Return to Tradd Street

  Thomas spoke quietly through his plastered smile. “Be nice. Remember that she can and will print everything you say. And keep reminding yourself that this is the kind of case that gets tried in the court of public opinion, and public opinion goes a long way in Charleston and with its judges. Think of it like eating your favorite doughnut that’s been dropped on the floor. After the first few bites of dirt, it’ll taste just like a doughnut.”

  I turned to him with new admiration. “Detective Riley, I think we speak the same language.”

  He slanted a meaningful gaze down at me. “That’s what I’ve been trying to tell you.”

  “Miss Middleton?” The reporter was now within shouting distance, and I could see that we were about the same age, except she was about six inches shorter and fifty pounds lighter. Her dark brown hair, worn short in a nod back to the unfortunate Dorothy Hamill wedge hairdo of the seventies and early eighties—to which I’d also fallen victim—was smooth like a helmet despite the wind and rain. I knew my own hair probably closely resembled a Brillo pad, and I stared suspiciously at the camera, making sure it wasn’t pointed at me.

  “Yes,” I said. “I’m Melanie Middleton.”

  The woman stopped, and she had to tilt her head back to talk to me. “You’re a hard woman to get a hold of.” She stuck her hand out and I shook it, and it felt like a child’s. I wondered whether her desk at the newspaper had to be retrofitted to accommodate her small stature. I pictured her sitting on a stack of telephone books, and the corner of my mouth lifted involuntarily.

  She continued. “You have really great gatekeepers at your office and residence.”

  “I know. It’s how I’m able to do my job with the least possible distractions.” I stared pointedly at her, but she didn’t seem to take notice.

  She turned and offered her hand to Thomas, whose hand swallowed hers up to the wrist. “Good to see you again, Detective Riley. My colleague Rebecca Edgerton mentioned you might be here. I understand you’ve been reading my columns prior to publication.” She held up her hand. “I know your brother-in-law is my boss, so I’m not going to say anything. I will admit that I was hoping it would give me an ‘in’ to an interview Miss Middleton, since Rebecca couldn’t seem to accomplish that for me. Not that it did, but things always have a way of working themselves out.” She grinned broadly, showing tiny, perfect white teeth. I almost asked her whether she’d lost all of her baby teeth yet.

  “So, here we are.” She held up a small tape recorder. “Mind if I record our conversation?”

  “On that?” I asked. Surely the newspaper could afford more modern equipment. Like pen and paper.

  She giggled. “What can I say? I’m a big fan of the eighties—can’t seem to get away from all the stuff that worked so well for me back then.” I eyed her loafers, trench coat, and hair and saw that she was telling the truth. I imagined her jogging with a Walkman and using a car phone that came in a bag and required an antenna.

  “Does this mean you’re asking for an interview?”

  “Believe me, this is more for your benefit than mine. I already have a copy of Bridget Monahan Gilbert’s letter and pictures of the christening bonnet, and now we have the exhumation and eventually we’ll have the results of that. That’s more than enough to fill three more columns, at least. It would just look bad if the woman who inherited everything—from an old man she met just once—refused to talk to the media.”

  I looked at Thomas, who gave me an encouraging nod. “Fine, then. Although I really don’t know if I have anything to add. Everything that has been reported so far is all new to me as well. All I know is that Mr. Vanderhorst’s father and my grandfather were old friends, and he seemed to think that was enough of a connection to leave me his house.”

  “So this has nothing to do with the fact that Mr. Vanderhorst believed you could see ghosts and claimed to see the spirit of his mother in the garden?”

  Oh. “Where did you hear that?”

  She smiled smugly. “Marc Longo’s book. Rebecca Edgerton gave me an advance reader copy.”

  I was about to ask how Marc would have known about Louisa’s ghost, but stopped. Rebecca. The same woman who was now pestering me to go for a fitting for my bridesmaid’s dress for her wedding. I wanted to shriek and stamp my feet at my cousin’s subterfuge, but didn’t want a report of my throwing a temper tantrum to find its way into Sunday’s paper, so instead I smiled calmly.

  “Mr. Vanderhorst was an old but very sweet man. That’s the reason I’m here today—to pay my respects. At the time of our first and only meeting, I allowed him to believe what he wanted to, because I thought that made him happy.”

  “Or because you wanted him to feel an empathetic bond with you, which would make it an easy choice when he was trying to decide what to do with his estate upon his death.”

  “Stop putting words in my mouth. I was called to his home that day because of a cold call I’d made to him in which he agreed to a discussion about listing his house for sale. I told him then that I hated old houses. At no point in our discussion did I allow him to believe that I wanted his house.”

  “You hate old houses? Isn’t that your specialty at Henderson House Realty?”

  I felt Thomas’s hand on my back, and I welcomed the solid support. “I disliked the idea of living in one myself due to events in my childhood that involved my grandmother’s house on Legare.” I swallowed thickly. “I don’t believe I feel that way anymore.”

  “Will you fight the Gilberts if their claim holds water?”

  Something nudged my shoulder, while unseen hands lifted my hair, as if someone were leaning close to whisper in my ear. You need to decide sooner rather than later what you want. And then be ready to fight for it.

  I looked up suddenly, expecting to see my grandmother before realizing that the voice had been male. It’s like a piece of history you can hold in your hands.

  “Mr. Vanderhorst?” I’d spoken quietly, the words catching on an icy breeze before being scattered like seeds over the garden of stones.

  “I didn’t catch that. Could you repeat it, please, into the tape recorder?”

  I cleared my throat and leaned forward toward the machine. “The Gilberts and I both want the truth. That’s my only comment for now.”

  “Do you see dead people, Miss Middleton?”

  I took a quick intake of breath. Damn you, Rebecca! “I don’t think that has anything to do with our interview. So, if you don’t have any more questions about Mr. Vanderhorst, I have a busy day.” Leaning on Thomas’s arm, I lifted my heels out of the sucking mud and began to walk away.

  She called out to my retreating back, “Because if you do, maybe you should ask one of them for the answer to who the baby is in the foundation at fifty-five Tradd Street. And if Nevin knew he had a living cousin. It would save us all a lot of trouble.”

  Without turning around, I shouted, “This interview is over, Miss Dorf. And if you print anything out of context, you will be hearing from my lawyer.”

  Thomas kept a firm grip on my elbow as he led me past crumbling mausoleums and sun-bleached white obelisks. The whispers of the dead grew louder as I neared the gates, as if they were sensing that an opportunity had been lost.

  I pressed my hands against my ears until Thomas and I were safely inside his car and driving away.

  He kept his expression neutral and didn’t say anything, which, I realized, was either because he’d grown up with sisters and knew when to stay silent, or because he was a detective and knew it was sometimes best to wait.

  Finally, I broke the silence. “Aren’t you going to ask me if it’s true?”

  “I figured if you wanted to tell me, you’d tell me in your own good time. I imagine it’s not something you talk about with just anybody.”

  “No. Not really.” I took a deep breath. “But it’s true. It seems to be something I inherited from my mother. It’s how I was able to figure out that Louisa Vanderhorst and Joseph Longo were buried in the fountain
in my garden, the identity of the body found on a sailboat owned by my family, as well as the Manigault murders.” I gave him a shaky smile. “I guess that means it’s not all bad, right?”

  He let out a low whistle. “I wouldn’t say it’s bad at all if you were able to help some people and solve a few cold cases. I think I mentioned this before, but maybe I should put you on staff.” He didn’t appear to be joking.

  “The thing is, I can’t see them anymore—because of the pregnancy. I used to think I’d be happy if it went away, but I miss it. Probably because I can still hear them—which almost makes it worse.”

  “Why would you be happy if it went away? I know it sounds corny, but I became a policeman because I wanted to help people. I wasn’t crazy about the idea of spending so many years in school and I figured I couldn’t be a doctor, so I picked the next-best thing. Seems to me you’ve been given a unique opportunity to help people—either by putting their minds at rest that their loved ones are at peace or sending lost souls to the light.”

  I looked at him suspiciously. “How do you know so much about it?”

  “Oh, I watch all those shows—Medium, Ghost Whisperer, Long Island Medium. My old girlfriend was obsessed with them and it’s kind of stuck.”

  “Well, you can’t believe everything you see on TV,” I said. “But some of it’s true—like ending a haunting by sending a soul into the light. It is a good feeling—although I hate to admit that.”

  “Why?”

  I was more surprised that he’d thought to ask the question than by the question itself.

  “Because it was something I’d inherited from my mother, and until recently I didn’t have a good relationship with her.”

  “And now?”

  “And now? Well, I guess being in denial and hating it have sort of become second nature. Plus, I don’t want to become some sort of freak show. I do have a reputation and a business I need to uphold.”

  He was thoughtful for a moment. “Yeah, I get that. But you could keep it anonymous. Like if a local police detective needed a little help on a cold case, maybe he could call you in. You’d get the satisfaction of helping out, and nobody would be the wiser.” He winked at me before returning his attention to the road.

  “Did you just offer me a job?”

  “Just an offer of consulting now and again. Assuming it comes back.”

  “It should. My mother’s sixth sense disappeared when she was pregnant with me and came back the moment she gave birth. But if it does, you’re serious?”

  “As a heart attack. I like to keep an open mind, and I think you could offer a new dimension to our detective work.”

  I felt what I could only describe as the warm-and-fuzzies, like putting on pajamas in the middle of the afternoon and curling up in front of a fire. It was the first time I truly felt as if my gift—or whatever I wanted to call it—had some value besides being a circus act or parlor trick.

  “I’ll think about it,” I said.

  “Take all the time you need. But thanks for considering it.”

  I was silent for a moment, my conscience nudging me. “You might change your mind after I tell you something. I haven’t been completely forthcoming with you.”

  “You mean you’re not really pregnant?”

  His words surprised me so much that I barked out an unladylike laugh, then immediately slapped my hand across my mouth. “If I were faking this, that wouldn’t say a lot about your abilities as a detective, would it?”

  He just smiled, and I knew he was waiting, and would continue to wait for as long as it took for me to tell him.

  “I, um, received a package on my front doorstep a while back—before I knew what was in Bridget Monahan Gilbert’s deathbed confession.”

  “What kind of a package?”

  “An old one. From 1898. There was no name on the package; it was just addressed to fifty-five Tradd Street. It looked like it had been opened before, because the twine that had been used to wrap it had been cut and knotted. Inside the package was a bunch of newspaper from the New York Times—that’s how we guessed at how old the package was.”

  “We?”

  “Sophie and me. She was with me when I opened it—which I did because she’s one of only a handful of people who know about my ‘gift’ and doesn’t freak out when something weird happens. And when I saw the package, I knew there wasn’t anything normal about it. It’s just a feeling, and I’ve learned that I need to pay attention to them.”

  “Were you right?”

  “Oh, yes.” We were both silent for a few moments as I searched for the courage to spill the rest of the story and he just waited. “It was a christening gown—without the bonnet. Made by Susan Bivens, just like the set you found with the remains. It looked very old—older than the mid–eighteen sixties.”

  There was a long pause, as if he were digesting the information. “And just like the bonnet Irene Gilbert has.”

  “Exactly. But I didn’t get how strange it really was until I read Bridget Gilbert’s confession, where she says she mailed the gown back to Charleston when she knew she was dying, but kept the bonnet. And she died in 1898.”

  He was nodding, as if slowly organizing all the pieces of information into a huge file cabinet in his brain. “So, if it is the same gown, where do you think it’s been all this time?”

  “If I knew that, it would help us figure out how I got it. Some part of me wants it to be a neighbor who was cleaning out his attic and happened to find this parcel with my address on it and so just dropped it off at the front door. But that’s not usually how things happen in my life.”

  “Was there a postmark?” he asked, his expression giving nothing away.

  I shook my head. “No. Sophie told me that parcel post didn’t start in this country until 1913, so if the package was originally sent from New York in 1898, it would have been delivered by a private express company.”

  “But it just suddenly showed up on your doorstep.”

  “Yes. And I believe that it might have been delivered by . . . unconventional methods. I wouldn’t be surprised. I mean, I have phone conversations with my grandmother, and she’s been dead for years.” I looked closely at him to read his expression, but he remained neutral.

  “Don’t you believe me?”

  He took a deep breath. “Like I told you, I like to keep an open mind. I’ll ask around the neighborhood and do my due diligence, see if anybody found it while cleaning the attic. Anything’s possible.” He paused for a moment. “I think I already know the answer to this, but why didn’t you tell me this before?”

  It wasn’t an accusation, but I still hesitated before answering. “Because the most plausible explanation about how it ended up on my doorstep was one that I couldn’t hope to explain to you. Before now, anyway.” I looked at him as a thought occurred to me. “Does this mean I’m in trouble for withholding evidence?”

  “No, because you’re going to give it to me when we get to your house. We’ll compare the gown and the Gilberts’ bonnet, as well as the one found with the remains to see if there’s a connection.”

  “Do you have any doubt?” I asked. “Because I don’t. That’s how my life works.”

  He was silent for a moment, then surprised me by laughing.

  “What’s so funny?”

  “Remember how I once told you that I found you quirky? I just had no idea exactly how much.”

  “But quirky in a good way,” I reminded him.

  He reached over and took my hand. “In the best way.”

  I felt warm and tingly, but in the way a comfortable pair of slippers made me feel. Not the warm and tingly feelings Jack gave me, the kind of feelings that made me think of fireworks and sunsets over the Ashley River.

  I smiled and squeezed his hand before removing mine to my lap, realizing that I had as much control over my heart as an old house did over the vagaries of time.

  CHAPTER 21

  I climbed the steps toward my mother’s front door, try
ing not to pant as heavily as I wanted, General Lee still prancing energetically beside me. I’d decided to actually listen to all the advice people had been throwing at me for the last five months and had walked the three and a half blocks from my house. It was a sunny but windy November day and at the time it had seemed like a good idea, but it took all of my energy to stay upright and ring the doorbell instead of collapsing on the top step like a beached whale.

  My mother opened the door, her expression showing her surprise. “Why are you ringing the bell, Mellie, dear? You know I gave you a key so you can come and go as you please. Besides, we were expecting you.”

  “I saw Dad’s car, so I didn’t want to come barging in.”

  I followed my mother inside before she bent to unlatch General Lee’s leash and scratch behind his ears. “Don’t be silly. Your father and I would never do anything that would embarrass you.”

  Too late, I thought, remembering my father referring to himself as her “stud muffin” when he didn’t know I was within hearing distance. I followed her into the parlor, where she’d set up my grandmother’s silver tea service, along with wheat-bread tea sandwiches with all the crusts still on, and what looked a lot like the flourless and tasteless cookies Sophie had brought to my house several times, and which I had avoided as a matter of self-preservation.

  My dad put down his glass of iced tea and stood to hug me and greet my dog, then returned to his seat. I noticed that he wasn’t really drinking, but using his glass to beat a steady rhythm with his fingers. If I didn’t know my father as well as I did, I would almost guess him to be nervous.

  My mother poured me a cup of green tea, then offered me the plate of cookies. “Nola brought these over yesterday. She said she found them in your pantry stuffed under a pile of reusable grocery bags.” She stared pointedly at me, but I refrained from commenting.