The Angel Whispered Danger

by Mignon F. Ballard

  I struggled to keep from crying all over again when my grandmother, waiting at the top of the hill, wrapped me in her arms and smoothed my hair as she had when I was little. She smelled like mustardy potato salad and I guessed she had been in the kitchen putting away leftovers. “She can’t have gone very far,” she told me. “The police are on their way, but I expect we’ll have her out of there before they even get here.”

  Uncle Ernest, looking as if he had aged ten years, held out a long-sleeved shirt. “Here, slip into this, Kate, my girl. You’ll need something over those arms.” The shirt was of faded blue cotton, thin from many washings, and the cuffs hung inches below my wrists. “What’s this you’ve done to your hand?” he said, shining a light on my palm.

  “Nothing. Scratched it, is all.” I tried to pull away, but my uncle was surprisingly strong for his age.

  “Nonsense. Goat, do you still have that first aid kit in your car? We’ll need peroxide and a bandage. Can’t have that getting infected.”

  Judge Kidd, silent for once, nodded grimly and sent Jon on the run for the kit. And so, while others were dividing into teams to look for my daughter, I stood pawing the ground while Uncle Ernest bandaged my wound.

  Deedee, Belinda and Aunt Leona had rounded up every flashlight in the place, as well as bottled water for all the searchers, while Uncle Lum dispensed a variety of hats and bandannas.

  “I don’t need a hat,” I said, waving him away. “All I want to do is find Josie.”

  Ignoring me, he tugged a bucket-shaped piece of canvas over my ears. “You’ll be glad of this when you wade into that blasted thicket. Now, get over there and let Violet scoot you with insect repellent. It won’t keep them off entirely, but it might help some.”

  And Josie was somewhere in that dark, threatening place with no water, no light and nothing to protect her from the mosquitoes. Earlier that day I had hastily anointed my daughter with the lotion repellent I carried in my purse, but that had certainly worn off by now, and I felt sick when I remembered she wore only shorts and a T-shirt.

  I hurried to where Burdette and Parker were dividing searchers into teams. Marge was to go with her husband and a couple of our South Carolina kin, while Parker, Deedee and Uncle Lum made up another team. Darby cried to be included until his dad convinced him we needed him there to blow a whistle from time to time in case any of us got lost. And since Uncle Ernest knew the area better than any of us, we reminded him, he should be the one to wait behind for the police. That left Grady, Aunt Leona and me to make up the last group.

  I had my doubts about taking my aunt along. Although Aunt Leona seemed agile enough, she wasn’t the outdoorsy type, and I was afraid she would slow us down.

  I was right. We hadn’t gone very far when we encountered the first obstacle.

  “Mom, you’ll have to sit and slide down this bank on your fanny,” Grady told her, shining the beam of our one flashlight on the sloping ground.

  “Well, all right, if you say so,” she answered, and did. But then we had to haul her up the opposite side.

  Aunt Leona dusted off her pants and adjusted her pert, visored cap. “My goodness, it’s dark as pitch out here! I can’t see a foot in front of me.”

  I was just about to volunteer to go it alone when Grady gently turned his mother around. “Mom, I know you want to help, but I think you can do that better by giving Ma Maggie and Violet a hand with the kids. They’ll all need baths and something to sleep in, and I’m sure they’d be glad of the extra help.”

  Below us a flashlight wavered and Uncle Lum called out Josie’s name.

  “Dad!” Grady waved his light and hollered. “Could you help Mom back to the house? We don’t have but one light between us, and Kate and I want to cover as much ground as possible before it gets any darker.”

  “Be right there!” his dad answered, although he didn’t sound too pleased about it. “I told you this would be too rough,” he muttered under his breath as he helped Aunt Leona up the other side of the bank. “You would have to come, though, wouldn’t you?

  “You two go on, I’ll catch up!” he yelled to Deedee and Parker, who had hesitated briefly before moving on.

  I wondered if he would be able to find them again, but just then that wasn’t my problem. Grady and I had been assigned an area to the right of the trail and I didn’t want to waste any more time getting to it.

  “I didn’t see Casey back there,” I said as we stumbled about, casting our light under bushes, behind rocks, any place where a child might be resting, sleeping, or—God forbid—lying hurt.

  “Burdette said he went on ahead.” Grady reached back to give me a hand over a particularly rough patch of ground. “Said he’d make better time and cover more ground alone.”

  “That makes sense. Do you know which direction he took?”

  “Whichever one he wanted to, I guess,” Grady said. “I don’t think Casey Grindle likes to take orders from anybody, especially after the way Uncle Ernest treated him today.”

  I agreed, but the caretaker’s feelings were the least of my worries. Every few steps we stopped to call to Josie, and now and then, true to his promise, we could hear Darby blowing his whistle far above us in the distance. For a while we could still see the lights Uncle Ernest had rigged in the clearing, but as the woods became denser and the night blacker, we finally lost sight of that.

  Below us I heard the rush of the river, and now and then caught a glint of light from the water. The sight and sound of it terrified me. Josie was a good swimmer, but the current was deep and swift, and in the darkness, she wouldn’t be able to see where she was going. Fear was like a heavy, growing thing in my middle. Oh, please don’t let my little girl wander into that treacherous, black torrent!

  Grady must have read my mind. “Josie knows better than to go near that river, Kate. If we can hear it, so can she. She’s probably curled up somewhere waiting for us to find her.”

  “Then why doesn’t she answer? Why?”

  But my cousin didn’t answer because he didn’t know.

  And what had happened to my guardian angel? I looked over my shoulder, hoping for a glimpse of a flaming-haired vision with flowers in her hair. “Okay, Augusta, you can come out now!” I spoke loudly enough for Gabriel himself to hear. If I ever needed heavenly help, it was now.

  Grady glanced back at me. “Augusta? Who’s that?”

  “A figment of my imagination, that’s all,” I told him, hoping she would hear.

  I waved gnats from my face, glad of the hat Uncle Lum had forced me to wear, and balanced on one foot as I pried my shoe from the mud. “I wonder how far we’ve come.” I couldn’t see any of the other lights, and it had been some time since we last heard Darby’s whistle. Surely the police had come by now.

  Every few steps Grady, who walked ahead, stopped to flash the beam of his light in circles, and together we called Josie’s name. I tried to think what I would do if I were ten and wanted to hide from my family. Ordinarily, Josie wouldn’t venture into these woods alone, but she was upset, and at that time it was still light. She probably ran as far and as fast as she could until either her temper cooled or she ran out of steam. My daughter could be anywhere.

  I had tied a water bottle to my belt loop with the bandanna and it sloshed against my side as I walked. Pausing, I unscrewed the cap and took a swallow. We were just above the river now, walking parallel to the banks below. “Where now?” I asked.

  Grady untangled himself from a vine and held it aside for me to pass. “To the right, I think. Parker and Deedee are supposed to be searching over to the left—and Dad, too, if he caught up with them. Burdette’s group’s combing that area below Remeth churchyard.”

  “Seems the police should be here by now,” I said.

  “Right, and they’ll have better equipment than we do. I don’t think our batteries are going to last much longer.” The beam was getting dimmer and Grady only switched it on now from time to time. “Do you want to start back?” he asked.


  “NO! Not yet! She might be just over the next hill, on the other side of the next tree. We can’t give up yet.”

  “We won’t be giving up, Kate. I’m sure the sheriff will organize a larger party—might even bring in bloodhounds. We won’t be much help in finding Josie if we can’t see.”

  He was right, of course, but I kept on going. “Please, just a little farther. Didn’t Uncle Ernest used to say there was a cave down here somewhere? Some kind of rock shelter? Josie might have stopped there to rest.”

  “That’s just one of his tales, Kate. I’ve never seen a cave down here, and if there was one, I can’t imagine Josie going in it.”

  “When’s the last time either of us were this close to the river?” I asked. “I don’t think I’ve been back since Bev and I found that dead man. Tobias King. Even his name gives me the creeps. Remember?”

  My cousin didn’t answer but stopped abruptly to stare into the dark void that was the river below.

  “What is it? Do you see something?” I moved quickly up beside him.

  “No, it was just that feeling . . . like a rabbit ran over my grave.” Grady flicked the switch on the flashlight, then shook it. “Damn! The batteries are gone.”

  “Let me see . . .” I reached for it. “Maybe if we reverse them.” It never worked, but I always tried it anyway.

  “Forget it, I did that a while ago.” Even in the dark, I could see the worried look on my cousin’s face.

  “Then I guess we should try to find our way back,” I said. “If we can get close enough, we might be able to see the lights from Bramblewood. And we can always yell for help.”

  Grady brushed debris from a rock and sat, offering me a place beside him. “Let’s rest a minute first.” He held a hand at arm’s length in front of him. “How good are your eyes, Kate? This is about as far as I can see. I don’t think it’s safe to start back in the dark.”

  “Josie is somewhere in this dark,” I reminded him.

  “And I would hope she has the good sense to stay where she is until somebody finds her.”

  “You mean you plan to stay here all night?” I said.

  “Or until somebody comes looking for us. They know we’re out here, Kate. If we try to walk out of here, there’s no telling what we might stumble into.”

  A wind ruffled the leaves and I hugged my uncle’s big shirt around me, but it wasn’t the wind that chilled me. I must have shivered because Grady asked me if I was cold.

  “I just wish those batteries had lasted a little longer. I don’t like this place, Grady. We can’t be too far from where Tobias King was killed,” I told him. “Did they ever find out anything about him? I don’t suppose we’ll ever know who killed him.”

  For a minute my cousin sat beside me rattling the batteries in the flashlight—click, click, back and forth. “I’ll tell you who killed him,” he said finally. “It was me.”

  CHAPTER FIFTEEN

  I don’t think I said anything for a minute or two, but sat on that dirt-encrusted rock listening to the race of the river, inhaling its damp, dark smells. A bug crawled on my neck and I slapped it away. “That’s not funny,” I said. “I’m not in the mood for jokes, Grady.”

  “I wish it were a joke. I’d give anything if it were a joke.” Grady sighed and I could just make out the outline of his face in the semidarkness. “Tobias King was my father,” he said. “My natural father, I guess you’d call him, except he was about as unnatural as a father could be. And Tobias King wasn’t even his real name. It just happened to be the one he was using at the time.”

  “What do you mean, you killed him?”

  “It was an accident. I didn’t mean to. Hell, Kate, I was eleven years old and I hated his guts. I did my best to stay as far away from him as I could.” Grady picked up a stick and threw it into the water.

  “So, what was he doing here?” And why are you telling me this?

  “He planned to blackmail Mom and Dad. Said they’d have to pay good money or he’d take me back. That would’ve been a laugh! Like he ever cared about me to begin with.”

  “But they had already adopted you. How could he—”

  “He wasn’t around when my real mother died—hadn’t been around for years. I guess everybody thought he was dead, too. At least they didn’t expect him back, so technically, he might have had a case.”

  “But how . . .” Did I really want to know this? I took another swallow of water. It was warm and I wasn’t sure I was going to keep it down.

  “Remember how we used to explore down here? Uncle Ernest had told us that yarn about a cave somewhere, and I thought I might find the Confederate gold in there. Anyway, the old man must’ve known where to find me because he was waiting here one day—grabbed me just before I came out into the clearing.” Grady fanned himself with the cap he’d bought at some golf course in Tennessee. “Liked to have scared the— Well, it shook me up pretty bad.

  “He’d been drinking and stunk to high heaven. I’ll never forget the feeling of his filthy hands on my arms. We struggled, with me pulling one way and him another. At that point, he wasn’t too steady on his feet and I lit into him, butted him with my head and shoved him as hard as I could.”

  I could feel Grady looking at me, but I couldn’t meet his gaze. “His head hit a rock when he fell,” he said.

  “And when Bev and I found him that day, you pretended you didn’t know anything about it.”

  “It wasn’t until the next day that you saw him. I was scared to go back there by myself, afraid he wouldn’t be dead. He sure wasn’t moving, breathing, either, but here he was reappearing after all those years. I thought he might be like one of those bad guys in the movies who just keep on coming back when you think they’re dead.”

  I tried not to flinch when my cousin touched my arm. “I’m sorry, Kate. But I had to find out, and I couldn’t tell anybody what I’d done.”

  “You’ve never told this to anybody? Not even Beverly?”

  He shook his head. “Especially not Beverly. You know how softhearted she is. Was.”

  “But you said yourself it was an accident. Nobody in their right mind would’ve blamed you for what you did in self-defense.”

  “True, but a kid isn’t rational about things like that. All I knew was that I had killed the old man . . . and I was glad. By the time I was old enough to realize what I should have done, it was too late to try and make things right. After all, what good would it have done? What good would it do now?”

  “So, why are you telling me?”

  “Being here in this place stirred things up, I guess. And frankly, it’s been bothering me for a long time, like a wound that never healed. Can you imagine me sharing this with Mom, or even Dad? You’re the closest to a sister I ever had, Kate.”

  I patted his arm but didn’t speak. I suppose I should’ve been honored, but I wished my cousin had waited until it was daylight and I had Josie back again to unburden himself.

  “Bev had a hard time that day you found him,” Grady went on, “and I felt bad about that, but if I had told her what really happened, she would’ve felt a lot worse.”

  Dry leaves rustled nearby and I slipped from the rock, hoping it might be Josie or one of the others coming to look for us. “Josie! Josie!” I shouted. “Are you out there? Honey, it’s Mom!”

  “It’s only an animal—raccoon, I think—heading for the riverbank,” Grady said gently.

  “Then let’s yell anyway. Yell together! Maybe somebody will hear us. I just can’t sit here doing nothing.”

  We spent the next few minutes screaming into the night, and between the two of us managed to find our way a few more feet alongside the river without falling in. I felt my way to a slender tree and leaned against it, waiting for an answer that never came.

  “You know, Kate, Josie might already be back at Bramblewood. She’s probably up there now pigging out on the last of the chocolate chip cookies,” Grady said.

  I almost smiled. He had said the right thing,
even if I doubted it was true. My injured hand was throbbing, and next to having Josie back, I wanted a hot shower more than anything I could think of, but I would crawl all night on my hands and knees if I thought I might find her.

  I heard Grady take out his water bottle and drink. “I wish things had been better between Bev and me before she died,” he said, replacing the cap.

  “But I thought they were. Wasn’t she planning to come back to this area when she finished the requirements for her degree? Sounded to me like the two of you had sort of rekindled things.” This was not a good time, I reminded myself, to tell him the police believed Beverly’s death wasn’t an accident.

  “To some extent, yes, but things were more or less unsettled.” He turned his head away when he spoke and I had difficulty hearing him over the sound of the water.

  “It wasn’t your fault, Grady. Beverly made her own choices—and in the end she had chosen to come home. Her mom told me Bev could hardly wait.”

  “It wouldn’t have been any too soon. You should’ve seen that dinky place she lived in . . . way out in the middle of nowhere and so small you didn’t have room to swing a cat!”

  “But how . . .” I stopped myself before I said it. Grady had said he’d never visited Beverly in Pennsylvania!

  “. . . how long had she lived there?” I continued. “Probably not more than a couple of years. I mean, most people don’t seem to mind an inconvenience like that if it’s temporary. And I got the idea she really enjoyed her part-time job up there. Worked in a nursery or a garden shop—something like that—didn’t she?”

  I babbled on and on, trying to cover my tracks. I couldn’t see Grady’s face in the darkness, so I wasn’t sure if he’d noticed my slipup or not.

  Grady had admitted killing his own father. In self-defense, he’d said. But how could I be sure he was telling the truth? And then there was Ella’s tragic tumble. Grady had been at Bramblewood that day long enough to have planned it, and he knew how much she cared about that cat. Maybe the house-keeper had learned something about Grady’s encounter with Tobias King. Ella Stegall usually minced no words. She would have confronted him with it.