Page 18 of The Christmas Spirits on Tradd Street
I gave her a sharp glance, noticing how she was sitting up straight, her gaze focused on the road ahead of us.
I continued. “Sophie wasn’t able to find out the reason for the name change but thinks it might have had something to do with a family rivalry the Vanderhorsts had with the Draytons. The Draytons’ Magnolia Plantation was established around the same time, but the Vanderhorsts wanted the name for their own plantation, so they just added the wordRidgeto differentiate. Someone eventually saw reason and changed thename to avoid confusion. To make sure that everyone knew which plantation they were visiting, the Vanderhorsts added real peacocks to the lawn, where they flourished until the Civil War.”
As I stared out the windshield, the specter of the soldier began to shimmer as waves of light rose from the ground like steam, before he disappeared completely.
“What happened to the peacocks?” Jayne’s voice was stronger than mine had been, but I could still detect a slight quaver.
“They ate them.” We exchanged a glance. “It was during the war and everybody was starving.” I frowned as the sun glinted off of what could have been a part of a musket that was no longer there. “On a happier note, according to Sophie, a peacock symbol has been used on everything that ever originated from the plantation since the name change, including rice barrels and all of the furniture. I bet it was one of the first uses of a logo.”
“Can we keep going?” my father asked impatiently. “I’m speaking at the gardening club at our meeting tonight, and I’d like to be able to go over my notes first.”
“Of course,” I said, reluctantly putting my foot on the gas again and moving forward down the lane. The full house had just come into view when we heard the sound of a siren behind us. I moved my car to the side for the unmarked car with the flashing dashboard light to pass, blowing up dirt onto my car before it came to a squealing stop in the circular drive right at the front steps of the house. Not sure what I was supposed to do, I followed, parking my car behind it.
Detective Riley, wearing dark sunglasses and a jacket and tie, stepped out of the driver’s-side door and looked back at us with an obvious frown. Jayne tensed beside me. “He’s tall. His shirt is blue.”
My father had already stepped out of our car and was walking toward the man with an outstretched hand and smiling with familiarity. I grabbed my sister’s shoulder and shook it gently. “Come on, Jayne. Get it together. We’ve been practicing, remember? It’s Detective Riley. Thomas. We know him. You’ve been on dates with him. He’s a nice guy.”
I watched as she swallowed, nodding. “I can do this.”
“Yes,” I said, opening my door. “You can. Unless you want to pretend you’re a dumbstruck teenager meeting Elvis for the first time.”
We walked together toward the detective, who greeted us both with a perfunctory nod, reminding me that Jayne said they’d had a fight. “So good to see you, Thomas,” I said with a smile, unused to his brusque greeting. “Why are you here?”
His gaze moved to Jayne and then back to me. “I was about to ask you the same question.”
Jayne spoke up before I could. “We’re meeting with Anthony Longo.” Her words were slow and deliberate, but at least they were coherent.
His frown deepened. “Well, I’m afraid he’s not here.”
“He’s not? Because we have an appointment.” I paused. “And how would you know he’s not here?”
“Because he’s in the hospital. Someone tried to run him off the road on the Crosstown. He’ll be okay, but his car is totaled.”
“Thank goodness,” I said, the skin of my neck prickling even more. “What happened?”
He was silent for a moment, as if deciding how much he could say. “It’s not clear, although witnesses say it appeared to be a single-car accident. He wasn’t exactly... coherent. Kept talking about someone hiding in his backseat and causing him to wreck. And then he said he was meeting someone out here at the winery and that he was afraid the same person might be here to harm them. I thought I should check it out. Imagine my surprise to find it’s you.”
While we’d been talking, my father had begun heading toward the cemetery, walking with a limp I knew he didn’t have.
“Dad? Where are you going?”
He continued walking toward the cemetery gate as if he hadn’t heard me.
Jayne began moving toward him. “Dad?” she called, but I was too worried about him to be annoyed at her use of the word Dad. “What’s wrong?”
As he approached the gate, it swung open with a loud squeal of rust and old iron.
“Stop!” I yelled, the temperature plummeting.
He stopped, then slowly turned around, but it wasn’t him. Not really. It was the same salt-and-pepper hair, the same strong jaw and crooked nose from having been broken several times in bar fights before he’d gotten sober. But it wasn’t my father. Whoever it was had distorted his features, making them run together like ink in rain.
I stopped ten feet in front of him, the scent of something vile sliding off of him in waves. Bile rose in my throat. “Daddy?” I said, using the name I hadn’t called him since I was six.
His mouth twisted and his eyes went hollow. “Go! Away!” The voice was loud and booming and definitely not his. His knees began to buckle, but I couldn’t move. It was as if someone was holding my arms behind me. Thomas sprinted forward and reached my father before he could hit the ground.
CHAPTER 7
I stood in the back garden watching Sophie’s graduate students—the few who agreed to come back—excavate the cistern, staying far enough back so that the whispers of unseen people remained unintelligible. Her graduate assistant, Meghan Black, wore cute bow-shaped earmuffs and what appeared to be a pink tool belt over a quilted Burberry jacket while she bent over a row of muddy bricks with a small brush. I could only wonder what her monthly dry-cleaning bill must be. Maybe her mother paid for that, along with the clothes.
