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?”
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nbsp; 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.
The Cemetery Club Page 8