by Edie Claire
Leigh sighed. “The situation is perfectly under control, Mom.” She did not bother to add the admonition “don’t worry,” as she had given up on that phrase in the eighties.
“And what exactly do you plan to do about the holes?” Frances persisted.
Leigh’s eyebrows rose. “What do you mean?”
“The children could step in them and twist an ankle!”
Metal keys were pressed into Leigh’s hand; she turned to see her father slipping surreptitiously back down the basement steps behind her.
“The holes have been filled in already,” she answered.
“Dirt settles.”
Leigh glanced at her watch. “Sorry, Mom. Gotta run. I… um… promised to bring home food. Wouldn’t want anyone to starve.”
Frances’ jaw tightened, and Leigh crowed internally. Her mother would, of course, assume that Leigh was referring to Warren. And as important as publicly lecturing one’s grown daughter on the propriety of family communication was, nothing trumped a wife’s duty to feed her (perfectly capable) husband.
Leigh smiled.
Frances glowered back. “We will continue this discussion later.”
“See you then!” Leigh said cheerfully, even as her feet took off at a jog. She reached her car, jumped in, started the engine, and pulled out on the street within seconds—half fearing to see Frances trailing behind her in the rear view mirror, holding out some cleaning implement. But her mother had disappeared, most likely down the clinic’s basement steps.
Godspeed to you too, Dad.
Warren was still on the mower, cutting a new symmetrical pattern into their already short, long-dead grass, when she returned home and headed out to Archie’s with the new bag of dog food and an extra pail loaded in the back of the kids’ old wagon. She took the short route along the creek and trundled as quickly as possible past the Brown’s house. If Mrs. Rhodis happened to be looking out the back, Leigh would have no hope of escaping detection. But mercifully for the neighborhood, the woman also watched a lot of television.
This time, Leigh got lucky. She made it all the way to Archie’s tool shed without seeing or hearing a soul. Although, she thought wistfully as she glanced at the still-unmoved truck, she would really, really liked to have seen Archie himself.
Less so the headless specter in the funky coat.
Stop that! Leigh chastised as her coward’s heart began to race. You didn’t see a thing.
She had questioned Warren late last night, asking him why he had left Ethan to bump into her in the dark while shining their flashlight into the woods. His response had been nonchalant: he’d heard leaves crackling, but saw nothing, so figured the sound came from a squirrel or a bird. Leigh had bitten her lip and stayed silent. No way was she ending such a day by making wild accusations about headless trespassers. Her rationality got questioned enough as it was, thank you very much, and although she did not, repeat not, believe in ghosts, anything one step away from a corpse was something worth avoiding.
She hadn’t seen a thing.
She parked the wagon behind the tool shed and pulled opened the cellar doors. The sound of happy squeals drifted up loud and clear, and she smiled. “Guess Mom’s milk has a little more punch to it this morning, eh?” She carried the bag down the stairs and set it on the floor. The mother dog did not growl, but watched her descent with an intent, hopeful look. As Leigh opened the top of the bag and scooped a heaping helping into the empty bowl, the dog’s thin white tail gave one shy, appreciative thump. “Progress,” Leigh said with a grin. “I bet you’re a very nice girl when you’re not defending your offspring with your life. But take some advice—stay away from the Wileys of the world. Men like that never commit.”
Leigh knew that the charming canine Casanova was, even as she spoke, unhappily being confined by Lester, who was worried that the hound might take off in search of his missing master. But she doubted that the new mother gave a hoot about Wiley, or any other handsome face. The dog had eyes only for her food.
“There you go. Breakfast! I’ll bring you some fresh water now, all right?” Leigh cajoled, rising to her feet.
The light in the basement went suddenly dim; a figure blocked the head of the staircase.
“Whatcha doing?” an overloud, taunting voice demanded.
Leigh tensed. Scotty O’Malley was quite possibly the last person in the world she would choose to have discovered the hidden den… headless ghosts included.
“Stay where you are,” she ordered. “This is—”
“Cool!!! Puppies!!!”
Scotty launched down the stairs three a time, coming to land at Leigh’s feet with a plop that send a cloud of dust into the air. “Can I have one? How big are they going to get?”
“Stop!” Leigh demanded, making a grab for him. “Don’t go any closer! She’s—”
But the boy paid no attention. Eluding her outstretched hand with ease, he barreled straight for the dog and litter, mouth open and fingers grasping.
He did not make it to the puppies. The mother dog was on her feet in an instant. Standing over her offspring with a wide-spaced stance, she snarled viciously and snapped her teeth in the air.
Scotty screamed at the top of his lungs, pitched back with his arms wheeling, and fell flat on his bottom. He let out a string of profanity (laced with liberal use of a certain four letter word which—in Leigh’s humble opinion—no eleven-year-old should be allowed to speak), clawed to his feet again and made a rush for the exit. He scrambled up the stone steps in double time, his high voice reverberating with each jerky motion until he disappeared through the hole above.
Leigh didn’t move. Despite herself, she was impressed. She couldn’t remember ever having heard anyone (standup comedians included) make such creative and frequent use of that particular word in such a short span of time. And the boy had been in motion, too.
Predictably, his absence lasted exactly five seconds. Then his pale face poked over the entryway again.
“You should watch your language,” Leigh chastised. “There are children present.”
“She’s a wild dog!” he accused, his voice still shaky.
“She’s only protecting her puppies,” Leigh defended. “See, she’s fine now.”
The mother dog had indeed lain down again, though she continued a low warning growl with an occasional lift of her lip in Scotty’s direction.
“You’ll have to stay out of here,” Leigh continued, not altogether anxious to disabuse the boy of his fear. “She needs complete quiet and solitude for at least another three weeks.” Leaving the resealed dog food bag on the floor, Leigh picked up the empty water pail and moved slowly up the stairs. When she reached the top, Scotty stepped back out of the way to let her pass.
“She bit me!” Scotty protested, trailing after Leigh as she carried both the old pail and the new one toward the tap at the side of Archie’s house. “I’ll tell my dad… and he’ll shoot her!”
Leigh restrained herself. “And I’ll tell your dad that I watched the whole thing, and that the dog didn’t get within a foot of you.” She could only hope that Scotty’s words were bluster, given that Joe O’Malley was well known for his devotion to the care and feeding of guns. “Just stay away from her and her puppies, and you’ll be fine,” she ordered.
Leigh turned on the tap and began to fill the first pail. She noticed that Scotty had stopped trailing her and was standing perfectly still about ten feet away. His eyes were scanning the area behind Archie’s house, his expression anxious. Leigh made an effort to relax her already taut nerves. She didn’t want to be anywhere near the corner of the garage where she had seen… nothing… but the dog needed fresh water and using the tap was a whole lot easier than hauling liquid all the way from her house. She finished one pail and started on the second. Scotty still hadn’t moved or spoken. The kid was creeping her out.
“There’s dead people here, you know,” he declared.
Leigh’s teeth gritted. How did the little twerp kn
ow exactly how to get to her?
“There is not!” she retorted, sounding no older than he was. Chagrinned, she cleared her throat and regrouped. “I told you yesterday, Mr. Pratt is not here. Nobody’s here. No humans, and definitely no ghosts.”
Scotty sucked air loudly through his crooked teeth. “Says you! Mr. Pratt said there is. He said Old Man Carr drowned to death right here in Snow Creek, and his ghost still haunts the place, because he was murdered!”
Leigh had visions of the entire contents of her pail raining squarely over the urchin’s head, but she suppressed them. Her unfortunate personal history with the M word was not his fault.
“Mr. Pratt did not tell you that,” she argued calmly, despite the chill that seeped into her bones. “No one was murdered.”
Scotty frowned. “Well, they never knew for sure. So he could have been, for all you know. Face down in the crick, all bloated up and everything. He could have been there for days. Could have had an Indian arrow in his back… and the fish ate it out of him!”
Leigh took in a deep breath, then let it go. There were so many things wrong with that claim, she didn’t know where to begin. But she had to admit, the boy had her intrigued. Mr. Pratt had clearly told him something. Could it be important?
She bit. “Who was Old Man Carr, exactly? You mean the Civil War soldier?”
Scotty nodded with enthusiasm and took an unconscious step toward her. “He fought at Gettysburg. You know, the big battle where, like, everybody died! Except he didn’t, he was a hero, because he was one of the guys who nailed the rebel dude with the hat—right as he came over the wall. Pow!” The boy banged a fist into his palm with relish. “And then Carr, he comes here and builds that house right there,” he pointed to the building behind Leigh, “and then he turns into an old man and does boring stuff and all until somebody murdered him. And now he haunts the place, because he’s like so mad that no one treated him like a hero and everyone thought he was crazy when he was really just old and wanted to hide all his money so the government couldn’t get it!”
Leigh’s eyebrows rose. What Archie had actually told Scotty, God only knew. But the last part was definitely intriguing. “He hid his money?” she asked.
Scotty nodded. Then he seemed to reconsider. “Well, they say he was paranoid… you know, when you think everyone’s out to get you. But somebody was out to get him, else he wouldn’t have got murdered, would he? You think Mr. Pratt got murdered, too?”
Leigh suppressed a scream. She picked up the full buckets and began walking in earnest. It was broad daylight. There were no such things as ghosts. Archie Pratt was not dead and certainly had not been murdered. She could not legally strangle Scotty O’Malley no matter how much he irritated her. Furthermore, she had a dog to water.
“Are you scared of being murdered?” Scotty probed, following so close behind her that he clipped one of her heels. “I wouldn’t mind being murdered if it meant I could become a ghost. Then I could scare the—”
“Language!” Leigh barked.
Scotty snickered. He clipped her heel again. “I’d scare everybody. Just like the headless dude. But I’d be better at it. I wouldn’t just slink around empty buildings and stuff. I’d come after people. I’d show up right in their bedrooms… or their bathrooms!”
Leigh reached the tool shed and set down the buckets with a slosh. “Don’t you have somewhere else you have to be?”
He shrugged. “Not really. Is Allison around?”
“No,” Thank God. “Where do you see these supposed ghosts?”
Leigh’s jaws tightened. She hadn’t intended to ask that.
Scotty cocked his head and rotated it around comically. “Like, everywhere back here. Tool shed. Garage. Behind the house. You name it, ghosts haunt it. Scared away all the other owners, didn’t you know? Or maybe they were murdered, too. I wouldn’t come out here at night if I were you!”
No worries.
“Later!” Without another word, much less any explanation, Scotty took off at a run. He reached the creek and halfway attempted to jump over, instead landing squarely in the middle of it. Leigh could hear him cackling with laughter as he splashed. “Maybe there’s a body in here right now!” he yelled cheerfully. “Yo, fish! Did you eat the head off?”
Praying for forbearance, Leigh picked up the buckets once more and headed down the cellar steps. The kid was a loony. She should pay no attention to anything he said.
They say he was paranoid… wanted to hide all his money…
What had Archie really told Scotty? Could the happy-go-lucky teacher/insurance salesman himself have been searching for something the old man left behind?
Leigh stopped at the bottom of the steps and set down the pails. She refilled the food bowl that was empty again already, smiled at the now-placid mother dog, and hardened her resolve. If there were any truth behind Scotty’s story, Archie’s best pal Lester Brown would know. And if it had anything to do with Archie’s mysterious disappearance, she was going to make darned sure the police knew it, too.
Chapter 6
“Lester ain’t here,” the gravelly voice said curtly. “Adith’s knocked out on her meds and Emma’s down in the kitchen feeding the baby. What do you want?”
The face of Pauline, Adith Rhodis’s roommate at the personal care home, was fixed into a disapproving frown, as it had been every time Leigh had ever seen her. According to Adith, the woman had started scowling the day prohibition was repealed, and hadn’t stopped since. While that seemed a stretch, even given Pauline’s impressive age of 97 years, Leigh could well imagine that Pauline’s sour disposition had begun well before her first social security check arrived. She was, quite simply, a “glass half empty” kind of gal.
“I just wanted to ask Lester a question about the man who built Archie Pratt’s house,” Leigh responded. “It can wait. Unless you think Emma might know?”
Pauline snorted. “Emma don’t care about that stuff. Harvey would, though. Lord knows he’s got nothing better to do.” She turned her back on Leigh and walked away with her cane, leaving the door open. Pauline was never without the bamboo cane, although its purpose was a mystery. It barely touched the ground as she walked, and she seemed to have no trouble getting up or sitting down. Nor did she have trouble standing, as was made clear when she stopped in the hallway, raised her cane high in the air, and banged it violently against a door. “Har-vey!” she yelled. “Get your nose out of those books and come bore this woman to death with your fool stories!” Then she turned on a heel, walked through the door of the room across the hall that she shared with Adith, and closed it behind her.
No sound came from behind Harvey’s door, and Leigh looked around with indecision. Adith must have taken whatever despised medication it was that made her sleepy, or she would have appeared by now. And the infant in question must belong to their mutual neighbors; Leigh knew that the baby-adoring Emma was only too happy to play grandma whenever Nora needed to get out for a while.
“Mr. Perkins?” she called out tentatively through the still-closed door. “Don’t bother getting up if you don’t want to. I can always come—”
The door swung open. Leigh was met by the pleasant smile of a thin, frail-looking man in his early eighties. Harvey was bald except for a wispy fringe of white hair that wrapped around the back of his head from ear to ear; his forehead was dominated by an impressively large liver spot. “Good day, Mrs. Harmon,” he said politely, with all the decorum that would be due if her arrival had been heralded by a British butler instead of a thwacking cane. “Is there something I can help you with?”
Leigh smiled back. She had always liked Harvey, though she saw very little of him, as he spent the vast majority of his time alone in his room with his cat and his books. According to Adith, he had spent his life running the family hardware store and was never able to go to college. But he was a born intellectual, and both Lester and Archie frequently praised his acumen as a local historian.
“I hope so,” she re
sponded. “I’m curious about the man named Carr, who settled Frog Hill Farm. Scotty O’Malley was telling me stories about him that supposedly came from Archie Pratt, but I’m not sure how much of them to believe.”
Harvey studied her for a long moment, his expression thoughtful. “Please,” he said finally, extending a hand in the direction of the sitting room. “Come and sit down.”
Leigh complied. The room was empty except for Pauline’s canary, which hopped from one perch to another with an occasional chirp. The cheerful bird seemed an odd choice of pet for someone like Pauline; Leigh had always thought a hawk would be more appropriate. Or perhaps an iguana.
“So, if you don’t mind my asking,” Harvey began as he eased into a chair opposite Leigh. “What brought about your interest in Theodore Carr?”
Leigh considered. “Several things, actually. I’m worried about Archie, as we all are. And with nothing much else to go on, I can’t help wondering if something odd has been going on over at that farm. Not that I believe in ghosts, of course!” She amended quickly.
Harvey’s thin lips drew into a smile. “Nor do I. But you are correct in supposing that Frog Hill has a somewhat… colorful past associated with it. A past about which Archie has always delighted in telling stories. Whether the history of his farm has anything to do with his disappearance…” Harvey’s voice trailed off a moment, lost in thought. Then he shook his head. “That, I couldn’t say.”
Leigh leaned forward. “Could you tell me about Mr. Carr? Is it true that he might have been” —she nearly choked on the word— “murdered?”
Harvey tented his bony fingers and took a slow, theatrical breath. Leigh couldn’t help but wonder how much he watched PBS television. For a man who never went to college, he bore a suspiciously strong resemblance to a host of Masterpiece Theater. “Theodore Carr fought in the Union Army during the Civil War. He was one of the 71st Pennsylvania Volunteers, a regiment recruited from the Philadelphia area. Archie has always been fascinated with the man’s history, and I admit to developing more than a passing interest myself. You see, Mr. Carr’s regiment played a pivotal role in the Battle of Gettysburg.”