The Cemetery Club (Darcy & Flora Cozy Mystery Book 1) (6 page)

Chapter 7

Feeling like a child who is
forced to confess a misdeed to her parents, I walked into Sheriff Grant
Hendley’s office.

His receptionist looked up
from her computer. “Yes?”

“Is
Grant in?” I asked. “I really need to talk to him. I’m Darcy
Campbell.”

The receptionist’s hazel
eyes lit up. She evidently had heard about me, which gave me a qualm or two.

The only spot of color in
this small space was the bouquet of fresh flowers on the desk of—I squinted at
her nameplate—Doris Elroy. Otherwise, the room seemed drab, with brown paneled
walls.

Grant opened the door to his
inner office before Doris could answer me. Jim Clendon peered over his
shoulder.

Swallowing, I said, “Grant,
um, I need to talk to you. Alone.”

The deputy frowned and
stalked through the receptionist’s cubicle and out the door.

Smiling, Grant said, “Come
in, Darcy.” He indicated a heavy, wood chair that faced his desk. “Have a
seat.”

I sat and drew a long
breath. “Somebody just shot at me.”

Grant’s smile vanished.
“What? Who? Where?”

So, I began my story with
Ray Drake’s visit, progressed to my trip to New York, and finished with the
gunman at my grandmother’s place on the river.

For a long moment after I
finished my recitation, Grant sat silently. At last, he asked, “Are you sure
you are all right? Did he hurt you in any way?”

I shook my head.

Grant leaned toward me. “Do
you think this Ray Drake fellow is the one who shot at you? It sounds to me,
Darcy, like he came too close for it to be anything but attempted murder. My
question is why he would want you dead?”

Someone would want to murder
me? To hear it spoken sent a chill down my back.

Grant’s blue eyes narrowed
and a muscle along his jawline twitched. “What else are you not telling me,
Darcy?”

Looking down at my hands, I
asked, “What makes you think there is something else?”

“Darcy Tucker
. . .” he began.

“Campbell,” I corrected him.

“Darcy Tucker Campbell, when
I talked to you this morning, you said everything was fine. That was an
out-and-out lie. Don’t you trust me anymore?”

My face felt hot. “Sure. Of
course I trust you, Grant, but I wouldn’t trust your deputy any farther than I
could throw him. Besides, I didn’t want to worry you.”

Grant’s
voice was soft but he spoke as if he were biting off each word.
“I
already explained about Jim. Now answer me. What else should I know?”

So I told him what Mom had
said about the gold and the legend of the cache, hidden somewhere in Ventris
County.

Pushing his chair away from
his desk, Grant swiveled around to gaze at the maple outside of his window.
“I’ve heard about that gold all my life, but I never put much stock in it.
Maybe there’s something to that old story after all.”

He turned back and faced me.
“I’ll have a couple of deputies watch your place, twenty-four/seven. Whoever
shot at you must know by now that he missed, and it stands to reason he’s going
to try again.”

I shook my head. “I don’t
want you to do that. Mom would probably distract your man by bringing him
coffee and apple pie and she would worry that he was too hot or too cold.
Besides, I know how to shoot and I can take care of myself. Mom too.”

“Like you did today?” Grant
asked.

“Okay, but today I wasn’t
expecting anybody to follow me. Besides, I surprised a young fellow who was
noodling for fish. Maybe he was the shooter.”

“What’d he look like?”

“He was young, in his early
twenties, I’d guess, blond and heavyset. He seemed very shy and ran off when I
tried to talk to him.”

“That sounds like Jasper
Harris, Pat Harris’ boy. Jasper doesn’t have a job and likes to prowl through
the woods and along the creek. I don’t think he would harm a flea. He’s not
quite right; or, maybe he’s just different than most of us and we’re the ones
who aren’t quite right in his eyes. No, I can almost swear that Jasper Harris
didn’t shoot at you.”

Pat Harris was the
secretary/treasurer of Goshen Cemetery’s governing board. She and Mom had
several phone discussions about putting the cemetery in shape for Decoration. I
remembered seeing Jasper years ago as a shy little boy, but hadn’t recognized
him all grown up. But if Jasper wasn’t the shooter and Ray Drake hadn’t been
able to follow me, who had shot at me?

Pushing my chair back, I
stood up. I shoved my hands into the pockets of my jeans so Grant couldn’t see
they were trembling.

“Thanks for listening,
Grant. I promise to be more careful. Mom will be fit to be tied, but I’ll have
to tell her about this so she can be watchful. She’s entirely too trusting.”

Grant walked to the door
with me. “I’m glad you decided to let
me in
on your investigation,” he said, “but don’t withhold any more information that
might be helpful in solving Ben’s murder. That’s
actually a crime, Miss
Tucker-Campbell. We still haven’t found Ben’s
body.
Someone, maybe the killer, for some reason, took him away and
hid him. A
person who would do such a thing is unpredictable and dangerous.”

“And maybe he’s the person
who shot at me?” I asked.

He cocked an eyebrow and
crossed his arms. It was time to leave. Grant didn’t have any more answers than
I did. In addition to trying to solve a murder and find a body, he now had two
meddling women to worry about.

Driving home, weary with the
day’s events, the realization of how nearly death had touched me brought tears
to my eyes. Promising myself that from now on I would be cautious and
suspicious, I, nevertheless, was more determined than ever to find out what was
going on in Ventris County. Solving this murder was the only way my mother and
I could be truly safe.

Chapter 8

How does one tell a parent
that her child has been shot at? I tried to break the news to my mother gently,
but wound up just blurting out
the fact
that I had come perilously close to death on Granny Grace’s
acres.

She listened in silence but
her complexion grew visibly paler, and when I finished my story she got up from
her chair, came around to where I was sitting, and hugged me. Her voice
trembling, she asked, “Could it have been some hunter shooting at rabbits or
squirrels?”

I shook my head. Sparing her
worry was important, but she needed to know that the person or persons we were
dealing with was dangerous and she should put her eternal faith in human nature
aside.

Wiping her eyes, she said,
“Oh, Darcy, this is all my fault. I wanted you to come back home and you have
had nothing but danger since you got here. You could be safe and sound in
Dallas now instead of worried that somebody is going to shoot you.”

“No, Mom, that’s not true.
This stuff would have happened, but I wouldn’t have been here to help you. You
would have found Ben out there at Goshen whether I was with you or not. And Ray
Drake would still think that Ben told you the hiding place of that unlucky
gold.”

“There’s no such thing as
luck, Darcy,” Mom said automatically. All my life she had reminded me that
belief in luck was superstitious and Christians were to have nothing to do with
it. She went to the cabinet and pulled the coffee canister off a shelf. To her
way of thinking, in all times of stress, coffee helped.

“Did you talk Grant out of
sending us bodyguards?” she asked as she measured coffee and water.

“I think so. We will just
have to be aware of everything and everyone that’s a little out of the
ordinary. From now on, wherever one of us goes, so goes the other. I don’t
think it’s safe to leave you alone again, Mom.”

“Seems to me I wasn’t the
one who got shot at,” my mother retorted. “I should be the one in danger since
supposedly Ben told me about the gold, not you. I just can’t figure out why
anybody would shoot at you.”

“Maybe the bad guy thinks
that you told me where the gold is hidden or maybe he just wants to scare you
into being cooperative because you fear for my safety,” I said.

The only sound in the
kitchen for the next few seconds was the old yellow coffee pot working its
magic. At last, Mom stopped pleating her place mat and smiled. “I have an idea!
We’ll just take a trip, a short vacation to somewhere or other, maybe back to
Bet in Fayetteville.”

Getting up from the table, I
took two cups from the cabinet. “No, that’s not far enough. We’d only put Aunt
Bet in danger too. If Drake is watching us, we should go farther than Fayetteville.”

“Well, where, then?
Timbuktu? Honolulu?”

Pouring steaming coffee into
our cups, I said, “Sounds good to me.”

Mom paused with her cup
almost to her lips. “Is Grant any closer to finding the murderer?”

“He didn’t say. He was too
busy being mad at me to say anything else. He wants us to stay out of any
investigation, but I don’t know how to do that. We are not asking to be
involved; we just are.”

“Darcy, I think the only way
we are ever going to be safe again is for that killer to be brought to justice.”

“I agree. But how long is
that going to take?”

Mom gazed at the rose bush
outside her kitchen window. “I keep thinking about the antiques dealer in
Oklahoma City, Jason Allred. I’m wondering if Ben went to see him and maybe
told him where the gold is. Do you think Mr. Allred could be so greedy that he
killed Ben, in order to recover the gold for himself?”

That was an angle I hadn’t
thought of. “It seems unlikely. Dealers in antiquities are used to priceless
items. Integrity and discretion are their stock and trade.”

“But what if we talk to Mr.
Allred, and find out what Ben told him? Now that Ben is dead, I don’t think
Allred would be sworn to secrecy, would he?”

I put down my cup. “And you
want us to go see Allred.”

Mom smiled. “I like Oklahoma
City. That would be a mini-vacation. We could stay for several days, and maybe
while we’re gone Grant will
arrest the
killer and find Ben’s body and get this whole thing cleared
up!”

Catching some of her
enthusiasm, I said, “If we could leave before daylight, Drake wouldn’t know we
were gone. He has to sleep some time, just like normal people! And we would be
together so I could
keep an eye on you.
Let’s pack tonight and leave bright and early in the
morning.”

“Good idea,” Mom agreed.

Sunrise was only a rosy
promise in the soft, gray east when we drove out of Levi the next morning. Mom
and I were in a holiday mood. Maybe the trip out of town, seeing different
sights, having lunch in a nice restaurant, would be good for her. She had
looked tired since
finding Ben’s body.
Leaving Levi with its dark secrets behind us was a
relief.

We headed west. The sky was
cloudless and promised a perfect day. A niggling memory of another day that
began much like this one passed, like a shadow, through my mind. The day we
found Ben started out sunny and warm too, full of promise. Mom had predicted a
storm the morning we left for Goshen, but the weather had seemed to belie that
and I hadn’t believed her. Glancing at my mother, I asked, “You don’t have any
warnings or premonitions this morning, do you? Any aches and pains in arthritic
joints?”

She wrinkled her nose. “Not
a one! Besides, I listened to the weather forecast last night and rain isn’t
predicted.”

Her confidence reassured me.
This little jaunt would be what we both needed. People were already stirring in
the farms and ranches we passed. What would their morning chores be, I
wondered. What particular defeats or victories would fill the days of the
strangers along the way?

Each person was a walking
story with his or her own personal tragedies and hopes. The surface of life
often masked triumphs or hurts that casual observers never knew. As for Mom and
me, we were trying to restore normalcy into our world that had come smack up
against an ancient secret. The horror of finding Ben would forever haunt us.
Sometimes Mom would pause in the middle of mixing cornbread or pulling clothes
out of the dryer and stare out the window as though she were looking fifty
years into the past.

The busyness of chores
helped the daytime hours pass, but often my nights were restless with worrisome
dreams that I couldn’t remember the next morning. For some reason, I kept
thinking of a phrase that an officer in the Dallas criminal investigation
division liked to repeat: “Murder without an obvious motive always comes in
threes.” Maybe I remembered it because I had often heard my Cherokee
grandmother, Grace, repeat something like it: “When a couple of bad things
happen, I always dread the next news. Trouble seems to come in threes.”

Shaking my head, I tried to
dispel thoughts of Ben’s murder, the disappearance of his body, and his
amputated finger. Perhaps they had been the three occurrences of bad luck.

Mom had more color in her
cheeks this morning. Even if we didn’t learn a thing from Jason Allred, the
trip was going to be good for her.

Slowing down to watch a
spring calf frolic in a pasture, I asked, “Would you tell me more about this
Hammer person? I don’t know anything about him. Did you say he’s Ben’s nephew?”

Her expression changed and I
wished I had said nothing about Hammer. Evidently, he was not a subject that
brought any joy.

“Actually, he’s not any real
relation to Ben. Hammer’s mother worked for Ben’s brother Sam at one time. They
lived far out in the country so there was no doctor and no birth certificate
when Hammer was born. About the time he started to school, Sam helped the boy’s
mother get some identification for him and evidently let him use the Ventris
name. Ben always said the boy was bright and energetic. I’m not sure how he got
the name ‘Hammer.’ A nickname, I suppose. His real name was Elijah.”

Pulling into the passing
lane, I went around a truck with a trailer load of cattle probably bound for an
auction down the road.

“So, what happened to Hammer
after he grew up? Is he still in Levi?”

Mom frowned. “Seems to me he
went up north some place. Hammer was a rotten apple by the time he was a
teenager, arrested for theft and for breaking into people’s houses, and I don’t
know what else. Darcy, let’s not even talk of unpleasant things today. Look at that!
Twin colts!” She pointed out the window.

Smiling, I agreed. “It’s a
deal. I won’t say another word unless it’s positive, cheerful, uplifting, and .
. . .”

“Oh, hush,” she said,
smiling once again.

We rode on in silence. I
looked forward to meeting Jason Allred. Arlen Templeton said Allred would help
me understand the mystery surrounding Ben’s gold. I could hardly wait to talk
to the man.

At last, Mom spoke. “I hope
all this trouble won’t affect the way you feel about Levi, Darcy. I want it to
always be home to you.”

A lump rose in my throat.
Home used to be wherever Jake was, but that was in the past. I came back to
Levi to heal. Being with my mother was part of that healing. “It always will
be, Mom,” I promised, “if you are there.”

The hours passed swiftly and
neither of us said any more about Ben or his gold. Traffic increased as we
neared Oklahoma City.

“This place is certainly
bustling,” I said. “I haven’t been here for several years and I’m sure there’ve
been lots of changes. According
to my map,
Jason Allred’s antiquities shop is on a short street near
Bricktown.”

Mom smacked her lips. “Good!
The Spaghetti Warehouse is in Bricktown. We should go there for lunch.”

She was the navigator as we
drove into the heavy traffic of
downtown.
With Mom reading the map and street signs, driving was
easier. However,
I breathed a sigh of relief when I saw a vacant parking place.

Getting
out of my Passport, I stretched. “Here we are, capital of the great Sooner
State, home of oil wells, cowboys, Indians, and lots of
history.”

“We hope it holds some
answers for us today,” Mom added.

A horse-drawn carriage
clattered down the brick street. “Is that your preferred mode of
transportation?” I asked. “Or would you rather take a pedicab or a trolley?”

“Let’s
just walk,” she said. “I need to stretch these kinks out of my
legs.”

“It’s still early, so why
don’t we find Mr. Allred first and then go to the Spaghetti Warehouse later?”

“Sounds good,” Mom agreed.
“The river walk is beautiful! Look at all these lovely flowers and these old,
old bricks. With so much beauty in the world, why do people ever take it into
their heads to deal out misery and death to others?”

I had no answer. The stores
we passed held many intriguing items, but our quest involved one certain shop.
At last, I saw it.

Taking Mom’s arm, I said,
“There’s Mr. Allred’s, wedged between those buildings.”

We stood outside Allred’s
Antiquities like children in front of a candy store. Everything about it,
except the size, spoke of elegance, from the burnished brass lettering on the
door to the sample of antiques displayed in the window.

“There’s something odd,” I
said. “The sign says ‘Open’ but the store is dark. Maybe the inside lighting is
dim or maybe we’re looking at a corridor leading to the main gallery.”

Putting her hand on the
doorknob, Mom gently pushed. “The door isn’t locked,” she said. “I guess that
means it’s all right to go inside.”

As we stepped onto the deep
carpet of the shop, a musical tinkle
announced
our arrival. However, no one hurried to meet us. No sound
at all came to
my ears except the ticking of a mahogany clock in the entryway.