by Edie Claire
Maura’s gaze fell on the O’Malley’s house. “Did you ask the nearest neighbors?”
Remembering her unpleasant conversation with Scotty earlier, Leigh frowned. “Well, yes and no.”
Leigh described the exchange, explaining also the pile of mail on Archie’s bench. “We tried not to mess with anything inside,” she found herself saying as the detective walked carefully across the creaky porch and opened the front door. “But we didn’t think of it as being a crime scene. I mean… it’s not a crime scene. Right?”
Maura stepped inside the front room and closed the door behind her.
Leigh moved away and began to drum her fingers on the wooden porch railing. She started to lean against it, but when the whole structure wobbled, she drew back. What had Archie been doing to “fix up” the house all these years? According to Cara, he had moved in eight years ago. From what Leigh had seen earlier, he certainly hadn’t spent that time obsessing over interior design. Some seemingly random spots in the house had been missing drywall, exposing bare insulation.
After what seemed an eternity, Leigh heard a door slam. She walked around to the back of the house and encountered Maura gazing out over the various outbuildings with a scowl. “Doesn’t look good, Koslow,” she commented, her voice flat. “Was the coffee maker on when you and Cara got here?”
Leigh nodded, impressed by the detective’s nose for detail. “And the television.”
Maura’s eyes met hers. She let out a sigh. “I’ll let the guys know; they’ll send somebody out. But this isn’t my area, as you know. It’s General Investigations. And I’ve got to be honest with you—without any clear signs of foul play, and when you’re dealing with someone who’s of sound mind, a missing adult isn’t going to get top priority.”
“I see.” Leigh studied her friend carefully, her own frown deepening. Maura was never in the best of moods on the all-too-frequent occasions when Leigh summoned her on “official business.” But today, something else was amiss. Maura’s baby blue eyes were bloodshot, with puffy lids and dark circles below. Her complexion seemed blotched and uneven, and although her broad shoulders often slumped when she was relaxed, her posture today seemed uncharacteristically weary.
“Maura, are you feeling all right?” Leigh asked tentatively. “You look… really tired.”
Maura’s eyes avoided hers. “Yeah,” she confirmed. “I am a little behind on sleep.”
“Is there—”
“I’m going to walk around and check out the grounds before I go,” Maura interrupted, turning away. “I’ll meet you back here in ten if you want a ride home.”
Leigh shut her mouth. Within seconds Maura had disappeared around the corner of the garage.
Fretting anew, Leigh decided to give her friend some space. She wandered off in the direction of the tool shed and sank down on its front step. Archie’s unexpected disappearance was disturbing enough. But a somber, tired-looking Maura Polanski who had been in Leigh’s presence for more than twenty minutes without once either blowing her top or cracking some sarcastic joke was not the Maura Polanski she knew and loved. What could possibly be the matter?
An odd sound met Leigh’s ears, and her eyebrows lifted. She was certain she had heard it—a very high-pitched murmuring squeal, familiar, yet out of place. She was silent a moment, listening. Then she heard it again. It seemed to be coming from below.
She stood up and looked down. There was nothing below. The step she was sitting on was a concrete block. She opened the door to the tool shed and stepped inside. It looked exactly as it had earlier in the afternoon—barren, dusty, and unused. The sounds had disappeared.
Leigh let out a frustrated breath and returned to her step. Her mind was going. Period. Maura wasn’t the only one behind on sleep—she herself hadn’t gotten eight hours straight in at least a week. She owed that to the crackpot who ran Rinnamon Industries, with whom her advertising agency had so foolishly embroiled itself, despite knowing his reputation. The man went through advertising firms like she went through leftover Halloween candy, chewing up copywriters as fast as their proposals could be wadded up and hefted into the nearest trashcan. He had turned down six of her ideas so far… she had been working on the seventh when she had fallen asleep in her hammock this afternoon. Which would never have happened if she hadn’t already sat up half the night trying yet again to make pottery crocks sound “traditional, reliable, and sensational” at the same time.
Her left temple began to throb.
No sooner had Leigh closed her eyes than the high-pitched squeaks started up again. This time she rose and attempted to follow the sound. It seemed to stay with her as she rounded the corner of the shed, but she saw only a primitive stone and clay-chink foundation covered with sprawling weeds. As she moved around the next corner, however, her gaze halted. Midway along the back wall lay a set of slanted wooden doors, one loose on its hinges and hanging askew, both half covered by the overhanging bushes.
“A cellar?” she mumbled out loud, suddenly embarrassed that neither she nor Cara had recognized the rotting planks for what they were when they had walked this way earlier. But in their defense, they had been distracted by what had looked like a trampled spot in the weeds nearby, and besides—who would expect to find a cellar under a tool shed? But a cellar door it definitely was, and the foundation under the building, she realized, was very old. Much older, in fact, than the wooden structure built atop it.
She moved closer to the doors. The squeals grew louder.
Her pulse rate increased. She knew that sound. But what was it?
Her hand moved to the door that hung askew. It was barely connected to the doorframe, hanging by a single screw anchoring one rusty hinge. A quarter of the original door was gone entirely, rotted off to leave a sizable hole.
She started to pull the door to the side. Then she stopped.
“Maura?” she called feebly. The detective was nowhere in sight.
Leigh cursed under her breath. Should she… or shouldn’t she? The sounds she heard weren’t particularly frightening. In fact, for some odd reason they made her think of—
At last, a light bulb flashed in her weary brain.
She grabbed the doors with both hands and lifted them open.
The dim light of early evening shone through the opening, illuminating little more than the top few of a flight of stone steps leading away beneath. But the fierce growling that now echoed upward confirmed Leigh’s suspicions.
“What you got, Koslow?” asked Maura, who had appeared behind Leigh’s right shoulder.
Leigh turned around and held out a hand. “Do you have a flashlight on you?”
Maura reached down and unclipped the mini LED attached to her belt. “Be careful,” she said, handing it over. “Sounds like you’re not too welcome down there.”
“You think?” Leigh flipped on the light and leaned down into the opening. She cast the bright white beam down the empty stairs and then swept the space beyond.
From the floor of the stone cellar, in the midst of what appeared to be a pile of rags, gleamed two bright eyes and a set of sharp white teeth. The growling intensified.
“It’s all right,” Leigh soothed, making no move to go closer.
Maura leaned in for a look of her own as Leigh swept the light beam over a medium-sized white and brown spotted mongrel. The dog looked pitifully thin and wore no collar. At least half a dozen newborn pups wriggled at her side, squeaking and squealing like a symphony.
“Is this Mr. Pratt’s dog?” Maura asked.
“No,” Leigh replied, her eyes perusing the uniformly black pups. “But under the circumstances, I’d say she has a pretty good case for child support.”
The mother dog’s growls turned to a snarl. She sprang to her feet, dislodging the unhappy pups and causing a cacophony of even louder squeals.
Leigh shut off the beam, and the women backed away.
“You didn’t see anything else down there, did you?” Maura asked as she stood up.<
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“It was pretty dim, but there was no sign of Archie—or any other human—if that’s what you mean,” Leigh answered as she replaced the door, leaving an opening equal to what had been there before.
“How long do you think the dog’s been down there?”
Leigh considered. “Less than a week, for sure. Probably only a day or so. The pups were tiny.”
Maura blew out a breath. “Well, we’ll leave the animal control to you and the shelter. I can’t see that the new arrivals have any bearing on Mr. Pratt’s disappearance.”
“No,” Leigh agreed. “That door has been rotted away for a while. The dog was probably sniffing around for a sheltered place to have the pups and just wandered in.” Something incongruous pricked at the back of her mind, but she couldn’t seem to identify it. “I’ll bring some food and water over for her; she must be starving. But we shouldn’t try to move her right now. Can you tell the officers—”
“I’ll make them aware,” Maura replied, her voice sounding tired again as she set off toward her car. “You want a ride home?”
Leigh considered. Her house was within easy walking distance, but her friend’s demeanor continued to bother her. “Sure,” she replied, falling into step beside the detective as they rounded the tool shed. “How’s Gerry these days?” she asked conversationally, inquiring after Maura’s husband of eleven years, who was a lieutenant with the city police force.
“He’s good,” Maura responded dully. “Been gone a couple days now, though. The department sent him to a conference in Minneapolis for a week.” The detective stopped short suddenly, her gaze on the ground. “Did you see this?”
Leigh looked down. The ground next to a maple tree had been recently disturbed. It was only a small area, maybe a foot across, filled with relatively fresh, upturned earth. “Archie’s dog, Wiley, is a digger,” she said with a shrug. “I imagine Archie has lots of damage to undo. I’ve seen refilled holes like that all along the creek, even in our yard.”
Maura’s brow furrowed. “Let me get this straight. Mr. Pratt has a dog—an intact male, evidently—who wanders all over the neighborhood digging holes. Then Mr. Pratt himself goes around with a shovel, putting the dirt back in?”
“Well, he—” Leigh’s own brow furrowed. The idea did seem pretty lame, now that she thought about it. Wiley did dig holes… she had seen him do it. But Archie had never mentioned anything about it to her, much less seemed apologetic. And why would the man bother to fill in holes in his own yard, when old farm machinery lay rusting by the garage and his front porch was falling in?
“I don’t know,” she answered finally. “I guess I haven’t given it much thought.”
“How long have you been seeing these holes?”
Leigh felt suddenly sheepish. “Oh, a long time. The kids started noticing them when we first moved in. We always just figured it was Wiley.”
Maura harrumphed. “Sounds a little fishy to me,” she proclaimed. “You sure you know who’s doing the digging?”
Leigh felt even more sheepish. When her and Cara’s offspring got a scheme into their heads, there was little she wouldn’t put past them. Particularly not with her deceptively innocent-seeming daughter Allison as their secret mastermind. Leigh didn’t doubt for a moment that her own impression of the kids’ “finding” the holes could be an illusion they had intentionally planted in her feeble brain years ago. She could no longer even remember how it had all started; since the holes had always been filled in, she hadn’t wasted precious energy worrying about it.
“Yeah,” Maura said, her mouth drawing into the closest thing to a smile she’d shown all evening. “I can see how sure you are.”
“No comment.”
“Try to find out,” Maura suggested as they reached her sedan. “I doubt it has any more to do with Mr. Pratt’s disappearance than his surprise litter of dependents, but you never know.”
Leigh opened the passenger door and sat down with a plop. “No,” she agreed, an uncomfortable feeling plaguing her middle anew. “You never know.”
Chapter 4
“Warren,” Leigh asked her husband as she watched through her front window while Maura’s sedan drove away. “You know those funny holes that keep popping up out by the woods all the time? The ones that have been dug and filled in already?”
Warren lowered the newspaper he was reading. “You mean the ones the Pack are digging?”
Leigh looked at him ruefully. “What makes you think the Pack are doing it?”
He blinked back at her, puzzled. “Well, who else would?”
“But we’ve been seeing them for years!” Leigh protested. “The kids were only kindergarteners when we moved in.”
Warren shrugged. “They were younger than that when Matthias decided to dig them all to China and cracked the septic line.”
Leigh sighed. Maura, Warren and herself had been friends since college, a trio of free spirits who had dubbed themselves “the three Musketeers.” But while she and Warren had a complicated history of being friends-only for a ridiculously long period of time before she fell madly in lust (an oversight she bitterly regretted), Warren had always enjoyed an easy platonic relationship with Maura. And often as not, he was more in tune with the policewoman’s way of thinking than was Leigh herself.
Case in point: now.
“You don’t think Wiley could be digging the holes?” Leigh asked.
Warren raised an eyebrow. “And filling them back in?”
“No! I mean…” she gave up. “Oh, never mind. If the Pack are the ones doing it, why? What are they looking for?”
He returned to his paper. “No telling.”
A blur of red streaked through Leigh’s peripheral vision, and she turned her head. Her son Ethan, whose unruly crop of cherry-red hair always gave his movements away, had just slipped into the kitchen from the back patio. She didn’t need to ask why. The Pack were out playing in the yard; the bag of chocolate chip cookies she had bought earlier was in the pantry. “Ethan? What are you doing?”
He appeared in the doorway. “Looking for something,” he said coyly, punctuating the words with his best lopsided, easy-going smile.
Leigh resisted the urge to grin. He looked just like his father when he did that. “I said two cookies each,” she reminded. “I believe you’re at quota.”
The boy’s smile faded. “You didn’t say three each?”
Leigh held firm. “Not a chance.”
Ethan began to slink back outside.
“However,” Leigh continued, watching him stop and turn toward her hopefully. “I’ll allow one more each on one condition. I want to know everything you know about the holes that have been popping up all over the neighborhood ever since we moved in here. And I do mean everything.”
The boy’s face flushed. He looked suddenly uncomfortable. “Um… well…” he glanced over his shoulder toward the patio. “I’m not sure I can really…”
Leigh tapped her foot.
Ethan straightened. “I tell you what, Mom. I’ll take your offer back to the others and we’ll conference about it. Okay?” He twirled around and disappeared.
Leigh cast a glance at her husband, who was grinning broadly. “Your offer?” she repeated. “Conference about it? He’s ten and a half years old! Where do they get this stuff? Do you give them lawyer-speak lessons when I’m not around?”
Warren chuckled and raised his paper again. “I’m a recovering politician, not a lawyer.”
“Same difference,” Leigh accused, dropping onto the couch beside him. “When they were infants, yes, I kept wishing time could go into hyperdrive. But all I wanted was for them to conquer the toilet and feed themselves! Clearly, my punishment is having elementary-age children who talk like a combination of a used-car salesman and Mr. Spock.”
Warren frowned at her over the Business section. “Don’t be dissing Spock.”
Leigh’s eyes rolled.
The patio door opened and the four children entered and marched sing
le file into the living room, where they stood facing Leigh and Warren, their expressions serious.
Leigh’s anxiety increased. Whatever was coming, it wasn’t good.
And this was the second time today.
“Aunt Leigh?” Mathias said importantly. Warren lowered his paper again.
“Yes?” she answered.
“Ethan says you wanted to know about the holes. Funny thing is, we’ve been talking about that all day. Ever since we got worried about Mr. Pratt. We took a vote, and we decided you should know. It might be important.”
The other three nodded in agreement. Leigh tensed. “What might be important?”
Mathias gave a nod to his sister, and Lenna stepped forward. She extended one skinny arm and held out a single sheet of folded paper.
Leigh took it. “What’s this?”
“It’s a treasure map,” Lenna answered proudly. “I found it by the creek.”
“We kind of swore each other to secrecy,” Ethan explained. “But now, with Mr. Pratt missing…”
“We can’t rule out a connection,” Allison finished. “So we thought you and Aunt Mo should know.”
Leigh unfolded the paper. Warren leaned in and studied it over her shoulder.
It was one of the most bizarre “maps” Leigh had ever seen. A photocopy, clearly, as white showed around the dog-eared corners of the yellowed and creased original. Various shadowed lines were visible along the edges of the paper, indicating any number of previous reproductions. The map itself had boxes that looked like buildings, squiggly lines that looked like creeks, and at the right hand edge, parallel lines that looked like railroad tracks. An assortment of smaller circles and squares could be trees or rocks—or anything. Across the whole map, radiating out from one of the large squares like spokes, were five straight lines. Each line had a series of Xs on it at different points along its length, some closer together than others. The only lettering consisted of two nearly illegible words sitting inside a jagged oval with an attached arrow pointing to the source of the spokes. This label said merely: “The Guide.”
