7 Never Haunt a Historian (11 page)

“For nearly two years!” Adith crowed. “In fact, they were the first owners after the soldier ghost’s family sold it off!”

Allison slid off her chair and popped up at Leigh’s elbow. “Can I go with you, Mom?”

Leigh tensed. “I didn’t say we were going anywhere, and besides—”

“Aw, let her come along!” Adith interceded. “Dora’s in assisted living, and you know how old people love to see young ones about. She’d be doing a service! What’s the harm?”

Allison blinked her dark, whip-smart eyes up at her mother. “It’s okay if you think I shouldn’t,” she said cooperatively. “I’m sure I’ll be fine here at home… all alone.”

***

Leigh sighed internally as she helped Adith buckle into the front seat of the van. She wasn’t sure what this visit was supposed to accomplish, but she wasn’t going to get Archie any closer to home by sitting around her house worrying, either. Why not help two bored elderly ladies amuse each other for an hour?

Allison slipped into the back seat, paperback in hand. Leigh studied her daughter curiously. Her jean shorts, tee shirt, and flip flops had been replaced with tan crop pants, a lacy white blouse, dress sandals, and a large, pale blue hair bow.

“What’s up with the do?” Leigh couldn’t help but inquire. The clothing upgrade she appreciated, but her daughter had not voluntarily tied a bow in her hair since she was seven.

Allison gave a shrug. “Old people like bows.”

The ride to the assisted living facility was just long enough for Adith to give a full report on her own exciting afternoon, which had included eavesdropping on the reenactors as they made their final reports to Lester. “None of them found a gun, or a ransom note, or anything really good,” she lamented. “One of them found a baseball cap they didn’t think was Archie’s, but it looked like it had been wherever they found it a whole lot longer than a week, so that didn’t amount to much. Everything else they found on the ground outside was stuff Arch probably dropped—some coins, a grocery receipt, a pen. Nobody thought it looked like he was planning to leave. More like he was
spirited
off… if you ask me.”

“Did anyone mention the state of the house?” Leigh asked, thinking of the conversation she had overheard.

“Oh my, yes,” Adith replied. “Lester got real upset about that. They said it was all tore up, and they couldn’t figure out what Arch was doing. Well, Lester, he’s so protective you know, he told them Arch was redoing the place, but he just wasn’t all that good at it, and besides, he didn’t have the time to fix everything. Got him so agitated it started a nasty coughing fit, that did!”

I’ll bet,
Leigh thought uncomfortably.

“He didn’t like it when a couple of them made a big deal out of the holes in the yard, either. Lester, he told them that Wiley liked to dig and it was nobody’s business if Arch didn’t mind his own dog digging on his own property! Though why he’d get his britches in a knot over that I can’t imagine, seeing as how many times he’s cursed that dog for digging in his tomatoes!”

Leigh bit her lip. Adith obviously wasn’t aware of the whole treasure-hunting scenario, which meant that Harvey had deliberately kept his mouth shut about Leigh’s earlier conversation with him. Lester was practically making himself apoplectic with zeal to protect the secret. Even Allison was sitting quietly as a mouse, saying nothing… although for her, that was status quo. The child had a one-way data valve.

Leigh’s sense of fairness warred with her better judgment. She was no big fan of secrets, particularly crime-related ones. Getting them out in the open was often the best way to render them innocuous. On the other hand, when talking about one Adith Rhodis, a little information could most definitely be a dangerous thing.

She decided to keep her own mouth shut too, at least for now. Adith could—and no doubt would—harass her about the omission later.

Within half an hour they were ensconced in the second-floor end unit of Dora Klinger, who seemed more than delighted to settle them into her olive green Victorian wingback chairs and treat them to a bowl of hard candy that looked like it had survived the Great Depression. Allison and Adith both managed to politely take a piece, but every lump Leigh attempted to extract was permanently affixed to the mother lode.

“I couldn’t believe it when Adith called,” Dora exclaimed as she lowered herself into a mechanized lift chair. Well-preserved for her age, with an unruly tuft of thick, snow-white hair covering her head like a mop, Dora’s animated eyes gave the impression of one tough cookie. Her long limbs suggested she was once a tall woman, but her stature was now reduced by the prominent hunch in her back. Getting around even this small, one-room apartment was probably an ordeal for her, yet she had insisted on rising to meet them and ushering them in. “I do love meeting people from the old neighborhood, but I wish it was under better circumstances. To think that Mr. Pratt has disappeared! I never liked living at that farm, myself. Always had my suspicions about it. But hearing this from Adith now, and thinking back to what I saw back then… it gives me gooseflesh!”

Adith leaned forward in her chair, eyes bugging. “Ooh, tell us all about it! You thought the place was haunted, didn’t you?”

“Every place is haunted,” Dora responded knowledgably. “It’s only a matter of whether the spirits are friendly or not.”

Leigh restrained her eyes from rolling. Why exactly was she here?

“Excuse me, Mrs. Klinger,” Allison said politely. “When did you live at Frog Hill Farm?”

Dora’s dark eyes rested on the girl with a smile. “Why, many years ago, child. My husband and I bought the farm back in 1958, when the houses you ladies live in were just being built. Five acres, a couple of outbuildings, and a crumbling wreck of a farmhouse—that’s what we got. I didn’t care for it from the beginning, what with the bridge and the flooding and all, but Bert—that was my husband—he liked his privacy, and we couldn’t afford much else, so there we were. Little did we know!”

“You bought the farm from Theodore Carr’s son?” Allison asked.

Leigh tensed.
How did Allison know—.
She stopped herself with a head shake. Any question beginning with that phrase was better left unanswered.

Dora beamed. “What a clever child you are!” she praised. “And such a pretty bow!”

Allison slid her eyes toward her mother and smiled smugly.

Saints preserve us,
Leigh thought, borrowing a quote from her own mother. Most ten and a half year-old girls would be embarrassed to use their small size to their advantage, but Allison had the ruse down to a science. Both twins had both been born prematurely, but while Ethan came out ready to roll, Allison had required four agonizing weeks in the neonatal intensive care unit and had always been the smallest child in her grade. Nevertheless, blessed (or cursed, depending on your perspective) with her grandfather Koslow’s ageless visage, Allison could—with a flip of her short hair this way or that, or an adjustment in clothing, posture, or eye wear—pose for any age between six and twenty. At present, she was shooting for “young, innocent, and adorable.”

At least two of them were true.

“We bought the farm from a man named Trout,” Dora answered. “But he wasn’t the son of the soldier, he was the grandson, a nephew to the man who had just died. Mr. Trout was trying to sell off and settle everything. He gave us a good price because of the shape it was in… while his uncle was still alive it had been let out as a rental, and it was all run down. Of course, we didn’t know then why none of the renters would stay in it!”

“Well, I can tell you that right now,” Adith chortled. “Spooks! The place is crawling with them. My Pansy knew it from the beginning, that’s why she always turns her head to the left and sniffs when she’s on the deck. Never to the right, mind you.
Always
to the left!”

Dora threw Adith a derisive glance, and Leigh hid a grin. It looked like Dora had heard all about Adith’s clairvoyant poodle over the phone already. It also appeared that even among believers, some paranormal claims were deemed more legitimate than others. “Yes,” Dora drawled critically, “
Well.
In any event, the renters didn’t last. And no sooner had the ink dried on our deed than we started hearing the stories.”

Adith leaned forward further.

“There were rumors, you see, that the man who’d lived on the farm for the last fifty years, Tom Carr, had murdered his own father. That was supposed to have happened way back in the twenties, but the neighborhood was still abuzz about it, because Tom was a loner and everybody thought he was touched in the head. Nobody visited the farm; people didn’t let their kids play anywhere near it. Getting the man into a nursing home was a terrible mess, I heard. Nephew had to go through the state and get him committed or some such. Bert and I knew all that when we bought the place, but Bert, he never had the ESP, not even a touch, so it didn’t bother him. Me, I was leery from the beginning.” Her voice dropped to a whisper. “When bad things happen in a place, bad energy
lingers.
”

“Oooh,” Adith crooned. “Ain’t it so, ain’t it so! Can I use your bathroom?”

Dora cocked one thin eyebrow, then waved a hand dismissively. “Of course, of course. Help yourself. Now, as I was saying…” she faltered.

“You were telling us about Theodore Carr’s son,” Allison prompted sweetly. “And the rumors about him? Strange things he did, maybe?”

“Yes,” Dora continued, granting Allison an indulgent smile. “Tom was a queer bird. They said he was unfriendly even before his father died, and afterward, he became a recluse. Most likely, his father’s vengeful spirit was what drove him to madness. Now Tom, he didn’t die at the farm. But unlike what some may tell you, a spirit
can
travel, if they’ve got a mind to.”

Leigh stiffened. Over Dora’s shoulder, she could see Adith prowling around in the bathroom, first popping open the vanity and now peering into her hostess’s medicine cabinet. She tried to catch Adith’s eye with a glare, but as Leigh was directly in Dora’s line of sight and Adith was paying no attention, a discreet reprimand was impossible.

“And from the moment I stepped foot on that farm,” Dora continued, “I sensed not one, but two centers of energy… and both were as vile and hostile as anything I’d ever felt before!”

Leigh’s cheeks flared red. Adith was pulling pill bottles off the shelves, unscrewing the lids, looking inside…

“Of course the nephew, Mr. Trout, he was the nicest man you’d ever meet,” Dora digressed. “He knew his uncle had problems, and he seemed to feel pretty bad about the way things had gotten with the neighbors. Once he took control out there, he did what he could to get the place put right. But some things you can’t just pick up and haul away on a truck. And
evil
is one of them.”

Leigh squirmed in her chair, trying to catch Adith’s attention, but the woman was oblivious.

“Do you know if either of the Carrs left a journal or… anything like that?” Allison asked.

Dora’s lips twisted in thought. “I don’t remember Mr. Trout mentioning such a thing, but we wouldn’t know—I’m sure he removed all his relatives’ personal property when his uncle went in the home, before the renters moved in. Why would you ask?”

Leigh breathed a sigh of relief as Adith at last exited the bathroom.

“Theodore Carr led a really interesting life, being a Union soldier and all,” Allison answered. “I like local history. I’m reading
A History of the Harmony Line
right now.”

Dora’s wrinkled face beamed. “Why, how nice! I used to walk down the creek and pick blackberries along where the tracks used to be. I remember one time…”

Leigh tuned out as, instead of returning to her seat, Adith took a U-turn into the bedroom area. With Dora’s attention temporarily turned to Allison, Leigh frantically gestured for Adith to cease and desist, but the older woman merely grinned at her and proceeded to examine the contents of a chest of drawers.

“Well, he buried his father’s body right there on the property, you know,” Dora was saying as Leigh tuned back in. “You could do that back then if you wanted—no law against it. Just have to mark it clearly and tell people when you sell.”

Leigh’s attention shifted back to Dora. “Theodore Carr is
buried
at Frog Hill Farm?”

“Of course,” Dora responded. “Hasn’t anyone seen the stone? It was downstream from the house a ways, by a little willow tree, near the edge of the woods.”

“But there isn’t any gravestone!” Allison interjected. “I’m sure there’s not. We would have seen it.”

Dora shrugged. “Well, it was just a little flat thing. Probably got moved.”

But did Theodore?
Leigh thought grimly. The thought of an unmarked grave on the property was disturbing. Surely
that
wasn’t what the map led to?

But if the “treasure” was buried with his body…

Leigh fought a shiver.

“Is that why people thought it was haunted?” Allison asked. “Something to do with the grave?”

“Oh no,” Dora said defensively. “It was much more than that. Lots of farms have family graveyards. But an evil presence… that’s something else. There are signs. Clear signs, if you’re able to read them. And I can. Floating lights in the wee hours… those are the orbs, you know.
Harbingers.
”

“Ooh! I love orbs!” Adith exclaimed, pausing in her analysis of the top drawer to retrieve a brassiere she’d sent dangling over the side. “I’ve seen ’em myself, out by the creek!”

Dora did not appear to hear the voice coming from directly behind her, which under the circumstances was fortunate.

“I know a boy who sees floating lights,” Allison said quickly, seemingly as anxious as her mother to distract attention from Adith. “I always thought they were probably just fireflies. Or maybe somebody with a flashlight.”

Dora’s lips turned down into a scowl. “Now don’t be a cynic, my dear. You sound just like my Bert. Flashlights, indeed. They may look indistinguishable from ordinary lights, but when you have The Sight, you know. You can
feel
it.”