, expecting him to be impatient with the conversation and ready to get down to business. He surprised me, however, by appearing to show great interest in the story.

  “Ah, yes, the desk,” she responded while rubbing her hands across the highly polished desk top. “The desk was made by Balthovar Bacher, a young cabinet maker who came to Savannah in 1741. He was one of my ancestors,” she said with pride in her tone. “Balthovar was only twenty-one years old when he made the journey to Savannah, but had worked with his father and uncle in their cabinet business in England since he was only twelve. He was very talented. He was given only menial tasks to do here in Savannah, but wanted to make a name for his self as quickly as possible. In his free time he took scraps of oak lumber, left over from the constant building along the river front, and made a small but elaborately carved table to be placed beside a chair to hold a reading lamp or candelabra. At first chance he presented the table to James Oglethorpe himself. Oglethorpe regularly came to the riverfront, often to the building above this basement, to observe the progress of building and expanding the port. He was governor of the colony and preferred to see firsthand all that transpired in the fledgling community. It is said it was he who brought Balthovar’s table down to this basement, and used to sit beside it in a wing back rocking chair and read reports from his builders and contractors.”

  “He brought it here?” Jimmy asked, making us jump in surprise.

  “Yes,” she answered, “to this very room.” Looking at Jimmy, she continued, “You are standing beside it. Oglethorpe’s chair is no longer here, but the table has remained in place since 1742. Jimmy’s eyes were wide with surprise. He reached down to gently stroke the top of the table with his fingertips.

  “Governor Oglethorpe was so impressed with the craftsmanship of the table that he commissioned Balthovar to construct a desk for him, to be placed in this very room as his personal workplace whenever he was here.” She waved her hand grandly over the top of the large desk. “This is the result.”

  I looked back t
o the small table and returned my gaze to the massive desk. “Wow!” I said, knowing that did not come even close to describing the magnificent creation. “If Oglethorpe was impressed with the table, he must have fallen over in wonder when he saw this!”

  “Actually, I doubt he ever saw it,” the shopkeeper stated flatly. “According to stories passed down through the family, Balthovar imported three massive mahogany tree trunks from Cuba for this project. With the governor’s blessing, he cleared out this entire basement to use as his work room. The floor above was wooden, and he found it necessary to cut a large hole through it in order to move the mahogany logs into the room. The governor might have come down from time to time to observe the young man’s progress, but there is no record of it, so we will never know. What we do know is that the desk took three years to complete. Oglethorpe returned to England in 1743, long before the desk was finished, so he never had the chance to sit where I am now sitting.

  “To finish the story,” she continued, “Balthovar finally completed the project, and might have gone on to great things in Savannah, but he was a Saltzberger, a sect that had come to Georgia from Austria. Most of them had moved to the north of Savannah and established a community known as Ebenezer. I’m sure he was a great help in establishing that community,” she stated with lament in her tone, “but he never became a famous Savannah cabinetmaker.”

  “The wooden floor was repaired, effectively locking this magnificent work of art into the basement. Over a hundred years later, when the cotton trade was flourishing, the floor was converted to concrete as multistory brick structures were built above, most with entrances down here on River Street as well as at the top of the bluff on Bay Street. The basement stairway was narrowed even more, so without great destruction to either the desk or the building, Balthovar Bacher’s greatest creation is locked down here forever.” She grinned impishly. “I’m kind of glad of that.”

  Jimmy cleared his throat. “That was a wonderful story, ma’am. I mean really…it was. But we came down here to talk about the skull.”

  “Yes, the skull,” the shopkeeper said, her smile completely gone. “You say it is evidence in a murder?”

  Jimmy hesitated just a moment before answering, “Not necessarily a murder. We prefer to call it a wrongful death until there is more evidence.”

  I thought my brother-in-law’s deflection of the question was truly artful. Judging from the way Billy was applauding within me, he felt the same way.

  “Wrongful death,” the lady mumbled to herself, as if not convinced of the validity of a ‘wrongful death’ investigation. “You say you need the skull as evidence. Do you need proof that I bought or sold it? Sales records, receipts, that sort of thing?”

  “No,” Jimmy answered authoritatively, and I saw the shopkeeper’s facial muscles noticeably relax. “We’re not interested in receipts or dollar amounts. We just need to find the current owner and retrieve the skull if possible.”

  “Hmm,” said the shopkeeper, obviously evaluating her options. Finally she asked, “If I cooperate and give you the name, will that be the end of my involvement in this affair? No testimony in court? No investigation into my own business?”

  Jimmy allowed the question to hang in the air for several long seconds. Until the protracted silence I had not even noticed the beautiful grandfather’s clock standing against the wall near the staircase. During the silent interval, however, the clock’s ticking off of each second seemed to fill the room, causing each of us to turn and look at the clock face.

  Finally Jimmy answered, “We need an address, and phone number if you have it, along with the customer’s name. Beyond that, we have no interest in your business and should not need to bother you again.”

  The lady sighed and reached to retrieve a ledger from an antique cabinet on her right. We watched as she flipped through several pages, finally stopping at one and running a finger down the page until arriving at a name. “Back in the spring,” she mumbled to herself. She retrieved a small note pad from beside an antique black telephone with a rotary dial on the face and copied information from the ledger. At last she stood and reached across the desk to hand the paper to Jimmy. “I hope you are being truthful with me. I hope you won’t bother me again with this.”

  Jimmy smiled as he extended his hand in an offer to shake hers. “Thank you for your help, ma’am,” he said in a friendly tone. “We’re very grateful to you, and will not bother you again.” As we turned to leave he added, “You have a great day, ma’am.”

  None of us spoke as we moved through the shop and out into the busy street. It was only when we were in Jimmy’s car that we exploded in a loud laughter that released all of our tension. “That was so easy!” I shouted far too loudly for the enclosure of the car. “You were great, Jimmy,” I continued, only slightly softer. Without warning, Billy exploded from my chest in full view of the deputy’s stare. He took in a sharp breath of alarm and reflexively threw open the door and leaped from the car, drawing stared from several passersby. Finally he relaxed, but stood at the door peering cautiously into the car for several minutes before finally settling in behind the steering wheel. Billy sat in the front passenger’s seat, looking very contrite.

  “I am truly sorry, my friend,” he said to Jimmy. “I became excited and was thoughtless of others in my actions. I can tell it was a great shock to you, but I hope there was no lasting physical harm.”

  Jimmy opened his mouth as if to speak, but no words came out. He turned to look at me in the back seat. In as calm and reassuring tone as I could maintain under the circumstance, I said, “Jimmy, do you need to check your shorts?”

  Billy was the first to snicker at the thought. The odd sound his muffled laughter created in my brain caused me to explode in laughter. Jimmy stared at us both, incredulous at our reaction, but finally he began to laugh along with us. He and I were wiping the tears from our eyes before he said, “I may need all of your Jaguars tickets, bro.”

  Chapter 19

  Hal and Roxie Lindsey lived in a small two bedroom condominium in Clearwater Beach, Florida. Just south of Sand Key, the narrow spit of land that separates the Gulf of Mexico from Clearwater Harbor was built to capacity with homes, condos and resort communities, and was a desirable place to which many couples retired and many tourists flocked in the summer for a week or two in the sun. The Lindsey condominium backed right up to the bay, and the view from their waterfront patio was magnificent. Now in their early seventies, Hal and Roxie were both retired auto workers from Michigan who, like many others, had tired of the cold northern winters and moved to a place of year-round warmth and endless activity and entertainment possibilities for retirees.

  Jimmy made the initial phone call to the couple and told them the same white lie he had told the Savannah shopkeeper, that the skull was crucial evidence in a police investigation. Roxie sounded horrified when she realized the skull was authentic. “That ghastly thing is real?” she shouted into the telephone. Jimmy could not see her, of course, but got the distinct idea that the septuagenarian was drilling holes into her husband with her eyes. “We don’t have that thing any longer,” she said with obvious relief in her voice, “but please come visit us when you can. It’s not too far away from here and I will see to it that Hal,” she inserted displeasure into her tone once more, “helps you retrieve his horrible decoration.”

  Hal was definitely in trouble, Jimmy announced when he told me of the call. But Mrs. Lindsey seemed very cooperative, if also unhappy with her husband’s choice of home décor, and it sounded as if they would enjoy some company. A road trip was in order.

  One of the largest plumbing supply companies in the southeast is located in Tampa, Florida, which is only a short distance from Clearwater Beach. I was actually in need of some replacement items for my tool box, so telling my family I needed to drive to Florida for supplies was only a slight stretch of the truth. I would pick up the needed supplies as we drove through the city on the way to our real destination. The trip was u
neventful except for the time I looked in the rearview mirror about twenty miles south of Jacksonville, Florida and saw blue police lights flashing. I knew the reason immediately. Billy had never been in a moving automobile before, and early in the trip was overcome with whatever the ghostly version of motion sickness is. After he became used to the speed and motion of the car as we wove our way through traffic on the busy interstate highway, my spirit inhabitant decided he wanted to try driving the vehicle. I knew it was a bad idea, but he was a willful ghost, and soon convinced me to relinquish control to him, if only for a few minutes. I don’t know what peak speed for a horse is, but I know an automobile goes much faster. Steering the vehicle at seventy miles per hour through heavy traffic proved to be more difficult that we estimated, and my ghostly partner constantly oversteered, causing the car to swerve onto the shoulder then turn to cross the lane dividing line in the other direction, often causing drivers in that lane to swerve out of our way. He drove much like a drunk, in other words. I finally wrested control of the wheel from him, but not before a highway patrolman had noticed our erratic behavior. He was polite when he stopped us, but required me to exit the car and take a standard breathalyzer test and walk a straight line, which I did without problem. Before he wrote a ticket for whatever reason he chose, Jimmy rolled down his window and called him over. He showed his county badge, and got out of the car. The two policemen engaged in a long discussion, occasionally looking in my direction and laughing. Finally they shook hands and walked back to me. The patrolman said, “I’ve agreed to let you go, but only if your brother-in-law drives the rest of the way. He tells me you have Jacksonville Jaguar season tickets, but you won’t be driving through my state anytime soon because you gave all tickets to him.” He smiled as he said, “That’s probably a good thing.” The patrolman continued to laugh as he walked back to his car, and we drove away with Jimmy at the wheel.