Chapter FOURTEEN
I broke into a run. “Hurry and get your dad . . . bring everybody you can find!” I called to Darby over my shoulder.
“And tell them to bring flashlights!” Marge yelled after him. I heard her close behind me as I raced around the house, past the rose garden, the scuppernong arbor, finally skirting the old apple orchard where hard, green fruit clung to the trees. And there we came to a stop.
“Which way do you think she went?” Marge asked, trying to see into the dense thicket ahead of us.
“I don’t know, but surely she wouldn’t go far! Josie’s afraid of these woods. She’s probably hiding behind a tree somewhere.”
“Josie!” I cupped my hands and called to her. “Honey, it’s okay! We’ll work this out. Come on back, now!”
Wading a little farther into the trees, Marge did the same.
It seemed a year went by while we stood in silence waiting for an answer. None came.
“Josie, this has gone far enough. You’re frightening me. Come out right now!” I didn’t even try to disguise the fear in my voice.
“Why don’t you go to the left and I’ll take the other way,” I suggested to Marge. “We can cover more ground like that, but watch your step. It’s tricky down there.”
“Just don’t wander too far. We won’t be able to see without lights for long,” she said, and I soon heard her scrambling through the underbrush not too far from where Ella had taken her plunge.
I looked at the sky. Although twilight had settled upon us, it was still light enough to see in the open, but it was already dark in the tangle of underbrush and trees that seemed to have swallowed up my little girl.
I knew there used to be a path around here somewhere, but the entrance must have grown over. I tore aside a honeysuckle vine and stumbled over uneven ground shouting Josie’s name. Briars snagged my shirt as I pushed past a straggling stand of cedars and through a forest of rhododendron to find what appeared to be a narrow path on the other side. The trail twisted around a tumble of moss-covered boulders, then hummocks, slick with pine needles, as it wound its way to the river below. Hikers and trespassers looking for a shortcut came this way now and then, although Uncle Ernest discouraged it, and in years past I had explored this same path with cousins and friends. If Josie had run blindly into the woods, she might eventually come upon it—or I hoped she would.
“Josie!” I stopped to call again. “It’s getting dark. If you’re here, answer me!”
Not too far away I could hear Marge doing the same. Close by, startled birds flew up from a rotting tree trunk and a chipmunk darted under a root, but Josie didn’t answer.
This was my fault. Josie was old enough to realize her father and I were having serious problems, and instead of trying to explain the situation so that she might understand, I had avoided dealing with it—and with her. And now look what had happened! My child was not only angry and confused, but wandering lost in a wilderness that stretched on for miles.
“Oh, Josie, please, please, please! Where are you?” Sobbing, I tripped over a root and went sprawling. A stick jabbed into the palm of my hand, bringing blood. Good! I deserved to hurt.
“Kate! Here, wait for me!” Grady’s voice and crashing footsteps brought me to my feet, but I couldn’t stop crying.
My cousin put an arm around me, urging me back the way I had come. “We’re going to find her, Kate, but it isn’t going to help Josie if you fall apart now. We’re getting together a search party, but we have to get organized before we go wandering off helter-skelter.” He gave me a gentle shove from behind. “Come on, now. Burdette and Parker are working out some kind of plan, and the sooner we get started, the better.”
“You’re right. I’m sorry, but, Grady, I’m just so scared!” I accepted his offer of a tissue and blew my nose.
“Hey, you’re entitled. But put the tears on hold, okay? Makes it hard to see where you’re going.”
I struggled to keep from crying all over again when my grandmother, waiting at the top of the hill, wrapped me in her arms and smoothed my hair as she had when I was little. She smelled like mustardy potato salad and I guessed she had been in the kitchen putting away leftovers. “She can’t have gone very far,” she told me. “The police are on their way, but I expect we’ll have her out of there before they even get here.”
Uncle Ernest, looking as if he had aged ten years, held out a long-sleeved shirt. “Here, slip into this, Kate, my girl. You’ll need something over those arms.” The shirt was of faded blue cotton, thin from many washings, and the cuffs hung inches below my wrists. “What’s this you’ve done to your hand?” he said, shining a light on my palm.
“Nothing. Scratched it, is all.” I tried to pull away, but my uncle was surprisingly strong for his age.
“Nonsense. Goat, do you still have that first aid kit in your car? We’ll need peroxide and a bandage. Can’t have that getting infected.”
Judge Kidd, silent for once, nodded grimly and sent Jon on the run for the kit. And so, while others were dividing into teams to look for my daughter, I stood pawing the ground while Uncle Ernest bandaged my wound.
Deedee, Belinda and Aunt Leona had rounded up every flashlight in the place, as well as bottled water for all the searchers, while Uncle Lum dispensed a variety of hats and bandannas.
“I don’t need a hat,” I said, waving him away. “All I want to do is find Josie.”
Ignoring me, he tugged a bucket-shaped piece of canvas over my ears. “You’ll be glad of this when you wade into that blasted thicket. Now, get over there and let Violet scoot you with insect repellent. It won’t keep them off entirely, but it might help some.”
And Josie was somewhere in that dark, threatening place with no water, no light and nothing to protect her from the mosquitoes. Earlier that day I had hastily anointed my daughter with the lotion repellent I carried in my purse, but that had certainly worn off by now, and I felt sick when I remembered she wore only shorts and a T-shirt.
I hurried to where Burdette and Parker were dividing searchers into teams. Marge was to go with her husband and a couple of our South Carolina kin, while Parker, Deedee and Uncle Lum made up another team. Darby cried to be included until his dad convinced him we needed him there to blow a whistle from time to time in case any of us got lost. And since Uncle Ernest knew the area better than any of us, we reminded him, he should be the one to wait behind for the police. That left Grady, Aunt Leona and me to make up the last group.
I had my doubts about taking my aunt along. Although Aunt Leona seemed agile enough, she wasn’t the outdoorsy type, and I was afraid she would slow us down.
I was right. We hadn’t gone very far when we encountered the first obstacle.
“Mom, you’ll have to sit and slide down this bank on your fanny,” Grady told her, shining the beam of our one flashlight on the sloping ground.
“Well, all right, if you say so,” she answered, and did. But then we had to haul her up the opposite side.
Aunt Leona dusted off her pants and adjusted her pert, visored cap. “My goodness, it’s dark as pitch out here! I can’t see a foot in front of me.”
I was just about to volunteer to go it alone when Grady gently turned his mother around. “Mom, I know you want to help, but I think you can do that better by giving Ma Maggie and Violet a hand with the kids. They’ll all need baths and something to sleep in, and I’m sure they’d be glad of the extra help.”
Below us a flashlight wavered and Uncle Lum called out Josie’s name.
“Dad!” Grady waved his light and hollered. “Could you help Mom back to the house? We don’t have but one light between us, and Kate and I want to cover as much ground as possible before it gets any darker.”
“Be right there!” his dad answered, although he didn’t sound too pleased about it. “I told you this would be too rough,” he muttered under his breath as he helped Aunt Leona up the other side of the bank. “You would have to come, though, wouldn’t you?
“You two go on, I’ll catch up!” he yelled to Deedee and Parker, who had hesitated briefly before moving on.
I wondered if he would be able to find them again, but just then that wasn’t my problem. Grady and I had been assigned an area to the right of the trail and I didn’t want to waste any more time getting to it.
“I didn’t see Casey back there,” I said as we stumbled about, casting our light under bushes, behind rocks, any place where a child might be resting, sleeping, or—God forbid—lying hurt.
“Burdette said he went on ahead.” Grady reached back to give me a hand over a particularly rough patch of ground. “Said he’d make better time and cover more ground alone.”
“That makes sense. Do you know which direction he took?”
“Whichever one he wanted to, I guess,” Grady said. “I don’t think Casey Grindle likes to take orders from anybody, especially after the way Uncle Ernest treated him today.”
I agreed, but the caretaker’s feelings were the least of my worries. Every few steps we stopped to call to Josie, and now and then, true to his promise, we could hear Darby blowing his whistle far above us in the distance. For a while we could still see the lights Uncle Ernest had rigged in the clearing, but as the woods became denser and the night blacker, we finally lost sight of that.
Below us I heard the rush of the river, and now and then caught a glint of light from the water. The sight and sound of it terrified me. Josie was a good swimmer, but the current was deep and swift, and in the darkness, she wouldn’t be able to see where she was going. Fear was like a heavy, growing thing in my middle. Oh, please don’t let my little girl wander into that treacherous, black torrent!
Grady must have read my mind. “Josie knows better than to go near that river, Kate. If we can hear it, so can she. She’s probably curled up somewhere waiting for us to find her.”
“Then why doesn’t she answer? Why?”
But my cousin didn’t answer because he didn’t know.
And what had happened to my guardian angel? I looked over my shoulder, hoping for a glimpse of a flaming-haired vision with flowers in her hair. “Okay, Augusta, you can come out now!” I spoke loudly enough for Gabriel himself to hear. If I ever needed heavenly help, it was now.
Grady glanced back at me. “Augusta? Who’s that?”
“A figment of my imagination, that’s all,” I told him, hoping she would hear.
I waved gnats from my face, glad of the hat Uncle Lum had forced me to wear, and balanced on one foot as I pried my shoe from the mud. “I wonder how far we’ve come.” I couldn’t see any of the other lights, and it had been some time since we last heard Darby’s whistle. Surely the police had come by now.
Every few steps Grady, who walked ahead, stopped to flash the beam of his light in circles, and together we called Josie’s name. I tried to think what I would do if I were ten and wanted to hide from my family. Ordinarily, Josie wouldn’t venture into these woods alone, but she was upset, and at that time it was still light. She probably ran as far and as fast as she could until either her temper cooled or she ran out of steam. My daughter could be anywhere.
I had tied a water bottle to my belt loop with the bandanna and it sloshed against my side as I walked. Pausing, I unscrewed the cap and took a swallow. We were just above the river now, walking parallel to the banks below. “Where now?” I asked.
Grady untangled himself from a vine and held it aside for me to pass. “To the right, I think. Parker and Deedee are supposed to be searching over to the left—and Dad, too, if he caught up with them. Burdette’s group’s combing that area below Remeth churchyard.”
“Seems the police should be here by now,” I said.
“Right, and they’ll have better equipment than we do. I don’t think our batteries are going to last much longer.” The beam was getting dimmer and Grady only switched it on now from time to time. “Do you want to start back?” he asked.
“NO! Not yet! She might be just over the next hill, on the other side of the next tree. We can’t give up yet.”
“We won’t be giving up, Kate. I’m sure the sheriff will organize a larger party—might even bring in bloodhounds. We won’t be much help in finding Josie if we can’t see.”
He was right, of course, but I kept on going. “Please, just a little farther. Didn’t Uncle Ernest used to say there was a cave down here somewhere? Some kind of rock shelter? Josie might have stopped there to rest.”
“That’s just one of his tales, Kate. I’ve never seen a cave down here, and if there was one, I can’t imagine Josie going in it.”
“When’s the last time either of us were this close to the river?” I asked. “I don’t think I’ve been back since Bev and I found that dead man. Tobias King. Even his name gives me the creeps. Remember?”
My cousin didn’t answer but stopped abruptly to stare into the dark void that was the river below.
“What is it? Do you see something?” I moved quickly up beside him.
“No, it was just that feeling . . . like a rabbit ran over my grave.” Grady flicked the switch on the flashlight, then shook it. “Damn! The batteries are gone.”
“Let me see . . .” I reached for it. “Maybe if we reverse them.” It never worked, but I always tried it anyway.
“Forget it, I did that a while ago.” Even in the dark, I could see the worried look on my cousin’s face.
“Then I guess we should try to find our way back,” I said. “If we can get close enough, we might be able to see the lights from Bramblewood. And we can always yell for help.”
Grady brushed debris from a rock and sat, offering me a place beside him. “Let’s rest a minute first.” He held a hand at arm’s length in front of him. “How good are your eyes, Kate? This is about as far as I can see. I don’t think it’s safe to start back in the dark.”
“Josie is somewhere in this dark,” I reminded him.
“And I would hope she has the good sense to stay where she is until somebody finds her.”
“You mean you plan to stay here all night?” I said.
“Or until somebody comes looking for us. They know we’re out here, Kate. If we try to walk out of here, there’s no telling what we might stumble into.”
A wind ruffled the leaves and I hugged my uncle’s big shirt around me, but it wasn’t the wind that chilled me. I must have shivered because Grady asked me if I was cold.
“I just wish those batteries had lasted a little longer. I don’t like this place, Grady. We can’t be too far from where Tobias King was killed,” I told him. “Did they ever find out anything about him? I don’t suppose we’ll ever know who killed him.”
For a minute my cousin sat beside me rattling the batteries in the flashlight—click, click, back and forth. “I’ll tell you who killed him,” he said finally. “It was me.”