7 Never Haunt a Historian (26 page)

Emma ran a hand through hair that was now half up in a bun, half down over her neck, attempted briefly to correct it, then gave up. “I think you’re right,” she agreed. “He’s been acting so strange lately. Almost paranoid. I should have asked him about it, but with everything that’s been going on with Lester—”

“Don’t blame yourself,” Leigh commanded as moisture welled up in Emma’s eyes. “We’ll find him. But we need the police. None of us can go out searching right now. It isn’t safe.”

“Amen to that!” Adith added.

Emma nodded. “I’ll call 911 right now. Unless you want me to call your—”

“No,” Leigh insisted. “You’re right. Call 911 and get an officer out as soon as possible.”
Any
officer, she thought to herself.

As Emma headed to the sitting room to pick up the phone, Adith grabbed Leigh’s elbow and steered her—rather painfully—through Harvey’s open doorway and into his room. “I looked on his desk already,” Adith bragged, “and in his closet. His desk looks like he’s cleaned it up. Almost like he was hiding something!”

Leigh cast a glance at the giant mahogany writing desk, which was indeed clear of folders, loose papers, and most anything else that would give evidence to what Harvey had been doing. Even the books he’d had out before were all back on their shelves.

“He doesn’t even own a coat,” Adith mentioned as she rummaged through the clothes in his closet. “Whenever he does go out, Emma makes him take one of Lester’s. But he’s not wearing it now. He wore it to the library—but he left it on the bed. See?”

Leigh did see. It certainly did not appear as though Harvey had prepared for a lengthy stroll on a stormy night. But it did appear as if he had prepared for something. “Have you ever seen his desk as clean as this?”

Adith shook her head emphatically. “Never! What do you make of it?”

Leigh’s eyes roved the room, coming to rest on the small trash can by the side of Harvey’s chair.

“Oh, I already went through that,” Adith said dismissively. “It was full of scribbled notes yesterday, but it got emptied before… Well, all that’s in it now is some tissues. That’s what you usually find in Harvey’s trash. Scribbled notes and tissues. Every once in a while a bandage wrapper or a toothpick. But those usually wind up in the bathroom.”

How Adith knew these things, Leigh chose not to ask. But as she looked closer into the trash can, a flash of white just beyond it caught her eye. She reached down and picked up a small piece of notepaper, well crumpled, that had evidently missed its mark.

“Ooh!” Adith cooed. “I didn’t see that! What does it say?”

Leigh unfolded the small square. It was covered with large, childlike printing, awkward and difficult to read. Three lines crossed the paper.

Have what you want

Will sell cheap

Meet me at dusk at Archie’s

Leigh’s breath caught in her throat. Behind her shoulder came a gasp.

“Ooh, Lordy!” Adith crooned. “I knew it! I knew something was up with that man! Who could it be from? How could he fall for something like that? Why would he go? Oh, mercy! They’ve lured him! Lured him just like Archie and Lester!”

Outside in the sitting room, Leigh could barely hear Emma’s frantic call to the police over the omnipresent buzz of Pauline’s television. “This isn’t good,” Leigh muttered unnecessarily. “Not good at all.” A look out of Harvey’s window confirmed the worst. The wind was howling, the rain was pelting, and dusk would almost certainly be setting in for real…
right about now.

Leigh stared again at the note, trying to make sense of it. Where and how had Harvey received it? Had it been sent directly to him… or was it intended for somebody else?

Emma appeared in the doorway, her face drained. “The police are on their way,” she announced. “I’m not sure they understood what I was saying about Archie and Lester and everything… but they’re coming.”

“Well, praise the Lord!” Adith said heavily, dropping into Harvey’s chair.

A thought struck Leigh. “Where is Gimli?” she asked. “Has anybody seen him?”

Both women’s eyes searched the room. “I’m sure he’s here somewhere,” Emma insisted. “Poor creature can barely stir himself to get to the litter box and back.”

Adith’s expression turned suddenly intent. “Fat old thing don’t even get to the sitting room. He’s always in here.”

Leigh’s phone buzzed with a text. She clenched her teeth and pulled it out. It could be Maura, after all. But it was not. It was Frances.

OH MY LORD! ALLISON HAS DISAPPEARED! SH

The text cut off. The phone buzzed immediately with another.

SHE’S RUN OFF TO THAT CELLAR!!!

Leigh’s body flashed with heat. Her pulse pounded in her veins. She dialed her mother’s number and Frances picked up immediately.

“She’s gone!!!” Frances screeched. “They were talking about how to find that silly rock, and we had just put the casserole in and then the other children came down and she wasn’t with them and they said they’d just seen her five minutes ago but now she’s gone and I just
know
she sneaked out with that silly map to see if—”

Leigh didn’t hear anymore. She stuffed the phone into her pocket and the crumpled note into Emma’s hands. Then she ran out the front door into the storm.

***

Allison can’t be in the cellar,
Leigh told herself as she ran.
She just can’t.
Leigh’s orders had been too explicit. Allison was smart; she wouldn’t go against them unless it was a matter of life and death…

What was the girl thinking?!

Leigh’s eyes roved the generous slope of grass—now mud—that stretched between the Brown’s back yard and Cara’s place. If she hurried, maybe she could cut Allison off before she reached the cellar. Frances said she had been gone less than five minutes…

Sheets of rain pelted Leigh’s face and eyes, making it difficult to see. She ran toward the creek bridge, stopping every few feet to scan the landscape for movement. Would Allison run across the open space, or would she make her way through the trees on the hill to be less visible? Leigh looked up into the woods, but visibility in that direction was even worse. The trees swayed and bowed in the wind; leaves not yet ready to fall were giving up and doing it anyway. A crack of thunder sounded.

Allison could
not
be out here. Had the child lost her mind?

Leigh reached the creek bridge. If Allison had come from Cara’s house, she would not need to cross it to get to the cellar, because Snow Creek Farm, like Frog Hill, was on the far side of the creek from the road. But even if Allison had come through the trees, she could not get to the cellar itself without sprinting the last hundred feet in the open.

Leigh saw something. She started to cry out—then stopped. Whatever she had seen moving in the woods directly behind her, it wasn’t Allison. It had been twice as tall.

She could have sworn it was a man. A man who, upon her notice of him, had ducked behind a tree.

Stay calm,
she begged herself.
The police are already on their way.
She made no movement, but stood her ground. Her eyes were fixed on the tree, but the figure did not reappear. Had she imagined it?

She wished.

A vicious wave of chill bumps swept up her spine. Her clothes were soaked. Wet bangs drooped down over her eyes; her socks squished in her shoes. And clearly, she was not alone. But none of that mattered. All that mattered was stopping Allison from coming any closer.

She decided to go for broke. “Allison!” she called, cupping her hands and shouting against the wind. “Allison! Can you hear me?”

There was no response. The wind grew more forceful, whipping her wet shirt around her waist and flapping the hem of her capris at her calves.

It was no use. Allison could be fifty yards away and not hear her.

Leigh ran briefly in the direction of Cara’s farm, scanning the creek bed as far as she could see. There was no one. Had she already missed Allison?

Her jaws clenched. She turned, ran back to the bridge, and crossed it. Beneath her feet, the creek was already swelling. Were she not already soaked to the bone, its fast-moving depths might have looked threatening, but the swirling brown eddies hardly registered in her mind. She ran on until the tool shed was in her sights, and she kept running until she had surveyed every possible angle of approach to it.

She did not see Allison anywhere. If Leigh had been too late to intercept her by the creek, or if Allison had slipped behind her mother through the woods, she could already be in the cellar by now.

Meet me at dusk at Archie’s.

Leigh’s eyes fixed on the cellar’s wooden doors. They were closed. Her heart pounded.

She made another scan of the landscape around her. A flash of movement caught her eye, and her heart tipped into palpitation.
Another man.
Someone equally tall, ducking quickly behind the corner of the barn.

If she was not soaking wet, completely terrified, half-blind from rain and the other half from hysteria, she could have sworn she’d seen a Union soldier.

She drew in a breath, braced her spine, and clenched her teeth tight.

Whatever!

An entire forest of ghosts, real or imitation, could surround Frog Hill Farm and she wouldn’t give a fig—all that mattered was getting her daughter the hell out of that cellar. The police should be arriving at the Brown’s any moment now, and Adith and Emma would send them straight out. All she had to do was find Allison and keep the girl with her…

Leigh’s eyes fixed on the cellar doors. Her lids narrowed and her hands balled into fists. Stupid hole was not going to defeat her. She was going back in the damned place one more time and that was it.

Throwing any thoughts of careful entry to the wind, Leigh threw open the cellar doors and rushed down the steps like a charging infantryman. “Allison Harmon!” she shouted, none too affectionately, “You get yourself back—”

Leigh stopped at the bottom of the stairs and blinked. The cellar was dark. But at least the rain had stopped pelting her. And she could see well enough to know that at least on the near side of the cellar, there was nothing to see.

“Allison?” she said again, this time in a whisper. “Are you here?”

She could not see into far corners where the dim light from the stairway failed to penetrate. And of course, she had no flashlight.

Oh, to hell with it!

Launching herself forward like a child playing airplane, Leigh extended her arms and ran a blind sweep around the far corner of the cellar. In three seconds, she was back where she started. She had seen nothing, felt nothing. Neither along the walls or under her feet.

Allison wasn’t here.

Leigh thought no more. She put her feet into gear and charged up the stairs with the same speed she’d used coming down them. Just let somebody try to stop her now.

When in an instant she found herself safely above ground again, with the rain and the wind pelting her anew, she had to admit a certain surprise. She cast a glance at the still-open cellar doors and allowed herself a smirk.

You lose.

Once again, she scanned the landscape around her. It was growing darker, and fast. In a mere ten minutes there would be no light at all.

Knowing that Allison was not in the cellar was some relief. But it was hardly enough. If Allison hadn’t gone into the cellar, where had she gone? What if she had reached it while Leigh was still looking downstream, and what if she had run into—

No.
Leigh couldn’t think that way. She just had to find her.

Lightning flashed. In the sudden burst of illumination Leigh could see a figure moving across the bridge. Not Allison… but someone. Someone who was walking straight toward her.

In a heartbeat, Leigh weighed her options. Then she moved slowly out from the corner of the shed and placed herself in a clearing that was within full view of both the approaching figure and—God willing—Adith Rhodis’s trusty binoculars. To her surprise, the slightly bent figure kept coming toward her. Not hurriedly. Not aggressively. But as if, for all the world, he or she were merely out for a stroll.

When the figure got to within twenty feet of her, another convenient stroke of lightning showed his face.

“Derrick?” Leigh exclaimed with disbelief as they approached each other. He was wearing dress slacks, business loafers, and a cardigan sweater—all of which were thoroughly waterlogged. His hands appeared to be empty, but his limbs were taut, as if he were prepared for flight. “What are you doing out here?” she asked.

Derrick looked at her quizzically, twitching his nose as if he were about to sneeze. The resemblance to a rodent was comical. “What are
you
doing here?” he returned anxiously.

Leigh considered. It was a fair question. “I’m looking for my daughter,” she answered. “She ran out of the house and I can’t find her. Have you seen her?”

For all his obvious nervousness, the small man looked slightly relieved. “No, I haven’t. Sorry. But it’s hard to see much on a night like this. Why did she run out?”

Leigh’s mind turned somersaults of confusion. Why Derrick was here, she didn’t know, but he showed no signs of intending any harm. If anything, the man looked frightened of
her.
“I’m not sure why,” she answered. “Have you seen Harvey?”

Derrick’s eyebrows rose, then knit together again in puzzlement. “No, I… is he missing, too?”

“Maybe,” Leigh answered, marveling at the absurdity of a conversation held by two people both equally determined to pretend that having a casual conversation in the middle of a driving rainstorm was an ordinary thing to do. “And why were you out here, again?” she queried.

Derrick’s nose gave another twitch. “I just needed some air.”

Leigh tried to think of an appropriate response to that. She failed.

“Well, I guess I’ll be getting back now,” he said awkwardly. “I hope you find your daughter. It’s a nasty night.”

Leigh nodded. “Yes, it is. Thank you.”

Derrick returned her nod, gave a little wave, made an abrupt about-face, and headed back toward the bridge. Leigh watched him a moment, flummoxed. Then her fear set back in.