The Angel Whispered Danger (13 page)

We scrolled carefully through successive issues reading follow-up stories, many written by Charles Hollingsworth himself, but learned nothing further about the two except that they were believed to have come from somewhere in Ohio.

“So, do you think one or both of them might still be alive?” I said.
Please let it be just one!

He nodded, watching the film rewind. “It’s possible. I hounded the police about that case for a couple of years after they found that raft. They dredged up some shoes they thought might’ve belonged to the boy, and several items of women’s clothing.”

“Anything else turn up?” I asked.

My companion held the door for me as we stepped out onto the sidewalk and I could feel the heat from the pavement through the flimsy soles of my sandals. “Not to my knowledge,” he answered. “Seemed to me as if they more or less abandoned the case. After all, these people were hippies—folks here didn’t think much of that sort then—and they were suspected of breaking the law. I got the feeling the police just figured it was good riddance!”

He waved to Roselyn Davis, who was arranging a sales rack in front of her dress shop across the street, and stopped to admire a display of fishing gear in the window of Woods ’n Water Sporting Goods, but I could tell something was on his mind.

“Those two were somebody’s children,” he went on. “Somebody’s brother, sister, niece, nephew. I can’t believe their families didn’t pursue it.”

“Maybe they did,” I said. We walked to where I had left my car in the semishade of a crape myrtle in front of the old yellow building. “How can we find out?”

Charles Hollingsworth shook my hand as we said good-bye. “Tell you what—give me an hour or so and let me see what I can come up with. Friend of mine has a son on the police force here—nice kid. Maybe he’ll help us out.”

It was close to noon when I looked at the clock on my dashboard, so I drove straight to Marge’s, hoping to catch them before they left for Bramblewood.

I was in luck.

I found my cousin loading the family van with containers of marinated slaw, pimento cheese sandwiches and her wonderful blueberry pound cake.

“Hi!” she yelled, juggling a stack of shifting boxes. “You just missed her.”

“Missed who?” I rescued a relish tray and what looked like a week’s supply of peanut butter cookies.

“Ma Maggie. Said she was tired of waiting for you to come and get the ice-cream churn, so she’s taking it to Bramblewood with her.”

“Which means I’d better get my act together—and I haven’t even been to the store,” I said. “Josie can help me shop; actually, she’s better at it than I am.”

“I’ll holler for her,” Marge said. “She and the boys have made up some kind of silly game where you have to talk backward. Even Hartley has gotten into the act. Listen . . .”

Even from where I stood, I could hear the four of them laughing upstairs.

My cousin put a hand on my shoulder and practically shoved me inside. “But first, let’s grab a few minutes to talk while we can. You’ve got a cloud hanging over you as dark as the inside of a chimney. What’s going on, Kate McBride?”

What I had to say would take longer than a few minutes, but I explained as quickly as I could that the distance between Ned and me amounted to more than miles. “He won’t admit it, but I think he blames me for losing the baby, Marge.”

My cousin stood across the kitchen table from me and brushed the hair from her face the way she usually does when she’s thinking. Finally she shook her head. “Ned has more sense than that. Have you two seen a counselor?”

“I talked to someone, but he wasn’t interested. I tried to get him to go with me, but Ned said he didn’t need it. Frankly, I don’t think he wanted me to go, either. He doesn’t even seem to care.” I felt hot, tattletale tears getting ready to start their run. “And so why should
I
?” I said.

“Don’t give up on him, Kate.” Marge reached out and took my hand. “What you have is too good to throw away, but it sounds like you might need somebody to help you through this. Burdette can probably recommend a—”

Just then Hartley came in crying that the others wouldn’t let him play, so I didn’t get a chance to tell her about Uncle Ernest’s midnight digging. That would have to wait.

On our way to Bramblewood, Josie and I stopped at J & G Groceries for whipping cream, peaches and ice cream salt and, on impulse, I also grabbed a couple of cartons of eggs. I haven’t been to a family picnic yet where they didn’t serve deviled eggs, and Josie even agreed to help me boil them.

“Are you having a good time with Darby and Jon?” I asked as we wound back up the mountain.

“Yeah! They have this old board game where you have to figure out the murderer and the weapon and everything, ’cept Cudin’ Bird always wins. I wish we did stuff like that at our house.”

Clue
. . . I wished it would be that easy to find out who was responsible for the skeleton next door. “But we play games,” I reminded her, naming a few. My husband’s favorite was crazy eights.

“When?” She looked up at me.

“Why, almost every night at the beach. Don’t you remember? We played—”

“But Dad wasn’t there.”

I didn’t have an answer for that.

A police car was leaving as we turned into the drive at Bramblewood and I wondered if they had learned any more about the skeleton. Uncle Ernest stood on the front steps with an unlit pipe in his teeth and I could tell by the look of him he wasn’t in the mood for questions. Josie and I went in the back way.

We found Ma Maggie, Cousin Violet and Aunt Leona congregated in the kitchen, and from the pitch of their voices, it sounded as if all three wanted to be in charge.

“I’m telling you, we don’t need any more sugar in that tea!” Cousin Violet was saying. “Why do you have to be so dad-blasted stubborn?” This was directed at my grandmother.

Ma Maggie turned her back and checked something in the oven. It smelled like baked beans. “I’m just telling you what I think . . . and what you should think, too!” she said.

“Some people prefer unsweetened tea.” Aunt Leona didn’t look up as she sliced cantaloupe into a large blue bowl. “In fact, I think we have entirely—”

“Has anybody heard about Ella?” I asked, finding space for my purchases on the counter.

“Some better, I believe,” Leona said, “but still in intensive care. Uncle Ernest says she seems to be coming out of it, but she’s still not coherent.”

“We passed a police car when we turned in the driveway,” I said, looking for a pot for the eggs. “Any news about . . .” I glanced at Josie. “. . . about what they found yesterday?”

“Oh, I know all about the skeleton, Mom.” My daughter filled the pan with water at the sink and carefully put the eggs in one by one.

“They just wanted to talk to Ernest,” my grandmother said. “Don’t know what they expected him to tell them.”

“Must’ve told them something because they spoke for a good while.” Violet searched for just the right cookie on the platter she’d brought and ate a chocolate one. “I saw them talking with that man Casey, too, although I don’t know why they’d bother with him. Been here less than a year.”

Ma Maggie frowned. “What on earth’s he doing around Rose’s old garden? Looks like he’s been digging out there.”

“Kate asked him to get rid of some of the weeds—thank goodness!” Leona said. “Looks like a jungle out there! Breeding place for chiggers, and probably snakes, too. He said a lot of those old roses needed fertilizer, too, and a couple of them had black spot real bad, but he thought he might be able to save them.”

My grandmother’s face went stiff. “And what did you say?”

Leona shrugged. “I said, ‘Go to it,’ of course. I know he tries, but Uncle Ernest is getting too old to take care of that plot like he used to, and besides, why hire a caretaker if you’re not going to let him take care of things?”

“Ernest won’t like it,” Ma Maggie said. And she was right. Later, when I took my turn with the ice-cream churn out on the back porch, I heard Uncle Ernest telling Casey he wasn’t to bother with that part of the yard anymore. He didn’t yell or sound mean or anything, but my uncle spoke with a tightness in his voice that signaled red.

I wondered what was out there in that old garden he didn’t want anybody to find.

Belinda Donahue noticed the difference right away when she showed up later that afternoon with a huge pot of something so heavy it took both Uncle Lum and Grady to carry it from the car.

“Why, I’ve never even noticed this pretty little garden back here before,” she said, pausing to sniff a yellow-pink blossom. “Was there a fence or something around it?”

“Just straggly old trees and waist-high weeds,” Aunt Leona said, following her into the kitchen. “What’s in the pot?”

“Chicken bog. It’s an old South Carolina recipe. My mother came from there, you know.”

“Ours, too,” Cousin Violet said, lifting the lid. “Or at least our grandmother did. Charleston, wasn’t it, Maggie?”

My grandmother was on her hands and knees rattling things in the kitchen cabinets. “Now, where in the world do you suppose Ella put that big green glass fruit bowl?” She frowned at Violet over her shoulder. “What was that about Charleston?”

“Our grandmother, Nannie Jane! Wasn’t she from South Carolina? Remember how Nannie used to make chicken bog?”

Violet glared at what she saw in the pot. “Why, this has
tomatoes
in it! I never in my life heard of putting tomatoes in chicken bog. Chicken and rice—maybe a little onion—cooked in seasoned chicken stock. Now
that’s
chicken bog!”

“Smells fine to me.” Uncle Lum inhaled deeply and winked at Belinda, who looked as though she might be counting under her breath. “Don’t believe I’ve ever met a chicken bog I didn’t like.”

“And what do you know about it, Columbus Roundtree?” Violet clanged the lid on the pot and poked him with a magenta-nailed finger.

“Oh, I reckon I know a little bit—for an old fart.”

Aunt Leona almost dropped a bowl of slaw. “For heaven’s sakes, Lum, do you really have to be so crude?”

But Grady laughed. “If Dad’s an old fart, what does that make you, Mom?”

“Guess it makes her an old fartress,” his father said, ducking out the door.

Ma Maggie gave both of them a withering look as she sighed and rose to her feet. “Belinda, if you don’t mind, would you give me a hand with the cloths for the picnic tables? I think Ella keeps them in that wicker chest in the laundry room.”

“I know where they are, Maggie. I’ll get them,” Violet offered, distancing herself from the offending chicken bog. But my grandmother, obviously upset by Violet’s rudeness, ignored her.

Belinda, clearly distressed by the turn of events, didn’t seem to know which way to go. “Why don’t I gather some of those gorgeous roses?” she said with a forced brightness in her voice. “We can use them on the tables.”

My cousin Violet crossed her arms. “Those are Rose’s flowers. Ernest never lets anyone cut them.”

“Then it’s time he did,” Leona said, with a hand on Belinda’s arm. “Come on; I’ll help you round up some vases.”

The telephone rang just then and I was relieved when Grady, who had rushed to answer it, said it was for me.

“I’m afraid we’ve run into a blank wall,” a man’s voice said.

“What?” I was so distressed by Violet’s scene in the kitchen, the person might as well have been speaking Greek.

“Charles Hollingsworth. About those two who were supposed to have drowned here back in the sixties . . . Ron Vickers at the police department tracked down the brother of the young man. Took some doing, but with computers it’s a whole lot easier than it used to be.”

“So, what did you find out?”

“Not much,” he said. “Quincy Puckett’s brother still lives in Ohio; says his parents died several years ago, still hoping the guy would turn up, but he never did.”

“What about the girl?” I asked.

“The Puckett fellow didn’t know much about her. Said she was somebody his brother took up with after he left home. Her real name, though, was Valerie Dutton, and she came from some little town outside of Baltimore.”