Sheila Connolly - Relatively Dead 02 - Seeing the Dead Read online

  Beyond the Page Books

  are published by

  Beyond the Page Publishing

  www.beyondthepagepub.com

  Copyright © 2014 by Sheila Connolly

  Material excerpted from Reunion with Death copyright © 2013 by Sheila Connolly

  Material excerpted from Picked to Die copyright © 2014 by Sheila Connolly

  Cover design and illustration by Dar Albert, Wicked Smart Designs

  ISBN: 978-1-940846-30-9

  All rights reserved under International and Pan-American Copyright Conventions. By payment of required fees, you have been granted the non-exclusive, non-transferable right to access and read the text of this book. No part of this text may be reproduced, transmitted, downloaded, decompiled, reverse engineered, or stored in or introduced into any information storage and retrieval system, in any form or by any means, whether electronic or mechanical, now known or hereinafter invented without the express written permission of both the copyright holder and the publisher.

  This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, and incidents either are the product of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously, and any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, business establishments, events or locales is entirely coincidental. The publisher does not have any control over and does not assume any responsibility for author or third-party websites or their content.

  The scanning, uploading, and distribution of this book via the Internet or via any other means without the permission of the publisher is illegal and punishable by law. Your support of the author’s rights is appreciated.

  Contents

  Chapter 1

  Chapter 2

  Chapter 3

  Chapter 4

  Chapter 5

  Chapter 6

  Chapter 7

  Chapter 8

  Chapter 9

  Chapter 10

  Chapter 11

  Chapter 12

  Chapter 13

  Chapter 14

  Chapter 15

  Chapter 16

  Chapter 17

  Chapter 18

  Chapter 19

  Chapter 20

  Chapter 21

  Chapter 22

  Chapter 23

  Chapter 24

  Chapter 25

  Chapter 26

  Chapter 27

  Chapter 28

  Chapter 29

  Excerpt from Reunion with Death

  Excerpt from Picked to Die

  Books by Sheila Connolly

  About the Author

  1

  “Abby!” Leslie Walker’s booming voice startled Abigail Kimball, drawing her attention away from the fascinating nineteenth-century diary she had been reading. She looked up to see her employer standing in front of her desk and giving her an evil grin. Leslie dropped a tattered three-inch stack of file folders on Abby’s desk, and Abby had to grab at them to keep them from scattering all over the floor. “Patriots’ Day!” Leslie announced triumphantly.

  “What?” Abby responded intelligently. Well, it was still early in the day, and she’d hoped for a few minutes of peace and a chance to finish her coffee before jumping into her responsibilities for—she glanced quickly at her calendar—three school groups that were scheduled to come into the museum today.

  “You do know what Patriots’ Day is?” Leslie demanded, although she was still smiling.

  “Uh, kind of,” Abby said cautiously.

  “I’ll forgive you for now—this is your first April in Massachusetts, isn’t it?”

  “Yes, it is. What am I supposed to know?”

  Leslie dropped into a chair in front of Abby’s desk. “Patriots’ Day commemorates the anniversary of the Battles of Lexington and Concord. You do know about those, right?”

  “Of course I do. I’m living in Concord, aren’t I?” And Ned Newhall, her … whatever he was, had taken her on a tour of the battle sites the prior fall, not long after they’d met.

  “You are. Anyway, while the actual events took place on the nineteenth of April, in the great commonwealth of Massachusetts we celebrate them on the third Monday in April. And, by the way, it’s a public holiday here—has been since 1894. And it’s also the beginning of the public school vacation week, which means I have to arrange for someone to look after my kids. Which is why I’m dumping this in your lap now. Great way to learn all about it.” Leslie beamed at her as though she had given Abby a gift.

  Abby wasn’t so sure. She’d been working at the museum less than six months, and there was a lot she didn’t know. “Does the museum do something for this?”

  Leslie gave an unladylike snort. “You’re kidding, right? Of course we do. Well, let me back up a sec—there’s a schedule of events that starts like two weeks ahead of the actual day, and includes such unique and wonderful activities as Liberty Pole Capping, the capture of Paul Revere, a Dawn Salute—lots of cannons—and so on. You get the drift. Every little group wants to have a slice of it. On the day itself there are reenactments of the battles, in Lexington and in Concord, and a big parade. It’s all in those files. Plus the reenactors get together to start practicing weeks ahead, so don’t be surprised to see guys carrying muskets around.”

  “Uh, thanks for the warning. They don’t actually work, do they?”

  “They’re not loaded, if that’s what you’re asking. But some of these reenactors really get into their roles, and they live for this event from year to year. So, back to the museum’s part. After the parade, we host the 4H Fife and Drum Corps, and we have setups for colonial crafts for the kids, and there’ll be reenactors roaming around the place—and of course we have some particular items in the collections that people always want to see. Like one of the lanterns from Old North Church, as you already know. We try to pull all the commemorative items together in one display, and we put our curator there to talk about them. You can handle the kids’ groups, right?”

  “Uh, sure, I guess, if you’ll tell me what crafts I’m supposed to know.”

  Leslie waved dismissively at the stack of files. “It’s all in there somewhere. You might have some new ideas of your own. You might want to touch base with the gift shop at the Alcott House—they’ve got some nice crafty things there.” Leslie stood up quickly. “So, you good to go? There’s an all-hands meeting after we close today, just to review, although a lot of the staff here has done this before. You can ask them about what you need to know. See you then!”

  And as quickly as she had come, Leslie turned and marched away, leaving Abby dumbfounded. Abby looked at the calendar on her computer screen and realized it was April 1. Maybe Leslie’s marching orders were part of an elaborate April Fool’s joke? But the files in front of her looked real enough.

  She should have realized Patriots’ Day would be a big thing around here. But she’d been living in Concord for only a few months. Well, maybe living was an exaggeration: she was house-sitting for someone she’d never met, thanks to Leslie, and she still felt like she was tiptoeing around rather than settling in. She’d gotten this job at the same time, and while she had taught before, in Philadelphia, she hadn’t been very focused on American colonial history, so she was trying to catch up and stay a few gallery talks ahead of the visiting children. There were plenty. Her predecessor in this job had done an excellent job and had left the materials in good order, but Abby wanted to put her own stamp on the gallery talks she gave, which meant even more research for her.

  And then there was Ned, and what had thrown her together with him. Speaking of whom, they’d made tentative plans to get together after work, and she should let him know
that something had come up. She had no idea how long this meeting she’d never heard of would take, so maybe it would be better to reschedule? But she didn’t want to do that. He’d had to postpone dinners and such with her plenty of times: his job seemed to produce a lot of crises that only he could handle. Things were seldom quite so urgent in the suburban nonprofit museum universe.

  She’d let him decide. She pulled out her cell phone and hit his speed dial number, and he answered on the first ring. “Newhall. Oh, sorry, Abby—things are a bit crazy here. Tax time, you know. Did you need something?”

  “Yeah—there’s a meeting here at the museum after five, so I’ll be late. Would you rather get together tomorrow night?”

  “I don’t think things are going to get much better for the next couple of weeks. Why don’t you give me a call when you know when you’ll be free and we can take it from there?”

  “Okay, that works. Talk later!” She hung up. Poor Ned: he seemed to have a finger in every pie at his company, which did something or other with DNA. She really should ask him more about it sometime. But they’d met through a shared interest in local history, and they had spent far more time talking about that. When they weren’t doing other rewarding things. With a sigh she turned to the stack of files that Leslie had dumped on her and started reading.

  • • •

  The meeting after work went quickly. As Leslie had told her, most of the staff had done it all before, and she was the only newbie. She was set free by six and stood in the lobby to call Ned. He didn’t answer, so Abby decided she might as well go home. It wasn’t far, and she felt extraordinarily lucky to have found the place, or more or less had it handed to her. It was only a few minutes distant from the center of Concord, and while it lay on a main road, it was set well back, surrounded by trees, and overlooked a protected marshland. Her main neighbors were deer and turkeys, and she thought she’d seen a fox at dusk one evening. The interior was every bit as nice as the setting, with high-end appliances in the kitchen—and even an indoor grill, which fascinated her.

  She knew she was only a short-term caretaker, but she’d avoided thinking about where she wanted to go next, although she should be looking already, since the owners would be coming back in two months. She couldn’t expect a place like this to fall into her lap more than once, but she knew Concord rents were high. More than she could pay easily. But she really liked being close to work, and close to the town. Maybe Ned would have some ideas. Well, maybe Ned would have one particular idea that she’d also been avoiding: moving in together.

  She still hadn’t seen his house. He described it as a Victorian fixer-upper in Lexington, unfit for habitation at the moment because he never had time to complete any of the essential construction projects it needed. He didn’t mind camping out surrounded by bare laths and dangling wires, but he claimed he didn’t want to inflict it on her. Of course, her place was nice, and he hadn’t been reluctant to spend a good number of nights there. But the looming return of the rightful owners was going to force her—them—to make some kind of decision, and she still wasn’t sure what she wanted to do.

  When she pulled into her driveway, she recognized Ned’s car parked next to the garage; Ned was sitting on the front steps. He stood up when he saw her arrive and waited until she had parked and climbed out of the car.

  “I saw your number on my phone,” he called out when she came near enough to hear, “and I figured you were on your way home. You mind my dropping by?”

  “Of course not,” Abby replied as she walked straight into his arms. Luckily they were both wearing jackets, so they made no skin-to-skin contact: that was something that had proved to be an interesting problem for the two of them. “I think there’s food inside. Shall we go look?”

  Without waiting for an answer she unlocked the door and quickly disarmed the alarm system, then waited for Ned to follow. She made a beeline for the refrigerator, and decided that she had enough ingredients to improvise a stir-fry, as long as neither of them was too picky about Asian authenticity. “Wine? Beer? Something else?” she said, over her shoulder, as she gathered vegetables and chicken breasts.

  “Wine sounds good. How’d your meeting go?”

  “It was all about Patriots’ Day. I assume you know a lot more about that than I do.”

  Ned laughed. “Since I grew up in a house on the Battle Road, I had no choice. I should have warned you: both Lexington and Concord are kind of shanghaied for that weekend. What’re you supposed to do?”

  “Supervise children making colonial craft projects, or that’s what the list says. I’m not sure I know any, but I’ve got a couple of weeks to practice.”

  “There are great craftspeople at Old Sturbridge Village, if you want to see them in action. Also at Plimoth Plantation, although on a smaller scale. Of course, that’s earlier, so there was less of that going on, since the pilgrims were more worried about surviving.”

  “Sturbridge sounds nice. Maybe one weekend?”

  “Sure.” Ned watched as Abby laid out her vegetables and started chopping. “When are your landlords coming back?”

  Abby’s knife slipped, luckily away from her fingers. Had he been reading her mind? “The end of May, I think.”

  “What are your plans, after that?” Ned said carefully.

  Abby set down the knife and turned to face him. “Nonexistent at the moment. Why?”

  They stared at each other for a few counts. Whatever weird physical connection they had—something they were still exploring—it didn’t seem to extend to mental telepathy. She couldn’t read his mind, and she wasn’t sure why he was asking. Although it was a fair question.

  “We’ve been ‘together’ for months now. I wondered if you’d like to take this to the next level?”

  “You mean, like move in together?” Okay, it was out in the open.

  “Yes, that’s what I mean. Is that a problem?” The poor man looked perplexed. Had he expected a different answer?

  Abby tried to decide what she wanted to say, but it wasn’t easy. “No, it’s not a problem. You’re not the problem. We’re not the problem. It’s me, I guess. You know Brad and I were together for like two years, and it took me that long to realize that things weren’t working between us. Then I landed here, and I found that I kind of like living alone. Not forever, but for now. Do you know, I went straight from my parents’ house to a college dorm, to a crummy Philadelphia apartment with two roommates, to Brad’s place? I’d never lived with just me. I’m still exploring that.”

  Ned nodded, once, his expression serious. “I can see that. But you’ll need to decide something soon.”

  “I know. If you’re worried, it’s not about this, uh, ability that we kind of share. I mean, maybe that’s part of it, but it’s not personal.” Abby poured herself a glass of wine, more to give herself time to think than because she needed the drink. “I’m still trying to understand what it is, and how I live with it. You’ve had longer to deal with all that.”

  “Abby, there was never anything in my life like what happened when we came together. I’m as confused as you are. Does it scare you?”

  She smiled. “Only because it’s so intense. I mean, it’s great—just kind of overwhelming. You know.”

  He smiled back. “Yes, I do know. All right, let’s table this for now. I’m hungry. What’s happening with dinner?”

  “I’m working on it. As long as you stay all the way over there, I might actually get it cooked.”

  2

  Dinner was ready within half an hour, and Abby and Ned sat on opposite sides of the round table in the kitchen to eat. “What do you need to know about Patriots’ Day?” Ned asked between bites.

  “Everything. I gather there aren’t too many states that actually celebrate it.”

  “Right. But we take it kind of personally around here.”

  “I can see that. By the way—thanks for that tour you gave me last fall. Without that I would have looked like a total idiot. I wish I had more free
time, so I could actually explore all the towns and historic sites around here. And work on my genealogy. Having a job kind of gets in the way. Not that I don’t like it. I just wish I had thirty-six-hour days, with more daylight.”

  “Nothing new on the ancestor front?” Ned asked.

  “I haven’t had time to look. Why? Is there something I need to be looking for?”

  “There’s always something more to be found. Those of us with local ancestors are lucky around here because we can access the local historical societies. They have a lot of information, including stuff that hasn’t made it online yet, and maybe never will.”

  “And half of those places are open to researchers only on Wednesday afternoons and every fifth Saturday,” Abby retorted. “I can understand why, since I work for a nonprofit too, but it’s frustrating if you want to get anything done.”

  “It is,” Ned agreed amiably. “You have to be patient and persistent. Remember, you’ve been working on this for less than six months. All those dead ancestors of yours aren’t going anywhere—they’ll wait for you to catch up.”

  “You know,” Abby said slowly, “I’ve already got Reeds here in Concord, but I haven’t gone up that line any farther. I don’t know if they came from here or somewhere else. I mean, just because they’re buried here, it doesn’t guarantee they lived here, right?”

  “True. But it’s worth exploring.”

  Now that she’d eaten, Abby was beginning to warm to the idea. “I might be able to work that into my curriculum at the museum. I mean, if I find out more about any local ancestors I have, I can show the kids how to find out about their own families. Even if they came from other countries. We were all immigrants at some point, weren’t we? Anyway, I can help them figure out where to look—and tell them to start by talking with their parents and grandparents.”

  “Good point. And good subject. I’m pretty sure Leslie would support something like that—as long as you don’t start working on it until after Patriots’ Day.”