Haunting Jordan pcm-1

by P. J. Alderman

  The pub was surprisingly full, its clientele mixed—some young enough to be college students, others closer to Jordan’s age, still dressed in their work clothes and clearly tradesmen. Even the personal styles were eclectic—everything from dreadlocks to old-fashioned, elaborate French twists paired with vintage clothing.

  Patrons stood at a baroque-style mahogany bar that ran the length of the room, chatting among themselves with the ease of longtime acquaintance. Others crowded around tables or jammed into booths, sharing pitchers of beer over some hotly debated topic.

  “Hey, everybody!” Darcy yelled. “This is Jordan. She bought Longren House. Jordan, this is everyone.”

  Jordan acknowledged several “hi’s” with a smile, noting the curious but polite scrutiny she was receiving.

  A tall, thin man with a silver ponytail and a diamond stud in his left ear came over to the table. He introduced himself as Bill, the bartender, and took her order for white wine.

  “Friendly place,” she noted to Darcy, relaxing into the captain’s chair.

  “Would I steer you wrong?” Off-duty, Darcy looked only slightly less intimidating, dressed in boot-cut jeans that emphasized her long legs and a soft, sea green sweater that turned her hazel eyes the color of old moss. “Wait’ll you try the food.” She forked up a bit of fresh mozzarella, tomato, and basil vinaigrette from her plate for Jordan to taste.

  The flavors exploded on Jordan’s tongue. “Oh.” She closed her eyes to savor the moment.

  “Kathleen makes the mozzarella from scratch each day, and she grows the basil out back. Jase has threatened to commit suicide if she ever leaves to open her own restaurant.”

  Jordan couldn’t stop herself from looking around for him. She found him seated behind a shiny black grand piano on a small stage in the back corner. Glancing up from the keyboard, he gave her a slow smile and launched into a mellow tune she recognized.

  Not only did he own the pub, he played jazz piano. She did not need to discover that fact. “FPP,” she muttered under her breath.

  “What’s that?” Darcy asked.

  “You have hearing like a bat’s,” Jordan complained, then sighed. “Four-Point Plan. It’s my way of dealing with everything that’s happened in the past year, starting with a grief stage.”

  Darcy snorted. “You’re grieving for a jerk who lost his license to practice by bedding his patients?” Catching Jordan’s wary look, she held up both hands. “Hey, don’t look at me like that. One of the guys Googled you.”

  “Terrific.”

  “Hell, most folks in here figure if you killed your ex, you were entitled.”

  Jordan choked on her wine, and Darcy leaned over to pound on her back, nearly slamming her face-first into the table.

  “So much for living a quiet life of anonymity,” Jordan rasped when she could finally talk.

  “If you wanted anonymity, you should’ve moved to another city. Everyone knows everyone else’s business in a small town, and you’re the most exciting thing to happen around here in years.”

  And to think she’d taken those politely curious looks at face value.

  “Cheer up,” Darcy said. “Half the men in here believe that if they get involved with you, they might end up dead. The rest are turned on by the possibilities.” She took a drink from her beer mug. “Of course, the fact that you bought Longren House has them a bit twitchy, but adopting the dog helped.”

  It was on the tip of Jordan’s tongue to ask which group Jase fell into. She drank down half her wine in one gulp instead.

  “I don’t suppose you have any theories as to who did kill your hubby?” Darcy asked.

  “The list of possible suspects is long,” Jordan replied wryly.

  “And you being the spouse—”

  “Soon-to-be ex,” Jordan corrected her, “which diluted my motive.”

  Darcy shrugged. “Depends on whether you were getting screwed in the settlement.” She waited, her expression expectant, and when Jordan didn’t confirm or deny, she asked bluntly, “Were you?”

  Jordan continued to hesitate. No matter how friendly Darcy seemed, Jordan couldn’t trust that anything she confided would be kept confidential. “No,” she said finally, keeping it simple.

  Darcy drank more beer, her gaze still assessing. “Whatever you aren’t telling me, you can bet the cops in L.A. picked up on as well.”

  Jordan remained silent, striving to look unconcerned, and Darcy shook her head.

  Jase ended his song with a glissando that ran the length of the keyboard, drifting away to enthusiastic applause, then rose from the piano. A group of men at a nearby table caught his nod, rising to carry their drinks and instruments up onstage, unpacking a bass fiddle, a sax, and two horns. Apparently, they were to be treated to live jazz. Jordan decided she could easily become addicted to evenings spent here, even if it meant putting up with a few questions from the resident cop.

  “So what have the welcoming committees brought so far?” Darcy asked.

  “Chocolate cake, sugar cookies, and a salmon loaf,” Jordan answered, relieved by the change of subject.

  “Salmon loaf is classier than a tuna casserole. Let me guess—Betty from down the block?”

  “I think so—I had trouble keeping track.” Jordan remembered a question she wanted to ask. “What’s a colorist? She—Betty—mentioned one when we were standing outside this afternoon.”

  Darcy scooted around in her chair. “Yo, Tom?” A bearded, red-haired mountain of a man at the bar raised his eyebrows. “Jordan wants to know about colorists.” He nodded and headed toward their table, beer mug in hand.

  “Tom’s the great-grandson of one of Port Chatham’s most famous police chiefs,” Darcy said by way of introduction.

  “Really?” Jordan shook his hand. “What time frame?”

  “Late 1800s,” Tom rumbled, his soft voice at odds with his bulk. He pulled out the chair next to Darcy, settling in. “My great-granddaddy was smitten with Hattie Longren’s sister, Charlotte, for a while, according to the diaries he left behind. At least, until Charlotte turned to prostitution, which cooled his ardor a bit.”

  “I read about her this afternoon.” The doll the dog had found evidently belonged to Charlotte, not a daughter. “She became a prostitute at the Green Light after Hattie was killed, correct?”

  He nodded. “Bad luck ran in that family, that’s for sure. Charles Longren perished at sea, leaving Hattie in charge of his shipping empire, but then Hattie was murdered not too long after. Once Hattie was gone, Charlotte was too young to run the business and had no way to survive. She ended up dead on the waterfront not too many years later.”

  “Tom’s a history buff, like many of the descendants of the original families here in town,” Darcy explained. She eyed Jordan curiously. “You’ve already started researching?”

  “A couple of ladies brought me a stack of papers they thought I’d want to read. Newspaper accounts of the murder and so on.” Jordan shook her head. “From what I was able to glean, the man who hanged for Hattie’s murder was someone with whom she had a close relationship. Pretty sad.”

  Tom leaned back, balancing his mug on the arm of his chair. “That jibes with my great-granddaddy’s account.”

  “The man was a union representative, correct?”

  “I think so. Frank Lewis enjoyed a certain amount of fame—or notoriety, depending on your perspective—for writing about the sailors’ plight in the union magazine of the time, the Seacoast Journal. The union and the shanghaiers were always at odds—both vying for the same berths with the shipping lines. And, of course, the shanghaiers had a lot to lose if the union got a toehold in the business.”

  “The opinion of the ladies who brought me the articles was that Frank Lewis might’ve been falsely accused,” Jordan said.

  Tom frowned, stroking his neatly trimmed beard. “I seem to remember some speculation that he’d been framed as a way to neutralize him because of his influence on the waterfront. The shanghaiers contin
ually looked for a way to get rid of him, that’s for sure. He was highly educated—his columns in the Seacoast regularly documented the brutality and illegal practices of both the shipping masters and the shanghaiers. But as for whether he was ultimately wrongly convicted, I wouldn’t know about that.”

  Belatedly, Jordan realized she had suggested that his relative, the police chief, might’ve bungled the investigation. “I didn’t mean any disrespect.”

  Tom shrugged. “None taken. People around here love to speculate about past events. Though it certainly seems like that old murder affected the lives of a lot of people, and not in a good way. My great-granddaddy never really got over losing Charlotte, and not too long after the trial, he was killed in the line of duty. I’ve always wondered whether his grief had made him careless.” He sat in pensive silence for a moment, then took a long drink of his beer. “You asked about colorists.”

  “Yes.”

  “We’ve only got two in town who specialize in color schemes for the Painted Ladies.”

  Jordan looked at him blankly, then the light dawned. “The Victorians?”

  “Yeah. Colorists consult with you to design historically accurate colors by customizing modern paint. I’m one, and the other is Holt Stilwell, who’s standing over there at the end of the bar.”

  She craned her neck to get a glimpse of a broad-shouldered man with a bleached buzz cut who was chatting up two young women. Aviator sunglasses hung from the neck of his muscle shirt, which exposed arms indicating that he bench-pressed somewhere around a gazillion pounds. Jordan had never been attracted to big, beefy types—her taste ran more to the lean, angular builds of men like … well, Jase. Dammit.

  “Best to stick with Tom,” Darcy muttered. “Stilwell is one of the main reasons I contribute heavily each year to the National Organization for Women.”

  Tom grinned behind his beer mug. “He’s a talented colorist, but he does have a certain reputation with the ladies.”

  “And it’s all bad.” Darcy scowled. “I’d love to run that son of a bitch in for being a misogynist and a womanizer, but unfortunately there’s no law against treating women like shit. And he’s too clever to get caught physically abusing anyone he lures back to his rat-infested dump.”

  “So tell us what you really think.” Jase had walked up while she was talking, and he rubbed her shoulder affectionately, smiling at her.

  At some point during the day, he’d exchanged the cable-knit sweater for a midnight-blue Henley T-shirt that emphasized his shoulders and lean build. Pulling out the chair next to Jordan, he was careful not to hit the dog, who was sound asleep.

  “Best not to encourage Darcy.” Tom winked. “Before you know it, she’ll have Stilwell facedown on the bar, handcuffed.”

  “That would be police brutality,” Darcy said, her tone prim.

  “Darlin’.” Tom grinned, placing a hand over his heart, and she rolled her eyes.

  “Justice, perhaps, in Stilwell’s case,” Jase pointed out.

  Jordan noted the easy camaraderie among the three and felt a moment of envy. In the past year, with her increasing isolation from friends and family, she’d lost any sense of comfort or intimacy she’d had with others. She missed it.

  “What you really need, though, before you start thinking about painting, is a master plan for the renovation,” Tom said, bringing the conversation back on topic. “You should assess the damage to the house and come up with a prioritized list of the repairs. There could be structural or mechanical problems that should be addressed first, or possibly problems that’ll cause continued deterioration and need to be fixed immediately.”

  Jordan hadn’t thought of that—he was probably right. The simple remodel she’d envisioned was becoming more complex by the moment. “Can you recommend someone for that?”

  “I can come by tomorrow and get you started in the right direction, if you want,” Tom replied. “Jase and I are both fairly knowledgeable when it comes to the old homes, and we know most of the folks here in town who work on the renovations—many are regulars here at the pub. You had an inspection done before you bought the place?”

  “Yes.”

  “Well, there you go. We can start with the inspector’s report. Shouldn’t be that difficult to get a handle on the work required, though with old homes like yours, there are always a few surprises along the way.”

  Jase leaned in close to pick up Jordan’s empty wineglass. “Another?”

  “Yes, thanks.” She smiled at him, then a thought occurred to her. “Would Holt Stilwell watch someone from afar?”

  Darcy shook her head. “He’s not that subtle. Why?”

  Jordan shrugged. “I felt a little creeped out today, like someone was watching me. You don’t have problems with anyone in this neighborhood, do you?”

  “Not that we know of.”

  Jase frowned as he set a full glass before her and returned to his seat. “Did you see anyone?”

  She shook her head. “I’m probably overreacting, given recent events.”

  “Maybe.” Darcy drummed her fingers on the table. “Then again, I’m thinking you’ve got the training in abnormal behaviors to pick up on something like that before the ordinary citizen would. I’ll take a look through the incident reports and see whether anything leaps out. For now, keep the dog close.”

  “And let me know when you’re ready to leave,” Jase added. “I’ll walk you home.”

  “No!”

  He gave her an odd look, and she felt heat color her cheeks. “I mean, no thanks, really, that’s not necessary.”

  He continued to hesitate. “Then why don’t I drop by tomorrow morning with Tom and check on you? We can point you toward the right people to hire, and so on.”

  “Works for me,” Tom added.

  Jordan quickly agreed. “Can we make it afternoon, though? I’d planned to visit the Historical Society at ten.”

  “Their museum downtown is open,” Darcy said, “though it won’t do you any good—they don’t keep the archives at that location. But if you mean the place out on the airport cutoff road, it’s closed down for remodeling.”

  “You must be thinking of a different place. Nora and Delia—the ones who brought me the papers?—told me to meet them there in the morning.”

  The three of them exchanged perplexed looks.

  “Nora and Delia are vacationing in the South of France,” Jase said. “I got a postcard from them just today.”

  Jordan shrugged. “So maybe they beat the postcard home. Unless this town has two sets of sisters named Nora and Delia, they were at the house this afternoon—they brought me a chocolate cake.”

  Darcy sent a silent look to Jase, and Tom rubbed his jaw.

  “What?” Jordan asked.

  “I stopped and checked the Historical Society building not two hours ago, on my usual rounds,” Darcy said. “It’s boarded up, and the sign says that it won’t reopen for at least three months. All the employees have been laid off for the summer, which is why Nora and Delia decided to take a long vacation …” She trailed off. “Well, hell.”

  Jordan stared at them. “Nora is around five-six with light brown hair,” she clarified, “and Delia is blond with blue eyes. Right? They wear vintage clothing?”

  “Nope. Nora is in her eighties,” Jase corrected, “and Delia’s not much younger. They’re both gray-haired.”

  “I don’t friggin’ believe this!” Darcy grumped. “I’ve been wanting to meet up with these two for eight damn years, and you get to see them on your first day in town.”

  Jase and Tom grinned, which seemed to make Darcy even madder.

  Totally confused, Jordan said, “Clue me in here, guys.”

  “You might want to drink some more of that wine,” Jase suggested, his blue eyes twinkling.

  “You had a visit, all right,” Darcy said dourly, “but not from the Hapley sisters.”

  “Well, then, who?” Jordan asked, exasperated.

  “Most likely,” Jase replied,
“the ghosts of Hattie Longren and Charlotte Walker.”

  Chapter 4

  “YEAH, right.” Jordan chuckled. No one joined in. “Oh, come on.”

  Darcy cleared her throat. “Evidently Sandy failed to mention a few of the more unique aspects of Longren House.”

  “Is this some sort of joke?”

  “No.”

  Jordan shifted in her chair as she looked around the table. All three looked completely earnest. “Seriously, people don’t really believe in ghosts. I don’t believe in ghosts.”

  “We like to think we’re open-minded on the subject,” Jase allowed. “After all, there’re a lot of ’em around.”

  In a matter of moments, the atmosphere in the pub had gone from cozy and welcoming to surreal. The dog woke up and looked at her.

  She propped her elbows on the table. “Okay, here’s the deal: Most of the time, when folks tell me they’re seeing things that can’t be real? I, like, refer them to a psychiatrist who can prescribe antipsychotic meds.”

  “Questionable strategy,” Tom pointed out. “You’d have to dope up half the town.”

  “Cute.” Jordan pinched the bridge of her nose. “You’re serious.”

  “Well … yeah.” Darcy shrugged. “We’ve heard about Hattie and Charlotte for years, though this is the first time we’ve heard anyone has talked to them.”

  “You think that because Hattie Longren was murdered in my house, she—what—roams the halls at night, clanking her boyfriend’s prison chains and moaning?”

  “She’s being sarcastic,” Darcy explained to the others.

  “My coping skills are stretched a bit thin these days, and I’m not feeling all that flexible about sharing my house with a couple of ghosts!” Jordan’s voice rose, and there was a lull in the conversation as patrons craned their necks to look at her.

  She took a deep breath, then another, holding up a hand. “Where I come from,” she said, lowering her voice, “California has real estate disclosure forms—TDS, SSD, and SPQ.” She ticked them off on shaking fingers. “You’re required to disclose even the smallest things, like whether there’s a children’s playground nearby that the buyer would consider too noisy, for chrissakes. You’re required to tell the buyer about bad things. Ghosts”—she paused for emphasis—“are bad things!”