Foliage and Fatality

by Karen Musser Nortman

  Also by Karen Musser Nortman

  The Mystery Sisters

  Reunion and Revenge

  The Frannie Shoemaker Campground Mysteries

  Bats and Bones

  The Blue Coyote

  Peete and Repeat

  The Lady of the Lake

  To Cache a Killer

  A Campy Christmas

  The Space Invader

  Real Actors, Not People

  We Are NOT Buying a Camper! (a prequel)

  The Time Travel Trailer Series

  The Time Travel Trailer

  Trailer on the Fly

  Trailer, Get Your Kicks!

  Happy Camper Tips and Recipes

  Foliage and Fatality

  by Karen Musser Nortman

  Cover Art by Ace Book Covers

  Copyright © 2018 by Karen Musser Nortman. All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reproduced in any form by any electronic or mechanical means (including photocopying, recording or information storage and retrieval) without permission in writing from the author.

  This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places and incidents are either the product of the author’s imagination, or are used fictitiously, and any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, business establishments, events, or locales is purely coincidental.

  Table of Contents

  Chapter One

  Chapter Two

  Chapter Three

  Chapter Four

  Chapter Five

  Chapter Six

  Chapter Seven

  Chapter Eight

  Chapter Nine

  Chapter Ten

  Chapter Eleven

  Chapter Twelve

  Chapter Thirteen

  Chapter Fourteen

  Chapter Fifteen

  Thank You

  Other Books by the Author

  About the Author

  Chapter One

  Lil

  Max’s red Studebaker Starlight coupe hugged the curve as the narrow road turned and dropped down a steep hill. In the passenger seat, her sister Lil Garrett sucked in her breath and gripped the road atlas spread open on her lap.

  Max pointed at the dash. “I don’t know why you bother with that atlas. Why don’t you just use the GPS?”

  Lil shut her eyes for a second. “I just like atlases. And I like the big picture.”

  Max snorted. “What a waste of time.”

  “Like I’m really busy.”

  “You’re missing the scenery.”

  The Pennsylvania highway wound through overhanging trees draped with crimson and gold leaves. Occasionally an oak that hadn’t turned yet or a bare ash broke up the kaleidoscope of color, just enough to emphasize the vibrant hues.

  “No, I’m not. It’s beautiful. I’m so glad we decided to take this trip in the fall. I never realized Pennsylvania was so wooded.”

  “Didn’t you pay attention in school? The name means ‘Penn’s Woods.’”

  “School was sixty years ago. Don’t be so crabby.”

  “Then don’t be so dense.”

  Rosie, Max’s large Irish setter, sat in the back seat with her head resting on the front seat between the two sisters. She rolled her eyes back and forth as she followed the conversation, or at least the sounds of their voices.

  Neither sister spoke again until they arrived at a crossroads with a large fuel plaza and truck stop. Max pulled up to a pump and turned off the car.

  “This will be our last stop until we get to Terry’s.”

  Lil opened her door. “Fine.” She stalked into the convenience store. After using the restroom, refreshing her makeup and fluffing her latest haircut, she returned to the store and browsed a snack counter. She bagged two pork egg rolls off a warming rack and was looking for the fountain drinks when Max came up behind her.

  “Are you about ready? We’ll never get there at this rate.”

  Lil seethed but held back her anger. “Be right there. Do you want anything?”

  “No.” Max eyed the egg rolls. “You going to eat those in my car?”

  “I’ll be careful, I promise.”

  “Even if you don’t spill, the whole car will smell like garlic and soy sauce.”

  Lil didn’t reply—she couldn’t and remain civil. She took her purchases to the cash register. Every trip she and Max took, and that was at least three or four times a year, they reached this point of dissension before they reached their destination.

  One would think that two women in their seventies would be able to maintain a cordial atmosphere, but it seemed the sibling rivalry was just too strong. She paid for her snacks and straightened her brown and gold cardigan, decorated with fall leaves in duplicate stitch, as she followed her sister back to the car in silence.

  Max had let Rosie out, walked her along the edge of the parking lot, and given her a little water. The dog now awaited their return with her head hanging out the window.

  Determined to improve the atmosphere, Lil cheerfully said as they pulled out of the truck stop, “It looks like we have about sixty miles left.”

  “Fifty-seven, actually.”

  “Okay.”

  Lil nibbled at her egg rolls, careful not to get any drips on the pristine interior of the classic car or her own carefully chosen outfit. She wiped her fingers and tucked the used napkin and wrappings into a side pocket of her tote where she kept a Ziploc bag just for such trash.

  She turned and watched out the window. They were headed for Burnsville, where her son Terry had moved eight months earlier with his wife Melody and children. Terry had taken a job as a loan officer at a local bank, and this was Lil’s first visit to their new home.

  Max and Lil, in an earlier, more congenial, conversation, decided that the fall would be a perfect time to visit Pennsylvania. Based on the scenery, they certainly had made a good decision. If they didn’t kill each other before they got to Terry’s.

  Terry and Melody Garrett lived in a white, traditional, two-story colonial with green shutters on a wide street lined with oaks and maples. Neat shrubs interspersed with cushion mums in gold, purple, and rust surrounded the house.

  “What a beautiful place!” Lil said as they pulled in the driveway.

  “It is nice,” Max agreed in a grudging tone. She rolled down her window to get the food smells out of the car while she unloaded the luggage.

  The front door of the house opened and a whirling dervish with red Orphan Annie curls exploded down the steps. “Granny Lil!” shouted the dervish as she ran into Lil’s arms.

  “Ren! I can’t believe how you’ve grown.” Lil, kissed the little girl on the cheek. She and Max had had a lengthy discussion in the car about Ren’s name. Max: “What the hell kind of name is Ren anyway?” Lil: “It’s short for Rendall.” Max: “What the hell kind of name is Rendall anyway?” And so on.

  But regardless of what Max thought of the name, Ren was a beauty, and one of those children interested in everything. At six years old, she loved toads, took tap dancing lessons, and planned to be an Olympic gymnast. However, she told Lil on the phone that she didn’t need to take gymnastics lessons. She already knew how to do a cartwheel.

  Now she hugged Rosie and allowed the huge dog to lick her face, giggling at the sensation. Then she grabbed Lil’s hand and tugged her toward the house. “Come and see my new turtle! And Rival got in trouble for tearing a hole in his closet ceiling!”

  Lil held back. “What? Wait—you can show and tell me everything later. I need to help Aunt Max with our suitcases.” She walked back behind the car for her roll-behind suitcase and matching tote.

  A deep voice boomed behind Lil. “I’ll get those, Mom.”

  She turned and looked up at her handsome, now mi
ddle-aged son. He was a little thicker through the middle and thinner on top, but his eyes had the same ornery twinkle.

  “Terry! So great to be here.” She almost teared up.

  He laughed. “It’s about time. Aunt Max, how are you?”

  Max hefted the strap of her old duffel bag over her shoulder. “Fine, Terry. Glad to have arrived.” She gave Lil a sideways glance.

  “I’ll take that, too.” He moved the duffel to his own shoulder, and pulling Lil’s suitcase behind, started up the sidewalk. “Follow me.”

  His wife, Melody, held the door for them. “Welcome! The kids have been beside themselves all day. They have so much to tell you.”

  “Ren already informed me.” Lil laughed and then caught sight of the wide and long staircase leading up from the entry. Her dismay must have shown on her face because Terry said, “Don’t worry, Mom. You chicks have a room on this floor. But I’m afraid the kids will drag you upstairs sometime for their show-and-tell.”

  Max raised her eyebrows. “Chicks?”

  Lil tapped her on the arm. “We need to take compliments where we can get them. Lead on, Terry.”

  He headed through a wide door on the right of the hall into a living room that stretched from the front to the back of the house. A large brick fireplace with a white mantle centered the opposite wall flanked by bookcases. Transom windows above the bookcases, as well as tall windows in the front and French doors in the back, let plenty of daylight into the room. Terry led them to a door in the far back corner at the end of the bookcases.

  As he flung open the door, he said, “I hope you don’t mind sharing quarters.”

  Lil had expected this, but Max looked a little surprised at the suggestion. Noticing her expression, Terry added, “If not, we do have extra rooms upstairs, but we thought you’d both prefer to be down here.”

  Ren danced and whirled around the room, nearly knocking Max over. Max caught herself, surveyed the room, and gave him a bright smile. “This will be fine.” She pointed at the twin Jenny Lind beds on the far wall. “Those are Grandma Bruns’ beds and the Trip Around the World quilts, if I’m not mistaken.”

  “They are,” Terry said. “Mom passed them on to us.”

  Ren stopped and looked at the beds. “Who is Grandma Bruns?”

  Lil pointed at herself and Max. “Our grandmother. Your dad’s great-grandmother. Your great-great-grandmother. She made those quilts—they must be over a hundred years old.”

  “Wow.” Ren skipped over and ran her hand reverently over one of the coverlets, tracing the rows as she talked.. “She must have been really great. I like these because the little squares are very light blue in the center and then around the outside they get darker and darker and darker…”

  “Okay, we get it.” Her dad laughed. “Would you like to show Granny Lil and Aunt Max the bathroom and the closet and how the TV works?”

  “Sure!” She grabbed Lil’s hand.

  “When you’re done, come out on the porch. Melody has some spiced cider and gingersnaps for you.”

  “Thank you, Terry,” Max said. “This is really wonderful.” After her sister’s surliness earlier, Lil was relieved at her apparent change of heart.

  Ren led them to the en suite bath complete with a blue and white tiled walk-in shower, and slid open the closet doors with a flourish. She showed them the sitting area and the remote for the TV.

  “And these doors go out to the back yard and our swings, and those go to the scream porch.”

  Max raised her eyebrows. “Scream porch?”

  Ren nodded. “Yeah, they call it that because it’s all covered with scream. It keeps the bugs out.”

  “I see. That’s good to know. You want to take us there for cider and cookies?”

  “Okay!”

  Rosie had done her own reconnoiter of the room and, apparently satisfied, waited eagerly by the doors. Max pulled an old blanket out of a tote to keep her off the furniture.

  The second set of French doors, as pointed out by Ren, led onto the wide porch that extended across the back of the house from the guest suite to another wing, also accessed with French doors.

  “That’s my mom and dad’s bedroom.”

  “How nice,” Lil said. “That way your mom doesn’t have to go up steps.”

  Ren pulled a chair away from a round stone-topped table and plopped down in it. “She doesn’t have to anyway. There’s an elevator in the lawn-dree room. I’ll give you a ride later.” Max chuckled at the girl’s seriousness and pronunciations.

  Melody Garrett had been diagnosed with multiple sclerosis about five years earlier, which limited some of her activity. Lil never ceased to be amazed, though, at the way that she coped.

  “Where’s your brother?” Lil asked.

  Ren lowered her voice to a whisper. “He’s doing something speshal up in his room. It’s a surprise for you.”

  “Okay, then.”

  Lil took the moment to check out the rest of the porch. Beside the doors from the bedroom wings, two other sets of French doors gave access from the living room and apparently the kitchen. The flagstone floor and the beamed ceiling gave a rustic feel, accented by the patio furniture in natural colors.

  Terry and Melody came out bearing a tray of glasses, a pitcher and a plate of cookies. They had each gotten their cider and a cookie, when another whirling dervish came through the living room doors. This time it was red-headed, freckled Rival, two years older than his sister and every bit as exuberant. He carried a package wrapped in construction paper, secured by what appeared to be several rolls of cellophane tape. Lil hoped Max didn’t feel compelled to comment on what the hell kind of name Rival was.

  Chapter Two

  Lil

  Rival slapped the package on the table in front of Lil, nearly upsetting her cider.

  “This is for you, Granny Lil!”

  Lil hugged him. “Thank you!” Before she opened the package, she sat back and looked him up and down. “You have gotten so tall. How do you like your new house?”

  “It’s cool. Open your present.”

  “Okay, okay. Did you make this?” She carefully pulled at the ends, trying not to tear the paper. Who knew what work of art she might ruin if she did? Inside, was a handmade booklet held together with staples and paper clips. The cover, orange construction paper, displayed the title Halloween, enhanced with stickers of ghosts, pumpkins, and witch hats.

  “It’s a book, and I made it myself, and it’s about Halloween!”

  “We never would have guessed,” Max said drily, earning a frown from her sister.

  Rival appeared oblivious to any undercurrents. “And guess what? My dad works for the bank, and they have a haunted house, and he’s in charge of it this year!” He took a breath.

  “How exciting!” Lil looked at Terry. “I hope the bank isn’t haunted?”

  Terry grinned. “Not that we know of. The haunted house is a fund raiser for a new school auditorium. Several community groups will help staff it. It opens tomorrow, as a matter of fact.”

  Melody said, “It has taken all of his spare time for the last several weeks. It’s pretty spectacular.”

  “We should take them over to see it today!” Rival said.

  Ren, who had been coloring, looked up. “Yeah, Dad, can we?”

  “I guess we could.” He winked at Lil. “Not every mother has a son with a key to a haunted house. But it will really be better with the people playing the parts once it opens.”

  “Some of the stuff goes by itself, though,” Ren said. “We helped put up cobwebs.”

  Max laughed. “When your grandma and I were kids, we always had to take the cobwebs down.”

  Ren frowned. “Take them down? Why?”

  “Our mother didn’t like cobwebs.”

  “That’s weird,” Ren said.

  In the end, they decided to check out the haunted house before supper. Max put Rosie in their room with her blanket. She flopped down, rested her head on her paws, and sighed. She gaz
ed up at Max with sad, brown eyes.

  On the drive to the haunted house, Terry explained its origins. “It’s known as the Kell house. The last owner died several years ago, but had been in a nursing home for a long time so the house really fell into disrepair. The bank is the executor of the estate, but hasn’t been able to sell the house. This fall we got the idea to use it as a haunted house for a fundraiser.”

  He turned off the main road and headed out of town. The house, a large Victorian bereft of paint, stood at the end of a lane overhung with trees. Hand-painted signs along the lane denoting hours of operation and sponsors did not offset the natural spookiness of the setting. However, once they passed the signs and reached the front porch, the isolation descended.

  Lil felt an almost physical sense of gloom. She shuddered and then smiled down at her grandchildren. “It is spooky!”

  “Just wait ’til you get inside.” Rival insisted. He jiggled up and down as his dad fiddled with the door key. Finally, Terry used a shoulder against the side of the door and it inched open, protesting loudly.

  Lil peered around him into the entry hall, and Max crowded behind her. Even though it was still daylight, the trees around the house and the lack of windows in the entry hall cast a twilight dimness over everything.

  Terry pushed a switch, and a bare bulb suspended from the ceiling created a harsh glare. An open staircase to their right led up and disappeared into a dark hallway. Pocket doors on the left were closed, as was a single door straight ahead.

  “There’ll be a lovely witch here to welcome victims—I mean, guests.” Terry rubbed his hands together and cackled.

  Ren pulled on Lil’s hand and motioned her to bend down. “The witch is my mommy,” Ren whispered.

  “Oh, my! She will be a lovely witch.”

  Melody looked embarrassed, but smiled at Ren. “Don’t give away all of the secrets.”

  Rival pointed up at a mass of white fuzz in the corner of the staircase. “I put that cobweb up.”