The Cemetery Club (Darcy & Flora Cozy Mystery Book 1) (16 page)

Lucky crows, not to have to
bother with sharp rocks and limbs that reached out to grab us. Limping after my
mother, I scrambled up a bushy rise toward the outcrop of gray rocks. I could
see the old river channel, curving snugly around the bottom of the bluff.

Mom stared at the dry bed.
“It always had water in it; now, it’s as dry as a bone. Anyway, it’s easier to
cross now that it’s dry. I hope that hill isn’t as steep as it looks from
here.”

We hurried to the foot of
the bluff and began to climb. “I’d prefer Mt. Everest to a bullet from that
ugly-looking gun,” I said between gritted teeth.

Finding an overhang on the
bluff, we stopped to catch our breath, if only for a moment. The rock that
jutted out gave us a brief respite from the rain but we’d soon have to leave
its shelter. We couldn’t rest long.

Something brushed past me
and an eddy of wind fanned my face. I jumped and clapped my hand over my mouth
to muffle my yell.

Mom caught her breath. “It
was only an owl,” she said. “We must have disturbed his resting place.”

“Only an owl? What is it
with these owls? I cannot believe they were once my favorite bird. Remember all
those owls I’ve seen lately? Something always happens right after I see one.”

I was babbling, I realized,
and not making a lot of sense.

Mom patted my arm. “I know,
but an owl is only a bird, not an omen. There have always been lots of owls in
these woods. Oh, I wish I knew if we are actually close to Ben’s farm and our
own land. I think we are, but I can’t be sure.”

I gripped my mother’s arm as
a sudden thought struck me. “Remember what Emma said, Mom? She said that map of
Ben’s had the Cherokee word for owl on it. Do you think that owl might mean we
are close to Ben’s treasure?”

She shook her head. “Darcy,
your hand is as hot as fire. You’re burning up with fever.”

“I’ll be fine, but we’ve
rested long enough. Come on, we’ve got to climb the rest of the way up this
hill.”

As we moved from under the
protection of our limestone ledge, rain and wind battered us. The storm seemed
to be in league with our pursuers, making our escape as difficult as possible.
The only good thing was that those two men were battling the same storm. Of
course, they didn’t have to contend with a scalp wound and cuts and bruises.

Wind-driven rain rushed at
us with such force that we could not see where we were going. Groping blinding
from one rock to the next, I crawled over rotting logs and sharp rocks, Mom
right behind me. I prayed that we would not disturb a cottonmouth or
rattlesnake. Probably, our hands and knees were a bloody mess, but there was no
time to worry about abrasions.

We must have been halfway up
the bluff when I realized that I no longer was being rained on. “What—what is
this?” I croaked.

My mother crawled up beside
me. “It another ledge, Darcy. I think it’s a small roof over an opening in this
cliff. It looks like we’ve found another shelter.”

“A shelter?” I stuck my arm
into the indentation under the rock. “How far back does that hole go?”

Pushing matted tendrils of
hair from her face, Mom squinted into the dark space. “I can’t tell. Can’t see
very far with no flashlight.”

“Unfortunately, the
flashlight and our purses are probably strewn somewhere between the top and
bottom of Deertrack Hill,” I said.

Sinking to her knees, Mom
sighed. “Oh, it feels so good just to get out of that rain and rest a minute.
I’m bone tired.”

“I know,” I muttered. “So am
I. We’ve got to keep going, though. If those two thugs catch up with us,
they’ll think nothing of adding us to their list of victims. Surely, we are
almost at the top of this bluff. Maybe from there, we can see some familiar
landmarks.”

Taking the hem of her shirt,
Mom dabbed at the blood trickling down my head. “This overhang juts out so far,
Darcy, we’re going to have to backtrack to find a way around it. We’re kind of
blocked from climbing up this way.”

The thought of leaving our
small protection and going back into the rain did not fill me with
anticipation. Going down would only put us closer to those men stalking us.
Waiting here, though, we would be like fish in a barrel, just hoping that Drake
and his friend would not find us.

Mom’s face began to look
hazy and a strange blackness crept around the edge of my vision. Leaning back
against the rock, I felt the pain in my forehead begin to engulf me.

As if
from a great distance, Mom said, “Darcy! Don’t pass out. Hang
on.”

Forcing my eyes open a slit,
I saw her bending over me. Once again, she was wiping my face with her shirt.
“Are you going to be all right?” she asked.

“I think so,” I whispered.
But, I felt cold and very, very weary. I had no strength left to continue and I
had no idea what we should do next.

Chapter 23

Shaking her head, my mother
said, “It’s no wonder you felt faint, Darcy. You’ve lost quite a bit of blood.
Maybe, just maybe, those men won’t see us here. At least, we’re out of the rain
and wind. If we scrunch down as small as we can . . . .”

Drawing my knees up to my
chest, I said, “It’s a risk, but we may not have a choice. What if they were to
come in this direction while we’re out in plain sight, trying to find a way up
the hill? It looks like we’ve painted ourselves into a corner.”

Mom
nodded. “I think we’ve about gone as far as we can go,” she
said.

Our trap was so efficient,
it might have been designed by those diabolical killers who were chasing us.
The rocky indentation where we sat was small and bottle-shaped, with the
entrance being the neck of the bottle. It was no more than three feet high and
four feet wide, barely room enough for two muddy, battered, and bloody women to
crouch. Although it was tiny, cramped, musty, and dank, compared with what we
had been through during this unbelievable day, it wasn’t bad. The old saying,
“Between a rock and a hard place” came to mind, an apt description of our
predicament.

“Please, God,” I whispered
aloud, “don’t let this tiny closet of Yours become our tomb.”

Mom nodded. “I believe that
God will get us out of this mess, Darcy. I don’t think He has brought us
through everything just so we could end our lives out here in the woods.”

“If you believe that, I’ll
try very hard to believe too,” I said. “Remember that plaque on Jackson
Conner’s wall?”

Together, we repeated, “If
God brought you to it, He will take you through it.”

Mom squeezed my hand.

I was freezing and my mother
must have been just as miserable as I was. We were wet, tired, and, I realized,
hungry. The time of day had no meaning. Was it still morning, or afternoon, or
nearing night? This cloudy twilight had been with us since we left home this
morning, and I felt like I had been running for a year. Already, my mother’s
warm kitchen seemed light years in the past.

Rubbing my stomach, I said,
“What I wouldn’t give for a cup of your hot, strong coffee.”

“Same here,” she answered.

The bone deep chill that
caused my teeth to chatter seemed to come from inside. Perhaps this is how
people felt when they were looking death in the face. True, we were in a
physical trap but a snare had been tightening around us since we walked out of
Jackson Conner’s office. The killer, or killers, had likely been watching us
then, a surveillance that continued through the night.

For a few seconds, I
wondered why those men, the ones who had three murders to their credit, had not
broken into my mother’s house and attacked us while we slept, but then, I
answered my own question. Yesterday we thought there was only one man after us.
He must have decided he needed help and called in his buddy to finish the job.
Who were they? Drake and Hammer? Drake and Clendon? Drake and an unknown
person? Where had they gotten the heavy car that tried to force us off
Deertrack Hill?

I voiced my thoughts aloud.
“Those crooks planned to run us off the road and make it look like an accident.
That’s why they had an armored car; they wanted to be sure to get the job done.
I wonder where they found such a vehicle. Not in Levi.”

“Nobody would have
questioned our deaths, Darcy. People would have said we were driving too fast
on a rain-slick highway. That’s why they didn’t shoot us. They wanted our
deaths to look like an accident,” Mom said.

A new thought surfaced in my
foggy mind. “It almost looks like two killers with different methods. The two
men and Skye might have been killed by someone who was angry—enraged because
they wouldn’t tell him what he wanted to know. But, if our deaths were to look
accidental, it would have taken some planning.”

“And that poison bomb,
Darcy,” Mom said. “That took some knowledge of such things.

I bent forward, hugging my
knees and trying to stop shaking. Why had Ben gotten us into this? Why was it
so important to keep the hiding place of that gold a secret that he would risk
my mother’s life by making her its protector?

One way or another, the
killers were determined to get that gold, and it didn’t seem to make much
difference which method they used. Did they really think my mother knew the
location of the treasure? Did they want only the map? Was the map the reason
those three people were killed? To my mind, that ancient map would not help
anybody. The area had changed and the scribbled lines were dim, without any sort
of recognizable landmark.

Turning my head to look at
my mother, I asked, “If we offer those guys the map, do you think they’ll leave
us alone?”

Mom patted my shoulder. “I
don’t think so, Darcy.”

We had played right into the
hands of the killers by being out alone early this morning. Why had I forgotten
to leave a message for Grant telling him where we were going? Why had I been so
arrogant as to get involved in this brutal case in the first place? At least
Aunt Bet knew we were coming. She would surely alert the authorities when we
didn’t show up. When Grant couldn’t find our bodies in my wrecked Passport, he
would search for us, wouldn’t he?

Then I brought myself up
short. Mom had insisted that nobody was going to drive her out of her home. She
hadn’t changed her mind until after that bomb. Perhaps, a niggling voice in my
head insisted, this was meant to be. The owl that flew up was a warning to us.
Maybe our deaths were imminent and we could no more have avoided this situation
than we could have avoided the rain-filled clouds that were steadily darkening
the entrance to our little rabbit hole.

A drop of blood dripped from
my nose and I flicked it away. I felt terrible and could not imagine how I
looked. If our lifeless bodies were found, would anybody recognize us?

“I’m in no condition to
die,” I told Mom. “Just look at my hair. If Minda Stilley could only see me
now.” I tried to grin but my teeth must have cut my mouth. It hurt.

Mom scooted closer to me.
“Don’t say that. I’m not wanting to go just yet.”

The front of my yellow knit
shirt was soaked with blood, mud, and rain, and my jeans wore red splotches.

My mother wasn’t much better
off than I was. The only difference was that she didn’t have a head wound that
kept bleeding. She had sliced her knee on a sharp rock, and her once-pretty
denim pants were ragged and soggy. Although the day was warm enough,
rain-cooled but still it was a spring ran, we both shivered as if a frigid
January wind blew against us. I felt dizzy and disoriented and Mom probably felt
the same; she just wasn’t the complainer that I was.

“I wonder how long it’ll
take for them to find us?” I muttered. Maybe fifteen minutes of going in the
wrong direction, if they fell for my trick of putting bloody strips to mark a
false trail, and then circling around until they found evidence of our flight.
We had kept to the rocky creek bed, but sooner or later, they’d find a hair, or
a broken limb, or a spot of blood. I had no idea how long we had been running.
It felt like forever.

Once again, Mom was the one
with coherent thoughts. “We’ve got to find something to stop your head from
bleeding,” she said, looking around her.

“Good idea,” I mumbled.
“What do you have in mind?”

She leaned back, wriggled
out of her canvas shoe, and began peeling off her knee-high hose. “It’s not
much,” she admitted, “but maybe it’ll help some. I should have done this a long
time ago.”

“We didn’t have time to
stop. But thanks, Mom.”

At least the hose soaked up
the blood, keeping it from dripping into my eyes.

I looked around us. “Since
we are pretty much trapped here, could we camouflage the opening in some way?”

“Let’s try,” Mom said,
crawling back to the little entrance. “There are some sticks and dead leaves on
the ground out here.”

I crawled out from under the
ledge too, and grabbed some of the small limbs that had fallen off the trees
last fall. The brown leaves should help to hide us. Scooting backward under the
outcropping, we pulled the sticks and leaves in with us and arranged them
across our little hole. Hopefully, nobody would get close enough to peer in.

On a sunny day, anyone could
detect our hiding place but the clouds were in our favor. Our hope lay in
trying to blend in with the terrain.

“I feel sure we are on Ben’s
land,” Mom said as we dusted off our hands and resumed our cramped positions.
“Once we are able to leave this little nook, it can’t be too far to his house.
Then, hallelujah, we can flag down a passing car, or at least find a better
place to hide. We must be near that little hill behind Ben’s barn.”

Unfortunately for us, the
threatening sky lightened at the same time I heard rocks rattling nearby. My
blood seemed to turn to ice and my shaking resumed in full force. Rain would
have helped to hide us. If the sun came out, our enemies could quite easily see
where we crouched.

That familiar, guttural
voice came closer, evidently displeased and grumbling. The second voice
answered. From the snatches of conversation I could decipher, I gathered those
two were displeased and arguing. Then the talking stopped and the sound of feet
crunching through sticks and kicking loose rocks grew nearer.

Ray Drake’s partner spoke.
“I used to tramp all over these woods. We’ll find those two if we have to check
under every rock and behind every tree. They aren’t getting away. That much, I
can promise.”

My heart thumping against my
ribs, I scooted toward my mother. We put our arms around each other. If we were
going to die, at least we would die together. Shrinking against the cold, hard
wall of our prison, I felt the rock pressing into my back.

Chapter 24

Perhaps extreme terror
sharpened my senses. Maybe desperation whispered that I shouldn’t give up yet;
whatever prompted me, with death snarling up the cliff toward us, I made a
startling discovery. My mother and I had scuttled as far as we could go under
the ledge. We were backed against the wall of this natural grotto and could go
no farther. The wall of the cave pressed against the left side of my back, but
there was no support behind my right side. Why was that? Was I feeling an
uneven place in the rock or was there a hole behind our hiding place?

Twisting around, I managed
to work one arm behind me into what seemed to be an offset in our enclosure. My
fingers probed a fair-sized opening we had not noticed when we crawled under
the ledge. Was it only a shallow cleft in the rock? Cautiously, I ran my hand
along the smooth, dry sides of this area that I could not see, but only feel.
Gently, I patted the floor of this space, and traced a square shape, like a
step. Leaning farther backward, I felt another square below this one. My heart
turned over. These were steps. How far down they went and where they led, I did
not know nor care. They offered the possibility of a better hiding place and I
did not question the serendipitous finding.

Shaking my mother’s arm, I
leaned close to her ear and whispered, “Don’t say a word, Mom. Just follow me.”

Flopping onto my stomach, I
squeezed, head first, down the first two stone steps. I heard my mother
slithering along behind me. The passage through which I slid was narrow with
barely enough room for my body to pass through. Raising one hand over my head,
I felt nothing but space. Cautiously, I rose to my knees, then to my feet.
Unbelievably, I was able to stand. Stretching my hand as far as I could above
me, I was not able to touch a ceiling. Although the height of this tunnel had
increased considerably, it was barely wide enough to allow us passage. Slowly
and carefully, I tested each step with my toe before moving downward. I inched along
into silence as complete as a tomb except for the sound of my mother, breathing
heavily behind me.

This was no labyrinth we
traveled. No other tunnels intersected this one. The passageway led steeply
down, with no twists and turns. With each step, we descended farther into the
subterranean depths of Ventris County, and we were still as lost as we had been
above ground.