The newcomer’s eyes, as sharp as ax blades, squinted at me for a few seconds. Pursing her lips, she said, “I see. Have you come a long way?”
“I live in Levi, Oklahoma. I just flew in to Atlanta today. My name is Darcy Campbell.”
Forcing a smile, I stepped toward her, holding out my hand.
“Gladys McEvers,” she said. Her handshake was firm.
“Why are you looking for Pastor Hughes?” Gladys McEvers’s voice was as crisp and cool as her handshake.
“I’ve got some questions and thought the answers might lie here.” A splitting headache threatened to crack my skull wide open. “Trace Hughes is our preacher at the Baptist church in Levi, Oklahoma. I understand he is from Tyler. You see, he disappeared. I thought maybe I could find some answers in his hometown. But, Mr. Galway said he is dead. I don’t understand.”
I glanced toward Rutherford Galway but he had disappeared.
“Where did he go?” I stammered, glancing at trees and bushes to catch a glimpse of him.
“Pay him no nevermind,” Gladys said, waving her hand as if she were batting at mosquitoes. “He comes; he goes. He likes to slip around as silent as a mouse. You look tired and a mite poorly. Why don’t you come into the house for a glass of tea? I think we need to talk.”
Chapter 27
I swallowed a long drink of iced tea and glanced around this clean, sunny living room. It was comfortably furnished with a brown leather sofa and matching chair, two cushy recliners, lots of books in shelves, and a small fireplace.
Glancing at the fireplace mantel, I did a double take. Several pictures sat there, family pictures, I assumed. One was of an attractive young man and a teenage girl, the other was the same two people with an older man. The younger man was my preacher, Trace Hughes.
Gladys McEvers smiled. “You recognize Pastor Hughes?”
“Of course. The young lady resembles him. His sister?”
Setting her glass of tea on the vinyl floor so quickly that some of it sloshed out, Gladys jumped from her chair and trotted to the fireplace. She pointed to the picture of Trace and the young woman.
“Is this who you are calling Pastor Hughes?”
Now it was my turn to be flabbergasted. “Why, yes.”
Pressing her hand over her mouth, Gladys shook her head. “I’ve got to sit down,” she said.
This was strange behavior but I waited quietly, sensing that Gladys would speak when she was able to collect her wits. She seemed completely bewildered.
My hostess was silent for so long, I grew impatient.
“I’m sorry, Miss McEvers, I’m not understanding. Do you mean that man is not Pastor Hughes?”
Gladys shook her head and clasped her hands together. She spoke so softly, I leaned forward to hear her.
“No, he’s not. He is Trace Hughes, Jr., our pastor’s son. The girl is his younger sister, Melanie.”
I felt as if my breath had been knocked out of me. What was going on?
“Let’s share stories,” Gladys said, her voice stronger. “I sort of look after the church and the parsonage, keep everything spic and span, you know. I’ve done that since Pastor Hughes died and Melanie left home.”
“So, it was the elder Hughes who was your minister? He is the one who died, and not his son?”
Gladys nodded.
I should not have felt such relief, because death is death, but a weight lifted from my heart. Trace was still among the living.
“When did he die? And why did Melanie leave home? Did Trace live here too? Why did he tell the church in Levi he is a preacher if he isn’t? Or did he pastor a different church?”
Wearily, Gladys shook her head. “It’s a sad story and one that hasn’t ended yet. Not really. You see, Pastor Hughes was a mighty good preacher but strict, kind of hard on his kids, seemed to me, wouldn’t allow them to be less than perfect. Maybe he felt the responsibility of bringing them up by himself. Mrs. Hughes died a few years back. Anyway, Melanie was a good girl, a pretty girl as you can see, but she rebelled against her father’s stern rules and she…well, she got pregnant.”
“And she wasn’t married,” I guessed.
“No, not married and it about killed her father. He told her to leave and not come back, that she had disgraced her family. So, that’s what she did. She left and nobody knew where she went exactly.”
“What do you mean ‘exactly’? Did somebody know her whereabouts?”
Gladys frowned and waggled her index finger.
“Now, just a minute, Miss Campbell, I’m coming to that. After Melanie left, Pastor Hughes saw that he had been too harsh. He was sorry he threw her out, worried what might happen to her. Well, he grieved himself into a heart attack. Yes, sir. That’s what he did.”
The wind sighed through the pines and a cloud passed across the sun, throwing the living room into shadows.
“I’m so sorry,” I said. “But why did Trace wind up in Levi, Oklahoma? Where does he fit in with all this? Is he a preacher or isn’t he? I can’t believe he lied to the church back in Levi.”
Going to the bookcase, Gladys opened a drawer and pulled out a magazine. She handed it to me.
The name on the cover of the magazine was Musician’s Scene. The cover of this slick magazine featured a younger Trace Hughes, a smiling Trace with a guitar in his hands.
Quickly thumbing pages, I skimmed the articles.
“It looks like Trace was a well-known musician, at least throughout the South. He has made some best-selling records,” I murmured. “No wonder he sounds like a professional musician. He is a professional.”
Gladys sat down, crossed her legs, and leaned toward me.
“When he heard that Melanie left, Trace came back home. He and his dad had words. He was so upset when he talked to me! I felt sorry for him. You see, he had always been close to Melanie and he blamed his dad for her predicament, said his dad had no understanding of a young girl. Then he said somebody, one of his buddies, heard she was hitchhiking, trying to get to a friend out in California and she had made it as far as a little place in northeast Oklahoma.”
“Levi,” I whispered.
“Yes, well, maybe. He didn’t say. But when Pastor Hughes died, Trace wrote to me and asked me to keep lookin’ after this place. He didn’t even come back for Brother Hughes’s funeral, but he sent a wad of money. As if I needed pay for doing what’s my boundin’ Christian duty. Anyhow, that’s all I know about this awful situation.”
“Thank you, Miss McEvers,” I said as I placed my empty glass on the floor and stood up.
Gladys rose too.
“Oh, please, you don’t have to go. You can’t mean that you are going all the way back to Oklahoma tonight? The parsonage has a guest room, bed freshly made up. You’re welcome to stay and then get an early start home tomorrow.”
The truth was, I could not wait to be on that plane, soaring through the sky to Levi. I would just have time to make the evening flight back to Fayetteville where I had left my Escape. My trip to Tyler had netted shocking news, but I couldn’t see that this explained the mystery of his disappearance from Levi. As for Trace himself, he was not here. Where was he? Trace, his father, Melanie…all gone. Tyler was a sad place.
Chapter 28
“I just can’t believe it,” Mom said for the fourth time, turning her coffee cup around and around in its saucer. “Our pastor is a fraud? Can you believe it, Darcy?”
Wearily shaking my head, I sighed. “It is a hard thing to wrap my mind around, but it’s pretty clear. He let us believe a lie, that he was the elder Trace Hughes. I suppose his motive was good, though. He must have thought if he gave us a reason to be here, he would have ample time to search for Melanie. And there was the letter from our church to his father. We didn’t know his father had died, of course.”
“You must be worn out. It’s after midnight. Why don’t you go to bed and maybe things will look better with the sunrise.”
“I couldn’t sleep, Mom. As I flew back from
Atlanta, I’ll bet I re-hashed Gladys’s and my conversation a dozen times. By the way, do you have any aspirins in the cabinet?”
“Third shelf to the left of the sink,” Mom answered.
Lightning flickered across the horizon as I glanced out of the kitchen window. I rinsed my cup in the sink and reached up for the aspirin bottle.
“Looks like another storm coming. I once liked rain, but this summer I’m growing mighty tired of it.”
“I think that’s just heat lightning,” Mom said.
An owl hooted down in the hollow and another answered, the age-old omen for a coming storm.
“Or maybe not,” she added.
Jethro rubbed against my ankles. Scooping him up, I returned to the table. Stroking his silky head helped my racing thoughts to slow.
Upstairs by my computer sat an incomplete manuscript. After I had finished the book about folk tales and legends of Ventris County, my publisher asked for a sequel. This book, however, was coming along slowly. Life kept getting in my way. Rain was a pleasant accompaniment to writing. Perhaps tomorrow I could finish another chapter.
“What do you think about all this?” I asked my cat. He squeezed shut his eyes and seemed to consider.
“Do you honestly think that Trace had a hand in Mort’s death?” Mom asked.
“The evidence, such as it is, is purely circumstantial,” I said, imagining that Jethro’s loud purring meant he agreed with that statement. “Let’s look at this, Mom. I heard Trace more or less threaten Mort. Trace wasn’t at Walter’s funeral, a sad omission for a pastor. And then, Mort turned up dead and I found the guitar pick by the Jenkinses’ front porch. That doesn’t prove a thing, but it does cast doubt. Mort had planned to go to Tyler. Maybe Trace didn’t want him to go for fear of what Mort might find out.”
Mom raised her eyebrows. “Of course he wanted to keep his real identity a secret, but surely not to the extent of silencing Mort. He pretended to be someone he wasn’t. I can’t think that he had anything to do with Mort’s death, but why did he disappear if he hadn’t?”
Wishing the aspirin would hurry and ease my pounding head, I said, “Levi is full of disappearing people. I don’t suppose Jasper has come home?”
“No. I talked to Pat a few hours ago and she was still wishing he would show up. She’s afraid Grant will think he had something to do with Mort’s death as well as Walter’s.”
“That’s just silly. But, knowing Pat, she does have a tendency to jump to conclusions without benefit of anything factual.”
Wrinkling her nose at the taste, Mom drained the last of her cold coffee. “Ugh! I’ve had enough coffee for ten people. I’ve been worrying about something. Surely, Trace is not tied in somehow with Walter’s death? Do you think?”
“I don’t see how or why. He may not really be a preacher, and he may have taken advantage of the invitation his father got from our church, but murder? Oh, my goodness, Mom, I cannot believe that he would kill anyone.”
“I’ve always thought I’m a pretty good judge of character,” she said as she carried her cup to the counter and returned to the table. “He has an honest face.”
Jethro jumped to the floor and I dusted off my jeans. “Maybe you should look for other evidence of character,” I said. “He certainly is not ordained to preach. He’s a professional singer.”
My mother fidgeted, looking down at her place mat. “He didn’t actually lie. His name really is Trace Hughes. We just thought he was the elder, and he didn’t tell us any different. And, he can sure sing those hymns.”
Grinning, I reached over and patted her hand.
“Oh, Mom, when you like someone, you find all kinds of excuses for them, don’t you?”
She sniffed. “I’m not excusing what he has done at all, Darcy, but I just have to believe that young man loves the Lord. He sings and speaks likes he really means those words.”
“You know,” I interrupted, “I believe I can sleep now, if I can make it up to bed.”
The stress of the past few days caught up with me in a rush. My eyelids felt as if they weighed a ton. I shuffled toward the stairs. Everything could wait until morning.
“By the way,” Mom called as my hand touched the newel post, “Miss Carolina said more food has disappeared.”
“Sure, why not?” I muttered. “Disappearing people, disappearing food, there must be a reason for all this but right now, I’m too tired to think about it.”
Chapter 29
The owls last night proved to be good weather predictors. Rain ran in gray sheets down the windows in the sheriff’s office where I sat. However, instead of spending the day at my computer adding to my book, I had chosen to talk to Grant. There were some things we needed to discuss.
Grant held the guitar pick between his thumb and forefinger and gazed at it as if it were a carrier of bubonic plague.
“So you found this outside the Jenkinses’ house and you didn’t say anything to me about it?” he asked, leaning back in his chair and never taking his eyes off the pick.
I bit my lip. “Well, no, I didn’t know what to do. I don’t know how it got there, but I’m sure it has no bearing on Mort’s death.”
“No, of course not. Probably Miss Georgia dropped it on her way to play guitar at the old folks’ home,” he sneered.
Heat flared across my face.
“Now, listen, Grant Hendley, if I had wanted to protect Trace Hughes, I would never have shown you that guitar pick at all. I would have thrown it away.”
“Okay. Sorry, Darcy. I’m a little on edge. So, you went to Tyler, Georgia? Why?”
How much should I tell Grant? Mentally shrugging my shoulders, I decided to include everything I had learned. In a way, it might help to absolve Trace of suspicion. He was, after all, on a charitable mission to find his young sister. Surely that showed compassion and would explain that he was in Levi for a good reason, not a nefarious one.
As I finished my story, Grant dropped the guitar pick on his desk, ran his hands through his red hair and glowered at me.
“Are you sure he didn’t drop it when he went to visit with the Jenkins ladies?”
“They said he had never visited them. They go to the Methodist church, you know. I think the only time they saw him was at our housewarming.”
“Darcy, this guy is a fake and a liar. I mean, it’s bad enough to pretend to be someone he’s not, but to pretend to be a preacher!”
“Are you going to get prints off that guitar pick?” I asked, hoping to divert Grant from the obvious shortcomings in Trace’s character.
“I can have it dusted and compare the prints to those in your rent house, but how would that prove anything we don’t already know?”
“You mean that we ‘suspect’, Grant. We don’t know anything for sure.”
“I know I never trusted Trace Hughes from the first. He has conveniently disappeared, so I can’t question him. He didn’t show up for Walter’s funeral, threatened Mort and Mort’s dead. I went back to the Jenkins house and had another look at that railing and the steps. Those screws holding the banister to the porch could easily have been removed, maybe just one left in to keep it in place.”
“But, Grant, Trace would not have known Mort was going to the Jenkins home. Miss Georgia or Miss Carolina could have walked down those steps.”
Grant shook his head. “You’re right. The only way this theory would work would be if Hughes was watching the house or trailing Mort and when he saw Mort go inside, he slipped over and removed some screws.”
I remembered the sense I had of being watched when Mom and I were last at the Jenkins house. But, it was only a feeling, nothing I wanted to mention to Grant.
Standing up, I said, “That sounds pretty unlikely. I think you’re providing a scenario for a conclusion you’ve already reached. You’re hunting for facts to support your belief that Trace is guilty. Next, you’ll be telling me that Trace and Jasper are accomplices and are hiding out somewhere together.”
“You
look cute when you get mad, you know.” Coming around his desk, he took my hand. “I don’t want you to be mad, though. How about going out and taking a look at my new ten acres I told you about?”
“It’s raining,” I protested, but I did not withdraw my hand.
“If we do anything this summer, looks like it’s going to have to be in the rain. Let’s go by Dilly’s and get a couple of hamburgers. It won’t exactly be a picnic like last time, but at least you can see what I have in mind. I want to expand my ranch, maybe build a bigger house on top of that hill. What do you say?”
Looking into his blue eyes, I saw the pleading there. This meant a lot to him. I would go, rain or no rain.
“All right,” I said. “You’ve convinced me.”
Chapter 30
Grant and I sat in his truck, munching our burgers, our cups of coffee steaming up the windows in the cab. Listening to the rain, looking out at the green countryside, and hearing Grant tell me about his plans for his ranch gave me a warm, contented glow. There was nowhere else I would rather be.
We were parked above the cave we had explored as children. The Ventris River rolled below us, muddy and spread out from the rain.
“You will have to build your house as far as you can from the river,” I said. “It would be awful if you were flooded.”
He nodded. “What I had in mind was a log house, not nearly as large as yours and Miss Flora’s, but large enough for two people, just to start with. I’d like a fireplace, maybe two bedrooms, a kitchen and a bath.”
I didn’t ask who he had in mind to share it with him. This was a serious subject and I had a way of sounding flippant at times.
“And a nice, wide front porch,” I chimed in, catching his enthusiasm.
He grinned. “Sure. I like porches.”
“Oh, Grant, that sounds perfect!” I said. “I can see it all now.”
And, I could. I could even envision sitting on the porch with Grant, watching the sunsets. Images of Jake were coming to my mind less and less frequently, but I needed to be honest with Grant. I was not sure I was ready to consider a second marriage.
Grave Heritage Page 10
