7 Never Haunt a Historian (29 page)

Chapter 23

A little over a week later, in the late afternoon of an unseasonably warm October day, an intergenerational crowd assembled at Archie Pratt’s house and marched outside and across the lawn to the tool shed. Despite the fact that four of the attendees were over eighty, two of those were over ninety, and another of the group had just gotten out of the hospital, only Dora Klinger moved in a wheelchair. Everyone else, including Archie, was determined to make the march on their own, even if their progress was glacial.

“You’re holding it wrong,” Pauline barked, critiquing Archie’s handling of his cane. “You got to pull it around a little more as you’re moving. See?”

Archie imitated the older woman’s movements, then broke out in a grin. “Well, what do you know?” he said slowly, his stiff jaw still muffling his words a bit. “That does help!”

Pauline sniffed in triumph.

“You should have let me rent that scooter,” Lester insisted, sticking close to Archie’s side in case he stumbled. Both Lester and Emma had been fussing over Archie like hens ever since his return, and Archie—never one to turn down either a free meal or friendly company—was letting them do it.

“You try to do too much on that leg too soon,” Emma threatened, “and you can say goodbye to Pioneer Days at Perryopolis.”

But Archie merely grinned again. He had been so happy to get out of the hospital and get home, he had been grinning almost constantly ever since, dismissing his healing jaw, fractured ribs, and deep bruises as a mere inconvenience. “Ain’t
nobody
stopping me from marching at Perryopolis,” he declared. “I may not finish the route till nightfall, but I’ll be there with bells on. Or at least a canteen and a haversack.”

He cast a wink at Allison, who smiled radiantly back at him. Scotty O’Malley, who had been dogging her heels the whole way, puffed up proudly. “I’m going to Perryopolis, too,” he bragged. “As a drummer! And dad says if I get a D in pre-algebra, I can go to Fredericksburg!”

“You can do it, boy,” Archie encouraged without sarcasm. “And so can I. By Fredericksburg,” he proclaimed loudly, “I’ll be good as new!”

Wiley, who had been running circles around the group as it moved, barked as if in agreement. His master grinned indulgently at him. It had surprised no one to learn that when Maura visited Archie in the hospital, the first words he had laboriously tapped out on his tablet were “dog needs fed.”

When the crowd reached the cellar doors, only just unsealed by Maura and another woman from the local PD, the group split. Lawn chairs had been set out for those who needed them, and Pauline and Dora, along with Emma, settled in up top to await the good word. But everyone else insisted on crowding into the dank space below to witness the climactic moment.

“Now, you know we could all be making a big fuss over nothing, right?” Archie cautioned from the cellar’s midst, his face illuminated by the glow of multiple flashlights. “Theodore Carr might not have had anything worth burying.”

“He had the hat of that Southern general dude, didn’t he?” Scotty asked excitedly, hopping from foot to foot like the floor was on fire. “The one who put his hat on his sword in the movie?”

Archie and Harvey exchanged a look of poorly concealed excitement. Despite their efforts at lowering the crowd’s expectations, Leigh suspected the both of them would be hopping like Scotty if they could get away with it. “We don’t know what he had,” Harvey said. “It’s all conjecture, because Theodore apparently kept the exact nature of his booty a secret, even from his family. The legend that passed down through his descendants was merely that Theodore had brought back a souvenir from Gettysburg that he was convinced was very valuable. At some point he hid it on the farm and wrote to his daughter that she was to come and get it when he died. He must not have trusted his son with it; though why, we don’t know. Whatever happened between the two men, after Theodore died Thomas apparently told his sister that their father had nothing of value—that it was just an old man’s fantasy. Theodore’s daughter, whose married name was Leonora Trout, believed her brother. But she did keep the last letter her father ever wrote her, which included the map. She gave it to her son, David Trout, and told him the story. When David realized that his uncle wasn’t mentally stable either, he must have started wondering: which man to believe?”

“It could be they were both loony,” Archie conceded. “But I think that before David Trout sold the farm, he took a stab at finding that treasure himself. Not only that, but he must have shown the map to somebody else. Copy machines like we have didn’t exist back then, but anybody could have taken a picture of it. And somebody must have, because according to Dora, there were strangers out here sniffing around even before Thomas died, when the place was still a rental. That points the finger to David as the leak.”

“Where did you get your copy of the map, Mr. Pratt?” Allison asked.

Archie’s eyes gave a twinkle. “Well, whose hands it started out in, I’ve got no clue. But it was given to me by a reenactor named Clive Haden, the man who recruited me. Fine old gentleman, passed away about ten years ago. Said he got it from another Civil War buff, along with the story that it marked the hiding place of…” he paused for proper effect, then gave a nod to Scotty. “The hat of Brigadier General Lewis Addison Armistead. Clive hadn’t ever searched for it himself; he didn’t even know where the farm might be, except that he heard it was someplace along the old Harmony Line. But once I saw the map, I was hooked. The very thought that it could be real, that a relic like that could be buried somewhere unclaimed, after all this time…” Archie’s voice turned wistful, but with a sudden shake of his head, he sobered. “I got a little carried away, I’ll admit. I figured out where the farm was, and then when I found out that it had once been owned by a Civil War veteran, well, I…” His gaze moved to the floor.

“You had every right to get carried away!” Lester broke in defensively. He looked around at the others. “Would you believe that at the very time Arch found this place, it just happened to be for sale? Now, how’s that for a sign?” He looked at Archie again. “You didn’t do a thing wrong. You had no idea if Theodore had any heirs, or if they even cared. Either way, they’d sold the place ages ago, and that includes anything buried on it!”

“But…” Allison asked hesitantly. “The story about it being Armistead’s hat. You said that didn’t get passed down through Theodore’s family. So how could anybody else know?”

Archie cast a shamefaced glance at Harvey.

“They couldn’t,” Harvey admitted, his own face turning equally sheepish. “That idea seems to have come from the Civil War buffs in the story. I suspect that they, like me, heard ‘soldier at the Angle’ and ‘souvenir’ and jumped to the most exciting possible conclusion.”

“Yeah, we’re optimistic like that,” Archie answered with a sad smile. “I don’t know why Theodore kept what he had a secret—maybe just part of his paranoia about somebody stealing it. But the story that came down through the family was bare-bones, like Harvey said. We heard it all from Derrick. He came to see me last night—wanted to apologize for Nora and try to explain. It turns out that when Nora’s grandmother Sarah—she was David Trout’s daughter—was on her deathbed, she gave Nora the original map and the letter and told her that one of her ancestors had fought in the Battle of Gettysburg and buried some treasure worth a fortune. But no one could ever find it and now the farm was sold. Nora was only twelve years old when she heard that story, and poor as dirt, and it caught her imagination and wouldn’t let go. She’s been determined to reclaim the treasure ever since.” Archie cleared his throat uncomfortably. “I guess she considered it her birthright.”

“Maybe so,” Harvey said gravely. “But at some point, it turned into an obsession.” He cast a glance around the group in the cellar, and Leigh suspected he was making sure not to be overheard by Emma, who felt horribly guilty for having hired Nora as an aide in the first place and was taking the entire affair very hard. “As it turns out,” Harvey continued at a lower level, “Nora’s been sniffing around the neighborhood for years, trying to buy the farm, or part of it, or something close to it. She would have bought your place” —he gave a nod to Leigh— “when it came up for sale five years ago, if she had the money at the time. But she couldn’t afford to buy anything until after she married Derrick. Then she made a point of cozying up to Emma so that she could finagle a job, keep an ear to the ground in case any other neighbors wanted to sell, and—”

“And keep tabs on Archie,” Lester finished bitterly. “She knew he was looking for the treasure. He and I would talk about it sometimes, secretly, of course, but somehow she—” He broke off, his face red.

“Well, I never trusted that woman for a minute!” Adith insisted. “I told you she was an eavesdropper. Ain’t nothing lower than somebody who can’t keep their schnoz out of other peoples’ business!”

Adith crossed her arms and nodded her head sharply.

Harvey coughed.

Adith threw him a withering look.

“But Nora’s rotting in jail now, right?” Scotty piped up, his face shining with glee.

“Her future is unclear,” Maura answered gruffly, casting a look at Scotty that not only stilled his tongue, but made him slide a step behind Allison. The detective had heretofore made an effort to be unobtrusive, observing silently from the background. But Leigh knew that Nora’s fate was a source of consternation for the prosecutors. Although there was no clear proof that she had assaulted Lester, there was ample evidence that she had hired two goons from her high school class to get Archie out of the way while she made one final, concerted effort at getting to the treasure before he did. But exactly what she had instructed the men to do was in debate, as was her mental state at the time. Her lawyers were pushing the theory of post-partum psychosis; the prosecution vehemently disagreed. Only one issue met with no debate from anyone: baby Cory belonged with his father. Fortunately, Derrick’s mother—formerly banished from the home by Nora—was now helping Derrick with the housework, and by all accounts the baby seemed unaffected by his mother’s sudden absence. Which was not so surprising given that, as Leigh suspected, it was Derrick who had been his son’s primary caregiver all along.

Whether Nora had married Derrick because she loved him or because she wanted his income to purchase a house near the farm, Leigh could only guess. Derrick had told the police that he knew of his wife’s desire to search for the family heirloom but had considered it a harmless quest, realizing only too late that her passion had morphed into pathology. The poor man seemed as amazed as anyone by the lengths his wife had gone to in the end. But despite the horror of the last weeks, he seemed to harbor no ill will towards the mother of his child. Amazingly enough, Derrick seemed optimistic that proper treatment could eventually bring Nora back.

“So,” Archie said loudly, infusing cheer into his voice again. “Who’s going to do the digging?”

The Pack held up their tools. “We are!”

“Well then,” Archie said with a grin. “Get busy!”

“Be careful!” Allison admonished as the foursome dug in with an assortment of small garden tools, and Scotty O’Malley, not to be left out, started pulling away the growing piles of dirt with his hands. “Don’t break anything!” Allison ordered. “Remember what Aunt Lydie said!”

Leigh leaned toward her cousin. “Why isn’t your mother here?” she whispered. “I thought she wanted to come.”

Cara’s lips twisted. “She did. But when I told her it was this afternoon she said she couldn’t—she had to meet
an
old friend.”

Leigh grinned. “The mystery man again?”

“Without a doubt,” Cara responded. “And where is your mother? Gotten any more texts lately?”

Leigh’s answering smirk made her cousin laugh. Cara knew perfectly well that when Frances realized it was her own overzealous alert that had propelled her daughter straight into the jaws of potential death and dismemberment, she had banished the cell phone to the nether regions of her purse for all eternity. Never mind that it had been what Frances said, rather than what she texted, that had sent Leigh running out into the storm. If Frances wanted to blame the entire affair on the evils of text messaging, Leigh was only too happy to let her.

The Pack soon removed enough earth from around the stone’s edges to make it wobble, and Archie leaned on his cane to loom above them. “Now, you kids have to realize,” he lectured again, even as his own eyes blazed with anticipation, “the whole hat thing was just our own wishful thinking. Theodore Carr was a senile old man when he made this map—he could have been sleeping with a tin can under his pillow and calling it a cannon ball.”

“The stone’s coming up!” Ethan shouted.

“Let’s pull it out!” Mathias ordered.

Five pairs of hands lifted the shallow rock from its resting place and set it to the side.

“In the middle there!” Archie shouted.

Ethan’s fingers worked frantically to free the small, half-buried object near his side of the hole. “I’ve got it!” He stood up, brushed off its surface with a flourish, and held it out on his palm. It was a thin rectangular box, maybe three or four inches on its sides. “Here Mr. Pratt,” he offered. “You open it!”

Archie, his eyes wide as saucers, took the item wordlessly in his hands.

“Well, I’ll be!” Adith crowed from near the steps, looking through her binoculars. “It ain’t no hat. It’s a Prince Albert tobacco tin!”

“It’s not the hat,” Allison explained with awe. “It’s
The Guide.”

“A rather clever way to hide an important paper,” Harvey praised. “These tins were ubiquitous in the twenties.”

“At least he was sharp enough to bury it in the center of the floor, where the ground stays drier,” Cara commented, no doubt quoting some of her mother’s archeological wisdom. “Otherwise it would have rusted through years ago.”

“Open it!” Lenna said impatiently.

Archie put his hands around the tin and gently pried open the hinged top. The assembled crowd held their breath as Archie’s pudgy fingers pulled out a yellowed, folded piece of paper.