Bodies & Buried Secrets: A Rosewood Place Mystery (Rosewood Place Mysteries Book 1) (12 page)

Annie held her breath as she peeled open the cover of the ancient book. It looked as though it had been very pretty at one time, but age had darkened the leather cover and yellowed the pages, which were now soft, brittle, and felt as though they would simply turn to dust in her hands as she turned them.

The book appeared to be a journal, and at first, Annie couldn’t tell if the flowery handwriting inside belonged to a man or a woman. After reading a few pages, Annie realized that she was reading a diary, and the author was definitely a woman. A date jumped out at her--1831--written at the top of the first page. Annie marveled at how well such an old book had managed to hold up, squirreled away between the floorboards for over two centuries. It was very fragile, very delicate, but still intact, and more importantly, its words were clear and legible.

Forgetting her original reason for returning to the attic, Annie sat back against one wall of the hallway and began reading the entries in the journal. The first few were almost boring, relaying the journal owner’s daily interactions with the staff at the plantation. Then the tone of the entries changed, and Annie realized that the book had been written by a woman, most likely a young one, and this young lady had most definitely been in love.

I have met the most wonderful man today. An acquaintance of my brother’s, Mister Edward McKinney is a most splendid visitor to our dreadfully boring plantation! He had some business with John, but thankfully my brother didn’t keep him busy for too long, and Edward did entreat me to take a walk with him down by the water of the old bracken pond. John was furious, as he sees himself more of a father figure than a brother since our beloved Papa joined Mama in Heaven last spring.

Edward did regale me with tales of his travels, and he claims that he is descended from most fearsome pirates, why, Blackbeard himself! I have reserved judgment on his outlandish tales, for he is most charming and yet, ever such a gentleman that he dared not even ask to touch my hand as we made our way across the plantation. I do hope that his travels bring him to our farm yet again, and I dare say that I hope he deems me worthy despite our family’s wicked circumstances.

Annie wondered what ‘wicked circumstances’ the girl meant, but as she read further entries, each one discussing the girl’s growing fondness for Edward McKinney, she realized that the Cooper family’s bad luck seemed to be infamous in Coopersville.

Despite the fact that my own family name is upon this town in which my family has dared to settle, and despite the fact that our plantation has grown and flourished, there are those who wish to see our suffering continue and our degradation become complete. My dear brother has informed me that the Governor himself has been blackening the Cooper name, declaring that my father’s fortunes were made not from honest farming, but from stealing slaves from larger plantations and selling them into North Carolina. I am outraged at his candid insult of my family’s name, and I am furious that my poor brother now bears the scorn of such nonsense.

Our crops were, indeed, blighted this spring by the late freeze and harsh storms, but John assures me that we are in no financial dangers at present. Still, I can’t help but wish Papa and Mama were here to shoulder the burden and tell us what we should do. John grows pale from lack of sleep, and I have been feeling unwell for a fortnight, struggling to keep myself from sinking into a black mood from which I fear I might not recover.

Only the thought of seeing my dear Edward keeps me looking upward. I feel as though God himself has sent him to us, for he has been counseling John in some business dealings that both assure me will see us through these desperate times. We had to sell three of our strongest slaves, and I fear that they went to masters who would mistreat them and beat them terribly. My heart aches, for though I know that my family thrives on the backs of their labor, my family would never wish to see a slave mistreated or harmed. It pains me to think of their families, lost to them now as my own dear Papa and Mama are to me. Perhaps John’s business dealings will prove most fruitful so that we may buy back our slaves and reunite them with their loved ones.

Annie’s stomach churned as she read this entry. She’d always known that slavery was a part of her town’s past, but reading about actual slaves and their young owner made her want to cry. At least, she consoled herself, it seemed that Rose’s family had treated the slaves well and worried about their safety. Annie wondered whether the Coopers were ever able to regain the slaves that they sold, but Rose’s further entries did not mention them. In fact, there were not many more entries in the journal, and as Annie read on, she began to understand why.

I am inclined to conceal these words, my own true feelings and thoughts, from even my own brother, but especially as John has told me that there are those who wish to see our home taken from us. My beloved Edward is gone, having left us to travel north for business which could take some time. I am not a fool, for I know that he does not love me as I do love him, but I fear I won’t be long for this world, and a small love is better than none at all.

John freed most of our slaves last month. He sent them north with Edward, who would take them to a city where they might find employment. There are men who despise my brother for his actions, because they say he is inspiring a dangerous hope among other blacks, but I know he did the right thing. We can barely fill our own bellies, and we will not starve our slaves nor send them to their doom on another farm. Our plantation is not thriving, but it is not because of the slaves. I do believe that my family’s terrible luck has passed to John and now myself. They say that curses are merely stories made to frighten children, but I believe that we are under a powerful curse, one that will not be ever broken.

It seems as though we are destined to suffer, though only the Lord knows why. Our plantation has been in the family for many years, but I fear that if something doesn’t change soon, John may be the last Cooper to sow a field on these lands. He has begun courting, at least, and if he marries, perhaps there is hope that new blood will cleanse the curse of bad luck and bring success to our family once again.

I hide my words within these walls, with a small token of my beloved Edward. I wear his trinkets and hope that he thinks of me, but what small hope for our union has been vanquished. In my heart of hearts, I fear I will not see him again.

In faith, in the year of our Lord, 1833.

Annie closed the book and stared at it for a long moment. Two years of this young woman’s life, captured in these pages and hidden away for over two-hundred years. She felt both saddened and amazed by the words she’d read, and she realized with some horror that nearly an hour had passed since she’d come to the attic to close the door. Placing the diary and the golden coin carefully to one side, she pushed the board back into place in the floor, where it fit perfectly. The bulge in the wood was no longer noticeable, and the door closed easily with a small sigh, as though the house had waited all these years to disclose Rose’s journal.

Holding her discovery close to her chest, Annie made her way back downstairs, where Bessie was napping in one of the chairs in the mostly empty sitting room. Annie looked around the room for someplace safe to stash the book and coin until she had time to do something with them, and she settled on a drawer in an end table by the sofa. She had just closed the drawer when Bessie startled herself awake with a snort.

“Oh, did you go get Rory out of jail yet?” Apparently, Bessie wasn’t wasting time with niceties. “What time is it?”

Annie checked her cell phone. It was just gone five o’clock, and most attorneys would be gone from their offices by now. She cursed herself for not reacting sooner, but she knew that nothing she did could guarantee that they’d let Rory out of the small county jail Emmett had taken him to.

“Let me call and see if I can offer to post bail at least,” she sighed, speaking as much to herself as she did her mother.

One phone call and ten minutes later, Annie was armed with the knowledge that Rory could be released the following day if she posted fifty thousand dollars’ worth of bail money.

“Fifty-thousand?” Bessie cried, “that’s impossible! And he’s innocent!” Annie knew from reading the New York Times that the figure was actually very low for the crime that Rory had been accused of. She also knew that it was very unusual for a suspect to be offered bail when a murder weapon bearing their fingerprints had been located. Something felt fishy about the whole thing, so she called the police department back one more time and asked if she could speak to Rory. At first, the officer who answered the telephone denied her request, but it was followed by a clumsy question.

“Wait, is this Annie Richards?” Annie cringed as she recognized Delbert’s nasally voice on the other end of the line. “Oh, well then, since it’s you, I guess I could make an exception.”

Annie forced herself to say a thank you to the young officer, then she waited patiently to be put through to Rory. It took a few minutes, but finally, she heard Emmett’s cheerful voice reminding her that all calls are monitored, and finally Rory answered.

“Hello?” He sounded surprisingly calm for someone who had just been arrested and accused of murder.

“Rory, thank goodness you sound alright! I mean, have they been mean to you or anything?” Annie had seen far too many news broadcasts highlighting police brutality, and now the scenes played through her mind in a tortuous manner.

“They’ve been fine,” he replied, clearing his throat. “In fact, the Chief had just brought me some dinner before you called. Meatloaf, mashed potatoes, and peach cobbler for dessert, definitely better than some hotels I’ve stayed in.” His attempt at humor irked Annie, but she was relieved that he was okay.

She wanted to tell him about the diary and coin that she’d found, but she was afraid that Emmett might be listening, so she simply told him that she’d be posting bail the next day.

“You can’t do that,” he replied, his calm demeanor slipping a little. “You don’t have that kind of money.”

“Well, that’s what bail bondsmen are for,” she replied, blowing out a mouthful of air in an exaggerated sigh. “My mother swears that you are innocent, and by golly, she’s never wrong. Rory, we’re getting you out of there, come hell or high water, and we will find out who’s really behind Suzy’s murder.”

Now it was Rory’s turn to sigh. “Good lord, Annie, you never could see a losing battle when you walked into one, could you? Look, I know I’m innocent, but the evidence says otherwise, and I have a record. This might not work out the way you want it to, and you can’t afford to lose your money if the police can’t find out who really killed Suzy.”

Annie ground her teeth together. She didn’t want to be told that she was a sucker, that she couldn’t tell when to quit. “I’m not walking away from this. Unlike some people, I stick by my friends when things get tough.” She thought the jab would make her feel better, but it didn’t. “And I’m not putting money up,” she said with a spark of defiance.

“Well, what are you--” Realization stopped Rory’s sentence. “No. Absolutely not.”

“I don’t have any choice,” Annie replied, her voice wobbling just slightly. “It’s the only thing I have that’s worth anything, and I know you’re innocent, so it’s all we can do.”

Annie could feel Rory’s frustration through the phone. “Annie, you cannot use the farmhouse for collateral.”

“Rory,” she replied, her voice softening as she spoke. “It’s as good as done. Now, you go eat your supper before it gets cold, and I’ll be there in the morning with the cavalry to bust you out. We’ve got ourselves a murder to solve and a killer to catch.”

As she ended the call, Annie steeled her determination. She would find out who really killed Suzy Anderson, and she would keep her home. Nothing would stop her, not even a killer with a thirst for hidden treasure or secrets buried centuries ago.

Coopersville’s police station was bigger than Annie remembered it being from her youth, and it had been relocated across town to accommodate its larger size. It was a strange amalgamation of both stern authoritarian in structure and a welcoming respite for those weary pedestrians who liked to amble through town on a Saturday morning. There were numerous stone benches dotting the front lawn of the building and several pretty little dogwood trees to provide shade. Annie wondered briefly just how much of the townspeople’s tax dollars had gone to pay for this lovely little setup that she couldn’t imagine ever using herself.

“Who wants to hang out in front of a police station?” Devon asked, echoing her own thoughts.

“We will,” Bessie said grimly, “if they don’t let Rory out immediately. We won’t go anywhere until that innocent man has been freed.”

Annie loved her mother’s determination, but she just hoped that positive thinking and the help of the kindly bail bondsman would be enough to take Rory home. The police had returned to her house the previous evening and towed Rory’s truck away, tools, camper, and all. She imagined they would return them once they were satisfied that there was no further evidence to be obtained, but for now, they wouldn’t be able to do any work on the house.

The tiniest flicker of doubt fluttered in her stomach. If Rory was guilty, she really would lose everything she owned, and her mother would, too. She rubbed her temples, pushing that fluttering, foul feeling away. She had to remain positive, and she had to stay on her toes. If they were going to free Rory for good, she’d need to learn to search for clues like a cop, and she’d need to think just like a killer.

The heavy glass doors clanged shut behind them with a thud, and Bessie began assailing the poor woman behind the front desk with her demands and pleas.

“We are here to take Mr. Rory Jenkins home, young lady. My daughter has all the paperwork, so if you’d please be so kind as to bring him on out here, I would be ever so grateful. And would you kindly tell that no good Chief of Police, Emmett Smith, that I have formally rescinded my invitation to come and eat fried chicken at my home.” The young black woman looked blankly from Bessie to Annie, the latter of whom shrugged in apology.

“Ma’am, I’ll have to go get the Chief for you, but if you’d like to have a seat--”

“We won’t be sitting until justice is served!” Bessie cried, waving her wrinkled fist in the air. Her silver hair bobbed as she shook her head in defiance.

“Mother, sit down. She said she’s going to help us, so don’t be rude.” Annie spoke firmly to her mother, and the older woman blushed.

“I’m sorry, “ she said apologetically to the woman behind the glass partition. “I just get a little over-excited when an injustice has been done.”

The young woman stood, smiled awkwardly, and stepped into a room behind the partition. Annie’s family waited in bloated silence. A few minutes later, Emmett Barnes stepped through the door, a smile planted firmly on his face.

“I don’t know what you are smiling about, you two-faced old bat,” Bessie began, leaping out of her seat and marching up to the counter.

“Now, Miss Bessie, I am truly sorry if I gave you the wrong idea,” Emmett apologized, his smile slipping for the moment. “I didn’t enjoy having to arrest Rory back there, but you have to understand that we need to check every single possibility when we are dealing with murder.” He went to a door in the side of the enclosed front office and used a key to let himself out. Now that he was standing face to face with Bessie, Annie could tell that Emmett was sincere. His eyes still retained their kindly expression, and the lines around them were no doubt the result of many hours of lost sleep and worry. She didn’t envy him his job, that was for sure.

“Annie, Bessie, I’ll be sending Rory out in just a minute. I just wanted to have a word with you, ask you some questions real quick before he leaves here.”

Annie had stood upon seeing Emmett, and she now stepped forward, putting herself between her still-angry mother and the elderly Police Chief. “Emmett, I’m happy to answer your questions, but just know that I have a lawyer on speed dial if I feel that you are trying to mess with my rights, or with Rory’s rights,” she added.

His grin flickered back into place for a moment. “I can see you get your sassiness from your beautiful mother here,” he retorted, one eyebrow cocking jauntily as he looked from Bessie to Annie. “Rest assured I’m not going to be putting you in any dangerous legal situations. I just need to know if anyone else at all has been sniffing around your place, asking questions about the house or Suzy Anderson’s murder.”

Annie hesitated only briefly before recalling Daniel’s visit. She relayed the details of his appearance to Emmett, who nodded silently. “Do you think he had something to do with Suzy’s murder?” Annie asked, grasping for some explanation that didn’t implicate Rory.

“Oh, well, now, I don’t know about that,” Emmett replied carefully. “Maybe he’s just looking for answers like the rest of us, but if I were you, I wouldn’t encourage him to visit again. The police are handling this investigation, and he would do well to just leave us to it.”

The finality of Emmett’s tone told Annie that he wouldn’t be offering to speak more on the subject of Daniel Tremaine, so she tried a different approach. “Is there some sort of unspoken mythology about the Rosewood place? I mean, why on earth are people turning up dead on a property that’s barely been lived in for ages?”

Emmett scratched his chin, then smoothed his impressive mustache. “It’s not unspoken, per se, but it’s just not common knowledge. Or, if folks know about it, most just assume it’s a made up story.”

“What’s a made up story?” Bessie’s curiosity replaced her indignation, if only for a moment. “Tell us what you know about our house, Emmett.”

He hitched up his trousers by the belt loops and sniffed once to prepare for his tale. “That property has been inhabited by some folk or another since the early 1700’s, but the house itself, well, that’s changed a lot throughout the years. I suppose you know Elijah Cooper, the founder of Coopersville, won it off of some fella in a card game. Well, even with over a hundred acres of land, that plantation never did thrive, not the way it ought to have thrived. The Upcountry was poor in those days, nothing like the lower part of the state.

Elijah Cooper’s family hailed from Charleston, or so they say. He was a poor man looking to build a name for himself, so he moved upstate and took to buying, or winning, land, as the case may be. He started out with mostly just land, but he took a shine to the plot where your place sits now and built himself a little shanty.”

Annie tried to imagine the upper part of her home state as wild frontier lands, but it was hard to imagine. Even on her little country plot she could see the impact of modern civilization on the power lines and telephone poles that dotted the horizon. She nodded along as Emmett continued his history lesson.

“People started saying that Cooper’s land was cursed, most likely because illness swept through these parts in 1730. Cooper’s wife and two of his four children died, but he still had two more children, and they took over the land after he got too old. Well, it passed down for a few generations, but never took off and became as successful as some of the other big farms in the Upstate, and certainly nowhere near as successful as those in the Low country.”

“How do you know all this?” Annie asked, her curiosity getting the better of her. “I mean, are you a history buff, or maybe your last name is really Cooper?”

Emmett smiled weakly. “No, ma’am, I’m no history buff. My wife, Marjorie, was a history teacher at the high school for forty years.”

Bessie made a noise in the back of her throat. “So you are married? Well, now, that is interesting.” She gave him a look out of the side of her eye that clearly told him she was not impressed.

“I was married, Miss Purdy. I am a widower, but I did have the great fortune to be married to a woman who knew more about these parts than most history books. She did share a great deal of that knowledge with me, but I’m afraid that she took a great deal more to the Pearly Gates with her when she passed.”

Bessie’s mouth puckered in surprise, and her cheeks flushed with embarrassment. “Oh, dear, I am sorry to hear that.” She put a hand on his arm and gave him a comforting pat. “My own dear Robert passed five years ago, and it still catches me by surprise some days.”

Emmett smiled, nodded, and continued his tale. “It seems like every generation of Coopers had something bad happen to it, from crop blight wiping out whole fields to sickness killing off family members or slaves. But sometime in the 1800’s things turned around for the family. That was also when the farmhouse started being called Rosewood Plantation. It was likely named for one of the Cooper girls, Rose Cooper, but it could have also been because rose bushes seemed to thrive there. Used to be a ton of wild roses growing all over those parts, but you hardly ever come across them now.

Rose’s brother, John, was running the place back in the 1830’s. He was pretty notable in these parts for being one of the few anti-slavery slave-owners. Caused a big ruckus when he freed his slaves, but he was likely freeing them because his crops had failed. There wasn’t much point in having slaves if you didn’t have crops to tend,” he explained. “Anyhow, about the same time as the ruckus about the slaves happened, John came into some money. He’d been doing some wheeling and dealing with a few unscrupulous characters, and it appeared that one of them helped him come into a small fortune.

Unfortunately, local lore also says this fella broke Rose’s heart. Not long after the Coopers’ money problems cleared up, Rose Cooper died. John never did marry, and the house was sold outside the family when he died in 1875. It changed hands a few times, but it seems nobody wanted it for very long. They always seemed to think the place had a curse on it, or so the history books say.”

Annie considered the journal entries she’d read in Rose’s diary, and she felt very sad for the girl. Still, she couldn’t see how any of this equated to stolen pirate’s loot being buried on the land. “What on earth would any of this have to do with why people are looking for some secret buried treasure on my property?” She exhaled loudly.

“Who told you people are looking for buried pirate treasure on your property?” Emmett looked confused.

Annie blushed. “Well, actually, no one did, but Rory, Devon, and I--”

“And me,” added Bessie, “Don’t forget I told you I thought there was some sort of treasure buried at the place.”

Annie rubbed her temples, continuing where she’d been interrupted. “We knew that the house was really old, we knew that people talked about pirates being in the area all those years ago, trafficking slaves up into North Carolina, and we just…” she trailed off. “Well, I guess we just jumped to conclusions, that’s all.” She suddenly felt very foolish saying all of this to Emmett, but to his credit, he didn’t laugh at her or try to make her feel stupid. Instead, he surprised her with what he did next.

Emmett reached into his pocket and pulled out an ancient gold coin, almost identical to the one that Annie had found under the attic floorboards. “Would you believe me if I told you that I think I found part of whatever’s hidden there?”

Annie felt her heart climb her rib cage. Two coins. Both from her land. “Emmett, I think I’m prepared to believe anything right about now,” she replied, willing herself to calm down before she passed out right there in the police station.