by JL Bryan
He was silent for a long moment while I waited for his response.
“I’ve been talking to my daughter,” he said.
“Oh.” That was my great and carefully thought-out response. I looked at the pictures on his desk—a smiling gap-toothed girl of three or four on Santa’s lap, then onstage competing in a spelling bee at about age ten. Graduating from high school. Draped in a wedding gown, marrying some guy in a tuxedo. I couldn’t remember the last time Calvin had mentioned her to me. “That’s...good news, right? How is she?”
“She’s going to have a baby,” Calvin said.
My mouth actually dropped open at that.
Calvin had already been divorced when I’d met him eleven years earlier, just after the pyrokinetic ghost Anton Clay burned my house down and killed my parents. His wife had left around the time Calvin became the go-to homicide detective on the Savannah police force for cases involving the supernatural. Calvin’s related study of the occult and ghost lore, as well as some of the nasty spectral entities that followed him home, had repeatedly upset her. His daughter had been five years old at the time. That meant she was about twenty-three today. As far as I knew, she hadn’t spoken to her father in years, until now.
“Congratulations,” I remembered to say. “You’re going to be a grandfather.”
He nodded. “That must be why she’s reaching out to me. She hasn’t said it in so many words, but I think she’s ready for me to be part of her life.”
“Are you planning to...visit her?” I knew Lori lived in Florida, hundreds of miles away.
Calvin looked at me and didn’t say anything.
“You’re not thinking about moving there, though? Right?” I asked. He’d mentioned it before.
“I could be near my grandchild,” he said. “They don’t know if it’s a boy or girl yet.”
There was no way for me to reply to that. It obviously didn’t feel right to discourage him from being closer to his family. I wanted Calvin around and needed his guidance and advice, but it was hard to argue that I needed him more than a newborn baby would. Then there was the whole specter of working for PSI and having to teach crystal-gazing meditation and lead inexperienced ghost tourists into haunted old buildings for their amusement. I didn’t even want to think about that. The idea of Calvin leaving was bad enough.
“I could also retire and turn the agency over to you,” he said. “Then I’d be leaving you in a difficult situation, with a larger company moving into the area and taking away business.”
“And you’d never get the big payday of selling the company,” I said. “Just a monthly trickle from whatever cases we land while you’re away.”
“That’s not my biggest concern,” he said. “I may look useless, but I can find other work. My concern is you. Stacey, too, but mostly you.” His smile was a little wry. “My own daughter grew up far away from me, kept away by her mother. You grew up here. You’re like another daughter to me.”
I don’t want to get too sappy here, but my eyes did sting a little at that. When I was fifteen, Calvin was the only one who really understood what had happened to my parents. When I talked about the man I’d seen in the house who was immune to fire—a strange, handsome, psychotic man in a silk cravat and tails, who’d tried to stop me as my dog led me out to safety—most people would have shoved me at the nearest psychiatrist and told him to stuff me with meds.
Calvin, who’d encountered his share of ghosts during his career of investigating questionable deaths around the city, took me seriously. He didn’t say much about it then, but later contacted me with his research. Clay had burned down a nearby antebellum plantation house in a twisted lovers’ murder-suicide, and his ghost had burned down five more houses over the years, including mine.
I’d forcibly apprenticed myself to him when I was a college freshman. Over time, as he taught me the ghost trade, he’d become something of a substitute for my lost father. I supposed I stood for the daughter missing from his life. We’d never really talked about this openly, but the feelings were there. On both sides, I now understood, not just on mine.
“I don’t want you to leave,” I said. There was nothing mature or wise there, not even a consideration of what was best for him, just me and my emotions.
Calvin looked away and cleared his throat.
“When we spoke about this before, you said you didn’t feel ready to take over by yourself,” he said. “With Paranormal Systems, you could work with other experienced ghost hunters. You’d access to the latest methods and technology. You’d be safer than if you try to go it alone.”
“I’d rather take over by myself than work for them,” I said. “Let’s remember we still have a couple hundred thousand dollars’ worth of cash in the safe downstairs. I say we get in touch with some coin traders and start the bidding. Then you can still get an apartment in Florida and travel back and forth. A week here, a week there. You wouldn’t have to run the agency day to day, but you’d still be involved. You’d still be here for me.” I gave him a hopeful smile, hiding how sick and scared I was feeling inside.
“That money was at the center of a major haunting,” he said. “Kroeller, that psychopath, killed thirteen people over it.”
“Why did he suddenly go all mass-murdery, anyway?”
“We can’t know for sure. Maybe it wasn’t so sudden, and he left bodies out in the desert that we don’t know about. Or he saw the robbery as his chance to run wild, since he’d arranged for others to take the blame. In any case, it’s not just blood money, it’s ghost money. The repercussions of taking it and using it for our own benefit could be extremely negative. How would you like Kroeller’s ghost stalking you for the rest of your life?”
I was pretty sure Kroeller wouldn’t return anytime soon, considering how his final departure had unfolded, but I’d held back on telling Calvin about that, especially since Michael hadn’t seen the great monster barreling down the tracks at all. Besides, who knows how the universe works? I certainly didn’t want to risk summoning Kroeller.
“I don’t think I’d like it,” I said.
“Even if that doesn’t happen, it could bring bad luck. Sell the old cash, use the proceeds to go on a lavish tropical vacation...and then your plane crashes, or you contract an exotic new virus.”
“Do you really believe that?”
“The money is spiritually tainted.” He shrugged.
“There must be some way to lift the taint off the money.”
Calvin steepled his fingers in front of his face, slowly tapping his index fingers together. Thinking. He spoke again after a minute.
“You might be right,” he said. “But you’ll have to take a road trip.”
“If I didn’t take road trips with Stacey, how would I learn all the intricate details of Jason Momoa’s dating life?”
“I have no idea who that is,” Calvin said.
“Should I have referenced Errol Flynn?”
“How old do you think I am?”
“Douglas Fairbanks?”
Calvin scowled, but he was smiling a little, too.
“So where do we go to launder cursed money?” I asked.
Chapter Twenty-Seven
We had to settle the question of what to do with the three bandit ghosts we’d trapped. Dangerous ghosts are typically taken to a certain remote and long-abandoned cemetery in the Appalachians, where they are buried in their traps. Should they eventually escape their traps, they’ll find themselves under the authority of the dead Reverend Mordecai Blake and his ghostly flock, as well as imprisoned by the graveyard walls.
Nicholas Blake, the young English man from Paranormal Systems had the same surname as the Reverend Blake, a snake-handler who’d drawn a minor cult-like following in the mountains about a century earlier. I wondered if they were related somehow.
Taking Maggie’s special plea into consideration, I insisted we release McCoyle at the “nice” cemetery over in the abandoned western town of Goodwell, where we let the less dangerou
s ghosts roam free among the wildflowers and massive oaks. Removed from their original haunts, they might be able to reflect on their lives, accept their situation, and move on. If not, at least they’re trapped far away from the living.
We didn’t know of McCoyle killing anyone until the night of his final robbery, and even then, he’d only shot the mass-murdering Kroeller, who’d died of the infected injury weeks later. We released the O’Reilly brothers along with him, since we had even less information about them, and I definitely didn’t want to make an entire separate trip to Reverend Blake’s graveyard if I could avoid it.
After disposing of those ghosts, Stacey and I made another road trip the following day, in my car. It wasn’t nearly as far—just to Charleston, South Carolina, a drive that takes one to two hours, depending on how fast your car is and how many highway patrol officers are around.
We parked on Broad Street in downtown Charleston, lined with stately old federal and neoclassical buildings housing assorted money-jugglers—banks, insurance and investment companies, and so on—and the sorts of steakhouses and pubs where bankers and lawyers apparently like to eat lunch. It was nestled in a part of town reminiscent of downtown Savannah, streets filled with lovely old mansions and gardens. It was a fairly haunted area, too–I’d been in the nearby neighborhoods a few times on different cases.
“Look at that.” Stacey pointed up at the triangular pediment of the building as we approached it. A huge golden eagle perched above the doors, glinting in the sun. “That ices the cake, doesn’t it?”
“What do you mean?”
“The building already looks like some ancient temple,” she said. “But putting a giant golden animal on the front really drives it home. I feel like we’re supposed to sacrifice a chicken on the way inside or something.”
“That’s one of the top thirty weirdest things you’ve ever said, Stacey. Okay—the Bank of Charleston was founded in 1836. That’s where all the stolen money was supposed to go. In 1926, it merged with the National Bank of South Carolina, which was later acquired by Wachovia, which was acquired by—”
“Wells Fargo.” Stacey pointed right in front of us, to one of the black and gold signs with the company’s name mounted on the exterior of the building. “I’m guessing.”
“The point is that this isn’t just the same building where the cash shipment was supposed to go, it’s the same institution, in continuous operation,” I said. “We’re lucky it still exists, or we’d just have to burn the money. If this doesn’t go well for us, we’ll still have to burn it.”
“That’s too bad. Well, they’re going to call us crazy, but I guess it’s worth a try.”
We opened one of the glass front doors and walked inside. I carried the cash in an old briefcase I’d borrowed from Calvin, since it seemed like a less obtrusive thing to bring into a bank than a musty old leather satchel.
The interior was posh, built in an age which nobody skimped on marble, crown molding and hardwood.
A young man in a cardigan and glasses that were a little big for his face approached, smiling and greeting us. “I’m Dennis. What can I do for you today?”
“I was hoping to speak to the bank manager,” I said.
“I’m sure I can help you,” he replied with a big smile, which seemed a little more aimed at Stacey than me. Typical male. “Come on over and have a seat in my office.”
The office turned out to be one of a cluster of cubicles with high glass walls, right out on the main floor. I doubted we would be sitting there very long, but I let him pull the seats out for us anyway. Very gentlemanly. I don’t know if that’s standard Wells Fargo procedure or if it had more to do with Stacey’s charming smile.
“Now, what I can do for y’all today?” Dennis asked, dropping into his chair across from us. “Are we opening an account?”
“We’re private investigators,” I said. “In a recent case, we came across some property that was stolen on its way here, to the Bank of Charleston, in 1902.”
“Did you say 1982?” he asked.
“No. Would you like to see it?”
“All right.” He looked uncomfortable, out of his element, which was probably handling complaints and selling loans.
I placed the briefcase on the table, unlatched it, and raised the lid, revealing stacks and stacks of national bank notes.
He gaped at it, adjusted his glasses, and gaped again, then frowned and furrowed his brow. I could see him going through the same thought process we had when we’d found it—surprise at the amount of cash, then confusion as we’d realized how strange the money actually looked, with unfamiliar faces and prominently displayed city names.
“I’m, uh.” He adjusted his glasses again. “I’m going to have to get the manager.”
“Thank you,” I said, closing the briefcase again.
Soon we found ourselves in the office of the bank manager, a woman in her fifties with a close-cropped haircut that fell just shy of a flattop. She had a sharp, no-nonsense look about her, from her sensible shoes to her sensible earrings, but she gaped a little as Stacey and I unloaded piles of long-lost bank notes onto her desk.
“I’ve only seen these in textbooks,” she said, a little bit of wonder in her voice as she lifted a stack of National Bank of Atlanta notes, turning them in her fingers. “You’re sure these are real?”
“We’ve had them examined by a numismatist,” I said. Grant had put us in touch with an expert. “Obviously, you’ll want to do the same.”
“And you said this deposit was from...when?”
“1902. I don’t have any of the paperwork for it, but it was definitely coming to this bank.”
“It’s going to take some time to find those records.” She was looking at us like she’d decided we were pulling some kind of scam.
“Also, it’s less than half the original deposit,” I said. “One of the thieves got away with the other half.” Some had also been used as bandit bait and was subsequently buried along with the ghosts, but I didn’t see any reason to get into that. “There’s twenty-two thousand, one hundred dollars, including some five-dollar coins.” I jingled a cloth bag tied tight with a drawstring. “All of it meant for the Bank of Charleston.”
“So you happened to run across all of this,” she said. “You took it to an expert. And then you decided to just bring it on over to us? It seems like the last thing most people would do in your situation. Assuming this money is genuine and you had a numismatist examine it, you must know what it’s really worth.”
“Yes,” I said. “And I agree, most people would sell it themselves, or keep it, or do anything but return it to its rightful owners. Our problem is that this isn’t just money that was lost or stolen. Fourteen people died over it in one of the deadliest train robberies in history.”
The bank manager continued watching me, waiting to see if I had a point, or what I expected to gain from the situation.
“Now, we did recover this at some difficulty,” I said. “And, as you’ve said, most people wouldn’t have brought it here at all. And half the money’s already lost to history. So, what we would like, in payment for our services, is a portion of the recovered sum. Ten percent is a common finder’s fee.”
She raised an eyebrow, as if she’d finally seen the point of our scam. “You want me to write you a check for two thousand dollars? In exchange for this?” She gestured at the stacks of bills, probably deciding they were fake.
“No, thank you, ma’am,” I said. “We’d actually like ten percent of the same money we brought in. That would be this amount.” I patted a few stacks of currency that we’d place a couple of inches away from the others. Our proposed cut, with a face value of twenty-two hundred dollars, the bills hand-picked for us by Grant’s numismatist. “If you could just give us this part, you can keep all the rest and we’ll be on our way.”
I could see she was a little puzzled. Any rational person would be.
“So you want me to give you back this portion of the cash th
at you discovered and chose to bring us in the first place...” She placed her own hand on the indicated stacks of bills, and I felt a little thrill. Maybe she was going for it. “And then leave the rest of this for us to deal with?”
“Exactly, yes, thank you,” I said. “We wouldn’t feel right keeping all of it for ourselves. This way, we’ve returned the lost money where it belongs, and you’re just giving some back as a reward.”
She still look puzzled, but she slid the stacks back toward me across the desk, probably just curious to see what we would do next.
“Thanks so much!” I hopped to my feet, and so did Stacey. I gathered up our share of bills and dropped them back into the briefcase. Completing the money’s journey to the bank, according to Calvin, was the best way to clear any cursed energy from it. I handed the bank manager copies of several very old newspaper articles about the train robbery. “I’m sorry we don’t have more information, but this should help you sort things out. They’ll give you a date to start with, anyway.”
“Thank you...” The manager looked from the blocky print of a 1902 newspaper to the rows of money on her desk, as if dazed and completely unsure what to make of the situation. Still, she’d accepted the cash and given us a portion of it.
I offered her a handshake to seal the deal, and she accepted it.
“I hope the rest of your day is great,” I told the manager, while nudging to Stacey to move on. “The weather’s so nice today.”
“Yes...” She stood there, looking perplexed, then grabbed the telephone on her desk as we left the room.
“I can’t believe that worked,” Stacey whispered, which brought a glance from an elderly security guard.
“It was a fair deal,” I said. “Calvin said once we return the money to the bank, any bad juju is discharged. It’s the bank’s discretion what to do with it at that point.”
“What do we do with our cut?”
“I’m leaving that up to Calvin,” I said, but I already had plans for a sturdy new leather jacket to protect me from the biters and scratchers. There’s a reason people used to make armor out of leather, but never out of denim.
