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

The
Cemetery Club

Copyright
© 2014 by Blanche Manos and Barbara Burgess

All
rights reserved. No part of this book may be used or reproduced in any manner,
including

electronic
storage and retrieval systems, except by explicit written permission from the
publisher.

Brief
passages excerpted for review purposes are excepted.

All
characters appearing in this work are fictitious. Any resemblance

to
real persons, living or dead, is purely coincidental.

ISBN:
978-1-940222-86-8  

First
Edition

Printed
in the USA

Cover
and interior design by Kelsey Rice

Dedication
 

Blanche Day Manos:
The
Cemetery Club
is dedicated to my son, Matt Manos and
to my mother, Susie Latty Day. These two always encouraged and inspired
me. Co-
author Barbara Burgess and I also want to credit the memory of
our mutual
friend, Levern Jones, who
introduced us and so set the wheels of this book in
motion.

Chapter 1

When I awoke to sunshine,
blue skies, and the fragrance of freshly-perked coffee that morning, I had no
inkling that a few hours later the sun would be blotted out by menacing clouds
or that my mother and I would stumble upon a dead body in a brush pile in
Goshen Cemetery. Mom’s purpose in coming to the cemetery was to see what needed
to be done before Decoration Day, which would happen on the third Sunday of
this month of May. My purpose was simply to be with her.

But there it was—a bare
human foot sticking stiffly from a mound of dirt and tree limbs heaped in the
oldest part of the ancient graveyard called Goshen. Nature itself seemed to
recoil at the horror before us. Trees bowed and swayed in a macabre dance with
the wild wind while angry clouds brooded over the gray headstones. I had seen
more than one dead body in my years as an investigative reporter, but this
shocked me to the core because it was so unexpected and horrible.

Mom grabbed my arm. “Darcy,”
she said, “is that what I think it is?”

I swallowed before I could
answer. “I’m afraid so.”

“But—but, how can that be?”
Mom’s voice quavered. “Who is it? Come on, let’s uncover him. Maybe he is
alive. Maybe we can help.” She started toward the pile of debris.

I grabbed her hand. “No.
Don’t go there. We need to get the sheriff. Whoever is under that brush is
beyond all help.”

Flora Tucker did not take
advice easily. She pulled away from me and made a beeline for the grisly
object. Past examples of her courage flashed through my mind: Mom gently
carrying me to the doctor when, as a child, I fell from a tree and broke my
arm; another time, she loaded Dad’s old rifle and poked around the foundation
of our barn until she found and shot the copperhead that bit my father. She was
not a large woman, but she had a lot of grit.

Nevertheless, I tried to
stop her. “You shouldn’t see what’s under there,” I pleaded. “Think about it,
Mom. This is a job for the authorities.”

She shook off my hand as if
I were a pesky mosquito, grabbed a stick from that pile of trash, and began
scooting away the limbs and rocks until she uncovered a green plaid shirt.
Removing a few more sticks revealed arms folded across a man’s chest and just a
few inches under his arms gaped a ragged, dark bullet hole. Another two seconds
of digging and the dead man’s face appeared. He had a dark complexion and
longish gray hair.

Mom gasped and shuddered
like the limbs of the surrounding cedars. “It—it’s Ben,” she whispered.

I held my nose and leaned
forward. She was right. Ben Ventris, a longtime neighbor of Mom and Dad’s, lay
before me. I had visited in the Ventris home many years ago when Mrs. Ventris
was alive. I
remembered a comfortable house
and the scent of wood smoke. Their
farm connected to land owned by my
grandmother. But now, here was Ben, still and lifeless, thrown away like
someone’s trash. Tears stung my eyes.

Something else about Ben
Ventris did not look right, besides the fact that he was quite dead. Mom
noticed it at the same time as I. Her hand on my arm felt like a vise. “Look!”
she whispered hoarsely. “Oh, dear Lord, Darcy, look at Ben’s poor hand.”

I looked. Only a bloody
stump remained where the third finger of Ben’s left hand should have been.
Nausea welled up in my throat and I heard my mother gag.

“Somebody cut off Ben’s
finger,” Mom whispered.

As we stood, mesmerized by
the horror in front of us, a strange silence descended on the graveyard. I
raised my head to see what was happening. Dark clouds that had brooded above us
now moved and churned and a small eddy of whirling air pointed downward. My
heart stopped, then thudded against my ribs.

“That’s a tornado!” I
yelled. “If it drops, we are in trouble!”

As if in agreement, a low
roar began over our heads and wind, hail, and rain came at us, battling to
whirl us into the seething heavens.

Mom and I linked arms and
stumbled into the storm. Putting her mouth close to my ear, she shouted, “The
chapel!”

We struggled toward a small,
sandstone building at the edge of Goshen Cemetery. Rain blinded us, hail pelted
us, and tree branches flew past, but at last we reached the little building. I
tugged the door open and we both fell inside, gulping blessedly dry air.

Mom sank into a pew and I
leaned against the wall. The storm’s roar dimmed to a comparative quiet within
this sanctuary. I was about to sit beside my mother when I heard a sharp click
and felt a breeze eddy around me. A shiver traced its way down my spine. Had
the back door of the chapel just opened and closed?

“Who’s there?” I called.

“I don’t care who it was,”
Mom said, her teeth chattering. “Maybe someone else wanted out of the storm. At
the moment, I’d share space with Mick Monroney himself.”

While I doubted that it was
Ventris County’s notorious outlaw from the 1930s who had gone out of the door,
I could not see much in the dim room. I flipped the light switch. Nothing
happened. Evidently, the electric power was a victim of the storm.

Turning the lock in the
front door, I felt my way through murky semi-darkness to the other end of the
building. No shadowy figure lurked anywhere that I could see. Our arrival must
have sent someone who had sheltered here into the storm. Groping for the bolt
on the door, I slid it into place, and fumbled my way back to the pew where Mom
huddled.

“I wish I had a jacket to
put around you,” I said. “You must be chilled to the bone.”

“I’ll be all right,” she
said. “It’s the shock of finding Ben more than being cold. Do you have your
cell phone?”

Of course! Why hadn’t I
thought of that handy little electronic gadget? Delving into my purse, I found
it and flipped it open. I punched in 911. Nothing lit up nor buzzed nor played
music. I shook my head.

“No signal. We must be out
of range.”

Mom sighed. “There are lots
of hills around. That must be the reason. This storm will let up sooner or
later and then we can get safely back home.”

Getting safely back home, I
feared, might not be so easy. Wind pounded the chapel and did its best to come
in the door or through the roof. Lightning flashes lit up row after row of wood
benches inside our shelter. Thankfully, the benches had no other occupants. An
old, upright piano crouched in a shadowy corner, and a small table with a
lectern on top stood in front of the pews. My ancestors had gathered here in
this small cemetery for countless funerals and Decoration Days. Mom’s
grandfather helped build the chapel. Through the years, Goshen had been a place
to worship and for mourners to hear the comforting Word of God when burying a
loved one. However, after this traumatic day, Goshen Cemetery would never be
the same for me. Something more dreadful and violent than a spring storm had
happened here. A good man’s life had been cut short, wrested violently from him
by an unknown assassin.

“We need to pray, Darcy,”
Mom said softly. I nodded. Together, we began Psalm 91, the Protection Psalm. “
He
that dwelleth in the secret place of the most High shall abide under the shadow
of the Almighty.”

Mom and I needed the
assurance that God was with us. I once fully believed this, but events of the
last few months had done nothing to strengthen my faith. When my husband Jake
died, the ground shifted under my feet. My rock was gone. Why had God allowed
Jake to die? Did He care that I was suffering as I had never suffered before?
How could it be His will to cut short the life of one as honest and kind and
loving as my husband? Of course, I knew that Jake was in heaven, but what about
me? I was left to carry on somehow without him, and I sorely missed Jake
Campbell’s strong arms around me.

Returning to Levi, Oklahoma,
the place of my birth, yesterday gave me the eerie feeling that I had never
left. I came home seeking healing, hoping that being away from the Dallas house
that I had shared with Jake would somehow ease the aching loneliness. Since
that awful morning when I awoke in our bed and found that a heart attack had
stolen my husband, I had lived with emptiness. Moving through each nightmarish
day, I pretended that Jake was in the next room or had just gone downtown. At
other times, the cold fact that my husband would never return hit me full force
and I knew that, somehow, I would have to carry on without him. During the weeks
after Jake’s funeral, I wandered through the house, wondering what to do with
it and all the furnishings, unable to concentrate on my job at
The Dallas
Morning News
, even though the editor told me I could work from home. I
still had an unfinished assignment for the paper which was nowhere nearly
completed. Thankfully, Jake’s life insurance was enough so that I could take
time off from my job without financial worry.

Mom wanted me to come live
with her. She was lonely too, although Dad had died twenty years before. So,
when my house sold, I loaded up my personal belongings and headed back to Levi,
hoping some of my mother’s courage would rub off on me.

A brilliant flash, a roar,
and a crash jarred me out of my reverie. The chapel shuddered.

“The oak,” Mom said.
“Lightning must have hit the old oak by the back door. I felt in my bones this
morning that a rain was coming but I didn’t know it was going to be a storm
like this.”

The tree seemed to have
landed on the roof. I hoped it would not come through.

Mom squeezed my arm. “Darcy,
I am sorry that you have had such a sad welcome home. I wanted you to feel safe
here.”

“I will admit that finding a
dead body and being in the middle of the storm of the century is a little
different than I imagined,” I said. “It is, however, a homecoming I’ll never
forget.”

Actually, it was more than
memorable—horrible came to mind. And, “safe” was not a good description of the
way I felt at the moment. Would a storm obliterate us or would Ben’s murderer
get to us first?

Was it only this morning
that the neighbor’s old gray mule had brayed a welcome to a beautiful spring
day? The sun had dappled the leaves of the maple in Mom’s front yard and
brought out the heavenly scent of peonies by the gate. Standing beside those
bushes more than twenty years ago, my boyfriend had kissed me for the first
time. Not Jake; not at that time. It was tall, slim, and handsome Grant
Hendley, the man of my girlhood dreams. Where was Grant now? Had life dealt
well with him?

Mom interrupted my thoughts.
“Listen, Darcy.”

“I don’t hear anything.”

“Right. We don’t hear
anything. The storm is over!”

My knees wobbled when I
stood up and my mother evidently felt the same. “I am as weak as a kitten,” she
said. “I guess that’s what comes of being scared about half to death.”

Taking her arm, I led her to
the front door. “Let’s see if your Toyota will start or if it has been washed
down the hill and into the creek. I hope we can get back to town and there are
no trees across the road.”

“But, Darcy,” Mom said,
“you’re forgetting poor Ben. Someone should stay with him. You go on home and
get the sheriff. I’ll stay.”

I stared at her. “Are you
kidding? I’m not letting you out of my sight. There is a murderer loose
somewhere around here. Ben is dead and we can’t help him now. My concern is for
you. You need dry clothes and something hot to drink. We are both going into
Levi and get the law out here as fast as we can.”

Unlocking
the door, I tugged it open. Grass swam with water.
Rivulets
ran here and there like small creeks. The huge oak lay at a
crazy angle across the back of the roof, its
roots sticking out of the mud.
Faded flowers in forlorn little heaps
were scattered among the graves and tangled in trees. Sunlight filtered through
remnants of racing
clouds. At the back of
the cemetery, that mound of debris was still
there but, thankfully, it
was so far away that we could not distinguish Ben’s body.

Mom sighed. “How in the
world will we ever have things ready for Decoration Day? And how can we even
have a Decoration when somebody has murdered poor Ben?”

I guided her around a
water-filled hole. “It will be a job for your cemetery club. If anybody can set
this place to rights again, it is you, Flora Tucker. Let’s hurry. Who knows if
the killer has gone or if he’s somewhere around here.”