Chapter 12
The Monday following Decoration Day was bright and beautiful, but to my mother and me a pall hung over the morning. The death of Skye Ventris was almost beyond comprehension. When Grant, Jim Clendon, and the EMTs arrived at Goshen yesterday, they were grim and suspicious of everyone. Grant questioned Patricia Harris, Tom Bill Monroney, Viola Prender, Hiram Schuster, and Mom and me. They would have talked to Jasper but Pat’s son had disappeared. Nobody could find him nor knew where he might have gone, including his mother. Shock and disbelief shone on the faces of everyone at the cemetery, and I didn’t see how the killer could have been anyone gathered inside the chapel.
I felt as if I had lost a family member, not that I knew Skye very well, but I had talked to her only a few days ago. Could I have done anything to prevent this? Should I have warned her of possible danger? When I was in Oklahoma City, I could have looked her up, but Allred’s death seemingly froze my thinking process.
Mom lifted the lid on a pot of pinto beans simmering on the stove. “I wonder what happened to Jasper?” she asked. “I wonder if he didn’t see Skye in that creek before he ran off.”
Putting two plates on the table, I asked, “Are you sure he wouldn’t become violent enough to kill someone? He really lost his temper with Tom Bill; however, there wasn’t enough time between his running out of the chapel and our finding Skye to choke her to death. I suppose he could have killed her before the business meeting.”
“I have never seen him angry before today,” Mom said. “I think he feels protective of his mother and didn’t like what the others were insinuating. I don’t know why they suspected Pat of anything. She’s as honest as the day is long.”
“It’s just too bad Jasper ran away,” I said.
“I’ve watched that boy grow up,” Mom said. “He sort of withdrew and became a loner. I was surprised to see him at the cemetery yesterday. Other children laughed at him when he was a youngster because he was different, so he stayed to himself. For as long as I’ve known them, it’s always been just Pat and Jasper.”
“Maybe he already knew that Skye was dead and he was afraid to tell anyone, afraid he’d be blamed. Maybe that was why he was so ready to take on Tom Bill.”
“I don’t know . . .” she paused at the sound of a car’s horn. “That would be the mailman. Cliff always honks if he has letters for me.”
“I’ll go check,” I said.
The mailbox contained the usual bills and ads and a long, white, official-looking envelope. There was no return address but the cancelled stamp read Oklahoma City.
Wiping her hands on her apron, Mom took the envelopes. She put the bills on the cabinet and the ads in the wastebasket. She pulled a letter from the long, white envelope and gasped. “Why, it’s from Skye Ventris. She had to have mailed it only a day or two before she was killed.”
In a voice that shook, Mom read aloud, “Miss Flora and Darcy, here is the map to the treasure that Dad told you about. I don’t think you were supposed to have it unless something happened to him. Well, it has happened and I hope he was right in sharing this with you. I’m afraid if word gets out that you have the map, you may be in danger. The map isn’t clear and when I come to Levi in a few days, I want to take you and show you where the gold is. It’s easier to show than tell you. Something recently caused Dad to worry about his safety. He mentioned his past catching up with him but he wouldn’t tell me more. Somebody had come to visit him, somebody who worried him, but he wouldn’t say who it was. Anyway, this is the map to the gold. I don’t need it. I have it memorized. Since Dad is no longer with us, I thought I should send a copy of his will too. Blessings on both of you, my friends. Skye.”
Mom read the will and sat down suddenly. She handed the papers to me. I skimmed the ancient map. It made no sense to me. Then I glanced at Ben’s will and sat down too.
Picking up my glass of iced tea, I pressed it against my hot forehead.
“Unbelievable,” I whispered. “Mom, Ben’s will states that in the event anything happens to both him and Skye, you are heir to everything he owns.”
“I know,” she whispered weakly.
Pouring her a glass of sweet tea, I said, “It’s too much to take in, especially while we are dealing with Skye’s and Ben’s deaths. Let’s look at the map. Maybe you can recognize some landmarks. I can’t.”
The paper on which the map was drawn was so old that it was yellow and brittle. The edges crumbled under my touch. Tiny holes and spots pockmarked it.
“I guess those symbols are trees.” I pointed to some triangles with stems. “And I suppose these lumpy things could be rocks. That squiggly line is the river, maybe?”
Turning to Mom, I said, “This county is full of trees and rocks. As well as the river, several creeks run through. This map is a puzzle to me. If anyone is smart enough to decipher it, he deserves the gold!”
“Wait, wait,” Mom said, pointing at one edge of the old document. “See those letters and numbers at the top? That looks like a land description. Run back and get my mother’s abstract to her land. It’s in my cedar chest.”
For years I had tried to persuade my mother to rent a safety deposit box but she put her trust in the security of that cedar chest. Finding the old abstract, I brought it to her. She opened it, scanned the land description of Granny Grace’s acres and then compared them with the faded symbols on the map.
Her eyes shone as she looked at me. “I know where this area is. It joins my mother’s land.”
“Do you know what that means? The gold must be somewhere just over the line between Ben’s farm and Granny’s.” I swallowed half my glass of tea.
She pointed to the squiggly line. “I don’t think that line is the Ventris River. I think it’s that little creek between our land and Ben’s.”
“The creek where I saw Jasper noodling,” I said.
Mom turned the map around. “And this extra big triangle must represent an extra-large tree; maybe one of those sycamores.”
“Yes, but which one? There are lots of tall sycamores along the creek.
Other faded markings on the ancient paper seemed to be written with the Cherokee syllabary. To decipher them, we’d need an expert in the Cherokee language.
My head began to ache and my mother rubbed her eyes. “Let’s take a break,” I said. “We can look at this again after lunch.”
Going to the stove, I began ladling beans into a brown crockery bowl. “We are going to have to find this gold, whether we want to or not,” I said.
Mom pulled a pan of crusty cornbread from the oven. “You’re right. Until the gold is found and turned over to the sheriff, that killer is going to be a menace. Maybe after he knows that he can’t get his hands on Ben’s treasure, we’ll be safe.”
“And, maybe Grant will nab him,” I said, sitting down at the table.
Nobody bakes cornbread like my mother. I buttered a slab and took a bite.
“An alternative to searching for the gold would be to hop a plane to some place far away,” I mused.
My mother evidently had changed her mind about taking a trip. “When I let a petty crook run me out of my home, I’ll be ready to meet my Maker.”
“Poor choice of words, Mom, but I know what you mean. We really must do our best to find that gold. Maybe in finding it we’ll also bring Ben’s killer to justice.”
She nodded. “To me, that’s far more important than the gold.”
We studied the map for an hour after lunch but were no closer to guessing what it meant. At last, I rubbed my aching back and stood up. “I’m taking a break from this thing and going to my computer. Hopefully, writing down the order of recent events will help me think more clearly.”
My mother nodded, but kept gazing at the enigmatic map.
Putting my glass of tea on the floor beside me, I sat down at the computer and typed:
First Event: Ben Ventris’s death, disappearance, and finding the missing finger
Second Event: Ray Drake?
??s visit. Drake had lied to us about being an FBI agent; instead, he was part of a bloodthirsty Chicago mob, but how would he know about Ben’s gold? Chicago was a long way from Levi.
Third Shocker: Someone shot at me while I was on my grandmother’s land. I remembered the bitter taste of fear and my heart catapulting into my throat.
Shivering, I wrote: The Fourth Occurrence: finding the body of Jason Allred. Who had gotten to the antique shop ahead of us? Had Allred told the murderer about the gold? If the killer had been looking for the gold medallion, he tore up the whole shop without finding it.
Fifth: Someone tried to break into Mom’s house. Neither she nor I had slept well since that night. Mom was evidently a target but why would the murderer want her out of the way? Judging from my close encounter with the shooter, I was a target too.
Again, I wished that Ben had not involved my mother in any of this mystery about hidden gold and sending her a map. Not that the map would do us much good, because we had no idea what it meant. Whether the killer knew about Ben’s will or the map, he would probably guess that Ben had confided in her because of their friendship.
This last murder was, to me, even more horrifying: Shocker Number Six: Patricia Harris found Skye Ventris’s body in the creek in back of Goshen Cemetery.
Now Jasper was missing and if the rumors flying around town were correct, so was Tom Bill. Gossip had it that Jasper may have killed both Skye and Tom Bill but I didn’t think so. To my way of thinking, Tom Bill decided it was wise for him to get out of Dodge until Jasper calmed down; however, I could be wrong.
As I stared at the list, I realized something else. Mom and I discovered the first and second murder victims; Patricia Harris found the third one. Mom and Pat both served on the Goshen Cemetery board. Adding to the weirdness was the fact that both Skye and Ben had, in all probability, been killed elsewhere then their bodies taken to Goshen. Allred was left in his shop in Oklahoma City, but the Ventris murders pivoted around a cemetery. This must be significant, but how?
Finishing my glass of tea, I stared at the computer screen without reaching any conclusions. There was one thing I could do to make my mother and me a bit safer. I’d call the only home security business in Levi.
Les Cooper of Watchful Eyes Security assured me that he would come as soon as he could. Since the murders, everybody in town either wanted a security system or a dog. I figured that the electronic watchdog would require less upkeep.
“Can’t you come tomorrow?” I asked.
“Sorry, Miss Darcy. I can’t do that. But I’ll get you all fixed up before the week is done. That much, I can promise.”
I returned to the computer—that wonder device. How had I ever managed without it?
Googling “Dahlonega gold” and the “state of Georgia” led me deep into American history. The California gold rush is something every schoolchild learns about, but significant amounts were also mined in northern Georgia. According to one website, Hernando De Soto first visited North Georgia in 1540 because he had heard rumors of gold. Indians who lived along the Chattahoochee River discovered it. Who knew how many years that occurred before De Soto?
By the time the soft spring dusk shaded into night, I felt that I could sleep even if a whole carload of bad guys were camped outside. I had gone over and over my list of events, and before I turned off the computer I sent out emails to eight colleagues at my Dallas newspaper. I asked whether anyone had any knowledge of legends concerning gold brought into Oklahoma from the east.
Newspaper folk are an odd bunch. There’s a lot of pushing and shoving for a good story, but when one of them sends out a call for help, they will come through. Hopefully, I’d get at least one good lead and maybe somebody would be well-versed in the Cherokee language and could decipher that map of Ben’s.
My search for information would wait until tomorrow. There was quite a bit of cornbread left from noon. Mom still slept upstairs, so instead of waking her, I heated the cornbread, poured a glass of milk, and sat down to a bedtime snack. Hopefully, tomorrow would hold some answers. Surely it was time for at least a few pieces of the puzzle to start falling into place. I felt as if I were lost in the woods and every turn I made only led me farther in.