Page 14 of The Guests on South Battery
“Does it get as hot here as it does in Birmingham?” Jayne asked, her words stiffened by her clenched jaw. “I mean, would central air be required for resale?”
Both Sophie and I stared at her for a moment, trying to see if she might be joking. Finally, I said, “It will really depend—you can either have the work done or reduce the price accordingly. Either way, summer in Charleston is like living in a toaster stuck on high. Air-conditioning is generally not considered optional.”
I left the front door open, telling myself it was with hopes of crisp, fresh air instead of giving me the option of a quick exit.
Jayne still had her arms crossed, but she was looking at me with an amused expression. “ABBA, huh?”
“You like them?”
She wrinkled her nose. “I didn’t say that. They were a little before my time. I saw the movieMamma Mia, though, so I’m familiar with their music.”
Sophie began walking toward the staircase. “You didn’t hear this from me, but Melanie’s a little obsessed. She denies it, but I’m pretty sure she has a white leather fringe jumpsuit in her closet.”
I joined Sophie at the staircase, but Jayne remained where she was, her gaze focused at the landing where the stairs took a turn and disappeared from sight. I followed her gaze, then stopped. The fat cat with the missing eye sat on the landing staring disinterestedly down at us. “How’d that get in here?” Jayne asked.
“Must have sneaked in while we were talking. I’ll send someone from the office who likes cats to come get it to see if it has a tag.”
“And if it belonged to Button Pinckney?”
“I guess it will go to a shelter.”
“What cat?” Sophie asked.
“That one,” I said, pointing to the empty spot where the cat had been. “Well, he or she was here a moment ago. It’s rather chubby, and is missing an eye. I don’t know how easy it will be to find it a home, so let’s hope it doesn’t belong to the house.”
I waited at the doorway to the parlor, hoping Jayne would take the hint, but she remained where she stood, her feet planted like a recalcitrant toddler. “There’s nothing to worry about,” I reassured her. “I promise the cat will be taken care of.”
She looked at me for a moment before stiffly nodding. Slowly, she moved inside, her gaze never leaving the top of the stairs. The skin on the back of my neck assured me that we weren’t alone in the house, yet the feeling of being barred from seeing anything extrasensory remained.
The stench of decay and a sense of foreboding permeated the space, brightened only by the extraordinary light flooding in from the front windows. It would be even brighter once they were cleaned, but even now I could see how beautiful this house had once been. “The lawyer told me that Miss Pinckney never left her room on the second floor for the last few years of her life. She had a housekeeper and nurse who took care of her. That might explain the neglect of the rest of the house.”
“It’s old,” Jayne said. “And it smells old. And...” She shivered, clenching her hands even tighter over her arms. “And I definitely don’t want to live here.”
She moved toward the door but was called back by Sophie’s voice.
“Oh, my gosh—I think it’s a William Parker glass chandelier. There’s only one other one I know of in Charleston and it’s at the Miles Brewton House. It’s worth a fortune.”
We moved into the drawing room to glance up at the cloudy chandelier that hung crookedly from exposed wires, the plaster medallion that had once encircled the hole now crumbling beneath our feet.
“I don’t think I’d pick that up if I drove past it at the curb with the rest of the garbage,” Jayne muttered.
“And this wallpaper,” Sophie continued. “It’s hand-painted silk. You see the vertical lines that show where each strip is? That illustrates that the owners were wealthy enough to buy multiple strips instead of just one long one. They wanted the lines to show to display their wealth and status.”
I looked closely but saw only faded wallpaper sagging from theweight of years, weeping at the corners from age and moisture. Where Sophie saw beauty, all I could see was decay. Signs of neglect were everywhere—from the scuffed and unpolished floors, to the mold spots in the wallpaper and the crumbling moldings that were now rapidly turning to dust. I was fairly certain that Jayne felt the same way.
I practically had to drag Jayne with me as we followed Sophie from room to room, listening to Sophie list all the unique, valuable, and historical elements of a house that neither of us could really see or appreciate.
I considered my house on Tradd Street separate from my thoughts on this house and most of the old houses in Charleston, if only because it was now my home and where I was raising my young family. My babies had been born there, and would learn to walk and say their first words there. The wooden floors would be scarred by the wear and tear of small shoes, scooters, and wooden blocks, marking the passage of another generation growing up at 55 Tradd Street. And I had visions of Nola getting married in the outside garden, and Sarah walking down the staircase in a prom dress waiting to greet her date. That particular vision also included Jack holding a rifle and looking menacing, but I shook it off quickly.
The Pinckney house was just brick, wood, and mortar, the longtime residence of a family I’d barely known and had no connection to. I found myself torn on how to advise my client, knowing the mental, physical, and bank-account-draining aspects of restoring a historic home.
I couldn’t look at Sophie, who was studying her surroundings as if she’d just found the Holy Grail, King Tut’s Tomb, and the Garden of Eden all rolled into one. Telling Jayne to sell it as is would break Sophie’s heart. And leave me vulnerable to her unique form of vengeance. The last time I’d advised a client to sell a house outside the protected historic district in dire need of repair and guaranteed to be demolished, Sophie retaliated by distributing flyers with a Photoshopped picture of me in a turban and one of my cell numbers printed on it, advertising free psychic readings. I’d had to change my number.
“Did you hear that?” Jayne asked when we finally made it to the second floor.
It had been a tinny, hollow sound. I would have thought I’d imagined it if Jayne hadn’t said anything. “Yes,” I said. “I think it’s coming from the room at the end of the hallway.”
“What noise?” Sophie asked from halfway up the stairs. She was busy studying the cypress wainscoting that had been stained to look like mahogany and ran up the wall on the side of the staircase. There were nicks and chips in the wood, little placeholders in time left by people long gone. Or so we’d like to think.
