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

by Loulou Harrington

  “I know the sheriff likes it.” Again, Frank didn’t sound any too happy to be so agreeable. “Joe gets his coffee there about every morning, I believe. Along with Miss Lindsey’s breakfast burrito, which I have heard him say would about be worth marrying for.”

  Jesse’s sudden whoop was quickly strangled into a cough, which she pounded her chest to emphasize, then added several more coughs for cover. After a minute, she croaked, “Swallowed wrong, I guess.”

  Privately, she couldn’t imagine a more mismatched couple than Joe Tyler and Lindsey Hatch. Not to mention that the original recipe for the Gilded Lily’s popular breakfast burrito was Jesse’s. Most of the recipes that the tea room used were either Jesse’s or some variation of old family recipes that Sophia had introduced. Lindsey was, however, an excellent cook and the tea room’s primary barista and manager. The coffee magic belonged to her, with some assistance from SueAnn during the morning rush hours.

  So, if Sheriff Tyler loved the coffee as much as it seemed, maybe his love affair with Lindsey was justified, though probably not welcome. After the end of a really bad marriage just a few years earlier, Lindsey was still smarting and in no mood to invite a man into her life any time soon, or so she said. And Sophia’s few unfortunate attempts to fix that had not worked out well.

  “Well, I could be wrong,” Jesse said, deciding it might be okay to poke the bear again, “but I believe that walking sticks have a smaller circumference than that.” She pointed to the round indentations near the pathway again. “And walking sticks usually have a smooth tip, like maybe wood or metal. That tip looks like it could be a molded rubber, maybe, and non-skid. And it’s obviously not from one of those.”

  She indicated the deeper, smoother depressions next to the garden tools. “So my guess would be a cane or a crutch.”

  Suddenly Jesse remembered where she had seen a rubber tip that was ribbed like the imprints next to the path. “A crutch! They definitely have a tip like that. So they don’t slip.”

  Her elation was short-lived when her gaze met the unfriendly stare of Deputy Frank Haney. “Are you through solving my crime for me?” he asked. “Huh? ‘Cause if you are, I believe it’s time for you to be leaving now.”

  She opened her mouth to defend herself, but before she could speak, he took a step closer and stabbed the end of a blunt finger toward the ground.

  “Now!” he barked. “Or I will arrest you where you stand, for no other reason than you are really startin’ to piss me off.”

  The last three words were said slowly and with emphasis, and each felt like a verbal sharp poke in Jesse’s sternum. It was all she could do not to wince. There was nothing friendly about his glare, his face, or his demeanor, and she was fairly certain that he wasn’t bluffing.

  “Okay.” She took a careful step backward. “I’m going.” She had really wanted to explore the small building that looked like a pool house just a little farther along the path. But she had better sense than to try it now.

  Putting several more steps between them, Jesse said cautiously, “You have a good day now,” then turned and walked toward the landscaped woodland that separated this area from the swimming pool.

  At the edge of the small wood, she paused and half-turned to say over her shoulder. “I was serious about meeting your wife. I have a new recipe I’m going to be trying out, and I’d love to have her sample it for me and give me her opinion. And I’d love to have both of you as my guests for lunch sometime.” She waggled her fingers in parting and walked away with as much speed as she could manage without losing her dignity entirely.

  Her mother had long told her that she had a distressing tendency to defy authority and that it was going to get her into trouble someday. She had always considered that to be her mother’s reaction to Jesse’s youthful rebellion, but lately she had begun to wonder if her mother didn’t have a point. Especially considering the number of times she had been threatened with arrest recently, while doing nothing more than speaking her mind.

  As a child, she had done things like that all the time. Perhaps, at fifty she should reconsider her approach. Her other choice was to, in Sheriff Tyler’s words, stop meddling in things that didn’t concern her. But that wasn’t going to happen. Not when it meant standing by and watching someone bully her mother, even when that someone was the sheriff.

  And not when it meant doing nothing while Vivian’s world fell apart one more time. Jesse might be helpless, in the end, to stop the train wreck that was bearing down on them all. But that didn’t mean she wasn’t going to try, regardless of what might happen along the way.

  Maybe she could just poke the bear a little less often and sneak around a little bit more. Tiptoeing lightly through situations wasn’t something she had ever been terribly good at, but with enough practice, she might improve. It was certainly worth a try. A little more sugar, a little less spice.

  By the time Jesse finished her pep talk, she had arrived at the last series of gardens before reaching the back terrace. Looking up, she saw Bliss and Marla Murphy walking down the terrace steps toward her. Bliss was biting her lip. Marla held a plastic bag with what looked like a gray suit folded inside and wore a somewhat thunderous frown on her usually pleasant face.

  Jesse stifled a groan and slapped on a smile. One more lecture, more or less, wasn’t going to kill her. She had been naughty, but she had also gotten a good look at the pool area and the entire crime scene, all completely surrounded by yellow tape. Very naughty, in fact, and she hadn’t really learned a whole lot. She could only hope the police knew more than she did, or nobody was going to get very far in solving this thing.

  “Where have you been?” Marla demanded while there was still a fair amount of distance separating them.

  Jesse continued to smile. “Admiring Bliss’s beautiful gardens. They are truly amazing.” She turned her gaze to Bliss. “Did you do all of this yourself?”

  Still looking worried, Bliss nodded and glanced from the woman next to her to Jesse. “I hired some workers to help with the digging and planting, but the design is mine, and I do most of it by myself now. Of course.” She spread her arms to indicate the rolling expanse of green on either side. “Someone else takes care of the lawn.”

  “Frank Haney called me,” Marla said, still agitated. “He said you were all the way down behind the pool poking around.”

  “I heard there were some pretty impressive vegetable beds on the back side, and I wanted to get a look at them. We raise a lot of our own vegetables for the tea room, and we’re wanting to expand.” Jesse reminded herself to stay loose and play innocent. All she was doing was looking, and they couldn’t prove what she was looking at.

  “Joe’s not going to be pleased when he hears about this.” The nice deputy sounded worried, and Jesse realized that she might be getting her into trouble for the second time in as many days.

  “I’m really sorry,” she said sincerely. “I didn’t mean to cause any problems for you. You can blame it all on me. I didn’t mean any harm, truly. And I didn’t touch anything.” Jesse held up a hand as if she were swearing. “Nothing.”

  “Frank says to make sure you leave and not to take my eyes off of you until you’re gone,” the deputy insisted.

  “I’m gone,” Jesse promised. “Are you ready, Bliss?”

  “Yes.” She started down the steps in a hurry, then stopped and turned back to the deputy behind her. “Are you through with me?”

  “Yes.” Marla Murphy nodded, and her gaze shifted briefly to Bliss before turning to Jesse. “I’m done here. I just need to lock up the house after you’re gone.”

  “Sorry,” Jesse said again, then beat a hasty retreat with Bliss hurrying at her side.

  “What did you do?” Bliss whispered, once they were safely around the corner of the house.

  “I just looked,” Jesse assured her. “But I looked all around the pool, and every place else I could think of, without really finding anything. And nobody caught me there, so nobody can get mad at
me about that. It was when I went to the back, by the pool house, that I practically tripped over Deputy Haney.”

  “What was he doing?” Bliss asked, still whispering while walking briskly toward Jesse’s maroon Silverado.

  “He was squatted on the ground, looking at some marks in the dirt that looked like the base of a cane or crutch. They were at the edge of the pathway, so whatever they were accompanying stayed on the path and didn’t leave a mark.”

  “So he knows you saw it?”

  “Oh, yeah. We had a discussion.”

  “So that’s what they’re mad about,” Bliss confirmed. “That you saw those marks.”

  “Mainly. That, and a footprint,” Jesse said, remembering it belatedly. “A very partial footprint.”

  “Really?” Bliss sounded excited. “A footprint?”

  “A partial footprint,” Jesse qualified again.

  “How big did it look?”

  “That part was hard to tell. It was just the side, and most of the toe.”

  “Was it bigger than my foot?” Bliss stopped walking and held out one stylish leather ballet flat for appraisal.

  Jesse paused to stare from Bliss’s small shoe to her own neon pink sneakers, while searching her memory for the details of what she had seen. “Put your foot down.” Bliss complied and Jesse aligned her foot next to the younger woman’s, which appeared to be a size or two smaller than Jesse’s.

  “Well,” she said after another minute of study, “I couldn’t put my foot next to the one in the dirt, but it seemed to me that it was bigger than my shoe size. And that would make it several sizes larger yours.”

  “Yea!” Bliss pumped her fist in triumph. “One thing that doesn’t point straight to me!”

  Jesse started to smile. Then she began laughing. “Yea!” She waved her hands in the air. “At least, I’ve done something that made someone happy.”

  “Oh, no!” Glancing over her shoulder, Bliss hooked her arm through Jesse’s and started tugging her toward the pickup. “Deputy Murphy’s headed our way. Let’s get out of here!”

  “Be careful. If you hang around with me too long, I may lead you down the path of civil disobedience.”

  Bliss’s laughter pealed merrily. “Oh, Jesse, that’s so funny. I’m about to be arrested for murder any minute now, and you’re worried about being a bad influence.” She started laughing again. “You do realize how funny that is, don’t you?”

  Jesse shrugged. “Anything I can do to keep your spirits up.”

  The other woman stepped closer and dropped her voice to a whisper. “Is it too awful of me to say that I’m starting to think whoever did this, maybe did me a big favor?” She blushed and glanced over her shoulder as Jesse did the same. Deputy Murphy was locking the front door while keeping watch on them out of the corner of her eye.

  “So, you’re starting to do better with your grief, huh?” Jesse asked.

  “Less grief, more guilt.” Bliss sighed and leaned against the front fender of the truck on the driver’s side. “I loved him a lot once. But that was a long time ago. Lately, even I knew he was a mistake I was going to have to do something about. I just hadn’t made up my mind exactly what to do.”

  “Do you think you were headed toward divorce?” Watching a flush steal over Bliss’s face for the second time in as many minutes, Jesse wondered if a murderer could still blush.

  “Eventually?” Bliss nodded and the heat in her cheeks subsided. “Yeah. It was inevitable.”

  “Do you think he knew?”

  Her pretty face looked sad as she stared off into the distance. “I don’t think a narcissist like he was could do a very good job of figuring out what other people were feeling.”

  Jesse noticed that Deputy Murphy was leaving the front porch and heading toward her car. “Hop in. Let’s ride. We promised to be out of here.”

  While Bliss went around to the passenger side, Jesse climbed in and started the truck. Old as it was, it still had a sweet motor that purred when she started it and rolled down the highway with the smoothness of butter. The pickup and the house were all her grandfather had to leave her, other than the knowledge he had shared with her, and they were all treasures that she cherished.

  Once they were away from the Kerr house and driving back toward the small town of Myrtle Grove, Jesse asked, “Do you always adjust this quickly to something so life-altering?”

  Bliss shrugged. “My parents died when I was eleven. In a plane crash. In Africa. Aunt Viv and Uncle Malcolm already kept me half the time anyway, so they just finished raising me. Then I lost Uncle Malcolm when I was in my twenties. I guess I’m improving with practice.”

  “Sometimes when you keep losing people, you shut yourself off,” Jesse suggested. She thought of herself and knew that’s what she had done. Bliss still seemed vulnerable in a way that Jesse doubted she herself would ever be again. “Vivian wouldn’t let you, would she?”

  “No.” Bliss smiled gently. “Aunt Viv said a bunch of sentimental and very wise things, and then she refused to allow me to close myself off just to keep from being hurt again.”

  Jesse thought back to the days after Michael’s death, to all the things that had happened and all the things that would never be the same, all the ways that she would never be the same. Shutting down your feelings to protect yourself sucked in the long run. “It’s probably for the best,” she said. “Vivian’s a smart lady.”

  “Yeah,” Bliss agreed. “I owe her a lot.”

  “We all do.”

  Just then the short blast of a siren jerked Jesse’s attention back to the present. Her gaze flashed to her speedometer, which was not above the speed limit.

  “Oh, my God.” Bliss’s shaky whisper held fear and dread, and Jesse’s heart went out to her. Maybe a healthy layer of self-protection wasn’t such a bad thing.

  Her foot moved to the brake and she slowed. Preparing to pull over to the shoulder, she checked the rear view mirror.

  “Hellfire and damnation!” she ground out as she recognized the big, white truck belonging to Joe Tyler directly behind her, lights flashing. The siren gave another short blast. “What the hell do you want?”

  She pulled all the way over and shoved the transmission into park. “You just better not ask for my license and registration,” Jesse warned the image in the mirror. “That’s all I’ve got to say.”

  “Oh, my God.” Bliss’s voice warbled as she collapsed against the back of the seat and slumped down.

  “Are you going to be okay?” Jesse asked the sheet-white girl next to her.

  Bliss’s teeth began to chatter. “I don’t know.”

  Jesse turned on the heater and directed the vents toward the passenger side. “Don’t pass out. He’s probably mad about something I’ve done.”

  “God, I hope so. I thought I could be brave.” Tears sparkled in Bliss’s eyes. “But I’m not ready to be a murderess yet.”

  “Driver!” a loudspeaker said. “Get out of the vehicle and walk to the back.”

  “Damn that man!”

  Chapter Eighteen

  As directed, Jesse walked to the back of her pickup and stood. She momentarily debated raising her hands, then reminded herself that she was making a new effort not to be deliberately irritating.

  So, she hooked her thumbs in the front pockets of her jeans and tried not to tense as she watched the tall, raw-boned sheriff exit his truck, slam the door shut, and then stand there staring at her across the vehicle length separating them.

  Hat pulled low, sunglasses hiding his eyes, he looked intimidating as hell, and Jesse steeled herself not to fidget. She’d been really sleepy when she’d dressed that morning and now regretted the blue jeans, pink-and-black plaid flannel shirt and fuschia running shoes she’d settled for. It wasn’t exactly a power look.

  “I wasn’t speeding,” she said, unable to stand the silence any longer.

  He jerked his head up an inch or so and motioned. “Walk toward me.”

  “I wasn’t weaving ei
ther.” Jesse didn’t like the sudden vision of her doing a heel-to-toe drunk test across the twenty or so intervening feet. It was the middle of the day on a Sunday. You couldn’t even buy liquor around there on a Sunday.

  Ignoring her, he motioned again. “Just walk normally. To here.” He indicated a spot about a foot in front of him. His voice was firm but not raised, and the words came slowly, as if he were speaking to someone who might not understand English well. “And then just stand still. I want to talk to you.”

  Obediently, Jesse walked toward him and stopped where he’d indicated, which was uncomfortably close. “Okay. I’m here.”

  “Good. Now, what the hell did you think you were doing wandering around a taped off crime scene unescorted? Huh?” His voice was a low growl, and he practically bounced on his toes as he leaned in.

  The effect was not at all reassuring. Instead, Jesse felt like she was being towered over by someone at least a foot and a half taller than she was and she had to make a real effort not to cringe.

  “I had phone calls from two different deputies,” he continued. “One to complain, and one to apologize for letting you be there in the first place and then for letting you get loose in the second place.”

  Jesse bit her tongue to hold back an apology of her own. She was damned tired of having to say she was sorry for every little thing she did, and she was doubly tired of being yelled at about it.

  “Frank Haney wants you arrested,” Joe went on, still leaving no room for a response. “Did you know that?”

  “Why?!” Jesse couldn’t help it. The word was out before she knew it, and then it was too late to bring it back. So much for good intentions.

  “For interfering with an officer in the performance of his duty and for offering him a bribe.”

  “I did not!” Bribe? Really? There was no bribe. Jesse was sure of it. “And he was just looking at some stupid marks in the dirt.” She held out her hands, palms up, hoping she looked vulnerable and misunderstood. “And all I was trying to do was…”

  He waved her off and went on talking. “Don’t even try to give me that crap about just looking at the gardens.”