Never Buried: A Leigh Koslow Mystery (5 page)

She tossed down the paper and tore the wrapper off her fourth low-fat granola bar.
Coffee. I need coffee
. She was about to search for some when Cara joined her in the breakfast nook.

"Morning," Leigh said, sounding more cheerful than she felt. Cara looked awful. Her normally perfect hair hung limply over her shoulders, several renegade strands sticking out in odd directions. Her eyes were red-tinged and her lids puffy.

"Yeah, I guess," she groaned, shuffling over to open the refrigerator. "Did you and Maura eat all those donuts?"

Leigh sniffed. "You, Maura, I, and half the coroner's office finished them by noon, yes." She rose. "You can have some breakfast bars if you want," she said, holding out the box. "They're sweet."

Cara looked at the box skeptically, but pulled out a bar and sat down. Leigh poured two glasses of orange juice and joined her. "Bad night?"

Cara glanced up in surprise. "Why do you say that?"

Leigh smiled slyly. "Um, gee, I'm just psychic I guess."

Cara looked at her hair out of the corner of her eyes and tried to smooth it down. "You were out at your mom's house pretty late last night," Leigh continued. "Did she make that great lasagna?"

Cara nibbled at the breakfast bar with distaste. "If she'd been making lasagna I would have invited you. Actually, she served chicken salad—it was a Ballasta Basket party. I thought the guests would never leave."

Leigh gave thanks for being spared the invite. Her aunt's chicken salad was second to none, but not even lasagna could make her spend an evening with thirty Martha Stewart fanatics cooing over Ballasta baskets.

"But even after I got back," Cara continued, "I didn't go straight to bed. Something Mrs. Rhodis said made me want to look around the bookshelves in the study."

This statement begged several questions, but Leigh decided to take first things first. "Mrs. Rhodis?" she asked. "That's the older woman who lives next door, right? I didn't know she knew your mom."

"She didn't," Cara answered. "I invited her. She was fussing over my Ballasta laundry basket the other day, and she's a neat lady. She hangs her clothes out on the line too. She has a dryer, but we both think there's nothing like that fresh smell—"

Leigh's efforts at polite conversation did have limits. "You were saying something about searching the house?"

"Yes," Cara backtracked, becoming more animated. "It's all very interesting. You know about how I found the money?"

Leigh nodded. A few days before, Cara, who was used to thinking in geometric terms, had noticed a discrepancy in the woodwork around the master bedroom fireplace. She thought there must be a potential space not accessible through the existing cabinets, and a more thorough examination revealed she was right. A camouflaged door opened to a small compartment, which contained a blank book and a metal tackle box with $300 in cash and some old coins. From Cara's reaction, you'd have thought she won the lottery.

"You still have it, right?" Leigh asked.

"For now," Cara answered. "But I think I'll give it to charity. It must have belonged to the man we bought the house from; but he's dead, and apparently he had no family."

The image of a small piece of paper flickered through Leigh's mind.
Get out of my house
.

Cara continued. "Anyway, this man, his name was Paul Fischer, lived in this house practically his whole life. Mrs. Rhodis lived next door to him for over forty years, but never got to know him very well. Do you believe it? She says he kept to himself, went to work and came back, and didn't have much of a social life. She only saw him when he was outside working on the house. He kept it in great condition, as you can see, so he clearly was a decent handyman and carpenter. Which led me to believe that he designed and built the compartment himself." She bit off a larger bite of breakfast bar.

"A miserly type who didn't trust banks?"

"That's what the police suggested when I found the money. Apparently he had no bank account, at least not when he died. So building a safe seemed a reasonable enough thing for him to do. But then I talked to Mrs. Rhodis."

A tiny bell went off in Leigh's mind. Hadn't she known a Mrs. Rhodis in her days at the Koslow Animal Clinic? She closed her eyes and tried to get a picture. "Yep," she said proudly, opening her eyes. "Got her. Short, round, wild hair. Polyester. Dynasty of clairvoyant white poodles."

"That's her," Cara grinned, "but I think the current poodle is apricot. Or maybe it's what you'd call champagne?" Realizing she was getting sidetracked, Cara shook her head and moved on. "The point is, she told me that before Paul Fischer died, he hinted that he had some important papers at his house."

Leigh's stomach twitched unpleasantly. "You mean, like a will?"

"No will was ever found. Nor were any other papers. The closest thing he had was an address book, and no living relatives could be located."

Leigh remembered the legal hassles Cara and Gill had gone through to buy the house. The sale had taken years. Just thinking about it made her head start to pound. Or was the pounding from another source? Her eyes panned the kitchen anxiously. If she didn't get some caffeine in her veins soon, civil conversation would become impossible. Maybe on the very top shelf? "So, Mrs. Rhodis has got you believing that this Paul Fischer guy hid something in the study? A treasure map, perhaps?" Leigh fetched the step ladder and started to climb.

Cara watched with amusement. "If you can control your cynicism for a minute, I'll tell you exactly what she said. But as I told you yesterday, you won't find any regular coffee. I went cold turkey when I found out I was pregnant."

Leigh stepped down reluctantly.

"I'm not expecting gold doubloons." Cara continued. "More along the lines of an answer to an old mystery."

Leigh couldn't help rolling her eyes. Once again, the promise of a mystery had Cara drooling.
Thanks a lot, Mrs. Rhodis
.

Cara caught Leigh's expression and set her jaw in irritation. "And what's so wrong with trying to solve a little puzzle here and there? What else am I supposed to do for the next seven weeks? Sit around and file my nails?"

Leigh could think of several better suggestions, but stopped herself. Cara clearly enjoyed such things. So much so that she had stayed up till all hours of the night rattling around measuring bookshelves. Harmless fun, right?

The image of a dusty hat and pinstriped suit formed unbidden in Leigh's mind. She rounded up her breakfast bar wrappers and threw them in the trash. A real mission was hers this morning—one that didn't involve catchy slogans for industrial soap dispensers. She needed to make sure Cara wasn't getting herself into trouble, and she needed to do it without Cara knowing about it.

But first, she needed caffeine.

It was twenty minutes later when an angel of mercy finally leaned down from heaven to hand Leigh the cup of life. "Thank you for choosing McDonald's," the pimple-faced teenager said flatly, slamming the glass window.

Leigh placed the brew delicately between her knees and steered into a parking spot, a technique she had perfected long before scalding your crotch had become a national cash cow. After half a large cup, her mind began to clear, and she tried to connect Cara's rantings with the appearance of the corpse. The note on the body was written in first person: get out of my house. Unless the deceased had the presence of mind to write it himself before he kicked off, it seemed reasonable that the note was planted by whoever left the body in the hammock. Since writing a note to a dead man would be pointless, the note must have been intended for whoever found his corpse. And with the body placed at the old Fischer house, it seemed reasonable to assume that the deceased was Paul Fischer himself.

Leigh took another long drink. When had Paul Fischer died? Years before Cara and Gil bought the house; she knew that. And they had owned it a few more years before they fixed it up and moved in. No need for a nice house when you spend 90% of the time living out of a suitcase bopping around the world.

And what could have happened to his body? She was fairly certain that most residents of Avalon ended up at Fields Funeral Home, intestate or not. Then again, Vestal hadn't recognized the body. Where had Fischer died? And where had his body been between then and yesterday night?

The more Leigh considered that the body might be Paul Fischer, the more certain she became. Surely Maura already suspected him—he was an obvious choice for anyone who knew about the note, which Cara, Leigh remembered, did not. That was just as well.

Finishing off the last of her coffee, she drove to the parking lot pay phone and placed a call to the station. After a considerable delay, Maura's voice came through in a harried bark.

"Polanski here!"

"Hi, it's Leigh. What's up?"

The officer sighed. "What's not? Look, I'm really swamped right now. Has something happened?"

Until yesterday, Leigh would have assumed "swamped" meant a stack of reports to fill out. Now she wondered if any other bodies had turned up. She was smart enough not to ask, however. "No, Maura, I called because I wanted to know if Paul Fischer is being investigated as a possible ID for the body."

"I'm out of that loop now, like I said. But that was my first thought, too. I do know that Paul Fischer died in 1989, and that his body went to Fields Funeral Home."

"How do you know that?" Leigh asked.

"Real heavy-duty investigative police work, Koslow."

"Your mother told you?"

"Yeah."

Leigh smiled. Maura's father might have been a legend in Avalon law enforcement, but her mother was a legend, period. Mary Polanski had a memory for names, faces, and minutia that boggled the mind. She knew who had twins in 1958, and she knew who got audited in 1974. Better yet, she wouldn't tell unless you had a good reason to ask.

Maura's chair was squeaking again. "Look, Leigh, if you want more information, you'll have to call the detectives. The coroner's report should be in sometime today. I've really got to go."

"Okay," Leigh said idly, her mind working. "Take it easy."

"Always do," Maura replied, and hung up.

Leigh crumpled her coffee cup and tossed it over her shoulder into the back seat. So far, her instincts were on the mark. And with fresh caffeine surging in her veins, she was ready to roll.

Chapter 5

Fields Funeral Home was located on California Avenue, Avalon's main drag. It was a spacious stone building spread out on a large, treed lot, and it could have passed for a house if not for the telltale awning over the side porch. The parking lot was filled.

"Who has a funeral at nine in the morning?" Leigh grumbled as she circled the lot looking for a space. She found one near the back door, which was just as well. It wouldn't do to walk in the front and interrupt.

She opened the unlocked door and surprised an older man in a red Fields-issue suit as he collected a drink from the vending machine. This was an informal lounge, most likely for employees only.
Oh, well
.

"Can I help you?" The man said politely. If he was annoyed at her, he did a good job of hiding it.

"I hope so," Leigh said with a smile, stepping forward to shake his hand. "My name is Leigh Koslow; I'm a writer." She felt a slight pang of guilt for the misrepresentation, but dismissed it. She
was
a writer—sort of. "I was hoping to talk to Mr. Fields, but I can see he's a bit tied up right now."

The man smiled and nodded apologetically.

"You may be able to help me. I'm doing some genealogical research on Avalon families. I'm particularly interested in a man named Paul Fischer, who died in 1989. I was hoping you could tell me if he had his funeral at Fields, and where he was buried."

The man smiled broadly. "Well, certainly." He then looked up at the ceiling thoughtfully, scratching his stubbled chin with a fat, liver-spotted finger. "Paul Fischer... he lived in one of those big houses on the river, didn't he?"

Leigh nodded enthusiastically.

"Didn't know the man personally," he went on, "but I suppose Mr. Fields might have. Our burial records are open to the public unless the family requests otherwise. Have a seat and I'll check for you. Make yourself comfortable, please."

Leigh's benefactor obligingly shuffled off, and she plopped down on the red vinyl couch feeling smug. If investigating was this easy, perhaps she was in the wrong line of work. After fifteen minutes she began to get worried, but her red-suited servant did return, pink "while you were out" note in hand.

"Sorry it took me so long," he apologized good-naturedly. "We put everything on computer in 1992, and the old records are a little disheveled. But I think I found what you need."

He handed Leigh the paper, which bore some illegible pencil scribbles. "Paul Byron Fischer was entered into the books on June 5th, 1989. He was buried over at Peaceful Acres on the Eighth. Was he a relative of yours?"

"Not a blood relative," Leigh answered honestly.