Page 37 of The Christmas Spirits on Tradd Street
Jack carried the shoebox of documents we’d received from Anthony, and I held the folder of misfiled materials Yvonne had given my dad. We’d already combed through all the papers, reading and then reading them again without seeing anything that caught our attention as being something we should investigate further. I supposed the cost of nails and sugar on an eighteenth-century plantation might have historical significance, but did not necessarily contain the seeds to overcome the goiter on the necks of our well-being, Marc Longo.
Neither Jack nor I was willing to believe that there wasn’t anything in those files that might lead us to any more hidden treasure. Or at least something that might be valuable enough to protect us against Marc’s next assault. We might be in a temporary truce now, but we weren’t naïve enough to believe that Marc wasn’t out there waiting to pounce like some feral cat outside a mousehole.
Our hopes were pinned on the indomitable Yvonne. She’d gleefully accepted the scanned documents Jack had sent her the previous day to go over before our meeting, just in case we’d missed something; she claimed that at her age she didn’t sleep much anyway. Besides, she’d said, she was hoping she could be instrumental in showing karma the way to Marc’s front door.
As we walked through the doors of the Addlestone Library, Jack’s face was grim, the dark smudges under his eyes making them appear more blue. Along with the dark stubble on his unshaven jaw, those smudges made him look like a marauding pirate on a mission, and I was glad that I was on his side. And in his bed.
I could only wish I looked that good when I hadn’t slept. Jack hadn’t come to bed last night, wanting to go through the files one more time, and all morning he’d been so preoccupied that he hadn’t even noticed the new labeling system I’d given his sock drawer during my labeling frenzy the previous day.
“There’s one thing I don’t understand,” he said, pausing inside the enormous glass rotunda where the previous summer the full skeletalremains of a T. rex had been on display. I’d wanted to bring the children, but Jayne said they were too young, and Nola had added that Sarah would be petrified if it started talking to her.
“Just one?” I asked, not meaning to sound sarcastic.
Not that it mattered. Jack’s face remained grim and I wasn’t even sure he’d heard me. “We know Marc wants our house. He’s admitted as much. So why not just sue us outright so we have to sell the house, and then they could film to their hearts’ content? Why make us believe that they’ll accept the insurance payout for the accident in return for the rights to film inside, and just let it go?”
We headed toward the third floor, where Yvonne said we’d find her in the historic archives’ reading room. We walked slowly as we contemplated the implications. “Good point,” I said. We stopped walking and our eyes met. I swallowed. “Unless he needs us.”
Jack nodded. “Exactly what I was thinking. He must believe there’s something valuable hidden in the house that he has yet to find. And he’s hoping we’ll lead him to it.” His face darkened. “We just can’t afford to let him get there first.”
I nodded, the unease I’d felt before now blossoming into a full panic. There was no doubt in our minds that Marc had orchestrated Jack’s current situation with his publisher, so he was aware how vulnerable we were. Nola’s accident must have seemed like an answer to Marc’s prayers.
I could almost see the pall of gloomy thoughts surrounding Jack as we entered the reading room, with its dark wood tables clustered in the middle, each one with a reading light. The white walls were crowded with black bookshelves, the tan carpet a sponge absorbing our footsteps.
I spotted Yvonne, wearing her signature rose petal pink and her rope of pearls, emerge from the other side of the room. It was odd seeing her in a place so modern, with lots of glass and concrete, instead of against the backdrop of the centuries-old Fireproof Building, where she used to work. She was frowning as she approached, something else I wasn’t accustomed to, her hands outstretched toward me.
“Aren’t you both a sight for sore eyes?” she said, accepting cheek kisses from both of us. “I don’t think I’ve seen a person over twenty-fiveall week. I’ve actually begun to feel my age—especially against all this... newness.”
The library was a recent addition to the campus and was a far cry from the elegant balustrades, Ionic columns, and fine architectural details of the Fireproof Building. “It certainly is newer,” I agreed, pushing down the Sophie-like thought that the historical archives had no business sleeping beneath concrete and glass.
She sighed. “Yes, that’s true.” She grinned at Jack over the rims of her bifocals. “But as we all know, youth can be overrated.”
Jack grinned back, and I was relieved to see a bit of the light return to his eyes. “And I hope you can prove that, Yvonne, by telling me you found something.”
“I do believe I have,” she said, leading us toward a table near the back of the room.
Jack let out a breath. “Thank goodness. Because if you didn’t have anything new for us, we’d have to resort to our Plan B.”
“We have a Plan B?” I asked.
“Not yet,” he said, placing a hand on the small of my back as we followed Yvonne through the maze of mostly empty tables.
She indicated that we should sit down at one of them where a thick folder rested, causing my heart and stomach to jump in unison. Jack slid the shoebox toward Yvonne. “Here are the documents that were taken from the archives. We’ve already talked to our detective friend, who says that even though we’re pretty sure Marc Longo took them, it’s all circumstantial. But if I were you, I’d put his face with a line going across it on a poster near the entrance to the library.”
“And these,” I said, placing my own folder in front of me, “are copies of the papers you gave my dad that had been misfiled in the garden papers for the Tradd Street house. They’re a jumble of things but include building plans for both mausoleums at Gallen Hall Plantation. The best thing about these documents is that we’re fairly certain Marc Longo hasn’t seen them because they were filed in error separately from the other documents.”
I felt as if we were playing a game of poker, each of us carefullylaying out our cards, with Yvonne our clever dealer. Beaming at us from behind her bifocals, she opened her own folder but kept her hand over the paper on top. “In addition to going through the documents you sent, I did a little digging on my own.”
She slid the top page toward us like a dealer in a casino, still covering it with her hand. “From what Melanie told me on the phone, Marc has seen, and possibly destroyed, an appointment diary once belonging to his grandfather, Joseph Longo, and in it, a picture of a drawing Joseph copied from a letter he’d found in the Vanderhorst home during a party.” She looked at me for corroboration, her eyes bright and shiny like those of a surgeon getting ready to cut.
I nodded.
“Marc’s brother also told you that in the archives that Marc stole and then”—she paused, as if in remembrance of a dearly departed loved one—“destroyed, he found a letter dated 1781 stating that a French visitor was coming to lay a wreath on the tomb of the Vanderhorsts’ beloved daughter, Marie Claire. I’ll keep looking, but sadly, I can’t find a copy of it or any other corroborating documentation about any visitors in 1781 to Gallen Hall. Either it doesn’t exist or Marc has already found and destroyed it.”
“But the Vanderhorsts at that time didn’t have a daughter,” Jack said.
“Precisely,” Yvonne said, finally lifting her hand from the paper. “This next part was easy. Here in the archives we have several tomes dedicated to various Charleston families—the original land-grant Charlestonians, who many still believe are the only true Charlestonians. We’re quite proud of our bloodlines, although some aren’t as blue as we’d like to think.” She winked. “Fortunately, the sheer number of sources makes it rather easy to find family trees and biographical information about them.”
We looked down and saw a photocopy of a biography taken from what appeared to be an ancient textbook. “This young woman Elizabeth Grosvenor—known as Eliza to her friends and family—wasn’t a daughter but did live with the family at the time as Mrs. Vanderhorst’s ward. Her mother and Mrs. Vanderhorst were distant cousins, and whenyoung Eliza was orphaned, she came to live with the Vanderhorsts at their plantation known as Gallen Hall. She was still living there in 1781, the year the letter was written.”
