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

by Blanche Day Manos

  She refocused and looked at me in the same way she did when I was a teenager and she was explaining why certain things were off limits for me.

  “You still don’t understand, do you, Darcy? Spotted Fawn was Hammer’s mother. That much we already knew. Hammer was born less than a year after she stayed at Ben’s house, taking care of him while he was sick. Darcy, that young man who grew up to be a bad apple might actually be Ben’s son.”

  Words failed me. If that were true, then certain things began to make sense. Emma looked intently at my mother and then at me.

  Reaching for her glass of tea, Mom quickly took a sip then set it back on the tray. “I just never made that connection until now. Looking back, I remember Hammer’s eyes; the same shape and color as Ben’s. The shape of his nose, I can see that there could be a resemblance.”

  Emma nodded. “Such things happen.”

  I reached for my purse. “We’re jumping to conclusions here which might not be true. Growing up with Sam, Hammer would still have heard something about that legend of gold. And, why couldn’t his father have been Sam?”

  “It stands to reason . . .” Mom began. “Emma, we’ve taken up enough of your time. Thank you. You have certainly given us something to think about.”

  “I wish I could have done more,” Emma said. “That map is ancient and the topography of the area has changed since the dam went in. Much of it is covered by water. But meeting you both has been a joy. You’ve brightened my day. Please come again.”

  Neither of us said a word on the drive back until we reached the outskirts of Levi.

  “Talk about not seeing the forest for the trees,” I said. “We’ve got to look at this from a different angle. Maybe Grant should be looking for Hammer instead of Drake.”

  “Somehow, I just can’t believe that Hammer is related to Ben,” Mom said. “He is just too different. Ben was a good man; honest, upstanding. Maybe Sam was Hammer’s real father. Wouldn’t Ben have known that Hammer was his son?”

  “I don’t know. Would he? Would Ella have wanted him to know? Is Ella Spotted Fawn still alive?”

  “No, she isn’t,” Mom said. “I remember when she died. It was when Hammer was in grade school.”

  “So he grew up with Ben’s brother, Sam?”

  Mom nodded.

  “Maybe Hammer felt that nobody wanted him,” I mused. “Maybe he got into trouble because he was acting out his feelings of rejection.”

  “And maybe you took too many psychology courses in school, Darcy. We all make choices in this life. Hammer made a lot of wrong ones.”

  My mother, the lenient one, so kind to Jasper, sure wasn’t cutting Hammer any slack. That was another facet of her character that I hadn’t known. Time and circumstance bring out characteristics that perhaps none of us know we possess.

  Chapter 15

  After the drive to Uvalda and the visit with Emma, exercise sounded like a good idea. I hoped that increased blood flow and a fresh supply of oxygen would clear my brain of all but the essential facts, the pertinent parts of this mystery. Slipping on my oldest, most faded blue jeans, and a red T-shirt, I went to the storage shed behind the house. I pulled out Mom’s gardening gloves, a spade, and some snippers. Taking a page from Emma James’s playbook, I hadn’t bothered with shoes. The grass felt cool and comfortable under my bare feet.

  A few weeds dared to raise their heads among the peonies by the front gate. That would never do! Getting down on my knees, I began pulling up those offensive upstarts, and before long, the pile of weeds had grown to a respectable height. My muscles complained about the sudden exercise, the sun was as relaxing as a heat lamp as it beat down on my back and head, and I felt a nap coming on. I deserved it! Leaning back against the fence under the peonies, I closed my eyes.

  I slept and dreamed. In my dream, the fragrance of flowers surrounded me and I stood by the gate, watching someone walk up the street toward me. I knew the figure was a man, but I could not see his face clearly; however, I certainly welcomed him and couldn’t wait for him to reach me. The person must be Jake, I decided. Jake had come back to me. At that moment, the gate squeaked and a voice spoke. My dream evaporated like a mist.

  “Hello, Sleeping Beauty.”

  My eyes popped open and I saw scuffed brown cowboy boots. My gaze traveled upward over snug blue jeans and a short-sleeved blue-checked shirt, to a smiling face topped by a white Stetson hat.

  Shading my eyes, I said the first thing that popped into my mind. “Oh! You’re not Jake.”

  Grant’s smile disappeared. “Sorry to disappoint you.”

  Squirming uncomfortably, I glanced down at my bare feet sticking out in front of me. Dirt smudged my arms, but it was too late to run into the house and wash up. I must look a sight.

  “Grant, you didn’t disappoint me. Um, I mean . . . I didn’t know you were coming.”

  His grin returned. “I didn’t mean to disturb you. You look relaxed.”

  Had my mouth hung open in my sleep? Had I drooled? Quickly wiping my face, I realized too late that I still wore Mom’s dirty gardening gloves.

  “Don’t get up,” Grant said. “I’ll sit here on the grass. I just wanted to talk to you or Miss Flora about these murders. I can talk as well out here as in the house.”

  He dropped his hat to the ground, and sat facing me. To my disgust, my heart began to beat faster. What a shallow person I must be. Jake had not been gone a year and here I was feeling drawn to an old flame. I scooted back to put some distance between us.

  Grant broke off a grass stem and absentmindedly rubbed it between his fingers. “Have you had any more encounters with bad guys? Any prowlers? Any suspicious people hanging around?”

  Jasper Harris popped to mind, but Mom and I had decided to keep his moonlit visit to ourselves. Jasper couldn’t really be considered a prowler. He wasn’t prowling, just lurking.

  “Darcy?”

  “Prowlers,” I repeated. “No. No prowlers. We have a new burglar alarm system. That makes us feel safer.”

  Grant flipped the blade of grass toward the sidewalk. “Glad to hear it. You would have called if anything had happened to scare you. Right?”

  “Sure. You can count on that. Thankfully, we’ve been comparatively fright-free.”

  Never had I seen anybody with more piercing blue eyes than Grant Hendley. They seemed to probe my guilty thoughts. Quietly, he asked, “So, what’s going on, Darcy?”

  Had he seen into the depths of my secretive soul? Did he know that I was being a little less than honest?

  “I don’t think I know what you mean, Grant,” I muttered.

  “Sure you do. I remember you well, Darcy. I have never met anybody who is as nosy as you are. If there’s something you don’t understand, you won’t be happy until you ferret it out. You’d never be any good at playing poker.”

  Nosy? Curiosity and a healthy interest in seeking the truth should never be misconstrued. This man could irritate me like no other.

  “I don’t remember that you were quite so blunt when we were in high school, Grant. Didn’t that law education include a class in diplomacy? Ferret out? Aren’t ferrets those sneaky little weasels?”

  He actually laughed. “Now, don’t get your back up, Darcy. I just want to be sure you’re telling me everything you know about Ben’s death and that so-called cache of gold. You’ve been poking around, and don’t deny it. You wouldn’t be you, if you didn’t. I’d sure hate to think, though, that you’re withholding information and obstructing justice.”

  Knowing that my eyes squinched up and my forehead wrinkled when I frowned, I frowned anyway. “So, are you going to haul me off to jail, Sheriff?”

  Chuckling, he said, “Now that would be just plain silly, wouldn’t it? No, I’m just wondering if you’ve glimpsed Ray Drake, the person the good folk in Chicago call Cub Mathers. He seems to have disappeared off the face of the earth.”

  “If I had seen him, believe me, you’d be the first to know. People like Drake seem to h
ave a short life span and lots of enemies. Maybe one of them got to him.”

  “That’s possible. I’ve been asking around the county and I found out some things about Ben that I didn’t know. Would never have guessed, in fact. You haven’t seen any strangers, have you?”

  Emma James had mentioned coincidences. Seeing a suspicious stranger around Levi at this time would be too coincidental.

  “No,” I answered. “Nobody except Drake. But then, you remember, I’ve been away for a good many years.”

  Grant was silent for a moment, finding something interesting in the top of the oak. “I don’t suppose you’ve heard tell of Jasper? I just came from his mother’s house. She swears that she has no idea where he is.”

  “If anybody knows Jasper’s whereabouts, it should be Pat. Mom says they are close,” I evaded.

  Grant reached over and wiped a fleck of dirt off my nose then he stood and dusted off his jeans. I stood too.

  Glancing at the peonies, he broke off a stem. “I hope Miss Flora won’t mind if I take this with me. I’ve always had a soft spot for that pretty bush.”

  He climbed into his white Ford Ranger. With a wave in my direction, he drove off down the street. For some reason, the sun’s brightness seemed to dim.

  “Was that Grant?” Mom called from the front porch.

  Walking slowly toward her, I said, “One and the same.”

  “Has he found out who killed Ben?”

  “No,” I said. “He asked if we knew anything that could help him solve these murders. I hate keeping secrets, Mom. I should have told him about Jasper and I should have told him about the map and Ben’s will.”

  Drawing a deep breath, Mom said, “If it worries you, Darcy, go ahead and tell him.”

  I shook my head. “No. It’s too late now. I don’t want him to know I’ve kept things back.”

  Mom’s face registered surprise. “Darcy! I didn’t know you felt that way. We aren’t lying; we just aren’t volunteering information.”

  “Maybe,” I said, climbing the steps to the porch. “Would you like for me to help you with supper?”

  She turned to go back into the house. “No. We’re just having vegetable soup and it’s almost ready.”

  While my mother was occupied in the kitchen, there was a little chore I needed to do. Going to the telephone in the living room, I dialed a familiar number.

  Chapter 16

  My mother was really mad at me. Her reaction to Emma James revelation had alarmed me and I insisted that she see a doctor. While she was busy with supper the night before, I made an appointment for her. She was not happy about it and insisted she felt fine. The victory I won was probably a Pyrrhic one.

  Dr. Richard McCauley stuck a tongue depressor into my mother’s mouth just as she mumbled something.

  He pulled out the depressor. “What did you say, Flora?”

  Mom snorted. “I said that I’m here only because of my stubborn daughter. There’s nothing wrong with me.”

  Dr. McCauley smiled and proceeded to examine her.

  When the doctor pressed the stethoscope against her chest, Mom threw me a sideways glance that would have shriveled a turnip.

  The doctor wound the blood pressure cuff around her arm, for the second time, and she wouldn’t even look in my direction.

  Shaking his head, Dr. McCauley said, “Your blood pressure is way up. Let’s see . . . .”

  He thumbed back through her file. “It usually runs low, in the neighborhood of 110/60 but today it is 150/90 and that’s too high.”

  Dr. McCauley pulled a stool toward him with his foot, sat down and observed her over the top of his glasses. “Now, why don’t you tell me what’s worrying you?”

  Crossing her arms over her chest, Mom snorted again. I put a hand over my mouth to stifle a giggle. She was beginning to sound like a steam engine.

  “Nothing is worrying me, any more than what’s worrying most people,” she said. “You’re the doctor. Why don’t you tell me what you think is wrong?”

  Dr. McCauley had dealt with my mother for more than twenty years. Tapping her hand lightly, he said, “I’m betting the problem with you, Flora, is finding Ben Ventris like you did and then later his daughter turning up dead over there in Goshen Cemetery. It’s no wonder to me that you are stressed. Any normal person would be.”

  She nodded in my direction. “Well, then, you ought to examine Darcy too.”

  He nodded. “I’ll be happy to do that. And I bet neither of you has been sleeping well. Isn’t that right?”

  Years of experience had produced acute discernment in Dr. McCauley.

  “No, I’m fine, Doctor,” I said.

  The truth was that both Mom and I were uneasy because we feared a return visit from someone poking around in our yard at night. Jasper might be keeping watch and that new burglar alarm was in place, but wires could be cut and Jasper’s roaming through the woods was erratic.

  Although Dr. McCauley was a sympathetic listener, I balked at telling him all this. He might think we were just foolish women with a wild imagination.

  “Everything else checks out okay, Flora,” the doctor continued. “But you need to keep an eye on your blood pressure. Do you have a monitor at home?”

  “She doesn’t, but I’ll get one,” I promised.

  “Fine. I’ll give you a prescription for these new sleeping pills that I guarantee will work.” Speaking to me, he said, “I think you should both try them. They aren’t habit forming.”

  Although I nodded in agreement, I had no intention of taking those pills. Perhaps Mom would use them. I didn’t like taking anything that slowed down my mental processes, and somebody should be aware of what was going on around our house each night. I just wished Mom would realize I was worried about her health and had insisted on the doctor for her own good.

  Apparently, Dr. McCauley sensed the tension between us and thought he’d help out. “Now Flora,” he said, “your daughter was right in bringing you here to see me. We don’t want a recurrence of that problem you had last year with an irregular heartbeat, do we? Keeping an eye on your blood pressure is the smart thing to do. You know, sometimes we’re so used to being independent that we have a hard time figuring out what’s best for us. I think that’s one reason the good Lord gave us children.”

  He winked at me behind her back. “You’ve never had a weight problem, your bones are remarkably strong, your lungs sound like those of a thirty-year old, and you don’t even need glasses except for reading. If I didn’t know better, I’d swear you hadn’t reached the ripe old age of sixty. You’re in much better health than a lot of women your age. We want to keep it that way.”

  As he talked, he scribbled on a prescription pad. He tore off a sheet and handed it to me. “I wonder, since neither of you is tied down with a job right now, if it might be a good idea to get away for a while. Go down to Florida or take a cruise; something like that.” He patted Mom’s shoulder. “Then by the time you get back, maybe the sheriff will have caught Ben’s killer, and you’ll have nothing more to worry about.”

  A short while ago, Mom wanted to do just that—maybe not go to Florida, but she wanted us to leave town for safety’s sake. If we were going on a vacation, I would vote for Georgia. I’d like to visit the land that produced the metal which caused men to lie and kill. But my mother’s enthusiasm for a vacation had vanished after we got Ben’s will and the map. And then, of course, Skye Ventris was killed. In some strange way, these events put a new determination into my mother. Since she was the only person standing between the killer and the treasure, a normal person might want to keep a low profile; not Mom. Now she was determined to stay in Levi and not be run out of her home.

  Now, she was just plain angry. She reminded me of a tiny chipmunk who once faced up to our family cat. Mom had a stubborn streak a mile wide. If I was blessed with stubbornness too, I needn’t wonder where it came from.

  Mom looked the doctor in the eye. “You can quit this ‘we’ business and patt
ing me and talking to me as if I were a three-year-old, Richard McCauley. You are certainly old enough to know that running away doesn’t solve anything and I am certainly old enough to make my own decisions.”

  Dr. McCauley raised his eyebrows, but he made no further comment. As we got back into my Passport, I thought I’d try and break the ice.

  “Looks like we both need to keep an eye on our blood pressure,” I said.

  Mom did not reply. Neither did she say a word to me all the way home.

  My mother believed in cooking or cleaning to relieve stress so immediately after lunch (a very quiet affair) she hauled out the furniture polish, mop bucket, mop, Windex, and a wad of paper towels.

  Jerking her head toward the hall, she said, “You can clean the bathrooms.”

  I made sure she didn’t see my grin. She knew I didn’t like cleaning bathrooms and she gave me that job because she was still irritated. I knew her well enough to realize there was no sense in trying to talk to her until she got over her snit, so I took the mop, bucket, and Windex and dutifully went upstairs to the hall bathroom.

  Chapter 17

  I scrubbed and cleaned and was beginning to polish the windows when I glanced out at a car which certainly looked out of place in Levi, Oklahoma. It was a late model, silver BMW convertible, and it turned into our driveway. I tried to keep from salivating. What a beautiful automobile.

  The man who stepped out of the car looked as out of place in our town as did his BMW. He wore stylishly flared burgundy trousers and a silvery sport coat the same shade as his car. A pale pink shirt completed his ensemble.

  The stranger carried a shiny briefcase with a clasp that caught the afternoon sun. He came to the bottom step of the porch, paused, then reached down and wiped the dust off his loafers. Grandpa George’s voice echoed from my childhood: “Never trust a man who wears a suit and girly shoes.” From where I stood, I guessed those shoes were made from the hide of some hapless alligator.