The Strangers On Montagu Street Part 19

I tugged on the leash. "Come on, General Lee. Let's go."

The girl thrust the photo at me. "Look! Do you see the eyes and the mouth? It's definitely a face. And it looks like he's leaning down to you to say something in your ear."

Reluctantly, I looked at the photograph. It was, indeed, a face, and one I recognized as the man I'd seen in the turret in the house on Montagu Street. I forced my voice to sound normal. "It's more like a blob to me, but I guess with a little imagination I suppose it could be made out to be a face."

They both looked at me with identical puckered frowns, as if not sure whether I was dim-witted or just blind. "I've got to go now. Thanks again." Not wanting to get into a power struggle with my dog, I reached down and picked him up, tucking him under my arm like a furry football, and walked quickly out of the cemetery gates.

I looked back once, wondering whether they'd also seen the clear form of a woman with long light-colored hair whose hazy figure could be seen standing between me and the dark shadow. I'd felt her presence, I recalled now, before the girl and her mother had appeared, and had felt the calming presence as if my own mother had stood beside me waiting to do battle for me.

I set down the dog and sped up my pace, eager to put as much distance as I could between me and the cemetery, and wondering the whole time why Bonnie had been there, and why the haunting melody of a song I'd never heard before reverberated in the air around me.

CHAPTER 19.

I hurried up the stairs of the Fireproof Building on Meeting Street, where the library for the South Carolina Historical Society was located. Nola clomped up the stairs behind me, her slow pace indicative of her lack of enthusiasm about our errand. But it had been nearly two weeks since I'd seen or spoken to Jack, so out of desperation I'd finally taken matters into my own hands and volunteered to drive Nola to Jack's loft for their twice-weekly visit instead of letting her walk. I had an appointment with Yvonne Craig first to find out whether she'd been able to discover anything about the Manigault family, and hopefully to glean information on Jack.

We ascended the circular stone staircase and found Yvonne in one of the book-filled rooms, seated at an oval dark wood table with several stacks of books and notepads on the table beside her. She glanced at her watch as we approached, a broad smile on her face. "Five minutes early to the second. I beat Jack by two minutes."

I stopped in front of the table. "What do you mean, you 'beat Jack'?"

"We've a running bet to see how early you're going to be for each appointment. If I win, I get a red velvet cupcake from Cupcake on King. If Jack wins, I have to buy him a handmade cigar from Lianos Dos Palmas."

I frowned for a moment before remembering my manners. "Yvonne, I'd like you to meet Jack's daughter, Nola. Nola, this is Mrs. Craig, a good friend of your father's."

Yvonne's smile brightened as she stood, her cheeks matching her pale pink twinset, a strand of pearls mixing with the beaded chain that held her reading gla.s.ses around her neck. She wore a round b.u.t.ton pinned to her sweater that read, LIBRARIANS: THE ORIGINAL SEARCH ENGINE. "Oh, yes. Jack has told me all about you. From the way he talks, I expected you to be floating ten inches off the ground and glowing with light." She beamed as she held out her hands to Nola. "My goodness, but aren't you the spitting image of your father! Won't he have a time of it, turning all of those boys away when you're a little older." She winked at me before turning back to Nola. "Lovely name, by the way. Very unusual. My parents used to call me Nola when I was a little girl as a kind of nickname. Could never figure out where they got 'Nola' from 'Yvonne.'"

I watched Nola's face register surprise, and then turn bright pink as she tried to suppress a laugh. "It's nice to meet you, Mrs. Craig," she finally managed.

"I like your pin, Yvonne."

Sitting down again, she touched the pin reverently and looked up at us, smiling. "Jack gave it to me."

I raised my eyebrows expectantly. "He's been here?"

Her face fell. "Not recently, no. He did stop by several weeks ago to ask a few questions about the Manigaults, but it wasn't for his next book. I've been waiting for him to come in again with his long list of questions and theories-as soon as he's through with one book he's usually ready to start researching the next."

I sat down next to Yvonne as Nola took a seat across the table and immediately took out her phone and began texting. I was glad that Alston had introduced her to some of her friends and Ashley Hall schoolmates, but the incessant texting was nothing short of irritating. I sent her "the look" and she immediately muted the sound of the clacking keys. I was surprised that n.o.body had yet to be killed by somebody annoyed enough by that clicky little sound that reminded me too much of Chinese water torture.

Turning to Yvonne, I said, "He's taking a little break right now between projects. I'm sure he'll be back in the saddle in no time." I sent her a rea.s.suring smile.

Lowering her voice to a conspiratorial whisper, she said, "I know he wanted to write that book about your family being wreckers and all of that business with the sunken s.h.i.+p and skeleton they found out in the harbor. Maybe he's working on that, since he already has everything he needs to write it."

I felt the blood drain from my face. "He, um, he told you that?"

She shook her head. "Not exactly. But when he was here a while back with that Rebecca person, she kept telling him what a good book it would make. As much as I hate to agree with her, she's right. Of course, it's your family and your personal history. Don't know how much you want the rest of the world to know about it." She raised her eyebrows meaningfully.

I wasn't sure whether Yvonne knew the entire story of how my ancestor had swapped places with Rose Prioleau and a.s.sumed her ident.i.ty, a secret that was still unknown to everyone except for my parents, Jack, and me. And Rebecca. A book detailing all the sordid particulars of how the real Rose Prioleau's body found itself at the bottom of Charleston Harbor would be devastating at best, and humiliating at worst, to not just me, but to my entire family.

I placed my hands flat on the scarred wood surface of the table and forced a smile. "Yes, well, he hasn't mentioned anything to me. So," I said, eager to change the subject, "what have you been able to discover about Julia Manigault's family?"

Yvonne began taking folders out of a box on the table, each one labeled with brightly colored Post-it notes. "Quite a bit, actually. A very prominent family, as you probably know, but not closely related to the Manigaults in your own family tree."

"That's a relief."

She looked up and paused, as if waiting for me to elaborate, before turning back to sorting the folders when I didn't. "At your request, I didn't delve any farther back than Harold and Anne, although there is a lot of information dating back to much earlier, of course. The first Manigaults were Huguenots, but you're not interested in all that." I sensed a note of disappointment in her voice.

She opened a folder and slid it over to me. "I took the liberty of photocopying several newspaper clippings and articles referencing the family."

Yvonne had already organized everything in chronological order, with pertinent facts highlighted in pale blue. I made a mental note to send her a box of red velvet cupcakes with cream cheese frosting from Cupcake, and/or my firstborn. The woman was amazing, and so much like me, at least in the organizational category, it was almost scary.

A pink-tipped finger pointed at one of the pages. "Harold was born by the coast in Georgetown County on the family's old rice plantation on the Santee River-Belle Meade-but was the youngest of three sons. Went to USC in Columbia, then to Charleston for medical school. Inherited a great deal of money when his father died, invested it in railroads and property, and was a wealthy man by the time he married Anne Ward of Florence, South Carolina. Built her that house on Montagu Street as a wedding present."

Nola paused in her texting. "She got a house for a wedding present?"

Yvonne nodded. "Yes, dear. That was something wealthy people did back then. Sometimes it was a way to keep property in a family, and sometimes it was just to sweeten the deal, as they would say nowadays."

Nola raised her eyebrows, then went back to her texting.

"What about William? Did you find out anything about him?"

With a patient smile, Yvonne slid a photocopied clipping from the stack inside the folder. A grainy and yellowed photograph of a young man with blond hair and a slender build circa the mid-thirties stared out of the photograph. I felt Nola lean across the table. "That's him, Mellie. That's the boy doll."

I nodded, half with acknowledgment and half with relief that it wasn't the face I'd seen in the window. I turned to Yvonne to explain. "Amelia Trenholm, Jack's mother, gave Nola a dollhouse and it appears to have been made for and given to Julia Manigault for her birthday when she was ten. It's an exact replica of the house on Montagu Street, and came with dolls resembling family members, including the family dog."

Her brow puckered. "A dollhouse? That doesn't sound right." She pulled the folder closer to her and began paging through it, finally pulling several pages out and sliding them in front of me. "Julia Manigault was an avid equestrian. She competed against boys her age in boys-only events and usually won. She was also an expert marksman and accompanied her uncle and cousins on hunts, even at an early age."

I visually scanned the pages, examining the numerous pictures of a younger Julia astride a horse or holding a shotgun or a dead bird, and some of all three. I looked up and met Yvonne's eyes. "She was a tomboy."

"Exactly. There's even an article in there about how she wasn't allowed to make her debut at St. Cecilia's because she'd been seen wearing trousers in public. Apparently, young Julia was raised at her uncle's plantation with his five sons. Her mother was what they used to term 'delicate,' which now probably would just mean she needed a little Valium to cope with life. Julia wasn't brought back to Charleston until she was about ten."

"So why would her father have given her a dollhouse if that's obviously not where her interests lie?"

Nola interrupted with a heavy sigh meant to convey, I was sure, our apparent lack of mental acuity. "To help her be more like a girl. Duh. I mean, he already had a son, right? So he wanted his daughter to be a real girl and do girl things." Nola raised her eyes briefly, then returned to flying her fingers across the screen of her iPhone. She shook her head. "Jack says he's glad I'm not too girly-girly, like that Rebecca chick. Says that if he had to go to a store and pick out a girl to be his daughter, he'd still pick me." She snorted. "As if."

I regarded Nola for a moment, wondering whether she realized what she'd just said, realized that Jack was glad she was his no matter what. That even if she'd yet to come to terms with the fact that she had a father and that he wanted her in his life, he'd reached that conclusion long ago.

I focused again on the papers in front of me and swallowed a lump in my throat. "What did you find out about William? I accidentally came across the Manigault mausoleum at the Circular Church cemetery and he's not listed on the plaque-just his parents, and there's a spot for Julia. Jack said the paper trail for William vanishes completely in 1938."

Yvonne nodded. "There's actually quite a bit prior to 1938. He studied engineering at Clemson, but there's no record of him graduating. He apparently dropped out of school in his fourth year, but there's simply nothing else to tell us what he did afterward."

"Julia said that he and her father argued and William left. She never heard from him again."

"Not a word? Ever?"

I shook my head. "I suppose it's possible to completely cut off your own family, but the fact that he was never seen again or never left any clues as to where he might have gone makes it highly suspicious."

Without bothering to look up from her phone, Nola said, "My mother moved to California and her family never heard from her again."

"Yes," said Yvonne. "Things like that happen all the time. But to have no bank accounts or mortgage or will or a grave site just makes it all so suspicious. Your mother at least had you as her connection with her past."

Nola just sighed and continued texting.

"I don't think Harold Manigault was a nice man," I said. "I wouldn't be surprised to hear that he had something to do with William's vanis.h.i.+ng act."

Yvonne regarded me with raised eyebrows, as if expecting me to explain how I might have known that about Harold. Clearing my throat, I said, "Julia must have told me something to give me that impression."

"Mm-hm" was all she said as she pulled out another folder and began rifling through the pages. "There was one other thing that I thought you might find interesting. Remember I mentioned that Harold Manigault made some of his money from investing in property? At one point he owned almost one thousand acres in Georgetown County, including his family's old home and what was left of the plantation-he apparently got it from his brother in exchange for settling some pretty hefty debts his brother had acc.u.mulated. As you can imagine, the land is quite valuable now, and developers have been chomping at the bit for years to build on it. And very recently, it appears they're going to get their chance."

"And the land has been in the family that whole time?" I asked.

"Yes. Prime real estate on the river just sitting there. Seems Miss Julia liked the offer a developer made to her, and they're scheduled to start clearing the land as soon as all the permits go through. Lots of ruckus in the papers lately from the preservationists and green people. I'm sure you've read all about it in the paper."

I smiled, too embarra.s.sed to admit that the only newspaper reading I ever did was the real estate ads. "I, uh, must have missed that."

"Yes, well, Cobb Homebuilders is planning a multiuse development of the land. One of those all-inclusive neighborhoods with shops and entertainment as well as residential areas. The whole purpose is for people to walk everywhere instead of drive. Sort of how all American towns started out, if you ask me." She fluttered her hands in front of her face as if to clear the air. "Anyway, the sale is pending, as there has been a slew of lawsuits filed on behalf of the various environmental groups. The National Trust is involved, too, because of an overseer's cottage still on the property. The main house was destroyed by fire back in the thirties, but the preservation people seem to think there's some historical significance in the cottage. Regardless, the Cobb people seem very confident that they'll win, considering they're already working on the permitting process."

"I wonder why Julia would sell now, after all this time?"

Yvonne folded her hands neatly on top of the table. "To put it bluntly, I suspect she needs the money. I don't know her all that well, just through mutual acquaintances, really, but she's been retired for a long time. She'd have her retirement pension and all of that, but I've pa.s.sed by her house enough times to know that it's falling apart. Keeping that old house in one piece must be sending her to the poorhouse."

I raised my eyebrows. "Welcome to my world. And if her inheritance money has run out or she made a few bad investments, and she's existing solely on her pension, I could see why she'd need the money."

"And, unfortunately, she's the last of her line. Of her five boy cousins, only one married and they had no children, so there are no relatives to ask for help. No children to support her in her old age. It must be a very lonely and sad existence. I'm so thankful for my children and grandchildren, you have no idea."

I had a sudden vision of an older and crinkled me sitting in my crumbling house on Tradd Street with no children to comfort me in my dotage. I'd have cats, lots of them, and I'd scare any child brave enough to ring my doorbell on Halloween. I'd hire somebody like Dee Davenport to feed me soft food and change my diapers. I shuddered. "What did you find out about her fiance? Jonathan was his first name, but I don't know his last."

She smiled a smile that could be called patronizing on anybody else, but on Yvonne it was just simply her all-knowing, confident smile that I'd come to rely on. She stood and moved back to the box and pulled out another folder. "I wasn't sure whether you'd want any of this, so I put it all in a separate folder just in case. It's birth, wedding, and death announcements regarding the family. There's an engagement notice you might be interested in."

She opened the folder and plucked something out of it before sliding it toward me. It was a photocopy of a sepia-toned photograph of a man and a woman. The woman, with gleaming dark hair piled high on her head, sat in a large leather-covered armchair, a tall and willowy dark-haired man standing behind her with his hand on her shoulder. The young woman wore a loose-fitting dress indicative of the nineteen thirties. Her left hand, folded demurely on top of the other and resting on her knee, held a large ring with a dark stone that could have been a sapphire. I wouldn't have called her beautiful, but she was pretty, with pale skin and bright, clear eyes. Her smile, however, transformed her face in such a way that it was hard to look away, or even to understand that this was the same dour Julia Manigault that I knew.

The man, however, was handsome-some might call him beautiful-by anybody's definition. With strong, chiseled features and dark eyes, he could easily be featured today in an Abercrombie ad. Or maybe Brooks Brothers. He was almost too refined for the beefy Abercrombie models. He was smiling softly, showing no teeth and reminding me a little of the Mona Lisa's mysterious smile. I held the photo closer, wondering why it looked like he was holding on to a secret.

The caption below the photo read: Miss Julia Drayton Manigault, daughter of Mr. and Mrs. Harold Manigault of Montagu Street, Charleston, is engaged to be united in holy matrimony to Mr. Jonathan Crisler Watts of Georgetown. Nuptials will be held Sat.u.r.day, August twelfth, at St. Mary's Catholic Church.

I looked up. "What happened to Jonathan?"

As if she'd already antic.i.p.ated my question, she handed me another photocopied page. Glancing down, I saw it was a death announcement. I squinted, yet again chastising myself for not bringing my gla.s.ses that would have made reading the tiny print of the small clipping possible.

"Should I?" Yvonne asked, holding out her hand.

Settling the gla.s.ses that hung around her neck on her nose, she cleared her throat, then read: "'Jonathan C. Watts, aged twenty-two years and three months, succ.u.mbed to influenza after a short illness at his parents' home in Georgetown on Thursday evening. Survivors include his father and mother, Mr. and Mrs. Arthur Crisler Watts, and a brother, Henry A. Watts of Murrells Inlet. A viewing will take place . . .'"

She stopped. "You probably don't need me to read any of the details of the funeral, but you might find the date of his death interesting." After pausing for dramatic effect, she said, "July twenty-ninth, 1938."

I raised both eyebrows. "Poor Julia. The same year that William disappeared, and both parents died the following year. To lose all four in such quick succession must have been devastating." There's no such thing as coincidence. I thought of Jack's words, wondering whether in this case it was simply a horrible and unfortunate coincidence.

"Mellie?" Nola interrupted my musings.

I speared her with a look that would have made my mother proud.

"I mean, excuse me, Mellie?"

"Yes, Nola?"

"Jack just texted me and wanted to know where I was."

I looked at my watch, surprised to see that we were running late. I quickly stuck the papers back into the folders and slid them into my large handbag. "Thank you so much, Yvonne. As always, you've been amazing. I'll let you know if we need anything else."

"You're more than welcome. You know I love working on these little mysteries for you and Jack. Keep me posted if you find out anything more, and I'll do the same."

Nola stood, too, and without prompting said, "It was a pleasure to meet you, Mrs. Craig."

"And you, too, Nola." She studied Nola's iPhone for a moment. "Can I text something to your father really quick?"

With a confused glance in my direction, Nola handed Yvonne her phone. "Sure."

We watched as Yvonne slowly and deliberately pressed each key as she typed her text.

"It would be faster if you'd tell me what you wanted to say and let me do the texting," Nola offered hopefully.

"No need," Yvonne said, before typing a few last characters and handing the phone back to Nola. "I don't know how to send on your phone, so I'll let you do it. We have pretty bad reception in here, so you might want to wait until you get outside to send it."

We said our good-byes, then made our exit. Nola paused on the sidewalk outside the building and stared at the screen on her phone, her eyes wide. Without a word, she turned it so I could read the screen. Squinting, I scanned the words before meeting Nola's eyes.

C u later, hottie. Come up and c me sometime.

"Should I send it?"

"Absolutely. It might make his day. Just make sure he knows it's from Yvonne."

She typed something, then hit the "send" b.u.t.ton before bursting out laughing. I joined her, hoping that at the very least it would put Jack in a better mood than when I'd last seen him.

When the elevator opened on Jack's floor, the door to his loft was open. I knocked firmly on the door. "Jack? Are you decent? It's Mellie and Nola."

"Come in." His voice came from somewhere in the back.

We pushed open the door and entered the apartment, the smell of bleach and Windex wafting heavily throughout. Beautiful antiques, from seventeenth-century French to art deco, blended seamlessly with the stainless steel and black granite of the kitchen, the contemporary light fixtures and redbrick walls of the interior adding a sedate backdrop. I knew Jack's impeccable sense of style had a lot to do with growing up in his parents' antique store, but his ability to pull it all together was definitely a talent. I might have even found him a little more attractive because of it, but all of his other annoying traits really helped to level the playing field.

"I'm back here," Jack called.

We followed the sound of his voice to the back bedroom, done in black and chrome, with an amazing chinoiserie armoire converted to an entertainment unit dominating the wall opposite the large king-size bed. I'd never been this far into Jack's apartment before, and was grateful that Nola was with me. Fortunately, the bed was made, and no dirty laundry littered the floor. And no bras, either. I'd experienced that once already and was in no mood for a replay.

Actually, I realized, there was very little clutter anywhere. In past visits, there'd always been newspapers and magazines, clothes and dishes scattered just about on every surface. The apartment now was spotless.