The Angel Whispered Danger (7 page)

And not a word of them is true, I told myself.
You are not ten years old, Kate McBride! Grow up and act your age. Think of something pleasant, positive
.

Augusta
.

Surely I hadn’t dreamed that unconventional duo! No! Those scones were real, and the pancakes. . . . But had I really met my guardian angel? If so, I wished she were here.

“It won’t be long now,” a voice said behind me, and I turned to find Augusta sitting there.

“Well, it’s about time!” I said. “I’m afraid Ella’s badly hurt, and I don’t know what else to do for her.” I broke off a frond of leaves and fanned the pesky gnats from Ella’s still face.

Augusta looked at the woman who lay beside me. “What you’ve done is fine, and the others should be here soon.” She slipped off her silvery sandals and tossed them aside. Her toenails, I noticed, were painted a metallic pink.

“Maybe you didn’t hear me,” I said, lowering my voice just in case Ella might hear. “She fell from all the way up there, probably hit those rocks on the way down. Don’t just sit there,
do
something!”

“Kathryn . . .” Her voice was patient, although I could tell it was an effort. “I think we need to come to an understanding. Just what is it you expect me to do?”

“Whatever it takes to save her life. Don’t you have some kind of heavenly magic? You are an angel, aren’t you?”

“It doesn’t work quite that way.” She slipped from her tree stump seat and came to stand beside me, her long dress swirling about her. Today she wore a broomstick skirt of what looked like crinkle cotton that fell from the bodice in tiers of pastel colors. A halo of daisies sat atop a pouf of coppery sunlight hair. “We can’t undo what’s already done,” she said.

“Then can’t you make her better?” I moved aside so that Augusta could sit in my place and watched while the angel touched Ella’s bruised and bleeding forehead with her long, beautiful fingers. Ella slept on.

“I don’t believe she’s in pain now,” Augusta said, observing Ella’s quiet face. “Now all we can do is wait for help.”

“That’s
all
? Then what good are you? What good are any of you? And where, might I ask, is Ella’s guardian angel?”

She adjusted her daisy crown and gathered up her skirt to make room for me beside her. “We aren’t magicians, Kate, and except in very rare cases do angels perform miracles. However, we do watch over you, do our best to direct you in the right path and try to protect you as best we can.”

“Yeah, right!” I said. “Somebody sure fouled up today.”

One glimpse into her troubled angel eyes made me want to take back my hateful accusations. My heart literally hurt, and it wasn’t from something I ate.

A lock of her hair came loose and tumbled over her forehead, and Augusta tried to tuck it back without much success. “Haven’t you ever sensed a warning, Kate, when you were close to danger?” she asked.

“Of course I have. We all have, but—”

“And don’t you sometimes, without knowing why, choose to do one thing instead of another?” Augusta held out her palm for a butterfly, who seemed quite at home there.

“You mean like today?” Ordinarily I would have chosen to return to my uncle’s the way we had come, but this afternoon, Grady and I had elected to take the longer route.

Augusta nodded. “Life is all about decisions, choices. Sometimes we make the wrong ones, as it seems Ella did today.”

I shrugged. “So, what happened? Did her angel give her a shove in the wrong direction?”

“Certainly not!” If Augusta had wings, she would have flapped them. “I imagine that in Ella’s search for her missing pet, she chose to ignore the warning, or perhaps she didn’t hear it. At any rate, you and your cousin came along to find her.” Augusta touched my arm. “And that was no accident, Kate.”

“You mean her angel sort of directed us here?”

“No doubt about it. We’re meant to look after each other, you know—humans and angels alike,” Augusta said.

“Wait a minute! How did you know about Dagwood?” I asked, and seeing her puzzled expression, realized she didn’t know what I meant.

“Ella’s cat. You said she was looking for her missing pet,” I explained.

She smiled. “I heard her tell you, of course. I’ve been keeping an eye on you, Kate.”

“Then you might’ve seen Ella fall! She says she was pushed. Is that true?”

Augusta’s smiled vanished and her sea-green eyes turned to gray. “I wouldn’t know about that. I’ve only been here since you and your friend left the path when you heard her cry out.”

“But how—”

“I’ve been teaching Penelope to make daisy chains, and we were just over in the meadow. I left her there playing with a huge yellow cat—your friend’s missing Dagwood, I suppose.” Augusta stood and brushed off her skirt. “Shh! I think I hear someone coming.”

I stood and listened, too, but I couldn’t hear a thing. Ella still lay where we had found her, her cheek nestled against my wadded-up blouse. She was breathing, but I didn’t know for how long. “I hope they get here in time,” I said, trying not to cry.

Augusta stepped into her sandals. “It should be any minute now.” She took both my hands in hers, and if eyes could talk, hers would say
trouble
. “I want you to promise you’ll be careful,” she said.

“Careful about what? What’s going on here, Augusta? Am I in some kind of danger? Is that why you’re here?”

“That I don’t know—at least not yet. Just don’t take chances,
please
. Because of my duties with Penelope, you understand, I can’t be with you every minute.” Augusta glanced at the broken figure at our feet. “And as you can see, it takes less time than that for—”

“There they are! I see them—right down there!”

I looked up to see my loudmouth cousin Deedee practically rolling down the bank in her name-brand, have-to-be-dry-cleaned linen shorts set that would never be white again. Grady and two men with a stretcher were right behind her, while Uncle Lum straggled along in the rear.

“My God, Kate!” Deedee stopped so short she almost tumbled headfirst into what looked suspiciously like poison ivy. “At least have the decency to put on a shirt or something!”

I was so glad to see professional help arrive, I didn’t even lose my cool, but I could swear I heard someone laughing behind me.

Of course, when I turned around, Augusta was gone.

“Poor Ella! Can’t see two feet in front of her,” Ma Maggie said as we gathered in Uncle Ernest’s living room. Uncle Ernest himself had ridden to the hospital in the ambulance with Ella. “She probably didn’t even realize she was standing on a ledge.” She looked about for a tissue, then fumbled in her purse until she found a handkerchief and turned away to dab at her eyes.

“I’m not so sure about that.” Violet fanned herself with a dog-eared bulletin from Bishop’s Bridge Presbyterian Church, then frowned as she read an item on the back. “I’ll be doggoned, I didn’t know Sally Rae Johnson had had her baby! A boy this time, named for—”

“Never mind Sally Rae Johnson!” Ma Maggie’s face was red and she puffed out her cheeks like she might blow any minute. “What makes you say that?”

“Say what?” Our cousin started fanning again.

“That you aren’t sure Ella stumbled off that ledge.” My grandmother walked across the room to stand over Violet. She cast a long shadow. “Are you saying it wasn’t an accident?”

Violet sat straighter. “I’m saying it
might
not have been, that’s all. After all, Ella
told
Kate she was pushed, and I heard somebody down in those woods today—sounded like two people talking. Could’ve been one of them.”

Uncle Lum frowned. “I can’t imagine why. When was this?”

“Just a little while ago . . . an hour or so, I guess. I was helping Ella look for her cat.” Violet’s lip trembled. “You know how she dotes on that animal.” She frowned. “And Ella said something else, something about a voice—or voices. Maybe she heard them, too.”

Deedee sat across from her, absently rubbing a spot on her shorts. It didn’t go away. “You probably heard the Belle Fleurs cleaning off the cemetery,” she said.

“The what?” Uncle Lum started to smile, then apparently thought better of it.

“The Belle Fleurs Garden Club. They were to start clearing that old graveyard today, the one that adjoins this property.”

“Remeth. Yes, I know. Lived down the road from it all my life,” Violet reminded her. “But the voices weren’t coming from there. They were more in the direction of the river; and I thought I saw somebody moving about down there.”

“People hike through there all the time,” Grady reminded her. “I wouldn’t take what Ella said about being pushed too seriously; after all, she got a pretty bad lick on the head.”

Ma Maggie moved to the window and pushed aside draperies that used to be green, but now were more of a coppery tan. Dust motes swirled in the sun. “It doesn’t look good,” she said. “Especially at her age. I think we . . . why, there’s that cat!”

I hurried to stand beside her. “What cat? You mean Dagwood?”

“See for yourself,” my grandmother said, stepping aside so I could get a better look. And sure enough, there was Ella’s big orange cat curled up on one of the stone banisters fast asleep. Our uncle’s collie, Amos, dozed nearby.

“Well, what do you know about that?” Aunt Leona came in from the kitchen just then with a tray of lemonade (sugar-free, of course). “Probably been here all along.”

Violet peered over my shoulder. “Unless those men frightened him away—poor baby.”

“What men?” Lum wanted to know.

“Why, the men I heard earlier in the woods. I expect they were looking for the gold.” Violet nodded in agreement with herself.

“What gold?” Grady winked at me behind her back.

“The Confederate gold, silly! Everybody knows Webster Templeton was one of the party that accompanied what was left of the Confederate gold out of Richmond—and then it just disappeared. It could be here as well as anywhere.” She frowned at all of us in turn. “Well, couldn’t it?”

Nobody spoke. Leona chugalugged a lemonade. Ma Maggie closed her eyes for so long I thought she’d fallen asleep.

“Poor Ella might’ve come upon them just as they found it,” Violet added, looking about. “Yes, and they would have had to make sure she didn’t tell.”

“How convenient for them that she wandered to the edge of a drop-off looking for a lost cat,” Grady muttered. But Violet didn’t hear him.

My grandmother looked at Violet and shook her head. “Whatever the reason, I think some of us should get over to the hospital and keep Ernest company. That’s a lonely vigil, and who knows what might happen with Ella. Violet, why don’t you and I—”

Uncle Lum put a hand on her shoulder. “No, Mama. Let me go. Grady can come with me—give us a chance to catch up on things, won’t it, son? We’ll call if there are any changes.”

Marge and family arrived with Josie soon after Lum and Grady left, and of course, we had to explain what had happened.

“Good heavens, Kate!” Marge whispered when I told her about waiting with Ella for help to come. “What if somebody really did push her? Why, they might’ve still been around somewhere! Did you hear anything—out of the ordinary, I mean.”

I shook my head. “I was too busy worrying about Ella. To tell the truth, it was almost too quiet. Gave me the creeps.”

My eavesdropping daughter spoke up. “It was probably a ghost. I told you that old cemetery’s haunted—the Yankee soldier, I’ll bet. He must not’ve liked old Ella hanging around so close to where he was trying to rest.”

“Or one of those hippie people,” Darby suggested. “Didn’t they drown somewhere around there?”

“This is not something to joke about,” I told the two. “Ella was seriously hurt, and if Grady and I hadn’t come along when we did, I don’t know when we would’ve found her.”

I had the sensation that somebody was staring at me and turned to find Cousin Deedee giving me the once-over. “Why, Kate,” she said, drawing each word out slowly. “I haven’t seen hide nor hair of Ned. Don’t tell me he’s not coming?”

Then don’t ask!
I wanted to say. Instead I managed to reply as calmly as possible that my husband was attending a seminar on the other side of the country and sent his regrets. Josie stuck out her lip at me, but I don’t think Deedee noticed it.

“And where is Parker?” Marge wanted to know. “And Cynthia. They’ll be here, won’t they?”

Deedee sipped lemonade and nodded. “Parker’s collecting Cynthia from pageant rehearsal. She’s in the running for Miss Junior Mountain Sunshine at the summer festival this year. Anyway, I phoned him to pick up the barbecue from the Friendly Pig since Uncle Lum probably won’t be back in time.”

For the time being, my cousin Deedee had redeemed herself.

“We want to see the new horse,” Darby said. “Can we ride her, Mom, please?”

“Not this horse!” Ma Maggie spoke up. “That Shortcake’s wild as a hant. Won’t even let you get near her. You stay away from that animal.”

“Then just let us pet her. Please,
please
!” Josie used her “I’ll die if you don’t give into me” voice, but my grandmother wasn’t swayed.

“Not now,” she said. “Maybe your uncle Ernest can coax her up to the fence for you tomorrow.”