The Guests on South Battery (Tradd Street #5)(54)

I wasn’t sure if he was referring to the kiss or the conversation, but either way I was feeling better than when I’d entered the room. I wasn’t yet able to formulate words, so I simply nodded.

“Good. I’m glad we’re on the same page, and I’m glad you came in here to discuss it with me. Is there anything else you want to get out in the open?”

I had a brief image of Jayne in her running outfit, jogging behind my two children in the stroller, but quickly dismissed it. If I were trying to be a more mature person, I had to take it slowly. I’d save that discussion for another time.

“No,” I said, then turned to look at the papers scattered on his desk. “Did you find anything new?”

“I’m not sure yet—I’ve been going through my notes all morning trying to see if anything jumps out at me, but nothing so far. There is one thing,” he said, tapping his finger on the yellow notepad. “The little girl—Hasell. As the only child from that generation, she would have inherited the house when Button died instead of Jayne. Just for interest, I thought I’d look into Hasell’s short life. And that’s where it gets interesting.”

“Why?” I asked, feeling an odd sense of foreboding. “Interesting” to Jack usually meant murder and mayhem. And dead people. That was why he was a writer. To me it only meant more dead people who needed me to solve their problems, since they were no longer here to do it themselves.

“I found her death certificate in the archives. She was almost twelve when she died but weighed only seventy pounds.”

“Poor thing,” I said. “She must have been really ill. Was it cancer?”

He shook his head. “No. And that’s just it—the cause of death on the certificate was simply marked as ‘unknown.’”

“Unknown? In this day and age they couldn’t figure out what she died from?”

“It’s strange, isn’t it? I’m going to have to view her medical files.”

I frowned. “But those aren’t generally open to the public, are they? I mean, unless you’re a member of the family.”

“I might be able to work around them. I have ways.”

I leaned against the desk. “Don’t you need to know who her doctor was?”

He slid a photocopy of a newspaper obituary over to me. “That was easy. She died on January third, 1983, attended by Dr. Augustus Gray, family friend, and survived by her aunt Caroline—Button—her father, and her mother. No other relatives were listed.”

“So, what next?” I asked.

“I track down Dr. Gray, or his descendants, and find out if he kept records of his own outside the hospital records. With all the new regulations, there’s no way I could have access to them through the hospital. But back then, it’s completely feasible that her doctor might have kept his own.”

“And if he left behind a lonely widow . . .”

Jack grabbed me around my waist and placed me in his lap again. “Mellie, if there is, she’s probably rather elderly now. Besides, there will never be another woman for me. You’re it. Even if she were young and gorgeous, I wouldn’t notice.”

I rested my head on his shoulder. “I know, and I’m sorry. It’s just that old habits . . .”

“Are hard to break,” he finished. “Speaking of which, what on earth is this?” He reached over and pulled out his desk drawer, where ten night-lights of varying designs and colors were lined up inside, all facing the same way, like soldiers. On the other side of the drawer were pieces of paper that had once been strewn all over and had now been organized and stacked. And labeled.

“It’s a bunch of night-lights I bought for Jayne in case she keeps breaking them. I’m out of room upstairs, but you had all this wasted space in here. . . .”

“It wasn’t wasted, Mellie. I was using it to store my notes, and now I can’t find anything.”

“But, see, I made it easier. Did you not find that index card on top of the pile that showed you how it was all organized?”

He was smiling, but the look somehow didn’t seem genuine. Like the one Sophie had given me when I offered to take her to my hairstylist for her birthday gift. “You are free to organize your own things, and even the children’s until they can fight back. But you promised to leave my things alone.”

“I know, but when I opened the drawer and saw the mess—”

His lips touched mine, and by the time his tongue had parted my lips, I’d already completely forgotten what we’d been talking about.





My mother picked up what looked like a piece of thread connected to two round pieces of lace from one of the displays at Victoria’s Secret on King Street. She held it up as if considering it until I reached over and snatched it out of her hand. “Mother!” I protested.

“Not for me, Mellie. For you. I thought if we were going to be buying you new bras, you should get new underwear, too. Men notice those things, you know.”

“Mother,” I said in a low voice, looking around to see if anybody had heard, Jayne in particular. I’d been a little embarrassed to run into her at a lingerie store, even though she’d quickly explained that she was looking for new jogging bras. It was her day off, so it would make sense that she’d be running errands. I just wished she’d been running them elsewhere.