“In my room. I’ll get them.” Knowing she should discourage the girl, Jesse stopped at the door and turned to do just that. But at the sight of Misty’s smiling, excited face, the discouraging words died in Jesse’s throat. “How about an afghan?” she suggested instead. “It gets chilly out here.”
“Sounds great.” Misty ran her hands up and down her arms, warming herself with friction. “Got any coke in your fridge? And pretzels. You got any pretzels?”
“I have homemade strawberry lemonade,” Jesse suggested. “And some wonderful gluten-free, whole grain, cheese crackers.”
The girl’s eager expression turned to one of pain so obvious Jesse almost laughed. And since Misty loved lemonade of any kind, the objection had to be with the crackers. “They’re really good,” Jesse promised. “You’d never guess they were healthy.”
“I’ve heard that one before,” Misty said with a frown. “But I’ll trust you. If there’s one thing you know about, it’s food.”
“You may want to move a side table closer while I’m getting everything from my apartment.”
Then, remembering that she had a dining room full of hungry customers waiting, Jesse hurried across the landing and into her compact but comfy apartment to change. Seeing the bedding still on the sofa, she rolled it up and tucked it inside an ottoman whose padded top concealed a storage area.
Ducking behind a dressing screen that doubled as a room divider, she slipped out of her mom’s caftan and her own oversized tee-shirt and into a mid-thigh, tailored, button-front shirt in white cotton worn over denim leggings. Tucked under the foot of the bed was a pair of canvas shoes.
Jesse slid her feet into the shoes and hurried into the bathroom to brush on a smidgen of mineral powder makeup and a dash of mascara. Pinching her cheeks in place of blusher, she ended with pink-tinted lip balm. Then she quickly loaded a tray with the items for Misty, added some fruit and water, stuck her cell phone into the pocket of her shirt, and tossed an afghan over her arm before hauling it all through two doors and onto the veranda.
“Wow, I’m ready for a siege!” Misty rose from her chair and hurried to take the tray from Jesse’s overloaded grasp. “This is so exciting! SueAnn told me about the detective work you’ve been doing. Who knew I’d get to be part of it?”
Arranging her tray as she talked, Misty tested the binoculars and spread the afghan over the footstool she had carried into her cozy corner of the veranda. Her cell phone went onto the tray next to the binoculars, lemonade, bottle of water, and array of snacks. Then she stepped back and threw her arms around Jesse in a big hug.
“Thank you,” she whispered next to Jesse’s cheek. “Thank you so much. I just love it here with you, and all your friends, and how welcome you’ve made me feel. I’ve missed you so much, Jesse.”
As the words choked to a halt and the girl’s arms tightened, Jesse returned the hug. Tears burned inside her and she remembered the sad, pleading eyes in Misty’s brave face as Jesse promised that even though she was moving home, they would still have each other.
And, of course, they hadn’t. With each degree of separation and each day that passed, they had spoken less, shared less, confided less, and for that Jesse felt such guilt that she could hardly breathe.
But Misty was someone else’s child, and on this very day Ronnie was supposed to arrive and carry her away again, back to whatever had driven her to Jesse’s doorstep in the first place. And Jesse would have no choice but to let her go.
She stroked the girl’s hair, which was amazingly soft in spite of its drastic colors. “You be careful, sweetheart. If you see Cynthia down there, don’t go near her. You call me. I want you on this veranda and safe.”
Jesse drew back and stared into Misty’s green eyes, watery with unshed tears. “If anything happened to you while you were here, I would never forgive myself. Do you understand? Look all you want, but don’t move from here. Call me, and I’ll get the sheriff. Okay?”
Misty nodded and sniffed back her unshed tears. “I’m not going to see anything anyway. I don’t know where she could be, but wherever she is, it’s miles away from here. Cynthia won’t want to be around when my dad finally shows up.” The girl tilted her head and crinkled her brow. “I’m not even sure I want to be around when he shows up. I’m not sure I thought this through very well.”
Jesse laughed and gave her another big hug. “Don’t worry, hon. By the time the sheriff’s done with him, your dad should have a whole new attitude.”
“That would be nice.” Misty’s words were wistful. “I guess you need to go to work now.”
“I do, sweetie, but the tearoom will be closed by mid-afternoon, and the rest of the day is ours. Maybe SueAnn can show you some of her computer tricks after work today.”
Misty was smiling again when Jesse left her to hurry downstairs. Her coworkers, however, were not smiling when Jesse arrived.
Ladies in their Sunday morning finery filled the tables. Husbands in cowboy chic sat beside them, wearing freshly pressed shirts, with stiff new jeans and bolo neckties under their collars.
“Finally,” Lindsey muttered with a roll of her eyes. Then she moved closer to Jesse and whispered, “I’ve never seen this place so packed on a Sunday morning. It’s almost time for everyone to leave for church, and nobody’s budging. And they keep watching us.”
Sophia joined them. “Poor SueAnn. Everyone’s trying to find out what happened, and she has no idea what to tell them.”
“Shame we can’t just issue a press release and end all the speculation.” Jesse grabbed a ticket and started toward the kitchen to dish up a bowl of steel-cut oats with a side of brown sugar, chopped nuts and dried fruit. Halfway there, she stopped and wheeled to face her mother. “Wait! Why can’t we? Has anyone told them anything?”
“SueAnn keeps saying that she didn’t get here until it was all over. Lindsey’s shrugging a lot, and I’m avoiding eye contact.”
“Great!” Jesse stepped up to the counter, cleared her throat and called, “Excuse me,” as loudly as she could without shouting. The conversation in the dining room stuttered and then picked up again. Jesse stood on her tiptoes. “Excuse me!” she repeated, louder this time.
A few people stopped talking and looked in her direction. Others continued on, apparently not hearing or noticing her. SueAnn stopped in the middle of taking an order and looked up expectantly.
Lindsey stepped up next to Jesse, took a deep breath and bellowed, “Hey! Everybody! Listen up!”
The room fell silent and everyone, even the ones on the porch outside, turned to see what was happening. Lindsey swept a hand toward Jesse and stepped back toward her barista corner.
Jesse grinned. “Thank you, Lindsey, and good morning, everyone. We’re so happy to have you all here. As some of you who arrived early are aware, there was a disturbance this morning, and in case anyone out there is curious…”
She had to pause for an outbreak of laughter among the diners, followed by shouts of “yes,” “please,” and “thank you.”
“Ya’ll hush up now. Let the woman talk so we can get on to church,” one man called out.
Still grinning, Jesse said, “Thank you, one and all. As I was about to say, we had someone wander in last night and apparently pass out on the floor. We found them when we came downstairs this morning, and the police took them off to the hospital to get checked out. There was no damage done, and as far as we know, the excitement’s all over with. All I can guess is that some drunk smelled the cinnamon rolls rising and decided to investigate. And now we’re going to get back to cooking and let you all get back to eating.”
Applause and laughter followed Jesse into the kitchen before the excited buzz of conversation filled the dining room once again.
“Good save, sweetheart,” Sophia whispered. “Although it does bother me a bit how adroit you’re getting at little white lies.”
“I know,” Jesse said with a grimace. “I worry about that myself. But it’s so hard to be completely
honest when you’re trying to weasel information out of people.”
“I think the word is ‘wheedle,’ dear.”
“It feels like weasel.” Jesse added two pieces of toasted raisin-cinnamon bread to the plate holding the oatmeal and set it on the counter with its ticket.
Sophia set a plated omelet next to it. They both picked up new tickets and returned to the kitchen to continue filling orders and begin transitioning to the soups, sandwiches and quiches they would need for brunch. Jesse slipped two loaves of lemon zest tea bread into the oven to bake and pulled out two coffee cakes with cinnamon streusel topping.
They had built their business on recipes dating back to Jesse’s grandmother Sadie, especially the baked goods. Meals were served on the vintage English china Jesse had been collecting for decades. And their trademark coffee house coffees were whipped up by their co-owner and barista extraordinaire, Lindsey Hatch.
The church crowd filtered out finally, some to return later for an early afternoon lunch. The brunch crowd began to flow in, a lighter, less hectic, less curious group who hadn’t seen the police cars gathered outside at dawn.
In the five-minute lull between brunch and the afternoon influx of the post-church lunch crowd, Jesse’s phone rang. She set a freshly baked meatloaf on the kitchen counter and took off her oven mitt. The phone was on its fourth ring before she got it out of her pocket and to her ear. “Yes?”
“Jesse, there’s somebody down there,” Misty said in a rasp that sounded like a shout trying to fight its way past a whisper.
“Where?”
“At the car!”
“Is it her?” Jesse’s excitement rose, and she mentally prepared to hang up and call the police.
“No, it’s a guy. But it looks like him.”
“Him?” Jesse didn’t remember a him involved in any of this. Except for Ronnie. “You mean your dad? Is he here?”
“No, the other him. The prom guy.”
“Prom guy?” Jesse felt like an echo, a dense, sluggish echo.
“Prom guy,” Misty insisted. “The one she married.”
“Oh, him. We don’t know for certain that she married him, and that picture is—what—twenty years old? You can’t possibly recognize him.”
“Well, somebody needs to do something, because whoever he is, he’s opening the back door of the car.”
“Don’t move!” Jesse disconnected and dialed Joe Tyler’s number. As it rang, she started out of the kitchen and across the dining room. She had entered the screened porch by the time he answered.
“Sheriff Tyler.”
“There’s a man at the car,” Jesse said, making sure the porch’s door didn’t slam behind her as she started down the steps into the brick-paved garden.
“Where are you?”
“Headed that way.” She was on the path that led through the garden to the garage, trying to stay behind trees as she made her way toward the alley.
“Stop right where you are,” he ordered. “Don’t take another step. That car’s under surveillance, or don’t you remember that?”
“It’s not Cynthia. It’s a guy,” Jesse whispered, still moving. “Nobody’s expecting a guy.”
“Has it occurred to you that it could be the guy who tried to kill her? Get back in your house and let us handle this, Jesse!”
The door to Lindsey’s apartment opened, and Deputy Angeles charged through it with his arm extended and his finger pointing straight toward Jesse. The look on his face was fierce as he made a slashing motion across his throat with his thumb. His mouth curled in a snarl, and his finger stabbed toward the ground at her feet.
Jesse was pretty sure he wanted her to stop, and he looked like he’d been taking no-more-Mr.-Nice-Guy lessons from his commanding officer, so she stopped.
“How did Todd know I was here?” Jesse asked into the phone as she stood obediently hidden behind a weeping cherry tree.
“We’re the police, Jesse.” Joe sounded like he was speaking through gritted teeth. “We have things called radios and more than one phone line.”
“Misty thinks the guy at the car looks like someone she saw in a picture with Cynthia.”
“How could she know that? And where is she?”
“On the upstairs balcony. I wouldn’t…” Jesse felt a tug on the tail of her shirt and looked over her shoulder into the slightly bloodshot eyes of the girl in question. “Uh, correction—she’s standing right behind me.” With a jerk of her head she signaled for Misty to stay back and in the cover of the tree.
“Lord, give me strength,” Joe said with a groan. “There are two of you now.”
“One of us is just visiting,” Jesse offered as consolation.
“Would you please take her and go back inside?” he asked. “Please?”
“Deputy Angeles doesn’t need backup?”
Joe heaved a sigh. “Deputy Angeles is not in a very good mood right now. The alley was empty when he got there. Whoever Misty saw there must have taken off while you were sneaking through the garden and Todd was going down the apartment stairs.”
Misty tapped Jesse on the shoulder and handed her a cell phone with a picture on the screen. It was a slightly blurry photo of a man glancing over his shoulder and toward her camera. Jesse squinted at it, and while that didn’t help bring the picture into focus, she could tell that the man did resemble an older version of the boy in the prom photo.
She scrolled with her thumb and saw a series of shots with the man approaching the car, looking at the car, and leaving the car. Two even had Misty’s smiling face in the lower corner, but none of them showed the man with the car door open.
He could easily have been a casual passerby. Except that the alley only had four homes with garage entrances off of it, and Jesse knew practically everyone in town. She had never seen this man before unless it was in a twenty-year-old photo.
“Misty took pictures,” she said. “Of the man in the alley. She’s got a whole series of them.” She looked at Misty and mouthed the word “selfies?”
Misty smiled and shrugged, then mouthed back “my first stakeout.”
“Send them to me,” Joe said.
Jesse texted the pictures, even the ones with Misty, while she watched a glum Deputy Angeles trudge back up the steps and into Lindsey’s apartment.
“What about that other picture you were telling me about?” Joe asked. “The one with Cynthia Stanton in it?”
“It’s a high school prom photo. About twenty years ago, but the guy in it does look a lot like this man. Maybe you can do one of those age progression things.”
“Okay, send me that one, too. Then, please, go back inside and stay out of trouble for a few hours. And could somebody bring Todd a lunch plate? He’s got to be starving by now.”
“Does he have any preferences?”
“Food. Probably something with meat in it.”
“We’ve got a meatloaf special for lunch.”
“Sounds good. Sounds very good, in fact. On second thought, I might just come by and pick up that prom picture from you.”
“I’ll save you a slice of meatloaf,” Jesse promised with a grin. “With all the fixings.”
Misty retrieved her cell phone from Jesse’s unresisting hand.
“Are you dating him?” the girl asked when Jesse had hung up and tucked her phone back into her pocket.
“Why would you ask that?” Jesse tried to hide her shock. She would have to watch herself around Joe if children were starting to wonder.
“That goofy look on your face when you hung up. And I felt kind of a vibe between you two earlier.”
“Well, no, we’re not actually dating.” She looked at the teenager who had almost been her daughter and felt an unfamiliar need for approval. “But we’ve talked about it. What do you think?”
“Not bad looking. A little intimidating, maybe, but then I guess a sheriff needs to be.” Misty gave her a thumbs-up. “You could do worse. Do you really like him?”
“Hard to tell. We
argue a lot.”
“Yeah, I noticed. Can’t really blame him, though, can you?”
Jesse hooked her arm around Misty’s shoulders and turned them both toward the house. “No. No, I can’t. And I think he’s kind of cute when he’s grumpy.”
Misty laughed. “Sounds to me like you’re in big trouble, lady.”
Chapter Eleven
“Did she get any rest at all?” Sophia asked softly. She glanced over her shoulder to where Misty was winding her way through the dining room refilling glasses with a pitcher of water in one hand and one of iced tea in the other.
“Probably not,” Jesse said. “But she’s too wound up to sleep, no matter how tired she is. Everything she came here to get away from has followed her here, and any minute now, her father’s going to walk through that door and tell her to pack her bag and come with him. At least this way, she’s got something else to think about while she’s waiting.”
“Have they heard anything more from Cynthia?”
“Not that I know of, but then I’m not sure Sheriff Tyler will feel compelled to keep me informed. As far as I know, they’ve still got her car and motel under surveillance. And I’m supposed to call the sheriff when Ronnie shows up.”
“Which should be any minute now, right?” Sophia pulled another meatloaf from the oven and set it aside to cool before slicing.
Jesse glanced at the clock on the back wall of the kitchen. Another half hour and they would be putting up the closed sign on the tearoom door. Lindsey had taken the lunch plate to Todd Angeles hours ago, and the sheriff had never shown up for the meatloaf special he’d asked Jesse to save for him. She still had a plate under plastic wrap in the refrigerator, just in case.
Misty had emailed him a copy of the prom picture she had found, along with a link to the yearbook, but there had been no response. Jesse had a feeling that something was going on, but she couldn’t exactly call and demand an update. Once the tearoom had closed and the cleanup was done, she planned to do some investigating of her own regardless of how sleep-deprived she was feeling.
A Misty Morning Murder (Myrtle Grove Garden Club Mystery Book 4) Page 8