The Guests on South Battery (Tradd Street #5)(15)
“Why would the woman think it’s important?”
“Because she’d never seen it before. She was moving into her parents’ home and found her sister’s trunk in their attic—the one that had been in her sister’s dorm room at the time of her death. It had never been opened since they brought it home. The woman found the charm in the bottom along with a broken chain. She’s positive it didn’t belong to her sister and could be the lead we needed to finally solve it.”
“Even I have to say that’s a long shot.”
He looked at me steadily without saying anything, as if waiting for me to fill in the blanks.
“Unless someone can talk to the dead girl,” I said slowly.
“Yeah, that’s pretty much what I was thinking.”
I studied my hands as I slowly pulled on my gloves. “I’ll think about it and let you know. Life’s pretty crazy right now. Maybe after I get this nanny thing sorted out.”
“I understand—thank you.”
“Thank you,” I said, “for being so quick with the references. Jack and I appreciate it.”
“Anything to help,” he said, giving me a devastating grin that might have my knees weakening if it weren’t for Jack.
We stood outside the shop on King Street. “Where are you headed—can I give you a lift?” he asked.
“If you could take me to my car on Tradd, I’d appreciate it. I’m driving over to meet Sophie and Jayne at the Pinckney house she inherited and wants to sell. She has absolutely no interest in hanging on to it.”
He raised his eyebrows.
“It wouldn’t be the first time a virtual stranger left an albatross of a house to an unsuspecting stranger. Selling an unwanted inheritance is always an option.”
“Yeah, but still. It’s a nice albatross. That house must be worth . . .”
“A lot. Haven’t seen the inside yet, so it could be a total gut job.” I narrowed my eyes. “What’s wrong?”
“I’ll have to ask my dad, but there was something bad that happened in that house back in the late seventies or early eighties when he was still a beat cop. I was pretty young, but I remember it because he was pretty shook-up about it—and he’s not the kind of guy who gets easily shook-up.”
“I’ll ask Jack to do a little research. I’ll need to know for full disclosure reasons, assuming Jayne will still want to sell it after she’s been inside.”
“She wants to sell it and she hasn’t even seen the whole thing?”
I paused. “She hates old houses.”
He stared at me blankly.
“It happens,” I said, getting tired of justifying this perfectly rational perspective—one I happened to share for personal reasons but not professional ones, obviously. “You’d be surprised how many people will only consider houses built in the last decade. Most of them are afraid of the maintenance and care an old house requires. Jayne’s a single woman who probably just doesn’t want to mess with all that, and I can’t say I blame her. She can find something nice and brand-new in Isle of Palms or Daniel Island for what she might sell the Pinckney house for if I do my job right.”
Thomas walked me to his car and held open the passenger door, then shut it behind me. After he slid behind the steering wheel and buckled his seat belt, he sat staring ahead without speaking for a long moment.
“What is it?” I asked.
“Were you afraid of the dark when you were little?”
I turned to look out the side window and spotted a woman wearing white pants and running shoes and a fanny pack standing in the middle of the street to take a photo down King Street, apparently oblivious of the waiting traffic. “I was. At least until my mother left me. That’s when I realized that real life was a lot scarier than whatever might be hiding in the dark.”
He nodded sympathetically and then started the engine. “I was, too, but only because I would stay up late to listen to my dad telling my mom about some of his cases. Enough to make a kid’s imagination run wild after the lights were switched off.” His jaw clenched. “I’m just wondering what would terrify a person so much that she grows into adulthood still being afraid of the dark.”
“It probably has something to do with being abandoned as a baby. They say some traumatic experiences stay with us no matter how young we were when they happened.”
Thomas turned the steering wheel and pulled away from the curb. “Yeah. That’s probably it. Poor kid.”
“Poor kid,” I repeated. I looked away again, embarrassed to find my eyes moist, and remembered the moment I realized that my mother wasn’t coming back and how I’d promised myself then that I’d never be afraid of the dark ever again.
CHAPTER 5
Iarrived at the Pinckney house on South Battery after Jayne did, something I always tried to avoid when showing a client a house for the first time. I preferred to curate what they saw initially and took note of, focusing on the positive attributes so they wouldn’t notice the cracks in the mortar or wood rot in the window frames. That would happen later, after they’d fallen in love with the old house and were already willing to restore the ancient pile of lumber without a thought to the hole of debt that they were about to step into.