P.J. Alderman - Ghost Ship

Hattie gave Frank a cool look. “Michael has no use for the money, nor would he steal it from me. You are mistaken in that regard.” She turned back to Jordan. “We want you to have it. You can put it to good use, making Longren House into a comfortable home for yourself.”

“I think it should be used for the wedding,” Charlotte insisted stubbornly. “It’s extremely important to ensure that the ceremony and reception are lavish, as befits Hattie’s station in society prior to her death. We simply must not scrimp on the preparations.”

“I really don’t feel comfortable accepting a forty-thousand-dollar gift,” Jordan repeated. “From anyone.”

“Nonsense,” Hattie said. “You should feel perfectly comfortable accepting the money.”

“Do you have any idea what’s going on?” Tom asked Jase. Both men had been watching Jordan intently.

“I’m getting the gist. I think.”

“We’re discussing who gets the money,” Jordan explained to them. “Frankly, until we have that issue decided, I don’t want to open the safe. Once the money is real to us, making any kind of ethical decision regarding it becomes much harder.”

“Precisely my point,” Frank stated. “When faced with the reality of that amount of cash, Seavey simply would not be able to help himself.”

“You don’t know Michael at all!” Charlotte cried. “He’s a wonderful man!”

“Now, Charlotte …” Hattie began.

“Pragmatically speaking,” Jase pointed out, talking over Hattie because he couldn’t hear her, “your discussion is moot if the money isn’t there.”

“He doesn’t know what he’s talking about,” Hattie scoffed. “The money exists. I removed only a small portion the night I paid the ransom to Seavey for the return of Charlotte. The rest has remained untouched all these years.”

“Please, Jordan!” Charlotte cried. “Open the safe.”

“I beg you to reconsider,” Frank importuned, earning a wrathful glance from Hattie. “If Seavey finds out about that money, no one will be secure in this house.”

“Oh, for …” Jordan threw up her hands. “If the money is in there, it’s yours to do with as you wish. Agreed?”

“And I will wish that you use it for the renovation,” Hattie replied, refusing to budge.

Using the combination Hattie had recited, Jordan spun the dial. With an audible click , the safe door swung open in her hand. Everyone crowded around, peering inside.

Hattie gasped.

The safe was empty.

“I don’t understand.” Hattie paced the library, wringing her hands. “I was so certain it would still be there. Whatever could have happened to it?”

Now that the excitement was over, Jase had left to deal with suppliers at the pub, and Tom had returned to the framing, accompanied by Malachi, who seemed to want no part of any further discussion with the ghosts.

“Was the safe combination written down anywhere?” Jordan asked. “Could someone have had access to it and found the money before you came back as a ghost?”

“No. Before I had Sara hire the carpenter, I asked her to open the safe and verify that the money was in there.”

“When was that?”

“Well, let’s see.” Hattie turned to Charlotte. “You died in 1895, correct?”

Charlotte bit her lip and nodded.

“So that would make it the winter of 1896 that I contacted Sara with my plan.” Hattie gave Charlotte a look filled with sadness. “You see, I had planned to make the money available for you. But by the time I was able to return, you were already lost to us all.”

Charlotte hugged her. “It’s all right. Mona took good care of me for as long as she could. I was young and reckless and … We all knew back then that prostitutes had short life spans. It was only a matter of time.”

“So the money was in the safe after Charlotte’s death,” Jordan repeated, bringing them back to the subject at hand. “Was the house vacant in the winter of 1896?”

“Yes,” Hattie replied. “It wasn’t sold at auction until a year after that.”

“Who knew of the money besides you?”

“No one except Frank, and he only knew of the recorded income; he never saw the actual cash,” Hattie said. She looked in Frank’s direction. “Frank knew that my late husband, Charles, had been engaging in illegal smuggling on his ships. We reviewed a list of payments Charles had recorded in a small ledger. But I never told Frank about the cash. And regardless, he was dead by then.”

“So Sara knew, and Frank, but he was gone,” Jordan concluded.

“I trust that Sara would not have taken it.” Hattie paced a bit, obviously lost in thought. She halted. “Mona Starr knew that I had access to enough cash to pay for Frank’s medical bills and for the ransom for Charlotte. She could have deduced from that, possibly, that there might be money hidden somewhere in Longren House.”

“Mona would never have stolen the money!” Charlotte protested. “Why, she had no need—she was very rich.”

“That’s true,” Hattie admitted. “I would have to agree with Charlotte. Mona had no reason to come looking for the money, and I would be stunned to discover that she engaged in that kind of theft. If so, I greatly misread her character.”

“The truth is that anyone could have taken the money at any time over the intervening years,” Jordan said glumly. “I doubt we’ll ever know.”

“But we kept an eye on all the owners,” Charlotte insisted.

“Every minute of every day, for over a hundred years?” Jordan asked. “That’s impossible. Anyone could have hired a locksmith, or a safecracker, for that matter, to open it. Who knows? Perhaps they even sensed, on some instinctive level, that they had to hide their activities from whoever was haunting their home. There’s nothing we can do about it—the money’s gone.”

Hattie nodded dejectedly. “Nevertheless, I had hoped that I had the solution to your financial troubles.”

“I’ll figure something out,” Jordan assured her. She paused, then carefully asked, “Charlotte, did you know of Seavey’s murder? And of Jesse’s death on board the Henrietta Dale ?”

Charlotte gave Hattie a nervous glance.

“Whatever you have to say,” Hattie assured her, “I won’t judge you harshly.”

Charlotte shook her head. “It’s more that I worry you’ll judge Michael harshly, and he doesn’t deserve it, truly he doesn’t. He saved me, you know. And Jesse— dear Jesse—was the one who managed to get me to Seavey’s hotel suite and convince Seavey we needed his protection. After Jesse died in the shipwreck, well …” She paused to swipe at a tear. “It was just so hard to continue on, don’t you see? Michael was gone, and Jesse, and so were you, Hattie. It seemed like all around me, people were dying.”

So Garrett had acted as Seavey had feared, Jordan thought. “Why don’t you tell us about it?” she said gently.

Charlotte trembled, eyes brimming, and shook her head. “I just can’t ! If you want to know what really happened back then, you need to read Eleanor Canby’s memoir. The wretched woman was responsible for so much of what went wrong, you see! And of course she wrote about all of it in that disgusting memoir of hers. She thought she was so virtuous, and yet she destroyed the people who came into contact with her. She ruined you, Hattie!”

Hattie put her arm around Charlotte. “I think that’s enough for today,” she told Jordan softly, then turned to Charlotte. “Jordan will read Eleanor’s memoir, and she can ask Michael to fill in the blanks of what she doesn’t know. What’s important is that we find out who murdered Michael, but I doubt we need your help to do that.”