Chapter NINE
For a minute I thought I was back in my own home and Josie was waking me with a nightmare. But my daughter’s hair—even as light as it is—doesn’t shimmer with an aura of coppery gold.
“Wake up!” Augusta said, bouncing lightly as she leaned over me. “Somebody’s out there digging. Sounds like it’s coming from behind the house.”
I rubbed my eyes and blinked. “Maybe they’re looking for fishing worms . . . I’m really tired, Augusta.” I yawned and tried to roll over but she had a most unangelic grip on my arm.
“Hurry now, and try to be as quiet as you can. It wouldn’t do for them to hear you.” She grabbed a robe from the chair and tossed it in my direction. “Where are your shoes?”
I fumbled for them under my bed. “They just dug up bones from where there shouldn’t have been any, somebody shoved poor Ella off a bluff and now you want me to go out there in the dark? What kind of guardian angel are you?”
Her glittering necklace winked turquoise and violet in the dusk and Augusta gave me an impatient little smile. “I’m here, aren’t I?” she said. “We might never know who it is if we don’t get closer. You do want to know, don’t you?”
I grunted a yes.
It must have been just before dawn because there was barely enough light to see, and I sensed, more than felt, her small hand on my shoulder, urging me from the room. “Do jiggle a limb now, Kate, we don’t have time to dawdle!” But I noticed she took time to glance at herself in the mirror as we hurried out the door.
The floor creaked as we crept down the dim hallway past rooms where my relatives slept, and from the far end of the passage, I could hear Uncle Lum’s staccato snoring. Feeling my way in the dark, my hand trailed past the place where the wallpaper was beginning to peel . . . and dear God, what was that brushing against my leg? Something soft and tickly that sent shivers up my spine! I almost bit my lip to keep from yelling before I realized it was Ella’s cat, Dagwood.
I kept close to Augusta as we made our way downstairs, hoping we wouldn’t wake Amos, who slept on a mat by the door. If suddenly roused, the dog would go into a frenzy of barking loud enough to wake the entire household. Augusta held up a hand in warning as Amos groaned in his sleep. The angel smelled of lavender that reminded me of the dried sachets Ma Maggie kept in her linen closet, and her chiffonlike dress swirled behind her as she walked. By the light of the table lamp in the window it looked creamy white with a spray of dainty pink flowers trailing about the hem.
We slipped silently past the sleeping dog and into the kitchen where the sound of digging seemed even louder. Crouched behind Augusta, I hesitated at the door that led to the back porch. “What on earth could anybody be looking for out there?” I whispered as Augusta edged slowly outside.
“That’s what we want to find out,” she said, beckoning me to follow.
The wind ruffled the leaves in the fig bush by the back steps and there was a hint of rain in the air. Augusta and I stood on the brick walk that led to the garage and listened. The noise was coming from that area of the yard Ma Maggie referred to as Rose’s flower garden. My grandmother said there had once been a fence around the garden, but that was long gone. Now a straggly tangle of pines, honeysuckle and knee-high weeds surrounded a tiny, well-kept garden plot. With Augusta’s prompting, I crossed the yard and hid behind the large sycamore that halfway screened the small garden from the house. I couldn’t see who was digging, but now and then I did glimpse the pale beam of a flashlight. Was this the same person who ran from Parker and Burdette the night before?
A family of mosquitoes enjoyed a midnight snack on my neck and a tendril of some kind of vine whipped my ankle—at least, I hoped it was a vine. The thought of snakes crawling about my feet in the dark scared me more than being discovered by the mysterious digger.
While I quietly battled insects, the treasure hunter, or whoever he was, moved his search to another part of the overgrown garden and I saw the light flicker on and off twice as he renewed his digging. How long was the blasted man (if it was a man) going to pursue this ridiculous quest? And how was I ever going to get close enough to see his face? My foot was asleep and I’d made the mistake of drinking a large glass of tea with supper so I really needed to go to the bathroom! I looked for Augusta to try and signal her of my distress, but she had stationed herself under the scuppernong arbor and couldn’t see my face. I don’t suppose angels ever have to go to the bathroom, so naturally my discomfort would mean nothing to her. I had decided to go inside without her when a loud clap of thunder came out of nowhere and seconds later lightning sizzled in the sky. It gave me just enough light to see the silhouette of a dark figure through the trees. I flattened myself against the sycamore as the person tramped through the junglelike border of weeds and saplings and passed almost close enough to touch as he made his way to the toolshed. He wore a slouchy old hat pulled low over his forehead, and I couldn’t see his face, but he smelled of bourbon and pipe tobacco. Uncle Ernest!
We waited until my uncle had time to put away his shovel and watched him go inside. The kitchen light came on and I knew he was making his ritual nighttime drink of something called Chocolate Comfort before retiring. It seemed to take forever before he finally turned off the light! I mentally timed Uncle Ernest getting out of his dirty clothes and washing up before going back to bed. He probably wouldn’t have heard us if we’d tramped in right behind him, but we huddled under the scuppernong arbor at least fifteen minutes as raindrops as big as cherries started to fall. “Enough of this!” I whispered, shivering. They began to pelt us even faster as we finally bolted for the kitchen door. It was locked.
“Well, this is another fine mess you’ve gotten us into!” I said, not expecting Augusta to understand the reference.
But she did. “Laurel and Hardy!” She clapped her hands. “Oh, what fun they were! Not still around, I suppose?”
I shook my head. “What do we do now, Augusta? I really have to go!”
“I don’t like to do this as a rule, mind you . . . but in this case . . .” Augusta disappeared from beside me, and seconds later opened the door from the inside.
Besides being rain-soaked and miserable, I was now wide awake, and while I went upstairs to change, Augusta made hot chocolate and produced from somewhere dainty jam-filled pastries dusted with powdered sugar and crisp triangles of toast that tasted of oranges.
Penelope, who had rendezvoused with raccoons and a fox or two, she said, in the orchard beyond the house, stood by the open oven drying herself from the rain. I offered a towel and a change of clothes, but she smiled and shook her head, and soon I knew why. In only seconds her bronze and gold sleeveless shift looked as if it had just come from the cleaners. She draped herself in a fringed shawl of dappled green and pulled out a chair for herself at the table, and it was a good thing I was standing beside her because, almost in slow motion, the chair began to topple.
I was able to catch it before it hit the floor, but I didn’t have as much luck with the mug of chocolate that spilled in a spreading pool across the table and made a brown puddle on the faded green linoleum.
“Oh, dear! Now look what I’ve done!” Penelope’s eyes filled with tears and her lap with hot chocolate.
I grabbed a couple of dishtowels and began to sponge her dress. “It’s okay, Penelope. I expect you’re just chilled from the rain. It’s nothing that can’t be cleaned up. It didn’t burn you, did it?”
“No, but I made such a mess . . .” She looked at Augusta, whose mouth looked kind of pinched at the corners.
“It’s all right, Penelope, dear, but you must try to move more slowly.” Augusta’s shoulders heaved as she wet a sponge at the sink. “Why don’t you take care of the spilled drink on the floor and we’ll see what we can do with your dress. There’s more chocolate where that came from.”
Later, as Penelope, soothed and dried, nursed her cup of chocolate by the stove, Augusta sat across from me at the table and sipped silently from her cup. The chocolate was dark and rich with a hint of peppermint, and the pastries tasted of raspberries.
“I don’t know what to think,” I said, wiping what I knew must be a milky brown mustache from my lip. “What was Uncle Ernest looking for out there? It must be something he didn’t want us to know about or he wouldn’t have been digging in the middle of the night. I wonder if it has something to do with the skeleton they found in the churchyard.”
“Whatever it was, I’d like to know if he found it,” Augusta said. “And why does your uncle keep that little garden the way he does? Surrounded by such a tangle of undergrowth, you can hardly see it from the house. Seems a shame to hide it that way—rather a sad place, don’t you think?”
“My grandmother said that for the longest time he couldn’t bring himself to come near it,” I told her. “But it’s been like it is now for as long as I can remember. Uncle Ernest takes care of it himself—won’t let anyone else in there. A lot of his wife’s roses are still there. Ma Maggie says it’s the only part of his marriage that’s still alive . . . I wonder if it’s because he still loves her or just feels guilty that he couldn’t make things work.”
“There’s one way you might shed some light on this,” Augusta said, dipping her toast in chocolate. “You might just come right out and ask him.”
But did I really want to know?
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“I thought I heard somebody digging out back last night,” I said the next morning at breakfast.
Uncle Ernest shook the salt shaker over his egg three distinct times, and the pepper twice. He didn’t look up. “Did somebody make brownies or something in here?” he asked. “The whole house smelled of chocolate this morning . . . and who do I thank for those little pastries I found on the table?”
“Oh, I picked those up at a bakery,” I said, pouring orange juice all around—and spilling about half of it.
“Maybe it was Casey you heard,” Grady offered. “Must’ve come back last night: I saw him trimming the shrubbery when I went out to get the paper this morning.”
“Why would Casey be digging in the middle of the night?” his mother wanted to know.
Grady shrugged. “To get an early start? Told me he was planning to mow that field behind the orchard so the children could play games this afternoon.”
Every year at the reunion all the children competed in sack races and relay games in the big field where I’d seen my uncle walking the day before, and later, some of the adults joined in for a family softball game. Parker and Burdette were due over soon to help Grady set up long tables, made of boards laid across sawhorses, under the large oaks at the edge of the yard, and family members who lived out of town would be arriving all during the day with potato salad, baked ham, fried chicken and just about every kind of cake and pie I’d ever heard of—and some I hadn’t.
Uncle Lum peered over his coffee cup. “Did anybody else hear that thunder last night? Sounded like a gully washer there for a while. Sure glad it moved on in time for the picnic.”
Grady and I both said we’d heard it, too, but Uncle Ernest, jamming on his familiar hat, excused himself to go to the hospital.
“Mosquitoes just about chewed me alive out on the porch yesterday,” Aunt Leona said as he was leaving. “Might be a good idea to ask Casey to get rid of some of those weeds around where Rose—Around the flowerbed back there. I believe they must be breeding in there.”
I could have told her that.
Since my uncle was in a hurry to see about Ella, I told him I’d talk to Casey about the weeds. Frankly, I was curious about the man, plus I wanted to see where Uncle Ernest had been digging in the garden.
I found the caretaker on the riding mower behind the orchard, and even after I chased him down, the tractor made such a racket I almost had to risk being run over to get his attention. Casey Grindle was large and red-cheeked. A green-checkered shirt, open at the neck, strained over his bulging stomach, and he wore jeans and a straw hat about as big as a bushel basket. Wild gray hair stuck out from beneath it, making him look kind of like a rotund scarecrow.
While I introduced myself and explained my errand, he took the opportunity to wipe his face with a soiled hand towel. I noticed that he wore thick gardening gloves, which really didn’t surprise me since Violet had said he was a writer and I supposed he would need to take care of his hands to use a computer or whatever he wrote on. He didn’t look much like a writer, though—or at least my idea of one.
“You’re talking about that little garden behind the house that’s surrounded with all those trees?” he said. His voice was sort of scratchy like an old phonograph record. “I asked about that earlier, but he didn’t seem to want anything done about it. Lot of underbrush around there.”
“I know. I don’t think he expects you to clean it out in one day, but maybe you can get some of the worst of it. I’ll show you, if you like.”
Even with Casey riding, I managed to get there first as he had to go the long way around and I cut across the yard.
It was obvious that somebody had been digging around the roses, and the dirt had been put back loosely in several places, but an excavation in a far corner of the garden was still uncovered, with a mound of dirt and grass piled beside a hole that looked to be over a foot deep and two or three times as wide.
“Your uncle intending to plant something here?” Casey asked, wading through knee-deep weeds to stand beside me.
“He hasn’t mentioned it,” I said. “Probably some of the children playing at digging for buried treasure.”
“Or somebody meaning to bury something,” he said.
I hadn’t thought of that. But why dig all those holes to bury something—unless it was in several pieces? But I didn’t even want to go there.
“My cousin tells me you’re a writer,” I said. “Do you think I might’ve read any of your titles?”
“Not yet, but maybe someday.” He started back to the tractor. “Still trying to get published. Took a year off to see what I could do.”
“Any particular genre?”
“Something in the category of historical romance, more or less,” he said, swinging into the seat.
“Oh,” I said. It was all I could think to say since that wasn’t at all what I expected. Suspense, maybe, or even science fiction, but not romance! “Well, do join us for our picnic tonight,” I said. “There’ll be plenty of good food and you’re welcome to come. Uncle Ernest probably hasn’t had a chance to invite you after what happened to Ella.”
“Yeah, that was a pretty bad thing . . . just learned about it yesterday.” Casey Grindle jammed his grimy towel in a back pocket and clattered away. He never did answer about the picnic.
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“We have a problem,” I said to Grady when I found him practicing his putting on the shady side of the house.
He frowned. I had made him miss putting his golf ball into a circle of string. “Whatdaya mean?”
I told him about Uncle Ernest and the midnight digging.
“You think it might have something to do with that skeleton they found?” he asked.
I didn’t know, but I felt as if a chunk of iron was wedged inside my chest. Neither of us wanted to mention who we thought the skeleton might be.