The Darcy & Flora Boxed Set

by Blanche Day Manos

  My befuddled brain settled on a question. “What are you doing out here? It’s cold and dark. Why aren’t you home with Pat?”

  Jasper scuffed his toe against the ground. “Aw, Miss Darcy, you know I like being out in the woods. I kind of like slipping around, keeping an eye on people when they don’t know I’m near.”

  Now was no time to get into a discussion about Jasper’s snooping. What if the man who had shot at me were to return? Perhaps he was in the woods at this moment, looking at me through the sights of his rifle.

  Jasper must have been thinking the same thing because he suddenly grabbed my arm and started tugging me toward the house.

  “Come on, Miss Darcy. You’ve got to get inside. That guy might be back. Hurry.”

  No further urging was necessary. I trotted as fast as my shaking legs would go, through the pasture toward the safety of the house. Jasper hurried along beside me.

  Chapter 23

  At last the front porch appeared out of the shadows, and I ran up the steps, across the porch and full tilt through the door. “Come on inside, Jasper. We’re safe now.”

  The darkness behind me was empty. Jasper had disappeared into the night.

  I locked the door and leaned against it, gasping for breath. Mom hurried down the stairs. “What’s wrong, Darcy? Where have you been?”A chair was within reach. I sank into it and leaned my head on my knees. “Someone…someone out there, by the woods, shot at me. Jasper found me and helped me get here.”

  Mom rounded the chair and hugged me. “Shot at you? What were you doing out there in the middle of the night and why would anyone shoot at you?”

  I raised my head. “I would say that someone around here doesn’t like me very much. I went out to sit on the porch swing, Mom, to see if being out in the fresh air would help me make sense of all the things that have been happening to us. I heard a dog barking and it sounded like it was in pain. I went to investigate and somebody shot at me.”

  Mom shook her head. “Oh, Darcy, this is awful. If someone was really shooting at you, why they might have…might have…”

  “Yes, Mom, except for the Good Lord’s protection, they might have. Gotta call Grant,” I said, stumbling from my chair to the phone.

  It took only a few seconds to reach Grant. His voice sounded groggy, and I was sure my call had awakened him from sleep. When he heard my story about being shot at, he immediately snapped into alert mode and told me he and Jim were on their way.

  True to his word, fifteen minutes later, a siren wailing down our street and a strobe light flashing through the window told me the Ventris County sheriff and deputy had arrived. I ran to the porch to meet them.

  Grant and Jim jumped from Grant’s truck.

  Grant’s voice was clipped. His face looked pale in the light from the window. “Where did this happen?”

  “I’ll show you,” I said. I led the way to the pasture, Grant’s flashlight lighting the ground before us. “It was right about here,” I said, pointing.

  “Okay, Darcy, we’re going to search the area. The guy is probably long gone by now. You go back to the house, lock the door and stay there. Understand?”

  Meekly, I nodded and turned back toward the safety of the house.

  I walked into the kitchen and sank into a chair. Mom was measuring water into her old yellow coffeepot with hands that shook. I sat down on a kitchen chair and watched her.

  “Grant and Jim will need coffee,” she said. In every emergency, she turned to prayer and her old yellow coffee pot, in that order. My mother firmly believed a good cup of hot, strong coffee helped solve all ills. She even told me once that if the leaders of two feuding nations would sit down and talk about their differences over coffee and doughnuts, there would be far fewer wars. Made sense to me!

  I went to the bathroom and washed blood off my face where the bits of rock struck me. The mirror showed a few scratches but nothing, thank the Lord, any more serious. My eyes looked like huge black holes in my usually tan face.

  Mom sat down in front of the dying embers of the fireplace to wait for Grant and Jim to come back to the house. I pitched another log on the fire, stirred it with the poker, and held out my hands to the warmth.

  She drew a cotton handkerchief from the pocket of her robe and wiped her eyes. “Maybe we should just pack up and move.”

  “What? Mom, it isn’t like you to run away from trouble.”

  She leaned toward me and grasped my hands. Hers were icy cold. “Darcy, that person, whoever it was, almost killed you tonight. I don’t know how to go about solving this puzzle and whatever the solution is, it’s got the best of me. What do you want us to do, wait around until this crazy person shoots at you again? The next time, he might not miss.”

  She had a point, but it didn’t seem to me that hiding out would help solve the mystery of the shooter or Eileen’s death or whether any of it was related to my Granny Grace’s first marriage decades before.

  An hour later Grant and Jim knocked at the back door. I got up to unlock and let them in. A puff of cold wind blew in with them. Both men removed their cowboy hats. Jim stomped his feet, probably to increase circulation. Grant reached for me and pulled me against his chest.

  His heart was beating so loudly I could feel it all the way through his denim coat. He released me and ran his thumb over my chin.

  “Those scratches…did that happen when the guy shot at you?”

  I nodded. “Yes, but the point is, he missed, Grant. I’m all right. Did you find any sign of him?”

  Grant shook his head. “Not one sign. But we did find where the bullet hit.”

  “Got that little sucker right here,” Jim said, holding up a squashed bit of lead.

  “Did you find a dog?” I asked. “That’s why I went out there in the first place. I heard a dog.”

  Grant shook his head. “We didn’t see or hear a dog, Darcy.”

  “Oldest trick in the world,” Jim said, “Barking like a dog or crying like a baby to lure somebody out in the open. You shoulda known better, Darcy.”

  Never had I met anybody with less sensitivity than Grant’s deputy.

  “We’re not all as smart as you, Jim,” I muttered.

  “You said Jasper found you and helped you get home?” Grant asked.

  I nodded.

  “Where is he now? Why didn’t he wait for me? And what was he doing out there at that time of night?”

  “I don’t know. Jasper is just that way. He likes to roam the woods. You know that, Grant. I was glad he was there. He scared off the shooter and helped me back home.”

  Clendon’s eyes narrowed. “Mighty strange that he would be at that exact spot so late. Also mighty strange that he didn’t want to talk to us.”

  “Take off your coats and sit down. I’ll pour coffee.” Mom hurried to take cups from the cabinet. “Now Jim, don’t you and Grant go accusing Jasper of anything. That boy is odd, I admit, but he means well. I think he considers protecting his friends his purpose in life, whether those friends are animals or human.”

  “Mighty good coffee, Miss Flora,” Jim said, taking the first sip.

  “Thank you, Jim. I just don’t want you boys to waste your time going off on a wild goose chase. Jasper had nothing to do with shooting at Darcy.”

  “Wind’s picking up,” Jim said, turning his head to listen.

  A branch of the rose bush scratched at the kitchen window screen.

  “I’m afraid we’ll have more snow,” Grant said. “If we get enough to cover the ground, we might not find anything at all in the woods tomorrow.”

  I swirled the amber liquid in my cup. “It’s hard to believe that someone hates me enough to try to kill me.”

  “He may not hate you,” Grant said. “You may be in the way of something he wants. Whatever his reason, you’ve got to be careful, Darcy. No more late night jaunts anywhere.”

  Outside, the wind moaned around the corner of the house, sounding like a person in pain. I shuddered and put thoughts of
night prowlers and guns out of my mind. Tomorrow, perhaps, we would find the one thing, the one key, which would unlock this mystery.

  Chapter 24

  As Mom and I stepped out of the house two days after my close brush with death, a strong north wind struck us. She pulled her cap closer over her ears. “Are you sure you want to go to Eileen’s funeral?” she asked.

  I opened the passenger door of the Escape, and she scooted in, then I hurried to the driver’s side. “Br-r-r. What a relief to get out of the cold. Yes, I’m sure. Grant gave me directions; a small cemetery about ten miles from Siloam Springs. He said Eileen’s aunt had claimed her body.”

  Mom snapped her seat belt around her. “Such a bad day for a funeral; but then, I guess there are no good days.”

  I backed out of the driveway and turned toward the highway leading out of town. “Grant isn’t going. He’s planning to try to talk to Jasper, if he can catch him.”

  “I don’t think even Pat knows where he is. It’s not helping Jasper for him to run off like that. Makes him look guilty and I just know in my heart he had nothing to do with the shooting.”

  Grant had talked to Pat and scoured the woods for Jasper for two days. So far, he had not located him. If Grant had found any clue of the man who shot at me, he hadn’t told me.

  I glanced in the rear view mirror. A car or truck followed quite a long way behind us but it turned off before we got on highway 412. I breathed a sigh of relief. There was nothing like being shot at to make a person jumpy.

  “I am so glad Grant spent the last two nights on our sofa,” Mom said. “I felt a lot more secure, just knowing he was in the house.”

  “Me too, Mom. Grant wanted to assign a deputy to guard us, but on a small town force, that just isn’t possible. We don’t need to be looked after as if we were children.”

  “I don’t know, Darcy. Maybe we do.” Mom turned the heater on my Escape up a notch.

  “I really think the shooter is miles away by this time. He is if he’s got any sense. He has to know that Grant and Jim are looking for him and that they’ve sent out alerts to all the surrounding counties.”

  Mom sighed. “I hope you’re right.”

  “Grant told me it’s to be a graveside service, according to Eileen’s aunt. From all the information I could find on the internet, Eileen was not married. She just sort of appeared out of nowhere. Not much of a record of her anywhere that I could find, only snippets of information here and there.”

  The Escape’s windshield wipers swiped at a light mist that started falling as we headed east toward Siloam Springs.

  “I’ve never seen such a winter,” Mom said. “Snow, sleet. Makes it mighty hard to do anything but sit in front of the fireplace.”

  I sincerely hoped the rain would not freeze before we got safely back home but going to this funeral was important enough to risk it. Eileen was a strange woman! Why hadn’t we known about her long ago? Why had she surfaced at this particular moment and laid claim to land we had considered ours for generations? But then, why hadn’t we known about Markham Cauldfell? What was the reason Granny Grace had kept that first husband a secret?

  Evidently Mom was thinking about the same thing. “It’s odd, Darcy, that all of these happenings are coming at us at once, like a nest of hornets. I don’t know what started the whole thing. Was it finding the package in the well? Was it our plans to build a house? And who ever in all this world would have thought that Miss Georgia Jenkins is actually my birth mother? I just don’t know what to make of it all.”

  Mom pulled her cap from her springy curls and ran her fingers through them, trying to fluff them back into shape.

  “How do you feel about that? Are you angry with Miss Georgia or Granny Grace? Do you wish somebody had told you the truth a long time ago?”

  She shut her eyes for a second then looked at me. “No, I’m not angry with anybody. If I had known the truth when I was a child, think of how confused I would have been. Miss Georgia and Mom and Dad did what they felt was best for me. I grew up in a happy home and didn’t know any of the grief that Miss Georgia suffered. She let me alone and didn’t impose her hurt upon me. I think that must have taken some courage.”

  Bare trees bent before a gusty wind which tossed handfuls of rain at the car as if warning us to turn back. This was a gray, grim day suitable for a grim, sad occasion.

  “You know, Mom, Miss Georgia said something about Granny Grace and Grandpa George having some kind of pact with her parents, Judge Jenkins and his wife. I wonder what she meant.”

  My mother shook her head. “I have no idea. I don’t know if we’ll ever know what she was talking about. I’d say the Jenkins twins are pretty good at keeping secrets.”

  “I agree with that!”

  “Someday when we have time, Darcy, would you research these new-found relatives of ours on the internet? Judge and Mrs. Jenkins, my birth father, Jefferson Thorne. And just think, Darcy, somewhere out there were his parents, that would be, let me see, my grandparents. Oh, my goodness, it makes my head hurt. Maybe we don’t want to go down that path after all.”

  “Oh, I do, Mom. Ancestry is a fascinating subject.”

  “If only we could get that journal back,” Mom said. “I think it would answer a lot of questions.”

  “Pat Harris found Miss Georgia’s picture in Jasper’s room. I’ve thought and thought about why it was there. Might it have fallen out of something? The journal is missing, Mom, and if Granny Grace stuck things in books as you do, maybe she put that picture in between the pages…”

  “Yes, that could very well be. And it was probably Jasper that was watching our house when you saw somebody in the woods the other night. He may have been somewhere nearby the next morning when Eileen paid us a visit. He could have slipped in and got those things from the table while we were talking to her.”

  “That’s about the only scenario that makes sense,” I agreed. “But why would Jasper want an old gun and journal?”

  “Everyone in town knows Cub found something; they think it was a box of treasure of some kind, thanks to his loud mouth. Jasper may have decided he wanted to see for himself what was in it.”

  The hour’s drive from Levi to Siloam Springs passed quickly while we rummaged around in our thoughts, trying to piece together the strange bits of information.

  “Here’s the sign that says Piney Vale Cemetery,” I said, slowing down as we approached a turnoff.

  The paved surface gave way to gravel and became a narrow road leading between a forest of pine and scrub oak. Why had Eileen’s aunt chosen such an out-of-the-way cemetery for her niece’s final resting place? Even on a sunny day, I doubted that much light filtered through this dense grove of trees.

  “I believe we’ve reached our destination,” I muttered. An even narrower lane branched off toward a cemetery. At the end of the lane, a familiar green tent marked the place of a new gravesite.

  “Why, there’s only a few cars,” Mom murmured. “What a pitiful looking place.”

  I brought the Escape to a stop between a Jeep and a black Tahoe. “I’m sure the bad weather has kept a lot of people from coming. Too bad they couldn’t have had her service inside a church or a funeral home.”

  We hurried for the protection of the tent. A solemn-faced man in a black suit greeted us and indicated two vacant chairs. I sat down beside a tall, slim woman dressed completely in black with an old-fashioned pillbox hat atop her gray hair. She turned to me and half smiled.

  Two younger women shared the shelter of the tent with us and at the end of the row of chairs sat a well-dressed man.

  I touched Mom’s arm and leaned toward her. “Don’t look now, but I think that’s the same person who wants to buy our land.”

  Mom gasped and leaned around me to gaze at him. He glanced our way, then quickly looked back at the preacher. Why was Stuart Wood of Innovation Technology in Tulsa here? What was his connection with Eileen?

  “We are gathered here on this sad occasion,” beg
an the man who had greeted us, as he launched into a eulogy which told us nothing that we didn’t already know about Eileen. The woman sitting beside me wiped her eyes and sighed loudly. Was this Eileen’s aunt, the one who had claimed her body?

  The tent flapped in the biting wind, sounding for all the world like I imagined dry bones would sound. This was not a cozy thought to have in a graveyard on a bleak day. I pulled my coat closer and tried to burrow deeper inside it. Beside me, Mom was shivering.

  At last the preacher asked us all to bow our heads for the dismissal prayer. I could hardly wait to stand up and start my blood circulating again. After the preacher’s “amen,” I raised my head and looked toward the end of the row of chairs. I wanted to talk to Stuart Wood but he was already backing his Tahoe toward the road. I hurried toward the car, but before I could reach it, he sped away.

  The black-garbed woman next to me touched my arm. “Are you a friend of my niece?” she asked.

  “Um, well, I only recently met her,” I hedged.

  The woman shook her head. “So sad, her untimely death. They said she had drunk some kind of poison. I don’t understand it. She wanted so much and ended her life with so little.”

  “You are Eileen’s aunt?” I asked. “I’m Darcy Campbell and this is my mother, Flora Tucker.

  “Yes, I’m Fern Eldon. It’s very nice of you to come out on such a bitter day. Eileen would have appreciated it.”

  I sincerely doubted that. “Were you close to Eileen?” I asked.

  Fern Eldon wiped away a tear, whether from the icy wind or from sorrow, I didn’t know. “I wish I could say I was, but I hardly knew her. I live in California and hadn’t seen the poor child for twenty years. But, I guess I’m all she had. Her mother died a long time ago.”

  Mom and I looked at each other. Fern Eldon would know little more about Eileen than we already knew.

  “We’re sorry for your loss,” Mom said, patting Fern’s hand. “Darcy, we should be getting back to Levi before the roads get bad.”