I had the feeling Grant’s thoughts were far from the fire truck as he gazed at its slow trek down the road toward Levi.
“I’ll have Doc McCauley give me his verdict,” he said, “but I think he was murdered, Darcy. That man did not die of a heart attack. He wasn’t burned in the fire. I didn’t see anything he might have fallen on; besides, he was lying on his back. That wound wasn’t a gunshot but, from the look of things, I’d say the murder weapon was something sharp, something at close range.”
Shutting my eyes, I tried to swallow the sick feeling that rose in my throat, seeing again the bloody shirt and the man’s staring eyes and gaping mouth. Who would hate another person enough to do that to him?
A sharp rap on the side of the truck jarred my eyes open.
Grant’s deputy, Jim Clendon, poked his arm through the window. “Say, I just found this near the house. The firemen stepped on it and smashed it into the mud, but it don’t look like it’s been there long.”
He handed a knife to Grant. It was a pocket knife, a common variety except for one thing: lettering on the side that proclaimed it to be a promotional item from a local builder. My breath caught in my throat. I had seen a knife similar to that not too long ago. Pat Harris’s son Jasper had one like it. For that matter, so did I but mine was still in the gun drawer at home. Jasper’s was unique in that some of the letters on the side of his knife were missing. The visible ones, C, H, m, s recently helped guide us to a killer. These same letters were on the handle of the knife Jim found.
Grant’s face hardened. I knew that he remembered Jasper’s knife too. Jasper was a loner, a young man who liked to roam through the woods. He would never harm anyone—I was sure of it—but he was different, a little odd, and lots of people did not understand that. In addition, Jasper had the unhappy tendency to be in the wrong place at the wrong time. When Ben Ventris was killed, Grant had suspected Jasper at first. And then Andrea Worth’s disappearance; Jasper had known a lot about that.
Grant’s voice was grim. “Are you able to drive, Darcy? If not, I’ll run you home and Jim can follow.”
“I can drive,” I said. My voice sounded shaky to my own ears. “I need to tell Mom about this before she hears it on the news.”
“Or from Pat Harris?” Grant asked quietly.
I nodded. “Or from Pat.”
Chapter 4
Mom kept shaking her head. We sat at her old wood dining table, mugs of coffee close at hand. Jethro, who sensed when I needed a furry head to stroke, left his food dish, strolled over to the table and sprang onto my lap.
“I don’t understand it,” Mom said. “Just think, only a little while after he was here, that fellow was murdered. It gives me the chills.”
“Me too, Mom.”
“And Jim found Jasper’s knife at the old house?”
“Well, it looks like Jasper’s. I’m sure there are lots of knives around town that look like his. We have one too. Only thing is, the knife Jim found has the same lettering as Jasper’s.”
Mom swallowed a sip of coffee. “I haven’t even seen that knife of ours for months. I don’t like knives or guns. Rightfully, I guess our knife belongs to Jackson Conner. It was his to start with.”
I nodded. “I don’t think he wants it. Maybe you would feel better if you gave Jackson a call.”
“And tell him what?” Mom asked.
“I just thought maybe he could say some comforting words.”
Smiling, Mom said, “Darcy, I’m not that delicate. Now, I enjoy talking to Jackson, but he’s busy and I don’t want to bother him unless we find out we need him, maybe for Jasper, if he actually becomes an official suspect.”
Jackson Conner, Levi’s most popular lawyer, was also my mother’s dear friend. Or maybe a little more than a friend? I certainly could see the attraction. Jackson had white hair and a bushy mustache, keen, blue eyes, and was altogether the most comforting man I knew. He was also my mother’s ardent admirer.
And Mom? Well, I could only hope I looked as good as she when I was closing in on seven decades on this earth. From her Cherokee ancestors she had inherited dark hair, high cheekbones and beautiful tan skin. She moved with grace and dignity and glowed with good health. She could work circles around me any day without tiring.
Thankfully, I shared many of her physical characteristics, the facial structure and skin color. Although my hair was dark too, I wore it long. The only thing I had inherited from my Irish dad, Andy Tucker, was his peppery temper.
The clack of tires bumping over our wooden bridge interrupted my thoughts. Looking out the window, I saw Patricia Harris’s truck pull to a stop in the driveway.
Drawing a long breath, I glanced at Mom.
“Oh, boy! Here comes Pat now. I wonder if she has heard about the dead man?”
“I’m not going to mention him, if she hasn’t,” Mom called over her shoulder, hurrying to open the door.
From the tenor of Pat’s voice, I judged that she was upset.
Mom tried to calm her as she guided Pat into the dining room.
Jethro sprang off my lap and dashed toward the comparative quiet of the living room.
“Now, Pat, just sit down at the table and I’ll pour you a cup of coffee. I can’t make head nor tail of what you are saying,” Mom said as she went toward the coffee pot.
Pat’s face under her tight, gray curls was as red as the rose in our yard in Levi. She was puffing sort of like a steam engine as she plopped down in a chair and grabbed the mug of coffee Mom handed her.
“I tell you, Flora, that Grant Hendley has some nerve, to come to my house and demand to see Jasper. Said something about just wanting to know where Jasper was last night during the storm and wanted to talk to him this morning. Why, even I don’t know where Jasper is half the time and anyway, doesn’t he have a right to roam the woods if he wants to? Grant wouldn’t tell me the reason he wanted to talk to Jasper, but why is it my boy is the first one who comes to his mind every time something happens? What I want you to tell me, Flora Tucker, is what’s going on. If anybody knows, I figure it’s you or Darcy, because you always seem to be right smack in the middle of trouble.”
“You’ll feel better if you drink your coffee,” Mom suggested as Pat ran out of air.
Pat swallowed a mouthful of coffee, choked and gasped, and then, with visible effort, took some deep breaths.
Reaching across the table, I squeezed her hand. “Now, Miss Pat, don’t be upset. You see, that shack of Old String’s burned down this morning—”
Pat interrupted, eyes bulging. “It did?”
I nodded. “It did and, you see, I found a dead man in the yard, and—”
“A dead man? Darcy Campbell, I might have known! Why is it that people just sort of wait until you get there before they decide to turn up their toes and go meet their Maker? I didn’t notice anything unusual about you when you were a little girl, although you always had more than a healthy dose of curiosity but…who was the dead man?”
Before she could deliver another rant, Mom spoke up. “We don’t know yet who he was, but just think a minute. When somebody is murdered—“
“Murdered?” Pat squawked. “Oh, my great aunt’s garters! And Grant suspects my poor Jasper.”
Shaking my head, I said, “No, no, he doesn’t, Miss Pat. He just has to check out everybody. Maybe he wants to talk to Jasper because Jasper sometimes knows things that other people don’t.”
Slowly, Pat nodded. “Well now, I hadn’t thought of that. Yes, maybe that’s it. Jasper does seem to know what’s going on in these woods. Grant talking to him about that would be fine, but the truth is I don’t know where Jasper is. I haven’t seen him since supper last night. How awful that there has been another murder in Ventris County. Who in the world would have been out there at Old String’s shack anyway? Maybe a homeless person although—”
I interrupted, which was sometimes the only way to carry on a conversation with Pat. Changing the subject seemed like a good idea.
“You said the new preacher might be interested in renting our house?”
“Yes, that’s right.” Pat’s voice dropped an octave or two as her face slowly returned to its normal color. “As a member of the pulpit committee, it’s my job to look around for a place for him to stay. He’s from somewhere down south so he’ll be a long way from home. Your house is pretty big for one person, but he might like it anyway. It’s kind of on the edge of town, quiet, and there’s that pasture behind the house.”
Mom got up to refill our coffee cups. “He isn’t married, then? I thought the church preferred a married man, thinking he would be more stable.”
I laughed. “Nobody at this table is married and I think we are about as stable as they come.”
“I meant to call you, Flora, and tell you that the preacher would like to go look at the house today, this morning in fact, but in all the excitement with Grant’s visit, I forgot.”
“I was on my way to town when I saw that house burning,” I said, glancing at the clock. “It’s nearly noon and I’ve got some stops to make in Levi, so I’d better be on my way. I’m looking forward to meeting this mysterious minister. Maybe he’ll drop in while I’m at the house. If he’s elderly, the stairs might be a problem.”
“I don’t think he’s old,” Pat said. “His picture on the resume was not very good. He said he needed a quiet area because he’s writing a book.”
“Writing? Then we have something in common.” Sometimes I doubted I would ever complete my second book about the stories and folklore of Ventris County. After I had finished the first book, I started this one but progress was mighty slow. My friend Amy kept prodding me to finish it, as did Mom. I had good intentions but I knew what road good intentions paved.
Shaking my head, I went out to the garage. Preachers were hard to come by. The church had been searching for a couple of months and was probably glad for any candidate, young, elderly, or in between. I imagined a quiet person, a devout man of God, just the type of renter we were looking for.
Chapter 5
The tangy scents of rosemary and peppermint perfumed the car. Drawing a deep breath of the heavenly fragrances that came from the herbs nestling in the Escape’s cargo area, I thought about my visit with the Jenkins twins. Visiting with Miss Georgia and Miss Carolina usually left me with a contented glow.
Their warm hugs as they had invited me into their huge, shady house with the wide and high front porch made me grateful for these two ladies in my life.
“Now, keep that mint in a pot, Darcy, honey,” Miss Georgia had said. “Mint just goes wild if you put it in the ground with nothing around it to make it behave.”
“There’s all kinds of mint,” Miss Carolina added. “I kind of like for it to run free; doesn’t bother me if it takes over. There’s pineapple mint and chocolate mint. Even out in the woods, there’s horse mint. I remember walking through it as a girl and smelling good the rest of the day.”
After a cup of tea (herbal, of course) and instructions on the care of an herb garden, I said goodbye to the Jenkins twins and headed for Mom’s house.
Mom had decided to keep, rather than sell, the beautiful old home I had grown up in. Earthquakes had damaged it somewhat last year, but we’d had it repaired and inspected to be sure it was safe. I didn’t think I could bear for anybody else to own it with its memories of Dad and Grant and even Jake on our visits home from Dallas. When Mom and I moved into the new house, we took her dining table, her yellow coffee pot, and several pieces of furniture but left the rest. Placed among the new sofa and chairs, beds, and appliances, the familiar pieces made our present home seem more comfortable.
To have started in such a horrific manner with the fire and dead body, this day was turning out to have some bright spots. Grant had phoned before I reached the Jenkinses’ home. The result was he would pick me up at the old house and we would go for that delayed lunch.
As I parked in the familiar driveway and climbed out of my SUV, a roar behind me stopped me in my tracks. Coming toward me was a big, black motorcycle ridden by someone wearing a helmet and goggles. As I watched, the cyclist pulled into the driveway, cruised past my car and mowed a path through my mother’s bed of zinnias.
“Hey! Are you blind?” I yelled.
Pushing the kickstand down with a black-booted foot, the stranger swung off his cycle’s deep leather seat and faced me. When he pulled off his helmet and goggles, I did a double-take. This man was tall, almost as tall as Grant. His hair was dark and curly. His eyes were midnight blue, fringed with long lashes. He was beyond attractive; he was movie-star handsome and he reminded me of Jake.
“I’m sorry, Ma’am,” he said with a Southern drawl. “I was so taken with the beauty of this house that I didn’t look where I was going. I’ll certainly pay for those lovely flowers, if you’ll tell me what I owe you.”
I gulped and shook my head. “Money can't replace that flower garden. Just pay attention next time, please. Why are you here? Were you following me?”
Perfect white teeth glinted as he laughed. “Following? No, I wasn’t following. I heard this house might be for rent and I was hoping to meet with the owner. Would that be you?”
What was there about this stranger that reminded me of my husband? His dark hair? The light in his eyes? Or, maybe it was just the energy I felt emanating from him. He made me uncomfortable.
“It would,” I snapped, “but I think it’s already spoken for. Our new preacher is supposed to look at it.”
With a disarming grin which showed a deep dimple in his cheek, he said, “That would be me, Trace Hughes, Miss…”
A preacher? A Clark Gable look-alike on a motorcycle? I think I meant to shake hands with him. Maybe I was just going to lean against the motorcycle for support, which was a foolish idea, but shock froze my brain. However it happened, I stepped toward Trace Hughes, stumbled, and my capri-encased leg grazed the exhaust pipe of his cycle. It was hot!
“Ow!” I yelled, dropping to the ground and grabbing my leg. The spot which had come in contact with the motorcycle was red and quickly forming a blister. It hurt, not just a little, but a lot.
The preacher knelt beside me. Gently, he turned my leg toward him and scrutinized the burn.
“I’m so sorry again,” he said, his eyes meeting mine. “This sure isn’t the way I planned to introduce myself to the town of Levi. I think we’d better get you to a doctor.”
“Could I be of assistance?” asked a familiar but strangely cold voice.
Glancing up, I saw Grant glaring down at us. His thumbs were hooked in his belt, his hat was tilted over his eyes and, if the unsmiling line of his mouth was any indication, I guessed that he was not the least bit happy.
Chapter 6
“Wear short pants for a while, keep this ointment on it, and change the bandage every day,” Doc McCauley said.
I slid from his examining table and took a few steps toward the door.
“Thanks, Doc,” I mumbled. “I don't know what you put in that shot but it's good stuff. My leg doesn’t hurt at all now. In fact, I’ve never felt better.”
The doctor laughed and stopped me with a hand on my shoulder.
“The door is in the other direction, Darcy,” he said.
Grant rose from his chair and took my arm. “I’ll get her home, Doc,” he said.
“Yes,” I muttered, blinking as the doctor’s face swam into focus. “Thank goodness, Grant can drive me home.”
A few minutes later, Grant and I were on the road. I closed my eyes, engulfed in a pleasant haze of drowsiness and well-being.
“So, the man who made such a burning impression is your new pastor?” Grant asked.
“Hmm? Who? Oh, yes. His name is Trace Hughes. Cute, isn’t he?”
In my right mind, I never would have said anything like that to Grant, but my mind was wrapped in the cozy comfort of painlessness and was definitely muddled.
Silence met my comment.
It was a quiet ride home. I wish
ed I could bottle that warm feeling of contentment, of being safe and cared for. In fact, I think I may have dozed.
The rattle of planks beneath the tires of my SUV as Grant drove over our bridge woke me. I roused, stretched, and smiled at my chauffeur.
“Thanks so much, Grant. I certainly was in no condition to drive. You were a lifesaver.”
“Just stay away from the exhaust pipe of motorcycles in the future, Darcy. I don’t know how all that happened and I don’t think I want to know,” he said.
After my nap, I felt surprisingly refreshed and my thinking skills were returning. There was something important I needed to ask Grant. Oh, yes! The dead man’s identity.
“I should have thought of this before we left the doctor’s office, but I forgot, thanks to that wonderful med. Does Dr. McCauley plan to do an autopsy on the person I found by Old String’s shack? Does he know the man’s name?” I asked.
A grin tugged at Grant’s mouth. “Little Miss Curiosity. The doctor wouldn’t have told you, Darcy, and neither will I. This is an ongoing police investigation. Don’t start meddling and trying to find out who the guy was or who did him in. Just let us handle it, okay?”
Well, rats! Did he say “meddling”? Anybody would be curious. After all, the man had come to our house and then dashed back into the storm and to his death. Didn’t that give me a right to be let in on a few investigative secrets?
I unhooked my seat belt. “All right, Grant.”
That wasn’t really a promise, was it? What I meant was I would consider his advice and I certainly didn’t plan on placing my mother in danger. Or me, for that matter. But how in the world was I not supposed to think about this bizarre murder and the way it seemed to implicate Jasper Harris?
A white Ford truck pulled in behind us.
“There’s Jim to take me back to town,” Grant said. “I’ll carry those flowers in for you. They sure smell strong, don’t they?”
“Those plants aren’t really flowers,” I said. “They’re herbs from Miss Georgia. An herb is sort of a weed—a weed with an attitude.”
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