Secrets of Harmony Grove (42 page)

My grandmother and I concluded our call soon after that, and before I went back inside I forced myself to sit there on the wicker couch and process everything I had learned and how that applied to the situation with Troy.

Daphne’s journal described finding diamonds.

Troy had obviously read Daphne’s journal.

He had already known that the grove here was created as a replica of the one in Germany. My guess was that after reading the journal he had assumed Abe would have used the same hiding place over here that Daphne’s father
had used over there. Following that logic, it made perfect sense for Troy to conclude that the diamonds were buried at the base of the Fishing Tree. So had he found that tree? More important, had he found the diamonds?

I still couldn’t know for sure, but at least after speaking with my grandmother I had a far better idea about the diamonds’ original source. I was also more determined than ever to hunt them down myself.

And suddenly I had a really good idea about where to start.

Moving through the house, I was surprised to realize that Heath and Floyd were still at it. As I came up the hall and once again was given the “shhh” sign by Heath, I continued on through to the stairs and up to my room. Quickly slipping on my shoes and grabbing my keys, I came back down as quietly as possible, hesitating on the bottom step.

Floyd was looking very relaxed, his eyes still closed, and he was saying something about the smell of stale swimming pool water.

“Good,” Heath told him in a soft voice. “Can you smell anything else?”

Floyd hesitated, then he replied, “Rust. I smell rust. But I’m thinking that must be all the blood.”

If Floyd was actually remembering smells from the other night, the guided relaxation session must really be working. Now, if my little errand was successful, we might end up making progress on several fronts.

Catching Heath’s eye, I held up my keys without jingling them, pointed at the back door, and mouthed the words “I’ll be back.” He nodded, so I eased open the door and slipped outside.

The rain had become a fine mist, so I didn’t bother with an umbrella or raincoat. I simply made a quick dash to my car and slipped inside as quickly as possible.

Not wanting to get in trouble with the law for walking around outside, I started up my car, turned around in the widened parking area, and drove up the long driveway to the road. There I made a right and then a quick left, turning into the driveway of the home where Nina lived across the street from my inn. She was still in the hospital as far as I knew, but I hoped her mother might be home to help me.

As it turned out, the woman was just coming out of her side door as I pulled in. Turning to see who it was, she peered through the mist until recognition lit up her face.

“Sienna! So you’ve heard?” she cried, opening her umbrella and stepping toward my car.

“Heard what?” I replied, rolling down the window even as the mist was blown inside the car.

“It’s Nina! She’s awake!”

That was good news indeed. Finally, with a second witness to the incidents of Wednesday night, we might actually obtain some clarity regarding the chain of events. For a moment I thought about driving down to the hospital to see Nina myself, but when her mother said the doctors were only allowing one visitor at a time, for five minutes each hour, I decided to wait. I felt sure the police were already questioning her, and maybe Mike would let me know what she’d had to say—if he was speaking to me at all, that is.

Trying not to think about that, I told Nina’s mother I had come in search of some documents that had belonged to my grandfather, documents I had a feeling Nina might have been storing at her place for safekeeping. Fortunately for me, the woman was so eager to get down to the hospital that she didn’t ask any questions but simply invited me to take a look for myself.

“Her apartment’s up over the garage, as I’m sure you know,” she said, “and the extra key is on the molding above the door. Just be sure to lock it back up before you go.”

I couldn’t believe it was going to be this easy.

Soon, Mrs. Zane was gone and I was inside Nina’s apartment, free to root around to my heart’s content. I started with a quick, cursory search but didn’t come up with anything, so then I focused on more subtle hiding places. Standing on one side of the rustic studio apartment, I slowly turned my head from left to right, looking for clever hiding spots or anything in the tidy place that might seem askew.

It didn’t take long to find what I was looking for.

On the left side of the bed the dust ruffle was messed up, its hem caught between mattress and box spring. Moving over there, I reached down and lifted up the mattress, revealing a fat brown envelope hidden underneath.

On the front, in my grandfather’s handwriting, was a single word: Daphne.

Back at the B and B, I dashed from my car to the door through the mist, the envelope safely tucked underneath my shirt so it wouldn’t get wet. Stepping inside, I was immediately greeted by Heath, who had a smile on his face.

“Sienna, big news! We may have discovered an important clue to this mystery!”

I eagerly listened as Heath explained what they had figured out. According to him, as Floyd had recalled each step of Wednesday night’s events, he had recovered from his muddy memory one new piece of information, that he had felt some sort of pain in his leg following the flash of fire.

Armed with his new knowledge, Heath had taken it upon himself to examine Floyd, and what he had spotted, on the front of Floyd’s right thigh, was a small, circular bruise at the center of which was an even smaller puncture mark.

Before I could even begin to guess what this meant, Floyd blurted it out.

“Doc thinks maybe I got shot by a tranquilizer dart,” he said triumphantly. “Probably Nina did too, we bet.”

Before I could respond, we were interrupted by the ping of a text message. It was from my grandmother:
Success! Found poems, will fax in just a bit!

After sending back a “thank you” with some exclamation points of my own, I returned my attention to Heath and Floyd.

“Sorry about that,” I said, asking Floyd to repeat what he’d just told me as I slid the phone into my pocket.

“Doc thinks I was shot by a tranquilizer dart.”

“By accident?”

“No, on purpose,” Floyd said, and when I looked at Heath, he explained the logic behind their reasoning.

“One shooting could have been accidental, but not both,” Heath said. “Besides, the shooter disappeared and the darts themselves were removed from the scene after the fact. To me, trying to hide evidence shows intent.”

None of us had any idea what this meant exactly or who might have pulled the trigger, but at least it gave us a starting point.

They each immediately began to pursue this information in his own way. While Heath spoke to the pathologist at the lab, Floyd called up his FBI contact. I thought about calling Mike as well, but I decided to leave all of that to the two men and focus on my own discovered secret, the packet of my grandfather’s documents.

For some reason I didn’t even tell Heath what I had found, not at first. Maybe I just wanted to have it all to myself for a while, to keep things between me and these ghosts of the past. As the rain began to drum more loudly against the eaves outside, I lit a fire in the fireplace, settled myself in the rocking chair, and held the packet in my hands for a long moment. Did the contents of this envelope contain answers to any of our questions?

I was just about to untwist the clasp and begin to find out when my phone began vibrating in my pocket. It was Grandma Maureen, calling to say she was faxing me the poems of Daphne’s that she’d had translated from German to English.

Heading into the office, I thanked her profusely, but I didn’t share my find with her, either. For the moment, it was still mine and mine alone. There would be time enough later to let others in on this treasure from the past.

Standing there, watching the pages feed through the fax machine that sat on top of the file cabinet, I wondered how Nina had ended up with the papers. Had they had been given to her long ago, by Abe, or much more recently, by Troy? Whether she had received them from one man or the other, I was just glad they had come into her hands somehow.

When the fax machine grew silent, its task complete, I lifted from its tray the pages of translated words. Between them and the brown packet, I had plenty to read and much to learn.

Back in the main room, I saw that Heath was off the phone and on his laptop instead, no doubt searching the web for information about tranquilizer guns and veterinary medicines and the like. From the sound—and the smell—of things, Floyd was in the kitchen cooking breakfast. Though I didn’t relish eating food made by his hands—or even having to look at his lying, cheating, felonious face—I knew my stomach would win out. I was starving, and whatever he was making in there smelled incredible.

But for the moment I returned to the rocking chair beside the fireplace and sat, glancing at Heath, who was working from the couch.

“I’m finding some great stuff here,” he said, looking up briefly before returning his eyes to the screen. “This all makes so much sense.”

“Good,” I said simply, wishing he wouldn’t elaborate just now.

“Ready for this? Tranquilizer guns often contain a small explosive charge that flashes when detonated.”

Lost in my own thoughts, it took me a moment to understand what he was saying. Once I got it, I gasped and said, “The creature’s burst of fire!”

“Exactly.”

We shared a triumphant smile, and then he concentrated again on his computer screen.

Feeling encouraged, I opened up the envelope to see what treasures it held. Inside were numerous loose sheets of paper as well as a small, leather-bound book, its brown spine crumbled with age. Carefully opening the cover of the book, my heart leaped at the words that had been written by hand on the very first page:

Frau Daphne Kahn Coblentz
25. Mai 1945

Daphne’s journal.

My heart pounding with excitement, I closed the journal and turned my attention to the loose papers from the envelope, gently flipping through
them. Most were yellowed with age and covered with sketches and notes, some in German and some in English, all in my grandfather’s distinctive handwriting. Then came pages and pages of newer-looking lined paper, covered with a completely different handwriting, one that was softer and more feminine than my grandfather’s. The words on the pages were dated, just like journal entries, so I compared those dates with those in the journal itself. Sure enough, they matched.

Next, I compared the pages with those faxed from my grandmother, but it was obvious that the handwriting was completely different. This was a newer translation, one by someone other than my grandma’s old friend. Perhaps Nina had done this? Having grown up in this area, it wouldn’t have been unusual for her to know at least some German.

Flipping through this embarrassment of riches, I decided first to go through the poems my grandmother had sent and then through the full translation. The poems were certainly interesting, and when I got to the third one, I did a double take, spotting amidst the verses the word “Werwolves.”