The Cemetery Club (Darcy & Flora Cozy Mystery Book 1) (8 page)

Chapter 11

Decoration Day dawned as
lovely and serene as only a May day in Oklahoma can. Goshen Cemetery basked
beneath an early morning sun. Droplets of dew sparkled like emeralds and rubies
on freshly-cut grass. Birds sang in ancient cedars, undisturbed by groups of
people moving quietly over the cemetery with their bouquets of flowers.

After the long drive from
Levi, it was good to get out of my mother’s Toyota and stretch. The blue
sweater across my shoulders felt welcome because the air was brisk. Unlocking
the car’s trunk, I pulled out two baskets filled with artificial flowers, then
we joined the people who had come to pay their respects to departed loved ones.

Goshen still bore scars of
that fierce storm that had roared through. A gaping hole and sawdust marked
where the oak had stood. The storage building had not yet been replaced.

A tradition in my family for
at least a hundred years, Decoration Day at Goshen always took my thoughts back
to how it might have looked to those early day settlers: women in long dresses
and bonnets, men carrying their hats which respect demanded they remove from
their heads, walking quietly among the headstones. Instead of rows of cars
outside the cemetery fence, teams of horses switched flies while they waited,
hitched to family wagons. Those wagons carried not only people but tubs covered
with dish towels. Under those towels nested fried chicken, biscuits, boiled
eggs, and fruit pies. At noon, families would take this food to the creek below
the cemetery, spread out quilts or lunch cloths, and share food and
conversation. The custom of eating the noon meal at the cemetery did not
diminish the sacredness of the day; rather, it was a necessity. Many people
traveled miles to get to Goshen and horses and wagons were a lot slower than
today’s transportation. Sometimes the trip took hours; thus, it was impossible
to get back home by lunch time.

Mom and I had a system. With
a long screwdriver, I punched a hole in the ground near each headstone and she
dropped in the flowers. We decorated my dad’s grave first. Remembering Andy
Tucker, his laughter, his devotion to Mom and his love for me, I whispered, “I
miss you, Daddy,” before I moved on to the next resting place.

Jake’s grave was in Dallas,
his hometown, where his parents still lived. Would I ever have the courage to
visit that lonely cemetery again?

“It’s good to see you,
Flora; you too, Darcy. It must be so hard to come back here after that awful
thing about finding Ben.” Earlene Crowder came up behind us. If I remembered
correctly, this skinny, red-haired woman with curiosity shining in her blue
eyes was a second or third cousin of mine.

Earlene’s husband, J. Lee, piped
up, “The real shocker must have been when ol’ Ben just up and disappeared. Bet
that about gave you a heart attack, didn’t it, Flora?”

“Is that Margie Mullen way
over there?” Mom waved to an unsuspecting person on the far side of the
cemetery. “Excuse us, folks. I do want to talk to Margie.”

“Pretty slick,” I told her.
“I hope we can dodge other questions that easily. Oh, dear! Here comes Lavina
Pugh.”

Finally, we quit trying to
avoid people and just answered their questions with minimum information. So
far, no one knew about Ben’s severed finger, and I hoped nobody found out. No
one had mentioned hidden gold either, which was a good thing.

We emptied both baskets of
the flowers and I glanced at my watch.

“Look at the time! Doesn’t
the business meeting begin at ten?”

“Yes,” Mom said, “and I must
be in the chapel to read the minutes from last year. Maybe the meeting won’t
last long and we can go home pretty soon. I’m tired.”

The little stone chapel held
memories of the last time we were there, shivering from cold and shock. Who had
gone out the back door just as Mom and I entered? Would that person be in the
group gathering inside now? Was he the one who killed Ben? Were we rubbing
elbows with a murderer? Nervously, I scanned the crowd for Ray Drake, alias Cub
Mathers. Surely he would not be seen in public. He must know by now that we
were onto his real identity. Taking a deep breath, I sat down beside my mother
in the second pew from the front, south side of the aisle.

A movement behind the podium
caught my attention as a small gray mouse skittered across the floor. The
little rodent was busily catching moths caught in cobwebs along the baseboard
and I welcomed the diversion. If I could keep my mind on that mouse, perhaps I
could sit in this haunted place with a minimum of stress.

The president of the Goshen
Cemetery Board, Hiram (pronounced “Harm”) Schuster, stood at the front of the
assemblage. He cleared his throat and ran a finger around the collar of his
long-sleeved white shirt.

“Folks,” Hiram said, “I want
to remind you that this meeting will be conducted in decency and order. Some
mighty upsettin’ things
have happened lately
on our hallowed grounds, but business must be done anyway. I’d like us to bow
our heads and open this gathering with
prayer.”

“After Hiram’s “amen,”
Patricia Harris led us in all the stanzas of “On Jordan’s Stormy Banks.” Had
Patricia chosen that old hymn randomly? No one needed reminding of the storm
that had swept over this historic place and the controversy surrounding Ben’s death
and disappearance. We sang without the benefit of the rickety upright piano in
the corner. By the time we reached the last verse, the song was dragging and I
was glad when it ended.

I gave Mom a thumbs up for
reassurance as she stood and faced the crowd. She read the happenings of last
year’s meeting with a clear voice. After she sat down, Patricia Harris gave the
financial report.

Someone at the back of the
room snorted. “Seems to me there ought to be more than $5,000 in the cemetery’s
savings account. I thought there was that much last year.”

“Why do we keep asking for
donations if the cemetery has so much money? And speaking of that, we ought to
use it for the cemetery’s upkeep, not hoard it.” This came from a stooped,
white-haired man whose nasal voice did not match his angelic face.

“Say, Pat, weren’t you
trying to buy some of Ben’s land? Now, it’s none of my business, but I know I
couldn’t afford to buy that river bottomland, so how could you?”

I forgot my proper
upbringing and turned around to glare at Tom Bill Monroney. What an insult to
Patricia. He was right—it was none of his business at all. But in spite of my
righteous indignation, I was surprised. I had not known that Pat wanted to buy
any of Ben’s land, and wondered why she wanted to.

Viola Prender stood up, her
black eyes snapping with suspicion. “I make a motion that we choose an
independent group to investigate our books. We have had a terrible thing happen
in our midst and we want that awful murder of Ben Ventris solved. If it has
anything to do with this cemetery, we must hand over all information to Sheriff
Hendley.”

Patricia Harris sprang to
her feet and stared at Viola. Her voice was shaking as badly as her hands. “I
have done nothing wrong,” she said.
“These
books are open to the public. What’s wrong with you all? Have
you lost
your senses? You’ve known my son and me all our lives.
You know we are honest. I don’t like all these accusations being thrown
around.”

Hiram pounded on the podium
and the gray mouse disappeared into a hole in the baseboard. “Here, here,
folks. Let’s have some order. We’ve got cemetery business to take care of and
we don’t want to go pointing fingers at honest Christian people.”

A noise like the roar of an
enraged bull interrupted Hiram. The young noodler from my grandmother’s acres
jumped up beside Patricia, nearly overturning his pew.

“You all had better not go
accusin’ my mother of doing anything wrong, Tom Bill, nor you either, Miz
Prender. You all just shut your mouths!” Jasper Harris reached over a pew, grabbed
Tom Bill by the shirt collar, and drew back his fist.

Tom Bill’s Adam’s apple went
up and down a few times. Finally, he squeaked, “I didn’t mean nothin’, honest,
Jasper, I just heard some things, that’s all.”

Patricia was weakly patting
her son’s back, telling him to shush. Jasper slammed Tom Bill down and stomped
from the building. Patricia scurried after him, sounding like a leaky tire in
her attempts to calm her son.

That episode ended the
business meeting. Hiram surrendered and sank down on the nearest pew. The buzz
of voices reminded me of a nest of angry hornets. Mom and I squeezed through
the crowd pouring out of the door. I looked around, trying to see Patricia or
Jasper. Glimpsing Patricia’s carefully waved gray hair disappearing down the
hill near the creek, I turned to my mother. “Let’s see if we can catch up with
them. I’d like to find out more about their relationship with Ben—gently, of
course. I sure wouldn’t want to rile Jasper any more than he is.”

A piercing scream echoed and
re-echoed from the surrounding hills. The hairs on my arms stood up. What or
who was that?

When I was able to move, I
sprinted toward the creek. Behind me, I heard hurrying footsteps but I outran
everyone. The scene before me stopped me in my tracks. Patricia stood at the
edge of the small stream, staring at a bundle of clothes that were half in,
half out of the water. Her face was whiter than the steppingstones across the
creek.

Peering closely at the cause
of Patricia’s horror, I saw the clothing in the stream contained a body, the
body of a woman whose loose black hair washed up and down with the current.
Gasping and clamping both hands against my mouth, I closed my eyes.

Mom leaned against me and
moaned, “Oh, no! Darcy, it’s Ben’s daughter. It’s Skye!”

Unbelievable and ghastly,
but true. Ugly blue bruises showed around the woman’s slim neck. Less than a
month after we found Ben’s body here at Goshen, Skye Ventris had followed her
father in violent death.

Skye had lived in Oklahoma
City. Jason Allred lived in the same town. Had the killer been unable to get
information from Allred and then looked up Skye? Had he committed two murders
the same day? And why had the killer brought both Ben and Skye to Goshen
Cemetery? What twisted brain thought it was important to do so?

Chapter 12

The Monday following
Decoration Day was bright and beautiful, but to my mother and me a pall hung
over the morning. The death of Skye Ventris was almost beyond comprehension.
When Grant, Jim Clendon, and the EMTs arrived at Goshen yesterday, they were
grim and suspicious of everyone. Grant questioned Patricia Harris, Tom Bill
Monroney, Viola Prender, Hiram Schuster, and Mom and me. They would have talked
to Jasper but Pat’s son had disappeared. Nobody could find him nor knew where
he might have gone, including his mother. Shock and disbelief shone on the
faces of everyone at the cemetery, and I didn’t see how the killer could have
been anyone gathered inside the chapel.

I felt as if I had lost a
family member, not that I knew Skye very well, but I had talked to her only a
few days ago. Could I have done anything to prevent this? Should I have warned
her of possible danger? When I was in Oklahoma City, I could have looked her
up, but Allred’s death seemingly froze my thinking process.

Mom lifted the lid on a pot
of pinto beans simmering on the stove. “I wonder what happened to Jasper?” she
asked. “I wonder if he didn’t see Skye in that creek before he ran off.”

Putting two plates on the
table, I asked, “Are you sure he wouldn’t become violent enough to kill
someone? He really lost his temper with Tom Bill; however, there wasn’t enough
time between his running out of the chapel and our finding Skye to choke her to
death. I suppose he could have killed her before the business meeting.”

“I have never seen him angry
before today,” Mom said. “I think he feels protective of his mother and didn’t
like what the others were insinuating. I don’t know why they suspected Pat of
anything. She’s as honest as the day is long.”

“It’s just too bad Jasper
ran away,” I said.

“I’ve watched that boy grow
up,” Mom said. “He sort of withdrew and became a loner. I was surprised to see
him at the cemetery yesterday. Other children laughed at him when he was a
youngster because he was different, so he stayed to himself. For as long as
I’ve known them, it’s always been just Pat and Jasper.”

“Maybe he already knew that
Skye was dead and he was afraid to tell anyone, afraid he’d be blamed. Maybe
that was why he was so ready to take on Tom Bill.”

“I don’t know . . .”
she paused at the sound of a car’s horn. “That would be the mailman. Cliff
always honks if he has letters for me.”

“I’ll go check,” I said.

The mailbox contained the
usual bills and ads and a long, white, official-looking envelope. There was no
return address but the cancelled stamp read Oklahoma City.

Wiping her hands on her
apron, Mom took the envelopes. She put
the
bills on the cabinet and the ads in the wastebasket. She pulled a letter from
the long, white envelope and gasped. “Why, it’s from Skye
Ventris. She
had to have mailed it only a day or two before she was killed.”

In a voice that shook, Mom
read aloud, “
Miss Flora and Darcy, here is the map to the treasure that Dad
told you about. I don’t think you were supposed to have it unless something happened
to him. Well, it has happened and I hope he was right in sharing this with you.
I’m afraid if word gets out that you have the map, you may be in danger. The
map isn’t clear and when I come to Levi in a few days, I want to take you and
show you where the gold is. It’s easier to show than tell you. Something
recently caused Dad to worry about his safety. He mentioned his past catching
up with him but he wouldn’t tell me more. Somebody had come to visit him,
somebody who worried him, but he wouldn’t say who it was. Anyway, this is the
map to the gold. I don’t need it. I have it memorized. Since Dad is no longer
with us, I thought I should send a copy of his will too. Blessings on both of
you, my friends. Skye.”

Mom read the will and sat
down suddenly. She handed the papers to me. I skimmed the ancient map. It made
no sense to me. Then I glanced at Ben’s will and sat down too.

Picking up my glass of iced
tea, I pressed it against my hot forehead.

“Unbelievable,” I whispered.
“Mom, Ben’s will states that in the event
anything
happens to both him and Skye, you are heir to everything he
owns.”

“I know,” she whispered
weakly.

Pouring her a glass of sweet
tea, I said, “It’s too much to take in, especially while we are dealing with
Skye’s and Ben’s deaths. Let’s look at the map. Maybe you can recognize some
landmarks. I can’t.”

The paper on which the map
was drawn was so old that it was yellow and brittle. The edges crumbled under
my touch. Tiny holes and spots pockmarked it.

“I guess those symbols are
trees.” I pointed to some triangles with stems. “And I suppose these lumpy
things could be rocks. That squiggly line is the river, maybe?”

Turning to Mom, I said,
“This county is full of trees and rocks. As well as the river, several creeks
run through. This map is a puzzle to me. If anyone is smart enough to decipher
it, he deserves the gold!”

“Wait, wait,” Mom said,
pointing at one edge of the old document. “See those letters and numbers at the
top? That looks like a land description. Run back and get my mother’s abstract
to her land. It’s in my cedar chest.”

For years I had tried to
persuade my mother to rent a safety deposit box but she put her trust in the
security of that cedar chest. Finding the old abstract, I brought it to her.
She opened it, scanned the land description of Granny Grace’s acres and then
compared them with the faded symbols on the map.

Her eyes shone as she looked
at me. “I know where this area is. It joins my mother’s land.”

“Do you know what that
means? The gold must be somewhere just over the line between Ben’s farm and
Granny’s.” I swallowed half my glass of tea.

She pointed to the squiggly
line. “I don’t think that line is the Ventris River. I think it’s that little
creek between our land and Ben’s.”

“The creek where I saw
Jasper noodling,” I said.

Mom turned the map around.
“And this extra big triangle must represent an extra-large tree; maybe one of
those sycamores.”

“Yes, but which one? There
are lots of tall sycamores along the creek.

Other faded markings on the
ancient paper seemed to be written with the Cherokee syllabary. To decipher
them, we’d need an expert in the Cherokee language.

My head began to ache and my
mother rubbed her eyes. “Let’s take a break,” I said. “We can look at this
again after lunch.”

Going to the stove, I began
ladling beans into a brown crockery bowl. “We are going to have to find this
gold, whether we want to or not,” I said.

Mom pulled a pan of crusty
cornbread from the oven. “You’re right. Until the gold is found and turned over
to the sheriff, that killer is going to be a menace. Maybe after he knows that
he can’t get his hands on Ben’s treasure, we’ll be safe.”

“And, maybe Grant will nab
him,” I said, sitting down at the table.

Nobody bakes cornbread like
my mother. I buttered a slab and took a bite.

“An alternative to searching
for the gold would be to hop a plane to some place far away,” I mused.

My mother evidently had
changed her mind about taking a trip. “When I let a petty crook run me out of
my home, I’ll be ready to meet my Maker.”

“Poor choice of words, Mom,
but I know what you mean. We really must do our best to find that gold. Maybe
in finding it we’ll also bring Ben’s killer to justice.”

She nodded. “To me, that’s
far more important than the gold.”

We studied the map for an
hour after lunch but were no closer to guessing what it meant. At last, I
rubbed my aching back and stood up. “I’m taking a break from this thing and
going to my computer. Hopefully, writing down the order of recent events will
help me think more clearly.”

My mother nodded, but kept
gazing at the enigmatic map.

Putting my glass of tea on
the floor beside me, I sat down at the computer and typed:

First Event
:
Ben
Ventris’s death, disappearance, and finding the
missing finger

Second Event: Ray
Drake’s visit.
Drake had lied to us about being an FBI agent; instead, he was
part of a bloodthirsty Chicago mob, but how would he know about Ben’s gold?
Chicago was a long way from Levi.

Third Shocker:
Someone shot at me while I was on my grandmother’s land.
I
remembered the bitter taste of fear and my heart catapulting into my throat.

Shivering, I wrote:
The
Fourth Occurrence
:
finding the body of Jason Allred.
Who had
gotten to the antique shop ahead of us? Had Allred told the murderer about the
gold? If the killer had been looking for the gold medallion, he tore up the
whole shop without finding it.

Fifth: Someone tried
to break into Mom’s house.
Neither she nor I had slept well since
that night. Mom was evidently a target but why would the murderer want her out
of the way? Judging from my close encounter with the shooter, I was a target
too.

Again, I wished that Ben had
not involved my mother in any of this mystery about hidden gold and sending her
a map. Not that the map would do us much good, because we had no idea what it
meant. Whether the killer knew about Ben’s will or the map, he would probably
guess that Ben had confided in her because of their friendship.

This last murder was, to me,
even more horrifying:
Shocker Number Six: Patricia Harris found Skye
Ventris’s body in the creek in back of Goshen Cemetery.

Now Jasper was missing and
if the rumors flying around town were correct, so was Tom Bill. Gossip had it
that Jasper may have killed both Skye and Tom Bill but I didn’t think so. To my
way of thinking, Tom Bill decided it was wise for him to get out of Dodge until
Jasper calmed down; however, I could be wrong.

As I stared at the list, I
realized something else. Mom and I discovered the first and second murder
victims; Patricia Harris found the third one. Mom and Pat both served on the
Goshen Cemetery board. Adding to the weirdness was the fact that both Skye and
Ben had, in all probability, been killed elsewhere then their bodies taken to
Goshen. Allred was left in his shop in Oklahoma City, but the Ventris murders
pivoted around a cemetery. This must be significant, but how?

Finishing my glass of tea, I
stared at the computer screen without reaching any conclusions. There was one
thing I could do to make my
mother and me a
bit safer. I’d call the only home security business in
Levi.

Les Cooper of Watchful Eyes
Security assured me that he would come as soon as he could. Since the murders,
everybody in town either wanted a security system or a dog. I figured that the
electronic watchdog would require less upkeep.

“Can’t you come tomorrow?” I
asked.

“Sorry, Miss Darcy. I can’t
do that. But I’ll get you all fixed up before the week is done. That much, I
can promise.”

I returned to the
computer—that wonder device. How had I ever managed without it?

Googling “Dahlonega gold”
and the “state of Georgia” led me deep into American history. The California
gold rush is something every schoolchild learns about, but significant amounts
were also mined in northern Georgia. According to one website, Hernando De Soto
first visited North Georgia in 1540 because he had heard rumors of gold.
Indians who lived along the Chattahoochee River discovered it. Who knew how
many years that occurred before De Soto?

By the time the soft spring
dusk shaded into night, I felt that I could sleep even if a whole carload of
bad guys were camped outside. I had gone over and over my list of events, and
before I turned off the computer I sent out emails to eight colleagues at my
Dallas newspaper. I asked whether anyone had any knowledge of legends
concerning gold brought into Oklahoma from the east.

Newspaper folk are an odd
bunch. There’s a lot of pushing and shoving for a good story, but when one of
them sends out a call for help, they will come through. Hopefully, I’d get at
least one good lead and maybe somebody would be well-versed in the Cherokee
language and could decipher that map of Ben’s.