The Guests on South Battery (17 page)

For the first time in my life, I found myself sucking in my stomach. “Actually, I haven't given it much thought. When is the party again? Jack called to RSVP and he might have neglected to put it on my calendar. I hope he thought to check to make sure I was free.”

Rebecca's lips formed a straight line. “On the twenty-seventh. You RSVP'd, so you have to come.”

“Do you think I could wear these together?” Jayne appeared from behind my mother, holding up a bright floral athletic top with striped running pants.

“Only if you're planning on running away with the circus,” Rebecca said before noticing to whom she was speaking. “Oh, it's Jayne, isn't it? We met at the park—you were with Jack and the children having lunch, I believe. Although I've run into you since then, haven't I?” She pretended to think for a moment, a pink-painted nail tapping against her chin. “Oh, right—running around Colonial Lake. You were with Jack again and the twins were in that adorable jogging stroller. You looked like the perfect Charleston family. Actually, I've been meaning to ask you what type of jog bra you were wearing—you're pretty chesty, but I noticed it was holding you high and firm.”

Jayne turned beet red as she opened her mouth to say something, but her lips kept on moving as if unable to find the correct words and failing.

“We're so happy to have Jayne as a member of our household,” my mother said, her tone reminiscent of the opera diva she'd once been. “I hope you were there for some exercise, too.” She let her gaze slowly roam up and down Rebecca. With a frosty smile, she said, “It's been lovely seeing you, Rebecca. Please give my best to your mother. Tell her that it's been too long and we must have lunch together soon.”

“I'll do that. Actually, I might want to come, too. I've been following my friend and former colleague Suzy Dorf's column on the history of some of these wonderful houses we have here in Charleston—kind of obsessed, really, which makes sense, since the story of Melanie's house will be making my husband famous—so of course I'm fascinated with Jayne's story of how she acquired the Pinckney house. My mother swears that she thought you and Sumter Pinckney were a serious item, but Melanie says I was mistaken. Just imagine—that it could have been yours if that were true. It's just such a fun coincidence that Melanie's nanny now owns that same house!”

She smiled and I was happy to see a smudge of pink lipstick on her front teeth. None of us mentioned it.

“Anyway, Mama said she could be mistaken—that she was probably just thinking about when you moved up to New York to start singing and then Sumter moved there a couple of years later. She said my daddy—who knew Sumter from their days at Porter-Gaud—ran into you together when he was up there on business.”

Only the flare of my mother's nostrils showed any indication of how annoyed she was. “Of course I saw Sumter when I was in New York. He was my best friend's older brother and he was kind enough to take me to dinner a few times so I wouldn't feel lonely. We might even have seen a play or two until my career took over my life. They were a lovely family. Now, if you will excuse me . . .” She turned her back on Rebecca and walked to the back of the store, where bins of underwear were sorted by color, none of which was white.

“Yes,” I said. “We have a lot of shopping to do before the twins wake from their nap. . . .”

Jayne, having finally found her composure, looked at Rebecca. “You have lipstick on your teeth. But you might want to leave it there so people will have something else to look at besides that silly contraption on your chest. And whether you know it or not, you're giving a bad name to people who really need a support animal. Think about that the next time you strap your little marshmallow dog into a baby carrier.”

Realizing there really wasn't anything else to say, I gave Rebecca a small smile and wave, then followed Jayne to the back of the store to join my mother. When I was sure we were out of Rebecca's sight, I gave Jayne a high five, and not just because she'd put Rebecca in her place, but also because I was gratified to know that she could, in fact, speak in coherent and well-thought-out sentences.

I was in a better mood as we continued the search for padded bras that also lifted and smoothed, but there was something Rebecca had said that kept pecking at my brain like a moth around a lightbulb. Something about coincidence, and how Jack was a firm believer that there was no such thing.

I
laced up my sneakers and slid on my sunglasses just in case anybody recognized me during my first attempt at running. Sophie had volunteered to come with me, but I'd declined, saying I was a big girl and could do it myself. The truth was that I was going to do something I'd seen on the Internet—interval training, a mixture between running and walking. Or what I liked to call survival. I'd skimmed over most of the article with its boring mentions of how many minutes should be spent doing each, deciding I would just stop when I got tired and walk until I felt like running again.

As a last thought, I grabbed General Lee's leash, rationalizing that if I gave out from pure exhaustion, I could blame him and stagger home. I thought about bringing Porgy and Bess instead because they would have more energy, but quickly dismissed that idea because walking them was an exercise in gymnastics and frustration, since they appeared to be allergic to walking in a straight line and also seemed hell-bent on either crippling or killing me by constantly crossing their leashes and running in opposite directions.

General Lee gave me a look of apprehension as I began moving my legs at a pace that was slightly faster than a walk, but much slower than what
others would refer to as a run unless one was a turtle. He soon caught hold of the idea and kicked up his speed, his short furry legs practically prancing. He actually appeared to be smiling. I had no idea how old General Lee was, since I'd inherited him with the house, but he was way too old to be outpacing me as I struggled to keep up. A couple of coeds with College of Charleston shirts darted past us, ponytails flying, making me feel like another reptile entirely—one that was related to the turtle but now extinct.

By the time I reached South Battery, I was convinced I would drop dead of a heart attack, and stopped, planning to turn around and go back home, feeling I'd done enough exercising for the day. But when I started walking in the direction from which we'd just come, General Lee yanked suddenly on the leash, yapping frantically. I turned to see what he was barking at and spotted a large, fat cat perched on the garden wall of the house opposite. Without my glasses, it was hard to tell, but as I approached, General Lee now in full attack mode, I could see the flap of skin that covered the empty eye socket, and the one green eye staring at us intently, the tail teasing us with its long, leisurely sway.

Just as we reached the curb in front of it, it jumped to the ground and ran down the sidewalk away from us. General Lee yanked on his leash so hard that it slipped from my hand, and he began chasing the cat. It was still early enough that there wasn't a lot of traffic on the street, but my dog couldn't be trusted off-leash. If it were diagnosable in dogs, I was pretty sure he had ADD; his ability to be distracted by pretty much anything that moved or made a noise was enough proof for me.

“General Lee, stop!” I shouted to no effect. “Come,” I tried, as if in his entire life he'd ever actually heard and listened to that word. “Treat!” I said instead, knowing that was the one word that might actually register. It didn't. I had a sharp pain in my side before I realized we were heading to the Pinckney mansion.

I watched the cat run up the outside steps and disappear through the open front door, General Lee close on its heels. I stopped at the foot of the driveway, bent over double, and dug my fingers into my side in a futile attempt to get the pain to stop.

“Melanie?”

I opened my eyes at the sound of Sophie's voice, but I lacked the energy and the oxygen required to straighten. I saw Birkenstocks and the bottom of a purple gauzy skirt with rainbow-colored elephant heads splattered like vomit all over the fabric. I let my gaze slide behind her to the Dumpster, where I spotted the backside of a man leaning over to lift something, his jeans slipping far past where they should be. I clenched my eyes shut again. “Is that Rich Kobylt?”

“He's helping me remove the cast-iron tubs from all the bathrooms. What are you doing here?”

I straightened slowly, the pain gradually lessening. “I was running after General Lee, who just ran inside the house chasing that black cat.”

She looked confused. “I didn't see a cat, but I did see General Lee, who was running a lot faster than I've ever seen him move.”

“Yes, well, the cat is apparently a lot faster than he is.” I looked behind her to where I saw Rich and another man lifting a claw-foot tub up a ramp that led into the back of his pickup truck, another three tubs waiting next to it. “Why aren't those going into the Dumpster?”

Sophie looked as if I'd struck her. “Because these can be refinished. They're solid cast iron! Do you know how much those would cost today? Besides, you're the first one to admit that all the buyers these days are looking for old stuff that looks new—and with the modern bathrooms we're putting in this house, these will be perfect.”

I looked at the tubs, with so much of their porcelain paint chipped off that they looked like brown-and-white cows. “I'll have to trust you on that one.”

Rich noticed me and walked over, pulling up his pants as he approached. I wondered if I left an anonymous gift of a belt on his driver's seat, whether he'd wear it. “Good morning, Rich.”

“Mornin', Miz Trenholm.” He jerked his chin toward the house. “Your dog's gonna have some trouble catching that cat. I've tried a bunch of times, but he's a fast 'un. None of my team can, either. Course, they claim they didn't see him, but that's only because they don't want to be bothered. They'll be bothered all right when that cat dies somewhere in the walls and starts to stink. Ever smelled that before?”

I almost said that I had, and worse, too, but chose instead to focus on his bumper sticker, which had the numbers 0.0 in a white oval. “What does that mean?”

“It means I'm more sensible than my wife and value my knees more than she does. She's a marathon runner and has a sticker that says 26.2. So I had to get my own.”

I had a vision of him running, his pants falling down to his ankles and making him trip, and I figured it was a good thing he wasn't a runner.

I also wanted to high-five him and ask where I could get a sticker, but I caught Sophie frowning. “I guess I should go find my dog,” I said.

We left Rich to deal with the tubs and I followed Sophie inside. If possible, the interior was an even bigger mess than it had been when I was last inside. Crumbled plaster and strips of moldy wallpaper lay in piles along the walls, the furniture moved to the centers of the rooms and covered in tarps, the paintings removed from the walls.

Sophie's eyes became moist as she looked around. “Sadly, even with a nice restoration budget, we've had to get rid of more interior elements than we'd like.” She brightened. “Happily, that article Yvonne found regarding the renovations in 1930 was extremely helpful. The architectural firm that was used and mentioned in the article still had the files that contained all the wallpaper and fabric patterns, as well as pen and pencil drawings of many of the ceiling medallions and other architectural elements in the house. It was like a gold mine, really. It's certainly going to take away a lot of the guesswork as well as save time. Although . . .”

“Although what?” I prompted.

“I feel sort of guilty making all these decisions. I mean, I bring stuff to Jayne for her approval and she just agrees to everything. She refuses to come see any of the work we're doing. She says she has dust allergies, and I get that, but I could give her a mask.”

I shrugged. “She really doesn't care. I don't think she plans on living here, so her goal is to make it as appealing to buyers as possible, in as short a period of time as possible.”

Sophie shook her head. “It's sad, really. Most people would give
their left arm to be in her position. Myself included. If I didn't know about her background, I'd say some people have all the luck.”

“Yeah, well, not everybody thinks inheriting an old home is a gift. Some might even view it as a punishment.” Before she could argue, I said, “I've been meaning to ask you—what's going on with the cistern in my backyard?”

“Oh, yes. That. Well, there's been a bit of a delay.”

I wanted to scare her with my narrowed-eye stare, but she busied herself picking through the piles of debris in front of us. “Yes, well, Meghan Black—my research assistant who's been doing much of the work while I've been focusing my efforts here—had a little accident with the XRF machine.”

“The what?”

“It's an X-ray machine we use to analyze bricks to determine what rivers they came from, which allows us to figure out the origins of the bricks. Since cisterns were usually made from old bricks from various places, this could be fascinating.”

“Fascinating.” I repeated the word, but I made my inflection different from Sophie's, hoping she'd take the hint. She didn't.

“Sadly, Meghan dropped it on her foot and broke it. I hate to say it, but at least her foot broke the fall, so the machine is okay. But she's in no shape to crawl in and out of a cistern for a while. And my other grad students are too busy working on their theses or helping me here. We'll just have to wait until she's up and about for the excavation to continue.” She said this last with her nose practically pressed against the wall, studying something I couldn't and didn't care to see.

“That's lovely. Hopefully it will all be done before the children graduate from high school. I'd hate for one of them to fall in.”

She was relieved from saying anything by her phone ringing out “Imagine” by John Lennon. I couldn't hear the other person, but from the horrified look on her face and furtive glances in my direction, I knew two things: It was something that involved me, and it wasn't good news.

“I'll call you back,” she said before hanging up the phone and looking at me with wide eyes.

“What's wrong?”

“I'm not sure. Remember my friend John Nolan—the antique toy expert who knows a lot about the Edison dolls?”

“Yes. He came and picked up the doll last week. Does he have good news?”

She clamped her lips shut and shook her head. “I'm afraid not. The doll appears to be missing.”

“Missing? As in he misplaced it?”

“He's not sure. He's positive he brought it to his office and locked it in the safe he has there for valuable items like that. He remembers very clearly doing it. But it's gone.”

“Maybe a coworker took it. Or he put it somewhere else and doesn't remember.”

She shook her head again. “He told me that he noticed it missing yesterday and has spent the last twenty-four hours looking for it and asking people who might have seen it. Apparently, he's the only one who knows the combination to the safe, and it was still locked when he went to go check on the doll.”

Our gazes met for a long moment, as if each of us was daring the other person to speak first.

A man's shout followed by a loud thump, as if something heavy had been dropped on the floor above us, jerked our heads toward the stairs. A flash of white flitted past my field of vision, disappearing around the corner by the landing.

“Did you see that?” I asked quietly.

“See what?”

I felt what I could only call relief. I had seen an apparition, and it hadn't been blocked—but neither had the dark, oppressive feeling that weighed down my shoulders now, pressing my feet into the floor and making them hard to move.

“Everything all right up there?” Sophie called.

When there was no answer, she headed up the stairs and I followed, not because I wanted to but because I didn't want to be left alone. We paused near the top of the stairs, trying to gauge the situation.

A workman wearing a white Hard Rock Foundations T-shirt stood in the hallway, his back pressed against the wall, a hammer lying in the middle of the floor. The color of his face matched his shirt. As if afraid to lift his hand from the wall, he pointed to the end of the hallway with his chin. “It wasn't there ten minutes ago when I went down to the kitchen to get my hammer. But I know the door was closed, because it was locked and I figured I'd have to jimmy it with my hammer.”

I knew what I'd see even before I turned my head and caught sight of what had alarmed the workman. The Edison doll, its face blank and its eyes as wide and staring as before, stood inside the door on the bottom step that led to the attic, its head facing us with unblinking creepiness.

The high trills of a little girl's laughter echoed around the hallway, its origins unclear. The dark presence I'd felt downstairs was behind us now, passing through us toward the open door. We all shivered, but only I knew why. “I'll get the doll,” I said, my voice cracked and dry.

General Lee barked and then came bounding down the attic stairs without the cat, and sat at my feet watching the progression of the cold mass of air moving toward the door and the steps. He stayed where he was, the little coward, when I moved forward. I strained to make out the shape of the dark stain of air that seemed to stretch and shrink in front of me. The stench was unbearable, like the smell of rotting meat, reminding me of my conversation with Rich Kobylt about the cat.

It surged ahead of me, up the attic stairs, hovering halfway up. Without taking my eyes off it, I took another step forward within grabbing distance of the doll. I reached out my hand, ready to snatch the hair and yank it toward me regardless of how valuable and rare it was. The doll didn't belong on those stairs, and I resented it thinking that it did. My fingers brushed only air, falling short of the doll's head, and before I could try again, the door slammed in front of me, narrowly missing my hand.

Sophie uttered a small expletive completely out of character for her, and I was sure the workman would have said even worse if he'd not already run downstairs, leaving his hammer behind and a promise that he would never come back.