Hark! The Herald Angel Screamed: An Augusta Goodnight Mystery (with Heavenly Recipes)

ucy Nan, are you sure we’re on the right road?” my cousin Jo Nell asked. “Seems like we’ve been driving an awfully long time.”

“Mama said the church was outside of Winnsboro,” I told her, “and this
is
outside of Winnsboro, isn’t it?”

“I’m sure she didn’t mean this far outside. We must be halfway to Columbia by now and I haven’t seen one sign of a small white church with a stone wall around it.”

My cousin sat ramrod straight beside me in the same black wool suit she’s been wearing for at least twenty years. Jo Nell never gains an ounce—the rat! On one bony knee she balanced a box holding her “Joyed-It” jam cake made from our grandmother’s special recipe and so named because when anyone ate it they always said they “joyed-it.” In her other hand my cousin clutched the black leather purse she carries every day from September through March. Sighing, she shifted the cake on her lap. “We should’ve turned left back there like I told you. Funeral’s going to be over before we get there.”

“You didn’t tell me to turn
left
, you said turn
right
. This is Old Grange Road, isn’t it? Here’s an intersection coming up. Hurry, look and see what the sign says.”

At the request of my mother, Jo Nell and I were on our way to the funeral of a relative, Mercer Vance, who was our second cousin or first cousin once removed. I never can get that straight.

My parents live in a condominium a couple of hundred miles away in Mount Pleasant, South Carolina, and pleasant it is, but it isn’t a mountain at all but an island off the coast of Charleston.

“Mercer was my favorite cousin when we were growing up and I hate it that I can’t be there,” Mama told me, “but it’s hard for your daddy to get around after his knee surgery and I don’t feel right about leaving him.” She gave me a chance for that to sink in. “You really don’t mind going, do you, sugar—as a favor for your poor decrepit mother who suffered through twenty-seven hours of labor to bring you into the world?”

Although she’s nearly eighty, my mother swims almost every day and plays golf at least once a week. I laughed. “Do spare me, please! Of course I’ll go, but it’s been years since I’ve seen some of those relatives and I can never remember who’s who.”

My family never let go of a name. Most of the men all the way back to Genesis were named Grayson, Mercer, or Vance while the women passed around Julia, Virginia, Lucinda, and Nellie. I’m named for my grandmother, who was named for her great-great-grandmother Lucinda Vance, who in 1835 with her husband, Mercer, built the columned home they named Willowbrook on the outskirts of my hometown of Stone’s Throw, South Carolina. My grandmother was born there and lived there most of her life, but Mimmer’s been gone for twenty years and except for some off and on tenants, the house has been empty since. Jo Nell claims it’s haunted.

Now my cousin leaned forward shading her eyes to read the road sign as the pale November sun glinted off her bifocals. “I told you we were on the right road, Lucy Nan! Old Grange Road—plain as day—right there on that sign we just passed.”

“Jo Nell Touchstone, you never told me any—”

“And there it is—white church with a stone wall. That’s got to be it right up ahead … see it?
Slow down
, Lucy Nan! You’re about to pass it.” Jo Nell unbuckled her seat belt before we came to a complete stop. “Lord, I hope they haven’t already said the benediction.”

I parked and looked around as we wove through the rows of cars to the front of the church where two somber men waited. “Did you see a sign anywhere?” I asked. “I hope we’re in the right place. Are you sure this is Capers Methodist Chapel?”

Jo Nell tramped ahead, pocketbook swinging from her arm. “What else can it be? Hurry, they’re already singing a hymn.”

I hurried. We were just in time for the last stanza of “In the Sweet By and By” when we took our seats in the next to the last pew.

I nodded politely to the people on either side of me, neither of whom I knew. They nodded back. It was close in the small sanctuary and heat blasted from a vent nearby. Jo Nell loosened the scarf around her neck and fanned herself with the memorial program. “Can you see Cudin’ Grayson and them up front?” she whispered. “I don’t see anybody I know.”

“It’s been so long I’m not sure I would recognize Cudin’ Grayson if I saw him,” I said, “but I’m pretty sure that’s Mercer under all those flowers down there.”

“Lucy Nan!”
Jo Nell’s eyes widened. “For goodness’ sake—”

“Shh!” I said primly. “I think they’re getting ready to start.”

The minister mopped his face and stood. He wore a black robe and a stole as red as his glistening face and took a long drink of water before he opened the Bible to read the Twenty-third Psalm. His voice was low and soothing and I tried to picture myself in a shady green pasture where not-so-still waters rippled over mossy stones. Pausing at the end, he closed the Good Book softly, gave it a loving pat, and set it aside.

“Our good friend Lizzie Frye has left us for a better place,” he began.

Lizzie Frye? What does she have to do with the price of eggs in China?
I thought.

A lot, I soon discovered when I looked at the program. It was Lizzie Frye, not our cousin Mercer, under all those flowers down front.