Chapter 1 Erik #3
Before he moved to Cape May and bought Trinkets, an antique and curio shop, Erik had used his expertise in art to travel the world helping museums and law enforcement find stolen masterpieces and stop smuggling rings. That had earned him powerful enemies, including Bratva, the Russian Mob.
Ben had been a Newark cop and private investigator before he came to Cape May to take over his aunt and uncle’s rental real estate company. He had been involved in several high-profile busts that involved the Newark Mafia, a group with a long memory.
Despite Erik and Ben trying to stay low-profile, old cold cases often attracted the notice of bad guys who wanted to elude authorities.
Erik’s abilities as a psychometric to read the history of objects by touch and Ben’s sleuthing talents had landed them in hot water a couple of times when scandals and murders meant the past refused to stay buried and forgotten.
“Even if Lila was a stowaway and her death wasn’t counted with the Mohawk sinking, if I can find out a last name, maybe we can figure out who she was and help her move on,” Erik said.
This time the wind nearly took their cups off the table, and the sky had grown darker.
“Guess it’s time for me to go back to work.” Monty stood. “Thanks for the visit. Best go straight home. This storm isn’t going to be anything to fool with.”
“Sometimes a ghost is just a ghost,” Ben said as they headed for Erik’s SUV.
“Yeah, but if Jon says Lila is an omen, then there’s more to the story aside from her death,” Erik countered. They barely made it into the Highlander before the rain started, pelting the windshield with fat drops.
“Admit it, you’re bored and looking for the next case.” Ben gave a fond grin as he reached over to rest his hand on Erik’s thigh as he drove.
“Busted,” Erik replied. “And maybe for once, this one won’t have any ties to organized crime.”
“When did we ever get that lucky? After all, this is Jersey,” Ben replied.
Erik had already called Susan and told her to go home before the storm broke. They were unlikely to get any customers in a raging thunderstorm, and at least she would get home without being soaked.
That also meant unlocking the door in the rain once they arrived.
Ben ran ahead with the key and an umbrella as soon as Erik parked.
Erik followed, holding the hood of his rain jacket tight against the wind.
Neither man stayed completely dry, but they weren’t wet to the skin, so Erik counted it as a win.
He turned on the lights and went to the kitchen to make a fresh pot of coffee, since they had both finished their takeout lattes.
Ben got his laptop and sat at the table. “I’m going to see what I can find about that shipwreck. It’s a long shot trying to find out more about Lila, but sometimes I get lucky.”
“I can help you get lucky,” Erik teased with a smirk.
“Hold that thought,” Ben replied. “I’m all for it.”
Moving in together was relatively recent, and the shift had gone smoother than either man dared hope.
Ben had been living in one of the rental units for Nolan Rental Real Estate, the company he took over for his aunt and uncle when they retired.
Erik had the apartment above Trinkets, which was big enough for both of them.
Erik loved the new arrangement, and Ben swore he was happy with it too.
“While you do that, I’m going to look at the inventory list,” Erik said. “The SS Mohawk sounds familiar.”
As soon as the coffee finished brewing and they both had fresh steaming cups, Erik went to his office and pulled up the files he needed.
Trinkets added to their supply of antiques and collectibles almost daily, between what people dropped by to sell and what Erik acquired online and at estate sales.
He started searching on the Mohawk and found several similarly-named ships that had all come to a bad end.
Monty had said that Lila’s unlucky craft had gone down in the 1920s, so that helped eliminate the false leads.
It also meant that divers and ocean currents had a century to strip away anything that survived the fire and the crash onto the bottom of the ocean.
Being a psychometric who could sense the energy and history of objects by touching them, Erik carefully curated the pieces he sold in the shop to do no harm. Those that radiated malevolence or bad magic, he secured and sent to a contact in Charleston equipped to cleanse or destroy them.
Even so, the nature of old things meant they had absorbed a lot of the emotions and memories of the people who had owned them and the history they had witnessed, often leaving a bittersweet resonance.
Some buyers seemed attuned to those vibes even if they couldn’t have explained what they sensed, while others were blissfully unaware.
Erik worked his way through the inventory, glad that the prior owner had been meticulous about record-keeping. That meant he could see what items had come through the store, both past and present.
“There it is.” Erik spotted the doomed ship’s name and pulled up the records.
“Find something?” Ben walked out of the kitchen cradling a cup in his hands. He came around to look over Erik’s shoulder at the screen.
“Yeah, I thought it sounded familiar.” Erik pointed to the items that had popped up. “Monty mentioned it.
“The Mohawk burned and sank, but small items washed ashore in the days and weeks afterward. An old man collected them and eventually sold the collection to Trinkets. Somehow a cup and saucer with the ship’s logo survived,” Erik marveled. “Along with a salt shaker and a handful of old buttons.”
“That’s a tie to the ship itself, but not to Lila,” Ben said. “And if the items are inside the store’s protections, it’s probably not what’s anchoring her ghost, especially since she’s haunting places outside the store.”
Erik nodded. “I agree. But it might be enough for Alessia to test our theory about magic being involved in the sinking. If she can figure out what happened, she might be able to neutralize what remains of the spell. Monty’s a strong medium, but he isn’t a witch.”
“Did you sell the pieces, or are they still in storage?” Ben leaned closer for a better look at the photos.
“Storage.” Erik jotted a note to himself on his phone. “They came in right before the store was sold, and I’m guessing it just wasn’t a priority to deal with them.” He looked up at Ben. “How about you?”
Ben grinned. “I think I’ve found our woman in white.”
Erik followed him back to the kitchen and pulled up a chair next to where Ben sat in front of his laptop.
“The Mohawk sailed from Boston to New York, then down to Charleston and Jacksonville with passengers and cargo, before turning around and doing the whole trip in reverse,” Ben told him.
“There was a bad storm the night the Mohawk sank, but what doomed it was a fire in the cargo hold. Other ships got the passengers to safety, but all the cargo was lost, and the ship burned to the waterline before it sank,” Ben said.
“What about Lila?” Erik leaned in for a better look at Ben’s screen.
“There’s no Lila on the passenger manifest,” Ben said. “If she was registered, that wasn’t her legal name. Since the official account says all the passengers were saved, I think she must have been a stowaway, like Jon said.”
“That’s going to make it tough to find out who she was,” Erik replied.
Ben nodded. “I know. I did a search on missing women named Lila in the ports where the Mohawk stopped in the year it sank. She could have come from other places, but I had to narrow down the search.”
“That was a hundred years ago. If she wasn’t famous, no one might have noticed that she went missing,” Erik said. “And the records are spotty.”
“True. But I think I got a break.” Ben brought up a new screen and pointed to what was posted.
“Delilah McIntosh, also known as Lila, daughter of a prosperous banker in New York, was reported missing right before the Mohawk incident. The article leaves it open to whether she ran away or was kidnapped, but there was a reward offered for information and for returning her safely to her family,” Ben said.
The grainy black-and-white photograph of a young woman in her twenties came up on the screen.
“Because her family was well-off, the story got picked up by other papers,” Ben said. “One of her friends was quoted as saying that she had met a man from Charleston and fallen in love with him against her family’s wishes, and that they planned to run away together when she disappeared.”
“You think she was going from New York to Charleston on the Mohawk and stowed away so her family couldn’t find and stop her?” Erik asked.
“Seems likely,” Ben replied.
Outside, the wind howled and rain came down in sheets, tapping against the store’s big front windows.
“I think the Mohawk items are in the storage area in the back room,” Erik said. “If not, we’ll have to wait out the storm before we go to the offsite unit.”
“Why don’t you call Alessia and see if she can check if there’s magic involved? If that doesn’t work, we can see if Haley would help dispel Lila’s spirit.”
“I’ve been thinking the same thing,” Erik replied. “I’ll call her, and then see if I can find the items from the Mohawk.”
“Not going anywhere else tonight,” Ben said. “I’ll start thinking about what we’ve got on hand to make dinner.”
Erik pulled up Alessia’s contact information on his phone and figured she would probably be home, given the bad weather.
Alessia Mason was a friend of theirs and a powerful witch.
She ran the local coven as well as the Spirit of the Sea gift shop, and her marriage into an old, prominent Cape May family provided a degree of social protection beyond what her magic afforded.
For as strong as her magic was, Alessia wasn’t a medium like Monty or Haley, since she could see and hear ghosts but not summon them. She could, however, use magic to help send them on.
“Erik, what’s up?” Alessa greeted him.