Ethan leans in close and whispers to me, “If we’re going to try to sell that watch, we should at least know something about it.”
Jimbo’s face lights up since it sounds like we may be interested in the tour. “They were orphan girls from France. Early on, this place was crawling with men. Not many girls, or at least the ones you’d want to take for a wife. Those girls got here and they had all their stuff in these little casket-shaped trunks. The nuns over at Ursuline locked ’em up tight, ya know, to preserve their virginal qualities.”
He grins big. Obviously he enjoys retelling this story. “Pretty bad times for those poor girls. Most of them got sick on the way here—skin and bones they were, white as damn ghosts. Some even had a raging case of tuberculosis. Rumors started flying ’round pretty quick. It was the coughin’ up blood that made people think they were vampires. Said they smuggled vampires into the Quarter in those trunks of theirs. Most of ’em died. It’s said that the nuns locked those casket-shaped trunks in the third-floor attic and the upstairs windows were nailed shut with eight thousand screws blessed by the pope himself.”
Then Jimbo laughs and leans in close. “And if you go on one of our tours, there’s a real good chance you’ll see one of them leaving through an open window.”
Teeny is fully engrossed with his story and it’s hard to pull her away. Jimbo calls after us, dropping the price of the tour but we ignore him.
The flashing pawnshop sign is half a block ahead and we pick up the pace. My mind races as my eyes dart from person to person. Every time I see a tattoo, my heart drops, but thankfully none of them are what Tyler described. We have wasted too much time out on the street.
Ethan walks inside and it’s empty. It’s not a big area, just a square-shaped space big enough for a handful of people and a counter on the back wall protected by iron bars and thick Plexiglas.
We walk to the small opening at the counter and Ethan presses the call button. A loud buzzer echoes through the room and a really short man appears on the other side of the bars. His head barely makes it over the counter and he’s got one of those awful greasy comb-overs. And his teeth are disgusting, yellowed and broken around the edges. I feel dirty just looking at him.
“Whatcha got?”
Teeny takes forever but finally turns the pocket watch over to me. She may understand that she needs to give up the watch, but she really doesn’t want to. I slide it through the metal tray to the other side.
He holds it up and inspects it closely then opens the latch and studies the inside.
“What’s the story on this?” he asks. “Looks like crap, but it’s old.” He spins the knob on top. “It got a story?”
“It belonged to one of the Casket Girls,” Ethan says.
He looks down at the watch again, like he’s seeing it for the first time. “No shit. Can you prove it? If you can, it’s worth a lot. If not, I’ll give you ten bucks.”
“Ten bucks,” Ethan spits out. “Ten bucks?”
We have no proof of where we got it. And ten bucks isn’t going to do anything for us.
“Have you seen any pictures of a girl hanging out of the third-floor window of Ursuline?” I ask.
“You mean that tour company that’s saying they have proof of a sighting and flashing pictures around to anybody walking around the Quarter?”
“That’s me! I’m the one in the picture!”
The man says, “Girlie, I don’t think that picture is real. That’s somebody getting a little crazy with the Photoshop. If that’s all you got, my offer is ten bucks.”
“Wait,” Teeny says. She lifts up the edge of her sweatshirt and I see the packet of letters hidden there. Francesca’s letters. “If we have proof of where it came from, how much can we get?”
The pawnbroker steps up onto something because he’s grown at least a foot and leans toward the plastic barrier. “Whatcha got there?”
Teeny holds them up but away from the metal tray. “Letters between Francesca DuBois and a boy named Henry. The same Henry written on the back of this picture.” Teeny unties the ribbon from around her neck and holds it and the envelopes up in front of the thick window. “Francesca was a girl from France who lived on the third floor of Ursuline and she writes all about it here.”
His eyes get huge. “Let me see ’em,” he says.
Teeny shakes her head. “No. That girl in the picture is my sister. We have been in a room on the third floor of Ursuline for several days. You make me a deal first then you get them. You’re not the only one who will give us money for this.”
I’m in awe of her right now. Ethan is, too. I know how much she treasures that picture and the letters. The distraction of reading them is probably the only thing that got her through our captivity.
Teeny and the pawnbroker haggle back and forth, but he finally gives in to Teeny’s demands. When a small stack of hundred dollar bills slide through the tray, I want to cry.
The pawnbroker scurries to some hidden back room with his newly acquired treasures before we finish pulling the bills from the tray.
We step out of the shop and I pull Teeny in close. “I’m sorry you had to give it all up. I know how much it meant to you.”
She shrugs and says, “Francesca was trapped. She wouldn’t have wanted us to be trapped, too. Do you think she died of that sickness he was talking about?
