Never Buried

by Edie Claire

  Maura's eyes moistened a bit. "I wish I knew what more to do, Leigh. I've made a hundred phone calls; people everywhere are looking—volunteers, police." She rubbed her chin with her palms.

  Leigh could tell she wanted to say something, but wasn't sure she should. "Out with it."

  Maura hesitated at first, then finished in a rush. "It's just that—I can't believe she simply wandered off, or we would have found her by now."

  The words echoed Leigh's own, uncomfortable thoughts. She said nothing.

  "Mom's never been gone this long without getting her orientation back, and once she did, she'd get back home—I know she would. She's a smart lady." Maura hesitated again. "It's almost as though something, or someone, is keeping her away."

  The words seemed to usher an icy draft into the small room. Leigh hunched up and rubbed her arms subconsciously. Somehow, saying the thought out loud made it more likely to be true. But what could she say? She couldn't admit her own worst fears. Instead, she stalled. "What do Mellman and the others think?"

  Maura waved the question away. "No one knows what to think. Mellman's a mess over it—his migraines are back with a vengeance. He gets out of sorts whenever anyone gets hurt in his borough, but he's taking my mother's disappearance personally—like he's failed my Dad or something. He's been knocking himself out trying to find her. Everybody has." She reached for a Styrofoam cup near her elbow, but stopped, seeing it was empty.

  Jumping on a chance to help, however small, Leigh picked up the cup and filled it, along with another one, from a pot two desks over. She wanted to help more, but she wasn't sure how. Was her idea a worst-case scenario, or was it a lead? She returned with the cups and sat back down. Perhaps mentioning it could help after all. "Have you ever wondered if your mother's disappearance could be related to the problems at Cara's?"

  Maura held the coffee cup close to her face, as if she, too, had felt a chill. Her words indicated the thought was a new one, but her face said otherwise. "What makes you think that?"

  "Nothing concrete. Just a feeling."

  Maura considered. "It's far fetched, Koslow."

  "I know that."

  Silence ensued.

  "So, did you do any more searching in the house before—well, before you went to the hospital?" Maura asked.

  "We ruled out the basement. Only the attic is left." Leigh considered the implication. The attic had spooked her, but she could rally herself for a good cause. "If you think there might be some connection with your mother's disappearance, I'll keep looking," she announced. "If not, give me something else to do."

  Maura ran a large hand through hair that hadn't been washed in a while. "Frankly, Leigh, we've got the bases covered right now. Your looking around the attic can't hurt, as long as the guards are still there. Maybe there is a connection." Her voice cracked slightly. "At least it would give us something."

  Leigh had never seen despair in Maura's eyes, and the look she saw now was as close as she cared to get. She stood up. "I'm gone," she said. "Call me if you need anything."

  ***

  The fact that a vehicle would be blocking Cara's driveway when Leigh arrived was not surprising. The story had no doubt come out in the Monday paper, waiting to enlighten any holdouts who might have missed the Sunday night telecasts. But of the various automobiles whose presence at the house could be easily explained, a full-sized moving van wasn't one of them.

  Leigh pulled the Cavalier hastily into a parking lot down the Boulevard and ran up, her blood boiling. "What the hell is going on?!" she yelled at the two muscular men who were maneuvering the parlor couch through the front door. They managed to ignore her completely—only after the piece was loaded in the truck did one of them deign to acknowledge her.

  "Is that your cat upstairs?" the chubbier of the two croaked.

  Leigh breathed in. "Yes!" she answered sharply.

  "Well, get her in a cage or something. We shut the door up there, but we got to go in and out, and I don't want to get yelled at if she runs off."

  Someone tapped Leigh's shoulder. She whirled around and faced a security guard she didn't recognize. "Miss Koslow?"

  She nodded, fuming.

  "I'm Henry Torman with Ford Security. The boss got a call a little while ago from Mr. March. He's having the contents of the house shipped to a mini-storage, and we're off duty as of this afternoon."

  "Mini-storage?" Leigh's head was spinning. "He can't do that! My stuff's in there!"

  The thinner of the two movers walked up to Leigh with a clipboard. "Are you Ms. Koslow?"

  She nodded again.

  "You need to mark your stuff separately from the rest as soon as you can. We started with the fancy stuff, so that's already packed. Haven't got to the bedrooms yet, but we will soon."

  "Who told you I was going to mark my stuff?" Leigh said, disbelieving.

  The mover looked bored. "Mr. March." He flipped a page on the clipboard. "Your stuff's going to 625 Ridgewood in West View."

  The Koslow residence. "The hell it is!"

  Both men shrank back, looking at her as though her medication were overdue.

  Leigh cleared her throat. "Um, sorry. But there's been a mistake. My stuff is most definitely not going to West View." I'll live with it in the mini-storage if I have to.

  The mover shook his head. "Talk to Mr. March. We're following his orders until we hear otherwise."

  Using a few expletives whose meaning she wasn’t entirely sure of, Leigh stormed inside, threw her essentials back into the boxes they had only recently come out of, and coerced a panicked Mao Tse into her carrier. If Mr. International Bigshot wanted to throw his weight (and money) around, there wasn't a whole heck of a lot she could do about it. It was, after all, not her house.

  Either Gil had read the morning paper, or, more likely, Frances and Lydie had spouted off the whole story. In any event, he would not be pleased with her. When the consulting opportunity had come up in Tokyo, Gil had first refused it. He hadn’t wanted to be away from Cara so late in the pregnancy. But Cara had insisted, saying he couldn’t pass it up—that he needed time off after the baby was born, not before. He had agreed only when Leigh had promised on a stack of Bibles to move in with Cara and watch her like a hawk. And now—this.

  She pictured his California-tanned face turning to an angry mauve. He had probably hit the roof and vowed that no one would set foot in the house again.

  She sighed. He was efficient, she would give him that. Not just anybody could produce a moving van and crew within hours. Gil had a way with a cell phone. And a check book. But he hadn’t been thinking clearly, or why would he have fired the guards? Her anger returned. Gil’s motivations didn’t matter. Nobody manipulated her—or her stuff.

  She mumbled and grumbled through eight or nine trips to her car, then started the engine. Mao Tse rubbed her face on the metal grid at the front of the carrier, protesting with her usual grating tone. "Sorry girl," Leigh answered, rubbing what little of the cat's nose protruded through the bars. "You can blame your Uncle Gil for this one." She had a sudden urge to go throttle her cousin-in-law post haste, but resisted it. Better to cool off first. And to find a roof to sleep under.

  Chapter 19

  As she had a tendency to do in times of crisis, Leigh soon found herself in the parking lot of the Koslow Animal Clinic. She lifted Mao Tse's carrier and toted the unwilling cargo through the back door. The kennel room was packed, but eerily quiet, as it tended to be on surgery afternoons. The only alert residents were a bored-looking cat on an IV line and a beagle with a brace on its neck, and neither were inclined to waste their energy announcing a visitor.

  Leigh popped open the largest cage on the top row and set it up with litter pan, food and water dishes, and a soft, folded-up towel. She opened the carrier door and nabbed the ball of black fur inside just as it sprinted out. "I know you hate it here, Mao," Leigh said sympathetically. "But you can't stay in the car—and I don't know where I'll be tonight." She plopped the cat into t
he cage and closed the door, then poked her head into the hallway outside the surgery to see what was going on.

  The associate, Dr. McCoy, was juggling a double load of patients while Leigh's father dealt with an emergency—a Doberman with an intestinal obstruction. Dr. Koslow's eyes were trained intently on the surgery table, but his peripheral vision caught Leigh like a snake with a heat sensor.

  "Leigh—scrub up. I need you."

  Somewhat glad for the distraction, she did as she was bid, and soon found herself retracting some unhealthy looking abdominal contents.

  "Whose dog is this?" she asked.

  "New clients," Randall answered, in the ever-so-slightly stilted conversational tone peculiar to surgeons. "From McKees Rocks. Dog got into the kids' room and chewed up a bunch of toys. They waited too long to bring him in."

  "Hmm." Leigh responded. It was a familiar tale. "Dad?"

  "Yes," he replied, making a neat scalpel cut over a swollen piece of intestine.

  "Did you ever meet Paul Fischer?"

  His eyes met hers briefly over their face masks. "No, I don't believe I did. He didn't have any pets, you know."

  Leigh sighed. "I wonder if anyone really knew him."

  "Catch that loop of bowel," Randall chastised.

  She did.

  "Someone knew him well enough to hate him."

  Leigh looked up sharply. "What do you mean?"

  He shrugged. "To not allow his body to be buried, but to keep it—doing who knows what with it—until it became useful. That sounds like vengeance, not just lunacy."

  Randall wiped his brow with the front side of his shoulder. He had opened the intestine and pulled out the dog's problem—a mangled green and white piece of plastic. He held it up for inspection. "What do you think? Teenage mutant ninja turtle?"

  Leigh shook her head. "Wrong decade, Dad. The turtle lovers are into body piercing now."

  "Power Ranger?"

  "Warmer." She looked at the plastic closely. "My money's on Buzz Lightyear."

  "Hm." Randall went back to work, cutting out the dead tissue around the swelling. "Okay, finger-clamp the ends for me. That's right."

  Leigh held the cut ends of intestine impassively. "Do you really think that's likely?" she asked.

  "I've never heard of Buzz Lightyear."

  "No! I mean this person hating Paul Fischer."

  Randall waited a moment before answering, then spoke while he sewed. "Perhaps you should look at why someone might hate him."

  She nodded. "It keeps coming back to Robbie. Mrs. Rhodis insists he was very close to his mother. If Paul were in some way responsible for her death, Robbie would hate him. But maybe he couldn't publicly accuse Paul of anything because Paul, in turn, would accuse him of Norman's death."

  "They had a mutual hold over each other." Randall said, trying out the thought. "Plausible enough. But answer this. Why would Robbie care now if Fischer's papers revealed his guilt? He's already AWOL. The police can't imprison him if they have no idea who or where he is. What difference would it make?"

  Leigh sighed. "I don't know. Every theory I come up with has a hole you could drive a truck through."

  Randall finished sewing the ends of intestine together and prepared to close. "Thanks, Leigh. That's all I need."

  She peeled off her gloves and dropped them in the trash can, then took off her mask and gown. Randall rolled the dirty surgery drapes into a ball, disconnected the dog from the anesthesia machine, and rolled it onto its side. "I assume there's still no word about Mary," he said, removing his mask and throwing it away with the drapes.

  "I'm afraid not."

  "And no change in Cara's condition?"

  Leigh shook her head. "Not that I've heard. I think I'll head back over there now and check on her." And tell her husband he's being an ass.

  Randall touched the corner of the Doberman's eyes to make sure it could blink, then rolled back a thick black lip to reveal healthy pink gums. He patted the dog's back absently. "Will I be seeing you at the house tonight?"

  "Sorry, Dad," she answered sincerely. "I can't deal with being almost thirty, unemployed, and living with my parents."

  Randall smiled. "Isn't sponging off the old folks supposed to be hip nowadays?"

  "Maybe," she answered. "But I've never been very good at the generation-X thing. I'll be staying with a friend."

  "Who?"

  A part of her resented the question. Didn't he think she had friends? The truth was, she really didn't have that many friends she could impose on with impunity. As fun as it would be to announce to her mother that she was staying with a man, Warren's apartment had only one bedroom, and his mod couch/sofabed was a chiropractor's dream. She had tried it once when her apartment was being painted, and her spine still hadn't recovered. "I'll give you the phone number as soon as I'm settled," she answered evasively.

  The Doberman made a gagging sound, and Randall pulled the endotracheal tube out of its mouth. "Could you fix a cage up on your way out?"

  She readied a spot in the kennel room for the semi-conscious dog, and Randall carried in the seventy-pound dead weight and laid it down. He removed the IV bag from between his teeth and hung it on a hook outside the cage. "I'll be here all afternoon," he said, breathing a little heavily. "Keep me posted."

  ***

  Leigh returned to her jam-packed Cavalier and drove to the hospital in Oakland. She picked up a badge at the visitor's desk and approached Cara's door cautiously. No sounds were coming from inside. She knocked softly.

  After several seconds, Gil opened the door. She looked past him to where Cara lay on her side in the bed, her eyes closed.

  "She's asleep," Gil said stiffly, pushing Leigh backward out into the hall. He followed her and shut the door. "And we need to talk."

  Leigh avoided his eyes, which resembled the sparklers she and Cara used to play with on the Fourth of July. She decided to strike preemptively. "I gather I'm being thrown out of the house."

  Gil ground his teeth, a gesture only he could make look attractive. "I trusted you, Leigh. You said you’d keep her in line, make her rest. And now I find out that since last Wednesday—" He took a breath. “If you were a man," he said simply, "I'd deck you."

  Leigh had no response to that. She was all for women's rights, but she wasn't an idiot.

  "How dare you let Cara stay in that house! You knew it was dangerous. You're not stupid!"

  Leigh rankled on her cousin's behalf. "Are you saying your wife is?"

  A low growl escaped from Gil's throat. "You know what I'm saying. Cara is impetuous. It’s one of the many things I love about her. But she gets wacko ideas and she lets them override her common sense. And she's pregnant. You know how those female hormones screw up a woman's thinking."

  Leigh's eyes narrowed. "No, I don't believe I do. Perhaps we should ask Cara about that. I'm sure she'd entertain the topic of her own mental incompetence."

  The sparklers turned into Roman candles. "You should have known better. You should have called me."

  He had struck a raw spot, but Leigh held her ground. "I was planning on it," she confessed. "But Cara convinced me that you would be unable to resist your own hormonal inclinations to protect her, and would screw up your job in Tokyo. She didn't want that to happen."

  Leigh decided that the veins standing out in Gil's neck were not so attractive. He made more guttural noises, but kept his voice down. "I could have protected her, and the baby, and the house. It was my job. I had a right to know."

  "Would you have rushed back here?"

  "Of course I would have!"

  "And would your taking off have stalled the project? Made you miss the deadline? Would you have had to go back to Tokyo even closer to the due date, or after the baby was born?"

  He blinked.

  Aha. "Perhaps a few extra days did make a difference?"

  He paused, and looked away. "The project is finished. We wrapped it up shortly before you called."

  Leigh smiled slyly. "Well.
Congratulations."

  Gil looked uncomfortable. "Thank you."

  Relaxing a little, Leigh decided to push the envelope. The irony of her defense of Cara's independence did not escape her, but she was on a roll. "Your wife is a grown woman. She has her moments, I'll grant you. But she's not stupid. And she can take care of herself. Not telling you about the threats was her decision, not mine. And I respected that. Maybe you should respect her judgment, too."

  Gil's eyes turned angry again. Leigh looked at the clenched fists that led up smooth arms to broad shoulders. That familiar little twist in her gut was back. A subject change was in order.

  "Can I stay at the house until I get another place?"

  He looked at her as though she had asked to bungee jump off the roof. "Of course not! It isn't safe."

  "Well, not now that you fired the guards, anyway!"

  Something flickered in his eyes, but she wasn't sure what. "Your stuff is at your parents' house. You can do whatever you want with it. Cara and I will be moving into a rental as soon as she's discharged. I have a realtor looking now. As for the house, I don't care what happens to it."

  "That's good," Leigh retorted. "Because it'll be burned to the ground within a week."

  "Great!" He said sincerely. "I can use the insurance money. God knows no one will buy that mausoleum now. We'll find a new house. In Franklin Park. Or maybe Seattle."

  Leigh decided to stop fighting. In a way, she agreed with him. She wouldn't mind seeing the house burn down, considering all the trouble it had caused. But certain questions had to be answered first. And if the house burned, they might never be.

  She supposed that was the idea.

  "Gil? Leigh?" The sound of Cara's voice drew them both inside quickly. "What are you arguing about?"

  Leigh sat down on the edge of Cara's bed. "We weren't arguing. Just one of my trademark animated discussions."

  Cara eyed her suspiciously, but let it go. "It looks like I'll be in here a few days," she said, resigned. "Are you going to be okay at the house by yourself? I'm sure it's perfectly safe with the guards, but don't feel like you have to stay there if you don't want to. Gil can get you a temporary apartment, until you find one you really like."