Defending the Dead (Relatively Dead Mysteries Book 3)

by Sheila Connolly

  “Is she going to be involved in this quest of yours?” Ned asked quietly.

  Abby studied his face, but he kept it neutral. “If I’m not your guinea pig, I can’t use Ellie as mine. And it wouldn’t be fair—to her, to her mother. I’m not trying to teach Ellie anything, because I don’t know enough myself. I hope to watch, and maybe guide, and reassure her that she’s not alone in the world with this. I’m not about to take her to Salem and say, find the witch. Or the Devil. Or whatever.”

  “I’m glad to hear that. Did Leslie say anything about me, when you were talking about arrangements?”

  “Not really. Ned, Ellie already senses a connection with you, which shouldn’t surprise either of us. But if Leslie and Ellie haven’t had the talk about who her father is, we can’t get into it. Ellie’s pretty young to have any idea what all that’s about.”

  “Which part? Love, marriage, making babies?”

  “All of the above. She’s seven. If she asks questions, I’ll try not to lie, but we—you and I—need to talk to Leslie about this. My initial impression is that she’d rather you stayed out of it for now. But that may change. I have no idea where this is going to lead. Are you saying I should keep Ellie out of Salem?”

  “No, just that you should let it happen naturally, not force it. If she asks about the place, fine.”

  “Ned, there were children involved in the witch trials, you know. Some of them were accused, others were the accusers. Children grow up a lot faster now, and know much more, than they would have in 1692. So let’s say, very broadly, that they’re peers. Does that make sense?”

  “Yes. But I’m uncomfortable with the idea of dragging her into this, at least right now. Why don’t you get settled into a relationship and then you can revisit the idea?”

  “That’s fair. Goodness, look at the time!”

  “Ready to go up?” Ned asked.

  “I am. As long as you’re coming with me.”

  12

  Abby was not surprised when Leslie called her early the next morning. “Listen, I’ve only got a minute, but I’ve got to give Ellie’s summer program the final schedule today. Are Wednesdays good for you?” Leslie said breathlessly.

  “Sure, no problem,” Abby said cheerfully. Any day would be fine, so Leslie could have her pick. “Should I meet you at the museum and collect her on those days?”

  “I guess.” Leslie sounded less than enthusiastic. “Listen—no cemeteries, okay? I know Ellie likes them, though I can’t see why, and I think it’s kind of creepy. Can’t you do something like normal sightseeing?”

  “That’s easy. How much do you want me to say to her about this . . . other thing?”

  “I don’t know. If she has questions, answer them, but you don’t have to bring it up, do you?”

  “Not if you don’t want me to. Look, I know this isn’t a good time to talk about it, but how much does she know about Ned?”

  “That he’s a nice man and Mommy’s friend. Period.”

  “Leslie, I think she already thinks they’ve got this connection thing. I promise I won’t say anything about the biological link, but I don’t know how many more people we’ll meet that share it. If we don’t find any more, she’s going to wonder why she has it with him.”

  “Let me handle that, all right? Damn, she’s so young,” Leslie added almost to herself. “I really thought I’d have more time before I had to explain things.”

  “Well, I won’t rock the boat. When do you want to start on this schedule?”

  “School’s out the end of this week. Next week all right?”

  “Fine. I’ll touch base before that to confirm the details with you. And thank you, Leslie.” Abby could have sworn she heard Leslie mumble something like “ha” as she hung up.

  So, she had a plan for Ellie. And a deadline. She should try to learn as much as she could about the whole Salem mess before next week, and then she could decide whether or when to involve Ellie. If ever. Maybe Ellie would just outgrow whatever this thing was, and it would never come up again. Or maybe it would blossom and she’d have a real problem on her hands—and so would Leslie. One day at a time, Abby, she told herself.

  Well, if she had a deadline, she needed a quick-and-dirty plan for research. She couldn’t just keep floundering around the Internet, dashing off in six different directions every time she saw an interesting article. It was fun, but it wasn’t efficient. And the odds she was going to come up with some earth-shattering discovery were kind of small—better minds than hers had tried. So if this was CSI: Salem, what would all those brilliant (and ridiculously well-dressed) investigators look at? Her findings didn’t even have to stand up in a court of law; all they had to do was make sense.

  She sat down at the dining room table with a clean pad of paper and a sharp pencil (with a good eraser) and thought. What was it most important to look at? She started setting down a list of bullet points.

  Point 1: the biological side. She’d already taken a look at possible physical causes, and discussed some of them with Ned, and her immediate impression had been that while on a micro-level a number of them fit, so far none seemed to work for an ailment that dragged on for months and affected only a limited group of people. To her mind, at least. She should check the water and soil and native pest theory (an infestation of poisonous spiders? that could be interesting), but generally she felt that the answer didn’t lie there.

  Point 2: the religious aspect. She wasn’t particularly religious herself, and she was far from qualified to understand seventeenth-century theology and its role in the colonial church. She was pretty sure that it was safe to say that a fair number of people believed in both God and the Devil, even in their daily lives. But under a magnifying glass, what had happened between Salem and Salem Village seemed to lie more in the sociopolitical realm than in any commitment to religion. And they hadn’t treated the ministers they’d recruited very well, either.

  Point 3: So that led to the political side, on a local level. Or more like warring families within the community, like the much later Hatfield-McCoy feud. Had it really been worth tearing the village apart just to prove one family was more powerful than another? Life must have been pretty dull in those days, if that was what passed for entertainment.

  Point 4: Samuel Parris, the minister at the center of the whole mess. The fact that he was a minister was interesting, since it was his space that the Devil seemed to have invaded. From what Abby had read about the man, he didn’t sound like a very nice guy—more like arrogant and pushy. She’d like to know more about the Reverend Mr. Parris.

  Point 5: the Indian slave woman Tituba. A slave of her sort must have been an anomaly in Salem. And what a convenient scapegoat she made! A foreigner! Not local! With dark skin! And yet no one suggested she hadn’t survived—Abby had seen one note suggesting that she’d been sold and disappeared from the records.

  Point 6: Abigail Williams, who had ignited the fire. Who was she? Where had she come from? Why was she in the Parris house? Why had anybody paid attention to her at all?

  Abby sat back and looked at her list, which now covered two pages. That should be plenty to keep her busy for the coming week. But where to start? Big picture to small, or the other way around? What would Gil Grissom do?

  Start small, she thought. Was there a crime scene? Yes and no. The place was still there, but few of the buildings, and none of the people. Well, not alive, at least, and Abby had no reason to believe that she could call up the right ones at will and ask them the right questions, much less get an answer. There was a historical society—did they have any physical collections? There were other small collections of personal artifacts scattered around the town, as she’d already seen. She could check if there were more. Had anyone kept a diary? Actually, how many people had known how to read and write back then? Most likely the important people in the community—the ministers, the merchants, maybe the richer people—would have known. But would anything they had written be accurate or honest? Well, she
could look for online transcriptions. The odds of actually touching one or another of the documents were slim to none, so she couldn’t hope for any messages that way.

  She shook herself. She was spending too much time in her head, or in front of a laptop digging through images of old documents. It wasn’t healthy. She should go out, do something. Get some groceries. Visit the bookstore in Concord and find something to read that was firmly mired in the modern world and did not involve any witches or visitors from the past. Or future.

  Call Ned’s mother. Maybe they could get together, take a hike along the Battle Road. Go antiquing. Go canoeing. Anything!

  Before she could change her mind, Abby located Sarah Newhall’s number and called. She’d had time to realize that she had no idea whether Sarah worked outside of the home. They’d barely met, back at Thanksgiving, when Sarah’s house was filled with friends and family and they’d had no time to talk. Since then something had always seemed to get in the way of meeting. Sarah hadn’t even seen the house, since Abby had moved into it. In fact, she wasn’t sure Ned had ever shown it to her.

  Sarah picked up on the fourth ring. “Abby? Sorry, I was out in the garden trying to get it cleaned up. Is something wrong?”

  What was wrong was that this nice woman who Abby really did like would think that there had to be some crisis before she would call. “No, not at all. I just realized I hadn’t seen you in a while, and since I haven’t been working I’ve been trying to keep busy working on the house and a couple of other things. But I suddenly felt the need to talk to a human being. Can we have lunch? Tea? A hike? I’m open to about anything.”

  “Abby, I’m delighted that you think of me as human! I’d love to get together. Look, we don’t know each other well. Are you a white gloves and bone china type of lunch eater? Or fast food?”

  “Neither, really. You know, what I’d really like would be for you to come over here, and I’ll give you lunch, and you can give me some advice on what to do with this handsome white elephant. This may sound like an odd question, but has Ned ever shown it to you?”

  “Do you know, he has not? Is he hiding something?”

  “Other than the fact that it’s barely livable, no. It is a beautiful house with great potential, and we’re lucky that we can afford to do a lot of things with it, but I’m kind of stumped. It’s a lot to take on all at once.”

  “And Ned doesn’t even notice it needs work, am I right?”

  “Kind of,” Abby admitted, feeling disloyal. “He works a lot, and then he comes home and we eat, and boom, the day is gone. But I’m sitting here staring at the walls and trying to figure out what kind of wallpaper I like. And the stove in the kitchen is older than I am. Help!”

  “Help is on its way,” Sarah said, laughing. “Why don’t I pick up some sandwiches and come on over, say, in an hour?”

  “Would you? I’d love that. I’ll see if I can find another chair.”

  “That bad, huh? I’ll be there.”

  Abby immediately felt cheered—and then panicked and hit Ned’s speed dial number. When he answered she said quickly, “You mother’s coming over for lunch. Does she know about Ellie? That she’s your . . .” Abby stopped, so no one else could hear on his end.

  “No,” Ned said, and he didn’t sound happy. “It didn’t seem to have anything to do with her at the time, and I didn’t expect Ellie to be part of my life. So we simply never talked about her.”

  “It’s okay,” Abby hurried to reassure him. “I just didn’t want to stick my foot in my mouth and give away anything you didn’t want me to.”

  “Are you going to talk about the . . . psychic thing?”

  “I’d like to, since she knows what I’m talking about. And if your ears start turning red, it’s because we’re talking about you.”

  “Oh, great. Be kind, will you?”

  “Of course. I want to get to know your mother better, anyway. Will you be home on time?”

  “I think so. Have fun, you two.” They hung up at the same time.

  Abby scanned the dining room. One of the benefits of the way they were living—or rather, camping out in an absurd amount of space—was that there wasn’t much to tidy up. But thanks to all her scraping and sanding off of antique glue from the walls, everything was dusty. And this was the way Sarah would see it for the first time? Abby jumped up and started scurrying around to clean up.

  Since it was a warm day, Abby had left the doors and windows open, to try to move the air around and get rid of some of the chemical smells. And the lingering cooking smells. And the underlying mildew smell—must make sure the basement was well-ventilated and there was no standing water. And . . . Abby’s frantic efforts were interrupted by Sarah’s voice. “Abby? Are you in here somewhere?”

  “Coming!” she called out and made for the wide entrance hall.

  Sarah had already stepped inside, carrying several bags from a local market, and was admiring the curving staircase. She smiled when she saw Abby. “This is gorgeous. I’m so glad nobody decided to rip it out and put in something modern.”

  “How anyone ever calculated the right curve to fit the space boggles me,” Abby admitted. “Thanks so much for coming over. And I wasn’t even sure you’d be home. Do you have a job?”

  “Not recently,” Sarah said. “I used to be a reference librarian, but a couple of years ago I decided I wanted more light and air and free time, so I simply said, enough! We could afford it, and the mortgage was paid off, so why not? I’ve been enjoying it—and the gardens have never looked so good.”

  “Don’t you get bored?”

  “No, or at least, not yet. Remember, I’m older than you are. I can understand that you’d be more impatient to do things. How’s my handsome son?”

  “Busy. Well, duh—he has a job, and a company to run. If I had a job, I might not feel so antsy.”

  Sarah held up the bags of food. “Why don’t we sort this out, and you can fill me in on what’s been happening. Ned is notoriously close-mouthed about personal things. Not that he’s hiding anything, but it just doesn’t occur to him that somebody else might be interested.”

  “But you’re his mother!” Abby protested.

  “He knows that, but that doesn’t mean he shares. He’s always been like that. Quiet. Introspective. Of course, he’s also kind, and he means well—but there are times when he’s kind of oblivious. Are you hungry?”

  “I am. For the last couple of weeks I’ve been trying to get rid of generations of crappy wallpaper, and that’s been hard work, which surprised me. And in between bouts of scraping I’ve been doing some research.”

  Sarah looked at her squarely. “About?”

  “This thing with seeing dead people.” There, she’d said it.

  13

  Sarah smiled. “I was wondering when we’d talk about that. Is it a problem? For you, or for the two of you together?”

  “No. Or at least, I don’t think so. Listen, has he told you how I ended up here? I mean, since we first met, not the years before that?”

  Sarah was laying out sandwiches and chips on paper plates that she’d brought along. “Let’s say the updates have been few and far between. One day he introduces you as a friend, and a couple of months later he informs me that you’ve moved in with him. There are a few small gaps between. Sit. I can talk and eat at the same time. Or listen, if that’s what you want.”

  So Abby took a large bite of her sandwich while she gathered her thoughts, and then launched into the events of the past couple of months. She didn’t have to go back to the beginning—how she had met Ned—but there was no way to talk about what had happened around Patriots’ Day without talking about this seeing of people who weren’t there. “Sarah, when we first met, you said you felt a kind of connection when we shook hands. Right?”

  Sarah was watching Abby carefully. “Yes. And we’ve never discussed that.”

  “Exactly. And I’m still working on figuring things out about that, but it’s important because it’s
linked to what’s happened lately.” So she plunged into the story about seeing someone not-real on the Littleton green at the reenactors’ muster, and how she’d followed her lineage back until she could identify him.

  “You know about Leslie, right?” Abby said cautiously.

  “You mean Ned’s ex-fiancée? Of course.”

  “Well, she runs the Concord Museum now, and that’s how Ned got me the job there. Which was great, until I ended up babysitting her daughter Ellie one day—”

  “Leslie’s married now?” Sarah interrupted.

  “Yes, for quite a while, and she has two kids—a girl named Ellie, who’s seven, and a younger boy, Peter. Anyway, one day there was some problem with day care, so Leslie asked if I could keep an eye on Ellie for the afternoon. I was happy to—I was working on children’s programs anyway, but I didn’t spend a lot of time with kids. Ellie and I went out to get lunch, and on the way back we visited one of the cemeteries—you know, the big one closest to the museum, on a hill?”

  “Sure, I know it. And?”

  “Ellie saw someone. The way Ned and I do. Someone who is dead.”

  “Ah,” Sarah said. “You’re going to have to tell me more.”

  Abby went on to explain why she couldn’t exactly interrogate Ellie on the spot, and how she had tried to explain things to Leslie, which had gotten her fired. “And it was then that Ned asked me to move in with him here—which might have happened without this psychic stuff. But I still don’t understand what’s happened to me and why, and if it’s the same with Ellie, I want to help her understand it and manage it. I’m sorry—is this too much, too soon?”

  Sarah shook her head. “No, not at all. And it makes a couple of things clearer.”