Chapter 12
They went back downstairs, where somehow in the crush of people, she lost Sailor again and wound up in a smaller room off the hall.
It was paneled and lined with books. Not just books, but also a bunch of glass display cases.
The cases held strange artifacts. What looked like scraps of metal and wood and frayed fabric, all on caramel-colored velvet, all glowing under dramatic, pinpoint lights.
She walked along the cases, studying the objects until she came to the large desk that sat at the far end of the room.
The desk was stacked with files and newspapers and yellow legal pads.
A glass beaker filled with black powder hung suspended from a small wooden stand.
An uncapped pen, red with gold trim, sat on one pad.
Ingrid picked it up, felt its slim heft in her palm, then slid the cap on. It clicked softly, satisfyingly.
Without letting herself think about it, she slid the pen into the neckline of her dress, hooking the gold clip over the strap of her bra.
She moved quickly back to the glowing cases.
A metal box, about the size of a matchbox, made of what looked like rusty tin, was scratched on the top.
Someone’s initials. Beside it lay a short knife, with an ivory and brass hilt and short, sharp, corroded-looking blade.
“They’re pirate artifacts.”
Ingrid turned to see Rill Loeffler, holding a crystal tumbler of whisky and watching her from the open doorway.
She blushed furiously, feeling the pen against her breast, but he didn’t seem to have caught her petty larceny.
He pulled the pocket doors closed behind him with practiced ease and moved beside her. He pointed at the knife in the case.
“That’s an eighteenth-century Khanjali dagger, reportedly used by Blackbeard when his cutlass wasn’t adequate for the situation at hand.
God only knows where he got it in the first place.
That right there”—he pointed again—“is a remnant of a shirt from one of the pirates who escaped from his ship during the blockade of Charleston.”
If words could swagger, Rill’s would be strutting down Bull Street.
“I’ve been collecting them since I was a boy.” He was now moving to the massive, mahogany desk on the other side of the room, where he set his glass down and leaned against the edge. “Every little boy wants to be a pirate, don’t they?”
He sent her a smile so warm and so incredibly charming, she felt literal shivers run up her spine.
“Everyone in this family disapproves of me.” He gazed out the window facing south toward Gaston Street and Forsyth Park.
“You don’t disapprove of me, do you, Ingrid?
Because I own this big house? Because I run a huge company that makes lots of money?
Because I buy unreasonably expensive pirate artifacts and lock them away in cases? ”
Another smile, this one small and intimate. She felt caught by his gaze. By his attention. But also confused. Not that Rill Loeffler would be the kind of man to manipulate with his charm, but that he would consider her a worthwhile target.
“No,” she finally said. “But maybe you should open it up to the public. The tourists would love to see all this stuff. They get so much fakery out there on the tours.” She thought of Boney with his little velvet bag.
He sniffed. Tossed back the last of the whisky in his tumbler. “The tourists. They’re such … an infection. This city was rundown back when your grandmother was doing business, I’ll give you that, but it was authentic. Real. Edie would say the same, I bet.”
“More tourists mean more money … for people like me, anyway. But also for people like you. They buy Savannah Sauce as souvenirs, don’t they?”
“Good point.” He eyed her. “So, are you making a lot of money from all these tourists, Ingrid?”
She felt her face flame. “I’m making enough.” A lie. One that he could obviously see, she was sure.
He cocked his head, studied her. “You’re a funny girl, aren’t you? Speak your mind, right out. I like that. Would you like some cognac?”
She nodded mutely, and from a crystal decanter he filled his glass and another for her. It was so much like a scene out of a movie that she felt the urge to laugh. She gestured to the test tube on his desk instead. “Is that some kind gunpowder from a pirate gun?”
He was the one to laugh. “That is ash from Mauna Loa, an active volcano Scoot and I visited on our honeymoon in Hawaii. Her souvenir from a gift shop. She was furious they wouldn’t let us into the actual volcano to collect our own.”
Ingrid wasn’t surprised. People like Scoot didn’t like to be told they couldn’t go somewhere. “It’s pretty cool,” she said, because she couldn’t think of anything else to say and she could tell Rill expected praise for all his special artifacts.
He didn’t acknowledge her comment. “I was in love with your grandmother, with Edie. Did she ever tell you that?”
Ingrid felt her heart flip. She looked into Rill’s eyes and shook her head.
“I wouldn’t guess she would have. Too icky. Old people and romance.” He made a face.
Ingrid smiled. He smiled back. Then indicated that she should sit as he sat in the chair opposite. She did.
“This would’ve been, oh, the early nineties.
I was twenty-five, just out of business school, working for my father’s company.
Being trained for the big desk one day, whenever that old son of a bitch, my dad, decided to die.
I was so in over my head, it was actually funny.
Had no clue what I was doing. Edie had her set-up over there on Taylor Square—Calhoun Square back then. Where you are now—”
She swallowed. He knew where she lived. Where her business was.
“I went in one day, hoping for … I don’t know what. To find out something real, maybe? If I really belonged in the business. Who I really was. She read my palm, my aura, whatever.” He suddenly looked tired.
“What did she say?”
His bright blue eyes fixed on hers. His voice was low.
“She told me I had what it took. That I was worthy of the mantle my father would give me.” He seemed faraway now.
“It was such a crazy thing. She was the first person who ever believed in me. It was … a revelation. It was … love, if you want to know the truth.”
Ingrid frowned.
“You’re doing the math.” He waved off her reaction.
“She was a forty-two-year-old woman with a daughter. Too old for me, obviously, but I didn’t care.
To me, she had this secret … a skill to living a life that was free.
A life that truly belonged to her. It was a skill I wanted.
” He shook his head as if to clear it. “So we became friends instead of lovers. I asked her to do readings for my friends and family. She was over at the house at least once a week back then, doing readings for my parents, aunts, and uncles, channeling some dead grandmother or auntie, whatever they wanted. She used to dress up like a gypsy back then. Do the whole show with the low-cut peasant blouse. Silk scarf over her hair. Gold earrings. She was gorgeous. Breathtaking, really.”
His voice had gone low, gruff and warm. Emotional.
Figs and cognac …
Had Edie read him as quickly as Ingrid had? Had she been tempted, the way Ingrid felt herself now? Not tempted to do anything necessarily, other than enjoy the sunlight of his attention. It was such a warm place to be.
“Her husband had died,” Rill said. “Just her and Tess, you know.”
Ingrid winced. Pictured her mother in the boyfriend’s Dodge Charger, pushing her out the back seat. I’ll call when we get back to Florida … Tess had never called. Not even once.
“Tess was pretty, too, like Edie, but she was a wild one. A handful.” Rill was watching her closely. Too closely.
But Ingrid avoided his gaze. She had nothing to say, not about Tess. It was bizarre to think Rill knew more about her own mother than she did. Hurtful. Just another blow from a mother she’d never known. A mother she would never know.
He leaned forward now, his fingers laced.
“Well, all that to say … we’re so glad you’re back.
Glad Sailor found you. She’s looking at a lot of life changes, my daughter.
At some point, she’s going to have to grow up and face some hard truths about her place in this family.
Truths she doesn’t want to hear from me. ”
“What do you mean?” She felt a bit guilty asking. Like she was betraying Sailor somehow.
“When she was young, Scoot and I were having problems. In our marriage. It affected Sailor. She got sick a lot. Missed school. Always wanted to go with me to the office. She told me she wanted to be CEO of Savannah Sauce.” His expression was pained.
“I think she was trying to fix it, you know? Fix our marriage. Our family. Me, too, no doubt.”
Something tickled the back of Ingrid’s memory.
“How old was she?”
He shrugged. “I don’t know. Around seven or eight?”
That break in Sailor’s lifeline. It wasn’t a death. Back when Sailor was young, her family had been broken.
He shook his head. “She’s a great little worker, my daughter, and more than competent heading up her region in the marketing department at Savannah Sauce.
But she’s not built to be a CEO. And even if she was, it wouldn’t work.
People around here want a man at the head of the company they’re dealing with.
It has to be Cas. My son. But what can you do? She doesn’t want to hear that from me.”
Ingrid’s mind raced. Her family had been connected with the Loefflers from long ago and still was.
Rill had loved her grandmother. And today Ingrid had helped Sailor.
And Sailor needed even more help, that was obvious, now that Ingrid had met her parents.
This was a family in trouble. There was so much unspoken. So many wounds unhealed …
Maybe this was what Edie had been trying to tell Ingrid on her deathbed. She had never really understood what her grandmother meant, but right now, standing in this house, in Edie’s dress, in Rill Loeffler’s opulent study, she wondered if she’d been led here in some way.
To help Sailor. To help this family. To close a part of a broken circle.
To right the balance.
“Maybe if Sailor heard it from someone she trusted …” Rill was saying, his eyes roving her face, like they were negotiating a deal. “We all know how you ladies are. It’s only meant to be if your horoscope says so.”
Ingrid didn’t know what to say.
“Daddy, there you are.”
Sailor stood in the open doorway. Ingrid flushed, feeling like she’d done something wrong. She hadn’t even heard the pocket doors.
“Ingrid, I had no idea he’d trapped you in his awful museum …”
Sailor entered the room. She and her father seemed to dance together, kiss the air lightly, then separate again. Ingrid got the impression of two boxers before a match, rather than a father and daughter.
“I’m so sorry I lost you,” Sailor addressed Ingrid. “You better come with me before he drags you into his Blackbeard stories and you vow to never come back here.”
She pulled Ingrid up out of the chair, and as they headed out of the study, Ingrid turned back to see Rill, his profile, all noble angles and smooth skin, surveying his collection of pirate paraphernalia.
Just before they slipped from the room, he looked over his shoulder at her and put one finger to his lips. She swallowed and turned away.
Ingrid asked for the bathroom, and on her way there, she happened to see Scoot Loeffler, in one of the drawing rooms, setting her empty glass on a mantel and taking another from a passing tray.
After she’d finished in the bathroom, Ingrid circled back into the empty room, fished the orange peel out of Scoot’s empty glass, and went to find Sailor so she could thank her for the evening.
She felt full and tired and a little bit drunk. She wanted to go home.