Never Thwart a Thespian: Volume 8 (Leigh Koslow Mystery Series) (3 page)

Bess dropped the skeleton and turned to look at her. “Oh, you couldn’t possibly—” She stopped suddenly. “Oh, my. I’m so sorry, kiddo. I totally forgot about your… um….
proclivity.”

Leigh frowned. How anyone in the family could forget for one minute her epic talents at unintentional corpse location, she had no idea. How many murder investigations did one innocent ad copywriter have to get dragged into before everyone admitted it was
not
her doing, but some kind of horrible genetic curse?

“That’s okay,” Leigh muttered, standing up and rubbing her arms. “But I’m done here. If the Pack wants to spend their spring break sorting through this mess, that’s fine, but I have to tell you — I have a bad feeling about this place. And knowing my history, that could be significant.”

Aunt Bess waved a dismissive hand in the air. “Nonsense. It has character, that’s all! All theaters do. And I’m telling you, this building was
meant
to be a theater — even if it has taken a hundred years to make it happen!”

“If you say so.”

Bess’s eyes gleamed. “Can’t you feel it? The history? The aura? The mystique! Why, every respectable theater has to have its ghosts, and from what I—” She broke off suddenly and threw a furtive glance at Leigh. “Never mind.”

Leigh stiffened. “Oh, no you don’t!” she warned. “There’s something about this place you’re not telling me, isn’t there?”

Bess’s large, almond eyes blinked. “Why, no. Of course not. At least not anything that would concern you, seeing as how you don’t believe in ghosts.” She smiled angelically. “So, no worries!”

Leigh groaned. Her aunt had her right where she wanted her, as usual. There was no rational reason to be apprehensive, and she prided herself on being rational. She cast another glance around the dim, musty, ill-fated building that Bess was so clearly infatuated with.

It seemed to look back at her.

With a smirk.

She sighed, long and slow. Bess was right. Leigh Koslow Harmon most certainly did
not
believe in ghosts.

But bad karma was a whole different matter.

Chapter 2

“Koslow!” Maura Polanski exclaimed, looking up from the stack of papers on her lap with a smile. “Didn’t expect to see you tonight. How did Allison’s surgery go?”

Leigh plopped down in the recliner that had been pulled up close to the detective’s bedside. Leigh’s longtime friend, who was not quite eight months pregnant, had been ordered to stay on strict bed rest because of premature amniotic membrane rupture. Being sentenced to physical inactivity was pure torture for a woman who chased down murderers for a living; but, being pregnant for the first time at forty-two, Maura was not inclined to take chances. Nor was her city police lieutenant husband, who had made it clear to the county homicide squad that any co-worker who tempted the detective into putting so much as one toe on the ground would be busted down to reading parking meters for the rest of his or her career.

“Allison handled it all like a trouper,” Leigh answered. “Everything went fine; she’s just tired. She dropped off to sleep early, so I thought I’d pop over. Tried to sneak you in a nail file, but Gerry frisked me at the door.”

Maura chuckled. “Yeah, he’s been a little overprotective. But at least he let Dodson schlep all this in here. I’d be going insane without it.”

Leigh raised an eyebrow at the mountain of manila folders and papers piled up on a card table at her friend’s other side. “Are you kidding me? What is all this? You can’t possibly have gotten this far behind on your reports!”

“They’re not mine,” Maura responded, closing the folder in her lap and tossing it onto the nearest pile. “At least, not many of them. They’re cold cases. The kind nobody has time to look at otherwise, at least not on the current budget. Right now, I’ve got nothing
but
time.”

“Baby staying put?”

Maura patted her abdomen, which slowed only the slightest of bumps. “Oh, yeah. Junior knows how to follow orders,” she said proudly.

“Yeah, well,” Leigh smirked. “Enjoy
that
while it lasts. At least you finally look pregnant. I was afraid Cara and I were going to have to come over and strap a pillow on you.”

“Oh, come on,” Maura protested, her eyes twinkling mischievously. “I’m huge!”

Leigh’s eyes narrowed. They had all been worried about Maura’s having a baby at her age and with her job, but up until her recent hospitalization, the burly six-foot, two-inch detective had sailed through the process with little more than occasional indigestion. The fact that she hadn’t needed maternity clothes until well into month seven was of particular annoyance to Leigh, who had looked and felt like a beached whale for the duration of her own pregnancy. “Do not make me hurt you,” she growled. “I looked more pregnant than you six months
after
the twins were born!”

Maura laughed. “Yeah, you did, didn’t you?”

Leigh gave an exaggerated frown. “Remind me why I bother to come and visit you?”

“Because you know how desperately I need a laugh,” Maura replied. “So, what’s up with the family? Besides your mother getting her silver fillings pulled and melted into a necklace?”

“Who told you about that?” Leigh asked with surprise.

“Your mother, of course. While she was dusting the bedroom. She even showed me the necklace. It was… an interesting twist on recycling. She’s coming back tomorrow to wax the kitchen floor. She said mine was way cleaner than yours, by the way, and that you use an overpriced cleanser that isn’t appropriate for your floor surface.”

Leigh rubbed her face in her hands. Of course Frances would offer to come and clean for Maura while she was indisposed. Frances would clean anything, at any time. Having the chance to dish on her daughter’s insufficiencies while doing so was just an incidental perk. “Well, that’s nice of her and fortunate for you,” Leigh conceded. “I bet she brought you guys a casserole, too.”

“Actually, she brought three.” Maura smacked her lips. “Delicious!”

“If she talked to you the whole time she was cleaning, you probably know more about what’s going on with the family than I do,” Leigh suggested.

“Well, let’s see,” Maura said with enthusiasm, leaning back against her pillow. “The kids have a week off school, during which you
should
be staying home taking the time to teach them things like how to fold their clothes properly and how to entertain themselves without electronic devices.”

Leigh slumped in her chair. “Oh, yeah. Heard that one.”

“And we’re all proud of Warren because he’s doing such a great job helping out all the local non-profits with their financial management, which is a major sacrifice on his part, because he
could
have become President of the United States, you know. Sadly, he had no choice but to stay closer to home and be the most devoted husband and father in the world, seeing as how his wife insisted on having a career of her own rather than dutifully supporting his.”

“Standard fare: selfish daughter marries man who can do no wrong. Next?”

“Your father works too many hours at the vet clinic and he’s not as young as he used to be.”

Leigh nodded. “Husband avoiding being at home; mysteriously not looking forward to retirement. Check.”

“And your Aunt Bess has apparently taken on ‘another foolhardy project which will only come to grief in the end’ and is using ‘inappropriate means’ to make it happen.” Maura’s lips twisted with thought. “I was plenty curious about the ‘inappropriate means,’ but Frances got distracted by a cobweb on the ceiling and had to leave before we got back to the topic.”

Leigh chuckled. “Well, I can’t say Mom’s too far off, there. Aunt Bess showed me her little ‘project’ yesterday, and it’s a doozy. As for whether her methods are inappropriate — that kind of depends on whether Gordon Applegate is complaining.”

Maura’s eyebrows rose. “Old-money
Applegate? Last of the steel baron dynasty? Now you’ve really got me curious.”

“He’s a client of Warren’s,” Leigh explained. “But I didn’t realize my Aunt Bess knew him. Apparently he’s a bit of a theater buff. Somehow or other — the ‘other’ being what my mother disapproves of — Bess talked him into buying a hundred-year-old building in West View so that her thespian society could rehab it into a theater. But the place is a total mess… and creepy as hell, besides.”

Maura pulled her head up. “What building are we talking about?”

“That red brick monstrosity that used to be a church. Right on Perry Highway, between the funeral home and the dry cleaners.”

“Andrew Marconi’s place!” Maura cried.

Leigh stared. “You know about him?”

Maura raised an eyebrow. “A guy buys a building in the middle of West View, proposes to open a strip club, starts a major community uprising, and then disappears? No one for two boroughs in any direction is likely to forget that! And perhaps you haven’t heard, but I also work as a county detective?”

Leigh sighed. “Sorry, I keep forgetting that other people actually had lives back then. I remember the hoopla it caused in the family, but the twins were toddlers in those days. Whenever I try to recall something from the world outside my house, all my brain serves up are blurred images of dirty diapers and macaroni and cheese.”

“So I’ve heard,” Maura replied drily, turning to study her tableful of files. “Marconi never did turn up again, you know. I was just looking at that case yesterday. It wasn’t mine, but it always bothered me.” She pointed toward a stack just out of her reach. “Can you look in that pile, there? Should be labeled Marconi. Got a couple sticky notes hanging out the side.”

Leigh rose, located the file, and handed it over. “Have you been inside the building?”

Maura shook her head as she flipped through the folder.

“It has bad karma,” Leigh informed.

The detective frowned. “Don’t start with me, Koslow.” She found a page with a pink sticky and pulled it out. “I never was happy with this case. The lead investigator wasn’t the greatest — he’d been good early on, but then he had some personal problems that got in his way. I always suspected he left a lot of stones unturned with this one, and now I know he did. He never even interviewed your mother!”

“My mother?” Leigh replied, startled. “Why on earth would he? I mean, I know she led the protests against the strip club, but—”

Maura put down the paper and gave Leigh an appraising look. “You really don’t remember all this, do you? All right, sit back down and I’ll refresh your memory. At least of what’s on the public record.”

Leigh dropped into her chair.

“To hear the locals tell it now, Andrew Marconi was some glitzy shark from the West Coast who invaded West View with every intention of turning it into the next Las Vegas. But none of that was true. Marconi was a local boy — grew up in Shadyside. His family were big-money lawyers going back several generations, and Marconi was the last of the line. He was also the definition of a black sheep. Failed out of law school, got arrested a couple times for petty stuff, couldn’t hold a job. Only success he ever had was when his dad died and he used what little inheritance he’d been granted to buy himself a business. Turns out he had a knack for the adult entertainment industry. He started off with one adult video and novelties store downtown and within a few years had opened a strip club on the South Side and two more novelty shops down in Washington county on the interstate. He bought the building in West View hoping to be the first to offer quality titillation closer to home for the relatively wealthy gentleman of the northern suburbs. But he made a critical error.”

Leigh smirked. “He underestimated one Frances Koslow.”

“Indeed,” Maura agreed. “By all accounts, the public outrage totally blindsided him. He knew there would be some disapproval, but he was naive about his ability to sway the local zoning board. He’d paid more for the building than it was worth, and he was in hock up to his eyeballs after expanding his other businesses so rapidly. The zoning board’s decision was critical to him.”

“So when he got the bad news he took off, rather than face his debts?” Leigh suggested.

“Well now,” Maura said smoothly, “that’s just it. That’s what everyone assumed. But the fact is, not a single person went on record saying they’d seen Marconi for a full thirty-six hours
before
the decision came down. He didn’t attend the final hearing; only his lawyer was present. The president of the zoning board said publicly that he had tried to reach Marconi with the verdict, but was unable to contact him. So yes, Marconi could have heard the verdict through the grapevine, or just seen which way the wind was blowing and took off to parts unknown. But there’s not a shred of evidence
proving
that he ever actually found out the news he was waiting so desperately to hear.”

Maura eyes met Leigh’s with a level gaze. “And in all the years since, the guy’s never been seen or heard from. The borough tried to find him — they had to in order to process all the legal rigmarole to get possession of the property he abandoned. He left all his other businesses in the lurch as well — had no further contact with family, employees, or his handful of friends.”

Leigh felt a prickle of angst. “I never knew he
disappeared
disappeared. I just thought he skipped town.”

“So did everyone else, at first,” Maura continued. “But his family raised the alarm when his car turned up abandoned somewhere in McKees Rocks, looking like it had been stolen and dumped several times over. When the investigators found no sign that Marconi had recently drawn out any cash and that he wasn’t using any of his credit cards, it began to look more like foul play.”

Maura tapped the file with a finger. “The case got assigned to homicide, but it never went anywhere. The detective in charge found zippo and eventually it went on ice.” Her expression turned wistful. “I always wanted to take a crack at it. I could see that Doomas was tunneling the thing.”

Leigh shifted uncomfortably in the recliner. She preferred the story she
thought
she knew. “What’s tunneling?”