Page 53 of The Shop on Royal Street
“Great,” I said, looking anywhere but at the doll, unwilling to look into the bulgy eyes again.
“Don’t make no sense why it would be nailed shut, but that’s all that was in it. Jorge and me didn’t touch a thing.”
The first taps of rain hit the window and the roof. I’d bought enough pails to put under the leaky parts of the roof and had emptied them out after the last storm, so they were ready. Thibaut had reached out to his trusted roofer and scheduled a roof replacement, but they’d already pushed us back twice, citing existing jobs taking longer than expected. I was frustrated enough to look for an online roofing course so I could at least figure out how to do a patch job to get us by for a while, even though Beau had warned me that putting on my own roof would be a lot like performing brain surgery on myself. Still, I considered it an option. Nothing could go into the house until the roof was replaced, and I didn’t want my parents to see the house in its current condition when they arrived in October. With their experience at renovating an older home, I knew they would understand. But I needed something tangible to prove to them that I had succeeded in outrunning my demons.
I was about to ask Beau if he needed to see anything else while we were there, but I was distracted by the sound of him snapping the rubber band on his wrist. “We should get going,” he said, moving his gaze from the window to the closet, then dragging his eyes back to me. “Looks like the sky is about to fall in.”
The sky cracked above us as a gust of wind pushed at the house, the lightning chasing the rain as it began pummeling the roof. The barest scent of cologne tiptoed through the air, the woodsy scent of pipe tobacco slithering silently behind it.
I looked at Beau, whose head had turned back toward the gaping closet, his nostrils flared. “Do you smell it now?”
“Smell what?” Thibaut asked just as a blinding bolt of lightning lit the sky and something nearby—possibly a transformer—exploded and extinguished all streetlights, throwing us into an eerie darkness and an odd quiet.
“Why isn’t the generator on?” I asked, loudly enough to be heard over the rain.
“I have no idea,” Thibaut said, heading down the stairs. “But I’m fixin’ to find out.”
A new, overpowering smell that reminded me of my grandmother’s hair spray, now mingled with the strong scents of cologne and pipe tobacco, almost choked me. I coughed, finding it hard to breathe. “Beau,” I said, grasping his arm, wanting him to tell me that he smelled it, too.
I felt his arm around my shoulder just as a huge crack of thunder sounded above us. At the same time, a brilliant flash of blue-white lightning illuminated the upstairs hallway with bright light and showed us the clear image of a woman with a bouffant hairstyle and a high-waisted dress looking back at us with opaque, brooding eyes, a secretive smile on her lips, before we were plunged back into darkness.
CHAPTER 17
I clutched Mr.Bingle on my lap as Beau and I sat in his truck in front of the house on Prytania, the rain cascading down the windshield with a violence that still couldn’t erase the image of the woman with the sad eyes who had disappeared as soon as Beau aimed his flashlight.
We hadn’t spoken on the fifteen-minute drive, except for me repeating the same unanswered question. “You saw her, right?” I said again. Despite the blasting air-conditioning, sweat beaded on Beau’s forehead.
His hands still gripped the steering wheel and I noticed he was wearing two rubber bands instead of just one. He followed my gaze and slid one off. “Here,” he said, handing it to me, his voice straining to sound normal. “I got one for you. It’s blue, and it reminded me of your shirt, so I figured you’d like it. I was going to wait until our next driving lesson, but I thought you might want it sooner.”
I stretched it between my thumbs, testing it, not sure what I should be focusing on—the fact that he remembered the blue blouse or that I might have need of the rubber band now. I decided on the latter. “So youdidsee her.”
He dropped his hands from the wheel and met my eyes. “I sawsomething. But there was nothing there when I shone my light in the corner, and nothing showed up in the photo I snapped. When Thibaut got the generator running again and we could see in full light, the corner was definitely empty. No one was upstairs, and no one could have passed us on the stairs if they had come from downstairs. I think the storm and the power outage freaked us out a bit. And the lightning created weird shadows that looked like a person standing in the upstairs hallway. This is a common thread in all the stories I discuss in my podcast.”
“Are you listening to yourself? I’m not just anyone with a casual belief in ghosts. I lived with a psychic medium for more years than I can count right now, and I know what a shadow is and what a ghost is. I can’t talk to them, but I have seen them when they are strong enough to allow being seen by ordinary people like me. And I know you saw her, too, so stop trying to deny it and instead tell me why you won’t admit that she was real.”
His nostrils flared as he took two deep breaths, his chest slowly rising and falling with each one. It’s what my dad did when he caught Melanie in his office with her labeling gun. Instead of answering, he said, “Why is it so important to you?”
His question surprised me. “Because if I have a ghost living in my house, there’s a reason she’s there, and chances are she’d rather not be. I always thought it was a real gift that Melanie and my aunt Jayne could release earthbound spirits by figuring out what tethered them here. I’d feel guilty moving into the house and carrying on with my life with her unhappy spirit lurking around.”
“A gift, huh?” His voice was sharp
“Well, Melanie used to call it a curse, but I think she’s finally come to terms with it. She and my aunt actively work on cold cases for the Charleston police now—on the down low, of course. They’ve helped bring closure to a lot of families.”
When he didn’t say anything, I said, “I think the ghost might be Jeanne. She was murdered in the house and her killer was never caught.I hate to assume, but since I can’t ask her, that’s the best I can do. And there’s another spirit, too. A man. I saw him once, on the porch. He wears cologne and smokes a pipe. Melanie once got involved in a case where the spirit of the murderer was locked in the same place as the victim, unwilling to let the victim go. Melanie said it was one of her hardest cases, because one of the reasons the murderer was reluctant to be sent into the light was because she wasn’t ready to face retribution. I’d hate to think that’s what’s happening here.” I paused. “If I keep digging into Jeanne’s case and end up solving it, maybe she’ll find her own way without guidance. I could ask Melanie when she’s here in October, but that’s a long time off. Or I could hire someone. New Orleans is full of psy—”
“No.” He shook his head. “Sorry. I didn’t mean to shout. It’s just that I’ve had a lot of experience with them. They’re all thieves and liars. And even if they don’t take your money, they steal your hope.”
I studied him in the growing dusk, the rain slashing at the roof and windows of the truck. “You talked to psychics before, didn’t you? When you were trying to find Sunny.”
He didn’t respond right away, like a child caught in a lie. “Yeah, a lot. But just one was legit. And that was enough to tell me that it wasn’t something to dabble in if you don’t know what you’re doing. Because chances are you’re not going to get the answers you’re looking for, and you don’t know who’s going to respond.” He reached to pluck at the rubber band on his arm but stopped when he saw me watching. He dropped his hands to rest on his thighs. “It’s like opening a door that you can’t close.”
I waited for him to say more. When he didn’t, I said, “Melanie can. She thought you could, too.”
His jaw tightened. “Well, even if she’s right, I’m not interested.” He flipped off the ignition. “We should go. Mimi will be waiting.”
I’d obviously touched a bruise, and I was almost as eager as he was to change the conversation. I was just a client, and personal conversations were for closer relationships. Like with girlfriends. “What should I do with him?” I indicated Mr.Bingle on my lap.
He looked at it and frowned. “It might be valuable, so we need to hide it. It would really tick me off if someone broke in to steal it.” He unbuckled his seat belt and rummaged on the floor of the backseat before retrieving an empty reusable grocery bag from Rouses Market and held it open. “Dump him in here and stick it under your seat.”
