7 Never Haunt a Historian (16 page)

Leigh nodded in agreement. She turned to Lydie, only to discover that her aunt had already taken off without her in the direction of the farmhouse. Leigh caught up to find her aunt circling the house’s foundation, consumed with obvious interest.

“It’s constructed very much like Cara’s,” Lydie proclaimed as she moved. “Stone foundation, wood frame structure. Cara’s was built in 1907, and I’d guess the same for this one, give or take a few years. The Carrs would have built it themselves, then?”

Leigh searched her memory banks for the details of her conversation with Harvey. “I think so. In nineteen-O-something.”

Lydie nodded. “The barn would have been built around the same time.” She moved to the far side of the house and threw a dismissive look at the garage. “Recent,” she proclaimed. “As for the barn—”

“Something going on here?” Boomed a voice from behind them.

Leigh whirled to see Joe O’Malley hastening down Archie’s driveway toward them, his son Scotty trotting at his side. Scotty was grinning from ear to ear. His father was not. Dressed in his usual wardrobe of faded workpants and a wifebeater, Joe was unshaven and scowling.

He was also carrying his trusty shotgun.

If Leigh didn’t know the man better, she might have run screaming into the hills. But since sighting Joe O’Malley without a gun was only slightly more common than sighting him with one, she did not take his armed state as signifying any mood out of the ordinary. Nevertheless, she cast a glance over her shoulder toward the children, and was gratified to see that they were both close to Warren and well out of the way.

“No,” Leigh answered pleasantly. “We’ve just come to see if the mother dog has returned. All of the commotion this morning seems to have frightened her away.”

“Just as well,” Joe grunted. “Don’t need no rabid dogs around here. Got enough problems in this accursed neighborhood.”

“Accursed?” Leigh inquired. Joe didn’t ask to be introduced to her aunt, and she didn’t offer.

Joe’s scowl deepened. “Hell, yeah. Lived here ten years now, been putting up with this damned nonsense the whole time. Archie’s taking off is just one more thing. Guy I bought my place from told me this here farm was haunted, and I thought he was a loon. But there’s
something
messed up going on out here, that’s for damned sure. Noises, lights—”

“They’re orbs, Daddy!” Scotty piped up excitedly.

Joe’s eyes flickered over his son with a mixture of skepticism and pride. “My boy says he sees things. And my boy ain’t a liar.”

Scotty looked toward the area downstream where the Pack were, and his eyes took on a sudden sparkle. “Hey! Allison’s here!”

He took off at a run.

Leigh squelched a strong urge to snatch the child by the collar and hogtie him to the porch railing.

“My wife saw cops crawling all over this place this morning,” Joe continued, his voice turning more sober as his son moved out of earshot. “She called over to the Brown’s, and Nora told her Lester had passed out while he was over at Archie’s, and that you found him. That true?”

Leigh nodded. She cast a glance over Joe’s shoulder toward the O’Malley’s, and noted that although trees blocked a direct view from house to house, his wife no doubt would have seen police cars coming and going on the drive and the officers walking about on the grounds.

“Then why all the cops?” he questioned.

“It wasn’t clear at first what happened to Lester,” Leigh explained carefully. “So when I called for an ambulance, they sent the police out. It’s routine.”

Joe’s gray eyes searched hers for a moment. He grunted. “That’s what they always say. ‘Routine.’ Nothing routine about a man taking off and leaving his dog and everything he owns, that’s what I say. Something’s going on out here. And I don’t like it.”

Leigh spied some rare common ground. “Neither do I,” she agreed.

“I believe the boy sees lights out here,” Joe said slowly. “But I don’t believe in no ghosts. That’s what they want you to think. They want you to tell people you see floating lights and spooky Civil War figures creeping around, just so no one will believe you—so they’ll think
you’re
the crazy one. They’re clever that way. But I got their number.”

He adjusted his hold on his shotgun—an unconscious gesture Leigh could have done without seeing.

“They?” she repeated meekly.

He bestowed her with a tolerant, protective look. “You know who
they
is, don’t you?”

Leigh’s mind skittered through the likely possibilities. What was popular with the conspiracy theorists these days? Federal agents were always a good bet. But there were other possibilities. Communists? Aliens? Marauding gangs of hoodlums? Anarchists? Devil-worshippers? Second-rate Elvis impersonators?

Leigh played it safe and shook her head.

Joe leaned in close to her ear. “Damned IRS,” he whispered.

Bingo.

“Leigh, dear,” Lydie said sweetly. “We should finish up out here, soon. I’ve got to get back and take my medicine.”

Joe straightened up and took a step back.

Leigh threw her aunt—whom she knew perfectly well was not on any medication—an appreciative look. “Yes, of course.” She turned her attention back to Joe. “Thanks for helping out with the search for Archie,” she praised. “We all want him home safe.”

Joe assumed an avuncular air. “Yes, sirree. Don’t you ladies worry—I’m keeping an eye on this place myself from now on. The whole neighborhood.”

Fabulous.
“That’s a comfort,” Leigh lied. “But you should know that I’ll be coming by regularly to put food out for the dog. So please don’t shoot me!”

She kept her tone teasing, but there was no answering sparkle in the man’s eyes. He seemed to consider a moment.

“Maybe you should wear a hunter’s vest,” he advised. “Just to be on the safe side.”

Leigh’s response stuck in her throat.

“Come on, dear,” Lydie coaxed, grabbing her arm and smiling a plastic smile. “We need to be moving along!”

Joe gave a nod of farewell and turned around. Much to Leigh’s relief, he then whistled for Scotty to join him as he headed back toward his own house.

“Charming man,” Lydie declared as they rounded the back side of the farmhouse. “How that type manages to procreate in a post-cave world is a mystery to me. And speaking of mysteries,” she continued, changing topics smoothly, “you’re right about the map being hopelessly inaccurate. The barn should have been drawn in. It’s almost certainly the same age as the house.”

“And the tool shed?” Leigh inquired, keeping an eye out over her shoulder for any sudden recurrence of her trigger-happy neighbor.

“Also left off the map,” Lydie agreed. “Let me see how old it looks.”

As Lydie prowled around the unimpressive looking structure, Leigh screwed up her courage and withdrew her flashlight from her pocket. The bag of premium dog food was still down in the cellar. All she had to do was bring it and the water pails up, and then she would be done with the place. She threw a look at Warren, who was watching her from the edge of the woods fifty yards or so away. Lenna and Ethan were up on the hill in the trees, calling for the mother dog in all sorts of imaginative (and clearly counterproductive) ways. Allison stood motionless on the edge of the woods, holding out her pad and pen and watching as Mathias walked in short, straight lines with his metal detector.

What were they up to? Leigh had a sudden image of the crumbling remains of Theodore Carr, buried all too hurriedly in a shallow grave, his rotted wooden coffin a mere yard beneath Mathias’s feet…

Cut it out.

The children were hunting for treasure, not bodies.

She summoned her willpower once more and stepped through the open cellar doors to the stairway beneath, shining her flashlight before her. To her comfort, her Aunt Lydie soon fell into step behind her.

“This is interesting,” Lydie commented.

“What’s interesting?” Leigh asked, relaxing slightly as each step down revealed more of the cellar to be vacant. When at last she reached the bottom step and confirmed that she and Lydie were the only occupants, her shoulders slumped with relief.

“This cellar,” Lydie answered, walking immediately to the nearest wall and running a finger along the stone. “The shed up top isn’t as old as the barn, but this foundation is quite old. Perhaps it started out as a root cellar.”

“You mean, a separate place to store food?”

“That’s right,” Lydie explained. “Before refrigeration, most everyone had them. Still,” she said speculatively, walking around the room’s perimeter. “It’s quite a large one. Larger than the building that’s on top of it now. Did you notice?”

Leigh had not. What she did notice now, and what shot a pang of angst straight through her heart, was a spot on the far wall that seemed to be missing something. Notably, a good bit of mortar.

She stepped closer and shone her flashlight directly on it.

“Ho there,” Lydie protested. “You’re leaving me in the dark, dear.”

“Sorry,” Leigh said, swinging the beam back into Lydie’s path until she joined Leigh at the wall. “But look at this. Someone has been chiseling the mortar around this rock.”

Lydie ran a finger in the groove to the left of the large, rectangular stone—the largest in the wall. Below the hole, on the dirt floor, lay a distinct pile of lighter-colored dust. “Indeed,” Lydie agreed. “But not just here. Look over that way.”

Leigh moved the beam across the wall and sighed. So much for thinking that their treasure hunters were actually honing in on their target. The mortar was chipped away in any number of places. One fist-sized stone near the stairs had been removed completely, then set back in. Leigh pulled it out and looked behind it, but there was nothing to see except more hard-packed, naturally rocky dirt, no different in texture or composition than the floor.

“You know, Aunt Lydie,” she said dispiritedly, “I don’t think anybody knows what the hell that map is pointing to. Including whomever is responsible for Archie’s disappearance.
If
the two things are even related.”

“You may be right,” Lydie said thoughtfully. “But just the same, I’d like to have another look at that map sometime, if you don’t mind.”

“Be my guest,” Leigh answered. “It’s back at the house.” She handed her flashlight to Lydie, then walked over to the dog’s water pails and emptied their remaining contents onto the ground. She then picked up the bag of food and set it on a hip, grabbed the empty pails with the opposite hand, and headed up the stairs.

Good riddance, creepy cellar,
she thought to herself, secretly hoping that the mother dog would not in fact return here, but would find herself another shelter nearby—something with a less unnerving aura.

No sooner had Leigh reached the top of the stairs than small fingers clasped the pail handles and tugged them out of her hand. “I’ll refill the buckets, Mom,” Allison said sweetly, turning away with haste and skipping toward the house.

Warren appeared a few seconds later, the other three children trailing behind him.

Leigh set down the bag and threw him a questioning glance. “How long did she—”

“Ninety seconds, give or take,” he said with remorse. “Sorry, I tried. She slipped over just as Lenna tripped on a rock and cried out.”

“Did Lenna really trip over a rock?”

Warren’s eyebrows arched. “I don’t think I want to know.”

“I’ll help her carry the water,” Lydie offered, handing Leigh back the flashlight and heading after Allison.

“Were either of you saying anything… hazardous?” Warren inquired.

Leigh thought back as she watched Allison reach the house and turn on the spigot. The other children were rapidly approaching from the opposite direction. “I don’t think so,” she answered. The conversation with her aunt, whatever its details, had certainly not enlightened
her
in any way. But with Allison, one never knew.

“No sign of the mother dog or puppies, Mom,” Ethan reported. “But Matt found a screw.”

Mathias grimaced. “Yeah. Another epic find. Next Christmas I’m asking for the kind that goes deeper. Like… eight, ten feet.
That
would be cool.”

“Ooh,” Lenna squealed. “Would that find bodies?”

Matt’s eyes met Ethan’s for only a second, but Leigh caught the tell.

Holy crap.
They
were
looking for Theodore!

“Metal detectors can’t find bodies, dork!” Mathias snapped. “They find
metal.”

Lenna’s blue eyes grew instantly apologetic. “Oh, right.”

“She knew that,” Ethan piped up quickly, grabbing Lenna by the elbow and urging her off toward Allison. “Let’s help with the water.”

In a blink, they were gone.

Mathias lifted his chin and stood his ground, looking uncannily like his self-assured, self-made father, Gil. “That girl says the dumbest things sometimes,” he lamented. “Using a metal detector to find a grave. Sheesh! You want me to put some of that food out by the woods, Aunt Leigh?”

Methinks thou doth protest too much.

Leigh picked up the food bowl that Lydie had brought from the cellar and handed it to him, along with the bag. “Sure,” she answered. “Go ahead and fill up the bowl, but bring the rest of the bag back. Otherwise the raccoons will clean us out.”

“Sure thing,” the boy answered, leaving his metal detector and heading off with pride.

Leigh’s eyes met her husband’s. “Did you see the look—”

“Oh, yeah,” he answered.

Leigh didn’t doubt his response. Warren always could read her mind. “What do you think the Pack were—”

He cut her off with a quick kiss and an arm around her shoulders. “Seriously, Leigh. Do you really want to know?”

She let out a long, tortured sigh—one that had undoubtedly been shared by countless parents of precocious tweens since the dawn of humankind.

“Hell, no,” she replied.

Chapter 13

The parade of people started walking back toward Leigh’s house along the creek, and Leigh was surprised when they reached the bridge at the Browns’ to see that Adith was not in attendance on the deck. She was even more surprised to see Harvey on the back lawn, walking slowly toward them and hailing her with an outstretched hand and a smile.