Shadow of a Life (29 page)

“
Okay. Knowing them as much
as I did, I would have to agree with you on that one. Other than
trying to track you down for the last fifty or sixty years, we
don’t really know what they’ve been up to. I would assume they’re
probably still conning people because that’s what they do best.
It’s probably a lot easier when they can vanish into thin air, too,
so I would assume they’re doing pretty well for
themselves.”

“
Is there something in the
past that involved either of you and their money?” I
asked.

“
Not that I can think of. I
was the low man on the
Mist
Seeker’s
crew. I didn’t get paid enough to
really make a difference to Jeremiah,” Nick answered.

“
And I didn’t get Jack Squat
from them, so I doubt they’re mad about that,” Sophia
added.

“
If either of you remember
anything, please tell the rest of us.”

They both nodded.

The five of us entered Dad’s den. I
doubt if that many people had ever been in the little room at one
time before. In fact, I don’t know if Camille had ever even been in
past the entrance in all the years I’d lived in the house.
Sometimes when she was over we would poke our heads in to talk to
my dad, but we didn’t usually make ourselves at home in
there.

Once our group was in the
den I headed straight for the double-doors of the closet behind his
big wooden desk. I think the room was originally intended to be an
additional bedroom, but there were no bathrooms on the lower floor
and we didn’t need any more rooms, so naturally it became Dad’s
den. I opened the closet, revealing Dad’s overflowing bookcases,
sagging from the weight they bore. They
were filled with books, which would usually excite me, but
Dad’s books were about business, management, ethics, and other
boring stuff. I never read any of
his
books.

“
Dad said the trunk was in
the back of the closet behind the bookshelves.” I stepped forward
and peered into the space. I turned my cell phone on and aimed its
light toward the right side of the closet. I saw nothing but bare
wall. I aimed it toward the left side and there, behind the
bookcase, I could just make out a large object half buried in
books. It had to be the trunk.

“
It’s here,” I
squealed.

“
Pull it out,” Nick
replied.

“
Yeah, right. We’re going to
have to take this whole bookcase out first,” I sighed.

“
Really?” Camille whined. “I
just painted my nails this morning.”

I rolled my eyes. “Unless you can
squeeze yourself back there and open it up, we have to move the
bookcase.”

It didn’t take very long for five
people to relieve the shelves of their books. We made sure to leave
the books stacked in order of where they went on the shelves. Dad
arranged his books alphabetically and I wanted them returned just
as he had left them. Once the shelves were clear, Peter and Nick
were able to slowly inch the bookcase forward until they could get
on either side of it to push and pull it out into the den. As soon
as they were clear of the doorway I slid past them and into the
back of the closet. Sure enough, a big black trunk was in the very
back corner. It was bigger than I’d expected. A person could stuff
a lot of things into something that size. I grabbed the books piled
on top of it and handed them back out through the doorway like an
assembly line until the lid of the chest was completely
clear.

“
That’s definitely their
trunk.” Sophia said as she stepped in behind me.

“
Really? You can tell that
even in the dark?” My heart was racing.

“
Yes. They brought it with
us every time we moved. It used to be in their bedroom when we
lived in the house where I met Nick, although I think Jeremiah
might have taken it with him after he restored the
Mist Seeker
.”

“
He did,” Nick said,
squeezing in behind Sophia. “I remember because I had to haul the
dang thing onto the ship.”

“
If you look in the lower
left corner, you’ll see the initials JG,” Sophia added.

I fell to my knees in front of the
trunk and again aimed the light from my cell phone toward it.
There, on the bottom left corner, was a little brass plate engraved
with the letters ‘J’ and ‘G’. I felt like the drumroll that had
been going on in my head ever since my dad mentioned the trunk that
morning had finally come to its climatic end and the cymbals were
crashing.

“
This is it,” I yelled and
jumped up. “We’ve got to get it out of here. We can open it in the
living room because there is no way five of us are going to fit in
this closet.”

I stepped back out so that Peter and
Nick could again work magic with their muscles. I was sure they
didn’t mind showing them off for us.

“
Does it feel heavy or do
you think it’s empty?” I asked, hovering closely behind them while
they ungracefully made their way out of the den and into the living
room.

“
It’s definitely heavy,”
Peter grunted.

“
Maybe for mere mortals like
yourself,” Nick teased.

The two guys carefully set the trunk
in the middle of the living room floor and us girls were on it in a
second.

“
It’s locked,” Camille said.
“Maybe that means it’s still never been opened.”

I rattled the padlock of the trunk. It
was old, but very thick and sturdy. There was no way we were
getting into that thing without some tools. I ran to the garage
with Peter and we rummaged through Dad’s things. He wasn’t the
world’s best handyman, but he owned the basics. We managed to find
a crowbar and a hammer and ran back inside. I let Nick and Peter
take over from there and they pounded and beat at the stupid thing
for what seemed like forever. Finally, after half an hour of failed
attempts, the lock broke off and we leapt toward the
trunk.

“
You open it, Sophia,” I
urged. “It belonged to your parents . . . sort of.”

“
As you discovered, they’re
more closely related to you than me,” she winked.

Sophia knelt in front of the trunk and
pulled the remaining piece of the padlock out of the latch. “Here
we go,” she said breathily as Camille took a step back. I think she
expected something to jump out at her.

Covering the contents of the trunk was
a gray woolen blanket. Sophia pulled it off and tossed it to the
ground. Like marionettes being controlled by some unseen hand, we
all leaned forward and peered in. One by one Sophia began to remove
things. There were a couple of well-worn changes of clothing for a
man and a woman first. Then, out came a pair of tarnished silver
candlesticks—closely followed by a silver serving tray.

“
I don’t remember these.
Elsa must have gotten them after I died,” Sophia remarked and set
them on the coffee table. It fascinated me how casually she talked
of death.

Next she pulled out a family bible
that looked as if it had never been opened. “We weren’t the best
churchgoers back then. I think that made some people mistrust
us.”

“
Really? Not the fact that
Jeremiah cheated everyone?” Nick pretended to be
shocked.

I turned the book over and flipped
through the pages of the bible, hoping something would fall out
just like the picture of Sophia had fallen from the photo album up
in the attic. No such luck.

There were a few names and dates
printed in the back cover, including the name of Jeremiah Goodwin
and his date of birth. Some sort of genealogy had been recorded
there. I knew with that information I would probably be able to
figure out exactly how I was related to Jeremiah and Elsa if I
wanted to. I set it on the coffee table next to the candlesticks
figuring I could always look at it later.

I turned back to Sophia and saw that
she had pulled out a packet of some sort. It was wrapped in cloth
and tied with string. She set it on the floor carefully, gently
untied it, and slowly pulled back the fabric. It was more
letters.

“
Do you want to read these
now or wait until we’ve emptied the trunk?” Sophia
asked.

“
Now
,” Camille yelled.

We all turned and stared at
her.

“
I’m sorry, but this is
intense. You’ve got to read them before I explode.”

Nick chuckled and took the packet from
Sophia. He gingerly flipped through the aged paper. The letters
were in even worse shape than the ones we’d pulled out of the attic
the day before.

“
These are really old,” he
said.

“
I know—we can tell,”
Camille responded anxiously.

“
No. I mean these are
really
old. I think
they’re in order of dates. Look at this one, it’s dated 1718.
Here’s one from 1712. And look at this one—1692,” he said as he
slipped the bottom letter from the stack.

“
Let me see,” I said as I
reached for the letter. “Wow. I don’t think I’ve ever held anything
this old.”

“
That’s more than a hundred
years before Jeremiah and Elsa were even born. Go ahead and read
it, Jamie, but I doubt it’s going to have anything to do with us,”
Sophia said.

I carefully unfolded the brittle paper
and began to read. I struggled as some of the ink was faded and the
script was a flowing, fancy kind that I wasn’t used to
interpreting.

Dearest
Catherine,

I am afrayd that Things
have taken a Turn for the worse. I now feare for my Life as many
before Me did as well. As much as it hurts Me, I do not wish you to
be invollved any more than you already have been in my Affayrs so I
will no longer have any Contact with you. I have hidden It all and
left Instrucshuns for you. Do with It what you will. Please know
that I am sorry for any Harm you may come upon because of your
Invollvement with Me.

Love, your dearest Friend,
H

“
H? Who is H? And who is
Catherine?” I asked.

“
I have no idea. I doubt it
really matters though, they lived way before my time.”

“
It matters a lot more than
you think.” I whirled around as the gruff voice spoke from behind
me. There was a loud scream that echoed again and again. I think it
was Camille, but I couldn’t know for sure because I was screaming
in my head and for all I knew the sound was actually coming from my
throat.

I watched in paralyzing fear as
Jeremiah and Elsa slowly appeared before us. Camille was huddled in
the corner with her head buried in her knees in the blink of an
eye. Peter grabbed my hand and pulled me with him, as far back as
we could get in the room. Jeremiah and Elsa blocked our exit.
Sophia was still kneeling in front of the trunk when Nick jumped in
front of everyone with his arms out, as if to protect us
all.

There was fire in Jeremiah’s eyes and
Elsa had a smug look of satisfaction on her face. Both were
brandishing pistols and I felt myself going weak in the knees.
Peter put his arm around me and held me tight.

“
What do you want from us?”
Sophia yelled. “You ruined my life. Why can’t you just stay
away?”

“
I want what’s rightfully
mine, you ungrateful little wench,” Elsa yelled back.

“
Ungrateful? Are you
serious? You murdered my parents.”

“
If it wasn’t for us you
would have died out in that ocean right along with them,” Elsa spat
back.

“
If it weren’t for
you
we would have happily
finished our journey to Italy and I would have been raised by my
real parents along with my brother. You raised me as your daughter,
why don’t you care about me now?” Sophia grew bolder and rose to
her feet. Nick stuck out his arm and held her behind him. For a
brief moment, Elsa looked hurt, as if she actually might care about
something.

“
And you, Nicholas Trenton,”
Jeremiah put in. “I trusted you, gave you a great job, and how did
you repay me? By secretly planning to steal our daughter away from
us. I guess you got what was coming to you, though, didn’t you?” He
nudged Elsa and laughed.

I felt like I stood in the presence of
pure evil. Camille still sobbed in the corner, her hands covering
her eyes. I don’t know if she ever even looked up. I had no idea
how we were going to get ourselves out of the situation. No one was
around to wonder where Peter was, Dad wouldn’t be home until the
next day, and Camille’s parents probably wouldn’t try to contact
her for at least a few more hours.

“
Do you realize how long
we’ve been trying to track you down?” Elsa continued.

Sophia didn’t say anything.

“
We heard rumors in the
ghost world that the poor little girl lost on the
Mary Celeste
had actually
survived and was living as a ghost. Oh, how
tragic
.” Elsa cupped her hands over
her heart in mock pain.

“
You’re one hard girl to
find, missy,” Jeremiah threw in.

Elsa ignored him as she continued
speaking. “We obviously can’t kill you again. We should have done
that the first time we had a chance. So . . . we’ll make a deal
with you.”