“I thought the knife might belong to you,” I said demurely.
“No, it doesn’t belong to me and Jim Clendon doesn’t carry one.”
Amazingly, he did not seem at all pleased with my thoughtfulness although he did say the knife looked somewhat familiar.
“Weren’t you listening to me, Darcy? Haven’t you learned from experience that there are people in this world who wouldn’t mind diminishing Levi’s population by one nosy reporter who can’t seem to understand that pure evil exists in this crazy world?”
He had slammed the knife into his desk drawer, muttering something about the probability of smeared fingerprints, and the wisdom of staying away from Spirit Leap. I fled Grant’s office like a scolded child. Where was my backbone?
Enough of that! It was a good thing that I had made a picture of the knife with my digital camera. The picture showed all the details, including the letters and the spaces where the letters had been rubbed off. I didn’t tell Grant but it seemed to me that the quicker the mystery of Andrea Worth was solved, the faster I would be safe. I had already put out feelers about her disappearance and I didn’t know how to back out at this late date. As for pure evil—yes, I was quite sure it existed. It seemed that much of it had settled in Levi, for some strange reason. I also believed that “greater is He that is in me than he that is in the world.” I would just trust Jesus for my safety and do my best to find out if Andrea Worth was dead or alive. Whichever it was, I needed to know. And the only way I knew to ferret out her whereabouts was to ask questions. First stop would be the hardware store to see if Mr. Sutter could identify the knife. But that was for another day. This day had been stressful enough and I was ready for the rest that my neatly turned-down quilt and sheets promised me.
“Scoot over, Jethro,” I told the sleeping cat. I bent down to scoop him off my bed and deposit him on the floor. Suddenly he sprang up on stiff legs, his back arching and the fur along his backbone standing straight up.
I jerked my hands away and stared at him. Never, in the two months since he had adopted my mother and me, had he behaved this way. My throat felt tight. “What’s wrong, old fellow?”
The cat didn’t appear to be looking at me. Instead, he gazed at the opaque night outside my bedroom window. His wide, unblinking yellow eyes brought back the memory of my encounter with his wild cousin. My legs suddenly felt like rubber.
Tiptoeing to the light switch, I flicked it off. Moonlight filtering through the large window silvered my room. When I glanced again toward my bed, Jethro was nowhere in sight. I moved quietly, hardly daring to breathe. Something had caught the cat’s attention; something that I had neither seen nor heard. I brushed the curtain aside and peered out. Below me, the peony bushes in the front yard bowed their stalks to a brisk breeze. The limbs of the oak swayed above the gate. I strained my ears and heard nothing but the rattle of dry leaves. Then I heard something else—a muffled thud that was different than the usual night sounds.
My mouth felt dry. Was that a footstep on the front porch? Should I wake Mom? Should I phone Grant? I pulled the curtain across my window. Had someone been down in the yard watching to see when I turned out my light and went to bed?
Jim Clendon’s words came back to me about women and overwrought nerves. I would not call Grant again unless I had proof that my nerves were not the culprit.
I crept into the hall. Gentle snores came from Mom’s room. Inching down the stairs, I prayed that the third step from the top would not creak as it usually did. The wind moaning around the corner of the house was the only thing I heard on the first floor.
I thought of Dad’s old pistol in the bookcase drawer and willed my bare feet to cross the hall floor into the living room. Sliding open the drawer, I pulled out the gun. It felt cold and heavy but reassuring.
No intruder in his right mind would ever enter a house where there was a nervous woman and a gun. The muscles along my shoulders felt as tight as the wires inside my old upright piano. Even though I held the gun with both hands, it jerked up and down in a spasmodic dance. Should I call out that I was armed and dangerous? I had a mental image of flinging open the door, squatting in a classic “gotcha covered” pose and yelling . . . yelling what? If someone was out there, did I want to hold him until help arrived or scare him away? I took one small step toward the door and rammed my foot against the rocker part of my mother’s rocking chair. Pain ricocheted through my big toe. I yelped and dropped the gun. It went off with a boom that vibrated through the house. Something thudded on the porch followed by a short scuffle; then, silence.
In that shocked quiet after the gunshot, my mother clattered down the stairs. “Darcy! What happened? Did someone shoot at you?”
I pointed to my gun lying on the floor by the door. “No, I thought I heard someone outside and then I whacked your rocking chair and dropped the gun and it went off.”
She grabbed my arm. “Someone outside? Are you sure? You could have been killed, Darcy, by your own gun. Oh, for goodness sake! Thank the Lord you’re safe.”
“No, Mom! Don’t do—”
Too late. She unlocked the door, flung it open, and flicked on the porch light. Nothing moved in the yellow light. No shadows crowded in from the darkness.
She pointed to an empty flowerpot which rolled against a porch post as the wind moved it. “There’s your prowler, Darcy. And I don’t think it is dangerous at all.”
I pushed the door closed, re-locked it, and sank down on the floor. My legs wouldn’t support me any longer. Okay, maybe there was no one on the porch. But what had Jethro sensed? Would something as innocent as a windblown flowerpot cause that terror-stricken stare?
And would I ever feel safe again?