7 Never Haunt a Historian Page 14

  “According to Dora,” Leigh explained, “Theodore and Tom were both a little off their rockers at the end. Tom could have been just as convinced the government was out to steal their prize, or UFOs, or the ghosts of Confederates past… whatever.”

  Harvey nodded. “Good point.”

  “I just hope,” Leigh continued, her thoughts turning suddenly macabre, “that Thomas didn’t bury the hat with his father.”

  Harvey’s bushy white eyebrows rose. “You mean… in a cemetery?”

  “No,” Leigh answered. “On Frog Hill Farm. According to Dora, Theodore was buried there.”

  “I never heard that!” Harvey exclaimed. “I’m sure Archie would have mentioned it.”

  “He might not know,” Leigh replied. “Dora described a small, flat gravestone, but it’s not there anymore. The kids have explored all through those woods and around the creek—there’s no way they would have missed a gravestone.”

  “I suppose not,” Harvey mused. “Such things are supposed to be disclosed when a property is sold, but… well, people don’t always comply. It’s possible.” He pulled a handkerchief out of a pants pocket and dabbed at his forehead.

  Leigh noted that, suddenly, he looked very tired. “Let me walk you back to the house,” she offered.

  Harvey complied. “I wish I thought the searching was all in good fun,” he said, his voice growing feebler as he moved uphill. “An honest quest, if you will. But with Archie gone, and now Lester…” his sentence remained incomplete. He stopped a moment and looked at her. “I know that Lester is lying to the police. He even lied to me yesterday when I asked him, point blank, what he and Archie were up to. But I know why he did it—it’s because he’s scared. I’ve known Lester since he was a little boy; his father was a friend of mine. He and Archie are good men, Leigh. It might not seem like it under the circumstances, but I know that they are.”

  “I know that too,” Leigh agreed. “And I think you’re right… about everything. But that includes this being a potentially dangerous game. So please, don’t feel like you have to do any more. I promise I’ll make sure that the officers investigating the case know everything we’ve talked about. It’s their job to sort it all out.”

  To her surprise, Harvey smiled at her wryly. “You didn’t believe me when I first mentioned the hat. You thought it was an old man’s nonsense. Are you sure the police won’t think you’re a little ‘off your rocker’ too?”

  Leigh let out a chortle. “Of course they will. But I’m used to that.”

  ***

  As Leigh walked past Nora and Derrick Sullivan’s house on her way home, her heart contracted with sympathy. The baby was crying again. Little Cory had cried as much as any newborn for the first month, but then the testy tyke had kicked it into serious overdrive. He was close to three months old now, and not only were the evening cry sessions still going strong, but he was often fussy all afternoon as well. Before she had kids of her own, Leigh would have blamed the parents. Surely they were doing something wrong?

  Now she knew better. She also knew that Nora had already made an excessive number of visits to her pediatrician, certain that the baby must have some medical ailment. But happily, little Cory always checked out fine.

  His parents, on the other hand, were probably getting close to the brink. Just as Leigh reached the corner of her own yard, the crying stopped, and she breathed easier. She wondered if Nora could hear the crying from inside the Brown’s house—and hoped she could not. Listening from afar was probably worse than being there. Besides, Nora had a point. Derrick, like all new fathers, would be well served by some one-on-one time with his son.

  Leigh entered her house to find the entirety of the Pack playing some incredibly noisy game in her basement. Cara and Gil were running late in their return from New York state and Lydie had pleaded some unspecified prior commitment, leaving Warren to supervise all four. He was accomplishing this by relaxing in his favorite armchair reading a paperback with a glittering purple light saber on its cover. Both their guest mutt and the resident corgi, energy temporarily depleted, slumbered at his feet.

  All in all, it seemed a typical Sunday afternoon.

  Leigh fidgeted with her phone, contemplating a call to Maura. She had no way of contacting the detectives from the General Investigations unit directly—she didn’t even know who they were. Even if she did, she doubted the effort would bear fruit. The best way to deliver the new information was through Maura… who at least believed that a treasure hunt might be a possibility and who would know how to present the evidence so the theory didn’t sound quite so ridiculous. But should she do that now?

  Maura’s husband Gerry was due back from his trip this afternoon. Leigh glanced at her watch. Any minute, actually. Which would make her timing maximally terrible.

  She sighed and walked to the front windows. There was no emergency. Not really. Lester was safe in the hospital. No one would be going back under the tool shed—at least not this afternoon. She would give Maura a little more time with her husband, then call her later tonight. The detective probably wouldn’t pass along the info until the next morning anyway.

  “Warren,” Leigh announced without enthusiasm. “I’m going to my brainstorming hammock. Those pottery crocks aren’t going to promote themselves.”

  Warren nodded. “May The Force go with you.”

  Leigh’s eyes rolled. “As always.”

  “And don’t leave the yard.”

  She offered a salute.

  “I mean it, Leigh,” he said seriously, lowering the book. “If I look out those back windows and you’ve mysteriously disappeared, I’m picking up the phone.”

  “You’d call Maura?”

  “No,” he answered, his tone grave. “I’d call your mother.”

  Leigh scowled. “That’s dirty pool.”

  A devilish grin played on his lips. “Indeed.”

  No sooner had Leigh crawled into her hammock, closed her eyes, and started thinking about pottery crocks than she heard it again.

  Baby Cory was screaming his lungs out.

  She put her hands over her ears and swayed the hammock.

  Look what’s new in ancient pottery crockware!

  Absolutely nothing.

  This isn’t your great-grandmother’s pottery!

  She peed in hers.

  It’s not just for King Tut anymore!

  Even you can be buried with it.

  Leigh groaned out loud and opened her eyes. The hammock wasn’t helping. Neither was the crying baby. She could stand it no more.

  She marched back into her house, informed Warren of her intentions, walked out through the front, crossed her lawn to the Sullivan’s house, and rapped on their door.

  After a long wait, the door swung slowly open.

  Nora’s husband Derrick peered out, holding the door with one hand while using the other to balance his infant son on his shoulder. His typical button-down office shirt was liberally covered with a spit-up rag, which was liberally covered with spit-up. His black slacks seemed to have taken the worst of the eruption, making him look like a reverse Dalmatian.

  A very sad, very tired Dalmatian who was lost, confused, and about to wander in front of a speeding truck.

  Leigh smiled. “Never fear,” she proclaimed. “Help is here.”

  Derrick blinked at her from behind oversized glasses that magnified his bloodshot eyeballs. The man was nice enough, but Leigh had yet to run into him when she had not in some way been reminded of a rodent. It wasn’t just that he suffered from a prominent overbite, which he did, but that he had a curious way of walking with his shoulders hunched and his hands flailing in front of him. It was almost as if he were working at a computer—even when he wasn’t.

  “Help?” he repeated, dazed.

  Leigh clapped her hands together and held them out, talking loud enough for her voice to carry over the continued caterwauling. “I’d love to entertain little Cory for a while. I know Nora’s still working and let�
�s face it—you need a break. I am the mother of twins, one of which screamed for most of her infancy. The fact that’s she alive and well now and I am not in prison should tell you that I’m eminently qualified for the task.”

  “Oh,” he responded, a light apparently dawning. Slowly. “Oh, that’s nice. Thanks.”

  If Leigh didn’t know that the man was employed as a systems analyst, a job requiring no small amount of analytical brainpower, she might be inclined to question his mental acumen. But she knew better than to judge any parent in the throes of sleep deprivation.

  Derrick turned and gestured for her to follow him back into the house. She complied, shutting the door behind her.

  The room looked like it had been struck by a white and blue tornado. Every surface was covered with baby blankets, baby toys, baby towels, and baby spit-up. It smelled of sour milk and one particularly ripe diaper that was balanced on top of Derrick’s printer, apparently having never completed its journey to the covered step-pail in the corner.

  Leigh fought back a grin. The room was actually quite well appointed and fundamentally clean… she suspected it had looked much different when Nora left this morning.

  Derrick flitted about the room, picking up various towels and blankets from off the furniture, inspecting each with a grimace, then setting it back down again.

  Leigh stepped over to the baby’s changing table, opened the cabinet door beneath, and pulled out a clean burp cloth. She threw it over her shoulder and held out her hands once more.

  “Seriously,” she coaxed. “I’d love to watch him for a while. Why don’t you take a walk, or a drive to the convenience store? Get some air?” She looked at her watch. “Nora’s relief person is due at the Brown’s in half an hour. I can stay here till she gets home, if you like.”

  Derrick’s eyes widened. “Oh, no!” he said nervously. “I can’t be gone when she gets back. She’d kill me! Look at this place!” Even as he spoke he gently handed over little Cory, whose cries quieted to whining wails at the transfer.

  Leigh held the infant in a firm cuddle that had, at one time, been as natural to her as breathing. The baby stopped crying and stared at her.

  “How did you do that?” Derrick asked with wonder.

  “Don’t feel bad,” she assured. “It won’t last. This is just the novelty phase. He’ll start squalling again in a minute. But that’s okay. Par for the course.”

  Derrick took a deep breath and looked around. “Maybe if I just… would you mind holding him while I clean up a bit?”

  “Absolutely.”

  The new father proceeded to stumble around the room, picking up various soiled linens and moving them to other places with no apparent plan in mind. “Have you,” he began uncertainly, “heard any more news about Archie?”

  Leigh sighed. “I’m afraid not. But I have a friend who’s a homicide detective with the county, and I’m hoping she’ll light a fire under the investigators pretty soon. I have my doubts about how aggressively they’ve been looking for him. To them, of course, Archie is an adult of sound mind who has every right to take off without telling anybody.”

  Derrick frowned. “I suppose so. But still, it doesn’t sound like him.”

  “No,” Leigh agreed. “It doesn’t. Did—” she cut herself off. She had been about to ask, “Did you know him well?” But the past tense was not acceptable. “Do you know him well?” she amended.

  Derrick gave the slightest of shrugs. “I don’t get out in the neighborhood much. But I’ve been to a few meetings of the reenactors.”

  Leigh glanced idly about the room, half expecting to see more Civil War paintings and memorabilia hung around. But all of the couple’s framed pictures were inexpensive prints of landscapes and flowers. “So Archie gave you the bug, too?”

  “Excuse me?” Derrick had managed to gather most of the soiled linens into a pile in the center of the floor, but the last few rags seemed to allude him.

  Leigh surreptitiously grabbed the one nearest her and added it to the stack. “I mean, did Archie get you interested in the Civil War, or were you already a fan?”

  “Oh,” he responded, picking up the pile of linens and dropping two. “Not really. I mean, I’ve always thought history was interesting.” He returned in a moment with a plastic trash bag, which he shook open and proceeded to carry around the room filling with crumpled tissues, pop cans, and the occasional used baby wipe.

  “Archie tried to convince Warren he looked like General McClellan,” Leigh said with a laugh. “But trying to recruit my husband for a reenactment in an itchy wool uniform is a lost cause. Unless it involves the Starship Enterprise, of course.”

  Derrick laughed out loud—or at least, Leigh thought it was a laugh. It sounded more like a snorting seal. “Oh, that would be funny,” Derrick replied, walking past the dirty diaper on the printer for the fourth time. “Now, wearing those costumes would be fun.”

  The question of itchy wool coat versus shiny spandex pajamas seemed like a toss-up to Leigh. But as her husband so frequently reminded her, she was not one of the faithful.

  Her novelty had evidently worn off. Little Cory started to cry again. She shifted him into a new position and started moving. “So… how many of the events have you participated in?”

  Derrick looked at her blankly.

  “The reenactments, I mean,” she clarified. The baby cried louder.

  “Oh. None of the big stuff,” he answered. “I was too busy for Antietam. But the Perryopolis Parade is coming up pretty soon.”

  “Oh?” Leigh said politely, slipping into the adjacent bathroom and wetting a clean rag with cool water. As she began gently sponging the baby’s face, his cries ceased. “What do the reenactors do in the parade?”

  Derrick shrugged again. “Just march and stuff, I guess.” He was watching her intently. “Hey, that’s a neat trick! He likes that.”

  “Just a distraction,” Leigh explained. “You have to keep varying your tactics.”

  Derrick continued his marginal efforts at cleaning up, and for a few minutes, Leigh tended to the baby in silence. Eventually Derrick managed to get the dirty linens corralled and had parked them and the half-full bag of trash by the door to the kitchen. He stood still a moment, then threw Leigh a pointed look. “I was wondering… have you heard any more about how Lester’s doing? Nora said he’d probably have to stay in the hospital overnight.”

  “You know as much as I do, then,” Leigh responded.

  Derrick’s chin lowered. His hands fidgeted with the drawstrings of the trash bag. “He’s a really nice guy, Lester,” he said awkwardly. “Archie, too. I hope they’re both okay.”

  Leigh could stand it no longer. She stepped over to the printer, picked up the dirty diaper, and deposited it in Derrick’s bag.

  He appeared not to notice.

  Nora, my dear, Leigh thought to herself. Your husband is one odd duck.

  Then again, who in this neighborhood wasn’t?

  “I hope so too,” she agreed.

  Chapter 14

  Leigh’s living room was dark, illuminated only by the flickering static on the TV that represented the inactive camera feed. The kids were getting ready for bed and Warren had retired uncharacteristically early in anticipation of a long drive to meet a new client the next morning. Leigh alternated between staring at the static and staring at her phone. Should she call Maura, or wait until tomorrow? The detective had asked to be informed. Perhaps a text would be better?

  She wondered what was going on in the Frank-Polanski household. She and Warren were both quite certain that Gerry would welcome his wife’s news, however unexpected. Still, Leigh feared that any reaction less than sheer, unbridled enthusiasm on his part would send her friend into a complete tailspin. Never mind that handling violence, corpses, murderers, and criminally insane lunatics was all in a day’s work for Maura. Facing a first, unplanned pregnancy at forty-two? That was scary.

  Leigh jumped as her phone rang in her palm. She checked the numbe
r.

  It was Emma Brown’s cell.

  “Emma!” she greeted, her pulse beginning to race. “Is everything okay?”

  “As well as could be expected, I suppose,” the usually merry voice said tiredly. “Lester’s asleep, finally. I’m going to leave here and head home in a minute—I’ve got a friend picking me up. But I’m coming back first thing tomorrow.”

  “How is Lester?”

  “He says he’s fine. But then, he’s a man.” She let out a sigh. “Nothing scary showed up on the tests, and they’re saying his concussion is mild. They don’t think he was unconscious very long after he hit his head; more likely, he was delirious with fever and just drifting in and out of sleep when you found him. He was pretty dehydrated—never mind how much I pushed the fluids at him.”

  So, Leigh thought with chagrin, no one is even considering the possibility of assault. And why should they, with Lester lying about the whole incident?

  Maybe she was wrong. Maybe he did pass out first and hit his head second. She certainly wished that were the case.

  “The police questioned him?” Leigh inquired.

  “Just a bit,” Emma replied. “It looked a little fishy, you know, him being on Archie’s property when it happened. But he explained all that.”

  “Was it just the local police who questioned him?” Leigh continued, worrying even as she spoke that she was pressing too much, “or the county investigators working on Archie’s case?”

  There was a pause. “I think it was the locals,” Emma said uncertainly. “Why?”

  Stupid running mouth. “I was just wondering if anyone thought there was a connection to Archie’s case. But obviously not.” Leigh made an attempt to sound cheerful, reassuring. She did not want to alarm Emma further.

  Emma didn’t answer for a moment. “Well, I’m calling because Lester made me promise I would. He wants to see you, Leigh. I don’t know why—he wouldn’t tell me. Well, he did tell me, but it was some nonsense about him needing to tell you how to feed Wiley. Like that mutt wouldn’t eat dirty shoe leather! By the way, somebody did feed him today, didn’t they?”