Antique Secrets (Locust Point Mystery Book 3)

by Libby Howard

  He blinked. He didn’t run screaming, which was a mixed blessing.

  “A ghost? Neither Dad nor Mom mentioned anything about a ghost in our house, and I don’t recall seeing or feeling anything. Although maybe none of us are sensitive to paranormal stuff. Or maybe it was someone who owned it before Mom and Grandmother had. How old is it, anyway?”

  “They made these styles from eighteen ninety to nineteen twenty,” I told him.

  “That sideboard came from grandmother, but I don’t know who owned it before her. If it’s from the nineteenth century, it might have had a previous owner. Grandmother was married in the mid-twenties, but it could have been used when she got it.”

  “It doesn’t bother you that I see ghosts?” Because it was weirding me out that he wasn’t weirded out. I’d sort of expected Daisy to take this in stride, but not Matt.

  “No. There’s all sorts of things that happen in this world that I can’t explain. Now if you’d told me that you had vampires living next door, I might have thought differently. But ghosts? Lots of people, normal sane sensible people, see a ghost or two in their lifetime. Can’t all be in their heads now, can it?”

  Six months ago, I would have said “yes”. Well, if the I-see-ghosts thing didn’t scare Matt off, this next revelation would.

  “Well, since neither your mother nor grandmother had been murdered, I felt like I’d hit a bit of a dead end on figuring out who this ghost was and why they were haunting the sideboard, so I had a friend of mine call in a medium to communicate with the ghost.”

  He still wasn’t running and screaming out of the coffee shop. In fact, Matt leaned forward on the table, obviously fascinated. “What did the medium say? Was there a crystal ball involved? Did the table thump up and down when she contacted the ghost?”

  Okay, clearly this guy had watched too many old séance movies.

  “No crystal ball or table thumping. Olive came to my house in a smart business suit and didn’t even insist on candles or incense. She contacted the ghost, but unfortunately the spirit wouldn’t give us her name, and would only repeat a few phrases.”

  “And it’s a woman ghost?” he asked.

  “Yes. I can only see a vague, shadow-like figure, but I feel certain this is a woman. Olive said she carries great guilt about something.”

  Yes, Matt was fascinated. Great. Far from discouraging him, my revelations were somehow making me even more interesting to the guy.

  “What did she say? The ghost, I mean.”

  I took a breath. “She said that she couldn’t rest. She kept repeating that over and over again.”

  “Well, of course she can’t rest,” he commented. “That’s why she’s a ghost.”

  I took a big swig of my coffee, thinking how surreal it was to be having this conversation with Matt.

  “She also said that no one could help her, that it was her fault—she was weak and it was her fault.”

  “Wow, what did she do?” Matt sipped his drink, staring at the table thoughtfully before looking up at me again. “Did she cheat on her husband or something?”

  I thought it was odd that Matt immediately went there. Was that the reason that his multiple marriages had ended?

  “Or suicide?” Matt added. “Although neither Mom nor Grandmother committed suicide, maybe there was a previous owner of the sideboard who did?”

  I hadn’t thought of that.

  “There’s one more thing the ghost said,” I added. “She kept saying, ‘May God forgive me for my sins. Please God forgive me for my sins. Forgive me my sins.”’

  Matt had the same stunned look on his face that I was pretty sure I’d had when the Olive-channeled-ghost had said those words.

  “Grandmother?”

  “That’s what I thought, because I remembered what you and your father had told me about her obsession with being forgiven for her sins.”

  “But lots of people must say that,” he countered. “We’ve all done things we regret, and depending on our spiritual beliefs, I can imagine many people during their last weeks of life would worry that the mistakes they’ve made would condemn them to hell.”

  He had a point. “Most people wouldn’t beg for forgiveness over jaywalking or shoplifting, though. It would have to be something big.”

  “Possibly. I run a therapy group for veterans and first responders. Even the ones who don’t have PTSD still have guilt over whether they made the right decisions, constantly second-guessing actions they took for decades. When your split-second decision takes a life, you never really accept that there wouldn’t have been another way—whether the person killed was an insurgent or a civilian in the wrong place at the wrong time, or someone on your team that might have lived had you just been a second quicker.”

  “But neither your mother nor your grandmother served in the military. And if the ghost is someone who owned the sideboard before them, she wouldn’t have served, either.”

  “Actually, she could have. There were many women nurses in World War I, although I think they mostly worked in the rehabilitation centers back home as opposed to on the front line. Maybe she couldn’t save one or more of her patients. Maybe she made a bad decision, or didn’t take a symptom seriously, and that’s always haunted her.” He shook his head. “It could have been any number of things.”

  If I could just nail down who this ghost was, it would be a whole lot easier to find out why she was still lingering after her death. Well, not easy, but at least I’d have a place to start research.

  Matt took another sip of his coffee. “Or maybe the ghost had an illness toward the end of her life that affected her mentally.”

  “So, this woman led a blameless life, but due to brain cancer or something, imagined she’d done something horrible?”

  He shrugged. “My grandmother was concerned about her salvation, but from my mother’s stories and from what I knew of her, she lived a spotless, admirable life. If you’re thinking it’s her, then it would have to be an imagined wrong.”

  “You said she died of a stroke. Did she have something earlier that might have caused her to think she’d done something wrong?”

  “No. As far as I know she was very healthy. And she’d always been concerned about her salvation.” He frowned. “I can’t imagine her having done something wrong, but maybe Dad was right. Maybe she was wrestling with some demons of guilt her whole adult life.”

  Okay, now this was the part where he ran screaming. “Matt, I know your grandmother lived a blameless life, but everyone has secrets. You and your father both noted how much your grandmother loved and cherished your mother. Do you think it would be possible that your mother was the source of her guilt? Maybe she’d been abused as a child, perhaps by her father, and your grandmother hated that she’d not been strong enough to intervene?”

  Matt gave me a sideways smile and shook his head. “We can try to ask Dad, but I think you’re barking up the wrong tree there, Kay.”

  “You said your grandfather died before you were born. And with your grandmother still alive, your mother might not have wanted to share that sort of thing with either your father, or with her child. Did she have a best friend, though? Someone she’d known since childhood?”

  He sighed. “Mom had always been close with Sarah Hostenfelder. She used to joke that once she married my dad, that they had to stay friends since they both had married into the weirdest names in the town.”

  Hostenfelder and Poffenberger. And I knew a Hostenfelder—Suzette who’d inherited her grandparents’ house at the end of our street. She was in her twenties, so Sarah would have possibly been her grandmother? Or a great aunt?

  “What had been Sarah’s maiden name?”

  Matt frowned for a moment. “Pratt? Yeah, it was Pratt. She was born the same year as my mother and they went to school together. Mom was maid of honor at Sarah’s wedding to Josh Hostenfelder. She used to show me the pictures in her album of the wedding. I remember visiting them when I was a kid. They lived in that old German farmho
use at the end of Birch Street, and had a big pond out behind their house.”

  She had to have been Suzette’s grandmother. But if that was the case, then Sarah was also deceased. And it was becoming clear to me that this mystery would never be solved because too much time had passed, and all the people who would have known the secrets had passed as well.

  But I had other avenues to explore before I completely threw in the towel on this one. I was convinced the ghost haunting my new sideboard was Mabel Stevens Hansen. And I hoped that there would be some additional clues to dig up, either online, or quite possibly at my friend Suzette’s house.

  Chapter 10

  Suzette’s eyes lit up when she opened the door and saw the gingerbread cake in my hands. I’d made it for post-yoga breakfast with Daisy tomorrow, but decided it would serve as an appropriate thank you for Suzette lending me her truck, as well as a bit of a bribe for information I hoped to receive. I’d also brought a container of caramelized pears which was probably the most amazing topping that gingerbread ever met. And in case that wasn’t enough, I had some whipped cream that I’d made right before coming over.

  “Oh, Kay. Bring me food like this and you can borrow my truck anytime. And I don’t care what you want to talk about, I’d spill national secrets for that gingerbread. It smells amazing.”

  I smiled, following her into the house. “Do you know any national secrets?” I could tell that Suzette had been remodeling the old stone and log house that had been built by German immigrants before the Revolution.

  “Sorry, no. But I’m happy to tell you anything else.”

  “I’ve got questions about your grandmother, Sarah Pratt Hostenfelder. You might not know the answer to them, but I’m hoping someone in your family does—your father, or maybe one of your aunts or uncles.”

  Suzette put on a pot of coffee, then pulled two plates and some forks out of the chestnut cabinets. They’d been heavily painted when she’d moved in, but Suzette must have yanked the doors and stripped the four layers of paint and refinished them since then. Slowly the woman was restoring the old house to a modernized version of what it had been two hundred years ago. No wonder I hardly saw her. All she did was work and restore her family home. And as rewarding as I was sure that was, Suzette needed to get out more. She might be young, but there was no reason she couldn’t come over for happy hour, or meet me for lunch, or even a dinner.

  “I spent a lot of time over here as a kid.” Suzette sat across from me and handed me a cake server. “Mom and Dad didn’t have money for summer camps or childcare, and we were barely scraping by with both of them working. Mom would drop me by on her way to work, and Dad would pick me up around four when his shift was done. Any school holidays, snow days, even when I was sick, I spent here.”

  “And your grandfather was strict?” I remembered Daisy saying how Mr. Hostenfelder would always run them off from swimming in the pond when they were kids.

  She took the outstretched plate from my hand and spooned a big dollop of warm pears on top of her gingerbread. “Oh, his bark was worse than his bite. The man complained all the time, was as gruff as a bear in winter, but he loved to sit me on his lap and read to me. He’s the one who taught me to ride a bike. He and Gran were polar opposites, but they truly loved each other. Icky public displays of affection and all. He died when I was seven.”

  “And your grandmother was friends with Eleonore Poffenberger?”

  Suzette laughed. “Oh my gosh, I haven’t heard that name in ages! She’d been a Hansen, as in the daughter of the department store guy. I was fifteen when she passed away and I went to her funeral with Gran. They were the same age, had been friends forever. They were even in each other’s weddings.”

  “They knew each other since grade school? That’s what Matt Poffenberger, Eleonore’s son, told me.”

  “They knew each other before that. Their mothers were very close friends that had grown up together as well. I got the idea Gran and Eleonore rolled around on the same blanket as babies while their moms drank tea and stuff.”

  I was stunned. Not stunned enough to keep from offering Suzette the whipped cream, but still stunned. “So, your great-grandmother was best friends with, grew up with Mabel Hansen?”

  She nodded. “Mabel Stevens before she landed the biggest catch in the county.”

  Mabel had been best friends with Suzette’s great-grandmother. Their daughters played together, grew up together, were in each other’s weddings. But that didn’t mean Suzette knew anything about their secrets.

  “Did your grandmother mention anything about Eleonore having a secret, or her mother having a secret that they would feel guilty about? Something that would haunt them their whole lives, that they thought was unforgivable?”

  Suzette shook her head, then rolled her eyes upward as she stuck a forkful of gingerbread into her mouth. “Holy cow, Kay. This is better than sex. Not that I’ve had sex in the last two years, but I’m pretty sure from what I remember that this is way better.”

  I’m wasn’t saying my baking wasn’t great, but clearly Suzette hadn’t met the right man yet.

  She swallowed, let out a happy sigh, then ate another bite before continuing. “I never knew Evie, my great-grandmother, but Gran always spoke highly of her as did my grandfather. She was a loyal woman, devoted to her friends and family. She’d do anything for those she cared about. I remember Gran saying that she’d taken care of her friend during her pregnancy, that Eleonore’s mom had a rough time of it and had needed to go to the country for fresh air for her last two trimesters. Harlen obviously couldn’t leave his business, so Evie took Mabel out to her cousin’s home in Pennsylvania until Eleonore was born. Actually, they stayed until Eleonore was about three months old, just to make sure they were healthy enough to come home.”

  I frowned, wondering why the heck Mabel had needed to go to the country, let alone out of state. Locust Point wasn’t a big town now, and it was even smaller back then. I couldn’t imagine the air would be any fresher in Pennsylvania than here in 1926.

  Maybe she just needed to get away from Harlen. From what Maurice had said, Harlen had been a cold, unloving father. I’d bet he was a cold, unloving husband. Mabel had married the catch of the county; he’d gained a beautiful bride as his trophy, and her pregnancy had been the perfect excuse to get away, at least until she could no longer find an excuse to stay away.

  “Did you know anything else about them? I was wondering how Mabel and Harlen’s marriage was, if there was any indication that Eleonore’s father may have abused her.”

  “I don’t know anything about Mabel and Harlen’s marriage, but I’m sure if Eleonore had been abused at all, she would have told my Gran. They knew everything about each other.”

  “Would she have told you any of that?”

  “Gran wasn’t one for gossip. She talked a lot about her childhood, and her and Eleonore, then about her romance with my grandfather. She had lots of stories, but they were all hers. She wouldn’t have told someone else’s stories.”

  Well, that was the end of that.

  “I’ve got the old journals. You could go through them, but from what I read, they’re not all that exciting. Mostly they’re records of visits, events, and how the tomatoes were looking that year. How many pies she baked, and when laundry day was. That kind of thing.”

  “Journals? Your grandmother kept a journal?”

  Suzette chuckled. “No. If she had, it would have been a far more interesting read. These were Great-grandmother Evie’s journals. I kept them because she had descriptions of the house as it was in the early part of the twentieth century. She’d known my grandfather’s parents when she was little, and visited a few times and had written about the furnishings and wallpaper and stuff. And I like to keep stuff like that. Makes me feel like I knew the great-grandmother I never met.”

  “Do you think I could borrow them?”

  She nodded. “Of course. As long as I get them back when you’re done.”

 
“Wait. How many journals are there?”

  “Twenty-five. She’d had one for each year since she was fifteen. Evie died when my grandmother was only nineteen. She was forty when she passed away, otherwise I would have probably had sixty or seventy of them.”

  Still, twenty-five journals were a lot. I could narrow down certain years, but the secret I was looking for could realistically be in any of them. Or none at all.

  Chapter 11

  “Can I share your workspace?” I asked Judge Beck.

  I’d left the rest of the gingerbread with Suzette, inviting her to the barbeque this weekend and returning with my arms full of her great-grandmother’s journals. The judge’s car was in the driveway, and he was once again sitting at the dining room table, folders and papers spread everywhere. When he looked up at me, I noticed a smudge of ink on the corner of his mouth, as if he’d been chewing a pen. I also noticed something I’d never seen before—the judge was wearing reading glasses.

  Reading glasses that he hastily took off when he saw me.

  “Don’t take those off on my behalf,” I told him, setting my laptop and notepad at the end of the table. “Up until my cataract surgery I had a pair of my own. That was one benefit of lens replacement—twenty-twenty vision once more.”

  He held up the glasses and scowled at them. “I’m too young for these. I don’t normally wear them, but if I have a lot of reading, I get eye fatigue and headaches without them.”

  Too young for those. I hated to tell the judge but most people in their forties did have a pair of cheats.

  “Oh, you’re just being vain. Wear them if you need. Lots of people do. Besides, you look very handsome with them on.”

  I don’t know why I said the last bit, except that men were vain. They dreaded the signs of aging just as much as women did. And he was handsome with them on. Of course, Judge Beck was handsome without the glasses, but they gave him an academic serious look that had always appealed to me. Eli, for all his playful sense of humor, had that appeal, especially when he was going over patient files or discussing a tricky surgery.