“No,” Jared said. “I know someone who can open the doors. I’ll call him and he can probably answer any quest
ions you both have. His official title is Dr. Caleb Huntley, director of the Nantucket Historical Society. Are you two going to be home today?”
When Jamie looked at Hallie, she nodded. “We’ll be here.” As he hung up, he picked up another of the square cookies, this one with a rose on it.
“It’ll be interesting to find out the history of the Tea Ladies, won’t it?” Hallie said.
Jamie was staring at the food on the tiered tray. “What’s your stepsister’s cell number?”
“I’ll look on my phone and give it to you.”
“You don’t know the number off the top of your head?”
“No, I don’t.”
“So you’re not one of those savants who can remember everybody’s numbers and addresses?”
“Of course not. What gave you that idea? Oh. Braden. It’s just that I’ve known him a very long time and his mother and I are close. She helped me after my grandparents moved out, when I was left alone with Ruby and Shelly. And he—”
“How old is this Braden?”
When she realized what he was getting at, she couldn’t help a little smile. “Thirty-two. Jealous?” She was teasing, just as he’d done this morning, but there was no laughter on Jamie’s face.
“Of an old lawyer? Not at all.” He got up from the table. “I have some emails to answer.” He left the room.
In spite of his denial, his attitude made her smile.
Jared called Caleb Huntley, his wife’s stepfather—though past that, the two of them had a very long history together. He didn’t bother with preliminaries. “You have to go to the Hartley-Bell house today and tell Jamie and Hallie about the ghosts. And be gentle. They don’t understand Nantucket.”
“Ah,” Caleb said, his voice soft. “Those beautiful young ladies. I’d like to see them again.”
“Forget that. I don’t want you talking to ghosts and scaring a couple of off-islanders to death. Go as Dr. Huntley, the director of the NHS, and tell them the facts.”
Caleb chuckled. “You mean tell them how every male on the island under the age of seventy used to climb the walls to get to those women? Actually, old Arnie was seventy-two, so make that every man under eighty.”
“I don’t have time to reminisce with you about the good ol’ days. Just please go over to the house and tell them some nice, quiet story that will keep them from jumping on the next ferry and leaving the island. I especially want Hallie to stay calm. She can’t leave until I get this business about her stepsister straightened out.”
“I’ll take care of it,” Caleb said. “You handle your buildings and leave the ghosts to me.” As soon as Caleb hung up, he buzzed for his assistant. When she entered he said, “If I draw a map of the attic of Kingsley House, could you go there and get something for me?”
Like all historians, her eyes lit up at the prospect. Kingsley House had been owned by the same family since it was built in the early 1800s. It was rumored that the attic was full of treasures that should be in museums: journals, clothes, historic artifacts, things historians could only dream about. “Yes,” she managed to say.
Caleb quickly drew a map of the arrangement of the attic. Third row from the door, all the way to the back, under four crates full of China imports, inside an old trunk, on the bottom left side, was a little cinnabar box that contained a key. He wanted that key.
Chapter Six
When Caleb got to the Hartley-Bell house, he knew he should go to the front door and knock, but he didn’t. Instead, he went around to the back gate. It wasn’t the big double gate by the B&B but the small one hidden behind shrubs and the old chicken coop. It took some muscle to open the gate, but in the last year Caleb had spent a lot of time in a gym. At first he’d protested what was, to his eye, an artificial form of exercise. He believed men got muscles from climbing rigging and hauling anchors. Jared had scoffed at that idea and hired him a personal trainer. Caleb hated to say it, but it had worked.
The first thing he saw was that the chicken coop had been remade into a home gym. The yard where the chickens had scratched and fluttered in their mud baths had a pretty grape arbor over it and two chairs beneath it.
He sat down in one and looked out over the long view of the garden. It was awful! It had once been lush to the point where it looked like the Garden of Eden. Now it was nearly bare, the flower beds still outlined but empty.
The big pergola was gone. The girls had served tea under it, and he remembered pink and white rose petals dropping onto the tablecloth. He’d always thought the petals matched the perfect skin of those beautiful girls.
As he envisioned those soft summer days, the food, the laughter, and most of all, the perfection of the girls, he could feel tears coming to his eyes. So many years had passed, but today it all seemed fresh.
He heard a door close, then a woman’s laughter, and he knew he should leave. If he went back out the gate and around to knock on the front door, they’d never know he’d been there.
He was about to get up, but when he saw them, he sat back down. He was always curious about people. They were a young, handsome couple and Hallie looked like Leland. How many generations separated her from her ancestor? he wondered. But no matter the time, the resemblance was still there.