by Edie Claire
One a little too close to home.
A chill swept up Leigh’s bones, starting at the center of her soaking wet toes and traveling up to rattle her skull. Harvey hadn’t received that note. Harvey had written it. Both the one she found—either practice or a reject—and the one he had actually sent. That incredibly cunning, gutsy old historian who never left his room had run out on a stormy night and enlisted the aid of the entire 102nd Pennsylvania Volunteer Regiment to bring the great-great-great granddaughter of Theodore Carr to justice before she flipped out altogether and hurt someone else.
And he had taken his cat with him.
“It’s back here,” Harvey was saying, his voice quavering. Leigh could hear him moving into the bedroom doorway, mere feet from where she stood. A woman’s answering voice, low and indistinct, sounded from farther away.
“It’s here, I swear!” Harvey pleaded, switching on the bedroom lights. “I… I overhead Lester and Archie talking and I knew what they were looking for. I stole a look at the map and figured out where to find it. They were off by a mile, but the location was obvious to me, and now I’ve confirmed it. It won’t be hard to retrieve it—but that’s your problem. That’s stealing, and I don’t want any trouble. I just want some money. Not much, considering what it’s worth. All I want is enough to get out of the home and set myself up in my own place.”
The voice that responded sounded much like a hiss. Leigh craned her neck uselessly, trying to identify the voice. But she could barely hear it.
“You can come on back, but I’m not showing you exactly where it is until I see some cash,” Harvey insisted. Leigh could hear him backing up into the bedroom. He was trying to lure the woman deeper into the house, most likely so that as many hidden men as possible could hear her… and surround her.
“I want half before you leave here,” Harvey continued, his voice advancing farther into the room. “If anything happens to me, the police will find a note explaining the whole sordid story. If you don’t want that, I’d suggest you leave me to my business. When you’ve got it, you send me the other half. There’s no risk for you. You own the land. All you have to do is bide your time, then find it “accidentally” while digging a fish pond or something. That was your plan from the beginning, wasn’t it? If you couldn’t buy the farm, land close by was good enough? Convince everyone it was found on your property, and it would be your property?”
You own the land.
Leigh held her breath as the second figure rustled through the bedroom doorway. Her eyes could see nothing, but her mind supplied the image with frightening clarity. A woman on the sidelines, unconcerned. A woman who could know everything, but whom no one gave credit for knowing anything. A woman who donned the cloak of a nurturer to mask the soul of a selfish, heartless witch.
“It is mine, you idiot!” the she-devil bellowed, her voice mere inches from Leigh’s horrified ears. “It’s always been mine! It belongs to my family, and it belongs to me! Archie was the one trying to steal it!”
“But you didn’t have to hurt him!” Harvey chastised, raising his own voice to an impassioned wail. Leigh could hear the fear in his voice—understood it and felt it in her bones—but she also knew what he was doing. He needed a confession, and he needed it now.
“I didn’t!” she screeched. “I didn’t lay a finger on him!”
“But you hired somebody else to!” Harvey fired at her. “Hired them to ‘get rid of him!’ Didn’t you? Well, didn’t you?!”
“No!” she shouted, her temper rising easily to Harvey’s well-dangled bait. “I only told them to scare him! To make him stop, to keep him away for a while! I can’t help it if they’re barbarians! But I can do the same to you all by myself if you don’t show me where it is and get out of my way!”
In the distance, outside the windows and through the rain, came the distinct, high wail of a police siren. “Show me now!” she screamed. “Or I swear to God, I’ll—”
“What?” Harvey pounced. “Bash my head in like you did Lester?”
“I’ll do worse than that, you old goat, maybe even in your sleep! If you know everything there is to know about me you should know not to stand between me and what I want! Now, WHERE IS IT?!”
No sooner did the woman’s voice move in the direction of Harvey’s than a shrill mouth whistle sounded from the living room. The man behind Leigh immediately pushed the closet door open, shoved her aside, and leapt out into the room—handgun drawn. At his shoulder appeared Joe O’Malley, now sporting a blocky, mean-looking pistol that looked like something from a bad action movie. A third man had sprung up from the corner behind Archie’s chest of drawers. A fourth leaned in the open window, his baseball cap dripping with rain.
“Oh…” the woman exclaimed, at first distressed, then incensed, as she backed away. “Oh, you think you’re all so smart, don’t you? Bringing your little toys? Well, look what I can play with!”
Leigh could no longer see the woman, but the sound of fabric rustling and buttons popping was followed by a collective gasp of horror from the men. Leigh hoped the gasp was not caused by what she thought it was. Her worst fear… yet, it couldn’t be. Not unless everything else she had ever thought about the woman was a lie.
Leigh’s limbs trembled as she moved to peer around her ex-closet mate’s shoulder.
Nora Sullivan stood boldly, defiantly. Trapped between Archie’s bed and the wall, her long wet raincoat unbuttoned to her waist. A handgun held between slim fingers.
Baby Cory nestled in a sling against her chest.
Chapter 22
“Unless one of you soldiers wants to go down in history as a baby killer,” she sneered, “I suggest you step aside.”
“Please, Nora,” Harvey said weakly. “Don’t do anything rash. Nobody wants to hurt either one of you.”
“No, of course not!” she snapped. “You just want me hauled off to jail! You don’t even know where it is, do you?!”
Harvey’s face had gone white as a sheet. He licked his thin, dry lips thoughtfully. “No, I don’t, actually. I’ve never even seen the map. So why don’t we all put down our guns and—”
Nora spat out a laugh. The sirens in the distance had grown louder, then stopped altogether. The cruisers must have parked at the Browns’. The officers would be here any second. “You all can stay if you like,” she said coldly. “Little Cory and I are getting out of here while we still can.”
“Nora,” Joe O’Malley said slowly, with what passed as his attempt at tact. “A half-dozen men here heard every word you said. I got a half-dozen more outside. You ain’t going nowhere, police or no police. Now put the gun down.”
Nora’s chest swelled up; her eyes narrowed. “I am getting out of here. I’m going to walk right out that front door, and you and all your little friends who like to play dress-up are going to let me.”
Joe’s face flushed with ire. “Ain’t nothing fake about the pieces we’re holding, wench! And now we all know it was you who tried to kill our captain!”
“Is that so?” Nora put her free arm under Cory and lifted the baby to rest over her heart. “Well then, fire away. How good’s your aim?”
The sound of a scuffle sounded from the living room. “Let me in! I can help, I tell you! Stop it! Let me go! She’s got the baby!”
“Let him go!” Joe barked.
Derrick, wild-eyed, soaked, and bedraggled, stumbled into the bedroom.
Ignoring the men and the guns in the room as if they didn’t exist, Derrick marched forward directly toward Nora, his chest heaving like he’d run a mile. “Give me the baby, Nora,” he pleaded in a near whisper. “Just give him to me. Okay?”
Nora’s brow furrowed with annoyance. “Go home,” she said disdainfully. “I don’t need you here. I shouldn’t have sent you in the first place. Worthless coward.”
The last of the fog before Leigh’s eyes cleared away as she realized how much her impressions about Derrick had been formed not by her own experience, but by his wife’s com
ments. Nora claimed that her husband was fascinated by the Civil War; but was he really, or had Nora coerced him into joining the reenactors just to keep tabs on Archie? Nora complained of his incompetence with the baby, but Leigh hadn’t seen incompetence, had she? Only poor housekeeping. Everyone had assumed all along that it was Nora who stayed up nights tending to Cory, but now, seeing the woman in her trenchcoat, Leigh suspected that wasn’t true either. Could it, all along, have been Derrick who stayed up nights changing diapers and giving two o’clock feedings—while Nora skulked about Frog Hill Farm with her coat pulled up above her head?
Leigh looked hard into the small man’s frightened eyes, his tight-clenched fists, the determined set of his otherwise weak chin. Nora had claimed that her computer-loving geek of a husband wanted chickens, for crying out loud! The contradictions abounded, but Leigh hadn’t seen them. She had believed the fiction—a fiction entirely of his wife’s creation, designed to paint Nora herself as a devoted mother, nurse’s aide, and neighborhood saint. And all to claim a treasure that could be worth a fortune.
Or nothing at all.
Dora Klinger had been right. Insanity did run in the family.
“The police are already here,” Derrick said evenly. “I saw them starting down the hill. It’s no use, Nora. Everyone knows you’re looking for the treasure, now. But that’s no crime, right? Everything’s still going to be okay.”
“The hell it is!” Joe interrupted gruffly. “You call having the captain beat to a bloody pulp not a crime?!”
Derrick’s head swung back to his wife, his face drained of color. “Oh, sweetheart,” he said softly, pathetically. “No. You didn’t really… I know you talked to those two… But you didn’t. You wouldn’t. Please tell me you wouldn’t go that far!”
Male voices raised in brisk conversation sounded outside. The police had met the reenactors. Nora was well and truly surrounded.
She glanced frantically around her, her eyes resting briefly, maliciously, on the silent figure of Leigh. For once, Leigh felt she could read Nora’s mind. There was only one way out for a trapped gunman.
Taking a hostage.
Leigh took a surreptitious step back. But Nora didn’t need her.
As the voices outside swelled to arguing tones, Nora raised her handgun slowly into the air, then pointed it straight down at little Cory’s head.
“Move out of the way,” she ordered coolly. “Put down your guns and let me walk out. And tell the police to do the same.”
She’s mad as a hatter, Leigh thought with horror, unable to imagine what twisted motivations—or violently unbalanced hormones—must be running through the young woman’s body. Surely it was a bluff. It had to be. But how could any of them take that chance?
“Nora!” Derrick choked, his eyes welling with tears. “You can’t do this. He’s just a baby. He could get hurt. Please, please, give him to me!” He took a step forward.
Nora stiffened, her eyes wild, and screamed at him, “Get back, you idiot! I’ll kill us both! I swear to God I will!”
A pall of quiet fell over the room. Even the voices outside had quieted. But within the void, Leigh heard something else. A low, rumbling sound that offered, even before her brain could place it, a thin ray of hope.
Quivering from head to foot, Derrick obediently stepped back. The men did the same, leaving a path for Nora to scoot out from behind the bed. But the man at the window was still too near for comfort, and as Nora sidled close along the mattress, Leigh’s breath held with anticipation.
Oh, please, she begged silently, certain now that her hunch was right. Go for it!
Nora had not yet cleared the bed when she stumbled suddenly and uttered a sharp cry. The instant her attention was diverted, Derrick the nerd king launched himself toward her like a missile, knocking her gun hand up into the air and pushing her bodily back onto the mattress. The nearest men closed in, removed her gun, and secured her flailing limbs while Derrick swiftly extricated the baby from the sling.
Leigh watched as, without another look at his wife, Derrick cradled the baby to his chest and moved away. She had thought that the too-silent Cory might be sick—perhaps even drugged—but amazingly, the infant was wide awake and perfectly calm. As Derrick’s face broke into a relieved smile, Leigh felt her own doing the same. What baby could stay content during so much turmoil? Ride the waves of so much excitement, noise, and tension with equanimity?
Perhaps one who really hated being bored.
Leigh stood still and stayed out of the way as the police entered and took charge of Nora, moving the ranting woman out into the larger room. Several more officers took Derrick and the reenactors aside for questioning. Leigh knew she would be interrogated as well, eventually. But this time, she didn’t mind. This time, she really was just an innocent bystander.
Her family would be proud.
Not everyone in the room had been innocent, however. When the last of the men stepped out, leaving Leigh alone in the bedroom, she walked softly over to the far edge of the bed. No one else seemed to have noticed the thin trickle of blood that ran down Nora’s bare ankle and into her shoe.
Leigh dropped to all fours and slowly, carefully, lifted the edge of Archie’s bedspread and peered beneath it.
She couldn’t help but grin.
“Way to go, Momma Dog,” she praised.
***
“Please, Aunt Mo?” Lenna begged. “Now? Can we?”
Maura Polanski smiled at the Pack indulgently. Up to now, they had shown impressive restraint. If it had been up to Leigh, they wouldn’t be here at all, but Allison had told Maura her entire theory of the map and the Guide over the phone already and Maura had asked Cara to bring all the children over to Archie’s.
Objectively, Leigh realized it was safe. Nora had been arrested and removed an hour before, and Derrick had taken his still-happy, gurgling baby home. The reenactors had finished their high-fiving, coordinated a plan to stock Archie’s refrigerator with his favorite beer in anticipation of his return, and left en masse to indulge in a round of their own in his honor. And to the amazement of all, Harvey Perkins had gone with them. The local officers had reported to Maura and departed. The storm had blown over and left only an occasional misting—and a lot of mud—in its wake.
Leigh herself had brought food and water for the mother dog and pups, all of which were present and accounted for, and which everyone had agreed to leave alone for a while. The rest of the time Leigh had been enjoying the telling smile on her best friend’s beaming face.
“Yeah, okay, we can take a look,” Maura answered. “But don’t touch anything or try to dig anything up. Just look. Capiche?”
Lenna squealed with delight. The boys and Allison saluted. All four of them turned on their heels, pulled out their flashlights, and ran to the cellar doors. Cara followed dutifully after them.
“It disturbs me when they do that,” Maura said with feigned annoyance, referring to the salutes. “Not teaching them how to snow me, are you, Koslow?”
Leigh grinned. “Who, me?” She looked from Maura’s glowing face to that of her husband Gerry, who had come along on the call and hadn’t moved six feet from his wife’s side since.
For the first time all evening, the threesome was alone. “Can I assume that everything came back okay?” Leigh asked tentatively.
Maura Polanski, unbelievably, stole a look at her husband and blushed. “You can assume that,” she answered with a grin. “In fact, you can assume that the obstetrician said my results were no different than the average thirty year old.”
Leigh smiled broadly. “That’s fantastic!”
“I think so,” Gerry said smoothly, looking at his wife. On the job, Lieutenant Frank had one of the coolest poker faces in the business. But there was no mistaking his true feelings at the moment. The man’s eyes sparkled like a kid at Christmas.
“Hey, wait up, you animals! This is my case!” Maura bellowed good-naturedly, breaking away to follow the Pack toward the shed. Wit
hin a few moments they were all in the cellar, although Leigh remained on the steps as a matter of principle.
“Look, Aunt Mo!” Allison said excitedly, standing near the center of the room, holding out the map for the detective to see. She moved her flashlight beam to the floor and tapped with a toe. “It wasn’t in the wall at all! Aunt Lydie kept saying it would be really hard for a man Theodore’s age to chisel out a big stone and put it back in, all without anybody noticing. The mortar would look different and unless whatever he hid was little bitty, the rock would stick out wrong. But he’d have no trouble digging up a rock in the dirt floor!”
Leigh gave in, stepped closer, and looked at the spot where several flashlights now shone. There were many rocks half buried in the ancient dirt floor, but only one had made Allison squeal as loudly as Lenna had. The rock in question was nearly flush with the ground, and the Pack had had to sweep a layer of dirt off it to see it properly. It was roughly an eight by ten inch oval, with two protuberances. Leigh had to admit, its two-dimensional outline was a near perfect match for the box drawn around the words “The Guide.”
Maura studied the map and rock and gave a whistle. “I’d say you have a winner here, troops.”
The children began to bounce. “Can we dig it up now?” Ethan begged. “I can look up in the shed for a shovel!”
Maura held out a steadying hand. “Unfortunately, no.”
The bouncing ceased. “Why not?” Mathias questioned.
“Last time I checked,” Maura said lightly, “None of you guys are landowners. This rock—and anything that might be buried underneath it—are the property of Archie Pratt. And only Mr. Pratt, or someone with his express permission, has the right to be digging here.”
The children’s faces deflated. But Allison was quick to buck up again. “Aunt Mo’s right, guys,” she announced, straightening her back and assuming her “mature” tone. “Mr. Pratt’s been searching for this treasure for years. He got hurt really bad because of it. It’s only fair to wait until he comes home and let him dig it up himself, don’t you think?”
