Chapter 2
The return trip toward Levi was an adventure in itself. Water washed up on the car as we splashed across the creek, and the tires left deep ruts in red mud. I drove as fast as I dared, my need to contact law enforcement urging me onward. Finally, mud became a paved road and the Toyota picked up speed. Dodging a small tree across the asphalt, we snaked our way up Deertrack Hill. When we were at last on level ground, Mom tried the cell phone again. This time, it worked. She dialed the sheriff’s office in Levi.
Even to me, her quavering recital about finding Ben sounded unbelievable, especially when she mentioned the missing finger. At last, she snapped the phone shut. “Grant said to stay right here and he will meet us. He wants us to go back to Goshen with him and Jim Clendon. That’s Grant’s deputy,” she said.
“Grant?” I asked. “Grant who?”
“Why, Darcy, I thought you knew that Grant Hendley has been sheriff of Ventris County for a year now.” She pointed to a small grocery story on the right side of the road. “Why not wait here in Tanner’s parking lot for Grant?”
So, my old flame became the sheriff of his hometown. He would be good at the job. Always a staunch believer in right being right and wrong being wrong—that was Grant Hendley. Unaccountably, I thought about my hair, plastered down to my head by the rain. My shirt and jeans were still damp and mud clung to my shoes. Grant probably would not recognize me.
Driving onto the paved area, I shut off the ignition and slumped against the steering wheel. “I don’t want to go back to the cemetery. Not today; not ever.”
Mom patted my shoulder. “We are going to have to go back.”
Closing my eyes, I asked, “Do you have an aspirin in your purse?”
The sun was playing hide and seek with harmless-looking clouds by the time the sheriff and his deputy arrived. Grant swung out of his truck and strode to our car, looking much the way I remembered him, only thinner. His eyes were as blue as ever, but gray sprinkled his red hair. Pushing his Stetson back from his forehead, he smiled, and an old, familiar warmth stirred in my heart—a disturbing feeling.
“Darcy,” he said, “good to see you.”
Returning his smile, I reached out to grasp his hand as he extended it through my window.
Jim Clendon squinted at me. “What’s this about finding some poor devil dead on top of the ground at the cemetery? Don’t you know that’s unlawful? You’re supposed to let ’em stay buried.”
“Forgive me if I don’t find that amusing,” I said between clenched teeth. My head pounded like a kettledrum. Mom’s aspirin had yet to work. “And,” I added, “that is not ‘some poor devil,’ that’s Ben Ventris lying out there.”
Clendon grinned and shot a stream of tobacco juice into a puddle.
Mom threw me a warning glance. “I think we’d better just show you what we found, Grant.”
Reluctantly, I put the car into gear and led the way back to our grim discovery. As we stopped once more at Goshen, only the thought of lending support to Mom gave me the courage to go through the gate.
Grant and his deputy parked beside us. “I see that the storm got the tool shed and that old oak,” Clendon said.
“The tool shed can be replaced,” Mom snapped. “What we can’t replace is Ben lying dead out there.” She pointed toward the tumble of branches that was Ben Ventris’s coffin.
Halfway between the gate and the body, Mom and I stopped to watch Grant and Clendon wade through the grass toward that forlorn heap. They walked around, bending over the ground now and then, obviously searching for something. At one point, Clendon kicked a branch aside, then they both peered intently at the pile of debris where we found Ben.
At last, they came back to where we waited. What would be Grant’s verdict? Would he find any clues?
An odd little smirk twitched the corner of Clendon’s mouth. He pulled a wad of tobacco from the back pocket of his jeans, bit off a chew, and asked, “So, just where is this so-called body?”
Air whooshed from my lungs. “What do you mean?” I gasped.
Running through the sodden grass, I reached the place where Mom and I had uncovered Ben. My mother jogged along behind me. The jumble of branches, rocks, and dirt still covered the ground, but Ben was gone. Not even an indentation showed that a body had lain here.
Both men stared at Mom and me with strange expressions. Grant cleared his throat. “Miss Flora, Darcy, are you sure there was a body here? Nerves play tricks on us sometimes and even make us believe—well—storms make a person nervous and you just went through a bad one. Maybe you thought you saw something that wasn’t really here.”
Anger brought the blood to my face. Had Grant Hendley changed in those years since we were both teenagers? As I remembered, trust had been a large part of our relationship. How dare he insinuate we had made up a story about finding Ben?
Clendon wiped his mouth and snorted. “And, anyhow, are you for certain sure it was Ben Ventris, assuming that you did see somebody on that brush pile, which don’t appear to be likely. If that there body was all covered up, how’d you come to recognize him?”
Grant shook his head. “Now, Jim, I’ve read some of Darcy’s articles in the paper and she’s a good investigative reporter. If she and Miss Flora think Ben Ventris was here, we’d better keep looking. Why don’t you take a walk down the hill a way and see if you can find any sign of a body being moved or any drag marks or squashed vegetation. It’s going to be hard to tell what the storm caused and what might have been made by something or somebody else.” He turned toward us. “Are you pretty sure it was poor old Ventris?”
“There’s no mistake about that, Grant,” I said. “Mom has known Ben for a long time.”
Clendon interrupted, giving my mother an up-and-down insinuating leer. “Yeah. I heard they were real good friends.”
What did he mean by that? I was on the verge of stepping forward, grabbing Clendon’s fox face, and twisting it around nineteen times.
Grant spoke sharply. “Jim, you go on down the hill and take a look. Now!”
Mom didn’t seem to be aware of any insult. She continued staring at the pile of rubble, her breath raspy.
“Sit down over there, Mom,” I ordered, indicating the flat top of a gravestone. Surely she wasn’t going to faint. Her color was pasty.
She fanned her face with her hand, as if she found it hard to breathe. “This must be a nightmare, Darcy,” she said. “It can’t be real.”
“Where did you get that deputy?” I asked Grant as Clendon sauntered down the hill. “Surely you had more candidates in the county that you could choose from.”
“I apologize for Jim,” Grant said. “Sometimes his choice of words isn’t the best, but he’s like a bulldog when it comes to going after the bad guys. Would you two ladies be willing to make a statement saying you saw Ventris under all this brush? Think about it before you answer. You say you found him, you say there was a bullet hole in his chest, and that he was missing a finger? Do you want to put your names to a statement like that?”
Stomping my foot sent water splashing from the rain-soaked grass. “Now listen to me, Grant Hendley. It’s just like Mom and I told you. Ben isn’t here now but he certainly was. A dead man named Ben Ventris was lying right out here in all these sticks and limbs before the storm hit. Why would we make up such a story? You know me better than that!”
Clendon sloshed back toward us. “Not a thing down the hill there, folks,” he said. “If somebody dragged a body out of here, there sure isn’t any sign of it now. Maybe the rain revived him and he just up and walked off.”
I bit my tongue and glanced at Mom. She had begun to shiver and I started toward her, thinking that she had had enough for one day. As it turned out, indisputable proof of our story lay at my feet; proof that could provide positive identification of the body these two officers doubted had ever lain here.
I kicked some soggy leaves out of my way and froze in mid-stride. Although the grayish, swollen object floati
ng in the mud puddle looked like nothing I had never seen before—pulpy and misshapen—there was no doubt in my mind it could be only one thing—the finger of a human hand.
I beckoned to Grant then pointed at the ground. Nobody said a word. Even Clendon’s sneer vanished. The only sound in the cemetery was a cardinal in a distant tree telling us to “Cheer up, Cheer up,” and my mother, softly sobbing.
Finally, Grant broke the silence. “Okay. I reckon you were right. I’ll take this to the lab boys and see what they tell me.”
“Darcy,” Mom whispered, “I want to go home.”
We turned toward the gate.
“Hey! Hold on there!” yelled Clendon. “Where do you think you’re going? We haven’t gotten your written statement.”
My cheeks burned and I spun on my heel. “You just hold on yourself,” I said. “We are leaving. If you decide you want a written statement today, you know where my mother lives. If not, we’ll see you tomorrow.”
Mom and I walked away with as much dignity as two traumatized women could summon. I felt the gaze of both men boring into my back as we trudged toward Mom’s car.
The Cemetery Club Page 2
