Secrets of Harmony Grove (11 page)

Mike asked the question I felt sure we were all thinking. “Any signs that struggle was with an animal?”

“Yeah, we can’t rule that out. A couple of gouges in the dirt could be claws, but we’re not sure what kind. We need better lights out there, and we need to widen the search. If it was an animal, maybe we can find a print somewhere else on softer ground.”

“How about signs that it wasn’t an animal? Any grease or oil or something that would indicate a machine of some kind?”

“Nope. Nothing of the sort. Mostly just blood on grass.”

“Which way did the victim go once the blood flow started? Straight to the pool?”

“Yeah, but not exactly in a straight line. It looks as though he was weaving around some, though whether from confusion or because he was being pursued, we can’t know. The splatters were closer together at the end than at the beginning, which indicates he was slowing down as he became more impaired.”

Everyone was quiet for a moment, considering this new information.

“I hate to be gross, but did you find the place where Troy threw up when he was on the phone with me?” I asked, knowing that that evidence might help them piece together the logistical parts of this puzzle.

“Not yet, but we’ve got an eye out for that. A change in the weather is coming our way, so we’re working things as fast as we can.”

“Yeah, I heard rain,” Charlie added, “though it’s not supposed to get here till Friday.”

Next to me, Mike sucked in a deep breath, held it for a moment, and then exhaled.

“Okay,” he said wearily, “I hate to do this because we know what will happen, but we have to put the word out.” Handing her the remaining duplicates of the sketch, he told Georgia to delegate the contacting of the people in all of the homes I had drawn.

“What do we tell them, exactly?” she asked.

“Just let them know that there might be some sort of wild animal loose in the area and for them to be careful and to try to stay inside if possible until we have more information. While you’re there, also find out the times that each of them was home today and if they have seen anything unusual or relevant.”

Georgia studied the sketch for a moment, looking confused, so finally Rip jumped in to explain it to her.

“This whole area here, it’s kind of like a clock. A big square clock.” Pointing toward me, he added, “She’s at twelve o’clock, you got her uncle at two o’clock, the Amish folks at three o’clock, the chicken farm at six o’clock, and then mostly just woods after that, all the way back up to twelve.”

“I see,” Georgia replied, nodding.

Once she seemed to have a handle on things, she, Rip, and Charlie headed out, leaving me alone in the kitchen with Mike.

“Excuse me while I prepare dispatch for the onslaught,” he said to me, pulling out his phone and making a call.

I was trying to stay quiet and out of the way as much as possible, but when he hung up I couldn’t help asking what he had meant by that. He rolled his eyes.

“You have no idea. As soon as word gets out, we’ll start getting calls on sightings of bears, mountain lions, panthers, you name it. It never fails. People watching for something often see what they want to see. A neighbor’s cat in the shadows becomes a cougar. A stray dog becomes a wolf. It’s human nature, and thoroughly predictable, but because we can’t know which leads are credible and which aren’t, we have to follow up on all of them, unfortunately.”

“Then you should probably know that it might get even weirder than that,” I said, wondering how to explain.

Mike looked at me, tilting his head in curiosity.

“As in?” he asked.

“As in, you may not be aware of this, but rumors have persisted for years that Harmony Grove is haunted, that it’s full of ghosts and eerie lights and even werewolves. That’s ridiculous, of course, but with all that happened here at the B and B tonight, I wouldn’t be surprised if those rumors start up again, big time.”

Mike nodded, considering.

“So, basically, along with the calls we’re already bracing for, we’re also going to get reports of Bigfoot, Yeti, Sasquatch, vampires—”

“Space aliens, werewolves, specters, you name it.”

“Lovely.”

“I’m sorry. I wish it wasn’t this way. But having seen Troy’s wound up close, I’m almost ready to believe in werewolves myself.”

“Hate to say it,” he replied, “but I know exactly what you mean.”

Our eyes held for a moment, and then he cleared his throat, breaking our gaze.

“Speaking of Troy,” Mike said gruffly, reaching into his pocket and pulling out his notebook, “is there anything else you need to tell me about him? We were interrupted just as we were finishing up our interview.”

“Only that the more I think about him being out in the grove today, the more sense it makes that he was there looking for diamonds. You have to understand that to get Troy Griffin outside and into nature would just about take something that extreme, believe it or not.”

“In other words, you’re confident he wasn’t simply out for a stroll?”

“Absolutely confident. I mean, I suppose he could have been cutting through the grove to visit one of the neighbors.” Mike raised an eyebrow in question, so I added that Troy was friends with almost everyone around here, that he had come to know them during the renovation. “But I think he was out there hunting for buried treasure. Troy simply didn’t do nature. He never went outside, not even around here where it’s so beautiful.”

Mike flipped through several pages in his notebook before speaking.

“An older couple who lives across the street said they noticed Troy out in the grove a whole lot, off and on, for the past two days. Said he was carrying something around with him the whole time, a stick or a pole or a tool or something. Neither one can see distance all that well, but they figured he was just doing yard work.”

I laughed.

“Yeah, right. Troy wouldn’t know a hoe from a hole in the ground. If they saw him out in the grove, there had to be some very good reason he was there. Something in my grandfather’s documents must have made him think he had a clue about where the diamonds were hidden. Judging by our last phone call, that would be on or in or under or around the Fishing Tree, whatever that is.”

“You have no idea.”

“No, especially without getting a look at those documents.”

“Well, we’ve searched Troy’s room and his car and found nothing like that in either. If they’re still around here somewhere, they’re hidden really well.”

Mike quickly skimmed through his notebook one last time before shutting it and saying we were done for now except for one more thing.

“You said that during your call it sounded like Troy was fooling with a latch of some kind? A metal latch?”

“Right. That’s when he was first sounding confused and weird. He got it open but then he realized he was all turned around and it didn’t matter. After that he retraced his steps.”

“Where do you think he was at that point? Could you show me on your sketch where any gates or latches would be?”

“Sure,” I said, grabbing the pencil and moving back to the table.

Sitting there beside the detective, ignoring the vaguely pleasant scent of his aftershave, I leaned over the drawing and put a mark on the gate to the pool area, and then on the gate to a small defunct garden that used to be out back but was now just a fenced-in rectangle of weeds.

“The chicken farm probably has some gates,” I added, pointing to that part of the sketch. “Troy could easily have wandered over there by mistake, so you might check with the guy who lives there. He’s a little odd, but nice enough. His name is Burl Newton.”

“I know Burl,” Mike said, though he didn’t elaborate.

“It’s wooded back there where our property lines meet. I can see Troy getting confused. I doubt the same thing could have happened over at Jonah and Liesl’s farm. I mean, I’m sure they have a number of gates, but theirs would all be out in the open, not hidden in the trees.”

“How about next door at your uncle’s house?”

I couldn’t think of any gates that might be at Uncle Emory’s, as his entire property consisted of a small one-story house, the barn behind it, an old springhouse beyond that, and the long driveway out front that passed through the covered bridge near the road.

“No latches there at all that I can think of,” I said. “Which just leaves the grove. There are four gates in there, at each of the entrances: north, south, east, and west.”

Mike’s brow wrinkled. “The grove is fenced in?”

“No. All four gates are purely ornamental. That’s probably why I didn’t think of them when Troy and I were talking. Maybe in all of his confusion he was trying to open one of those gates without realizing that all he really needed to do was walk around it.”

The more I thought about it, the more I decided that made the most sense. I drew in all four gates on the map, and when Mike took it back from me I could tell he seemed to think this was the most likely scenario as well.

He thanked me for my help and stood, asking if by any chance I was an artist.

“For a fast doodle, this is pretty good,” he added, “not to mention accurate, judging by what I know of this area.”

“Thanks. I do like to fool with art in my spare time, but it’s just a hobby.”

After Mike went out, I stood in the open doorway and listened as he asked for more lights in the grove and began assembling teams to move in there.

I heard him ask his people who among them were competent as hunters, and then he delegated to them the job of searching the grove for animal prints, scat, and any other signs they would know to look for.

It sounded as though he was eager to get out into the grove as well. And while I didn’t relish the thought of being mauled by a wild animal, I realized that if I went along with him and the technician he was going to take with him, I could probably be a big help. As children, my brother Scott and I practically lived in the grove, and I still knew it better than almost anyone.

Summoning my nerve, I called Mike over and offered my services. At first he seemed hesitant, but when I stressed that the grove was very unique and difficult to navigate in daylight, much less in the dark, he finally relented. He agreed that it might be a good idea to have me go out with him and his technician, but just to be safe he would add two extra men, armed officers who would flank the three of us and watch for animals as we went. I said I just needed to grab a windbreaker from my car and then I would join them where the teams were assembling on the far side of the pool area.

When I got to the car, I thought about grabbing one of my guns from there as well, but then I decided against it. I didn’t want to create any unnecessary suspicion that could end up leading these people in directions I didn’t want them to go. Also, not everyone who owned a gun really knew how to use it, and though I was well trained myself, I didn’t want them to be worried that I might accidentally shoot somebody’s foot off.

Pulling the windbreaker on over my dress jacket, I joined what was to be our little five-person group: Charlie, Rip, Mike, the technician, and me.

“Let’s keep our eyes and ears open,” Mike said, looking at each of us in turn.

In response I noticed that the two gunmen instinctively patted their firearms, and for a moment I regretted my decision not to arm myself too. Instead, I would have to trust in the protection of others, something that had been difficult for me to do ever since that night ten years ago, when I learned that the only person I could ever really count on to save me was myself.

The technician handed me a flashlight, a heavy, powerful one that shone a long bright beam out in front of me. Everyone else in our little group had one as well, and once they had all turned them on and made a final equipment check, it seemed we were ready to go.

Excitement crackled in the air. At Mike’s command, we headed out toward the grove together, walking side by side, five parallel beams of light slicing through the darkness like claws ripping through skin.

As we walked together toward the grove, I tried to give a brief explanation about it, one that would help Mike and the others understand its unique design. Trying to focus on the illuminated ground in front of me rather than thoughts of any creatures that could be lurking in the shadows beyond, I told them how my grandfather had gone off to Europe in World War II, during which he met and fell in love with a German woman named Daphne. The story of how their relationship came to be was fascinating but far too complicated to go into now. It also wasn’t relevant to our search, so instead, I rattled off information I knew would resonate with these men in uniform, where my grandfather was inducted and trained and assigned.