Page 42 of The Christmas Spirits on Tradd Street
Rich Kobylt wore a thick sweater that was long enough to cover his waistband, something for which I was eternally grateful. I didn’t think my stomach could handle the view of his backside without at least a cup of coffee in me.
“Good mornin’, Miz Trenholm,” he called out in greeting.
I closed the door behind me, my face stinging with the chill. “Hi, Rich.” I noticed he wore a large metal cross on a heavy chain around his neck. I was pretty sure I hadn’t seen it before. He must have guessed where I was looking, because he put his hand on it.
“My wife gave it to me,” he said. “No offense, Miz Trenholm, but this garden gives me the creeps. You’d think finding a skeleton in the fountain and then again in the foundation would have sent me over the edge, but it’s this cistern that just makes my skin crawl. I feel like someone’s watching me whenever I’m in the backyard. My wife gave me this as a little extra protection.” He jiggled the chain.
“That was nice of her,” I said, not able to think of anything else to say. Was there a proper response for when someone starts wearing a religious icon to protect them from your backyard?
“Yeah, she’s pretty thoughtful.” Facing me again, he said, “So, I hear my friend Greco is working for you now. He’s got a funny way of dressing, but he’s a good guy.”
I kept my face neutral. “He’s great. Very nice to work with. And definitely not easily spooked.”
Rich’s eyes narrowed a little at my choice of words, and I bit my lip, wishing I hadn’t said that out loud. He faced the cistern, where Meghan Black and two other students were diligently picking at the bricked sides despite the cold. “Between you and me, this is taking a lot longer than I’d thought. If they don’t finish this week, there’s no way I’m going to be able to fill this in and make it disappear before your big party.”
“Could you just get a bulldozer in here and cover it all up and we’ll call it an accident?”
He stared at me blankly. “You serious, Miz Trenholm? Because I don’t think Dr. Wallen-Arasi would go for that.” He emphasized his words by shaking his head. “As a matter of fact, she’s nice and all, but I wouldn’t want to get on her bad side.”
As a frequent victim of her bad side, I had to agree. “No, you certainly wouldn’t want to go there. So,” I said, eager to get away from the cistern and the pervasive scent of dead, rotting things that lingered despite the cooler air and Sophie’s assurances that anything dead would have disintegrated long ago. “You’re here to look at the dining room floor?”
“Yes, ma’am. I understand you got some of those nasty wood-boring beetles.”
“According to Dr. Wallen-Arasi, we do.” I put my hand on his arm and leaned closer. “Could you do me a favor, please? If it’s over a thousand dollars to get rid of them and repair the floor, could you get me an estimate on laminate floors? You know—the ones that look like wood but aren’t tasty to beetles?”
He pursed his lips. “Dr. Wallen-Arasi won’t like that at all. Not one bit.”
I stepped back. “True. But she’s not the one paying for it, is she?” I narrowed my eyes at him. “And if you breathe one word to her about what I just said, you’re going to need a lot more protection than that necklace. Do you understand?”
His eyebrows shot up. “Yes, ma’am. I understand.”
“Good. You go on inside. I have a quick question for one of the students first. I’ll join you in a minute.”
He didn’t wait for me to tell him a second time. He’d almost made it to the kitchen door before he bent down to tie his shoe. I almost spit out my coffee and had to avert my eyes.
Turning toward the cistern, I watched as Meghan Black, in the same cute black bow earmuffs and pink tool belt I’d seen her in before, bent forward with a tiny brush to wipe dirt from a protruding brick in the cistern’s wall.
“Hello, Meghan?” I called.
She continued with the brush and I noticed the wires from her earbuds snaking beneath the earmuffs. I moved to stand in front of her and waved my hands until she noticed me. She reached up and pulled out the buds and smiled at me. “Good morning, Mrs. Trenholm.”
“Good morning.” I took a sip of my coffee, the liquid quickly growing cold. “So,” I said, indicating the deep hole in my backyard. “Are you all almost done here?”
She looked horrified. “No—far from it. We’re finding things every day, but it does take time to make sure nothing is damaged when we excavate.” She moved closer to me, and I saw a pink and green Lilly Pulitzer coffee thermos on the ground next to a white blanket, on which what looked like junk lay in careful rows. “Look what we found this morning,” she said with excitement as she held up what appeared to be a broken piece of china. “It’s a broken piece of china!”
“Fascinating,” I said.
“I know, right?” Meghan carefully replaced the shard next to a nearly identical piece. “I think we might have an entire cup and saucer.” Shemoved her hand to something smaller lying on the blanket. “We found this bone, too,” she said, holding up something small and white as my throat constricted.
Her smile fell. “Oh, don’t worry, Mrs. Trenholm. Actually, we’ve found a lot of animal bones—mostly chicken bones. Probably from buried garbage. You know what they say—one man’s trash is another man’s treasure.”
She said it with so much enthusiasm that I had to smile. “Do you have a moment? I wanted to ask you about that photo you took. And the man standing near the cistern.”
A visible shudder went through her, and I was fairly sure it had nothing to do with the wind. “I deleted it from my phone. Along with the photo of the face in the window upstairs.”
This didn’t surprise me. I would have done the same thing if I didn’t know for sure that the spirits wouldn’t stay deleted. “No worries—you e-mailed them to me, so I have them on my phone, and you gave me printed copies, remember?”
She nodded. “Yeah. You should probably delete the photos and tear up the prints, too. It’s not like I believe in that kind of thing, but it would seem to me that’s not something you should have hanging around your house.”
