The Cemetery Club (Darcy & Flora Cozy Mystery Book 1) (18 page)

With the gold out of sight
once more, a measure of my clear thinking
returned.
“I’m going to look around this room and see if there’s a door
somewhere.”

Unhooking the lantern from
its peg, I held it above my head, and
walked
slowly around this circular cave, running my hand across the wall as I walked.
Close beside Ben’s body, I touched wood. Holding my
lantern closer, I
saw a doorknob protruding from an ordinary-looking door.

I shouted, “Mom! Come take a
look at this!”

“What is it?” she asked,
purposely averting her eyes from that pitiful bundle wrapped in the quilt.

“It’s a door, but I think
it’s stuck. Help me pull.”

I yanked on the door until
it creaked open a couple of inches. My mother slid her fingers into this crack
and pulled as I tugged on the knob again. With a nerve-shattering shriek, the
door swung inward on rusty hinges.

The lantern shone on an
earthen tunnel which slanted upward. I didn’t care how steep it was, since the
direction was up instead of down.

“Hurry! Hurry,” I urged.
“This has got to lead to the light of day and freedom! Come on, Mom.”

She hesitated. “Darcy, wait
now. We know that we can get out by going back the way we came. Maybe Drake and
his friend are long gone by now. We don’t know where this doorway leads. We
could be walking into a trap.”

Pausing, I thought this
over. She was right, of course. On the other hand, the two crooks could still
be looking for us in the bluff area. And, after we had retraced our steps, we
still wouldn’t know which way to go to get help.

“This can’t be any more
dangerous than finding ourselves on that bluff again, Mom. Remember, we were
trying to find a way off it when we discovered that tunnel.”

She looked at Ben, her eyes
brimming with tears. “Jasper was right. Ben is where he would want to be. In a
way, I guess he’s buried. He shouldn’t be moved. Maybe we ought not to tell
anybody about finding him or the gold.”

Now, I was worried about her
mind. She wasn’t thinking clearly. “You know that we’ll have to tell Grant,
Mom. He has to know everything, and this time, I’m not keeping anything a
secret.”

“I believe in respecting a
person’s last wishes,” Mom said. “This would be what Ben wanted.”

What I wanted was to scream.
“Mom,” I said as patiently as I could, “Ben is dead. He’s dead! What he wanted
doesn’t matter anymore. And it is all Ben’s fault that we are in this
predicament, running for our lives. Why on earth did he tell you anything about
that gold? He sure wasn’t thinking about your welfare.”

“Darcy!” Mom looked as
shocked as she sounded and I was immediately sorry for my outburst. “Ben didn’t
ask to be guardian for this gold, either.”

“I know, I know. It was
handed down to him by his father and grandfather. The point is, the secret
could have died with him and I quite frankly wish it had.”

“You’ll feel better when you
are safe,” Mom said.

Gritting my teeth, I held my
tongue. Grasping the lantern and my mother’s hand, I squeezed through the door
and started up yet another tunnel, this one made of dirt.

My legs ached as I leaned
into the path that slanted sharply upward. Silently, I prayed that this dark
passageway would not turn out to be our grave. My fondest hope was that I would
not be buried until after I died.

Chapter 25

When it seemed as if I could
not climb another step and my lungs were
on
fire, a current of cool air brushed my face. Mom felt it at the same
time.

“Stop for a minute, Darcy.
Let’s rest. I can breathe better, all of a sudden. There’s fresh air coming
from somewhere.”

The breeze moved my hair and
relief flowed through me. “Wonderful!” I said. “Praise the Lord! We are heading
toward an opening to the outside world.”

Once again, I put one weary
foot in front of the other, buoyed by
the hope
that our nightmare might be ending. I was about to stop for another breather
when Mom said, “Up ahead! Look, Darcy! There’s
a
light.”

She was right. The dim light
of day filtered into the darkness and my weariness vanished. When I was
younger, I went spelunking with Jake, but if I got out of here, never again
would I willingly set foot below the ground. Maybe I would just re-think my
final arrangements and ask for my earthly resting place to be a mausoleum.
Anything would be fine, as long as it was above the ground.

Abruptly, the tunnel came to
a dead end with a wide board wall blocking our way. A sliver of light and a
current of air pushed through a crack in the wall.

Gasping, I said, “I don’t
see a door. How do we get out of here?”

“Maybe we just pull,” said
my matter-of-fact mother. “Let’s grab hold of these boards.”

“Got it,” I answered. “One,
two, three, pull!”

We both tugged with all our
strength. The heavy boards inched toward us.

“Once again, Mom.” I panted.
“We can do this.”

And this time, the crack
widened. Grasping the boards, I yanked, giving just enough room for my slender
mother to slip through.

From
the other side of the wall, she said, “I’ll push, Darcy. Squeeze
through.”

Grunting, I maneuvered
sideways through the opening. Never had I felt happier than I did at that
moment, free from the dark and forbidding earth.

Slowly, my eyes adjusted to
the anemic light filtering in. We didn’t need the lantern any longer.

“Where in the world are we?”
I whispered.

My mother actually clapped
her hands. “I believe I know exactly where we are. Just look. It’s no wonder we
couldn’t move those boards.”

On the tunnel side, the
partition had seemed to be a wall or a gate. On this side, those boards were
the backdrop for shelves on which sat jars of canned vegetables and fruit.
Several Mason jars lay broken on the floor, knocked off when we tugged the wall
open.

Amazed, I muttered, “What in
the world?” Mom laughed. “I do believe we are in a cellar.”

She was right. Wooden
shelves lined three walls containing the
bounty
of someone’s garden. In front of us, six wood steps led to a slanting door.
Cracks in the door let in the pale but beautiful light of
day.

“Well, I don’t care whose
cellar it is. I just want out of here. I want to go home!” I started toward the
steps.

“It’s Ben’s cellar,” Mom
declared, stopping me in my tracks. “It stands to reason if that cave was under
his pasture and we were on his land. He must have covered the back wall with
shelves to hide the opening into the hiding place for the gold.”

Was Skye planning to show us
the cellar when she came for a visit?
She
had said it was easier to show us the hiding place than tell us about
it.

“Are
you able to climb those steps and get out of here, Mom?” I
asked.

She nodded. “I’ll get up
them if I have to crawl.”

Setting the lantern on the
floor, I started toward the stairs. I was standing on the second step with Mom
behind me when the cellar door burst open and a large form barreled toward us,
nearly knocking us over.

“Miss Darcy! Miss Flora!
What are you doing here?” he yelled.

Mom caught her breath.
“Jasper Harris! What under the sun?”

Peering up at this young
giant towering over us, I felt neither shock nor surprise. After such an
unbelievable day, I would not have been surprised to see anyone or anything. My
mind and body felt numb.

We turned around and
retraced our steps as Jasper clattered past us.

He seemed incredulous,
staring first at my mother, then me. “Miss Darcy, you look awful. You’ve got
blood and mud all over you and Miss Flora, your clothes are all torn and
. . . why are you here? What are you doing messing around? Did
somebody hurt you? How did you get down here? You shouldn’t be here at all!”

Not wanting to take the time
to explain to Jasper all that we had been through and wanting desperately to
leave this underground room behind me, I shrugged.

Jasper’s eyes narrowed. At
last it must have dawned on him that we very likely knew far more about this
place than anyone left alive, except himself. I could see the question coming
before he asked it.

“Where did you come from? I
mean, well, I don’t mean that. Have you just been down here in the cellar or
did you come from . . . .” He paused and glanced at the shelf-covered wall
which stood partially open and the broken jars on the floor.

Mom interrupted. “If you are
wondering whether we discovered your secret, Jasper, yes. We did. We know that
Ben is back there. And we know the gold is there. Two killers are after us, bad
men that want Ben’s gold and they tried to kill us to get us out of the way.
They chased us into the tunnel. Why did you bring Ben here? He should have been
properly buried.”

Jasper’s face reminded me of
a small boy who had just heard a story about monsters. “Killers?” he blustered.
“Do you mean . . . are they the same ones who killed Mr. Ben?”

Sidling around us, Jasper
edged toward the back wall. With a tug, he pulled it open. Lifting both hands,
he turned to Mom and pleaded, “Miss Flora, you gotta believe me. I didn’t know
Ben was dead until I
found him in the
cemetery the day of the storm. I moved him ’cause I
couldn’t let him
stay out in all that rain and hail. You understand, don’t you?”

Mom spoke quietly. “Of
course, Jasper.”

“When you and Miss Darcy
went into the chapel, the day of the storm, I slipped out the back. I had
thought about what to do since I saw Ben out there on those sticks and rocks. I
took him to the cave while you all were inside the chapel. I knew that Ben
would want to be in that cave, but I sure couldn’t tell the sheriff! He
would’ve thought I killed Ben.”

Jasper paused and wiped
sweat from his forehead. “I found those rock steps by accident when I was
noodling, and then I followed the tunnel on this side of the cave and came out
here through Ben’s cellar. Ben never did know that I found his secret. But I
guess it ain’t a secret no more. Now you all know about it and you know where
Ben is.”

Jasper looked as if he might
start to cry.

Rubbing his hands through
his hair, Jasper paced in a circle. “How did you all get out of the cave
without setting off the trap?” he asked.

I grasped his arm. “What
trap, Jasper?”

He shook me off. “Never
mind. Now, I gotta think about this. What am I gonna do?”

Mom grabbed the front of his
shirt. “Listen to me! We are all three going to walk out of this cellar, that’s
what we’re going to do. Later, we’ll sit down and figure out the whole thing.
But right now, you are going to take us straight to your house so we can use
the phone and call the sheriff and get Darcy to a doctor. We’ll let the law
handle this.”

He shook his head. “No, I
can’t do that. The sheriff would find that gold back in there with Ben and he’d
throw me in jail and . . . .”

Jasper’s eyes swung toward
the steps behind us just as a voice I had hoped never to hear again, said, “I
don’t think you’ll have to worry about that, son.”

Ray Drake jumped down the
cellar steps. He wore a smirk and carried a gun that was pointing directly at
us. His partner was at his heels. He too held a gun. My mother took two steps
toward him, then put her arm around me.

“Hammer?” she whispered.

So, this was the second man,
Ben’s nephew. Or something more than a nephew? The man’s dark good looks, the
arched nose and chiseled face certainly reminded me of Ben.

For a few seconds, I felt as
I had when I was ten years old and fell out of an apple tree flat on my back.
My lungs seemed empty and I could not breathe.

How long had they been
standing outside the cellar? Had they heard
Jasper
talking about the gold? Hammer’s next statement answered that
question.

“Just imagine finding you
and Uncle Ben’s gold all in the same day! So, that’s where it is, back there!”
He jerked his head toward the tunnel.

“And, to think, I’ve seen
this cellar all my life and didn’t know. I’ve
hunted
all over these hills, killed three stubborn people and, all along,
it
was right under my nose! My, my. Lady Luck is certainly smiling on me.”

Mom’s voice was deadly calm
as she faced Hammer Ventris. “You murdered him. You murdered Ben, a man who
always treated you fairly, had always been good to you. Then you murdered that
antiques dealer in Oklahoma City and Skye. Poor little Skye, your own cousin.
How could you do such cowardly, evil things?”

Hammer’s eyes became black
slits. “Cowardly? Evil? That depends on your line of thought. My thinking is
that nobody ever wanted my mother or me. The Ventris family never let us forget
that we owed them for the very food we ate. I’m going to take what I should
have had in the first place. You see, Miss Flora, I knew that good ol’ Ben had
a soft spot for you. He wouldn’t tell me where the gold was, no matter what I
threatened. Stubborn old man! But I figured he must have told you. I’ve been
back in Ventris County for quite a while. You didn’t know that I was anywhere
near, did you?”

“You’re right,” Mom said. “I
didn’t know you were back in Ventris County. Last I heard, you were up north. I
can’t say much for the sort of friends you made there.” She motioned in Drake’s
direction.

Ray Drake growled and
started toward my mother. Before I could move, Jasper jumped in front of him.
“Don’t you hurt her!” he yelled. “She’s a good woman.”

“Aw, get out of my way,
kid,” Drake muttered. “I heard what you said about the gold. So, it’s back in
that tunnel there, is it?”

Jasper’s face wore the
petulant scowl of a child. “It ain’t your gold. It’s Mr. Ben’s. You’re not
going to get your hands on it.”

Drake laughed. “And who’s
going to stop me?”

“I am,” I said. Not that I
felt courageous. I just wanted to divert Drake’s attention from Jasper who
seemed to have no concept of guns and danger.

My ruse worked, probably all
too well. Ray Drake turned that deadly looking barrel toward my mid-section.
Grinning, he sneered, “Come on, then, if you’re feeling brave.”

I swallowed. At the moment,
“brave” was not an accurate description of the way I felt.

While Drake’s and Hammer’s attention
was on me, Jasper edged toward the back wall and the open doorway. Crossing my
fingers, I hoped he could escape down that tunnel and bring help.

But, as he jumped through
the opening, fruit jars fell and shattered. The two gunmen pivoted in his direction.
Drake leveled a shot at Jasper, who disappeared in the darkness of the tunnel.

“Come back here, you
dumb . . .” Drake yelled.

I felt frozen until I heard
the sound of Jasper’s feet growing fainter as he ran. Drake’s shot had missed
and I could breathe again.

Hammer turned back to his
partner. “Stay here and watch these two. I’m going after that stupid kid!” He
grinned and I felt goose bumps rise on my arms. “After I finish with him, I’ll
come back and take care of these two.”

Drake’s eyes turned toward
Hammer. “Hey, stay away from that gold until we can count it out together!” he
yelled.

Sometimes desperation spurs
even the weakest creature to act irrationally. In the three seconds Drake’s
attention was on his partner, and with no doubt about what Hammer had in mind,
I felt along the shelf behind me for a possible weapon. My probing fingers
touched the cool, smooth sides of a heavy jar that Ben’s wife probably canned
years ago. Grasping the full jar, I swung my arm around, and hurled the missile
at Drake’s head.