Page 47 of The Guests on South Battery
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 givetheir 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.
