At the Corner of King Street (13 page)

On the third ring, I heard the shatter of glass hitting a floor, muffled curses, and then, “Margaret McCrae.”

Clearing my throat, I leaned forward on my bed. “Margaret, this is Addie Morgan. My Aunt Grace owns the architectural salvage company on King Street.”

“Yeah. Sorry about the crash and the curses. Just knocked my coffee cup over.” She cleared her throat. “It's been a long time, Addie. Like twenty years. How's Grace doing? I haven't seen her in a year.”

“Great.” The lies tripped easier and easier. “I'm in town for a few days, and she's gotten a lead on a salvage job. She said you helped her with the last job, and I was wondering what you're doing these days?”

“Still chasing any historical gig I can find. Landed a job in St. Mary's County, Maryland, last year but that ran its course. Working part time at the Archaeology Center, and if the Universe really hates me, I help at the bakery.”

“I don't think I've been in the bakery in over seven years.”

“A lot has changed. Daisy is running the joint along with Rachel. My parents finally retired. Hard to keep them in town much. Have Winnebago, will travel. They're always on the go.”

Hard to forget Mr. and Mrs. McCrae from that summer. I visited the bakery more to see them than to play with Daisy and Rachel. They were solid, hardworking people and they seemed to really love and care for each other. That kind of respect and affection between a husband and wife was foreign to me, and I savored it as much as Grace's routines. “Good for them.”

“You know Rachel's husband died.”

“Grace told me. I'm sorry.”

“Yeah. But she and the girls are good. She was dating a French baker, but is single again. And old Daisy got herself hitched last year and made a baby. Never, ever thought I'd see that day.”

Her candor teased a laugh. “She's a tough customer.”

“I think Mom still has the book that you two ripped in half. She pulls it out every so often and tells the story. If Mom is telling the story right, you give as good as you get.”

“No doubt.”

“So what are you doing these days?”

“Work on a vineyard in the Shenandoah River Valley. Started off as a picker and I now manage the place.”

“And Janet? She was always a firecracker.”

“Around.”

“Ah, more to that story, I sense.”

I glanced at Carrie. “You'd be right.”

“So, you said you have a job?”

“It's an old stone hearth. I don't have a lot of info on it, but I've been told it dates back to the early eighteenth century. Located on what was the McDonald Plantation. The owner wants the hearth removed so she can build a garage or expand her driveway.”

Margaret sighed. “How much history has been lost because someone needed more parking?”

“This job will give you a chance to dig into a bit of local history. The McDonald place was a tobacco plantation.”

“We're the city tobacco built.” Interest warmed Margaret's whiskey voice, and I sensed it wouldn't take much to hook her.

“I dismantled a few hearths in my time, and I always found something unexpected hidden in the rocks.”

She chuckled. “You know how to sweet talk a girl, don't you?”

I smiled for the first time in days. “I'm giving it my all. If you say no, I have to hustle and find someone else.”

“I'm not saying no. This sounds good. So what do you need from me?”

“I've got the truck, but I need day laborers, and if you've got the time, I'll pay you to be on-site. The more I know about the site's history, the higher the price the stones will fetch.”

“What time tomorrow?”

“It's going to be early. I've until noon to clear the site.”

“You telling me a developer is going to destroy the site right after they take a lunch break?”

“Zeb Talbot is trying to work with us. He's been asking Grace for a couple of months to clear the site, but she kept turning him down.”

“Is she really doing okay?”

“She's old, Margaret. She wants to do this, but even though she won't admit it, the job's too much.” That wasn't true, but Grace was family, and I lied for family.

“Might be fun, and if we go super early I can push back my work at the bakery. They're very used to my tardy, delinquent ways.”

A small weight lifted from my shoulders. “That would be great, Margaret. Do you have any muscle men?”

She chuckled softly. “I can always round up muscle. Now tell me again where the property is. You've peaked my interest, and I'm feeling the need to do a bit of pre-dig research.”

I checked my texts and found one from Zeb. I read off the address. “Can you go as early as six or seven?”

“Split the difference. How about six-thirty?”

“Great.”

Captain Smyth arrived home today on the
Constance
safely.
So excited was his wife to see the white sails on the horizon that she bade me to run with her to the bluffs. We watched as sailors, anxious to be ashore, unloaded their cargo of dark-skinned creatures onto barges as they also tossed rocks used for ballast overboard.

When the captain reached shore he hurried to his goodwife and gave her a fierce hug. My nose wrinkled over the wretched odor that clung to him. He smelled of human waste and despair. When he saw me raise my handkerchief to my nose, he grinned and replied the stench of money was not always sweet.

When I arrived home, Penny was silent and hovered in the corner. Dr. Goodwin arrived home for lunch, grinning. The cargo, he said, would fetch handsomely on his investment. Penny turned to the fire and prepared him a hot cup of broth, and when she turned again and handed the mug to him, she was her old smiling self.

C
arrie woke at midnight and then again at three in the morning. Though her cries startled me awake each time, my heart didn't race as fast or as hard as last night. My body was trying to adjust to this new, temporary routine.

On the vineyard, there were plenty of times we rose as early as four. Harvest season was a three-week stretch of days that began long before the sun rose and ended hours after sunset. The grapes were planted and designed to ripen in one section of the vineyard after the other, and it was important to be ready for the grapes because, if left too long in the sun, they withered, and if left too long in damp soil, they rotted. Grapes required a delicate balance that the grower carefully maintained.

The alarm on my nightstand went off at five-thirty
A.M.
and I quickly silenced it. I needed to be downstairs, ready to go with Grace and Carrie at six-thirty.

Carrie slept in her dresser drawer bed, her little lips slightly parted
as her chest rose and fell steadily. “As tempted as I am to wake your little ass up, I won't. I'm the bigger person in this relationship.” I also reveled at the idea of taking a quick shower, dressing, and guzzling coffee before the kid awoke.

I found Grace in the kitchen setting up a pot of coffee. “I've made sandwiches,” she said. “And I've packed the last pre-mixed bottles.”

“That's great.” I didn't expect the gesture.

“Get your shower. I'll scramble a few eggs.”

Whoever whisked the real Grace away and brought this Replacement Grace was my new best friend. “Will do. Thanks.”

I hustled into the shower and turned on the hot water. Aching and tired muscles all but groaned their pleasure as I stepped under the hot spray and soaked up the warmth for a minute or two before I was out of the shower. I was half dressed when Carrie started to wail. Pulling a quick comb through my hair, I hauled on a T-shirt and moved toward the kid. I found Grace standing over the child, frozen.

“You can pick her up,” I said.

“No. You're better with her than me.”

“She's pretty tough.” I leaned over, my damp hair falling forward, and lifted Carrie. “I think she's gaining weight. Or her diaper is a real mess.”

Grace backed out of the room. “I'll let you figure that out.”

I cleaned up the baby, who squawked and cried as I wiped her off and fitted her with fresh diapers. I dug out another outfit from Grace's clearance-rack run and found a long-sleeved jumpsuit covered with a commando print and sporting a duck in the center of the chest. As I wrestled her into the outfit, I said, “Sorry, kid, but you don't look so hot.”

Carrie cried.

I hefted her on my shoulder. “Yeah, I'd cry, too, if I were wearing a camouflage outfit with a duck on it.”

Grace handed me the bottle as we entered the kitchen and grimaced when she saw the baby. “It was only a dollar.”

I sat and tucked the kid in the hollow of my arm. Within seconds, she was suckling hard. “It doesn't really matter. Soon, we'll have her with real parents who'll know what the hell they're doing. She can spend her days in a crib staring at mobiles instead of a bare ceiling.”

Grace poured me a cup of coffee, her expression grim. “A kid does deserve a real home.”

“We're the temporary harbor and not the final destination.” The idea of sailing to a new port buoyed my spirits. As hard as this seemed, it wasn't forever.

Carrie finished up her bottle as I gulped coffee and ate a piece of toast. I rested her on my shoulder and eight pats on the back later she burped like a field hand. “Good girl.”

As I was about to load her in the front pack, she did a number in her diaper, which required a revolting change of diaper and apparel. I tossed the damp and very smelly commando duck outfit in a paper bag for dirty clothes and dug out another jumper. This one was navy blue with sailor stripes on the collar. The red clearance tag read fifty cents. “Your aunt knows how to squeeze a dollar.”

We found Margaret McCrae on the first floor studying an old marble fireplace. She wore faded jeans rolled up to her calves, Chucks, and a loose green shirt. Her red hair was fastened in a knot with a black scrunchie. In the last twenty years Margaret and I had crossed paths a couple of times, but she hadn't really changed much. Still the same free-spirited geek.

“Margaret,” I said.

She turned with a grin that vanished as her gaze swept over the baby. “You dropped a kid?”

Away from the vineyard, it was easy to discuss my well-known family. “She's Janet's baby.”

“Where's Janet?”

“In the hospital.”

“Complications?”

“Not the medical hospital.”

Her eyes narrowed and then her head nodded with understanding. “She's sick again.”

“Yeah.”

“How bad?”

“She made a baby, nearly gave birth on the street corner, and now can barely communicate.”

“Sucks.”

“Yep.”

She glanced at the baby, but didn't ooh or ah like some women might. “You already enlisted the kid in the Navy.”

“Yeah, meet Ensign Carrie Morgan.”

“Morgan? So Zeb wasn't a part of this?”

“No.”

Margaret rested her hands on her hips. “And you're keeping it together?”

“For a few days.”

“And then?”

“I'd rather talk about my stones and all the great history behind them.”

Margaret's grin was swift and genuine. She rubbed her palms together, her ringed fingers catching the light. “I can't say for sure if I know who the property once belonged to, but I have an idea.”

“Let's load up the truck, and you can tell me as we go.” I glanced toward the stairs. “Grace!”

Footsteps sounded on the stairs and her head poked around the corner. She carried the baby seat and the cooler stocked with lunches and bottles. “Addie, I've gotten a call.”

“I didn't hear the phone ring.”

“It's important.” She glanced toward Margaret. “Good, you're here to help.”

“At your service. How you doing, Grace?”

Grace arched a brow, her expression saying,
You've got to be kidding
. “Great. Did you get those men we used the last time?”

“More or less. Two men. Very strong. And hard workers.”

“Then you don't need me.”

“You said you were going to help with the baby,” I said.

Grace shook her head. “I can't. Not today. Besides, Addie, the baby likes you better than me.”

Annoyance snapped and stirred old feelings of resentment. What was the deal with this family? Did anyone ever go the distance? “Grace, I think you can pull it together enough today to help.”

Grace's frown deepened. “I'm not coming and I'm fairly sure Margaret doesn't want to hear our argument.”

Margaret shrugged. “Grace, I never mind a good family argument. It's much like being at home. You two have at it.”

Arguing in front of others might not have bothered Margaret, but it bothered me a lot. As much as I wanted to yell and scream, with Margaret standing feet away, I swallowed all my frustration. “We'll see you when we see you.”

Pissed, I picked up the car seat and loaded it in the backseat of the truck. My familiarity with the belts and hooks was growing at an alarming rate. I installed the kid in her seat and then turned on the truck engine and the air-conditioning. Margaret slid into the passenger seat beside me.
As I backed out of the parking lot, I caught sight of Grace standing in the door of the salvage company, staring at me with a stony face.

I pulled into traffic and wound my way up King Street. A turn on Patrick Street and I was headed south toward Richmond Highway.

“So you want to hear what I found out?” Margaret asked.

Shoving out a breath, I loosened my grip on the steering wheel. “I sure do.”

“If I have my property correctly identified, then you're going to love this.” She dangled the historical tidbit much like a mother used candy with a child.

“Spill.”

“Do you have a basic history of Alexandria?”

“For the most part. Most of my knowledge centers around architecture because it helps to know a little when you're demolishing a place.”

She winced. “Taking a place apart. Makes me want to cry.”

“The way I look at it, I am saving history.”

Margaret swiped away a loose curl. “In the sixteen hundreds . . .”

The truck frame shuddered a little as I slowed. “We're going back that far?”

“I pulled up your job site on Google Maps. And yes, we're going back that far.”

I downshifted at a stoplight. “Give it to me.”

“You know about Jamestown?”

“Sixteen oh two.”

“Sixteen oh seven. Basic American history, Addie.”

“Understood. But can you give me the CliffsNotes version?”

She sighed. “I'm dealing with peasants.”

“Work with me.”

She turned sideways in the seat so that she faced me. “In 1607 the
English created the first settlement in America. As you may or may not know, it didn't go so well.”

“Right. Pocahontas.”

“Right, Ms. I-Get-My-History-from-a-Disney-Cartoon. Anyway, the first settlements didn't go well, but settlers kept coming and, after a decade or so, discovered that tobacco was a major cash crop. Thank you, John Rolfe, Pocahontas's husband. Long story short, the Virginia settlement spread west toward Williamsburg and into the Chesapeake Basin and around the banks of the Potomac. In 1732, the plantation owners along the Potomac River were doing a bang-up business of growing tobacco, but trading it with the English was cumbersome. And the English were finding that sometimes the tobacco reaching their shores had rotted. The Crown decreed the establishment of tobacco inspection warehouses. Long story short, Mr. Hugh West's Hunting Creek warehouse thrived.”

“On the corner of Union and Oronoco Streets.” The site was five blocks north of our warehouse.

“Give or take. Yes.” She settled back in her seat, as comfortable as a history professor at the lectern. “I could get into the land grant, the surveying of what would become Alexandria, but that lesson's for another day.”

“So who did my stone hearth belong to?”

“I know there were a few families that lived in the area south of town. Technically, they would have leased their land from the Berkeley family, who really owned all of Northern Virginia and as far west as the Shenandoah River Valley.”

“Margaret, you're getting too deep in the weeds for me. What about these stones would help me sell them?”

She fiddled with a red beaded bracelet on her wrist. “There's a mention of a woman named Faith who lived in that area. She was brought to Alexandria in the mid-1740s and, from what I can tell, she was
accused of witchcraft in Scotland and her punishment was indentured servitude in Virginia. This is the first time Faith has popped up on my radar, so I've definitely got to do more digging on her.”

“Witchcraft.” I sensed Margaret would connect the witch to the stones.

“Fears of it were alive and well, even then.”

“I thought all the witch stuff was limited to Salem in the sixteen hundreds.”

“Nope, fear of witches thrived in Scotland around that time. And Virginia can claim a lapse in judgment when it comes to witches. There was a case in the Tidewater area around seventeen hundred. That woman was convicted and sentenced to seven years in jail.”

“Seven years? What did that woman do?”

“Basically, she was an independent woman. She grew herbs, wore trousers, and refused to remarry after her husband died.”

“But she is not connected to our stones.”

“No.” Margaret rubbed her hands together, the rings on her fingers clicking against each other. “But stories about witches will sell those rocks.”

“For the right buyer, they sure could.”

“To be fair, a lot of people believed in witches in Faith's time. England or Virginia weren't easy places to call home in those days. Disease, hunger, and the Indians all made life tough. Death was always close and when the sun set, there was only a handful of candles and hearths to chase the dark away. It was easy to assume the unnatural lurked in the woods.”

“So you think Faith is attached to this property?”

“I do. On microfilm I found her indentured servant contract. It was first owned by the ship's captain, then it was sold to a man named McDonald.”

“The current owner of the land is a McDonald.”

Margaret ran her hands along her arms, chilled by a sudden breeze. “No shit?”

“Yeah. It's a woman. Rae McDonald.”

Bracelets rattled as she fist pumped her hand in the air. “I love it when the past connects to the present.”

“So we have a connection to a witch. Then our stones will be enchanted?”

Laughter rumbled in her chest. “Hey, you wanted a story that would sell them.”