The Guests on South Battery (Tradd Street #5)(79)
He reached into his back pocket and pulled out a freshly laundered handkerchief and handed it to me. “It’s hard to hear.”
I touched my face, surprised to find it wet, then dabbed at my eyes with the cloth. “It makes me angry, in a way. That all the advances in medicine couldn’t fix what was wrong with her. But that doesn’t explain why she’s still here.”
“Isn’t unfinished business usually the reason?”
“Sometimes. But what kind of unfinished business could an eleven-year-old shut-in have? Which makes me think that maybe it’s not her ghost up in that attic. I mean, the house is more than two hundred and fifty years old. Lots of people have lived and died in that house. She’s just one in a long list of candidates.”
His eyes met mine for a moment before returning to the pile of paper. He pulled out a loose sheet from the very bottom and handed it to me. “This might change your mind.” It was a photocopy of a South Carolina death certificate that he’d shown me before. “I was looking at this again to see if there was anything I’d missed, and there it was.” He pointed his finger to a spot on the form.
I squinted, unable to see the really tiny print.
“Oh, for crying out loud, Mellie.” He reached around the desk and pulled out the top drawer. “Just put them on already.”
Feeling chastened, I put my reading glasses on and looked down to see the name Hasell Chisolm Pinckney on the top line, and then moved my gaze to the spot he indicated. I put my hand over my lips, unable to speak. The words “Time of Death” were printed above bold, black numbers typed neatly in the little box: 4:10 a.m.
“That would be a little too coincidental if that weren’t Hasell’s spirit trying to reach you, don’t you think?” Jack asked quietly.
“Even if we did believe in coincidences,” I said slowly, my mind still trying to wrap itself around what he’d just discovered. I thought back to when my alarm clocks had stopped at ten minutes after four, and the phone call came in from a disconnected number. I remembered it had been the first day back at the office. The day I’d met Jayne and learned she’d inherited the Pinckney house, the same house Hasell had lived and died in. That was when Hasell had first reached out to me; I could guess that much. But I was no closer to understanding why.
“Which we don’t.” Jack was thoughtful for a moment and then began righting the papers, stacking them against the flat top of my desk before returning them to his satchel. “There’s something else, too.”
I looked at him over my reading glasses before realizing that I probably looked like my first grade teacher, Mrs. Montemurno, who’d worn muumuus over her ample body and lots of gold clanky bracelets over the crease in her arm where her wrists were supposed to be. She’d looked ancient even back then and I remembered how the bags under her eyes were always accentuated when she looked at me from over her glasses. I hastily took them off. “Go ahead,” I said.
“You mentioned the Pinckneys had once owned a house on Lake Jasper near Birmingham. I’d never heard of it before, but I wouldn’t be a writer if I didn’t jump at every loose piece of information, so I did some research. The reason why I’d never heard of it before is probably because it doesn’t exist anymore. The lake was enlarged in 1985 by the Army Corps of Engineers and the name changed to another, larger lake that was combined with Lake Jasper.”
“So what happened to the Pinckney house?” I asked.
“Oh, it’s still there, I’m sure. Just underwater. It happens sometimes—to whole towns, even. It’s almost like they’re encased in snow globes with the roads, houses, shops, and churches still there, only unreachable unless you like to scuba.”
“That’s horrible. And not a little creepy. Remind me to never go boating or swimming there. I can’t imagine what sort of angry spirits are probably hanging around.”
“Yes, well, some people say on Sunday mornings, you can still hear the church bells ringing.”
I winced. “That’s scary, even to me.” I thought for a moment, remembering something he’d said. “And it was flooded in 1985?”
After he nodded, I said, “Your mother found a salt-and-pepper-shaker set as part of a collection in the Pinckney House. It’s from Lake Jasper and somebody had painted the date May thirtieth, 1984.”
He pulled out his notepad and jotted it down. “Just in case it’s important. Regardless, the set might be valuable, seeing as how Lake Jasper doesn’t exist anymore. Make sure Jayne is aware so she doesn’t dump the whole collection at Goodwill before she knows the value.” He replaced the notepad, then glanced at his watch before looking back at me with a wicked grin. “Looks like we have five minutes.”
The intercom on my desk buzzed and Jolly’s voice was piped in: “The nanny’s here.”
“Hold that thought,” I said as I stood.
The children were squealing with happiness upon seeing Jayne and were too preoccupied to notice Jack or me. At least that was what I told myself. I let Jayne know that I’d added a few things to the children’s Google calendar, including their first-year checkup at the pediatrician’s. I made sure to let her know that I’d added a note to that event about which matching outfits they should wear. She and Jack, and even Jolly, stared back at me with the same blank expressions, making me wonder, just for a moment, if it was me that wasn’t understanding something.