She noted that Hattie still wore her nightdress and had her hair tied with pieces of fabric. She also wore a scowl on her face. “It’s very hard to get any beauty sleep around here with all the noise,” the ghost complained. “We were up fashionably late, and etiquette dictates that you don’t allow visitors on the premises before a more respectable hour.”
“We were eager to see what’s in the safe,” Jordan explained apologetically, avoiding mention of the hole in the parlor wall.
Tom and Jase looked at the space beside Jordan, their expressions curious. “So we have company?” Jase asked Jordan.
“He’s the company,” Charlotte sniffed as she materialized on Hattie’s other side. In no better state of dress than her sister, she peered sleepily at Jordan. “I trust the hole in the upstairs parlor wall is necessary, and that you will have it fixed prior to the wedding,” she said archly.
Damn. “Of course,” Jordan said, hoping that was true. Truthfully, she hoped the wedding would simply cease to be an issue, and the sooner, the better. She shuddered to think about the logistics of such an affair. The house would have to be fixed up as much as possible, but no humans could attend or, rather, it didn’t make any sense for them to attend.
“Would you happen to remember the combination to the safe after all these years?” she asked Hattie.
“Ten to the right, twenty-three to the left with an extra revolution, then six to the right,” Hattie replied promptly. “I memorized it.”
Jordan rubbed damp hands on her cotton sweats, then walked over to the safe. She raised her hand to the old dial, then hesitated. “You know,” she said, turning back to the ghosts, “this really isn’t my money—it belongs to you.”
“We want you to have it for the renovations,” Hattie insisted.
“Halt right there,” Frank ordered as he materialized. “If you open that safe, you are exposing yourself to great risk. Seavey will go to any lengths to get his hands on that much cash.”
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.”