Never Buried

by Edie Claire

  Maura was gone. Leigh hobbled off in pursuit, and caught up with all three women on the other side of the duplex. There was no time for introductions, but she presumed the sleepy looking woman in the worn nightgown was Judith.

  "Of course I'm sure!" Maura bellowed. "If you two didn't touch the clothes, nobody did." She pushed past Leigh and went back through the door towards Mary's room. Leigh hobbled after her again, catching a ghost of a grin on Charlotte's face as she did so. Her own eyes narrowed.

  Maura was sifting through the clothes herself, quickly returning the room to near its previous state. "You're right!" she exclaimed. "They're gone. And they were here. I know they were."

  She sank onto the bed, a wide grin on her face. Leigh looked at her questioningly. "Don't you see, Koslow?" she beamed. "Somebody got those clothes for her. She's all right! She's hiding somewhere, or she's being hid, but either way, she's being taken care of. Someone brought her a change of clothes!"

  Leigh tried to catch her friend's enthusiasm, but her pessimistic side ruled. Did they really know Mary's wardrobe that well? She couldn't begin to catalog all the crap in her own closet, and she considered herself an organized person. Mary's captor stealing clothes from the house of a police officer? It was nonsense, and Maura should know better. "But how could anyone get in here?" she asked mildly.

  "There's a key hidden on the porch," Maura said dismissively. "Mom could tell them exactly what to do." Her eyes lit up even more. "Heck, she could even have gotten them herself! If she was careful."

  Leigh's skepticism remained. Maura was usually the one to hold back—to be cautious. The role reversal was unsettling, at best. "But why would she be hiding from us?"

  Maura sprang up from the bed. "Who cares?! Don't you get it, Leigh? This proves she's all right! She's all right!!" Maura pushed past her silent aunts. "I'm going on down to the station. The guys are going to love this!"

  Leigh looked at the faces of the two older women. Judith looked confused first off, concerned second. Charlotte looked thoughtful, and less than enthusiastic. Did they see what she saw? An overtired daughter, a little too desperate for a good sign?

  "Do you think she's okay?" Leigh asked quietly. "Maura, I mean?"

  Judith looked at Charlotte; Charlotte sighed. "She's been through a lot. A little hope won't hurt her. After all, she could be right, you know."

  ***

  The sewing room turned out to be a small room with an orange-upholstered day bed, a sewing machine, a black-and-white television, and a rowing machine without dust. After noting a conspicuous dip in the middle of the day bed, Leigh grabbed a pillow and blanket and returned to the downstairs couch. She sunk quickly into a light, fitful sleep, but was interrupted by the piercing shrill of an old-fashioned dial telephone.

  "Hello!" she barked automatically, her mind still hazy. The shrill sound came again. Leigh cursed at the fist she was holding to her ear and picked up the phone. "Hello! What is it?"

  There was a pause. "Leigh? Is that you?"

  Leigh sank back down onto the couch with the phone. "Yes, it's me. What is it, Warren?"

  "What do you think? I'm checking on you. Is everything all right?"

  "Well, we're out of the house, aren't we?"

  "That's not what I asked. I know Cara's in the hospital—I sent flowers already—and I know you and Mo had a rough afternoon. Are you really okay?"

  "We're fine."

  "No...new developments?"

  Leigh paused, seeing through his question. "Out with it, Harmon. What happened? You get another call?"

  "No," he began reluctantly.

  Her pulse began to quicken, but she fought it. She was tired of getting scared. "Then what?" she asked irritably.

  He sighed. "It's the Channel Five news. I have a friend who's a cameraman there, and I'd asked him to keep his ears open for me. He just reported some unpleasant rumors about the piece planned for eleven o'clock."

  Leigh waited.

  "A reporter researching the house dug up the 1949 story. He seems to feel there's evidence implicating Mary Polanski as a suspect in the arson attempt."

  "What?!" she said, incredulous.

  "I know it sounds ridiculous to us, because we know Mo. But it looks bad. Mary did disappear the same night as the arson attempt, and hasn't been seen since. If she simply wandered off, she'd almost certainly have been located by now. And being an Avaloner isn't her only connection to the Fischer house—she knew Robbie Fischer as a child. Her husband was the chief of police and her daughter is currently on the force; she's a prime candidate for special treatment. And she's known to be mentally unstable."

  Leigh's blood boiled. "She's not insane; she has Alzheimer's! Don't those idiots know the difference? And the rest of those facts don't add up to squat!" She couldn't help but think of the facts they didn't know. The puppy love. Chief Polanski's refusal to discuss the case. The missing clothes.

  "There's still a good chance they'll back off it," Warren said hopefully. "Sometimes editors balk at these things. I just wanted to warn you—and Mo."

  Leigh thanked him, assured him she was safe and sound with the door bolted, and put the phone in its cradle. She picked it up again to call Maura, but a glance at the clock stopped her. It was 10:59 PM.

  She settled herself in front of the Polanski's aged television, switched on the dial, and adjusted the antenna. By the time the tube had warmed up and she had gotten rid of the snow, the story had already begun. There were visuals of Cara's house, looking quite respectable in the daylight: shots from across the street, close-ups of the front door, and a side-angle view from the Rhodis's front yard. She held her breath as the reporter sensationalized the house's bloody history.

  Mary's name wasn't mentioned.

  She breathed a sigh of relief, but as the story wrapped up, her attention was drawn to the side view. Something didn't seem right. The picture was quickly replaced with one from the police station, where an officer made a bland statement about the Jane Doe in Beaver. A mug shot and description of Mary followed, with the innocuous lead-in of "Also, in Avalon..."

  Leigh walked over and switched the television off. She stood for a moment, eyes focused on nothing in particular, her brain replaying the side view of the house. Something was wrong.

  Chapter 22

  Leigh stood a few moments, her brow creased in concentration. Her sketches. Where were they? Vaguely remembering stuffing them into a box, she grabbed her keys off the counter and walked out to the Cavalier. She found the folded papers in a box next to her answering machine, stuffed up on the ledge inside the back window. Settling into the front seat, she spread them out over the steering wheel under the car's dim overhead light.

  Her fingers traced the crude outline of the inside of the attic. There were eight windows in all. Two flush with the wall and six dormers. She frowned. Had she drawn them right? She had only managed to closely investigate the floor and two of the four walls when she had gotten spooked. If only she had finished...

  She exhaled in a huff and folded up the drawings. She was stupid to have quit. The nonsense would end when the house's secret was uncovered. And the sooner the nonsense ended, the better for everybody.

  She tucked the drawings in her back pocket, grabbed the flashlight out of her glove compartment, and started walking.

  ***

  Like many of the narrow brick streets in Avalon, Elizabeth Avenue was steep enough to slide down on a snowy day, but on a warm evening in August, the trek merely made one's insteps sore. The Polanski's duplex was just a few blocks from the Boulevard, and after one had crossed that busy thruway alive, only a few more paces were required to reach Cara's door.

  Leigh skirted the entrance and walked around to the side facing the Rhodis's house. She pointed the flashlight up towards the roof, and her breath caught. She hadn't been seeing things after all. Only one window on the west side of the house was a dormer. The other was tucked inside a triangular gable, protruding from the main roof with its own set of
eaves. That window was flush with the outer wall.

  She pulled out her drawings. There was no doubt about it—she had made a mistake. Either she had misdrawn the interior sketches, or she had been fool enough to quit searching too soon.

  Which was it?

  She had to know.

  Leigh put a hand over the keys in her pocket. She could get in, all right. No problem there. And if someone saw her? Well, what difference did it make? She had every right to be there.

  She marched to the front door and twisted her key in the lock. The door swung open easily, and she walked into the foyer and punched in the security code. She smiled as the unit acknowledged her. Gil wasn't so smart. He could have at least changed the code. She locked the front door behind her and turned on the lights. Would Mrs. Rhodis see them on and call the police? No matter. By the time they arrived, she'd have everything all wrapped up for them in a nice little package.

  Unemployed Copywriter Solves 50-Year-Old Mystery.

  Leigh smiled to herself and started up the stairs, flipping lights on as she went. Offered Six-Figure Advance and Film Rights for Book Proposal. The smile was still on her lips when she reached the attic door.

  She swung it open and stepped in to pull the light chain. The single one hundred-watt bulb didn't accomplish much in the huge space. She shone her flashlight on the west bank of windows.

  Her sketches weren't wrong. The windows were both dormers.

  ***

  When she ran her fingers carefully along the walls flanking the far window, she was looking for something subtle. Some loose panel that might be pried away to access the dead space—the triangular spaces on either side of the window that had to be at least a foot and a half deep. What she found wasn't subtle at all. A rectangular outline in the wall near the floor, where the original wood had been cut out and replaced. She pressed gently on each edge. The top junctions split apart, but the panel didn't move. Sticking a fingernail in the exposed wood along the rectangle's top edge, she pulled. The door top popped out easily, folding down on flimsy hinges to rest at her feet.

  The beating of Leigh's heart rattled her rib cage as she aimed her flashlight into the exposed compartment. At first, she saw only more of the floor. Then the light reflected a tall object, with horizontal stripes. She stuck her head deeper into the opening. It was a stack of books.

  Wedging her shoulders through the door, she was just able to reach it. Thinking that Paul Fischer must have been a small man even before he shrank, she pulled the bottom of the pile toward her. The stack promptly collapsed—with books toppling onto her arms and a cloud of ancient dust exploding upward.

  She pulled her head out of the hole, coughing, and shook the dust out of her hair. One book had fallen near the door, and she snatched it up hastily. The fine, gray-brown powder on its cover matched nicely with her newly decorated forearms. She opened the cover.

  It was a journal, dated Spring, 1968. She flipped through the pages quickly, seeing the same, stilted printing she remembered from the poem. It was Paul's. Paul Fischer's journal.

  All anyone talks about anymore is the war. On the bus yesterday, I tried to tell a man about how writing was a dying art. He told me I was foolish to think about art when young men were dying everyday on foreign soil. I told him I'd almost died on foreign soil myself, at Normandy. He believed it, but it didn't matter. He said that all war was wrong. We stopped talking then. How can you talk with someone like that?

  Leigh's brow furrowed. She agreed that writing was a dying art, but as far as she could tell, Paul had little to contribute to it. Unless, of course, being prolific counted for something. She read a few more snatches that complained about the war-obsessed society, then put the book down and dug deeper into the cavity.

  The journals were out of order now, if in fact they had ever been in order. The books were all neatly dated on the front, either with ink or label tape, but she had to pull each out and dust it off before she could read the inscription. Not all the books were the same. Some spanned only a few months, others years. A few plain notebooks had been thrown in; several in pencil and barely legible. She feared at first that the notebooks were the older ones, but they were dated at random—perhaps Paul had used notebooks whenever his current journal ran out of space, and before he bought another. She could see now why Summer, 1987 was downstairs in his bedroom. He had not yet started it when he died.

  Leigh found a book dated 1943, and squealed with delight. How old would Paul have been then? Eighteen.

  I'm happy about it—why shouldn't I be? Father says he's worried about what everyone will think, but I doubt he cares, really. He doesn't want me to leave him, I know that. I'm all he's got.

  He told me maybe I should tell people another reason, like that I have flat feet. But I don't see why being underweight is any worse than walking like a camel. The Fischers have never been big men. If it saves my hide and keeps me whole, I've got no problem with it. Let the others get shot at. I'll hold down the fort on this side of the ocean. Somebody's got to. God knows we can't leave it all to the women.

  Any simpatico Leigh had felt for Paul as a fellow writer dissolved. He had been self-absorbed and small-minded at eighteen, and hadn't changed by forty-three. She slammed the book closed. When had Norman married Anita? It didn't matter. What she needed were the journals from 1949. Where were they?

  She put her head and shoulders back into the hole, then froze. Sounds filtered in the hole around her waist and echoed up to her ears. She pulled her head out and sat quietly. The squeaking wood couldn't lie. Someone was walking up the attic stairs.

  Her breath seemed to catch in her throat. Who was it? She hadn't been afraid—not really—not since seeing Robbie's face. The lights were on. It was probably just the police.

  But there were no sirens, no sounds from farther below. Just the steady creaking. Step. Step. Step. The person's progress was maddeningly slow. If it was the police, why weren't they calling out? Leigh took a quick glance around the attic. There was nowhere to hide, even if she had time. The hole in the wall taunted her. If only she didn't have such damn big hips!

  Step. Step. Step. Leigh's heart beat violently against her ribcage. There was no point in thinking—she was going to meet this person, and she was going to do it with a dusty book or two and a lightweight flashlight. No way around it. She grabbed at the flashlight and switched it off, then flattened herself in the corner of the dormer.

  Step. Step. Heels creaked as they swiveled on the landing. The attic door was open. A flashlight beam appeared and shone through the doorway to the opposite wall of the attic, making sweeping arcs. Someone called her name.

  "Leigh?"

  She swallowed as the figure stepped into the light of the lone bulb. It was the blue-eyed security guard.

  "I'm over here," she said, exhaling. "I...um... I forgot some things."

  The flashlight beam swung around and caught her in the midst of the pile of books. "You scared me," she chastised.

  The guard smiled. "Sorry," he apologized in a soft baritone. "I would have guessed you didn't scare easy. Are you crazy, coming back here by yourself, at night?"

  "Probably," Leigh answered honestly. "But I needed something." A thought struck her. "So what are you doing here? I thought Mr. March cancelled your contract."

  "That's what we’re supposed to say," he said matter-of-factly. "Your brother-in-law's no idiot. He figured maybe somebody would try something else if the house was unguarded."

  "And that's a good thing?" Leigh said sarcastically. Gil was on her bad side, and she wasn't inclined to give him the benefit of a doubt.

  "If we catch him, it is." the guard said logically.

  Leigh humphed. "Well, why don't you tell Mr. March his security has been breached?"

  The guard smiled again. "I already did—when you came in the front. He told me to find out what you were doing and then shag you outta here."

  Leigh's face burned. "Well you can tell him I said 'Go to hell,' and that's a di
rect quote."

  The security guard leaned back against the door frame and grinned, clearly enjoying himself. "I think it’d be better if you told him that yourself. In the meantime, please get what you need and come on out. It really isn't safe."

  "Why not?" Leigh insisted. "You're guarding it, aren't you?"

  His grin increased. "I guess you've got me there." He looked at the pile of books scattered at her feet. "I'll give you a couple minutes to get those together, then you'll have to leave, I'm afraid. Do you want help?"

  "No," Leigh answered quickly, "I just want one or two. Thanks."

  The guard winked at her, and left. She got back down on her knees, which were more than a little shaky. Fear, anger, and lust in quick succession could certainly wreak havoc on one's nervous system.

  Determined to bring all the books out into the light, she put her torso back into the hole and shoved them out one by one. The bottom of the door had been poorly sanded, and she cursed at the scratches criss-crossing her stomach. It was a good thing she preferred one-piece swimming suits.

  Coughing and sniffling, she pulled the books away from the dusty hole and began rubbing off each one. Fall, 1961. Spring/Summer, 1954. Spring, 1947. Had Paul Fischer been a more interesting person, she might have liked to read them all. As it was, only one mattered.

  And after she had cleaned and stacked about two thirds of the journals, she found it.

  Summer, 1949. The stilted letters jumped out of the dust, reverberating in her brain like winning lottery numbers. She opened the book gingerly and turned to the first page.

  June 12, 1949

  I think he regrets it now—like I knew he would. All day long she does nothing but snivel around, whining about how I need to get married and how I never help out around the house. Father doesn't put up with that nonsense, and he shouldn't. He needs me around, and he knows it.