Murder, Mayhem and Bliss (Myrtle Grove Garden Club Mystery Book 1)

by Loulou Harrington

  Vivian closed her eyes and gave her head a shake, then exhaled another sigh. “I hadn’t realized how worried I was about all of this,” she answered with a rueful smile. “So much for all of my bluster.”

  “Maybe you should go ahead and get in touch with a criminal attorney. Just in case.” Jesse hated to make the suggestion, but it was either that or give in to her need to hug the older woman like a child, which wouldn’t have been a very popular move either.

  “I already have,” Vivian said. “He’s standing by for a phone call.”

  Someone else might not have heard the vulnerability in Vivian’s voice, but Jesse did, and it stirred every protective urge in her body. “We’ll figure out who did this, Vivian,” Jesse promised. “We’ll find them. We’ll prove it. And then we’ll put this behind us.”

  Tears sparkled in Vivian’s eyes as she took the hand Jesse reached out to her. “Michael did me a huge favor by bringing you into my life, dear. You have become my rock, Jesselyn. And now…” Vivian released Jesse’s hand and rose to her feet. “Before I become too maudlin, I think I’ll do what I can to divert the good deputy, while Bliss wraps up her meeting.”

  “Oh, please,” Jesse said, rising as well, “let me help.” While the two of them crossed the sunroom on the way to the foyer, she gave into her curiosity. “Why do you suppose she’s here?”

  “I believe Bliss is supposed to look at suit jackets again.”

  “Ah! The note.” Jesse nodded, remembering that Bliss still needed to face the music about the note she found and walked away with. “Does this mean they’re going back to Bliss’s house?”

  “Yes, it does. Do I detect a glimmer of conniving in your eyes?”

  Jesse smiled. “Quite possibly you do. Is it too obvious?”

  “Only to me, dear. And it lightens my heart to think that you might have learned it from me.”

  “That’s very possible,” Jesse agreed. “I do remember myself as a more simple and innocent person when we first met.”

  “You were eight.”

  “Well,” Jesse answered as they linked arms and continued toward the front door, “that would explain it.”

  Chapter Sixteen

  The meeting in the study broke up while Jesse and Vivian kept Deputy Murphy diverted on the terrace outside the kitchen. Chatting over coffee, they had reached a first name basis with the young, mahogany-haired deputy only moments before she interrupted their conversation to exclaim, “Wow, you weren’t kidding about her being in a meeting, were you?”

  Startled, Jesse looked up to see the dark blue Lincoln driven by Bliss’s attorney, Marcus, glide slowly past the terrace before rounding a curve in the driveway and disappearing from view behind a colonnade of mature oaks. Her gaze moved to Vivian, who sat transfixed in something approaching horror.

  “Was that Marcus Rutherford?” Marla asked. “He’s the dealership’s attorney, isn’t he?”

  “I believe so,” Vivian answered. Her composure, at least outwardly, had returned. Jesse herself wondered at the fact that the sheriff’s office already knew who the dealership’s attorney was. What did that mean?

  “Wow,” Marla said again.

  “Would you like some more coffee?” Vivian asked, only to be ignored as the black Cadillac sedan belonging to Bill Marshall was followed by the red Mustang with Maria Ortiz at the wheel to form a sedate parade that crunched its way past the curious deputy. One by one they followed the Lincoln down the limestone drive past the terrace, around the curve and behind the oaks that blocked their exit from view.

  With the cars out of sight, and only a distant grinding of tires on gravel to mark their progress, Marla Murphy turned her attention back to Vivian and Jesse. “Am I wrong, or was that Bill Marshall and Harry Kerr’s assistant—what’s her name? Uh, Maria, right? Maria Ortiz. Was that her?”

  “Uh,” Vivian said, staring toward the second curve in the driveway at the base of the long, sloping lawn. This would bring the cars back into view just before they reached the gated front entrance.

  “Yes,” Jesse answered. How could they have forgotten that the driveway passed by the terrace? Of all the places they could have chosen to keep the curious deputy out of the way, why did they choose the terrace?

  Right on cue, the parade of cars emerged from the protective overhang of the old oaks and followed the white gravel strip across the wide, green lawn to the arched iron gateway with the giant “W” centered in the scroll work. An electronic eye parted the twin gates, swinging them wide for the little parade to exit, then quietly closed again. Like the breaking of an hypnotic trance, everyone relaxed and ended the silent stare that had held them all.

  “Well, here you are.” Bliss emerged from the kitchen onto the terrace with a bounce in her step. “That went really.… Oh, hi there, Deputy Murphy, I didn’t realize you were here.”

  Setting down the coffee that had grown cold, Marla rose. “I’ve just been here a few minutes. Sheriff Tyler was hoping you would be able to identify that suit jacket for us today.”

  Her cheerfulness of a moment earlier gone, Bliss took a deep breath, squared her shoulders, and forced a smile. “Yes, of course. Did you want to do it now?”

  “If you’re available now.”

  “I could go with you, if you would like, dear,” Vivian offered. Her attempt to sound eager, or even willing, fell flat.

  The brief light in Bliss’s eyes died out, and she shook her head. “That’s okay. I’ll be all right.”

  Both Bliss and Vivian seemed miserable and clearly reluctant to return to Bliss’s house while it was still a crime scene, or possibly ever. Jesse’s sympathy for them both, and her own curiosity to do exactly what they didn’t want to do, had her stepping forward without any real forethought on her part.

  “Why don’t I follow behind,” she offered to Bliss, “and I can drive you back when you’re done.” Turning to Deputy Murphy, she continued, “That would save you from having to make a return trip back here.”

  “Yes!” Bliss jumped at the offer. “That sounds wonderful. Thank you.”

  Marla frowned, then shrugged, obviously not thrilled, but hesitant to create ill will by vetoing the suggestion.

  Bliss grinned, took Jesse’s hand and squeezed, continuing to hold it all the way through the house. Outside, she finally released her, then leaned closer to Jesse and whispered, “Really. Thank you. The last thing in the world I want to do right now is to step foot in that house.”

  As Deputy Murphy walked past them going toward her car, Jesse said quietly, “I’ll be right behind you. Do you need me to go in with you?”

  Bliss shook her head. “Not unless you want to. It’ll be enough just to have you there, somewhere.”

  Jesse leaned closer again and dropped her voice to a murmur. “I kind of wanted to look around outside.”

  Bliss grinned. “I kind of thought you might,” she whispered in return.

  Joining them, Vivian said, “The nice deputy is waiting.” She nodded toward the police car in the drive.

  “Yes, ma’am.” Bliss bobbed a curtsy and hurried down the steps of the front portico and across the drive, in a much lighter mood than she had been only moments earlier.

  “Bless you, my dear.” Vivian laid one hand on Jesse’s shoulder and waved goodbye to Bliss with the other.

  “I have purely selfish motives,” Jesse assured her.

  “Of course, you do.” Vivian patted her shoulder. “Now run along and do your snooping. I’ll want to hear everything when you and Bliss get back here.”

  Jesse obediently started down the stairs, then stopped and looked back to Vivian. “You know, you may have a roommate for a while. I don’t think it’s going to be easy for Bliss to go back to living in that house.”

  With a nod, Vivian signaled her agreement. “She’s welcome for as long as she wants. This is a big house. And I’m not one of those who needs a lot of solitude. At least, not when it comes to the people I care about.”

  Jesse smiled. �
�Good. See you in a bit.”

  On the way to the aged pickup she had inherited from her grandfather, Jesse continued to smile. While Vivian was still a vibrant, healthy and active woman, she was nevertheless growing older. And Jesse had recently begun to worry just the slightest bit that Vivian spent too much of her time alone in such a big house so far away from neighbors. Of course, Dottie still worked half-days during the week, but Dottie was no youngster either. Now with Bliss’s arrival, Vivian had gained a live-in companion for the moment, and Jesse could avoid the difficult subject of precautions for a while longer.

  So at least there were a few good outcomes to Bliss’s unfortunate situation—not that Jesse would actually say that out loud, and not that any of those outcomes were positives for Bliss herself. Her life, in fact, had been turned upside down, giving her new responsibilities she hadn’t wanted and wasn’t sure what to do with, while, in spite of everything, she seemed to be grieving for a husband she still cared for.

  The home they had shared seemed to have become something she didn’t want any part of. Her reputation was in danger of being shredded. And some of the very people she was looking to for help and support were the ones with the strongest motives for committing the murder she was suspected of. All in all, it was not a position anyone would want to find themselves in.

  The rest of the way to the Kerr house, Jesse worked to shake off the nagging unease her thoughts had induced. She felt a little like someone trying to save another person from an impending meteorite. Descending to we’re-all-going-to-die helplessness was no solution, but really, it all seemed so enormous sometimes, and her own limitations so frustrating.

  Pulling into a parking space between two county sheriff’s cars, Jesse exited her elderly but well maintained pickup into the bright, midday sunshine and, like magic, when her feet hit the ground, her optimism returned, along with her compelling curiosity. Another deputy was here somewhere, but at least it wasn’t the sheriff’s shiny new, extended-cab truck she was parked next to, so she would be spared a confrontation with him at least.

  Happy to be alone in her explorations, and hoping to stay that way, Jesse hurried toward the back of the house and its fascinating array of landscaped grounds and multi-level stone terraces. Here, she followed winding mulched pathways through increasingly more densely planted and elaborate garden rooms until all paths converged at the metal entry gate of the pool.

  At the gate, she turned to look back. In the distance, the house was partially visible, but any detail was obscured by the trees. The swimming pool itself seemed a world away from the main body of the property, isolated behind its surrounding brick wall and the vines that enclosed it.

  “What a lonely place to die,” Jesse muttered to herself as she opened the gate and carefully ducked under the yellow crime scene tape. She thought of the note Bliss had found, inviting Harry to a meeting in the middle of the night.

  The author had to have been familiar with the area and its seclusion. Jesse looked up and saw that the bright lights around the perimeter of the pool were still burning. One corner of the enclosure wasn’t bathed in the artificial light. A magnolia grew there, its spreading branches adding to the surrounding shade. A collection of hostas, ferns and azaleas dotted the landscape at the tree’s base.

  Thinking that if she were part of a clandestine meeting, she might wait in the shadows provided in that corner, Jesse walked closer, checking the ground for footprints, cigarette butts, anything the sheriff’s people might have missed. She found a heavy layer of mulch, looking neat and undisturbed. And that was all she found everywhere she looked in the area around the pool’s perimeter, except for one section midway down the wall facing the house. There, the mulch was turned over and redistributed in about a ten-foot length. A few branches were broken on the azaleas in that part of the landscaping.

  If she had to guess, and in this case she did, the sheriff’s department searched that area with special diligence, probably finding what they were looking for since the rest of the pool’s surroundings were not so torn up. It would be interesting to know what they found there. She paused to study the emptied swimming pool, wondering if they were looking for anything in particular when they had drained it, and if they had found what they were seeking.

  Without water to distract, the tile around the inside rim of the pool stood out. Moroccan in design, in multiple shades of blue, it was starkly beautiful. The ledge surrounding the outside edge was a different but similar pattern, and equally stunning. It would be easy to believe that the pool was Harry’s passion, and it was apparent that someone had spent a lot of money and attention to detail when building it.

  The metal furniture was solid and elegant. The cushions were thick, in the same shades of blue as the pool’s tile-work. There were lounges, dining tables with chairs, seating groups with settees, rockers and side tables, and a giant grill built into an island with a granite top, complete with an overhang and four bar stools.

  So, maybe on second thought, if Harry’d had to pick a place to die, this would have been it. If there had been a bed and a bathroom, he would never have had to leave. On that thought, Jesse looked toward the gate on the backside of the pool area, and realized that there was yet another path through the surrounding trees.

  Her curiosity pulled her forward once again, and she hurried through the second gate, exiting the pool and entering another path through an even more wooded area. Here, the trees were more like a virgin forest, the moss-covered floor dotted with hostas, ferns, rhododendron, and a scattering of rare, woodland specimens suited to a botanical showcase.

  Jesse almost tripped over a tree root while oohing and ahhing over the hardy orchids, variegated Solomon’s seal, lady’s slippers, and hellebores, to name just a few. Clusters of delicately pink cyclamen were in bloom and in a few months, the nodding flowers of the hellebore would brighten the short winter days.

  She had heard Vivian mention that Bliss did her own landscaping, but if she had done all of this, Jesse was going to have to reevaluate her opinion of Bliss, once again. This wasn’t just a garden, and the person who did it wasn’t just a gardener. A woodland wonderland like this required a lot of work, a lot of knowledge, and a lot of passion.

  Tearing her attention away from the fairy world of the green oasis behind her, Jesse stumbled out into the sunlight and practically tripped over Frank Haney, the one deputy who had almost as little use for her as Sheriff Tyler had.

  “What the hell are you doing here?” he demanded, rising from his squat. “And watch where the hell you’re going. This is a crime scene, dammit. And we’re not through processing the evidence.”

  Jesse’s heart soared while she tried mightily to appear contrite. Evidence! She had stumbled across evidence. Literally, it seemed.

  She looked at her feet and saw.… What was that?

  Chapter Seventeen

  “What is that?” Jesse pointed to the round indentations in the soft dirt at the edge of the footpath. What looked like it could be a part of a footprint was next to it. It was just the side and part of the toe of a shoe, with a smooth sole, no tread. There wasn’t enough of it to tell how big the shoe size was, at least to her untrained eye.

  A little distance away from the footpath, a rake, hoe, and a shovel lay on the ground. Small impressions, the size of a quarter or maybe a silver dollar, were scattered around where the garden tools lay. Those depressions in the dirt were deeper, smoother and more rounded than the two closer to the path.

  “Those look kind of like they’re from a cane, maybe,” she suggested, pointing to the imprints next to the footpath.

  “Thank you very much. I could never have figured that out on my own,” Frank Haney answered.

  He looked like such a big teddy bear of a guy, Jesse was always shocked by how unfriendly he could be, usually when he felt like his toes were being stepped on. Oh, well.

  “You might want to get casts of those,” she said, pointing again, while being very careful not to move from
the pathway and create any footprints of her own. “Just in case somebody else comes down through here.”

  The imprints in question were almost perfectly round, not too deep, and had a series of ridges in the form of circles, like maybe something to help with traction.

  “I have,” Deputy Haney snapped. “And there better not be anybody else down through here. This happens to be a taped-off crime scene, and I’d like to know how you got here.”

  Jesse tilted her head toward the house, somewhere far behind them. “Bliss is identifying a jacket for Marla. I’m driving her back to Vivian’s when she’s done.” With a smile, Jesse looked around her and began damage control. “Bliss has really done some amazing landscaping here, don’t you think?”

  “This didn’t all just grow like this?” Distracted, he relaxed his anger and sounded almost human.

  “No-o-o.” Jesse pursed her lips and drew the word out, while giving her head a quick shake. “All that stuff in there…” She waved her hand toward the grove behind her. “That’s all natural woodland plants, but you would only find a few of them in any one area. And you wouldn’t normally find things like trilliums mingling naturally with things like hostas. Not in your average, native forest.”

  He shrugged. “I guess you’re the expert.”

  “Well, not really. But I do garden some, and I know which plants are hard to come by.”

  He shifted uncomfortably. “My wife would enjoy talking to you,” Deputy Haney conceded in a tone that suggested he himself didn’t.

  Jesse grinned, pleased to have gotten him off the subject of her trespassing and onto what was, for him, unsteady ground.

  “Why don’t you bring her by the Lily sometime,” she suggested. “Maybe for lunch. In nice weather, we have outdoor dining in the garden. And then whoever wants to is free to look around for as long as they like. You might even enjoy it yourself.”