That was it. No surgeon general's warning about how smoking can kill. Nothing about fetal birth weight. Still, it was kind of strange how advertising from before they had TV – before they even had radio – was still basically the same as advertising today. Only, you know, now we know that naming your product after a race of people will probably offend them.
I opened the box and found the letters inside. Andy was right about their poor condition. They were so yellowed that you could hardly peel them apart without having pieces crumble off. They had, I could see, been tied together with a ribbon, a silk one, which might have been another color once, but was now an ugly brown.
There was a stack of letters, maybe five or six in all, in the box. I can't tell you, as I picked up the first one, what I thought I'd see. But I guess a part of me knew all along what I was going to find.
Even so, when I'd carefully unfolded the first one and read the words Dear Hector, I still felt like somebody had snuck up behind me and kicked me.
I had to sit down. I sank down into one of the armchairs my mom and Andy keep by the fireplace in their room, my eyes still glued to the yellowed page in front of me.
Jesse. These letters were to Jesse.
"Suze?" My mom glanced at me curiously. She was rubbing cream into her face. "Are you all right?"
"Fine," I said in a strangled voice. "Is it okay … is it okay if I just sit here and read these for a minute?"
My mom began to slop cream onto her hands. "Of course," she said. "You're sure you're all right? You look a little … pale."
"I'm great," I lied. "Just great."
Dear Hector, the first letter said. The handwriting was beautiful – loopy and old-fashioned, the kind of handwriting Sister Ernestine, back at school, used. I could read it quite easily, despite the fact that the letter was dated May 8,1850.
Eighteen fifty! That was the year our house had been built, the first year it was in business as a boarding house for travelers to the Monterey Peninsula area. The year – I knew from when Doc and I looked it up – that Jesse, or Hector (which is his real name; can you imagine? I mean, Hector) had mysteriously disappeared.
Though I happen to know there hadn't been anything mysterious about it. He'd been murdered in this very house … in fact, in my bedroom upstairs. Which is why, for the past century and a half, he's been hanging out there, waiting for …
Waiting for what?
Waiting for you, said a small voice in the back of my head. A mediator, to find these letters and avenge his death, so he can move on to wherever it is he's supposed to go next.
The thought struck me with terror. Really. It made my hands go all sweaty, even though it was cool in my mom and Andy's room, what with the air conditioning being on full blast. The back of my neck started feeling prickly and gross.
I forced myself to look back down at the letter. If Jesse was meant to move on, well, then I was just going to have to help him do it. That's my job, after all.
Except that I couldn't help thinking about Father Dom. A fellow mediator, he had admitted to me a few months ago that he had once had the misfortune to fall in love with a ghost, back when he'd been my age. Things hadn't worked out – how could they? – and he'd become a priest.
Got that? A priest. Okay? That's how bad it had been. That's how hard the loss had been to get over. He’d become a priest.
Frankly, I don't see how I could ever become a nun. For one thing, I'm not even Catholic. And for another, I don't look very good with my hair pulled back. Really. That's why I've always avoided ponytails and headbands.
Stop it, I said to myself. Just stop it and read.
I read.
The letter was from someone called Maria. I don't know much about Jesse's life before he died – he's not exactly big on discussing it – but I do know that Maria de Silva was the name of the girl Jesse had been on his way to marry when he'd disappeared. Some cousin of his. I'd seen a picture of her once in a book. She was pretty hot, you know, for a girl in a hoop skirt who lived before plastic surgery. Or Maybelline.
And you could tell by the way she wrote that she knew it, too. That she was hot, I mean. Her letter was all about the parties she'd been to, and who had said what about her new bonnet. Her bonnet, for crying out loud. I swear to God, it was like reading a letter from Kelly Prescott, except that it had a bunch of hithers and alacks in it, and no mention of Ricky Martin. Plus a lot of stuff was spelled wrong. Maria may have been a babe, but it was pretty clear, after reading her letters, she hadn't won too many spelling bees back at ye olde schoolhouse.
What struck me, as I read, was the fact that it really didn't seem possible that the girl who had written these letters was the same girl who had, I was pretty sure, ordered a hit on her fiancé. Because I happened to know that Maria hadn't wanted to marry Jesse at all. Her dad had arranged the whole thing. Maria had wanted to marry this other guy, this dude named Diego, who ran slaves for a living. A real charming guy. In fact, Diego was the one I suspected had killed Jesse.