Read Online The Angel Whispered Danger by Mignon F. Ballard - Free Book Online

dab at her eyes.
    “I’m not so sure about that.” Violet fanned herself with a dog-eared bulletin from Bishop’s Bridge Presbyterian Church, then frowned as she read an item on the back. “I’ll be doggoned, I didn’t know Sally Rae Johnson had had her baby! A boy this time, named for—”
    “Never mind Sally Rae Johnson!” Ma Maggie’s face was red and she puffed out her cheeks like she might blow any minute. “What makes you say that?”
    “Say what?” Our cousin started fanning again.
    “That you aren’t sure Ella stumbled off that ledge.” My grandmother walked across the room to stand over Violet. She cast a long shadow. “Are you saying it wasn’t an accident?”
    Violet sat straighter. “I’m saying it
might
not have been, that’s all. After all, Ella
told
Kate she was pushed, and I heard somebody down in those woods today—sounded like two people talking. Could’ve been one of them.”
    Uncle Lum frowned. “I can’t imagine why. When was this?”
    “Just a little while ago . . . an hour or so, I guess. I was helping Ella look for her cat.” Violet’s lip trembled. “You know how she dotes on that animal.” She frowned. “And Ella said something else, something about a voice—or voices. Maybe she heard them, too.”
    Deedee sat across from her, absently rubbing a spot on her shorts. It didn’t go away. “You probably heard the Belle Fleurs cleaning off the cemetery,” she said.
    “The what?” Uncle Lum started to smile, then apparently thought better of it.
    “The Belle Fleurs Garden Club. They were to start clearing that old graveyard today, the one that adjoins this property.”
    “Remeth. Yes, I know. Lived down the road from it all my life,” Violet reminded her. “But the voices weren’t coming from there. They were more in the direction of the river; and I thought I saw somebody moving about down there.”
    “People hike through there all the time,” Grady reminded her. “I wouldn’t take what Ella said about being pushed too seriously; after all, she got a pretty bad lick on the head.”
    Ma Maggie moved to the window and pushed aside draperies that used to be green, but now were more of a coppery tan. Dust motes swirled in the sun. “It doesn’t look good,” she said. “Especially at her age. I think we . . . why, there’s that cat!”
    I hurried to stand beside her. “What cat? You mean Dagwood?”
    “See for yourself,” my grandmother said, stepping aside so I could get a better look. And sure enough, there was Ella’s big orange cat curled up on one of the stone banisters fast asleep. Our uncle’s collie, Amos, dozed nearby.
    “Well, what do you know about that?” Aunt Leona came in from the kitchen just then with a tray of lemonade (sugar-free, of course). “Probably been here all along.”
    Violet peered over my shoulder. “Unless those men frightened him away—poor baby.”
    “What men?” Lum wanted to know.
    “Why, the men I heard earlier in the woods. I expect they were looking for the gold.” Violet nodded in agreement with herself.
    “What gold?” Grady winked at me behind her back.
    “The Confederate gold, silly! Everybody knows Webster Templeton was one of the party that accompanied what was left of the Confederate gold out of Richmond—and then it just disappeared. It could be here as well as anywhere.” She frowned at all of us in turn. “Well, couldn’t it?”
    Nobody spoke. Leona chugalugged a lemonade. Ma Maggie closed her eyes for so long I thought she’d fallen asleep.
    “Poor Ella might’ve come upon them just as they found it,” Violet added, looking about. “Yes, and they would have had to make sure she didn’t tell.”
    “How convenient for them that she wandered to the edge of a drop-off looking for a lost cat,” Grady muttered. But Violet didn’t hear him.
    My grandmother looked at Violet and shook her head. “Whatever the reason, I think some of us should get over to the hospital and keep Ernest company.