Chapter 4
I must have screamed, but I was so preoccupied with getting out of the room as quickly as possible that I couldn’t say for sure.
Only the pain from my forehead—I hit the doorframe on my way out—was proof of my panicked state.
I’d made it to the kitchen before I collided with a large, solid human body—a body with two strong arms that immediately wrapped around me.
I buried my face in the broad chest, a familiar male scent breaking through my fear with a mixture of comfort and rightness. “Beau?” I muttered into his chest, unable to open my eyes.
“It’s me,” he said, instinctively patting my back and not asking for an explanation. This was the way it was between us; there was an unspoken understanding that was as comforting as it was confounding.
“Is everything okay? I thought I heard a scream.”
Beau’s arms dropped to his sides as I pulled away, not completely sure why I felt guilty. We both turned to see Cooper standing in the doorway between the dining room and the kitchen.
“Yes,” I said. “There was…” I jerked my head in the direction of the back bedroom, not yet able to form coherent thoughts.
Beau took my hand in a solid grasp and began leading me toward the rear of the house, my forehead pounding where I’d smacked it. We stopped inside the second bedroom, taking in the open armoire and my purse, which I didn’t remember dropping.
Cooper walked past us, then stopped in the middle of the room. “What’s this?” He picked up the object of my terror and held it up.
I stayed back as Beau joined Cooper. “Looks like an antique doll,” Beau said.
“My grandmother has an impressive collection at the store.” He took it from Cooper’s hand and flipped the doll over before lifting the strawlike hair from the nape.
“I can tell from the markings that it’s a Madame Alexander doll, and definitely post-1940, since the dolls weren’t marked before then, just their clothes. ”
“So you still play with dolls?” Cooper asked.
“Funny. Nola didn’t tell me you were a comedian.”
Cooper slid his gaze to me. “Nice to know she talks about me. The list of all my good points must have been too long.”
Beau took his time smoothing down the doll’s dress before turning it around to face us. “Actually, I can’t say that she’s ever mentioned your name once in the years I’ve known her.”
I snatched the doll from Beau so he and Cooper would stop puffing up their feathers, or showing their rumps, or whatever was the human male equivalent to an animal dominance dance. “Is it worth anything?”
Beau shrugged. “Could be. You should ask Mimi, who’s the real expert. I only know what Mimi’s told me when she’s sent me to auctions to bid on them. This one looks to be in pretty good condition, though, which will always put it in a pricier bracket. Where did it come from?”
I pointed at the armoire, the mirrored cabinet yawning open. “It was in there, behind the locked door—except there wasn’t a key inside it.”
“Where’d you find the key?” Cooper asked.
I opened and closed my mouth several times, trying to find the best way to answer the question. “I heard small feet running on the wooden floors, and when I went to investigate I stepped on the key.”
“It must have fallen from the top of the doorframe ledge,” Beau said. “It’s a common place for hiding a key.”
“Right,” I said. “And denial isn’t just a river in Egypt. Look, Cooper isn’t a stranger to things that go bump in the night. He knows Melanie—remember? And if he’s seriously considering buying this house, we need full disclosure of any…problems the house might have.”
Our attention was drawn to a steady drip, drip from a corner of the room where a growing puddle had begun to spread on the uneven floor, accentuating the warping of the wood.
Puckered plaster surrounded by yellowed and peeling paint ringed a hole in the ceiling through which rain entered the house unfettered.
“Exactly.” Beau walked over to the corner and peered up at the ceiling. “Obviously a new roof and fixing the floors will be part of the renovation—which, incidentally, we haven’t yet started—so if you’re squeamish about old houses that need a lot of work, this isn’t the house for you.”
“Nola? Are you there? Do I need to call nine-one-one?” Jolene’s voice came from my phone where I’d dropped it outside the doorway.
I rushed to pick it up and turned on the speaker.
“Sorry—I, uh, left my phone in another room. Beau and Cooper are here, so I’ve got to go.
We can finish our conversation later, okay? ”
“Sure. But did you hear the last thing I said?”
My mind tried to rewind to the moments before the doll fell at my feet. I gingerly touched the sore spot on my forehead, where a lump had begun to form. “About the Mustang?”
“No. About the story on the news this morning. It’s been a real gully washer for the last week, so it’s not totally unexpected, but a construction worker at the old Charity Hospital site found a human bone stuck in mud near the back entrance.
He thought it might be from a nearby cemetery, since every once in a while some of the residents float out of their resting places during heavy rains, but the cemetery director said it didn’t come from him, so—”
“Jolene,” I interrupted, “is there anything important I need to know right away, or can this wait?”
“Sorry. It can wait. I just thought you’d find it interesting.”
“Later, all right?”
“Fine. Last thing—if you need to borrow my rain boots, they’re in the back of my closet, on the left side.”
I looked down at my feet, warmly ensconced in Jolene’s yellow boots. “Okay. Thank you. I think I will.”
“Say hey to Cooper and Beau for me, all right?”
“I will. I’ve got to go n—”
“And if you don’t think it will be too awkward with the two of them fighting over you, there’s a great little place for lunch right down the street from where you are right now—Café Degas.
It’s Wednesday, which means they’re open, so you’re in luck.
Did you know that Degas lived with an uncle and his family for a few months in a house on Esplanade? He—”
“See you tonight, Jolene.” I ended the call, then turned back to where the two men stood in front of the armoire, pretending they hadn’t heard Jolene talking about them.
Cooper was holding the perfume bottle I’d apparently dropped before fleeing; he had pulled off the stopper so he could wave its scent in the air between him and Beau. “I definitely recognize this perfume. I remember buying it for my grandmother every Christmas when Gwynn’s had the gift sets.”
“Yeah. And the lady of this house liked it a lot, too.” I walked past Cooper with the doll, then shoved it back onto its little shelf and closed the door. “Why don’t you put the bottle back inside as a special gift for whoever buys the armoire?”
Beau strode over to the armoire and removed the doll. “It’s just a doll, Nola. No need to be creeped out about it. I need to bring this to Mimi so she can decide what she wants to do with it.”
“I didn’t say I was creeped out.”
His eyes softened. “You didn’t need to.”
I felt Cooper shift on his feet as a small electric jolt shot through me.
Glancing back to the leaking ceiling, I said, “Yeah, well, maybe we should be a little creeped out. This room could have been the murdered woman’s, and this doll was locked inside the armoire without a key to open it. Sounds creepy to me.”
Cooper faced Beau. “Why don’t you go take your doll to your grandmother while Nola shows me the rest of the house and tells me the renovation plans? It was nice seeing you again.”
“Actually, I stopped by to talk with Nola. We need to go over our reno specs, and Jolene mentioned that Nola wouldn’t be doing fieldwork today because of the weather, so I figured this would be a good time. I thought maybe we could grab lunch and talk while we ate.”
“That’s a great idea,” Cooper said. “Since I’m extremely interested in buying the house, I’m thinking I need to be part of the discussion.”
Before I could say that I thought the three of us having lunch together was a terrible idea, a loud crack of thunder sounded above us, followed by a fresh burst of rain.
The lights flickered, and my phone buzzed in my hand.
I flipped it over to see the music app loading, and then the sound of Adele’s “Rolling in the Deep” blasted from the speaker.
I attempted to shut off the music, and when that didn’t work I turned the volume down to the lowest setting, which also had no effect. Desperate, I powered off the phone, Adele’s singing coming to an abrupt stop.
My eyes met Beau’s. “That was Adele. It’s happened before. With the same Adele song. But I don’t have any of her tunes in my music library.”
“Hey, look at this.” Beau and I turned to where Cooper was crouching in the middle of the room beside a set of wet footprints—too big to be a child’s and too small for a man’s—distinct from the growing puddle in the corner.
He stood, pointing at the fading trail they made to the doorway, where they disappeared just past the threshold.
—
We sat at an interior table at Café Degas.
The simple décor—including a tree emerging from the middle of the floor, and a French tricolor window hanging over the exposed kitchen area—came as a surprise, considering all the accolades the restaurant had garnered since it was opened in 1986.
But, as my dad would always say when we went out to eat in Charleston, we weren’t eating the furniture.
Cooper, Beau, and I ordered drinks immediately—a Fauxjito for me—even though it was the middle of the day. Despite our self-proclaimed immunity to paranormal phenomena, we were all a little off-kilter following the morning’s events.