Best Left Buried

Good morning. I am Darcy Campbell, Blanche and Barbara’s lead character in their cozy mystery series. You’ve met my mother, Flora Tucker, and me in The Cemetery Club and Grave Shift. Barbara and Blanche have completed the third book, Best Left Buried and Blanche has asked me to tell you about a few of the people you’ll meet within the book’s pages. Yesterday I introduced you to  a few as they appeared in the book. Today, I’d like you to meet four more. These are the main  characters who are involved in the mind-boggling happenings that everyone told us we should just leave alone, leave them buried in the past.  First, is a very important man in my life. He’s tall and slim. He has red hair and the most amazing blue eyes I’ve ever seen:

Grant Hendley, sheriff of Ventris County, is what some people might call an “old flame” of mine. I would take issue with the “old” since he and I are the same age. When we were sixteen, we were in love as only youngsters can be. That attraction lasted for several years, until, in fact, Jake Campbell came into my life. I left Grant and my hometown of Levi, Oklahoma, behind in favor of Jake and Dallas, Texas. Now that Jake was with the Lord and I had returned to Levi, Grant and I were rediscovering that the flame which once burned brightly could be re-kindled with very little effort.

Does every ointment has to have its fly? That’s rather the way I thought of Eileen Simmons. I saw her for the first time in Grant’s office. Of course, she didn’t see me. She had eyes only for the sheriff:

A vision in bright colors sprang up from the chair placed beside Grant’s receptionist, Doris Elroy. The woman was almost as tall as Grant. A yellow shirt and tight black jeans invited one and all to admire her obvious physical attributes. Long earrings dangled halfway to her shoulders. Her shiny black hair was piled in loose curls atop her head and she had the greenest eyes, rimmed with mascara and eyebrow pencil, that I had ever seen. She ran to Grant, amazingly acrobatic on three-inch heels, and threw her arms around him.

Two elderly ladies, Carolina and Georgia Jenkins, played an important part in our drama. Mom told me about her visit with them. Although they were lifelong residents of Levi, I knew very little about them:

“They live way on the other side of town in that old Victorian house their daddy left them. They keep it as spruce and neat as the day it was built. Never knew them to work anywhere, but they attend that little Methodist church a couple of blocks from where they live. Haven’t missed a Sunday in 50 years, they said.”

Pat Harris has been Mom’s friend since they both were girls. Pat and her son appeared in the first book, The Cemetery Club, and also in Grave Shift. She is a bit nosy, somewhat flighty, but her friendship is as solid as a rock:

Pat Harris, secretary of the Goshen Cemetery Board and my mother’s best friend, sat with Mom and me in front of our fireplace. The stack of logs blazed, but still the room seemed chilly. The north wind found every crack in our hundred-year old farmhouse. Mom pulled her green afghan around her shoulders. Pat laughed. “Flora Tucker! You never could fool me, even when we were girls. Of course there’s something going on. All of Levi knows about Cub finding that box and everybody’s guessing what’s in it. I know deep in my bones that there’s a whole lot more that you’re not telling. Out with the story!”

Mom would be miffed if I didn’t introduce you to Levi’s prominent lawyer, Jackson Conner. I suspect that Mom and Mr. Conner will be seeing a lot of each other in the future and I am in favor of that:

Jackson Conner’s office was a comfortable,  masculine-looking room. The cedar paneling and dark leather furniture was like the man himself: solid, dependable, and attractive. What I remembered most from past visits was the scent of his cherry-flavored pipe tobacco. Although Jackson’s pipe lay unlit on his desk, that fragrance lingered. 

Now you have met several of Levi, Oklahoma’s residents. Our lives are somehow woven together in an inexplicable series of events that plunge my mother and me into a desperate situation. But, I guess that’s why the book is called a mystery, and there’s only one thing to do with a mystery: solve it!

Thought: May we take the time to enjoy God’s beautiful world, the changing leaves, and the people He puts in our path today.