Trifles and Folly

by Gail Z. Martin

  “It doesn’t have to be much to find a trail,” Teag murmured, intent on the screen. I’d watched him research like this before, and it always astounded me. Regular people could find amazing things on the Internet with a little skill and luck. Teag’s Weaver magic took that to a whole new level. I wasn’t entirely sure how it worked, and neither was Teag, but he told me once that it was as if each piece of data that he found had ‘threads’ visible to his magic that connected it far beyond what could be accounted for by mere hyperlinks. If he followed those threads and watched how they interwove, he could piece a story together to rival the top intelligence agencies.

  I watched in silence, happy for the chance to regroup. Teag was utterly absorbed in the data that flashed on his screen. His fingers flew across the keyboard, sending him from page to page. Old newspaper articles appeared, and he scanned down through them quickly, then went on to the next bit of information. Finally, he sat back and stared at the computer, deep in thought.

  “Find something?” I asked.

  Teag nodded. “I looked up Sanderson first. It was a little easier than I expected. Hansford Quincy Sanderson was a self-made millionaire and cotton baron. He liked rye whiskey, fast horses, and loose women. Not,” Teag said, arching an eyebrow, “necessarily in that order. He got mentioned a lot in the news of the day for his penchant for throwing opulent parties, much to the chagrin of the old money types. You know how that goes.”

  I did. Charleston had a lot of old money, the kind that preferred to be discreet about their wealth, at least in the public eye. Flamboyance, even now, was considered in poor taste and dreadfully nouveau riche. “What else?”

  “From what I found, Sanderson made a lot of enemies. There was a rumor that he had ties to criminal elements. I suspect there might have been a line of likely suspects when he turned up dead, but the guy they arrested wouldn’t have been in it.”

  “Oh?”

  Teag shook his head. “Hansford Sanderson was found dead in the alley behind the Legacy Hotel with a small caliber bullet in his heart. Clara Raintree, the waitress, was found dead nearby with a broken neck. And guess who pulled the trigger?”

  “Carl,” I said, not sure how I knew, but I was certain. “He and Clara were lovers.”

  Teag nodded. “Yep. Carl didn’t even try to fight the charges. According to the story he told police, he saw Sanderson manhandle Clara and force her into the alley. Carl heard her scream, and went after her, but by the time he got there, he saw Sanderson choking the girl, who was fighting him. Carl says he shot Sanderson with the twenty-two caliber he kept behind the bar in case of robbers, because he was trying to save Clara’s life.”

  “But he was too late,” I finished for him. “What happened to him?”

  “No one was particularly upset that Sanderson was out of the picture, but the plantation class really couldn’t let a bartender get away with killing one of their own, especially for philandering, which was a pretty common pastime,” Teag noted drily. “It might have set a bad precedent.”

  I had a bad feeling about this. “He got convicted?”

  “He was hanged. A couple of ‘witnesses’ turned up who claimed they saw Carl roughing up Clara and that Sanderson tried to intervene, so Carl shot him.” Teag made a sour expression. “Funny thing, but the witnesses disappeared after the trial and were never seen again.”

  “I bet.” I paused, almost afraid to see what Teag would come up with on the poker set. “Do you feel up to finding out what happened to Williams? I’m afraid we already know what happened to Elise.”

  Teag waggled his eyebrows at me, trying to lighten the mood. “Certainly,” he replied, turning back to the computer. I sipped the rapidly-cooling tea, glad that the physical repercussions of the visions were fading, but still troubled by the violence of what I had seen.

  “Bingo!” Teag said after several minutes of silence, turning to face me once more. “And it’s another tie to the Legacy Hotel. Artemis Bennett Williams was our poker player. Where did they dream up those old names?” he wondered aloud.

  “And who was Arty, other than a creep?” I asked.

  “A wealthy creep,” Teag replied. “He was the son of Jefferson Rubel Williams, who made his money in sugar cane and rum down in the islands and returned to Charleston just after the end of the First World War. The Williams family was filthy rich, even by Charleston standards, but there were rumors that they had left St. Croix under a cloud.”

  “Elise had an islands accent,” I interrupted.

  Teag nodded. “Artemis Williams had a bad habit of hitting on other men’s girlfriends, which got him into some dicey situations with the Country Club set.”

  “Like what?”

  Teag shrugged. “One jealous boyfriend got shot in what was rumored to have been a duel, but Williams got off because the judge was a friend of his father’s. In another case, the rival ‘suddenly left town’.”

  “Or got dumped in the ocean at night,” I added. “That is, after all, one way to leave town.”

  Teag nodded. “My thoughts exactly. Williams was trouble. He was briefly engaged to the daughter of a respectable family, but her father forced them to call off the wedding and sent the girl to Europe.”

  “Smart man,” I replied. “But what happened to Williams? And what about Elise?”

  Teag grinned, and I knew he had found something good. “Williams turned up dead in the alley behind the Legacy Hotel—the same alley where Sanderson was shot. Only Williams looked as if he’d been clawed by a wild animal. Official cause of death was heart failure. He was only thirty-five.”

  “And Elise?”

  Teag shrugged. “According to the account in the newspaper at the time, when Williams’s body was found, they questioned everyone at the hotel, including a woman named Elise DuPre, but no charges were ever filed.”

  He gave a dramatic pause. “And get this. The police tried to make a case against Elise because she had been a friend of Clara’s and had once spoken sharply about Sanderson to some of the staff for his bothering Clara. They couldn’t pin Sanderson’s murder on her because Carl was such a convenient patsy, but when Williams died in the same alley, they took a long hard look at Elise, and still came up empty.”

  “Interesting.”

  “It gets better,” he said with relish. “Over the years, I counted at least fifteen questionable deaths in that back alley behind the Legacy Hotel. All men in their twenties and thirties, and all of them with prior arrests for domestic violence, rape, or assault.” He paused. “And at least some of the accounts mention finding a poker chip beside the bodies.”

  Just then, I got another faint whiff of the sweet perfume, and with it, a pungent odor of tobacco. “Elise is part of this. I don’t know how she did it, but I think she arranged for Williams to die… and from what you’ve found, it sounds like after all these years, her spirit still has an ax to grind.”

  “Her granddaughter still lives in Charleston,” Teag said with a grin. “Do you think she’d talk to us?”

  It was tempting, but I couldn’t figure out why the woman would open up such a nasty old family secret for two strangers without a good reason. “Hold onto that contact information,” I said. “I want to ask Sorren about this. After all, he’s been in Charleston all these years—maybe he knows something about the people or the incidents.”

  Teag nodded. “Good idea.” He paused and gave me a careful look. “How are you? Do you need me to see you home?”

  In the time we had worked together, Teag had gone from being my assistant store manager to becoming a friend and a confidant. I was lucky to have him around. My pride made me shake my head. “Thanks, but I’m doing better. And besides, don’t you have a dinner date with Anthony?”

  “Not tonight,” Teag replied with a sigh. “He’s working on another big case, and it’s my night for basket weaving with Mrs. Teller.”

  “Then you’d better get going,” I said, not wanting to keep him from his lesson. “I’m planning on a qu
iet night at home with Baxter.” Baxter was my little Maltese, who was one of Teag’s biggest fans. The admiration was mutual.

  Despite my protests, Teag insisted on following me home to make sure I got in safely. I waved from the doorway, and heard Baxter yipping himself silly in greeting. When the door was shut and locked, I knelt down and cuddled Bax and took a few deep breaths to let the day—and the visions—slip away.

  I fed Baxter and took him for a walk, deep in thought about what I had seen when I touched the flask and the poker set. Two young women who met trouble or tragedy because of men who had been high rollers at the old Legacy Hotel. And the possibility that fifteen men with sketchy backgrounds had gotten what was coming to them in a dark alley behind an abandoned hotel.

  When I got home, I raided the fridge for left-over Chinese fried rice and poured a glass of white wine to calm my nerves. Then I called Sorren’s cell phone and left a message for him to call me. I don’t know how many other six hundred year-old vampires have cell phones, but my silent partner is a pretty savvy guy. He told me once that vampires who don’t adapt and keep up with the times don’t make it very long. He should know.

  I decided to do a little Internet research of my own, and looked for anything I could find about the Legacy Hotel. There were plenty of pictures and more links than I would have expected for a place that had been out of business for years. As I read through the posts, a picture began to form in my mind.

  The Legacy Hotel had been founded in 1897 and at the time, was a very respectable, upscale venue popular with planter-class men who were in Charleston on business. The pictures from the time showed a building at the height of Victorian opulence, praised in its day for having all the modern conveniences. It was the crowning achievement of Rayford ‘King’ Lanier, who had made his fortune as a hotelier in Europe before coming home to Charleston. But almost from the start, the grand hotel was the site of tragedy.

  A newspaper article from the time commented on an unusual number of deaths and injuries during the construction of the hotel, although no reason appeared to be discovered. The grand opening was marred when one of the older guests at the extravagant reception had a heart attack and died. A year later, a woman fell to her death from one of the upper balconies. Then a carriage ran over a child in front of the main doors. In every case, the hotel was absolved of any responsibility.

  Baxter had been on my lap, but he got restless, and I put him down on the floor so he could run off. I kept searching, intrigued with the tainted history of the hotel. As the years went on, there was at least one tragic incident a year, none of them apparently related except for the location.

  I was beginning to think that the Legacy Hotel itself was a cursed object. The hotel survived the Prohibition years and continued its heyday into the 1960s. But like many grand lodgings of its era, the new chain hotels that sprang up in the 1960s and 1970s were the beginning of the end. The Legacy Hotel staggered on as a dinner theater catering to senior citizen bus tours into the 1980s, when it was sold and turned into condominiums. That lasted for fifteen years, until the developer went bankrupt and the property went into receivership. It closed for good five years ago, and I remembered driving past it and thinking that it was sad that the grand building had fallen on hard times.

  It occurred to me that Baxter had been gone and quiet for too long, so I got up, stretched, and went to look for him. I found him in the kitchen, sitting on Sorren’s lap at the table. Baxter had a curiously bemused look on his face, which meant that Sorren glamored him to keep him from barking.

  “I was in the neighborhood, so I thought I would just stop by,” Sorren said, scratching Baxter behind the ears. I sighed and rolled my eyes. This is what comes from inviting your vampire boss into your home. Especially when, five hundred and some odd years ago, he was the best jewel thief in Belgium.

  “Have you been here long?” I asked, pulling out a chair to sit down across the table. Sorren looks to be in his late twenties, although the reality is closer to six hundred. With his dark blond hair and sea-blue eyes, there’s no mistaking his European background, although after all this time, his accent is whatever he wants it to be. Sitting in my kitchen dressed in a t-shirt and jeans, he fit right in—unless you noticed that he wasn’t breathing.

  “Just long enough to say hello to Baxter,” Sorren said. “I got your message.”

  Sorren listened intently as I recounted the visions I had gotten from the flask and the poker set. His eyes narrowed as I told him about what Teag’s research had turned up, and what I had discovered on my own. “You’ve been in Charleston since long before the 1870s,” I said as I wrapped up my report. “Have you heard anything about the Legacy Hotel?”

  Sorren sat back for a moment and thought. I could imagine that after nearly six hundred years, it might take a while to comb through the memories. Baxter sat on his lap with a goofy look of adoration, his black button eyes slightly glazed.

  “Yes, I know of the place,” he replied. “And I believe that it’s truly haunted. But then again, so are a lot of buildings in Charleston. I can also believe what you’ve told me about the tragedies that happened there, but again, tragedy is linked to nearly any place in this city that has stood for a length of time. This is a beautiful city, but it was built on the toil and misery of slaves, and it has more than its share of bloodshed in its history.”

  That was true, much as the tour books tried to downplay it. Charleston had a fine and proper side, and below that, a darker undercurrent. What we did at Trifles and Folly often tapped into that darkness. “So you aren’t aware of anything special about the Legacy Hotel?”

  Sorren shrugged. “I never went there when it was open. It hasn’t come to my attention since I’ve been working with the Alliance, and your Uncle Evan and his predecessors never seemed to find it noteworthy.” He frowned. “But I agree that the objects you found and the research certainly point us in that direction now.”

  Just then, my cell phone rang. I fished it out of my pocket, and answered. Teag sounded breathless. “Cassidy—you’re not going to believe this. When I was working on the baskets with Mrs. Teller, I happened to mention the Legacy Hotel. After all, she’s up in years and I thought she might have heard something.” I could tell that he had hit pay dirt from the excitement in his voice.

  “She knows Elise’s granddaughter! I should have realized that Mrs. Teller knows everybody in Charleston. She knows the woman we want to talk with, and without me telling her about anything, she said it was about time to put things right at the hotel and lay the spirits to rest.” Teag was so excited, I knew Sorren could hear every word even at a distance.

  “Not only that, but Mrs. Teller said she would go with us to talk with Elise’s granddaughter. She said that between the three of you, you would ‘have the skills’ to do what needed doing,” he added.

  I glanced at Sorren, and he nodded. “Okay,” I replied, still trying to catch up. “When does she want to introduce us?”

  “Tomorrow,” he said. “The sooner the better.”

  Again, Sorren nodded, so I drew a deep breath and said, “That’s fine. If we can get Maggie to close the shop, you and I can go in the early evening.”

  “I already arranged for Maggie to be there by three,” Teag said. “And I told Mrs. Teller we’d pick her up at six.” After another moment’s chit-chat about his latest basket lesson, I hung up feeling like I’d been in a whirlwind.

  “Mrs. Teller is a root worker,” I said. “And she’s got the Sight. She may not know straight out what I can do, but she knows I’ve got a Gift, and I’m pretty certain she can sense Teag’s magic, too.”

  “Ernestine Teller has a powerful magic ability,” Sorren confirmed. “I know you think of her as Niella’s mother and the old woman who weaves baskets at the marketplace, but she was a force of nature when she was younger, and people came from all around for her cures and conjuring. She’s a powerful ally.”

  “What do you think she meant about the granddaughter a
nd how the three of us would have the ‘skills’ to handle things?” That made me nervous, even though Teag seemed plenty happy about it.

  “I think it suggests that Elise’s granddaughter has abilities we’d best learn more about,” Sorren replied. “And it may be that those abilities have been passed down from her grandmother. If so, she’s the key to the deaths in the alley.”

  “You think those are somehow connected to Elise?”

  Sorren nodded. “At this point, I’m nearly certain of it. Be careful, Cassidy. Whatever’s active at the Legacy Hotel has proven it can kill. It may be enjoying its vengeance, and it might not want to stop.”

  To my surprise, Niella insisted on coming along when Teag and I came by to pick up Mrs. Teller. “Mama told me what y’all are doing,” Niella said, in a tone that told me that she didn’t fully approve, but that she knew there was no stopping her mother. “I couldn’t talk her out of it, so I’m here to ride shotgun.” A glance confirmed that there was no actual shotgun, but Niella’s purse was big enough to hide other things just as lethal.

  “My daughter worries too much,” Mrs. Teller said. Niella was thirty, just four years older than me. Mrs. Teller had white hair and an unlined face, and was as spry as people half her age, which I figured must be somewhere in her late sixties, maybe older. I knew Niella was her youngest child, out of eight older siblings.

  “You said that the three of us had the right skills to set the problem to rest,” I said as Teag drove. “What exactly did you mean?”

  Mrs. Teller fixed me with a look like I had suggested she had just fallen off the turnip truck. “Girl, I know you have the Sight. Different from mine, but something special. I can feel it. And you know that I See things, things I shouldn’t know, but I do know.” Niella, always protective, moved to interrupt, but Mrs. Teller laid a hand on her arm.

  “Niella, keep your peace. I’m not talking out of school. Cassidy already had me figured. I saw it in her eyes.” Mrs. Teller had a tart tongue and had no problem speaking her mind.