Secrets of Harmony Grove

by Mindy Starns Clark

  “No health insurance,” she replied, running a hand through her messy hair. “I couldn’t afford to stick around the hospital any more than I absolutely had to. Is that all?”

  She started to close the door, but I held out a hand to stop her, saying no, that was not all and that she and I needed to have a talk. Sighing heavily, she let me in but said her mom had just run to the store to get a few things and we had to be finished before she got back or we’d both be in trouble that she was out here talking instead of resting.

  “Then I’ll get right to the point,” I said as she led us to twin rockers near the front window and we sat. “It’s my understanding that you’re holding me responsible for what happened Wednesday night.”

  “I sure am,” she said softly, sitting in the creaky chair. “If it hadn’t been for you, Troy never would have been out there trying to beat you to those diamonds.”

  I wondered if I had heard her correctly and asked what she meant.

  As she talked it became apparent that the poor girl had been manipulated by Troy, who had fed her a bunch of lies. According to Nina, she had spotted Troy in the grove with a metal detector on Tuesday morning and had gone out to see what he was doing. They hadn’t spoken in a month or two, and I had the feeling that mostly she just wanted an excuse to see him. He had acted odd, though, and after talking to him a little, it struck her that maybe he was out there looking for “Mr. Abe’s diamonds.”

  “You knew about the diamonds?”

  “Yeah, I’ve known about them for a long time,” she replied, but she didn’t elaborate. I could tell from her expression that there was more she wasn’t saying.

  She continued with her tale, explaining how she had asked Troy straight out if that was what he was doing. He finally admitted that yes, he was, but not so he could steal them. He wanted to find them for Emory’s sake.

  “Yeah, right,” I scoffed.

  “No, it’s true. He told me he overheard you and your new boyfriend talking about how the two of you were going to come to the inn next week, find the diamonds, and keep them for yourselves. He said you were currently in Boston, but that as soon as you got back you were coming straight out here to find those jewels. He said he had only a couple of days to get out there and locate them ahead of you. Once he found them, he was going to take them straight to the authorities to make sure Emory got his full inheritance without you or anyone else stealing those diamonds out from under him.”

  Floyd was right. Troy was a pathological liar, and he had really pulled out all the stops on that one. My first reaction was one of disdain, wondering how Nina could possibly have been so naive as to fall for his lies. My second thought was that I lived in a glass house and had absolutely no business whatsoever throwing stones.

  “You believed him, Nina? You weren’t even willing to give me the benefit of the doubt?”

  “I did! I called your office and asked for you, and they said you were in Boston. That was all the proof I needed that Troy was telling the truth.”

  FORTY-ONE

  Knowing that Nina and I were just a pair of gullible fools, I hesitated, wondering how I would ever be able to make her understand that Troy had been lying about everything.

  “The only reason Troy knew I was in Boston was because he called me on my cell phone Monday night to ask me about my grandfather’s papers, and I mentioned it then,” I said.

  “You know about the papers?” she asked, casting a fleeting glance toward the door. I realized she didn’t yet know I had been up to her apartment, found the envelope, and taken it away. Choosing not to bring that up now, I said yes and asked what she could tell me about them.

  “Troy found them somewhere in your bed-and-breakfast,” she replied. “He said that as soon as he saw the words die diamanten, he knew they had to do with Emory’s inheritance and were worth reading. Once he did, he realized those documents held the key to where the diamonds were hidden, at the base of something called the Fishing Tree.”

  “Do you know, or did he know, which tree that was?”

  She shook her head.

  “I tried to help him figure it out. My German is better than his, so I took the pages and starting translating all of them, hoping to find more clues. Instead, I just learned a bunch of sad stuff about Emory’s mother. I mean, Mr. Abe had told me about a lot of the stuff that was in there, but reading it for myself was really hard. Anyway, she barely mentioned the diamonds at all.”

  I kept going, asking Nina what happened Wednesday evening.

  “Well, Troy searched for the diamonds all day Tuesday without any luck, and then he went back out there again on Wednesday. He had gotten rid of Floyd for a couple of days, you know, but when Floyd called and said he was heading home, Troy told me he needed my help. He knew Floyd was tight with you and your boyfriend, and as soon as he got back he was going to cause trouble. So Troy came up with a plan. He said we could put something in Floyd’s drink, like a sedative of some kind that would knock him out for the rest of the evening. If it worked, we could do the same thing the next morning. We hoped that would buy enough time for Troy to keep working—without Floyd knowing—until he found the diamonds.”

  Glancing at Nina and seeing the sheepish expression on her face, I said simply, “The Ativan.”

  Looking out the window in the direction of Emory’s house, she said she knew it was wrong to take Emory’s pills, but in a way it was okay. “We were doing this for him, after all. Was it wrong to steal a few of his pills if, in the end, that was what got him the diamonds?”

  We both rocked in silence for a long moment. Ignoring my own feelings about drugs being put into drinks, I kept thinking that by telling herself that lie, Nina had climbed onto a very slippery slope, one that couldn’t lead anywhere but down.

  I knew a thing or two about slippery slopes.

  Nina went on to tell me how she had taken the pills out of the box while Emory was at his boss’s house having dinner, and then she had gone into the grove to find Troy and give the pills to him. He was nowhere to be found, though, so she kept walking all the way to the inn. She was heading up the sidewalk toward the back door, just passing the open gate to the pool area, when she glanced inside and thought she saw something.

  Pausing to look, she realized it was Troy, and he was floating facedown in the pool. Screaming for help, she immediately pushed open the gate, jumped into the water, and pulled him out. She tried to do CPR, but the next thing she knew Floyd was there, telling her that it was no use, that Troy was dead. Seeing the gun in his hand, she had immediately jumped to the conclusion that Floyd had shot and killed Troy.

  “He kept denying it, but while we were arguing we heard a weird noise, like a strange, scary rumble, just beyond the far side of the fence. We turned to look, and then all of a sudden there was a big flash and Floyd collapsed on the ground.”

  “Did you see where the flash came from?”

  She nodded, saying she knew it sounded stupid, but the flash had come from a big, black creature who had risen up from the bushes and shot Floyd with some sort of gun. I pressed her for a better description of the creature than the one Floyd had given, and she finally admitted that it had looked not unlike “the Michelin Man, all padded and lumpy, except that it was black instead of white, and it just had holes for eyes.”

  The Michelin Man? Padded and lumpy? I couldn’t fathom what that could have been.

  She went on with the little bit that was left of her tale, saying how she had run away as fast as she could, the beast in pursuit more slowly behind her. She had cut across the side lawn and around the front of the grove to Emory’s driveway, and had made it almost as far as the covered bridge before she felt a sharp pain in her buttocks, “worse than a wasp—more like a big jellyfish.”

  That was all she remembered.

  Again we sat in silence for a little while, rocking in our chairs, thinking about what she had just shared. As gently as I could, I gave her my defense, explaining how Troy had duped her and then
explaining the much bigger way in which he had duped me as well.

  “Yeah, that cute police detective already told me most of this,” she said. Though she didn’t seem fully convinced, I could tell that at least some cracks had been made in her certainty. Perhaps the more she thought about it, the more she would come around.

  “Am I fired?” she asked suddenly, and I felt a deep surge of pity for this girl who had been through so much in her lifetime: the loss of a husband to divorce, the loss of a child to death. I didn’t see any reason for her to lose her only job as well, and I told her so.

  “But I stole Emory’s pills,” she said, her eyes filling with tears. “I’ve never done anything like that in my life.”

  I agreed that had been a serious lapse in judgment, but I told her I had a feeling it wouldn’t ever happen again.

  “No, never. I promise,” she said emphatically, shaking her head from side to side. “Before he died, I told Mr. Abe not to worry. I said I would always look after Emory and keep him safe. I intend to keep that promise, whether I do that as an employee or as a friend.”

  “Our family appreciates how good you are with Emory.”

  “I try. Mr. Abe spent so many years obsessing about his son’s welfare, you know, terrified that someday there could be another Holocaust and Emory’s half-Jewish heritage would come back to haunt him. I just wish Mr. Abe could have found some peace about that.”

  “Me too.”

  We both stood, and though she was still weak and pale, I thought I could see a little spark inside of her now, no doubt the relief that came from confession and restoration.

  “You really loved my grandfather, didn’t you?”

  She nodded, her eyes again filling with tears.

  “My daddy passed away when I was so young, but Mr. Abe was like a second father to me. I loved him very much.”

  Stepping toward the door, I said I had never had much of a relationship with the man myself simply because he was always so quiet and remote.

  “Yeah, he didn’t talk often. But once in a while he would surprise me and come out with all sorts of stuff, especially when he got near the end.”

  I paused at the door, one hand on the knob.

  “What sorts of things did he talk about?”

  “Like how many mistakes he had made in his life. How he had hurt his first wife so deeply. How he had driven his second wife away entirely. He had a lot of guilt, you know. A lot of guilt. About the war. About the women he had loved. About the family he had hurt and the God he had disappointed.”

  “Did he ever talk about the diamonds?”

  She studied my face for a moment before nodding, but she wouldn’t elaborate. Rather than argue, I tried to come at it from a different way, posing other questions to her instead.

  “You know,” I said, “Abe was such a mystery. I’ve always wondered what it was that changed him so, back during the war. What made him regret his decision not to bear arms? Why did he do such a complete about-face on his stance of nonviolence? Did he ever talk about that with you?”

  “Yes,” Nina said, exhaling wearily, as if the very thought of explaining such a complicated transformation was almost too exhausting to comprehend. “He told me everything started to change when he first saw Buchenwald. Witnessing the horrors there, he realized what the war had really been about, and he felt that his choice to serve as a conscientious objector had been a mistake. He told me, ‘I know Jesus said we’re supposed to turn the other cheek, but what are we supposed to do when it isn’t our own cheek we’re talking about? What about when others are being hurt? Shouldn’t we do whatever it takes to protect them from harm?’ He couldn’t figure that one out. All he knew for sure was that God never meant for anyone to suffer the way the Jews had suffered. If taking up a gun and fighting the evil of Hitler’s regime was the only way to stop it, then he couldn’t see how that could ever be wrong.”

  I thought about that, wondering if I dared share those sentiments with Heath, or if it would even make any difference if I did.

  “I think the final clincher for him came a few days later,” she continued, “when one of his patients asked him to do her a favor, a young woman named Daphne. She was nearly dead from typhus, but she wouldn’t stop saying that she had to get the ashes, that she needed to bring her mother and sister home. If you ever read Daphne’s journal, you’ll know what I’m talking about. She had put some ashes in a sock and hidden it up under her mattress. When she begged Abe to go to her bunk in the empty barracks and find that sock and bring it back to her, he felt so sorry for her that he agreed to do it.”

  Nina looked so weak, I knew I shouldn’t keep her any longer, but I couldn’t walk away until I had all of my answers.

  “When he went inside the barracks and looked under that mattress and found that sock, he said it was the saddest, most sickening moment of his entire life. Overwhelmed by the stench, the lice, the waste, he just stood there with that sock in his hand and wept. I think that’s probably why he ended up marrying Daphne, at least at first—out of guilt and shame and obligation. It wasn’t until later, until after she had passed away, that he realized he had actually loved her. But by then it was too late to let her know.”

  She went on to explain that by the time Abe felt strong enough to read the journal his late wife had left behind, he had already remarried and had another child on the way. Of course, he had been deeply affected by the whole journal, but especially by one of her poems, the one called “The Other Daphne,” about how she loved Abe more than he loved her.

  I sighed, thinking about that myself.

  “Her poem just about broke his heart,” Nina continued. “The first time he read it, he decided he would spend the rest of his life, if necessary, making that up to her. That’s when he really got serious about finishing the grove. He still hadn’t even sprinkled the ashes on it yet.”

  “What do you mean?”

  “The ashes in the sock, plus Daphne’s ashes too, from when she died—he still had all of them.”

  “You’re kidding.”

  “No. See, when they went back to her home in Germany after the war, she was going to bury the ashes in the grove there. But then they found out that the Nazis had been using it as a training ground for some commando teams. She said the place had been spoiled for her forever and it didn’t deserve those ashes. Abe promised her they would find another grove, but they never did and then she died.”

  “How sad.”

  “It gets worse. Believe it or not, some paranoid administrator at the hospital saw ‘typhus’ in Daphne’s medical records and ordered that her body be cremated immediately.”

  “Isn’t cremation against Jewish law?”

  “Sure is, but the hospital people didn’t even realize she was Jewish, especially with her being married to an American soldier. When Mr. Abe found out what had happened, he was devastated. Taking her ashes regardless, he promised himself that someday he would make the situation right. When he and Emory came back to America, he finally came up with a plan. He decided to recreate the grove here—her grove, exactly as it was—but without the taint of the Nazis. Then he would be able to bury everybody’s ashes in there all at the same time, finally putting the matter to rest.”

  “Wow. I had no idea.”

  Nina looked as though she was just about finished, and though I felt guilty for pushing her much further, she still had one question to answer, so I tried again.

  “What did he say to you about the diamonds, Nina? Did he bring them back to America with him when he came home?”

  “Yes,” she whispered.

  “What did he do with them? Where are they now?”

  Her cheeks began to flush, twin red circles on the pale skin of her face.

  “I don’t know. But they’re real, Sienna. They do exist. I can tell you that for a fact.”

  “How can you be so sure? Did you ever see the diamonds yourself?”

  She looked at me, eyes swimming with tears.

 
; “Just one of them,” she replied. And then she added, “The one your grandfather gave to me.”

  FORTY-TWO

  This was too important to miss, but if we weren’t careful, Nina was going to pass out soon. She leaned back against the wall, closed her eyes, and explained. She said that two and a half years ago, after her daughter’s car accident and subsequent death, she had found herself in serious debt, with almost $40,000 in outstanding medical bills. When my grandfather found out about that, he had given her one massive, cut diamond that he said she should be able to sell for between $30,000 and $50,000. He wanted the proceeds to go toward her bills, no strings attached, as long as she promised to keep the source of the diamond confidential.

  Nina had been shocked, of course, and though she tried to refuse, Abe had insisted. She finally relented once he told her that he had plenty more where that came from, that in fact he had an entire cache of diamonds tucked away for safekeeping. The diamonds had belonged to Emory’s mother, and Abe had held on to them all of these years, intending them to be used for the cost of Emory’s care and housing and other expenses once Abe was gone and could no longer provide for his son himself.

  “I asked Mr. Abe if Emory knew about the diamonds, and he said yes but not where the diamonds were hidden. At one time, Emory had known where they were, but then Mr. Abe had caught him blabbing about it, so he chose a new hiding place, which he didn’t share with anyone. He said that once he passed away that hiding place would be revealed. But it wasn’t, and I’ve been wondering why ever since.”

  Nina was right: Whatever great revelation my grandfather had intended after his death had not taken place. Now it was anyone’s guess where he had put the diamonds and if they were still there.

  “Was his estimate of the value correct?” I asked, wondering how many diamonds there were altogether and what their total worth would be now.

  Nina nodded, eyes shining.

  “God bless him,” she whispered, adding that she sold the stone to a private dealer for $46,000. “That covered every single one of my bills and then some.”