House of Whispers (Ellie Jordan, Ghost Trapper Book 5)

by JL Bryan

  “You found it?”

  “Yes. A little bit.”

  “What does that mean?”

  “The Red Suite was comped on Gary's authority that week. No record of the guests. I think that's where the ghost people were staying.”

  “So...do you have a name or phone number or anything for these people?”

  “No.” His smile faltered. “I don't have any of that.”

  “Can you remember the exact name of the TV show?”

  “Ah...sorry. Ghost something. Or Haunted something. How many can there be?”

  “You'd be surprised.” I took a deep breath. “Okay. What about Gary? Can you get me in touch with him?”

  “I...shouldn't do that.”

  “He can't fire you now,” I said. “Remember I'm here as a security consultant for Madeline. You can hand over any information I need.”

  “If you say so.” Steve called up the former hotel manager's information and gave it to me—telephone, address, email. “Don't tell him it came from me. Gary was the one who hired me. He was all right, for a boss.”

  “Thank you.”

  Back in my room, I looked up every ghost-hunting or true-haunted-house show I could find—nineteen of them, I was surprised to discover, if you counted the ones from Canada. Then I tracked down phone numbers for their production companies and called each one of them, asking whether they'd recently filmed at the Lathrop Grand in Savannah. Nobody said yes. A few said they would have to get back to me.

  After another nap to finish recharging, I met up with Michael in front of the hotel.

  “Any luck catching Stabby Abby?” he asked with a grin as I climbed into the passenger seat.

  “I may have run into her once or twice.” I'd taken care to select a top that covered my shoulders and upper back so he wouldn't see the long cut in my back, which was starting to heal but still felt tender. As an EMT, he would probably insist on taking my shirt off and having a closer look—though that only made me think that maybe I should mention it to him.

  We hit some of the major antique and salvage shops downtown, including Universe Trading Company, mostly stocked with outlandishly large items, like carousel horses, jumbo-sized toys, and dragon and pirate statues that might have once adorned a kitschy miniature golf course.

  I dared Michael to try on an oversized antebellum ball gown that was currently worn by a gigantic fuzzy gorilla statue, possibly one of the Kongs. It looked more Donkey than King. He said he would if I tried on a clunky suit of medieval armor that stood in one corner, but I declined.

  We walked through the cultural flotsam and jetsam that had washed up in the booths at the Wright Square Antique Mall, everything from old china and pottery to jewels, records, dog-eared books, and endless jewelry boxes, old bottles, and glassware of every kind. Michael had no trouble finding broken clocks—he never took parts from machines that were still working—but he needed some specific gear or spring that was only made by a particular clan of Bavarian tree elves in the nineteenth century or something, so it took a while.

  When he could, he would surreptitiously open an old clock to check its innards. Michael usually focuses on the elaborate antique automaton clocks, the kind with lots of moving parts that animate little mechanized spring-driven characters, like cuckoo clocks. It could take months to restore a single one, which he would then reluctantly sell at a profit to wealthy collectors.

  Meanwhile, I browsed among the old knickknacks and decorations. Part of me was always looking for things that reminded me of my childhood, before I'd lost my house and my parents to the fire. Even random objects, like the little pastel owl salt and pepper shakers that had perched on the kitchen counter, or the poster of Linda Carter as Wonder Woman that my dad hung in the garage, just between his tool bench and his worn-out armchair, much of it chewed to bits by my dog when he was a puppy. My poor golden retriever, Frank, dead from smoke inhalation after saving my life.

  I went back to watching Michael. I didn't care about the wheels and gears inside the delicate old machines, but I liked the intense focus on his face when the wheels inside his head were spinning.

  When the proprietor of one place allowed him to open up a big, non-functioning clock taller than I was, he stared at the inner workings for a full minute without moving or saying anything. The exterior of the clock was made of heavy cracked walnut, with a cluster of doors and curved pathways around the clock face, the whole exterior shape of the clock suggesting a castle tower, with little curtain walls and narrow arrow-slit windows.

  “Is it sucking out your soul through your eyes?” I whispered to Michael, after the silence had begun to seem awkward.

  “I'm just trying to see where it's broken,” he said. “I might be able to fix it. Look at those characters.” He pointed to the compartment hiding the little figures that would come out at different times of the day. Several were missing, but I saw a snarling black horse in black armor—a knight. There was a dirty white bishop with a dead-solemn look carved into his face, a black king with no face at all. “Chess pieces. There are people out there who would go totally ape for this.”

  “You're still thinking about wearing that giant hoop gown from the gorilla mannequin,” I said. “Admit it.”

  “I'm serious. I really have to get this.”

  “Weren't we looking for just a couple of tiny little gears?” I was trying to keep it light, but the old clock made me a little uncomfortable. The black king seemed to stare at me with his nonexistent face, reminding me of the dark, eyeless sockets of the soldier I'd encountered the night before. “This clock is kind of spooky.”

  “I thought you liked spooky things.”

  “Just because I deal with them, it doesn't mean I like them. I get enough creepy at work, thanks.” I tore my eyes away from the dusty, disturbing little figurines and tried to ignore the spider-crawl feeling up my back. “Can we get lunch yet?”

  “I really think I should...” His fingers were already working at the little mechanisms within, tightening, coiling. His voice trailed off. The elderly gentleman who'd opened the clock squinted at Michael from behind the counter, as if annoyed. I'm sure he was.

  “Repairing creepy old clocks. I guess it passes the time,” I said, attempting to lighten the suddenly dreadful mood.

  “Clocks can teach you a lot about life,” he said, still mesmerized by the gearworks inside.

  “Okay. Elaborate, guru,” I said.

  “At first, when you wind it up...” He turned a crank, raising weights until they reached as high as they would go. “The weight is far off the ground. Gravity's pulling on it, so it's loaded with potential energy. That's like when you're born, you have the highest potential. And then...”

  One of the weights dropped, very slightly, and I heard a tick as the second hand advanced a notch.

  “I see where you're going with this,” I said. “Over time, you fall down, you lose your potential and your energy, until you finally stop moving and you're dead.”

  “I was going to take the comparison in a less depressing direction...”

  “How else could it go? We're all mechanisms that run down, wear out, and finally break down. That's where your analogy leads.”

  The clerk finally cleared his throat. “Sir? I'm afraid I can't allow that unless you purchase the item.”

  “How much?” Michael still didn't look up.

  “Michael, come on—” I said.

  “Eight seventy-five,” the clerk said. I don't think he meant eight dollars, seventy-five cents.

  “See, that's way too much.” I tugged on Michael's arm.

  “It's a good investment,” Michael said, reaching for his wallet. “I'll make a lot more than that after I restore it. Do you take Visa?”

  I stood glumly aside while he bought the thing and made arrangements to pick it up later, when I wasn't around to complain about it, I guess.

  I felt better once we were outside in the early afternoon sunlight, the dim antique shop and the weird old clock
behind us. I hoped he would change his mind about the clock, but I didn't think pressuring and nagging would get me there.

  I'd also hoped to eat over at Ruan Thai, a gorgeous place with delicious food over on Broughton, but Michael pretty much had his heart set on the Soda Pop Shoppe, an intensely 1950's-themed place where the outdoor tables, if you could get one, had a pretty great view of the leafy green park at Wright Square. He seemed to think it would go out of business if he didn't personally eat there.

  “Then He Kissed Me” by The Crystals played over the jukebox, but I can't say that watching my boyfriend order a chili cheese dog with added slaw really compared to that scene in Goodfellas where Ray Liotta shows Lorraine Bracco around the exciting world of mafia nightclubs. I had a chicken salad.

  “Where would you want to go?” Michael asked, finally getting more talkative. He'd seemed withdrawn for a minute. Probably thinking about that stupid clock.

  “Well, I wanted to go to Ruan Thai...”

  “I mean, if you were going to live somewhere else,” he said.

  “I guess I could use a bigger apartment.” I didn't get where he was going with this.

  “If you could move anywhere in the country. I've been thinking out west, you know, the huge national forests and everything. A lot of places are still wild out there, untouched by civilization.”

  “Sounds like somewhere Stacey would like to go,” I said. “I like air conditioning.”

  “But you've lived here most of your life. Haven't you ever wanted to move?”

  “Not really. I belong here.”

  “How do you know? Ever tried belonging anywhere else?”

  “What are we talking about, Michael?”

  “My sister's going off to college in the fall. I was thinking about it while she was working on her applications—she'll move out, and I won't need to stay here anymore. I can go anywhere now. Ever since my mom...you know, my whole life's been about taking care of Melissa. Soon I'll be free of all that.”

  “And you want to leave town?”

  “What do you think? Do you plan to stay here your whole life?”

  “My life is here. My work is here.”

  “I'm sure there are ghosts in other cities,” he said.

  “Yeah. But this is my city. And it's not like it would be easy to get established somewhere else, even if I wanted to. Which, I should add, I don't.”

  He nodded. “I was thinking it might be nice to try life somewhere else for once. Even just to get out of town for a while.”

  “Yeah, I could use a vacation or something. But not, ideally, sitting around in the woods the whole time. I want to visit cities. San Francisco, maybe. New York. Europe, if I could afford it.”

  “Sounds cool.” He didn't say it like he was ready to sit down and make plans. Not when there were woods and mosquitoes out there waiting to be enjoyed.

  “And I'm not ready to leave Savannah. I don't feel like I ever will be.”

  “Even if Calvin sells the agency to that other company? What's it called, Supernatural Services?”

  “Paranormal Solutions.” I thought about it. “You know, you might be right. I might just want to get out of town if that happens.”

  “You can hunt ghosts out west! On horseback.”

  “I'm not saying I want it to happen, though.”

  “Yeah, I understand. Want a bite of my dog?” He held out a mess of yellow, brown, and green that was very poorly contained by the bun.

  “No, thanks.”

  “Let's go for a walk down River Street after this,” he said. “That always puts you in a good mood.”

  “I actually have to get back to work soon,” I told him, which maybe sounded like a blow-off, but it was also true.

  “A walk around the park, then?” He pointed to the little one about twenty feet away from us.

  “Maybe halfway around. I'm in a hurry.”

  We moved back to easier subjects as we strolled under the brightly colored autumn canopy—music, movies, anything people talk about when they want to keep their deeper thoughts and concerns to themselves. The brick walkway led us to benches by the fountain, where we sat, and we might have spent a few minutes kissing while we were there. I was confused, uncertain whether to pull him close and hold tight, or to push him away if he was so eager to get out of town.

  I told myself it didn't matter, at least not today. Today I could bury myself in work, my usual response to any situation where I came dangerously close to exposing my feelings for someone else to crush.

  So much for the world of the living. Back to the world of the dead, where things make much more sense.

  Chapter Ten

  The three-story federal-style mansion housing the Savannah Historical Association looked lovely surrounded by trees glowing with autumn colors in the afternoon sunlight.

  “We have an exciting day ahead, don't we?” Grant asked when he greeted Stacey and me at the front door.

  “If you say so, it must be true,” I said. “I'm guessing you found some juicy dirt on the Lathrop Grand.”

  “The juiciest and the dirtiest,” he assured me while ushering us into the front hall. He glanced around as though preparing to share a deep, dark secret—though he's in his late fifties and going gray, he still moves with a kind of childlike enthusiasm. “We'll have to step down to the vault.”

  “What's the vault?” I asked, following him to the wide, polished stairs surrounded by bright windows.

  “The vault. It must be whispered, never spoken of aloud.”

  “Now I'm excited,” Stacey said.

  We followed him into the softly carpeted, well-lit basement, past the archives and storage rooms of to-be-sorted materials, past the book restoration room, and to a very normal-looking interior door near the end of the basement hallway.

  He pulled the door open to reveal another door immediately behind it, this one made of steel, with a digital combination lock at one side.

  “This is where we keep the valuables,” Grant explained. “Don't take offense, but standard security measures require you to look away while I enter the combination.”

  “How mysterious and dramatic.” I turned my back on Grant, and so did Stacey.

  “That is what we're known for here at the Historical Association,” Grant said. “Mystery, drama, and intrigue. We somehow fit it all in, just between the touring senior citizen centers and tea on Friday afternoons. You may turn back now.”

  Grant was opening the door as I turned around. Actually, the door was silently swinging inward under its own power, which was probably a good thing since the Association is made up mostly of genteel ladies between the ages of sixty and a hundred.

  The climate within the vault was cool and dry, a dehumidifier humming quietly in the background somewhere. Sealed glass cases displayed a number of items, including paintings and antique jewelry, as well as crumbling leather remnants of a very old pair of boots that, Grant confided, was believed to have belonged to James Oglethorpe, founder of our city and state.

  Grant opened one of a row of steel cabinets and removed an old book sealed in thick plastic, its title too faded for me to read.

  “This has not yet been digitized,” Grant said. “Miss Tolbert, you may take images of the pages within for your research—provided you share copies with me.”

  “Of course!” Stacey said. “What's the book about?”

  “The Lathrop Grand Hotel,” Grant said. “If you wish to learn more, follow me.”

  He led us out of the vault, carrying the book as if it were a lost treasure from a lost civilization from a lost age of history on a lost planet.

  We followed him to an archive room where stacks of papers and photographs sat in the center of one rectangular work table. He eased the book down alongside these.

  “At times, I struggle to find details for the properties about which you inquire,” he told me, while gesturing for us to sit across from him. “In this particular case, it was a matter of sifting, sorting, and weighing to
determine which details might be useful to you.

  “The Lathrop Grand,” he began, sliding the first stack apart to reveal paper copies of old drawings and paintings. One showed a wood engraving of the hotel, with its wrought-iron veranda, overlooking a dirt road crowded with horses and carriages. Ladies in huge flounced skirts and bonnets adorned with lace and flowers accompanied men in dark long-tailed coats and white cravats, strolling outside the hotel or passing in and out of the front doors. All around, it was a super-fancy scene.

  “The Lathrop Grand was a center of high society for some time, or at least that portion of high society that enjoyed Caribbean rum, gambling, and dancing. For a decade or so, it was the place to stay when one visited Savannah and wished enjoy comfort and luxury.

  “By all accounts, Mabel Lathrop, the wife, was instrumental in the conception and construction of the hotel, and could be found carousing in the hotel's lounge and restaurant nearly every evening. Her husband Uriah was not so social, preferring the company of his books and a cat or two in his library. There was more than one scandalous rumor of affairs on the wife's part, in fact.”

  Grant showed us images of the doctor—a small, pinched-looking man with thick glasses whose muttonchops nearly swallowed his face—as well as his wife, including the painting of pudgy, red-cheeked Mabel Lathrop that now hung in the restaurant bearing her name. That restaurant was the latest incarnation of the downstairs saloon where she'd drank, danced, and flirted while her husband studied his books.

  “The war forced the doctor out of his little retreat as the hotel became a hospital for Confederate troops,” Grant continued. Yellowed photographs showed the hotel's lobby crowded with men on makeshift cots. I shuddered, thinking of the vision I'd seen the night before, during the slip backwards in time. “By all accounts, the doctor worked quietly and diligently, day and night, hardly resting until the war was over. When General Sherman took the city, he worked just as hard to help Union troops. That, of course, brings us to the hotel's most famous resident—Abigail Bowen.”