7 Never Haunt a Historian (6 page)

Frances’s lips drew into a frown. Levity in the face of calamity was not appreciated. “You know perfectly well what’s up!” she retorted, hands planted firmly on her hips. “A neighbor of yours has been violently abducted, snatched away from within inches of my own grandchildren, and not only do you take no steps whatsoever to protect them, but The Family is not even informed!”

Leigh blinked. She should have seen this coming. Whatever she and Warren hadn’t told Lydie last night, Mathias and Lenna undoubtedly had, and although Leigh’s aunt was the most unflappable of women, she had the tiresome habit of sharing absolutely everything with her twin sister.

Leigh cleared her throat. “First off, all we know is that Mr. Pratt is not at his house; we have no evidence that he was ‘abducted,’ violently or otherwise. Second, I called Maura last night and the police are investigating. Third, the children have been told in no uncertain terms that they are not allowed anywhere near Frog Hill Farm without supervision until further notice. And fourth, correct me if I’m wrong, but is there any member of the extended Morton clan who does
not
know this entire story already?”

Frances’ lips pursed, confirming that she had already called every relative on her speed dial, and probably half her address book as well. “Your Great Aunt Eliza didn’t pick up,” she answered tonelessly. “Which is a good thing, because she probably would have had another heart attack.”

Leigh sighed. “The situation is perfectly under control, Mom.” She did not bother to add the admonition “don’t worry,” as she had given up on that phrase in the eighties.

“And what exactly do you plan to do about the holes?” Frances persisted.

Leigh’s eyebrows rose. “What do you mean?”

“The children could step in them and twist an ankle!”

Metal keys were pressed into Leigh’s hand; she turned to see her father slipping surreptitiously back down the basement steps behind her.

“The holes have been filled in already,” she answered.

“Dirt settles.”

Leigh glanced at her watch. “Sorry, Mom. Gotta run. I… um… promised to bring home food. Wouldn’t want anyone to starve.”

Frances’ jaw tightened, and Leigh crowed internally. Her mother would, of course, assume that Leigh was referring to Warren. And as important as publicly lecturing one’s grown daughter on the propriety of family communication was, nothing trumped a wife’s duty to feed her (perfectly capable) husband.

Leigh smiled.

Frances glowered back. “We will continue this discussion later.”

“See you then!” Leigh said cheerfully, even as her feet took off at a jog. She reached her car, jumped in, started the engine, and pulled out on the street within seconds—half fearing to see Frances trailing behind her in the rear view mirror, holding out some cleaning implement. But her mother had disappeared, most likely down the clinic’s basement steps.

Godspeed to you too, Dad.

Warren was still on the mower, cutting a new symmetrical pattern into their already short, long-dead grass, when she returned home and headed out to Archie’s with the new bag of dog food and an extra pail loaded in the back of the kids’ old wagon. She took the short route along the creek and trundled as quickly as possible past the Brown’s house. If Mrs. Rhodis happened to be looking out the back, Leigh would have no hope of escaping detection. But mercifully for the neighborhood, the woman also watched a lot of television.

This time, Leigh got lucky. She made it all the way to Archie’s tool shed without seeing or hearing a soul. Although, she thought wistfully as she glanced at the still-unmoved truck, she would really,
really
liked to have seen Archie himself.

Less so the headless specter in the funky coat.

Stop that!
Leigh chastised as her coward’s heart began to race.
You didn’t see a thing.

She had questioned Warren late last night, asking him why he had left Ethan to bump into her in the dark while shining their flashlight into the woods. His response had been nonchalant: he’d heard leaves crackling, but saw nothing, so figured the sound came from a squirrel or a bird. Leigh had bitten her lip and stayed silent. No way was she ending such a day by making wild accusations about headless trespassers. Her rationality got questioned enough as it was, thank you very much, and although she did
not,
repeat
not,
believe in ghosts, anything one step away from a corpse was something worth avoiding.

She hadn’t seen a thing.

She parked the wagon behind the tool shed and pulled opened the cellar doors. The sound of happy squeals drifted up loud and clear, and she smiled. “Guess Mom’s milk has a little more punch to it this morning, eh?” She carried the bag down the stairs and set it on the floor. The mother dog did not growl, but watched her descent with an intent, hopeful look. As Leigh opened the top of the bag and scooped a heaping helping into the empty bowl, the dog’s thin white tail gave one shy, appreciative thump. “Progress,” Leigh said with a grin. “I bet you’re a very nice girl when you’re not defending your offspring with your life. But take some advice—stay away from the Wileys of the world. Men like that never commit.”

Leigh knew that the charming canine Casanova was, even as she spoke, unhappily being confined by Lester, who was worried that the hound might take off in search of his missing master. But she doubted that the new mother gave a hoot about Wiley, or any other handsome face. The dog had eyes only for her food.

“There you go. Breakfast! I’ll bring you some fresh water now, all right?” Leigh cajoled, rising to her feet.

The light in the basement went suddenly dim; a figure blocked the head of the staircase.

“Whatcha doing?” an overloud, taunting voice demanded.

Leigh tensed. Scotty O’Malley was quite possibly the last person in the world she would choose to have discovered the hidden den… headless ghosts included.

“Stay where you are,” she ordered. “This is—”

“Cool!!! Puppies!!!”

Scotty launched down the stairs three a time, coming to land at Leigh’s feet with a plop that send a cloud of dust into the air. “Can I have one? How big are they going to get?”

“Stop!” Leigh demanded, making a grab for him. “Don’t go any closer! She’s—”

But the boy paid no attention. Eluding her outstretched hand with ease, he barreled straight for the dog and litter, mouth open and fingers grasping.

He did not make it to the puppies. The mother dog was on her feet in an instant. Standing over her offspring with a wide-spaced stance, she snarled viciously and snapped her teeth in the air.

Scotty screamed at the top of his lungs, pitched back with his arms wheeling, and fell flat on his bottom. He let out a string of profanity (laced with liberal use of a certain four letter word which—in Leigh’s humble opinion—no eleven-year-old should be allowed to speak), clawed to his feet again and made a rush for the exit. He scrambled up the stone steps in double time, his high voice reverberating with each jerky motion until he disappeared through the hole above.

Leigh didn’t move. Despite herself, she was impressed. She couldn’t remember ever having heard anyone (standup comedians included) make such creative and frequent use of that particular word in such a short span of time. And the boy had been in motion, too.

Predictably, his absence lasted exactly five seconds. Then his pale face poked over the entryway again.

“You should watch your language,” Leigh chastised. “There are children present.”

“She’s a wild dog!” he accused, his voice still shaky.

“She’s only protecting her puppies,” Leigh defended. “See, she’s fine now.”

The mother dog had indeed lain down again, though she continued a low warning growl with an occasional lift of her lip in Scotty’s direction.

“You’ll have to stay out of here,” Leigh continued, not altogether anxious to disabuse the boy of his fear. “She needs complete quiet and solitude for at least another three weeks.” Leaving the resealed dog food bag on the floor, Leigh picked up the empty water pail and moved slowly up the stairs. When she reached the top, Scotty stepped back out of the way to let her pass.

“She bit me!” Scotty protested, trailing after Leigh as she carried both the old pail and the new one toward the tap at the side of Archie’s house. “I’ll tell my dad… and he’ll shoot her!”

Leigh restrained herself. “And I’ll tell your dad that I watched the whole thing, and that the dog didn’t get within a foot of you.” She could only hope that Scotty’s words were bluster, given that Joe O’Malley was well known for his devotion to the care and feeding of guns. “Just stay away from her and her puppies, and you’ll be fine,” she ordered.

Leigh turned on the tap and began to fill the first pail. She noticed that Scotty had stopped trailing her and was standing perfectly still about ten feet away. His eyes were scanning the area behind Archie’s house, his expression anxious. Leigh made an effort to relax her already taut nerves. She didn’t want to be anywhere near the corner of the garage where she had seen… nothing… but the dog needed fresh water and using the tap was a whole lot easier than hauling liquid all the way from her house. She finished one pail and started on the second. Scotty still hadn’t moved or spoken. The kid was creeping her out.

“There’s dead people here, you know,” he declared.

Leigh’s teeth gritted. How
did
the little twerp know exactly how to get to her?

“There is not!” she retorted, sounding no older than he was. Chagrinned, she cleared her throat and regrouped. “I told you yesterday, Mr. Pratt is not here. Nobody’s here. No humans, and definitely no ghosts.”

Scotty sucked air loudly through his crooked teeth. “Says you! Mr. Pratt said there is. He said Old Man Carr drowned to death right here in Snow Creek, and his ghost still haunts the place, because he was
murdered!”

Leigh had visions of the entire contents of her pail raining squarely over the urchin’s head, but she suppressed them. Her unfortunate personal history with the M word was not his fault.

“Mr. Pratt did not tell you that,” she argued calmly, despite the chill that seeped into her bones. “No one was murdered.”

Scotty frowned. “Well, they never knew for sure. So he could have been, for all you know. Face down in the crick, all bloated up and everything. He could have been there for
days.
Could have had an Indian arrow in his back… and the fish ate it out of him!”

Leigh took in a deep breath, then let it go. There were so many things wrong with that claim, she didn’t know where to begin. But she had to admit, the boy had her intrigued. Mr. Pratt had clearly told him
something.
Could it be important?

She bit. “Who was Old Man Carr, exactly? You mean the Civil War soldier?”

Scotty nodded with enthusiasm and took an unconscious step toward her. “He fought at Gettysburg. You know, the big battle where, like,
everybody
died! Except he didn’t, he was a hero, because he was one of the guys who nailed the rebel dude with the hat—right as he came over the wall.
Pow!”
The boy banged a fist into his palm with relish. “And then Carr, he comes here and builds that house right there,” he pointed to the building behind Leigh, “and then he turns into an old man and does boring stuff and all until somebody murdered him. And now he haunts the place, because he’s like
so
mad that no one treated him like a hero and everyone thought he was crazy when he was really just old and wanted to hide all his money so the government couldn’t get it!”

Leigh’s eyebrows rose. What Archie had actually told Scotty, God only knew. But the last part was definitely intriguing. “He hid his money?” she asked.

Scotty nodded. Then he seemed to reconsider. “Well, they say he was paranoid… you know, when you think everyone’s out to get you. But somebody
was
out to get him, else he wouldn’t have got murdered, would he? You think Mr. Pratt got murdered, too?”

Leigh suppressed a scream. She picked up the full buckets and began walking in earnest. It was broad daylight. There were no such things as ghosts. Archie Pratt was
not
dead and certainly had not been murdered. She could not legally strangle Scotty O’Malley no matter how much he irritated her. Furthermore, she had a dog to water.

“Are you scared of being murdered?” Scotty probed, following so close behind her that he clipped one of her heels. “I wouldn’t mind being murdered if it meant I could become a ghost. Then I could scare the—”

“Language!” Leigh barked.

Scotty snickered. He clipped her heel again. “I’d scare
everybody.
Just like the headless dude. But I’d be better at it. I wouldn’t just slink around empty buildings and stuff. I’d come after people. I’d show up right in their bedrooms… or their
bathrooms!”

Leigh reached the tool shed and set down the buckets with a slosh. “Don’t you have somewhere else you have to be?”

He shrugged. “Not really. Is Allison around?”

“No,”
Thank God.
“Where do you see these supposed ghosts?”

Leigh’s jaws tightened. She hadn’t intended to ask that.

Scotty cocked his head and rotated it around comically. “Like, everywhere back here. Tool shed. Garage. Behind the house. You name it, ghosts haunt it. Scared away all the other owners, didn’t you know? Or maybe they were murdered, too. I wouldn’t come out here at night if I were you!”

No worries.

“Later!” Without another word, much less any explanation, Scotty took off at a run. He reached the creek and halfway attempted to jump over, instead landing squarely in the middle of it. Leigh could hear him cackling with laughter as he splashed. “Maybe there’s a body in here right now!” he yelled cheerfully. “Yo, fish! Did you eat the head off?”

Praying for forbearance, Leigh picked up the buckets once more and headed down the cellar steps. The kid was a loony. She should pay no attention to anything he said.

They say he was paranoid… wanted to hide all his money…