by Edie Claire
Scotty, who had at first pretended to help by holding whichever tools weren’t otherwise in use, had grown bored quickly. “You still have the puppies at your house Mr. Pratt?” he questioned.
Archie chuckled and threw an amused glance at Leigh. “Oh, I most certainly do. They’re in charge of the house now, you know. I’m lucky I get to sleep on the couch!”
“She didn’t stay in the box?” Leigh questioned. Randall Koslow had helped her fashion a whelping box to lure the mother dog to a more suitable location, and Leigh had succeeded in gradually coaxing her to move the litter out from under Archie’s bed and into the area under the staircase. Although less than ideal, it was as good a spot as any for the dog to serve out her rabies observation sentence, and the one place in the house Leigh thought she might still feel safe after Archie returned home—provided he was willing to let the family stay. To Leigh’s relief, Archie was more than willing… he cooed over the litter like a proud grandpapa.
“No, she didn’t stay in the box,” Archie reported cheerfully. “Her majesty prefers the fine shag carpeting under my bed. Her majesty also prefers I keep myself the heck out of there.”
“Oh, no,” Leigh said with chagrin. “Is she growling at you?”
Archie chuckled. “Not in so many words. Actually, she’s a quite friendly little miss… ate some bacon right out of my hand this morning. I think she and I will get along fine. She can stay where she wants until the pups are older, though it’ll be the devil to keep things clean. The couch is no matter. I’d be sleeping there anyway. It’s easier to get up and down.”
“That’s very generous of you,” Leigh praised.
Archie shrugged. “Can’t very well turn her out, after such a selfless act of heroism on her part, can I? Besides, we have an understanding. I’ve talked to Wiley and he accepts his responsibilities.” He put out a hand and patted the black hound’s head. “I guess we’ll take your dad up on that kindly offer of his.”
Leigh smiled. Dr. Koslow had offered to vaccinate the pups and spay the mother dog when the time came—but only if Archie would also let him neuter Wiley.
“Hey look!” Mathias cried. “Uncle Warren’s hit something!”
Everyone moved immediately to crowd around the edge of the hole.
“It’s metal all right,” Warren said, removing a glove to feel the flat stretch of surface he’d unearthed. “Maybe a tackle box. Or a foot locker.”
“I can dig some more!” Ethan insisted, and Warren stepped back while the boys eagerly resumed the effort.
“So what do you see?” Adith shouted anxiously from the clearing twenty paces below.
“It’s a metal box of some kind!” Leigh reported.
Harvey, who had been determined to make the uphill struggle, chuckled softly. “Haven’t heard so much about hauntings lately, have we?”
Leigh grinned back. Despite Adith’s newfound interest in Dora’s phasma victus parties, neither woman had mentioned a word about ghosts, evil spirits, or orbs since Nora’s arrest.
“I hope I didn’t upset anybody with all that,” Archie said apologetically. “I just thought it was all in fun, you know.” He gave a surreptitious nod in the direction of Scotty, who was now scuffing his shoes anxiously at the edge of the hole, knocking some of the dirt back in. “The boy seemed to like it. And I didn’t want him following me around out there when I was working, of course.”
“You wore your blue army coat,” Leigh accused. “You knew he’d think you were a ghost!”
Archie gave a mischievous smirk. “Well, yeah. That was the fun of it.”
Harvey chuckled. “You don’t have to give those men an excuse to wear those coats. Why, Jeb wore his to the farm the day of the sting! And when I asked him why, he shrugged and said that the wool was good in the rain!”
“What’s taking so long?” Pauline carped from downhill. “I could dig faster with my danged dentures!”
“Look!” Lester cried, “You can see the corners of it! It’s bigger than a tackle box… looks more like a trunk!”
At last the boys were able to grab the edges of the box and make it jiggle. After a few more minutes of concerted digging, Warren was able to lift it out.
“He’s got it! He’s got it!” Scotty screamed.
Warren stepped out of the hole and carried the metal box triumphantly down the hill to the waiting crowd.
“Oh, goody, goody, goody!” Adith exclaimed, clapping her hands as Warren set it on the ground in the middle of the group of chairs. Everyone stared at the object with reverence for a moment, despite its unimpressive appearance. The metal trunk was about a foot wide and a foot and a half long. It had a hinged top and a latch with a lock, but since most of the hinges were corroded, the lock appeared to be no obstacle. The surface of the trunk was rusted, but its integrity seemed otherwise intact.
“How on earth could an old man bury such a thing that deep all by himself?” Dora questioned.
“It wasn’t that deep,” Warren responded. “It just got covered over with tree roots.”
“When Theodore buried it,” Harvey explained, “those rocks would have been at the edge of the woods. He picked his spot well—safely above the flood plain, and with good drainage. Otherwise the metal would have rusted even more, after all this time.”
“You think it’s waterproof?” Dora questioned.
Harvey and Archie exchanged a troubled glance. “Not likely,” Archie answered sadly. “Some water’s bound to have leaked in over time. And it would only take a little…”
Harvey shook his head. “No way could a felt slouch hat survive over eighty years underground in a metal box. Theodore didn’t plan for that, you know. He thought his daughter would come to pick it up soon.”
No one said anything for a moment. After a while, everyone looked at Archie.
“Don’t look at me!” he said with mock cheer. “It’s not my property. Whatever it is and whatever’s left of it, it belongs to the Harmons, fair and square.”
Leigh and Warren looked at each other blankly.
“Well, somebody open the gol-durned thing!” Adith demanded.
With a mutual shrug, Leigh and Warren tugged at the metal lid until the hinges gave way and the top tipped off to the side. The crowd gave a collective gasp, but all anyone could see was the folds of a wool blanket, faded and partially deteriorated. Leigh reached in tentatively and lifted out the bundle.
“It’s heavy,” she commented. “There’s something hard inside.” Leigh’s hands felt unsteady. Her eyes met Warren’s for a moment, then both of them turned to Allison with a silent question. With an equally silent nod, the girl agreed. Leigh stepped over to Archie and gestured toward an empty chair. “If it’s ours,” she insisted. “We say you should open it. Now sit down and take this thing before I drop it.”
With a grin, Archie complied. As everyone gathered close around him, he slowly unwrapped the folds of wool from the hard object within.
“Maybe it’s a skull!” Scotty said brightly.
“Or some jewelry,” Dora suggested.
“My money’s on a gun,” Adith added.
“Well, it ain’t going to be an octopus!” Pauline griped.
“Nope,” Archie replied as he pulled the last of the fabric away. “It’s… a big jar.”
“A jar?” Leigh said, unable to hide her disappointment. “What?”
Archie turned the vessel around in his hands with care, looking at all sides. It was ceramic, six or seven inches in diameter and just under a foot tall. It was sealed with a wire bail top. Archie’s face turned sharply up toward Harvey. “Rubber gasket,” he said breathlessly. “It’s a long shot, but do you think… maybe?”
Harvey’s cheeks flared red. “Open it!” he practically shouted.
Archie’s own hands were trembling as he popped the metal wire off the lid, then slowly removed the lid from the jar and set it down in his lap. He looked into the wide mouth, inserted two fingers, and pulled out a yellowed piece of paper alm
ost entirely covered with handwriting.
If this is a hint for some other place to look, Leigh thought with chagrin, so help me…
But before anyone could suggest it, Archie started to read out loud.
“My dearest Leonora,” he read haltingly, his voice thick with emotion. “Thank you for coming. Your brother’s mind is gone and my own is not as it used to be. You must take this, and you must keep it safe. I did not speak much of the war to you when you were a child. It wasn’t worth speaking of. But now you have to know what you have and what you will hold. When I was a young man I served in the 71st Pennsylvania Infantry, and I was one of the few who left it whole. What I give you comes from what they call Cemetery Ridge at Gettysburg, where we lost nearly one hundred men. I will spare you much of that story, but what you must know is that I was lying on the ground, one dead man already on top of me, when I saw General—”
Archie’s voice broke. He swallowed and started again. “General Armistead fall. He was still alive, but when he fell to the ground his hat and sword fell with him. I wanted the sword but couldn’t reach it. The hat fell almost to my hand. I grabbed it and tucked it beneath me, and when I left that bloody field it left with me.”
Archie stopped and took a ragged breath. Beside him, a flushed and unsteady Harvey leaned heavily on the arm of the chair.
“They gave the sword back.” Archie continued. “Gave it back to the bastards who killed those hundred men—and so many others. This hat must never be returned to them. Never! Such fuss now over that rebel who did nothing but hold it high in the air! This hat is worth something, daughter. Sell it if you can, or keep it yourself, but you must promise me that you will sell it only to another Pennsylvanian, and that those damnable rebels will never worship at its altar again!”
Archie paused, then slowly lowered the letter. “Your loving father, Theodore Edward Carr. Dated May 27th, 1923.”
“Two years before he died,” Harvey said weakly. “And Leonora never came.”
No one spoke. After a moment, Archie looked into the jar, then held it tentatively out toward Harvey. “You do it,” he croaked.
Harvey stretched out a shaky hand and slid his fingers into the jar’s mouth. With a slow, gentle movement, he extracted a misshapen lump of dull gray fabric.
“It’s true,” he said wondrously, his blue eyes dancing. “It’s true, Archie. It’s a hat! A felt slouch hat!”
“So it is,” Archie agreed hoarsely. “It may never look like one again, but—what’s that?”
“The hat pins!” Harvey cried out loud. “It still has his wife’s hat pins in it!”
“So it’s real?” Lester asked.
“Well, I’m no expert, but—” Archie began.
“It’s real,” Harvey said firmly. “It will have to be authenticated, of course, but… the style, the pins, what’s left of the cords, the insignia… I’d stake my life on it!”
“Well, Lord love a duck,” Adith murmured.
Everyone stood still. Held breaths were released. Eyes, both young and old, sparkled with excitement. Faces glowed.
“We shouldn’t be touching it,” Harvey said suddenly, letting the hat fall gently onto Archie’s lap. “We could damage it. We should get it in some kind of protective case immediately.” He looked up at Leigh. “Do you have a cardboard box that would fit it, for now?”
“I’ll get one!” Allison offered, and in a flash she was off the hill up toward the house, with Scotty and the rest of the Pack behind her.
Harvey looked beseechingly at Leigh. “We should call a museum… or something. What do you want to do?”
Leigh and Warren exchanged another silent communication. “If it’s real, of course it belongs in a museum,” Warren agreed.
“Who do you think we should call, Archie?” Leigh asked.
“The Gettysburg Foundation,” he answered immediately. “They’ll know what to do with it. They’ll send somebody out right away. They’ll want to see the box and everything, and take pictures…”
Leigh reached out and retrieved the jar and lid from Archie’s lap, leaving him with the hat and the letter. A surge of unexpected delight coursed through her.
She stepped back out of the way, then looked around at the assembled onlookers as they began to file politely by, taking a closer peek at the precious relic which—despite the unlikeliest of circumstances—had managed to survive intact for over a hundred and fifty years, nearly ninety of them in her own backyard. Theodore Carr might have been paranoid and senile, or he might have been neither. No one might ever know what had transpired between him and his son at the end. But one thing was for sure. The man knew how to wrap a package.
Leigh slipped off, moved away from the sound of the crowd’s assorted oohs and aahs and Pauline’s “that looks like a damned dead vole,” and pulled out her cell phone.
Her officemate Alice picked up the call immediately. “I’m not saying one word to you, Koslow,” she began with venom, “unless you tell me—”
“Get your best photographer out to my house ASAP,” Leigh interrupted. “I’ve got your concept.”
There was a pause. “You mean it?”
“Would I lie to you?”
“Every other damned day! Is the SOB going to like this one? You know this is our last shot—and we need that account.”
“No, he’s not going to like it,” Leigh answered, cradling the antique, salt-glazed stoneware carefully in her arms. She turned it over and looked again at the crock jar’s bottom. With a finger, she rubbed away a smudge of decaying wool, revealing the remainder of the engraved maker’s mark beneath.
Rinnamon & Co. Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania.
“He’s going to love it,” she said with a smirk.
Acknowledgements & Historical Disclaimer
Private Theodore Carr is a fictional character, and as far as I know, the ultimate fate of the hat of General Armistead remains an open question. I confess to completely making up the part about his late wives’ hatpins, but otherwise, I have attempted to stay true to historical facts. There is no unit of reenactors associated with the 102nd Pennsylvania Infantry Regiment (at least not so far as I know), but I am in debt to the reenactors of the 38th and 40th Pennsylvania Volunteer Infantries for providing such informative websites. Many thanks also go out to those who willingly answered my historical, architectural, and police procedural questions, including Dr. John B. Vincent, Kate Gibson, and Maggie Price.
Author’s Note
If you enjoyed this book, I hope you’ll enjoy all seven mysteries in the Leigh Koslow Mystery Series: Never Buried, Never Sorry, Never Preach Past Noon, “Never Neck at Niagara” (a short story), Never Kissed Goodnight, Never Tease a Siamese, Never Con a Corgi, and Never Haunt a Historian. If you’d like to be notified by email when new books are released, sign up for my new book alert!
To find out more about these and other books by Edie Claire, including my novels of classic romantic suspense, YA romance, women’s fiction, and comedic stage plays, please visit my website or check out my Facebook page. You can try a free sample of one of my favorite romances, Long Time Coming, at Amazon US or Amazon UK. I always enjoy hearing from readers via email, so if you’re so inclined, please drop me a note!
Looking for another mystery series? One of my favorites is the “Dying To” series written by my friend Judy Fitzwater, who thinks so much like me that our protagonists once said almost exactly the same line! To follow the quirky trials and tribulations of wanna-be novelist Jennifer Marsh, start with a free copy of Dying to Get Published.
Thanks so much for reading!
Table of Contents
Dedication
Chapter 1
Chapter 2
Chapter 3
Chapter 4
Chapter 5
Chapter 6
Chapter 7
Chapter 8
Chapter 9
Chapter 10
Chapter 11
Chapter 12
Chapter 13
Chapter 14
Chapter 15
Chapter 16
Chapter 17
Chapter 18
Chapter 19
Chapter 20
Chapter 21
Chapter 22
Chapter 23
Acknowledgements & Historical Disclaimer
Author’s Note
