At eleven a.m., Allison opened the front door of Pinckney House to let in her brother-in-law, Lawrence.
The AC kicked on, sending chills down her arms, and she tightened her black sweater over her black sundress. Her low-heeled sandals clicked on the pine floor as she led the way to the study.
She’d returned home a few minutes earlier. And since she’d worn jeans and a white blouse to her office, she’d used the time to change into more formal clothes to meet Lawrence’s more formal world.
Lawrence wrinkled his nose. “This house smells like lemongrass oil tinged with mildew. Are you sure you’re keeping it up? It is an historic home, after all. It has special needs.”
“I’m well aware of Pinckney House’s needs.” She’d only been living here and managing the house’s social calendar for years.
Nicholas Trott bound down the hallway from the kitchen, halted in front of Lawrence, and ran away toward the sitting room.
“You still have that mongrel?”
“Nicholas Trott is not a mongrel.” She sat behind the desk and waved to the chair in front of it. “In fact, he’s a beloved member of this city. He even has his own parking space at the public library.”
Lawrence scowled and sat. Although younger than Stuart, he was taller and leaner. He was also a successful entrepreneur who’d made his money with Got Ghosts?, his popular paranormal tour guide business in Charleston, Savannah, and New Orleans.
But today, in khaki pants, a white button-down shirt, and purple bow tie, he appeared more serious than she’d ever seen him before. More like a lawyer than a ghost hunter.
That couldn’t be good.
“So, Lawrence, how was your flight from Paris?”
Were the croissants worth missing your brother’s funeral?
She didn’t say that, of course. No point in poking the tiger who now held the purse strings of the Pinckney Trust.
“Fine.” Lawrence cleared his throat. “I have something to tell you that you’re not going to be happy about. My accountant and lawyer have finished the audit of the Pinckney Trust, and money is missing.”
“Missing?” She sat back in her chair. “I take care of the day-to-day household expenses, but Stuart handled everything regarding the family trust.”
Lawrence held up a hand. “I’m not accusing you of anything. But the audit discovered that, over the past two years, almost a million dollars has been siphoned from the estate.”
She planted her palms on the desk and stood. “I don’t believe it. Stuart wasn’t a thief. His books were perfect. He was a bank president.”
“Sometimes we don’t know people as well as we think we do.”
She sat again, her chest feeling suddenly tight. So very true. “Lawrence, is that why you put a hold on the account?”
“It’s standard procedure to freeze a family trust after the executor of the trust dies. It wasn’t personal.”
“But it’s been difficult—financially as well as emotionally.”
“It’s only going to remain difficult, financially I mean, until we clear up this mess.”
“You still have the crinkled look on your face. What else is wrong?”
“Did you know Stuart added an addendum to his will?”
“No. Stuart’s will was straightforward. As his wife, I inherit his assets—those outside the Pinckney Trust, of course.” A trust that made her a guest in her own home.
“I was surprised as well.” Lawrence took a file out of his briefcase and laid it on the desk between them.
She struggled to keep the rising dread out of her voice. “What’s this?”
“My lawyer and I have reviewed this many times.” Lawrence put on his glasses and opened the file. “According to Stuart’s will, you’re the sole beneficiary of Stuart’s assets, except for Pinckney House and the proceeds from a secondary life insurance policy.”
She shook her head. “I’ve already received payment from the life insurance company. It’s not a huge amount of money but it’s helped pay the monthly bills.”
It’d also paid for Stuart’s funeral.
Lawrence studied her from over his readers. “Stuart bought a second life insurance policy for a million dollars. The beneficiary is Isabel Rutledge.”
Allison’s voice stopped working. Stuart had left Isabel a million dollars?
“I believe,” Lawrence continued, “Stuart funded this insurance money with the cash he took out of the Pinckney Trust. Except he took out more than the policy cost. My next question is: What did he do with the rest of the money?”
“I don’t know.” Her voice rang with a harshness she’d never heard in it before.
Lawrence stood to pace the room. “You’ve no idea why Stuart would embezzle money and buy a life insurance policy for Isabel Rutledge, an obscure family friend?”
Allison swallowed and stared at her clasped hands on the desk. It would be so easy to pretend that what was true was false. But she’d, apparently, been living a life of lies for two years. And while hiding the truth to protect her bruised ego was a tempting proposition, she now realized that, although lies stole from the truth, they didn’t make the truth go away. “Last night, I discovered Stuart and Isabel were having an affair.”
Lawrence sat again. He’d paled and was blinking rapidly.
Yep. That’s how she’d felt last night.
She went to the bar in the corner of the room, opened a bottle of scotch, and poured some into cut-crystal glasses.
She handed him his drink and placed the bottle on the desk. She sipped hers while Lawrence downed his and poured another. Since her brother-in-law seemed incapable of speech, she asked, “Lawrence, how did you find out about this policy?”
Lawrence finished his second drink. “Stuart sent it to my lawyer a year ago with instructions to show it to me upon Stuart’s death. There’s one other thing I need to talk to you about.”
She wanted to lay her head on the desk and cry. Instead, her phone buzzed with another text from Pastor Tom.
Can you come by the church so we can talk about Stuart’s service on Friday?
She texted back I’ll be there soon.
Pastor Tom responded with a thumbs-up emoji and a praying hands emoji. She was going to need a lot more help than that to get out of this mess.
“Allison?” Lawrence barked. “Are you listening?”
She laid her phone on the desk and sent a fake smile to Lawrence. “Yes.”
“I’ve decided to move back to Charleston, and I want to live in Pinckney House.”
Her pretend smile turned into a real frown. “Why? You have a huge historic home in Savannah. Your business is based in Savannah.”
“This house has been in my family for centuries.”
“I don’t understand. It’s not like I can sell the house. I’m just going to care for it like I’ve been doing since I married Stuart. Besides, I don’t think you understand anything about Pinckney House’s full social calendar.”
“No, I don’t think you understand anything about this situation. Now that Stuart is gone, you don’t belong here.” He pointed to the folder on the desk. “Now that I know the truth, I don’t think you ever belonged here.”
“But—”
“I’m the executor of the Pinckney Estate. As such, I’m giving you notice. You have one week.”
A second text came in, but this one wasn’t from Reverend Tom. It read:
Fear not, Lady Allison. What issue this day will come? Your love and your will shall direct it.
What did that mean?
Lawrence snapped his fingers in front of her face. “Are you listening?”
“Of course.” This time she slipped her phone into her dress pocket. “One week to do what?”
“Move out.”
* * *
Twenty minutes later, Allison stepped into Saint Philip’s Church and inhaled the cold, vanilla-scented air. The church was empty and she wondered if she should go to the parish office.
She shrugged on her sweater and checked her phone. No more strange messages. Good thing too, since all she could think of was the fact that she was a week away from eviction. Needing some peace, she turned off her phone and threw it into her purse.
“Allison?” a male voice said from the doorway leading outside to the east graveyard.
She tried to smile. “Hello, Pastor Tom.”
Pastor Tom, in black clericals and white collar, with thinning brown hair, waved his hand that held a metal watering can. “Come with me. We’ll talk while I water.”
She adjusted her purse on her shoulder and followed him only to immediately shed her sweater and shove it into her bag. She waited while Pastor Tom filled his can from a spigot on a metal pipe sticking out of the ground between two seventeenth-century graves.
Bugs chittered and the hot, humid air shimmered through the overgrown palmettos, orange black-eyed Susans, pink crepe myrtles, and roaming purple salvias. The sunny haze made everything fuzzy. Spanish moss hung like heavy blankets from old and randomly planted live oak trees. Considering how many headstones in the over-three-hundred-year-old cemetery had melded themselves to tree trunks, she’d often wondered which came first: the trees or the dead.
She heard a drilling sound from the darker recesses of the cemetery that extended around the other side of the church. “What’s that noise?”
“City is renovating some of the older pipes and sewer lines to alleviate flooding. We’ve had a lot of rain this summer and, as you know, are always waiting for the next hurricane.” Pastor Tom turned off the spigot and led the way down an uneven flagstone path. As he walked, the foliage he disturbed hit her bare legs.
“Pastor Tom, I’ll never understand how you can keep track of everyone buried back here.” She brushed away a palm branch, praying no spiders fell out of the tree, because that sometimes happened. “Most of the names and dates are worn off.”
“That’s what historians are for, my dear.”
She stopped when he paused to water a daylily. Waving an arm around the cemetery which was an overgrown garden filled with dearly departed, she asked, “How do you decide what to water?”
“The plants tell me.”
That wasn’t at all helpful. She blew a strand out of her eyes and sat on an iron bench next to a stone obelisk draped in ivy. “Is there something you wanted to talk to me about?”
After watering a few more plants in between gravestones, then ferns in urns on top of columns, he sat next to her. It always amazed her how, despite wearing black all the time, he never seemed to look hot. “I’m concerned you don’t want to speak at Stuart’s service tomorrow. Is there a reason?”
She turned toward the iron fence that separated the church from the road and the other cemetery across the street. “I…” She clasped her hands in her lap. “I don’t know what to say.”
“Then speak from your heart.”
Except her heart was so closed down from pain and betrayal—past and current—she wasn’t sure words could escape. “If I spoke from my heart, those attending would trample each other running for the door.”
He smiled and sat back to survey his deceased flock, most of whom had passed on centuries ago. “Allison, I understand there’s hurt—”
“You couldn’t possibly.”
He glanced at her, his gaze softening as if knowing she was on the verge of tears. “Stuart and I talked about it. I know.”
“Know what?” She stood and kept her voice deliberately vague. It was possible that Stuart had other secrets besides Isabel, insurance policies, and rare manuscripts.
Pastor Tom watched her, and she warmed beneath his regard. Still, she was going to make him say it. She needed him to say it.
“I know Stuart desecrated his marriage vows.” Pastor Tom now stared at his shiny black shoes. “I begged Stuart to confess his affair to you and make amends, and he’d finally agreed.”
She sat again because her legs were no more stable than if they’d been soggy Pixy Stix. “When?”
“A few days before his death, we spoke about…the situation. He told me he was going to end the affair and tell you all about it. As well as other things going on.”
“He didn’t.”
Pastor Tom raised an eyebrow. “How did you—?”
“Stuart’s lover told me.”
“I’m sorry.” He stood and she followed him toward the front of the church, where he stopped to water a clump of wild daisies. “I understand why you don’t want to speak, but Stuart was your husband. I know how much you loved him and he loved you.”
“Not enough, apparently.” All this talk made her feel worse. “The truth is, Pastor Tom, I have nothing to say.”
“The irony is,” he said as he watered a wild flowering fern, “you have many words. You just can’t say them to Stuart.”
She followed Pastor Tom toward another spigot sticking up out of the ground next to a limestone tomb covered in spotted mold. He filled his watering can again while her mind raced.
Pastor Tom was right. She had a million questions, but Stuart wasn’t here to answer them.
She was a walking contradiction. She felt so detached yet so filled with pain. And the thought of speaking in front of others made her throat close up and her palms itch. A few more wildflower waterings led them to her brother’s grave. A skull with wings had been carved above the name Daniel Fenwick. Below that were his birth and death dates. Then there was the quote she’d never fully appreciated until today. When sorrows come, they come not single spies but in battalions.
She avoided a nearby stretch of dirt without a headstone that signified a newly buried body. Stuart lay deep beneath, and soon his headstone would be placed next to her brother’s.
She turned away. “Pastor Tom, did Stuart ever mention finding the Witch’s Examination of Mercy Chastain? Or buying the Pirate’s Grille?”
“Yes.” Pastor Tom watered the wild violets in front of Danny’s grave. “Stuart said that the Witch’s Examination of Mercy Chastain and the Pirate’s Grille, if used together, was one of two ways to find the dread pirate king’s treasure.”
“What was the second way?”
“Discover what happened to Mercy in 1704. Stuart believed that if he could find Mercy, she would lead him to the treasure.”
Great. “This dread pirate king—would it be Henry Avery?”
“Yes.” Pastor Tom pulled wild purple clematis vines off a marble column. “You don’t seem surprised by all of this.”
“I am and I’m not.” She licked her dry lips. “Did you know Henry Avery was, supposedly, Mercy Chastain’s lover? And that they disappeared together in 1704?”
“I did.” Pastor Tom pointed to Pirate House across the street. “Henry Avery met Mercy in the Pirate House when it was an alehouse—”
“Brothel—”
“And then built the nearby Pink House for her after she bore him a child. Yet, while I’ve seen Mercy’s ghost, I’ve never seen Henry’s.”
Allison coughed politely. “Did Stuart say anything else about why he was looking for this treasure?”
“Stuart was supposed to find and give the treasure to someone named the Prince before another man found it.”
“Does this other man have a name?”
“Remiel Marigny.”
She sank onto a raised flat tomb, not caring that it was covered in green lichen.
Hadn’t Zack mentioned Remiel Marigny last night? Twice?
Pastor Tom gently touched her shoulder. “Stuart told me if he could find Mercy and the treasure, he could keep you safe.”
She might have believed that yesterday, but today? Not at all. She stood and followed Pastor Tom to the front gate.
“There is one other odd thing that happened not long before he died. Stuart asked to borrow a small hammer and chisel. The kind one uses on a headstone.”
“Why?”
“He didn’t say.”
“This all seems far-fetched,” she said. “Stuart was a bank president, after all.”
“We are not always who we appear to be to others.” When they reached the gate that led to the street, he frowned. “Is that your mother in Pirate House?”
A woman in a long orange-and-red-striped skirt and black camisole had her hand on the knob of the front door of the white stucco building. “What is Rue doing here?”
Pastor Tom gave her a half smile. “Please give her—”
He stopped speaking, probably because of the disgusted look Allison sent him. “Rue doesn’t care about well wishes or other people. You know that better than anyone.”
He cleared his throat. “Will she attend the memorial service?”
“No. And please don’t lecture me about inviting her.”
“I won’t.” He gave her a chagrin-tinged smile. “Everyone in town knows Rue Chastain Fenwick could start an argument with an empty room.”
“Truer words and all that.” Allison hiked her purse on her shoulder. “I’ll take care of it.”
“Good luck,” Pastor Tom said as he walked away.
Taking a deep breath, she opened the iron gate and hurried across the street toward the house with red shutters and a huge anchor on the outside wall. It was called the Pirate House because it’d served as an alehouse and brothel for eighteenth-century rogues and villains. People still thought it was the oldest building in the city not because of its hurricane-proof engineering but because it had once belonged to Mercy. It’d once been protected by a witch.
At this point, Allison would take her protection any way she could get it.