7 Never Haunt a Historian (2 page)

Leigh shook her head and kept walking. She had heard Archie talk about a lot of things, but politics wasn’t one of them. Which was probably a good thing.

She reached the front steps of the farmhouse. She steeled herself and started climbing.

Everything around her seemed perfectly, harmlessly normal. The farmhouse was old—as old as Cara’s, having been built shortly after the turn of the twentieth century when the Harmony Railroad Line began shuttling people in and out of nearby Pittsburgh at the amazing speed of sixty miles per hour. Cara’s house had been both lovingly and meticulously restored, but Archie’s ministrations had addressed only half of that equation. He kept saying that he was “fixing up the place.” But while Archie appeared to have a wide variety of vocations, including insurance salesman, high school teacher, Civil War reenactor, and sometime e-trader—a carpenter he was not.

Leigh gasped and jumped aside as a board under her foot made a cracking sound. She saw no damage, but she stepped carefully off the beaten path the rest of the way to the door. Falling through a rotting porch onto God only knew what lay beneath was not on her agenda this afternoon.

Neither was seeing a headless ghost. She was delivering a man’s mail. That was it.

She leaned over and laid the stack of envelopes and fliers neatly on the wrought-iron bench that sat under the front window, weighting them down with the arrow from a broken weathervane whose various pieces (including the rooster) now decorated Archie’s windowsill. The porch roof was wide; the papers would be at least as safe from the elements as they had been in the stuck-open mailbox.

Leigh’s eyes came to rest on the heavy wooden front door, its once-white paint peeling in sheets. She was virtually certain that Archie was not at home—and had not been at home for several days. But she should probably check, just to be sure.

Shouldn’t she?

She punched the sorry-looking doorbell. Its casing had fallen off, leaving wires exposed, but she could hear its muffled ring from inside.

She waited exactly ten seconds. Predictably, there was no response.

“Not home!” she said aloud, attempting to sound cheerful to herself. Perhaps Archie had left in a hurry, not knowing how long he would be gone. He could have left out several days’ worth of dog food, figuring he would return before it ran out.

Her lips twisted ruefully. To the owner of a corgi, the mere thought of such a plan was preposterous. Given an infinite supply of food, her Chewie would never move again. He would simply gorge himself into oblivion. When and if he regained consciousness, he would cheerfully repeat.

No, Archie was a helpful, gregarious man with many equally helpful, dog-loving friends. He absolutely would have asked someone to care for Wiley. And he probably would have called to check up on him as well.

On impulse, Leigh’s arm reached out. She put her hand on the metal doorknob and turned.

Her breath caught. The door was unlocked.

It creaked loudly on its hinges as she pushed it open barely an inch, then stopped. Surely Archie would lock up his house if he knew he were leaving?

“Archie?” she called uncertainly, throwing her voice through the crack. “It’s Leigh Koslow. Are you here?”

She put her ear closer. No hearty male voice answered her call. But she could definitely hear something. Professional voices, canned music.

The television was on.

“Mr. Pratt?” she called again, her voice squeaking like a child. “Are you all right?”

There was no reply.

Leigh’s heart pounded. It was no use pretending anymore. Archie Pratt couldn’t possibly have deserted his house, his truck, and his dog with no word to anyone, leaving his door unlocked and his television on. He must never have left at all.

Which meant he must still be here.

Had he injured himself somehow? Fallen down the stairs? Had a stroke? Could he be in bed with a bad case of flu?

“Mr. Pratt!” Leigh called again. Her hand on the knob shook a little.

No response. If Archie was ill, wouldn’t Wiley have stayed with him? The Pack said the dog went in his house and came right back out—that he didn’t want to be here.

Her hand pushed the door open another quarter inch, then stopped.

“Leigh Koslow!” she told herself sternly. “Get a grip on yourself. You are
not
cursed, do you hear me? It’s all in your mind!”

Of course. It was in her mind. And in the official files of the homicide division of the Allegheny County police department. The City of Pittsburgh’s homicide squad, too. Oh, and the state police. In law enforcement circles, the name Leigh Koslow was synonymous with one thing: bodies. It didn’t matter who or what killed them; it was Leigh who found them. Never mind that she didn’t want to, that she never even tried. Corpse echolocation was her cosmic destiny. For one happy decade while the twins were growing up, she thought she’d been given a reprieve. But this summer, it had started all over again.

“Archie?” she called, trying one more time.

Please. Just a groan. A moan. Anything.

Silence.

Leigh’s stomach churned. She tried not to be superstitious. Really, she did. But why, oh why, did
she
have to be the one checking up on Archie? Seriously, how good an idea was that?

I think he’s dead,
Scotty has whispered.

Did she have no concern for the poor man at all?

She closed her eyes and swore.

Chapter 2

“You’re being ridiculous!” Leigh’s cousin Cara proclaimed between heaving breaths. “Honestly, how silly!”

Leigh pushed her cousin forward another pace toward the farmhouse door. She was still trying to catch her own breath, after having rousted Cara from work in her home office—precious “adult” time they both considered inviolate ever since Leigh bought the house next door and the women had agreed to trade off child care. She steadied herself and planted both hands on her hips. “Archie Pratt is a genuinely nice person, and I happen to like him very much,” she defended hotly. “If my being ridiculous is what it takes to keep the man alive, then
fine
—call me ridiculous!”

Cara’s blue-green eyes rolled. “All right, all right,” she soothed. “I’ll go in first.”

“I’m staying here,” Leigh asserted, crossing her arms. “If you need me to call 911, just yell.”

Cara threw her cousin another exasperated look, but turned and put her hand on the knob. “Mr. Pratt?” she called, knocking briskly with her other hand. “It’s Cara March. Are you home?”

They waited. There was no response.

“It’s open,” Leigh reminded.

Without hesitation, Cara opened the door.

Leigh watched, heart pounding, as her cousin disappeared inside. “Mr. Pratt?” Cara called again.

Leigh’s ears strained to hear a response. All she heard was the television. Impatiently she moved forward to stand just outside the doorframe. “Cara?” she urged, “What is it? What do you see? Is he there?”

Her cousin, maddeningly, took her sweet time in answering. “He’s not here or in the kitchen. I’ll check his bedroom. I’m guessing it’s over here…” her voice trailed off.

Leigh turned and paced a bit. She gnawed on a fingernail. She checked her phone to make sure the battery was charged. She paused with one shaky finger hovering over the nine.

“Leigh?”

She jumped. Cara stood in the doorway. “Do you know if he used the upstairs?”

“I have no clue,” Leigh answered. “Did you see—”

Cara disappeared inside the house again.

Leigh groaned in frustration. She waited another minute, then moved slowly toward the open door. Cara had said Archie wasn’t in the front room, hadn’t she? Leigh crept forward and poked her head inside.

Her nose was met by the mingling aromas of must, dust, and burned coffee. The room was shabby and cluttered; about what she would expect for a middle-aged bachelor who was generally either puttering outside or away in his pickup. But the floor was a disaster, strewn liberally with the recognizable shreds of cardboard, paper, and plastic that had once sheathed snack crackers, boxed macaroni and cheese, dehydrated potatoes, and instant soup. Someone—and she had a pretty good idea who—had led a full-out assault on Archie’s food pantry.

Leigh jumped as she heard a banging noise from the back of the house. As if on cue, the culprit in question bounded in from the kitchen and danced around her ankles, his flailing paws scattering the litter in all directions. “Down, Wiley!” Leigh ordered, sensing the animal’s clearly telegraphed intentions of leaping onto her person. The lanky black mutt seemed to be some combination of Labrador and hound, but his attitude was all puppy. “Been a little hungry lately, have you?”

The dog continued to prance in circles around her as Leigh made her way through the front room to the kitchen. The farmhouse’s tired-looking vinyl floor was scratched, pitted, and buried even deeper in waste than was the front room. A small, box-shaped television sat on the countertop, hooked up to a digital converter box and tuned to a free local channel. The one small table was empty except for a single, quarter-full coffee mug; on the floor beneath lay an overturned glass, one fork, and the shards of a broken breakfast plate. The pantry door hung open, its former contents spilling out into the room like a cornucopia.

“He’s not in the house,” Cara announced, returning down a narrow staircase and joining Leigh in the kitchen. “I looked in every room.” Her eyes remained fixed on her cousin, even as she raised a practiced knee to forestall Wiley’s attempt at a crotch sniff. “And my guess would be that he either left in a hurry in response to some emergency, or else he didn’t intend to leave at all.”

Leigh drew in a shuddering breath. “He couldn’t be… you know…”

“Stuffed somewhere?” Cara finished without a blink. “No. I’ve looked in all the closets, under the beds, everywhere that would be feasible. It’s a small house; the attic door looks like it hasn’t been opened in years. Have you looked around outside? In the cellar?”

Leigh raised an eyebrow.

Cara let out a breath. “We’ll have to do it now, then. Did you see this?” She pointed to the kitchen countertop along the far wall. A well-used coffee maker sat with its glass carafe still on the warmer, stained brown and bone dry. The red brew light was on.

“Whatever was left has all evaporated,” Cara said soberly, wading through the trash to switch the machine off. “We’re lucky it didn’t start a fire.”

The women stood in silence a moment, looking at each other.

“I’d guess we’d better look around outside,” Leigh agreed.

The women proceeded out the back door and into the yard. With Leigh sticking close to—but always behind—her cousin, they systematically checked the farmhouse cellar, the detached garage (which was filled with so much junk it couldn’t possibly house any vehicle larger than a scooter), the skeletal shell of the old barn (which was empty except for several decades’ worth of bat guano), and the tool shed (whose notable lack of tools shed some light on Archie’s deficits as a carpenter). For all his hound blood, Wiley proved no help whatsoever; once they left the vicinity of the house his interest waned and he took off again in the direction of Leigh’s place. The women finished their sweep by walking along the creek and looking for any disturbances in the brush along the woods, but they saw nothing unusual. Archie’s truck wasn’t locked, but according to Cara his keys were in his bedroom, sitting on the dressing table alongside his wallet.

“I think you should call Maura,” Cara said when their search was complete. “Not that there’s any evidence of foul play exactly, but… well, maybe they can locate a family member who should know?”

Leigh nodded gravely. Maura Polanski might be her best friend since college, but the career policewoman, now a respected detective in line for promotion to Lieutenant, was less than enthusiastic about Leigh’s “abilities” in the field of homicide. More accurately, she had threatened that the next time Leigh’s name appeared in one of her investigative reports, it would be as the victim
of
said homicide, perpetuated by the detective herself.

Then again, Maura threatened a lot of things. And her bark was always worse than her bite. Besides, Archie’s situation was different. Wasn’t it?

“I’ll call her,” Leigh agreed as the women set off walking home along the creek. “But I’m not looking forward to it.”

Cara smiled. “Don’t be silly. You’re merely doing your neighborly duty, aren’t you? Besides—”

“Yoo hoo!” a loud, screechy voice called to them from the back of the Browns’ house. “You two come on up here and tell me what’s going on! What’re you looking for? Did the kids lose something?”

Leigh and Cara glanced up at the personal care home’s generous wooden deck, where an elderly woman in an athletic pantsuit stood hanging over the rail, supporting herself with one hand while holding a pair of high-powered binoculars in the other.

“Looks like we’re busted,” Cara whispered. “Maybe we should have been more discreet?”

Leigh shook her head. “Wouldn’t have mattered. Her crime sensing makes me look like an amateur.” She cupped both hands around her mouth. “We’ll be up in a minute, Mrs. Rhodis!”

The older woman leaned out even farther. “Say
what?”

“Oh dear,” Cara responded hastily, turning toward the house. “Let’s get up there before she vaults over the rail!”

Leigh hustled in kind. Sadly, her cousin was not exaggerating. Arthritis may have rendered the eighty-something-year-old Adith Rhodis barely able to walk, but her mind was still sharp as a tack—and more dangerously inquisitive than ever. The woman was so bored at being homebound that she could find intrigue in anything from a distant plume of smoke to a half-eaten box of breakfast cereal. And where there was no mystery to be found, she would happily create one.

“I saw you girls looking in the bushes out there!” Adith beamed when the two had finished climbing the steep wooden stairs that led up to the Browns’ back deck. “What are you after?”

Leigh smiled at her friend’s latest performance-ready, moisture-wicking warm up suit, this one in midnight blue with shiny white racing stripes. Adith had hung onto her prized collection of seventies-era polyester housedresses and pantsuits well into the new millennium, but after losing fifteen pounds to Emma Brown’s healthy cooking, her longstanding love affair with double-knit had been forced to evolve. Leigh had been as happy as anyone to see the retirement of the olive-green zippered dress and burnt orange skorts, but Adith’s new penchant for athletic-fit spandex did take some getting used to.