The Strangers On Montagu Street Part 29

I shook my head. "You know you shouldn't do that alone."

"I wasn't thinking I'd be alone."

I stood. "No way am I going back there. I . . . No. Never."

My mother stood, too. "Sweetheart, you and Jack have to talk and work this thing out. I'm not saying this to be mean, but you're pretty pathetic right now."

My throat closed a little, and I was afraid I'd start crying. Again. I swallowed. "I told him I loved him, Mother, and all he said was 'I'm sorry.' I think we've done all the talking we're going to."

She momentarily closed her eyes, as if summoning strength. "Regardless, you've got to get on the other side of this, and wallowing here in your nightgown is not going to make it happen."

I was silent, the TV blaring a detergent commercial. I picked up the remote and flipped it off. General Lee barked and began chasing his invisible friend around the table. He circled twice, then ran to the back door, stopping himself in time before colliding with the door. He sat up and whimpered, then began to paw at the wood. I moved to pick him up and he actually growled at me. Startled, I straightened.

"He's probably desperate for a walk," my mother said. "Besides being let out in the garden to do his business, I don't think he's had any exercise in weeks." Her gaze drifted to my swollen ankles. "A walk would probably do you both good."

I sighed heavily, knowing she was right. "Fine. Let me go throw some clothes on and I'll be right back. But you're coming with me in case we run into anybody I know. You can tell them I have the plague or something so they don't get too close."

"All right. But please brush your hair. And some lipstick would help, too."

I was about to glare at her when the TV popped back on with no picture, just sound. "I'm Just Getting Started" blared loudly, making General Lee renew his efforts to exit the door. I hit the "off" b.u.t.ton on the remote and then tried the actual television, but the sound continued. Finally, I pulled out the cord, an unnatural silence filling the kitchen.

"Look what I found," Nola shouted as she raced through the doorway, holding up the dog figure from the dollhouse. She stopped when she spotted me with the television cord in my hand.

"Where was it?" I asked, feeling as if I already knew the answer.

"Stuffed inside the s.h.i.+rt of my teddy bear. I have no idea how it got there."

General Lee whimpered at the figure, then threw himself at the door again, his small body making a thumping sound against the wood.

My eyes met my mother's. "They're not going to leave me alone, are they?"

My mother shook her head. "No. And neither are we. You can either come willingly, or we can drag you kicking and screaming. It's up to you."

"I'll take the dog for a walk, but that's all I'm committing to right now," I said. "I need to get dressed-could somebody please let the dog out before he messes on the floor?" I didn't wait for a response as I headed out of the kitchen.

"You might want to try to drag a brush through your hair while you're at it," Nola called out to me.

My eye rolling was blocked by the closed door.

When I returned, I found Nola, my mother, and General Lee on the sidewalk, the dog nearly choking himself on the leash because he was straining so hard to follow something the rest of us couldn't see. I could make out the brief flash of a tail, but the rest was invisible even to me.

"He won't go potty, so I'm thinking he wants to take a walk," Nola said. "We were just waiting for you."

"Thanks," I said, taking the leash and nearly losing my balance as General Lee shot forward, his agenda known only to him.

"What are you wearing, Mellie?" my mother asked.

I looked down at the bright blue velour sweat suit as if I were seeing it for the first time. "Something I borrowed from Charlene. She said it was appropriate vacation attire."

"Isn't it a little warm to be wearing velour with long sleeves?"

I nodded, already starting to perspire. "You know how cold-natured I am. I'll be fine." I didn't want to tell her that it was the only thing I could find that fit me. I was so bloated, and everything else seemed to be too tight. As Jack and Sophie had long predicted, the days of eating everything I wanted without gaining weight had come to a cras.h.i.+ng halt. I knew that turning forty had been a bad idea.

At least my mother either pretended not to notice or didn't see the flip-flops on my feet, something I never wore in public except on the rare occasions I made it to the beach.

"Where are we going?" Nola asked, sounding breathless as she jogged to keep up.

"I'm not sure, but he seems to be following his invisible friend." I stubbed my toe on a crack in the sidewalk and stumbled, cursing under my breath at the absurdity of wearing shoes without any kind of support or toe protection. "It's best just to follow."

We continued our brisk pace, and I was relieved that he wasn't heading in the direction of the Circular Church and its cemetery. When we crossed Broad Street to Rutledge, I had a pretty good idea of where we were going.

"Hey, this is the way to Miss Julia's house," Nola said.

"I think you're right." I glanced at my mother, who was delicately mopping her brow with a tissue she'd pulled from her purse. I was sweating like a horse but wasn't about to admit it by asking whether she had another one.

When we were still a block away, the hair on the back of my neck rose, an almost refres.h.i.+ng cold wave of fear racking my body. My mother stopped and I did, too, General Lee continuing to pull on the leash.

"Do you feel that?" she asked.

I nodded as our eyes met.

"This might not be . . . good."

"Is it ever?" I asked.

She didn't smile. "I have a feeling that if we go any farther, it will be too late to turn back. And if you turn back, I'm going to have to turn back, too, because I can't fight whatever is there by myself-it's much too strong. So you have to decide now whether you're going to see this thing through and let Julia die in peace, or go back to your wallowing as if your life is over. Right here, right now, you need to decide that your gift is something that will always be there, and will transcend even the disappointments in your life. It has always been that way for me, and I hope it will be for you, too."

I stood, staring at her while I dripped sweat in my velour sweat suit, feeling as ridiculous as I looked and wondering whether all of life's big decisions happened when one was least prepared. I looked down the street in the direction from which we'd come and saw Nola with her arms crossed, her face expressionless.

She'd changed so much in the last few months. She was still a teenager-I supposed we'd have to wait about seven years for that to change-and she was as comfortable in her own skin as she'd always been. But she didn't seem so alone anymore, or so lonely. If I didn't think she'd argue with me, I would almost suggest that she was feeling as if she belonged in Charleston now, with her father and the ragtag family that had come together to see her through. Despite all of that, I could still see the stricken little girl who'd arrived on my doorstep, the girl abandoned by her mother and not knowing why. My own heartache didn't seem so bad in comparison anymore.

Looking beyond Nola to the street behind her, I couldn't see Bonnie, but I could hear the tune I'd begun to a.s.sociate with her, the song that seemed to come from inside my head. I felt the pull of my old life, but now more as a memory than a necessity. Maybe by turning forty I had traded in my metabolism for wisdom. Or maybe it was just time for me to grow up.

"Come on," I said, allowing General Lee to leap forward and following at a slow jog. It was one thing to capitulate; it was quite another to admit to being wrong about so many things in such a public way. My mother didn't say anything, but I caught her exchanging a glance with Nola and heard the slap of hands, as if a high five had occurred behind my back.

Nola spotted the yellow caution tape first as we neared the old Victorian house, starting at the curb and marking off the entire side yard on the turret side of the house and going all the way to the back property line. A backhoe loader sat in front of a large hole, a pile of dark earth parked next to it. The yard was deserted, the equipment turned off, and as we stood staring and wondering what to do next, Dee Davenport came out of the house, running faster than I thought a person her size could, and carrying something in her hand.

"Miss Middleton-you must have read my mind. I was just trying to call you!"

General Lee stopped pulling at his leash, as if whatever he was chasing had gone, then lay down at my feet. "What's going on, Dee?"

She pressed a pudgy hand against her chest as she paused to catch her breath. "We had a water pipe burst in the yard-we're thinking it's from the roots of that big oak tree by the side of the house. Anyway, when they started digging they found bones."

"Bones?"

Dee nodded. "Not human, fortunately. But dog bones-the whole skeleton. The skull was cracked-probably the cause of death."

I looked down at General Lee, sleeping off his exhaustion, and was glad he hadn't heard what Dee said. "That's awful. But why were you calling me?"

She held out a rectangular wooden box, similar to others I'd seen at Trenholm's Antiques. It was a Victorian glove box, used to store ladies' gloves. "Because they found this, too. Not buried with the dog, but nearby."

I handed the leash to Nola and took the box. "But why are you giving this to me? If it was found on this property, it belongs to Miss Julia."

Dee nodded, her cheeks flushed with exertion, her hair stuck to her forehead with sweat. "I know. I just came from the hospital, where I showed it to her. And she asked me to give it to you."

I stared at the box as if it held spiders or other crawling insects. "What's in it?"

"Letters. I showed them to Miss Julia. She said you and Mr. Trenholm would know what to do."

My eyes smarted at the mention of his name and I quickly blinked. With a glance at Nola and my mother, who both gave encouraging nods, I opened up the box, revealing a pleated pink silk interior lining that cradled a small stack of letters. The envelopes were crisp and brittle, faded to yellow. There was no writing on the outside, the flaps torn unevenly, as if the person opening them had been too impatient to find a letter opener.

"Go ahead," Dee said. "Miss Julia wanted you to read them."

Handing the box to my mother, I took the top envelope and opened it carefully. The handwriting inside was small and precise, done in all capital letters, and definitely written by a male. My eyes scanned to the bottom of the page, searching for a signature, and found only the initials JCW. I thought hard, wondering whether I'd run across a name that fit the initials.

"Jonathan Crisler Watts," Nola volunteered, reading over my shoulder. "It was in one of the newspaper articles we got from Yvonne at the Historical Society."

"She's young and still has all of her brain cells," my mother said, indicating Nola. "Just be thankful she's here and move on."

With a brief glance at my mother, I turned back to the letter and began to read out loud.

" 'Darling, last night's pa.s.sion and the feel of your bare skin against mine, the touch of your golden hair under my fingers-'" I broke off, then continued to scan the rest of the letter, my cheeks heating at the mixture of Victorian romance and erotica.

"What does it say?" asked Nola, reaching for the letter that I'd s.h.i.+elded from her view after the first few words.

"More of the same," I offered as explanation. I placed the letter back in the envelope, then picked up the next and opened it, the letter revealing yet another enraptured Jonathan waxing poetic about soft blond hair and making improbable rhymes with the words "desire" and "rapture." I examined the rest of the letters and discovered them all to be pretty much the same.

I closed the box and took it back from my mother. "I don't understand," I said, turning to Dee. "Why would Julia want me to see these letters from her fiance?"

"Because Miss Julia says she's never seen them before. She's old, but she's still as sharp as a tack, with a good memory. She'd remember if she'd read them."

"So would I," I muttered. I thought for a moment. "But somebody read them, and somebody buried them. But who?"

"That poor dog," my mother said. "Why would somebody hurt the dog?"

"Maybe he died by accident and they buried him here," Nola suggested.

"I'd like to think so," I said. "But I think there has to be some connection, since he's haunting the dollhouse with the other family members. And the head on the dog figure had been damaged, too."

General Lee whimpered in his sleep, and I bent down to scratch him behind his ear. Looking up, I said, "Nola, look at the house and point to the spot that corresponds to the place where you found the figure of William and the dog on the floor outside the dollhouse."

She faced the house and walked to the side by the turret. The whole side yard seemed to pulsate with energy, a black cloud visible to only the lucky few, hugging the air surrounding the turret. I refused to look up, knowing what I would see.

Nola stopped about ten feet away from the turret and approximately five feet from where the hole gaped open. "About right here."

My mother crossed her arms over her chest. "So let's say William fell-or was pushed-from the turret window. If the dog were outside, he would have barked. a.s.suming William didn't end up on the ground by his own devices, whoever was here with him would have wanted to silence the dog in the quickest way possible."

I nodded, thinking hard, feeling the s.h.i.+fting of all the pieces as they tried to find their way into the correct slots of a puzzle with pieces that seemed to be not only two-sided, but had no edges. I opened my mouth to say something, then stopped, the image of the Manigault family portrait I'd seen printed in the newspaper flas.h.i.+ng in my mind.

I turned back to Dee. "Where was the box of letters found?"

She pointed to a spot near where the dog's bones had been found. I turned to my mother. "Isn't that about the same general area where Jack said he keeps finding the Anne doll?"

She nodded. "Sounds about right. Maybe she's the one who buried the letters."

I shook my head. "None of this makes any sense." Turning back to Dee, I said, "And you're sure Julia said she'd never seen them before, and had no idea how they got buried in the yard?"

Dee nodded. "Right. But why would somebody hide letters to Julia from her own fiance?"

I took a deep breath and raised my eyes to the turret as a certain knowledge settled on me as clear as the image of the hollow-eyed man watching us from the window. "Because those letters are from Jonathan. But they weren't written to Julia."

CHAPTER 28.

I finished stowing the pick and hoe I'd borrowed from my father in the trunk of my car. I knew he would have come with us if I'd asked, but I also knew that despite his new open-mindedness, enough doubts existed that might work to drain the energy my mother and I might need. It would have been nice to have a few more muscles to help with the digging, but I wasn't about to ask Jack, and my mother had had the good sense not to even suggest it.

"Where's Nola?" I asked as I watched my mother walk toward me. She wore walking shorts and sneakers-something I'd never seen her wear, much less thought she owned-and I wondered whether she might be just trying to make me feel better about my own fas.h.i.+on choices. Or lack thereof, I thought, as I looked down at the mom jeans and loose Greenpeace T-s.h.i.+rt Sophie had given me. Oh, how the mighty have fallen. Accepting clothes from Sophie, purchased from Goodwill, no less, had taken a major att.i.tude adjustment. Not as major as I'd expected, though; I didn't seem to have much att.i.tude left.

"I drove her to Jack's early this morning. It seems the two of them had an outing planned, so Nola couldn't come with us."

I'd slept until ten o'clock, something else I'd not done since infancy, and had apparently missed Nola's announcement and departure.

"Oh. I guess I didn't need the third shovel then." My disappointment seemed way too keen to be about a shovel, but I didn't want to examine my feelings too closely because then I'd start crying. My mother was already looking at me funny.

"It's always good to have extras," she said as she opened the pa.s.senger door and slid in.

We spent the next hour and a half on our drive to Georgetown fighting over the radio b.u.t.tons-me hitting the seventies station trying to get an ABBA song and her angling for the cla.s.sical station. It made me wish I'd never asked for the satellite radio upgrade. Eventually, I plugged my iPod into the stereo so that we were forced to listen to my playlist, which was comprised of a lot of ABBA and the rest eighties dance music. I made no apologies, realizing that it wouldn't be enough for my cla.s.sically trained opera-singing mother.

Highway 17 is a lonely stretch of highway that runs through Charleston and along the coast. We pa.s.sed place-names familiar to me-Sullivan's Island and McClellanville, both towns in which I'd spent summers and other vacations with my sorority sisters from college. While I'd been at the University of South Carolina, my father had continued to move around with the army, so for vacations and holidays I preferred to borrow a home and family wherever I could find them. Not that I would have chosen to visit with him anyway, having long since gotten over the need to be his caretaker.

As we approached the historic city of Georgetown, my mother unfolded a large and wrinkled AAA map circa 1989. "The turnoff should be coming up here on the right."

"You know, I have a GPS. All you have to do is plug in the address. . . ."

"Those things are never right. Besides, I doubt any GPS could find it. It's an abandoned homestead where n.o.body has lived for decades. That's why Yvonne couldn't give us a street address."

"Mother, it uses a satellite. Anything that exists can be seen. . . ."

"There it is," she said, almost chortling. "Nothing like good old-fas.h.i.+oned map reading to get you where you need to go."

"Avoiding technology just means you're getting old," I said smugly as I turned onto an unpaved road, effectively silencing her.

Dust erupted under the tires, seeming to swallow up the road behind us. The car b.u.mped over rocks and small limbs, making me wish I'd taken my dad up on his offer to borrow his truck. The old-growth pine forest loomed thickly over us, blocking out much of the sunlight and giving me the impression of being inside a cathedral. None of which did anything to soothe my nerves. With grave digging on the agenda, I hadn't really expected anything would.