Thirty-Six and a Half Motives: Rose Gardner Mystery #9 (Rose Gardner Mystery Series)

by Denise Grover Swank

  “Granny?”

  “In the kitchen.”

  We walked through a room that looked be a makeshift mud room, filled with muddy rain boots and coats. It was also full of an array of gardening tools—a few rakes and shovels, a hoe, and a pitchfork.

  Neely Kate glanced over her shoulder. “Home protection.”

  “From zombies?” Jed whispered to me with a smirk.

  “I heard that,” Neely Kate said dryly.

  We entered a small kitchen, the counters stacked high with dirty dishes and pots. A small round table covered with a lace tablecloth was pushed close to the wall, and three empty mismatched wooden chairs were gathered around it. A fourth chair was occupied by Neely Kate’s grandmother, who wore a brightly colored turban on her head.

  She held her hands out when she saw us. “Welcome to your future.”

  “We’re not here for a reading, Granny,” Neely Kate said, looking back at us and gesturing to the chairs.

  Jed’s eyes widened, and I couldn’t say I blamed him. I had my doubts one of those rickety chairs would hold his bulky frame.

  Neely Kate plopped onto the chair next to her grandmother. “Jed, you sit in the corner. I need Rose over here.” She pointed to the chair between them. When he hesitated, she grumped, “Oh, have a seat, you big baby.”

  I couldn’t say I blamed her poor attitude, and I also understood why she was so eager to stay with me out at my farm. Five minutes in this place would make me grumpy, too.

  Jed scooted between the table and the wall, his legs bumping the edge, pushing it toward Neely Kate’s granny. He shot my friend a look that said she was a dead woman when we left.

  Neely Kate just chuckled.

  “You did that on purpose,” I whispered.

  “Paybacks bite you in the keister. We’ll see if he ever suggests I’m incapable of a little light burglary again.”

  This obviously had something to do with their visit to the Pelgers’s office, but I knew better than to ask now.

  Neely Kate’s grandmother stood, and her gazed flitted around the table before coming to rest on Jed. “And who might you be?”

  “Granny,” Neely Kate said, “this is Jed.”

  “Jed what?”

  Jed gave her a wary smile. “Jed Carlisle, ma’am.”

  “Well, Jed Carlisle, this is your lucky day. I’m gonna tell you your future.”

  Jed’s eyes flew wide open. “That’s not necessary ma’am.”

  “Nonsense,” she said, moving over to her stove and grabbing a worn red tea kettle. She hobbled over to the sink and pushed a pan out of the way to fill the pot. “Have you ever had your tea leaves read before?”

  “No, ma’am.”

  She glanced over her shoulder and smiled. “Then today really is your lucky day. I’ll even do it at a discount price.”

  “You’ll do it for free, Granny,” Neely Kate said, shooting her a warning look.

  “You don’t need to do it at all,” Jed insisted.

  Granny shot Neely Kate a frown before putting the kettle on the stove. “Of course I’ll do it for free. My introductory special.”

  It was obvious Jed did not want to know his future. I found it amusing considering all the dangerous situations I’d seen him navigate without so much as breaking a sweat, not to mention the fact that I’d told him his changeable future many times.

  But whatever his reason, I decided to help him out. Lord knew he’d helped me plenty. “Ms. Rivers, can you read my tea leaves instead?”

  The older woman moved closer, putting her gnarled hand on my cheek. “No, your future is too uncertain.”

  Neely Kate looked alarmed. “What does that mean, Granny?”

  Her grandmother’s back stiffened. “It means just what I said.” She picked up a tea cup and rinsed it in the sink.

  “Why would her future be uncertain?” Neely Kate asked.

  The older woman put the cup and saucer on the table. “Because she’s a seer. All seers’ futures are unclear because they carry the futures of so many others.”

  I shot a questioning look at Neely Kate, but she shook her head.

  “I didn’t tell her,” she said.

  Neely Kate’s granny laughed. “She didn’t have to tell me. I can see it in your aura.”

  “Granny, we’re not here for you to read either of their futures. I’m here because I need to ask you a few questions about Momma.”

  The older woman’s smile fell, and she suddenly looked nervous. “Oh.”

  “Momma was seeing someone before she left. Do you know anything about him?”

  She waved her hand in dismissal, but she wouldn’t look her granddaughter in the eyes. “That kid in the band.”

  “No, Granny. She was seeing someone else.”

  Her grandmother froze. “What makes you say that?”

  I cast a glance at Jed to see if he’d picked up on her strange behavior. His previous anxiety was gone, replaced with the face he used to face Skeeter’s adversaries in meetings.

  “I found out some information about Momma . . . before she left,” Neely Kate said. “She was pregnant. You always told me she got pregnant later.”

  Her grandmother sat in her chair and covered Neely Kate’s hands with her own. “You don’t know what you’re messin’ with, baby girl. You need to leave this alone.”

  “What are you talkin’ about?” Neely Kate asked.

  “You just accept that fool boy as your father and go on with your life.”

  “Momma never told me who my father was. She always said it didn’t matter.”

  Her grandmother nodded, but I saw the fear in her eyes. “This is the one time your Momma and I agree on somethin’, and given what a rarity that is, you should listen.”

  “No, Granny. I need to know.”

  Anger flashed in the older woman’s eyes. “No, you don’t! You just let sleepin’ dogs lie, Neely Kate Rivers. Your very life depends on it!”

  We were all silent for a moment before Neely Kate said in a calm, clear voice. “I know that J.R. Simmons is my father.”

  Her grandmother shook her head violently. “No, Neely Kate. No.”

  “Yes, Granny,” she continued. “It’s true. Now I need you to tell me what you know.” Neely Kate grew impatient when her grandmother didn’t answer. “Granny!”

  “There was a woman here . . . recent. She was asking about you.” She started to shake. “You’re not supposed to know about it.”

  Neely Kate gasped. “What? Who?”

  My heart slammed into my chest. Had Kate been to see Neely Kate’s grandmother?

  Neely Kate looked over her shoulder at me, then back at her grandmother. “Just tell me what she looked like, okay?” Neely Kate asked in an amazingly calm voice. “What color was her hair? That couldn’t hurt anything, could it?”

  The older woman was clearly flustered. “She told me not to tell anyone. She told me not to say.”

  “Granny, this is important. I need to know.”

  “No!” Granny Rivers’s face turned red. “She said she’d kill you if I told! I failed Jenny Lynn. I’m not failing you, too.”

  The older woman clearly knew more about what had happened to her daughter than she was letting on, but I was worried she wouldn’t tell us anything.

  Neely Kate stood and began to pace, and Jed’s eyes had darkened. “Ma’am, I know you think you’re protecting Neely Kate,” he said, “but she’ll be in more danger if we don’t know who came to see you and why.”

  She pressed her lips together and shook her head.

  “Granny Rivers,” I said softly as I slid over to sit in Neely Kate’s vacated chair. “She said not tell us what she said, right?”

  She nodded.

  “How about I ask you a few things, and you only answer if you feel comfortable?”

  She hesitated, eyeing me closely as though trying to figure out if it was a trick.

  “I won’t force you to tell me anything you don’t want to. Can we just try it?”<
br />
  She nodded.

  “Okay.” I smiled. “Let’s talk about the time before Jenny Lynn left.” When she didn’t protest, I continued, “Did you know she was seeing an older man?”

  “I knew she was hiding something, but I didn’t know what. She wouldn’t come home for days, and she’d show up with things—once a necklace and another time a pair of earrings.”

  “From him? The man she was seeing?”

  Granny Rivers shrugged. “She never said. I almost accused her of stealing, but I knew better. Jenny Lynn was a lot of things before she left, but a thief wasn’t one of them.”

  “Did she ever act scared of him?”

  “She was jumpy at the end. Easily spooked and lookin’ out the windows at night. The last week was the worst, and that’s when she finally told me the whole story.”

  “And can you tell me the whole story?” I asked.

  “No. She told me not to.”

  “The woman who came to see you?”

  Granny Rivers nodded.

  “That’s okay,” I said softly. “Did the woman want the whole story?” She started getting agitated, so I added, “You’re not telling me what you two talked about. It’s okay.”

  She nodded, grabbing a tissue from a box on the table. “She wanted the whole story.”

  “Did you know who Neely Kate’s father was before Jenny Lynn left?”

  She hesitated.

  “You don’t have to say it out loud,” I suggested. “You can just nod or shake your head.”

  She nodded.

  “Did anyone come lookin’ for her after she left?”

  She nodded again.

  There was no way J.R. would have shown up to do his own dirty work. He would have sent someone else.

  “Do you know the name of the person who came to see you?”

  She looked away. “No.”

  “If I show you a picture, do you think you can tell me if it was him?”

  Despite her dubious expression, she nodded and said, “I’ll never forget that man.”

  I pulled out my phone and sent Skeeter a text:

  I need you to send pic of Thaddeus Brooke’s photo on his driver’s license.

  He didn’t respond for a good half-minute, but then he sent the photo, no questions asked.

  I held the screen in front of Neely Kate’s grandmother. “Is this him?”

  Tears filled her eyes, and I stared at her in shock. This was not the woman I’d met in the bingo hall. I had never expected anything to terrify that feisty woman.

  “So this is him?”

  She nodded.

  “He showed up lookin’ for Jenny Lynn?”

  “Her too.”

  “So he was looking for something else?” I asked in surprise.

  When she didn’t answer, Neely Kate blew her stack. “For God’s sake, Granny, I know you think you’re helpin’ me, but you’re hurtin’ me more by not telling me! What was he lookin’ for?”

  Her grandmother stood up and shouted, “A gun! He was looking for the gun Jenny Lynn took from that man!”

  Neely Kate gasped. “A gun?”

  The older woman started to sob. “Jenny Lynn took if for insurance.”

  “You mean protection?” I asked.

  “No, insurance. She said he’d shot and killed a man with it. She took it to use for blackmail. I told the man who showed up that if he or the man who’d used Jenny Lynn tried to find her, we’d turn the gun in to the police.”

  I sucked in a breath.

  Granny Rivers wiped her nose with her tissue. “I told him that she took it with her. He banged me up a bit, then said he’d be back in a week to get it or else. But he never came back. Then the police chief got shot in his house. A burglary gone wrong, they said. Who’s gonna fall for that? The police chief! After the same thing had happened to the owner of the fertilizer plant the week before . . . Everyone thought there was a dangerous criminal on the loose, but I knew that rich guy from El Dorado had somethin’ to do with it.”

  “Where’s the gun now, Granny?” Neely Kate asked.

  She started crying harder. “She took it with her.”

  “Momma took it?”

  “No, that woman. She knew I had it, and she demanded I give it to her.”

  Neely Kate glanced at me. “How’d Kate know about the gun, and why would she want it?”

  I shrugged. “I don’t know. Maybe she wanted it for more evidence against her father.”

  “So why’d she threaten Granny if she told anybody about her showing up and askin’ questions?”

  “I don’t know.” I looked over at Jed. “Any ideas?”

  “Not a one, but I agree it sounds like Kate. Still, it would be good if we could get your grandmother to help confirm it.”

  Neely Kate squatted next to her grandmother’s chair. “Granny, listen to me. Can you tell me something about the woman? We can make it yes or no, just like the questions you answered for Rose.”

  The old woman looked suspicious, but Neely Kate forged on anyway. “Did she have dark hair?”

  Her grandmother hesitated before giving a slight nod.

  “See?” Neely Kate said. “That wasn’t hard. Now tell me this: did she have blue streaks in her hair?” Neely Kate grew frustrated when the woman didn’t answer. “Granny, did she have blue streaks in her hair?”

  “I don’t know,” she said, her body shaking as she started to cry. “Her hair was covered with a hat. I could only see the ends of her dark hair sticking out.”

  I heard the door behind us open.

  “Hey, Granny,” Neely Kate’s cousin Witt called out. “Sorry I got held up. I know you think I was trying to get out of fixin’ your hot water heater.”

  “What did the hat look like, Granny?” Neely Kate said, her voice rising. “What was she wearing? Tell me!”

  “What in the hell is goin’ on here?” Witt stomped into the room with fury in his eyes. “What are you doin’, Neely Kate?”

  Neely Kate stood and turned to face him, looking like she was ready for a showdown. “A woman was here askin’ about me and my momma, but she threatened to kill me if Granny told anyone. I need to know what she asked and what Granny told her.”

  “So you’re just lightin’ into her?” he asked in disbelief. “She’s liable to have another spell.”

  “I need to know, Witt!”

  “Well, this isn’t the way to do it!”

  I put an arm around Neely Kate’s shoulders and gave her a comforting squeeze. “It’s okay, Neely Kate. We have enough.”

  “No, we don’t!” She turned to face me. “We don’t know who he killed with that gun!”

  “We don’t need to,” I said quietly, trying to calm her down. “It’s enough to know that Kate’s gettin’ desperate. She has to be if she’s threatening an old woman just to make a move on her father.”

  “Rose is right,” Jed added, rising from his chair. “We’ve got enough for now.”

  “No—”

  “Neely Kate,” Jed said, firmly. “That’s enough.”

  She nodded, and then her entire body slumped against me.

  “Jed . . .” I called out in a panic.

  “I got her.” He was around the table in an instant, scooping Neely Kate up in his arms. “I’m takin’ her out to the car.”

  “I don’t need you to do that, Jed Carlisle,” Neely Kate protested. “I can walk on my own two feet.” She swatted his chest, but she didn’t struggle very hard to get loose as he carried her outside.

  “Rose,” Witt said. “What’s goin’ on?”

  I moved next to him and lowered my voice. “Neely Kate has stumbled onto the truth about her birth father, and it’s a dangerous mess.”

  Pride filled Witt’s eyes. “Of course it is. It’s Neely Kate.”

  “And now that she knows someone came to see your granny . . . Well, Neely Kate has just had one shock right after another today, and I suspect she hasn’t eaten in hours, which explains why Jed is carryin’ her.
”

  Witt winked. “Or the fact that he’s a strappin’ young man.”

  I shook my head, wondering how much of his suggestion was true. “In any case, we’re gonna take her with us to keep her safe, but you might take your granny somewhere else tonight. To be on the safe side.”

  “Just how big of a mess has Neely Kate stumbled into?”

  “A huge, nasty pile of poo.”

  He shook his head in amazement. “You’ve got your work cut out for you. You take care of Neely Kate, and I’ve got Granny covered.”

  “Thanks.”

  I squatted next to Neely Kate’s grandmother. “I’m sorry we upset you, Mrs. Rivers. Neely Kate is just desperate to get some answers.”

  “I hope that other woman is okay,” she said.

  I hesitated, assuming I must have heard her wrong. “What other woman?”

  “When that woman left, she stopped outside the front door and took a phone call. She told the caller not to worry, that she had Jenny Lynn’s gun and now she was gonna teach the other bitch a lesson she wouldn’t forget for the rest of her short life.”

  Dizziness flooded my head. “Are you sure?”

  She nodded.

  “When did the woman come see you?”

  “Yesterday. Yesterday afternoon.”

  Yesterday?

  “Thank you, Mrs. Rivers,” I said. Then I ran out the door to find Jed.

  We had to save someone.

  Chapter 30

  Jed was standing next to the back car door, surveying the farm, when I found him. He turned to face me. “Neely Kate’s lying down on the backseat.”

  I nodded.

  He gestured toward the house. “That was a surprise.”

  “Which part? The gun?” I asked. “Or the fact that Kate was here digging into Neely Kate’s past?”

  “Both.”

  “Well, I’m about to add more intrigue—Mrs. Rivers said her visitor stopped by yesterday, but as she left, she took a call and told the person on the other end that she was going to teach the other bitch a lesson. Then said she was going to kill her.”