by Edie Claire
Leigh’s yard needed work, but it was raining again. The house needed— She broke off the thought with a snort. To hell with that! She was still technically on vacation. Computer work was out; she was too restless. But what else could she do with herself?
Feed me.
“Chewie, my man,” Leigh stated, “Grab your leash. We’re going for a drive. Maybe we’ll go surprise your Aunt Mo.”
The corgi didn’t move a muscle.
Feed me?
Leigh looked into his earnest brown eyes and sighed. Chewie took in a lot of human words. He just assumed they all meant the same thing.
Her cell phone rang. She crossed over to pick it up from her desk and looked at the screen. It was Bess. Whatever she wants, Leigh coached herself, just say no.
“Hi, Aunt Bess.”
“Hey, kiddo! Listen, you’re not busy are you?”
“Swamped. I have—”
“Good, good,” Bess interrupted. “Look, I made an absolute mountain of lasagna to feed everybody tonight, since the Pack wanted to stay late again and see the beginning of the rehearsal. But then I drove off this morning and just left it all there in my refrigerator. Could you be a dear and swing over to my house and fetch it for us?”
“You can—”
“And would you mind letting Chester out while you’re there?” Bess plowed on. “He can use the dog door, but he’s gotten so skittish about the rain lately, sometimes he’ll wait for hours until someone encourages him to go out—”
“I’m not—”
“And you know that’s not good for an aging bladder. Your father says it makes him more susceptible to infections. And with his liver already being—”
“Aunt Bess!” Leigh broke in firmly.
“Yes?”
“We both know perfectly well that you’re only trying to get me back in that damned building.”
“Well, duh.”
Leigh exhaled with a groan.
“Come on, kiddo,” Bess cajoled. “We’ve been through this before. Neither you nor I can possibly avoid every place you’ve ever found a body. It simply isn’t practical.”
Leigh closed her eyes and groaned again.
“It’s better to get right back on the horse, as they say,” Bess continued. “Not to mention the fact that I really did leave the lasagna at my house, and it’s going to take a while to reheat. And your father did say that Chester—”
“All right, fine!” Leigh capitulated. “I’ll do it. But I’m not staying.”
“Yes, you will,” Bess said confidently. “Ta-ta!”
Leigh hung up the phone and gnashed her teeth. She was such a pushover.
Chewie, who had sat at her feet like a tin soldier throughout the entire conversation, nudged her shin with his nose. Feed me.
Leigh gave up. She tossed the dog another treat, grabbed his leash, and headed for the car.
Nearly an hour later, she pulled into the building’s parking lot, looked around, and sighed. It was happening, all right. She’d been paying enough attention to the media to know that news of Marconi’s body being found, after all these years, in the very building he’d unsuccessfully tried to turn into a strip club, had hit all the local radio and television stations by dinnertime last night and made page one of both of Pittsburgh’s daily newspapers this morning. The community battle over Marconi’s adult entertainment enterprise and the intrigue over his sudden disappearance had never gotten off the local pages, but throw in a skeletonized corpse and suddenly the story was everyone’s business.
Judging by the traffic jam caused by rubberneckers on the street, and the fact that Gerardo had to guard the open door beside the dumpsters against intrusion by the people loitering on the sidewalks and in the parking lot, Leigh was guessing that her Aunt Bess’s folly was now the biggest local topic of conversation since the Big Dips coaster burned down in the old West View Park.
At least this time, her own name had not been included in the press reports. The police were aware of it, of course, but with them she was already legend.
She attached Chewie’s lead to a belt loop, then balanced the giant tray of lasagna in both arms. She had tried carrying things with the dog’s lead around her wrist before: lesson learned. She slammed the car door with her foot, hit the remote lock button, and strode toward the door.
Gerardo met her with a somewhat silly grin, his dark eyes oddly vacuous, and sprang to open the door for her. She studied him warily, certain she was watching a deliberate ruse. The spark of intelligent awareness she’d seen in his eyes the day she met him might be easy enough to cover up, but it could not be invented from whole cloth. She was certain the man was whip-smart, and quite possibly spoke English better than she did. “Hello, Gerardo,” she said pleasantly, slipping inside. “Thanks.”
He responded with a smile and a nod, then quickly turned away and closed the door. Leigh frowned. What was the man trying to hide? She should have told Bess her suspicions already. She had just been too darn preoccupied.
No sooner had the door closed behind her than she saw a group of older teenagers approaching it from the parking lot. “No go in!” Gerardo shouted fiercely, loud enough for Leigh to hear through the door’s glass pane. “Call police!” He added something indecipherable — and no doubt colorful — in Spanish, and the youths moved off.
Leigh felt a jerk at her waist. The Pack’s voices were echoing up from the basement, and Chewie was pulling that direction with all his might. “Not yet, Chewie,” Leigh insisted. “We’ve got to get this in the oven first.”
She tugged the dog backward a few steps, then turned and nearly collided with her mother. Frances surveyed her daughter, the dog, and the aluminum tray with a mixture of surprise and disapproval.
“You’re coming back?” Frances asked rhetorically.
“Bess made me,” Leigh retorted, realizing too late that she sounded like a five-year-old. Frances had, according to Leigh’s father, taken her daughter’s most recent corpse discovery with remarkably less hysteria than usual. She hadn’t even suggested that Warren keep his wife locked in the house with an ankle bracelet for a month, which was her usual response. This time Frances had spent the first few hours afterward staring at her husband over a snifter of brandy mumbling, “Where did we go wrong? Where?” Then she had gotten up and scrubbed all the floors in her house and all the floors in her sister Lydie’s house next door. Then she had gotten over it.
It was progress.
“So what are you and Lydie working on today?” Leigh asked, attempting a smile.
Frances glowered. Despite her frequent protestations of doom and gloom for Bess’s proposed theater, she was psychologically unable to resist cleaning it, which was — of course — why Bess had invited her over in the first place. “Fresh bat guano,” she said heavily.
“Ah,” Leigh replied.
“And now,” Frances continued critically, casting a glance toward the floor. “Dog hair.”
“I brushed him this morning!” Leigh protested, even as she looked down to see a tumbleweed of tawny fluff detach itself from Chewie’s rump and float gracefully to the tiles below.
Frances raised a single eyebrow. They both knew that brushing corgi hair was pointless, as it could replace itself in a matter of seconds. Frances stooped over and plucked up the tuft of fur. “If it were up to me,” she said with authority, “none of us would be here. But my mule-headed sister has decided she knows better, and so naturally we will all put ourselves at risk for her sake. For the good of the family.”
Leigh adjusted the tray in her hands. It was getting heavy.
Frances eyed it suspiciously. “You didn’t make that?” she asked, the dimmest glimmer of hope daring to shine in her eyes.
“Um, no.” Leigh admitted. “Aunt Bess did.”
Frances frowned. “Of course.” Then she studied her daughter’s face, and her voice softened. “You are… feeling all right. Aren’t you?”
Leigh smiled. “Yeah, mom. I’m fine. I guess you
could say I’m… getting used to it.”
Frances’ lips twitched, seemingly undecided between pursing and smiling. “I think we’d all be happier if you got over it, instead.”
Leigh chuckled weakly. “So would I, Mom.”
“Chewie!” Ethan whooped, running down the hall and skidding to a stop before them. He detached the dog from Leigh and swept him up. “Can I let him run around the basement with us?” he asked.
Frances growled under her breath. “I suppose if the dog must be inside the building, that’s the least destructive place for him,” she conceded. “Since we haven’t cleaned down there yet. But don’t you dare let him—”
“We won’t, Grandma!” Ethan promised, skating off the way he had come on the shining, newly polished floor, dog in hand. Two more bunches of corgi fluff wafted through the air in his wake.
Frances harrumphed and took off after them, and Leigh continued toward the annex kitchen. She unloaded the lasagna into the oven, set it to warm, and made her way reluctantly back toward the old sanctuary. Her Aunt Bess was right. If this building did ever become the theater the Thespian Society was dreaming of, Leigh would not be able to avoid it forever. At least not the sanctuary. The attic, she could and would avoid forever. And she would make sure the Pack did, too.
“Leigh!” Bess cooed, hustling over to her from the stage, which was now fully decked out to look like a church chancel. “I knew you’d come! Did you get the lasagna in the oven?”
Leigh nodded, surveying the scene over her aunt’s shoulder. Camille was flitting about the chancel, adjusting and readjusting the altar cloths. Ned and Chaz were on its opposite side, setting up folding chairs and wiping them clean with wet rags. In the rear of the sanctuary stood several tall light trees and a mobile spotlight. Other light trees were set up on either side of the stage, and myriad electrical cords covered with brown duct tape traveled across the floor.
“Isn’t it looking splendid?” Bess said excitedly, practically bouncing as she talked. “And guess what? No more bats! That’s one favor the police did us. They got a wildlife expert in here to properly seal up the attic. They had to, of course, so that the technicians could—”
At the look on Leigh’s face, Bess broke off mid sentence. “Anyway, Kevin’s got the lights all ready to go tonight, and the cast should be here soon.” She threw a thoughtful glance over her shoulder, then pulled her niece away from the others and out into the curved hallway. “The board had an emergency meeting last night,” she explained. “It was touch and go for a while, but good sense won out. We’re proceeding full speed ahead! I told them we really had no choice. The show’s been advertised for this weekend already; and in any event, Gordon’s more antsy than ever now and he won’t tolerate a delay. But if we can pull off a sellout crowd under these circumstances, he’ll have to believe the theater can succeed!”
Leigh struggled for a response, but false enthusiasm was hard to muster. “I’ve been meaning to mention,” she said instead. “There’s something about Gerardo that bothers me. I think he—” she was interrupted by her Aunt Lydie coming around the corner wearing a fully stocked tool belt and holding a tape measure.
“Hello, Leigh, dear,” she said fondly, her soft eyes transmitting sympathy she was unlikely to put into words, but which was abundantly clear regardless. Although Lydie appeared superficially to be a thinner version of her identical twin Frances, the women were nothing alike in temperament.
“Hey, Aunt Lydie,” Leigh greeted, smiling with reassurance. “What are you up to?”
“I’m about to measure the attic window for replacement glass,” Lydie answered, then turned to Bess. “Frances was right, there was definitely some water damage around the window in the women’s room, probably from the ice this winter. Whoever patched it up cut some corners, but I can take care of that as soon as I make another supply run. About the glass — you said you’d send one of the men up with me to hold a light?”
“Absolutely,” Bess answered. “I’ll have Ned take you up. Follow me.”
As Leigh walked back into the sanctuary behind the two other women, she opened her mouth to protest. But she could think of nothing to say. The broken windows did need to be fixed, and the sooner the better if they were to keep the bats out permanently. Lydie had plenty of experience at replacing glass (thanks to Ethan’s and Mathias’s love of flying objects) and she was clearly not bothered by the prospect of going into the attic. What was there for Leigh to protest?
“Ned?” Bess called as they walked back into the sanctuary. “Could you grab that big flashlight in the office and take Ms. Dublin up to the attic so she can measure that window for new glass?”
Ned dropped the chair he’d been holding with a clatter. His pasty face paled further. For a long moment, he merely gaped at Bess with wide eyes. Then he collected himself and shook his head. “Not going up there, Ms. Bess. There’s bats!”
“There are no more bats inside the attic,” Bess said confidently. “The wildlife specialist assured us of that. For the time being, at least, they have all been sealed out.”
Ned shook his head again, causing his wild gray locks to quiver about his head. “I’m not going up there,” he repeated firmly.
“I’ll go!” Chaz shouted, tripping over the chair he had been wiping as he lunged forward. “I’d love to help!” He moved toward the door, practically prancing with enthusiasm. “I’ll run and get the light, Ms. Dublin,” he called to Lydie. “Meet you at the top of the stairs!”
He darted through the door, and Lydie gave a shrug to Bess and then moved off after him.
“That is odd,” Bess said to Leigh, her voice low. “I wouldn’t have predicted Ned to be the squeamish type. I don’t believe for a minute that he’s afraid of bats, or he wouldn’t have gone up on that ladder and covered the vent the other day.”
“Aunt Bess,” Leigh argued. “I don’t think there’s anything weird about Ned not wanting to hang out in a place where a body lay rotting for nearly a decade. In fact, that’s actually the least weird thing I’ve seen him do since I got here. You have to admit, all three of those men are a bit on the weird side.”
Bess waved a hand dismissively. “Ned isn’t weird,” she insisted. “He’s a tad bit socially awkward, yes. But he’s a hard worker and he doesn’t complain. Gerardo is an excellent worker, too, when he bothers to show up, although I’ve been a little miffed at his irregularity lately. As for Chaz, well, he sort of came with the building. Ned did too. The Outreach recommended them both because they’d worked here before. Chaz helped with the haunted houses, as you couldn’t possibly have avoided hearing, and Ned did janitorial work here when it was a dance studio. You must admit, for all Chaz’s faults, his knowledge of the props has been helpful, and if it weren’t for Ned’s insisting to me that there was a decent hardwood floor hiding underneath all that padding and grime, I might have wasted a ton of money recarpeting the sanctuary. So all in all, they were good hires. The Outreach checks all their clearances, so no worries there.”
“Aunt Bess?” A small voice piped up behind them.
Leigh jumped, then cursed under her breath. She really wished her daughter would stop doing that. When had Allison slipped upstairs into the sanctuary, anyway? Leigh could swear the child had not been there seconds ago.
“Yes, kiddo?” Bess replied.
“Aunt Cara said to tell you that we’re done with the trash. It’s all been carried out to the dumpsters and it all fits.”
“Excellent!” Bess praised. “Once all the props are moved into the classrooms, we can start getting that basement cleaned.”
Allison nodded.
“All right,” Bess continued. “If you’re done going in and out, you can tell Gerardo to lock that door and come up here. I’m expecting some people at the front doors shortly, and I’ll need him to keep a watch out that way instead.”
For a long moment, Allison looked at Bess without speaking, her dark eyes seemingly perplexed. “Okay,” she said finally,
then turned and hastened back down the stairs.
Leigh’s stomach churned with fresh anxiety. “Aunt Bess,” she asked, “were you planning on her delivering that message in English or Spanish? Because they don’t start foreign language until middle school.”
“Oh, poo,” Bess sputtered. “I wasn’t thinking. I usually just gesture to the man, and eventually he gets it.” She paused a moment. “Well, she didn’t seem too worried, did she?”
Leigh knew she should be proud of her daughter’s obvious perceptiveness. But the truth was, it worried the crap out of her. “I think Allison suspects that Gerardo understands English better than he lets on,” she explained. “And I think so, too.”
Bess looked at her with surprise. “But the director at the Outreach said—” she broke off her own statement, considering. “He was a late addition to the project, actually. They didn’t have a track record with him yet, but they insisted he came highly recommended. How odd. If he needed the work so badly, why would he handicap himself by hiding the fact that he was bilingual?”
Leigh’s unease grew. Before Marconi’s body had made its grisly appearance, Gerardo’s deception had seemed like a lark. So had Sonia’s persistence, Chaz’s enthusiasm for the macabre, and Ned’s looking and acting like a character from a spooky kid’s cartoon.
Now it all seemed darker.
A shiver slid up Leigh’s spine.
Stop that!
She gave herself a shake. Whatever violence had befallen Andrew Marconi had befallen him a very long time ago. She would not allow herself to start seeing murderers everywhere she looked. That way lay madness.
“I don’t know, Aunt Bess,” she answered, attempting to lighten her tone. “Maybe spending time in this building just brings out the wacko in people.”
