The Strangers on Montagu Street

by Karen White

  Ah. I nodded. “All right. But you need to understand that it’s a two-way street when it comes to spirits. Is there a reason he might be reluctant to speak with you?”

  Her eyes darkened and for a moment I thought she might start crying. I half rose from my chair, ready to find Dee. Julia raised her hand, palm out, and I lowered myself back into the chair. “No. Of course not.” Her gaze skittered away as I continued to regard her closely.

  I cleared my throat. “I don’t think William’s alone. There’s another spirit—I’ve seen him here, in your house. Looking out the turret window.”

  Her eyes were clouded with alarm, her fingers like brittle twigs as she tightly gripped the arm of her chair. “Jonathan?” she asked, her voice barely over a whisper.

  “Who’s Jonathan?”

  “My fiancé. He died . . . he died that same year William went away.”

  I shook my head. “The man I’ve seen in the window is much older. I was thinking it might be your father.”

  A frown pulled at her skin, making her face seem as if it were melting. “I don’t go in that part of the house. It was my parents’ wing. He’d never come in here, though. Too much Christmas.” She opened her mouth and laughed, the sound more like a cackle, then sobered quickly. “I’m not interested in speaking with him.” She tapped her fingers on the arms of her chair. “If you can help me speak with William, I will make it worth your while.”

  I sat up, stricken, envisioning me inheriting yet another dilapidated house in Charleston. “I don’t need anything, Miss Julia,” I said quickly. “I’m just looking for an opportunity to hopefully put a spirit to rest.”

  “And if you find out certain . . . things about a family along the way, what do you do with that information?”

  I looked at her with surprise. “To be honest, my experiences so far have only been personal. But anything I discovered would be completely confidential, of course. Although it might help if you told me everything up front. I don’t want to give the ghosts the advantage.”

  “There’s nothing you need to know, Miss Middleton. All I want is to speak with William.”

  I looked at her dubiously. A mantel clock in the form of Santa’s sleigh chimed from the bookshelf behind Julia, reminding me of the time. “I have to leave now. If you think of anything, please let me know. In the meantime, I’ll do what I can to speak with William.” I stood. “Would you like me to take you to the music room on my way out?”

  She nodded, and I opened the door before positioning myself behind the wheelchair. I paused in the doorway to the music room, admiring the picture of my mother and Nola on the piano bench with their heads together as they harmonized to a piece of music I didn’t recognize.

  “I’m leaving now,” I announced as I pushed Miss Julia up to the piano. I turned to Nola. “Your grandmother is coming to get you around four o’clock to spend the rest of the weekend with them—she bought a futon you can sleep on in the living room, so you’ll have your own space. Don’t forget you’re doing the admission testing for Ashley Hall tomorrow morning, so make sure you get plenty of sleep.”

  “Whatever,” Nola said, rolling her eyes.

  “Where are you going?” my mother asked.

  I made a show of placing the wheelchair in the right position. “I’m having lunch with Jack. We have things to discuss.”

  My mother’s eyebrows went up, but I studiously ignored them.

  “I won’t be long.”

  “Take your time, Mellie. Nola and I will be just fine without you.” She smiled.

  I said good-bye, then turned to leave. I’d reached the front door before stopping and retracing my steps. “Miss Julia, if your brother wanted to say something to you, would it be ‘Stop her’?”

  Her lips thinned so that they almost disappeared into her face. “I’m quite sure I don’t know what that means.”

  I nodded, then left, knowing two things about Julia Manigault: She was a terrible liar, and she was almost as afraid of William as I was.

  CHAPTER 18

  I spotted Jack’s black Porsche at the curb on the opposite side of the street as soon as I stepped out onto the front porch of the Manigault house. He hopped out and opened the passenger side as I approached. I felt the telltale pricking of the skin at the back of my neck as I slid into the car, deliberately keeping my head turned away from the turret window.

  As I buckled my seat belt, the scent of Rebecca’s perfume assaulted me, followed quickly by the thick aroma of food. I looked at the small ledge that passed for a backseat and spotted the bags from Brent’s on Broad. Trying to keep the disappointment from my voice, I said, “I thought we were going out for lunch.”

  “We are,” Jack said as he pulled away from the curb. “Thought we’d dine al fresco at White Point Gardens. The weather is still mild so I figured we should take advantage of it while we can.” He slid his sunglasses on, but not before I noticed the dark circles under his eyes. “How did it go in there with Nola?”

  “She handled it surprisingly well, thanks to my mother. You owe her for that, by the way. Personally, I don’t think you needed to bribe Nola with an iPhone. I sincerely believe that she would have gone anyway.”

  “How do you figure?” He cut a sharp right on Meeting Street from Broad, nearly hitting a large man standing in the middle of the road snapping a picture of St. Michael’s. Jack swerved around him, the man oblivious as he pointed the lens up toward the most recognized steeple in the Holy City.

  “I think Nola sees this as an opportunity to not only become serious about her talent, but also to prove her mother wrong, to show Bonnie what she’s missing.”

  “You think? That sounds so . . . wrong. They’re mother and daughter, after all.”

  “Trust me. The mother-daughter relationship is something you will never be able to understand, Jack, so don’t even try. Makes finding the cure for cancer seem easy.”

  “And you would know.”

  “Absolutely.” I pointed to a Volvo station wagon with a Porter-Gaud window sticker pulling away from the curb on East Battery.

  As Jack sped toward the available parking spot, he said, “Do you happen to know Nola’s shoe size?”

  “She’s a six and a half narrow. Why?”

  He parallel parked, the car sliding perfectly into the spot the first time. I wouldn’t have expected anything less. “I’m just preparing myself for the part where we tell Nola she’ll have to wear a uniform at Ashley Hall. For their dress days when they have to wear the school blazer, they can wear black or purple closed-toe shoes. I was thinking a pair of purple Converses might work.”

  I wasn’t sure the administrators at the school would approve, but the gesture wouldn’t be lost on Nola—or me, judging by the way my blood was going all slushy in my head. I reached behind me and grabbed the to-go bags as Jack walked around the car to open my door. “You’ve already studied the uniform list? She hasn’t even taken the independent school entrance exam yet.”

  He locked the door and grinned. “I’ve already purchased everything she’ll need, except for the leggings, because they’re not sold at the uniform store and I’m not really sure what they are.”

  I experienced that squishy feeling again. “You’re that confident she’ll get in, huh?”

  “I saw her transcript from her school in Los Angeles, as well as her standardized test scores. They’d be stupid not to let her in, regardless that she’s a legacy.” He stopped walking and faced me. “If you think about what she’s been through and what an amazingly independent and strong-minded girl she is despite everything, and throw in her music talent and her . . . well, her Nola-ness, she’s a shoo-in.”

  I nodded, but didn’t say anything, not because I didn’t agree with everything he said—I did—but because I was afraid I’d do something stupid like kiss him.

  As we approached the pineapple fountain at the center of White Point Gardens, a tour group that had been sitting on an adjacent wrought-iron bench and listening to thei
r guide stood up and moved on, leaving the spot completely open. When I was with Jack, things like that always seemed to happen. I glanced out at the water in the harbor, wondering whether I’d see dolphins, too, but was rewarded with only the picture-postcard view of a sailboat.

  We began taking our lunch out of the bags, a turkey Reuben wrap for me and a veggie wrap for Jack. I narrowed my eyes at him. “Et tu, Brute?”

  He shrugged. “I can’t see myself going vegan, but I like vegetables, so I figured, why not?” He eyed my Reuben. “But if that’s too much meat for you, I’d be happy to stick some on mine.”

  I snorted, indicating he had as much chance of getting hold of any of my wrap as of Nola looking forward to wearing a blazer to school. Peering into the bottom of the bag, I tried to quell my disappointment.

  “Don’t worry—they’re in the other one.”

  I glanced into the second bag, relieved to see two brownies. Jack didn’t eat sweets, so I knew they were both for me. We were almost like an old married couple, except for the fact that we hadn’t ever dated or slept in the same room. The thought made me blush, so I turned away to face the harbor.

  The Battery was crowded with tourists and residents alike, enjoying what was surely one of the last days before the unbearable heat and humidity descended on the city like a sodden blanket. I’d be back to wearing my hair up in a usually vain attempt to quell its desire to frizz up into a Brillo pad look-alike.

  Picnickers lounged in the grass, while others posed for pictures, precariously perched on the displays of antique weaponry pointed out into the harbor and the distant Fort Sumter. Whereas pirates and Yankees had once been the enemy to aim for, the armory was pretty much harmless now, unless you considered the alarmingly large number of tourists maimed by tumbles from cannons and cannonball pyramids.

  “I found out a little bit about Jimmy Gordon.”

  I focused my attention back to Jack as I took another bite of my sandwich, a long string of sauerkraut refusing to make it completely into my mouth. Since it was only Jack, who’d seen me more than once in granny sleepwear, I wasn’t too self-conscious about shoveling it into my mouth with a finger.

  He watched me with an amused grin. “From all accounts he’s a pretty nice guy. Either he’s still too new to the music business for any of the hoopla to have affected him, or he’s actually the real deal. Couldn’t find any connection between him and Bonnie. But Nola said she’d met him, right?”

  I nodded, taking a long sip of my sweet tea through a straw. “Yeah, and she called him a jerk, but that’s all she’d say about him. I’ll try to ask again. I actually heard her talking about him on the phone this morning—called him a fake, I think was her word.”

  “Who was she talking with?”

  “Some guy named Rick—she said it was her mother’s old boyfriend who’d found her on Facebook and wanted to find out how she was doing.”

  Jack put his half-eaten wrap down into the wrapper. “Since when does she have a Facebook account? Do you know how many perverts are out there looking for somebody like Nola?”

  I held up my hand. “Technically, you told her you didn’t want her to have a Facebook app—and she doesn’t. She borrowed Alston’s laptop and set up an account there. Regardless, you do need to sit down with her and come up with some rules about using social media, but I think she’s pretty savvy about it. He found her and posted his phone number so she could call him, since she knows him. She assured me she wouldn’t have done that if she didn’t know who the guy was. . . .”

  Jack shook his head. “I don’t care. I think thirteen is way too young for a Facebook page—whether it’s accessed through an iPhone app or a computer.”

  I kept the smile off my face as I considered the source of the parental concern and wondered how many parents during Jack’s formative years quaked in fear that somebody like Jack Trenholm would want to date their daughter. “Granted, she knows a lot more about the world than most kids her age—and older—but still, I think you’re right.”

  Jack picked up his wrap again. “Did she mention the last name? Rick sounds pretty familiar—like I might have come across it while researching Bonnie.”

  “Yeah, it’s Chase. Do you want me to ask her more about him?”

  “No. I don’t want Nola to think that I’m prying, especially if he’s only who he says he is. I just want to make sure.”

  I nodded again, my attention now focused on two guys wearing College of Charleston T-shirts and throwing a yellow Frisbee. “Does ‘my daughter’s eyes’ mean anything to you?”

  “No. Should it?”

  I shrugged, then dug into the bag for the first brownie. “I sort of spoke with Bonnie—while I was with Sophie at the bridal shop. It’s a long story, and the words weren’t directly from her, but basically she told me to look for ‘my daughter’s eyes.’ I have no idea what she meant.”

  Jack chewed thoughtfully for a long moment while slowly rolling one of the paper bags into a ball. “I don’t have a clue. Did you ask Nola?”

  “Not yet. She’s still so prickly about her mother that I really have to search hard for the right time to spring something like that on her. Stop by Ruth’s Bakery on your way home to drop me off and I’ll bring home her favorite doughnuts. Bribery couldn’t hurt.”

  “Doughnuts? Nola?”

  “Yep. Don’t ask me how I know, but I have my ways.”

  Jack leered at me. “I know.”

  My cheeks warmed, and I concentrated on digging into the bag for my second brownie. “We need to find out more about the Manigault family. I was right about Julia having ulterior motives. When I asked her what she really wanted she said she just wants to speak with William, but there’s something more there. She claims that ‘stop her’ doesn’t mean anything to her, but she’s afraid of something—of William, I think.” I took a bite of brownie. “And we need to find out more about her fiancé, too. She said his first name was Jonathan. Do you think we need the last name, too?”

  “‘We’? I like the way you assume we’re a package deal in all this.” He smirked. “As for getting the information we need, with Yvonne, all things are possible.”

  I took a sip of my drink so I didn’t have to say anything. He gave me his Jack smile and I forced myself not to look away.

  “You should wear that color more often, Mellie.”

  I looked down at my Anne Fontaine blouse. “White?”

  “No. Pink. Like the color of your cheeks.”

  I made a concentrated effort to focus on my brownie. “It’s because I’m hot,” I said finally. “I walked a lot today.”

  “Uh-huh.” He slipped his sunglasses in his shirt pocket. “So, what did you want to talk with me about—besides Bonnie and Miss Julia?”

  I met his eyes and steeled myself so that I wouldn’t notice how very blue they were. “We’re friends, right?”

  He raised an eyebrow.

  I took a deep breath. “I just . . . well, I . . .” I stopped and took another breath, totally unprepared for this kind of conversation. I’d had them before, but I was always the bug under the magnifying glass, and Sophie was the one holding it. “Look, are you all right?”

  His eyes narrowed. “What do you mean? Do you think I’m sick or something?”

  I let the words fall out of my mouth before I could pull them back. “Are you drinking again?”

  He wore the expression of a man who’d just been punched in the gut. Hard. With measured precision, he said, “Why are you asking?”

  “You’re just . . . you’re not yourself. I know you’re having problems with your publisher right now, and I know that can’t be easy. Your career is important to you—like mine is to me—and it must be frustrating not knowing what’s going on.”

  “Did your dad put you up to this?”

  I shook my head. “Not exactly. My mom and Nola, too. We’ve all noticed it. They thought that since you and I, well . . .” I couldn’t think of what to call us, so I just kept going, hoping he d
idn’t notice I wasn’t filling in the blanks. “And you look so tired and preoccupied every time I see you. I just wanted to know whether you were all right. If things were getting to be too much for you so that you were tempted . . .” I stopped, his expression scaring me. Not that I would ever think he’d physically hurt me, but I knew his words could create permanent wounds.

  He leaned toward me so that I could see my reflection in the dark blue of his eyes. “And what would you do if I said I wasn’t all right? Would you sleep with me if I said it would make me feel better?”

  It was like I’d been plunged into a deep pool of warm, warm water, dunked so suddenly that my lungs filled, making it impossible for me to speak.

  With jerky movements, he began to throw all of our garbage into the remaining bag, ripping off the handle. He tossed the half-eaten brownie into the bag, but I couldn’t bring myself to protest.

  I stood and brought my shoulders back. I barely recognized my voice when I found the air to push out the words. “You didn’t answer my question, Jack. Are you drinking again?”

  He walked to a nearby garbage can and stuffed the bags inside before turning back to me. I’d never seen him this angry before, but the subject was too important to let it drop. Or to think about the consequences.

  I had to force myself not to take a step backward. He stood directly in front of me, close enough that I could smell the soft scent of his cologne. “And you didn’t answer my question, either.”

  I felt the blood rush to my face, but I didn’t look away. “You first.”

  His eyes smoldered with anger. Very slowly and deliberately, he said, “As I believe I’ve mentioned more than once, there’s a lot you don’t know about me.” He spun around and began stalking away.

  “Where are you going?”

  “Not to a bar, if that’s what you’re thinking.”

  “That’s not what I was thinking,” I said, jogging after him, feeling like I’d just made a permanent mistake, but not quite understanding what it was. “I’m sorry, Jack, if I said the wrong thing. I’m worried about you.”