“See you soon.” Erik leaned in for another kiss. “Call if you need me. I’ll be right here.”
After Ben left, Erik refilled his coffee and settled back in at the table. He started with hotel listings from the mid-nineties, around the time the Commodore Wilson was destroyed, andthen went back decade by decade to identify hotels and other buildings that might have been a hiding place for the dome.
As the hours ticked by, Erik got an education in Cape May’s real estate market as well as its rising and falling fortunes. At the time of the Commodore Wilson’s destruction, the city wasn’t as vibrant as it became later. During that slump, many older commercial properties and hotels fell onto hard times. Some were purchased and leveled, while others got a second wind.
A small number of locations just stopped being mentioned. Erik couldn’t find a record of them being demolished, or any information about being sold or repurposed. If they fell into receivership, the proceedings dragged on for years without a published resolution. It didn’t seem possible for the properties to just fall between the cracks, but it looked like that was exactly what happened.
By lunchtime, Erik had a list of a dozen possibilities. After a sandwich and soda, he whittled that down to five likely locations. Since Ben was busy with the rentals and wouldn’t be able to run the leads on his computer until evening, Erik reached out to Brent Lawson, a friend who was also a private investigator.
“Erik, great to hear from you. To what potentially world-ending catastrophe do I owe the honor?” Brent greeted him.
“Who says there has to be an apocalypse for me to call?” Erik bantered.
“Because you don’t usually want to talk about the latest blockbuster movie,” Brent replied. “What’s up?”
Brent lived in Pittsburgh and had a law enforcement background similar to Ben’s. He often collaborated with them on problems involving magic and the supernatural, so Erik didn’t have to worry about being believed. Brent even had experience dealing with the Pittsburgh Mob, so he understood that part of the equation.
“Old Mafia trouble, missing artwork, same old, same old.”
“How can I help?”
“I need to run a couple of addresses for a history, and Ben’s tied up with work. I’m hoping you can please do me a favor and put them through your databases.”
“Yeah, sure. Not a problem. Ben’s managed not to go back into the business?” Brent asked as Erik typed an email with the locations he was hoping to learn more about.
“He doesn’t take new clients,” Erik replied. “Technically, he’s taking over the rental real estate business for his aunt and uncle, but he keeps his P.I. license so he can get the insider scoop when we get trouble. He’s out all day, and I’m trying to make headway on some research that’s pretty time-dependent.”
Erik heard a ping on the other end of the connection.
“Got your email. Give me an hour or so, and I’ll send you what I can get out of the databases. When are you and Ben going to come visit Pittsburgh?”
“I could ask when you’re going to come up to Cape May. Bring Travis. We can go ghost hunting,” Erik joked. Travis was Brent’s work partner, and together they teamed up to stop supernatural dangers in Pittsburgh.
“Spring,” Brent replied. “It’s already getting cold here, and you’re farther north.”
“Fair enough. Let me know when you’ve got something. Thanks so much. I owe you.”
Erik spent the next hour catching up on paperwork for the shop, dusting the displays, and ordering supplies. By the time Brent’s email came through, he felt like he had managed to put in a good morning’s work.
He texted Brent his thanks and dug into the trove of reports his friend sent. Brent’s detective license and connections gave him access to data that was not openly available to the public, and the additional information helped Erik narrow his search.
After he waded through all the documents, Erik had a top contender, Weston Hall.
Named for an English country house and built in 1910, Weston Hall’s builder had envisioned it as a grand manor befitting his fortune. He barely outlived the construction and left one heir, who died on theTitanic. The property sold to a developer who made it into a resort, which held its own until competition from other historic hotels siphoned off its clientele during Cape May’s revitalization.
From there, Weston Hall passed through various hands, and its owners attempted a number of different ways to reinvent the buildings, from private school to conference center to hotel again. Age and upkeep made it increasingly expensive to maintain, and the parade of owners meant damage occurred as maintenance became irregular. Notably, it had a sizeable warehouse among its outbuildings.
By the time Thomas Bartolo bought Weston Hall in 1995, it had become something of a white elephant in the local real estate market. Bartolo’s success and wealth from trucking and real estate came with ties to organized crime, and he was linked to the shady dealings of the firebrand preacher who was the Commodore Wilson’s final owner.
Erik recognized Bartolo’s name from the list he had compiled of people who made purchases at the Commodore Wilson’s liquidation sale. He checked that information and confirmed that Bartolo had spent big money to purchase many of the doomed hotel’s architectural features.
The liquidation sale records were spotty in places, but what Erik could find reported that Bartolo had his purchases shipped to his various properties, presumably to install them there. Erik didn’t see a mention of Weston Hall, but it seemed likely that the most local property would receive some of the Commodore Wilson’s pieces, for nostalgia value.
Whatever Bartolo’s plans might have been, he was killed over a poker debt with another mobster. Lawyers and bankers litigated his estate, with claims and countersuits wending through the courts for years. Through it all, Weston Hall seemed forgotten, even as other properties found buyers.
According to the database information, Weston Hall remained abandoned and dilapidated, still tangled up in lawsuits. Its uncertain ownership and lack of a clear title, as well as unpaid debts, meant no one had been able to purchase the old hotel either to renovate it or tear it down for the land.
“Bingo,” Erik muttered under his breath. That sounded like the perfect place for the dome’s crates to go missing, overlooked in the storage area of a deserted ruin.
