7 Never Haunt a Historian (18 page)

She marched back into her house, informed Warren of her intentions, walked out through the front, crossed her lawn to the Sullivan’s house, and rapped on their door.

After a long wait, the door swung slowly open.

Nora’s husband Derrick peered out, holding the door with one hand while using the other to balance his infant son on his shoulder. His typical button-down office shirt was liberally covered with a spit-up rag, which was liberally covered with spit-up. His black slacks seemed to have taken the worst of the eruption, making him look like a reverse Dalmatian.

A very sad, very tired Dalmatian who was lost, confused, and about to wander in front of a speeding truck.

Leigh smiled. “Never fear,” she proclaimed. “Help is here.”

Derrick blinked at her from behind oversized glasses that magnified his bloodshot eyeballs. The man was nice enough, but Leigh had yet to run into him when she had not in some way been reminded of a rodent. It wasn’t just that he suffered from a prominent overbite, which he did, but that he had a curious way of walking with his shoulders hunched and his hands flailing in front of him. It was almost as if he were working at a computer—even when he wasn’t.

“Help?” he repeated, dazed.

Leigh clapped her hands together and held them out, talking loud enough for her voice to carry over the continued caterwauling. “I’d love to entertain little Cory for a while. I know Nora’s still working and let’s face it—you need a break. I am the mother of twins, one of which screamed for most of her infancy. The fact that’s she alive and well now and I am not in prison should tell you that I’m eminently qualified for the task.”

“Oh,” he responded, a light apparently dawning. Slowly. “Oh, that’s nice. Thanks.”

If Leigh didn’t know that the man was employed as a systems analyst, a job requiring no small amount of analytical brainpower, she might be inclined to question his mental acumen. But she knew better than to judge any parent in the throes of sleep deprivation.

Derrick turned and gestured for her to follow him back into the house. She complied, shutting the door behind her.

The room looked like it had been struck by a white and blue tornado. Every surface was covered with baby blankets, baby toys, baby towels, and baby spit-up. It smelled of sour milk and one particularly ripe diaper that was balanced on top of Derrick’s printer, apparently having never completed its journey to the covered step-pail in the corner.

Leigh fought back a grin. The room was actually quite well appointed and fundamentally clean… she suspected it had looked much different when Nora left this morning.

Derrick flitted about the room, picking up various towels and blankets from off the furniture, inspecting each with a grimace, then setting it back down again.

Leigh stepped over to the baby’s changing table, opened the cabinet door beneath, and pulled out a clean burp cloth. She threw it over her shoulder and held out her hands once more.

“Seriously,” she coaxed. “I’d love to watch him for a while. Why don’t you take a walk, or a drive to the convenience store? Get some air?” She looked at her watch. “Nora’s relief person is due at the Brown’s in half an hour. I can stay here till she gets home, if you like.”

Derrick’s eyes widened. “Oh, no!” he said nervously. “I can’t be gone when she gets back. She’d kill me! Look at this place!” Even as he spoke he gently handed over little Cory, whose cries quieted to whining wails at the transfer.

Leigh held the infant in a firm cuddle that had, at one time, been as natural to her as breathing. The baby stopped crying and stared at her.

“How did you do that?” Derrick asked with wonder.

“Don’t feel bad,” she assured. “It won’t last. This is just the novelty phase. He’ll start squalling again in a minute. But that’s okay. Par for the course.”

Derrick took a deep breath and looked around. “Maybe if I just… would you mind holding him while I clean up a bit?”

“Absolutely.”

The new father proceeded to stumble around the room, picking up various soiled linens and moving them to other places with no apparent plan in mind. “Have you,” he began uncertainly, “heard any more news about Archie?”

Leigh sighed. “I’m afraid not. But I have a friend who’s a homicide detective with the county, and I’m hoping she’ll light a fire under the investigators pretty soon. I have my doubts about how aggressively they’ve been looking for him. To them, of course, Archie is an adult of sound mind who has every right to take off without telling anybody.”

Derrick frowned. “I suppose so. But still, it doesn’t sound like him.”

“No,” Leigh agreed. “It doesn’t. Did—” she cut herself off. She had been about to ask,
“Did you know him well?”
But the past tense was not acceptable. “Do you know him well?” she amended.

Derrick gave the slightest of shrugs. “I don’t get out in the neighborhood much. But I’ve been to a few meetings of the reenactors.”

Leigh glanced idly about the room, half expecting to see more Civil War paintings and memorabilia hung around. But all of the couple’s framed pictures were inexpensive prints of landscapes and flowers. “So Archie gave you the bug, too?”

“Excuse me?” Derrick had managed to gather most of the soiled linens into a pile in the center of the floor, but the last few rags seemed to allude him.

Leigh surreptitiously grabbed the one nearest her and added it to the stack. “I mean, did Archie get you interested in the Civil War, or were you already a fan?”

“Oh,” he responded, picking up the pile of linens and dropping two. “Not really. I mean, I’ve always thought history was interesting.” He returned in a moment with a plastic trash bag, which he shook open and proceeded to carry around the room filling with crumpled tissues, pop cans, and the occasional used baby wipe.

“Archie tried to convince Warren he looked like General McClellan,” Leigh said with a laugh. “But trying to recruit my husband for a reenactment in an itchy wool uniform is a lost cause. Unless it involves the Starship Enterprise, of course.”

Derrick laughed out loud—or at least, Leigh thought it was a laugh. It sounded more like a snorting seal. “Oh, that would be funny,” Derrick replied, walking past the dirty diaper on the printer for the fourth time. “Now, wearing
those
costumes would be fun.”

The question of itchy wool coat versus shiny spandex pajamas seemed like a toss-up to Leigh. But as her husband so frequently reminded her, she was
not
one of the faithful.

Her novelty had evidently worn off. Little Cory started to cry again. She shifted him into a new position and started moving. “So… how many of the events have you participated in?”

Derrick looked at her blankly.

“The reenactments, I mean,” she clarified. The baby cried louder.

“Oh. None of the big stuff,” he answered. “I was too busy for Antietam. But the Perryopolis Parade is coming up pretty soon.”

“Oh?” Leigh said politely, slipping into the adjacent bathroom and wetting a clean rag with cool water. As she began gently sponging the baby’s face, his cries ceased. “What do the reenactors do in the parade?”

Derrick shrugged again. “Just march and stuff, I guess.” He was watching her intently. “Hey, that’s a neat trick! He likes that.”

“Just a distraction,” Leigh explained. “You have to keep varying your tactics.”

Derrick continued his marginal efforts at cleaning up, and for a few minutes, Leigh tended to the baby in silence. Eventually Derrick managed to get the dirty linens corralled and had parked them and the half-full bag of trash by the door to the kitchen. He stood still a moment, then threw Leigh a pointed look. “I was wondering… have you heard any more about how Lester’s doing? Nora said he’d probably have to stay in the hospital overnight.”

“You know as much as I do, then,” Leigh responded.

Derrick’s chin lowered. His hands fidgeted with the drawstrings of the trash bag. “He’s a really nice guy, Lester,” he said awkwardly. “Archie, too. I hope they’re both okay.”

Leigh could stand it no longer. She stepped over to the printer, picked up the dirty diaper, and deposited it in Derrick’s bag.

He appeared not to notice.

Nora, my dear,
Leigh thought to herself.
Your husband is one odd duck.

Then again, who in this neighborhood wasn’t?

“I hope so too,” she agreed.

Chapter 14

Leigh’s living room was dark, illuminated only by the flickering static on the TV that represented the inactive camera feed. The kids were getting ready for bed and Warren had retired uncharacteristically early in anticipation of a long drive to meet a new client the next morning. Leigh alternated between staring at the static and staring at her phone. Should she call Maura, or wait until tomorrow? The detective had asked to be informed. Perhaps a text would be better?

She wondered what was going on in the Frank-Polanski household. She and Warren were both quite certain that Gerry would welcome his wife’s news, however unexpected. Still, Leigh feared that any reaction less than sheer, unbridled enthusiasm on his part would send her friend into a complete tailspin. Never mind that handling violence, corpses, murderers, and criminally insane lunatics was all in a day’s work for Maura. Facing a first, unplanned pregnancy at forty-two?
That
was scary.

Leigh jumped as her phone rang in her palm. She checked the number.

It was Emma Brown’s cell.

“Emma!” she greeted, her pulse beginning to race. “Is everything okay?”

“As well as could be expected, I suppose,” the usually merry voice said tiredly. “Lester’s asleep, finally. I’m going to leave here and head home in a minute—I’ve got a friend picking me up. But I’m coming back first thing tomorrow.”

“How is Lester?”

“He says he’s fine. But then, he’s a man.” She let out a sigh. “Nothing scary showed up on the tests, and they’re saying his concussion is mild. They don’t think he was unconscious very long after he hit his head; more likely, he was delirious with fever and just drifting in and out of sleep when you found him. He was pretty dehydrated—never mind how much I pushed the fluids at him.”

So,
Leigh thought with chagrin,
no one is even considering the possibility of assault.
And why should they, with Lester lying about the whole incident?

Maybe she was wrong. Maybe he did pass out first and hit his head second. She certainly wished that were the case.

“The police questioned him?” Leigh inquired.

“Just a bit,” Emma replied. “It looked a little fishy, you know, him being on Archie’s property when it happened. But he explained all that.”

“Was it just the local police who questioned him?” Leigh continued, worrying even as she spoke that she was pressing too much, “or the county investigators working on Archie’s case?”

There was a pause. “I think it was the locals,” Emma said uncertainly. “Why?”

Stupid running mouth.
“I was just wondering if anyone thought there was a connection to Archie’s case. But obviously not.” Leigh made an attempt to sound cheerful, reassuring. She did not want to alarm Emma further.

Emma didn’t answer for a moment. “Well, I’m calling because Lester made me promise I would. He wants to see you, Leigh. I don’t know why—he wouldn’t tell me. Well, he did tell me, but it was some nonsense about him needing to tell you how to feed Wiley. Like that mutt wouldn’t eat dirty shoe leather! By the way, somebody did feed him today, didn’t they?”

Leigh assured her that the Pack was spoiling the dog rotten. “Did Lester want me to come to the hospital?” she asked, her heart still thumping.

“He did,” Emma responded. “But I told him no way was I asking you to drive out tonight, and that he needed his rest. Of course he argued with me, but then he fell asleep anyhow. I was thinking he’d be discharged tomorrow morning, but the last doctor that was in here said maybe not—it will depend on whether his fever goes back up. Lester wanted to call you, but they won’t let him talk on the phone, or watch television, or anything like that. Still, he’s determined to see you tomorrow whether he goes home or not. I told him I’d ask you just to settle his mind.”

“I’d be happy to come,” Leigh said quickly, mentally revising her schedule so that she could work from home tomorrow. Being a founding partner in an advertising agency did have its perks. “Just tell me when would be a good time, and I’ll be there.”

Emma said that she would call tomorrow and let Leigh know; only when they were about to hang up did Leigh remember the camera. But how could she ask Emma’s permission without upsetting her? A thought struck.

“Well, of course that’s all right with me!” Emma replied to her request. “I hope the dog shows up and the kids can figure out where she’s got that litter stashed. It’s too bad that Lester scared her away like that. But at least the weather’s warm, and there’s been no rain.”

Leigh agreed. The women exchanged pleasantries and hung up.

The television screen flickered suddenly to life. An image of the tool shed in the distance appeared. In the foreground, something moved, then disappeared again. Leigh leaned forward, eyes wide.

Come back!

The figure moved onto the left side of the screen.

“Oh,” Allison said with disappointment. “It’s just a deer.”

Leigh startled. Her daughter was standing behind her chair, not ten inches from her ear. Clad in a cotton nightshirt with running mustangs gracing its front, Allison hopped around and plopped herself down in front of the TV. “We can actually look for the dog if you want,” she said pleasantly, with just the slightest trace of a smirk.

Leigh bit back a retort. She really hated getting caught in a lie—even a white one—by a child she tried so hard to teach
not
to tell lies.

Especially white ones.

Explaining to Allison that she had been trying to keep Emma from getting unnecessarily upset on an already trying day would only add fuel to the fire, given that “I thought it might upset you” was Allison’s favorite excuse for her own infuriating omissions of fact.