Granny frowned. “Visiting my sister? They were visiting Amelia? How did you know that? I didn’t know that.”
“I was making a visit to see if she’d like to join We Save You Christian Church. They were just wrapping up their visit when I got there,” replied Henrietta.
“Hmm, I wondered why they didn’t follow me to the Police Station,” mused Granny. “It seemed too quiet on that front. Are you sure they were together? Last I saw them, they didn’t like each other too much.”
“I didn’t hear much,” replied Henrietta. “They both had glowering looks on their faces when they came in. Then when that Franklin of yours saw your sister, he had a smile so wide it might have cracked his face. The other guy, the one you call Mr. Supercilious––Mavis told me that––kept on glowering and then they ushered me to the door. Like they couldn’t trust a pastor? I was miffed.”
“Did you hear that?” Lulu asked, hearing a noise through the darkness, and she moved closer to Granny.
“I heard it,” Ditty Belle said, and hid behind Granny. “Well, she has the weapon!” said Ditty Belle, explaining why she hid behind Granny.
“Don’t they usually have yard lights out here?” Mavis tapped the post that should have had the light.
“There’s nothing here but a broken old house and a silo. Why would I waste good electricity on yard lights?” Granny shook her head, “I don’t hear anything; relax. Mavis and I’ll take a good look inside and around the silo. Ditty Belle, Lulu, Delight, and Pastor Henrietta, you all take a look around the grounds and the outside of the house.”
“Um, maybe I should go with them, Granny,” Mavis suggested in a hushed voice. “There’s safety in numbers.”
Granny skewered her with a look. “Mavis, just pretend we’re in The Farmer in the Dell reality show. We’re looking for the cheese, or the rat. Come on. Let’s go!”
The others fanned out around the house, staying close to one another. Only Ditty Belle was brave enough to break off from the other three and head toward the back of the house.
Granny and Mavis continued on to the silo. Once inside the silo, Granny and Mavis examined the cement floor, inch by inch using their flashlight to show them the way. It appeared that all evidence had been swept away and the floor was clean. The hay had been removed.
Granny was about to study a pencil marking that appeared to be written on the bottom edge of the cement wall when a scream broke through the quiet night.
“Help! Help me! He’s got me; he’s got me!” Ditty Belle screamed into the night.
Granny ran through the door of the silo into the dark night toward the sound of the screams, pitchfork out in front of her. Mavis picked up a loose rock she’d tripped on while exiting the silo, raising her arm ready to throw when she could see her target.
“Let me go! Let me go! I didn’t see anything!” Ditty Belle pleaded with her captor.
Granny and Mavis met up with the other women just as they were rounding the corner of the house.
“It’s Ditty Belle! He’s got her,” Lulu stated.
“Who’s got her?” Granny asked as she shushed everyone trying to hear where the screams were coming from. “I thought Ditty Belle was with you.”
“She decided to check out the back of the house by herself,” Pastor Henrietta added.
Just then, Ditty Belle let out another screech, “Ouch! You’re hurting me; let me go. Help! He’s going to kill me!”
“Okay; she’s in the back. Turn the flashlights off. We’ll sneak up. When I give the count, everyone turn on your flashlights at once. We’ll blind him and I’ll fork him. Pastor Henrietta, you get ready to grab Ditty Belle. Delight, have your cell phone ready to dial the police. Let’s go,” Granny instructed.
Quietly, holding on to each other in the dark, they moved towards the back of the house. Ditty Belle was no longer screaming, but making little whimpering sounds.
“She’s dying,” Lulu whispered, “We’re too late.”
Ready to go around the corner to the back of the house, Granny started her count down, “One, two, and three!”
At the count of three, Granny sprang out from the side of the house, pitchfork poised to attack. All flashlights flicked on and aimed at the sounds coming from the direction of Ditty Belle.
Seeing Ditty Belle, Granny let out a loud laugh and lowered her pitchfork to the ground. The other women, seeing what the beam of their flashlights revealed, chuckled, and soon were bellowing with laughter.
“What’s so funny? Kill him, he’s got me!” Ditty Belle pleaded.
“Yes, he certainly does,” Granny answered, still chuckling. Moving forward, she moved to Ditty Belle and began untangling her from the brambles of the big bush that held her captive. “You’ve been captured by Mr. Barney Bramble, as we used to call this bush when we were kids, although he certainly has gotten a lot bigger since then.”
The other women moved forward. Pastor Henrietta held the flashlight while the women untangled Ditty Belles’ clothes from the bush.
“How did you get caught, Ditty Belle?” Mavis asked, trying to distract her as she pulled a prickly branch out of Ditty Belle’s hair.
“I heard a noise. It sounded like someone pounding on a door in the back of the house. But when I got back here, there was no door, just all of these trees and bushes. I turned around to call to all of you, when it got me! Are you sure you didn’t all scare away whoever was holding me? It felt like arms encircling my neck.”
Granny dangled a vine in front of Ditty’s face. “These are the arms of the culprit. Somehow when you turned around you stepped backwards right into this bush and the vines.”
“What about the noise? Someone was knocking.”
Pastor Henrietta gave Ditty a disbelieving look. “My dear, Ditty,” she said in a soothing tone, “I’m sure with your exquisite hearing and your anxiety about the darkness, your ears perhaps were hearing God’s knock on your heart.”
“Or your head,” Granny interjected.
“There aren’t even any doors back here. All that are here are bushes and––look!” Mavis pointed out, shining her flashlight at the base of the house, “There isn’t even a basement.”
Granny picked a last twig off Ditty Belle and directed her flashlight beam into the thickness of the bushes. “That’s it! There is a basement. It used to be one of those stone basements, but Ferdinand wanted a bomb shelter and a basement that no one would know was there; he always said, ‘You can’t be too careful. You never know when you might have to hide from the bill collectors.’ He had the house lifted up, built a concrete basement and a slab, and put the house down on top of it. It’s even with the ground and has no windows and no access from the inside. You don’t even know it’s there. Maybe that’s where Robert Blackford was hiding.”
Delight shone her flashlight on the bushes and thick undergrowth. “It doesn’t look like anyone has bothered it in a long time.”
“Shush; hear that?” Ditty Belle whispered. “I told you I heard knocking.”
A thumping could be heard from deep in the brush.
Granny moved to the corner of the house, next to the side, and directed her flashlight beam on the ground. Reaching down, she tentatively touched the branches of the bushes that were on the ground. “They’re loose. We used to have a path right here behind these bushes that no one could see.” She grabbed the big branch of the bush and moved it aside. The others followed behind Granny, shining their flashlights to light the path as Granny used the pitchfork to move the brush away. Finally, she reached a spot near the middle of the house.
They could hear thumping continuing underneath their feet. “Something’s buried alive!” Ditty Belle exclaimed.
Granny held up her hand and put a finger to her mouth to gesture the others to be quiet as she whispered, “Something’s in the basement. There’s a door under this last piece of brush. Someone covered it up good. Move the brush and open the door. I’ll be ready with my pitchfork. On the count of three! One….two…t
hree!”
Mavis lifted up the last piece of brush. Pastor Henrietta pulled up the door. Ditty hid behind Granny and the pitchfork. Granny lifted her pitchfork ready to strike when a medium-sized squiggly creature made a loud oink and bounded up and out of the basement steps and outside, past the women, into the darkness.
“You missed it!” Mavis yelled at Granny.
“It was a pig! I couldn’t fork a pork!” cried Granny.
“What was a pig doing in your basement?” Pastor Henrietta asked Granny.
“How am I to know? Remember yesterday was the first time I’ve been back here since Ferdinand died. Maybe porky the pig left his ghost in my basement and he wanted a pastor to put him out to pasture,” Granny answered sarcastically.
“Granny, you can’t talk about a pastor like that,” Mavis admonished Granny.
Granny ignored Mavis, flashed the beam of light from her flashlight into the darkness before moving down the basement steps, her pitchfork poised in front of her. “Let’s see what other secrets my old basement holds.”
“Maybe we should call Thor and the Tall Guy,” Delight suggested.
“This is my birthday. Remember, this is my party. Come on, let’s get the party started.” Granny led the way into the dark basement.
They all congregated down at the bottom of the steps in a huddle.
“Now what?” Pastor Henrietta whispered, moving into the darkness of the basement, illuminating the walls with the light from her flashlight. The others did the same.
The beam from Granny’s flashlight landed on a camping lantern. She moved to the lantern and turned the switch. It lit up the darkness, revealing a cozy room that had been set up. Food sat on the table in the corner. “I guess we were right; Robert Blackford must have been living here.”
“With a porker,” Mavis answered.
“But why? Why would he have come back here and why live in secret? Why live on your abandoned farm, Granny? How did he know there even was a basement? And who else knew? Maybe the murderer is still here?” Ditty Belle rattled off questions without waiting for answers until she asked the last question and realized what she’d just said. Then, she shuffled over close to Granny, grabbing Granny’s arm to hold the pitchfork in front of them both.
“Look! There’s another room.” Lulu, who’d been silent since Ditty Belle’s capture by Mr. Bramble, shone the beam of her flashlight onto another door off to the left of where the women were standing.
“That used to be a bedroom. We had one down here in case it stormed and we had to spend the night. Someone really cleaned this place up,” said Granny, moving around the room, noticing the clean surfaces. “But they must not have taken out the trash because it’s kind of smelly down here.”
Lulu wandered over to the door and poked her head into the old bedroom while shining her flashlight over the shapes in the dark room. She let out a scream, dropped her flashlight and ran back over and hid behind Granny.
“Now what’s wrong? Let’s get this straight, Lulu, if you’re going to sleuth with me you’re going to have to get over this screaming at every shadow,” Granny instructed the women.
“Ah, ah, ah, but…but…but someone’s sleeping in the bed,” Lulu stammered.
Granny grabbed Lulu’s hand to loosen the grip she’d placed on Granny as she was trying to explain what she’d seen. “If they were sleeping, they won’t be now,” Granny rasped, “That scream was enough to wake the dead.” Granny grabbed the camping lantern and held tight to her pitchfork before moving towards the door of the old bedroom.
The others, not wanting to be left alone and wanting to see what Lulu had found, moved together in a tightly knit group towards the door.
Entering the room, Granny approached what appeared to be a lump under the covers on the bed.
“Lulu, it’s probably just a lump of blankets. Robert Blackford surely didn’t bother to make the bed the morning he was offed by the haystack killer,” Granny surmised as she pulled back the covers.
Ditty Belle, Lulu, and Mavis gasped and jumped back away from the bed and Granny. Pastor Henrietta moved forward for a closer look before reaching out her hand and closing the eyes of the still man in the bed. She said a quick prayer and turned to Granny, “Do you know him?”
Granny shook her head, “Never saw him before in my life; looks like someone got him with a knife.”
CHAPTER EIGHT
The sound of something padding down the steps of the old basement silenced whatever Granny had been going to say to finish her statement.
“Someone’s coming!” Mavis warned.
“It could be the killer!” Ditty Belle said in alarm.
“Let’s not panic,” Pastor Henrietta whispered, “the Lord will protect us, but just in case, everyone get into the corner over here.” Henrietta moved quickly to be first in the corner of the room.
“Shut your flashlights off; they’ll see us,” Granny instructed, killing the light from her lantern and getting her pitchfork ready. “We’ll surprise them. When I move with the fork, you all start screaming to distract them.”
“No problem,” said Delight.
The women huddled together silently in the dark corner with Granny in front of them, pitchfork raised. The darkness was thick so no movement could be seen. They heard the tick, tick, on the cement floor telling them the intruder was getting closer. They saw no movement.
Delight reached out to touch Mavis. Mavis put her hand on Granny’s shoulder. Henrietta moved over closer to Ditty Belle as Ditty Belle hugged her in response. Lulu stood shivering, silently, trying to melt back into the cement of the wall.
Ahhwoo! Ahhwoo! A howl split the darkness and silence of the room. The women all screamed as flashlights hit their faces.
“Baskerville, enough!” Granny commanded, putting down her pitchfork.
“Dagnabit, woman! What kind of trouble are you in now?” Silas Crickett’s voice came out of the darkness.
“You trying to blind me, Silas?” Granny countered, looking into the bright lights that were shining into their faces.
“Mavis, you told me you were going to Granny’s party at the Pink Percolator.”
“George,” Mavis’s quivery voice questioned, “is that you?” Getting over her fear and realizing that George wasn’t supposed to be here, she moved forward. “You followed me. And this is Granny’s birthday party.”
“What are you doing here, Mr. Supercilious?” Granny asked Silas, momentarily forgetting about the dead body in the bed behind her.
“When George told me there was a birthday party at midnight with a bunch of old ladies,” replied Silas, “I knew you had something planned. I told George we’d better check it out and join the party.”
“And Baskerville?” Granny touched Baskerville’s head as he moved behind Granny to sniff at the aroma that was originating from the bed. He let out a blood curdling howl.
“We watched you leave,” continued Silas. “I figured we’d find you here since Thor told you not to come here. We parked up the road and walked. By the time we got here, you’d disappeared. Hence, we put Baskerville to work,” he added sarcastically. “We brought him along just in case we needed to look for your body.”
George covered his ears as Baskerville let out another yowl. “What’s he yowling about?”
“Um,” Granny hesitated.
“The dead body, the dead body!” Mavis blurted out.
“Dead body?” Silas brushed past Granny, shining his flashlight on the bed, revealing the dead body. “By the smell of things, he’s dead alright. I noticed the smell when we first came down the stairs but then you screamers distracted me. We’d better call my son, Ephraim, and Thor. How did you know he was down here? And why didn’t the police find this basement and this body when they were investigating the one in the silo?”
“We didn’t know a body was here. We were just having fun for my birthday party,” said Granny. “You don’t think women our age can have fun?” Granny poked Silas in the chest w
ith her finger to make her point. “We were zombie hunting!”
“Yah, zombie hunting!” Mavis backed up Granny’s statement by also nodding her head.
Delight giggled. “Didn’t you ever go zombie hunting in the dark out in the country? Although, the last time I went zombie hunting I was teenager and I had a big strong guy to protect me.”
“We were recreating our youth,” Ditty Belle said with a challenging tone in her voice.
“Well, you found your zombie,” said Silas. “I’m going above ground to call Ephraim. George, be a strong arm for these zombie hunters to hold on to as you escort them out of the basement to wait for the police.”
Silas was finishing his phone call when the zombie hunters and George ascended from the basement and made their way through the prickly bramble path back to the side of the house, joining him. Turning to Granny, he looked at her and shook his head. “Granny, to say your son and my son are upset with you might be understating the problem you’re going to have when they get here.”
“And you got Mavis into this!” George huffed.
“George!” cried Mavis, “It was my idea. This will be a great script for our reality show.”
“And ours too. Don’t blame Granny. All for one and one for all!” Ditty Belle stated.
“Yah!” the others chimed in, closing rank around Granny.
Her pitch fork hit the ground with a thud as Granny lifted it up high and then forked the dirt making the pitchfork stand straight up on its own. “We’ve got to get our story straight,” she said.
“And what story might that be?” Silas asked, “Zombie hunting? forking a fragile body? Leading these women into trouble? Or forgetting you’re old and supposed to be home and in bed?” The tone of his voice got louder as his questions continued.
Granny was spared from answering as the police cars with their loud sirens turned into the driveway.
Granny Forks A Fugitive (Fuchsia Minnesota Book 4) Page 4
