Never Thwart a Thespian: Volume 8 (Leigh Koslow Mystery Series)

by Edie Claire

  Leigh followed Bess down the last steps and looked out into the room. It was all she could do not to turn around immediately and go back up. “What the—”

  “Yes,” Bess interrupted. “It is rather impressive, isn’t it?”

  Leigh gaped. The space was as big as the sanctuary above it, but its ceiling was low — at least those sections of ceiling that were visible. The entire space, from wall to wall and floor to ceiling, was completely crammed full of stuff. It didn’t look like a storage room, with orderly piles and rows and aisles. It looked like a charity donation clearinghouse that had gotten hit by a tornado, pulled up into the funnel, shaken like a martini, and sat back down again.

  “Where did it all—”

  “Well, the building has served a lot of different purposes, like I said,” Bess interrupted again. “Churches, the two fraternal orders, and a couple times it was a banquet hall. See the chairs?”

  Leigh did see folding chairs. Some folded, some unfolded. Some broken in half. One was hanging off a crooked hat rack, another was partly buried underneath a clear plastic bag filled with Styrofoam packing peanuts. All of them were thoroughly entangled in a web of other items under, around, and on top of them. The vast sea of accumulated objects before Leigh’s eyes looked like a child’s “find this” puzzle book on steroids.

  “I… do see chairs,” she conceded.

  “We just have to get them out, you see,” Bess continued. “And… er… all this other stuff, too.”

  Leigh turned toward her aunt. “We? All this? Out?”

  Bess offered her best fake smile. “Of course. Our patrons will need to get to the accessible bathroom, you see.” She pointed across the room.

  Leigh looked. “I don’t see any bathroom.”

  “Yes, well,” Bess replied, her smile starting to droop a little. “You would if you walked back upstairs and came down on the other side. But it’s… um… kind of hard to get there from here at the moment.”

  “You don’t say,” Leigh deadpanned, moving past a wet/dry vacuum with no hose to get a closer look at a long, smooth pole that hung off a stand on one end and dragged the floor on the other. “Isn’t this a ballet barre?”

  Bess stepped forward with her. “I do believe it is! This place was a dance studio for a while, too. Didn’t I mention that? Back in the nineties.”

  Leigh’s better judgment still urged her to run screaming back up the steps. But the bizarre nature of the cornucopia of accumulated crap before her couldn’t help but spark her curiosity. She picked up a shaggy piece of brown fur from off one end of the ballet barre. It was shaped like a hood and sported a stub of paper mache from which the tip had obviously broken off.

  “Narwhal horn,” Bess explained.

  “Since when do whales have fur?”

  “Since the men of the order got hat envy over the Moose and the Elk.”

  “Gotcha.” Leigh dug deeper into the pile. She opened a small cardboard box, then shut it quickly. New ballet slippers might look pretty, but apparently used ones could reek of foot odor indefinitely. “Any chance there’s anything of actual value in here?”

  “Oh, absolutely!” Bess cried. “Seems like every occupant left it in a hurry. No one’s used the basement or the old kitchen in ages… even when the place was a banquet hall, all the food was catered and they used the newer kitchen in the annex for reheating and dishwashing and such. The basement’s only been used for storage.”

  Leigh pulled a folded section of newspaper from the bottom of a ceramic planter decorated with pink flamingos. She checked the date. “May 17th, 1974!”

  “You see?” Bess said proudly. “This place is practically a museum! The Pack will love it!”

  “The Pack?” Leigh questioned. She knew perfectly well that Bess was referring to Cara’s two children and Leigh’s own twins, whose nickname was well earned. Not only had the foursome roamed their North Hills neighborhood as one ever since Leigh and Warren moved in next door to Cara and Gil, but when the kids combined their brainpower, any unsuspecting adult prey were in serious, serious trouble.

  “Yes, I’ve been meaning to speak to you and Cara about that,” Bess began, her voice suddenly demure. “I know the kids are off on spring break next week, and I heard that none of you are going anywhere, what with Allison’s surgery and Gil’s conference in Nuremberg. So I thought, what could be more perfect than their dear young aunt finding them a fun and exciting job to do?”

  Leigh’s head filled with visions of her precocious eleven-year-old year daughter climbing around on shaky scaffolding trying to live-capture a sleeping bat. “Aunt Bess, I don’t—”

  “Under constant supervision,” Bess cajoled. “And with pay?”

  Leigh gritted her teeth and considered. She was wondering how she could keep the kids safely occupied with school being out all next week. Pittsburgh in March was still wet and cold, most of their friends were headed out of town, and the eye muscle surgery Allison was scheduled for — while not restricting her physical activity per se — was expected to leave her eye red and puffy for a few days. The girl wouldn’t be feeling very social, nor would she be able to spend her usual hours reading or staring at a computer screen. As for Ethan, he still owed twenty bucks for the window he and his cousin Mathias had busted out playing disc golf. “Keep talking,” Leigh replied.

  Bess’s eyes twinkled. “I need their brains as much as their brawn. There are bound to be some real gems in here for the theater group — it’s a veritable treasure trove of props! But the room has to be completely cleared out by opening night, and I can’t possibly sort through it all myself and whip the rest of the building into shape besides. I’ve already hired a crew of men through the Community Outreach Center to help with the heavy lifting and cleaning and such, but I can’t trust them to tell the wheat from the chaff — yesterday I caught one of them throwing out a perfectly good walking cane topped with a carved fish head!”

  Leigh reserved comment. “So you want the Pack to help you sort through all this and decide what to keep and what to pitch?”

  “Exactly!” Bess beamed. “I’ll give them my criteria and they can take it from there. They’ve got a good eye for treasure, all of them. They just need to catalog the ‘keeper’ stuff and get it squirreled away in the annex, then stack the trash for the crew to haul out. They can earn a little money and it would be such a tremendous help to the society. What do you say?”

  Leigh took another long look around the cluttered, musty-smelling basement. She didn’t need to wonder what the kids would think of their great aunt’s proposal. Hunting treasure was already one of their specialties — getting paid to do it would be nirvana. But what if, buried amidst the broken chairs and the smelly shoes, there was anything… dangerous?

  “You have no idea what’s in here, do you?” Leigh asked, wading deeper into the clutter and shifting aside a metal shelving unit stocked with bags of silk flowers. She had spied the corner of what looked like a steamer trunk, and she couldn’t resist checking it out. Antique steamer trunks could indeed be valuable.

  “Well, what I’ve seen so far has been pretty predictable,” Bess assured. “The churches left hymnbooks and Christmas decorations and candles and such. The banquet facilities left chairs and dishes and some sound equipment. There are all sorts of things from the dance studio — apparently that owner skipped out in the middle of the night and left everything. But as for the fraternal orders…” her voice trailed off as she held up a giant orange plastic toilet seat. “I daresay we might be in for a few surprises.”

  “As long as there’s nothing… toxic,” Leigh offered, pushing a mound of wadded up black fabric off the top of the trunk. It was a steamer. And an antique. It seemed to be in reasonable condition, too, except that the latch was missing. She smiled as she reached down to open it. Perhaps a little treasure hunting could be fun, even if the building itself did give her the creeps.

  “Does that mean you’ll let me hire the Pack?” Bess asked hopefully.
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br />   “I’m sure they’d be delighted,” Leigh answered, lifting the heavy lid.

  “Oh, goody!” Aunt Bess crowed. “I’ll come over and see them after school, then. I’ll have to speak with Cara too, of course—”

  Leigh didn’t hear anymore. Her ears had shut off the instant her eyes saw human bone. Tattered cloth. Gaping, empty eye sockets.

  She let the trunk lid fall shut with a bang. She stepped backward, tripped over a plastic topiary, and tumbled sideways over a patio grill.

  “What on earth?” Bess questioned, scrambling forward to offer Leigh a hand.

  Leigh pulled herself upright, then pointed a shaking finger toward the trunk. She made a strangled sound in her throat, but no words came out.

  Bess turned toward the steamer. Leigh reached out to catch her aunt’s arm, but was too late. Bess was already opening the lid. No! Stop!

  Bess smiled and reached down. She pulled out a length of twine, then hoisted her arm high to lift out the remainder of the plastic skeleton. Her merry voice cackled with laughter. “Well, that’s a stitch, isn’t it? Almost looks real! What with the clothes and decaying flesh and all. I guess I forgot to mention… the last couple years, when the borough had possession, they let the Young Businessmen’s Chamber use the building for their haunted houses at Halloween.” She looked deeper into the trunk. “Oh, and look here… rubber brains! And fake vomit!”

  Leigh sank back down on the grill and tried to rein in her racing heartbeat. “Aunt Bess,” she said weakly as her aunt inadvertently dangled the skeleton’s rib cage inches from her face. “Please put that thing away.”

  Bess dropped the skeleton and turned to look at her. “Oh, you couldn’t possibly—” She stopped suddenly. “Oh, my. I’m so sorry, kiddo. I totally forgot about your… um…. proclivity.”

  Leigh frowned. How anyone in the family could forget for one minute her epic talents at unintentional corpse location, she had no idea. How many murder investigations did one innocent ad copywriter have to get dragged into before everyone admitted it was not her doing, but some kind of horrible genetic curse?

  “That’s okay,” Leigh muttered, standing up and rubbing her arms. “But I’m done here. If the Pack wants to spend their spring break sorting through this mess, that’s fine, but I have to tell you — I have a bad feeling about this place. And knowing my history, that could be significant.”

  Aunt Bess waved a dismissive hand in the air. “Nonsense. It has character, that’s all! All theaters do. And I’m telling you, this building was meant to be a theater — even if it has taken a hundred years to make it happen!”

  “If you say so.”

  Bess’s eyes gleamed. “Can’t you feel it? The history? The aura? The mystique! Why, every respectable theater has to have its ghosts, and from what I—” She broke off suddenly and threw a furtive glance at Leigh. “Never mind.”

  Leigh stiffened. “Oh, no you don’t!” she warned. “There’s something about this place you’re not telling me, isn’t there?”

  Bess’s large, almond eyes blinked. “Why, no. Of course not. At least not anything that would concern you, seeing as how you don’t believe in ghosts.” She smiled angelically. “So, no worries!”

  Leigh groaned. Her aunt had her right where she wanted her, as usual. There was no rational reason to be apprehensive, and she prided herself on being rational. She cast another glance around the dim, musty, ill-fated building that Bess was so clearly infatuated with.

  It seemed to look back at her.

  With a smirk.

  She sighed, long and slow. Bess was right. Leigh Koslow Harmon most certainly did not believe in ghosts.

  But bad karma was a whole different matter.

  Chapter 2

  “Koslow!” Maura Polanski exclaimed, looking up from the stack of papers on her lap with a smile. “Didn’t expect to see you tonight. How did Allison’s surgery go?”

  Leigh plopped down in the recliner that had been pulled up close to the detective’s bedside. Leigh’s longtime friend, who was not quite eight months pregnant, had been ordered to stay on strict bed rest because of premature amniotic membrane rupture. Being sentenced to physical inactivity was pure torture for a woman who chased down murderers for a living; but, being pregnant for the first time at forty-two, Maura was not inclined to take chances. Nor was her city police lieutenant husband, who had made it clear to the county homicide squad that any co-worker who tempted the detective into putting so much as one toe on the ground would be busted down to reading parking meters for the rest of his or her career.

  “Allison handled it all like a trouper,” Leigh answered. “Everything went fine; she’s just tired. She dropped off to sleep early, so I thought I’d pop over. Tried to sneak you in a nail file, but Gerry frisked me at the door.”

  Maura chuckled. “Yeah, he’s been a little overprotective. But at least he let Dodson schlep all this in here. I’d be going insane without it.”

  Leigh raised an eyebrow at the mountain of manila folders and papers piled up on a card table at her friend’s other side. “Are you kidding me? What is all this? You can’t possibly have gotten this far behind on your reports!”

  “They’re not mine,” Maura responded, closing the folder in her lap and tossing it onto the nearest pile. “At least, not many of them. They’re cold cases. The kind nobody has time to look at otherwise, at least not on the current budget. Right now, I’ve got nothing but time.”

  “Baby staying put?”

  Maura patted her abdomen, which slowed only the slightest of bumps. “Oh, yeah. Junior knows how to follow orders,” she said proudly.

  “Yeah, well,” Leigh smirked. “Enjoy that while it lasts. At least you finally look pregnant. I was afraid Cara and I were going to have to come over and strap a pillow on you.”

  “Oh, come on,” Maura protested, her eyes twinkling mischievously. “I’m huge!”

  Leigh’s eyes narrowed. They had all been worried about Maura’s having a baby at her age and with her job, but up until her recent hospitalization, the burly six-foot, two-inch detective had sailed through the process with little more than occasional indigestion. The fact that she hadn’t needed maternity clothes until well into month seven was of particular annoyance to Leigh, who had looked and felt like a beached whale for the duration of her own pregnancy. “Do not make me hurt you,” she growled. “I looked more pregnant than you six months after the twins were born!”

  Maura laughed. “Yeah, you did, didn’t you?”

  Leigh gave an exaggerated frown. “Remind me why I bother to come and visit you?”

  “Because you know how desperately I need a laugh,” Maura replied. “So, what’s up with the family? Besides your mother getting her silver fillings pulled and melted into a necklace?”

  “Who told you about that?” Leigh asked with surprise.

  “Your mother, of course. While she was dusting the bedroom. She even showed me the necklace. It was… an interesting twist on recycling. She’s coming back tomorrow to wax the kitchen floor. She said mine was way cleaner than yours, by the way, and that you use an overpriced cleanser that isn’t appropriate for your floor surface.”

  Leigh rubbed her face in her hands. Of course Frances would offer to come and clean for Maura while she was indisposed. Frances would clean anything, at any time. Having the chance to dish on her daughter’s insufficiencies while doing so was just an incidental perk. “Well, that’s nice of her and fortunate for you,” Leigh conceded. “I bet she brought you guys a casserole, too.”

  “Actually, she brought three.” Maura smacked her lips. “Delicious!”

  “If she talked to you the whole time she was cleaning, you probably know more about what’s going on with the family than I do,” Leigh suggested.

  “Well, let’s see,” Maura said with enthusiasm, leaning back against her pillow. “The kids have a week off school, during which you should be staying home taking the time to teach them things like how to fold their clothes properly
and how to entertain themselves without electronic devices.”

  Leigh slumped in her chair. “Oh, yeah. Heard that one.”

  “And we’re all proud of Warren because he’s doing such a great job helping out all the local non-profits with their financial management, which is a major sacrifice on his part, because he could have become President of the United States, you know. Sadly, he had no choice but to stay closer to home and be the most devoted husband and father in the world, seeing as how his wife insisted on having a career of her own rather than dutifully supporting his.”

  “Standard fare: selfish daughter marries man who can do no wrong. Next?”

  “Your father works too many hours at the vet clinic and he’s not as young as he used to be.”

  Leigh nodded. “Husband avoiding being at home; mysteriously not looking forward to retirement. Check.”

  “And your Aunt Bess has apparently taken on ‘another foolhardy project which will only come to grief in the end’ and is using ‘inappropriate means’ to make it happen.” Maura’s lips twisted with thought. “I was plenty curious about the ‘inappropriate means,’ but Frances got distracted by a cobweb on the ceiling and had to leave before we got back to the topic.”

  Leigh chuckled. “Well, I can’t say Mom’s too far off, there. Aunt Bess showed me her little ‘project’ yesterday, and it’s a doozy. As for whether her methods are inappropriate — that kind of depends on whether Gordon Applegate is complaining.”

  Maura’s eyebrows rose. “Old-money Applegate? Last of the steel baron dynasty? Now you’ve really got me curious.”

  “He’s a client of Warren’s,” Leigh explained. “But I didn’t realize my Aunt Bess knew him. Apparently he’s a bit of a theater buff. Somehow or other — the ‘other’ being what my mother disapproves of — Bess talked him into buying a hundred-year-old building in West View so that her thespian society could rehab it into a theater. But the place is a total mess… and creepy as hell, besides.”

  Maura pulled her head up. “What building are we talking about?”