A Misty Morning Murder (Myrtle Grove Garden Club Mystery Book 4)

by Loulou Harrington

“You know, no matter what time Ronnie flew out of Austin this morning, it should still be hours before he gets here.” Jesse hesitated to say more, but this might be her only quiet moment to confide in her mother before something else happened.

  Sophia let out a heavy sigh but let the subject rest.

  “I know, Mom. He certainly seems to be taking his sweet time.” Jesse took a deep breath that mirrored her mother’s sigh. “But listen, there’s something about Ronnie I haven’t mentioned.” Jesse lowered her voice and continued, “He called me late last night. At least I think it was him. The second one, I mean. The first call was such a strange conversation. But the second one was downright alarming. Now it seems like a bad dream, but I know it happened.

  “And what did he say in this call, dear?”

  “He asked me to take care of Misty until he comes for her. And he said to tell her that he would do whatever she wanted, including canceling the wedding.”

  Sophia gasped. “You’re kidding me!”

  “He sounded almost scared, Mom,” Jesse said softly. “It was so strange. I haven’t heard him sound like that since we first started dating. There’s something going on, and I couldn’t tell if it has to do with Cynthia, or if it’s something completely separate.”

  “Did you tell the sheriff any of this?”

  “Some. It was hard to get in a word edgewise with everything going on this morning. Besides, Ronnie was in Austin, so that phone call has nothing to do with the craziness that happened here last night.”

  “But that might explain why Cynthia seemed so desperate.”

  “Well, you’re right about that. Because he definitely sounded like he was having second thoughts. But that still doesn’t explain why someone would attack Cynthia in our kitchen—or who in the world it could have been.”

  “Well, I’m hoping that once Ronnie shows up, all this silliness will go away.” Sophia set the plate she’d been assembling onto the counter for SueAnn. “I don’t even care who was responsible, I just want it to stop.”

  Jesse frowned. Her curious mind still cared and definitely wanted to learn more. “I still want to know who was lurking around the alley this morning.”

  “It could have been a reporter, Jesse. Every time something happens now, news people start coming out of the bushes trying to find out what’s going on.”

  “As fascinating as I find all of this,” Lindsey said, moving closer, “the faster we get the food served, the faster we get closed, and the sooner I get to go run that deputy out of my apartment.”

  With a start, Jesse realized she had forgotten all about where she was and what she should be doing. “Oh, good heavens, I’m so sorry, Lindsey. Thank you.”

  “How much sleep did you get last night, Jesse?” Lindsey asked with more concern than normal.

  “Oh, an hour or two, here and there.”

  “When we get closed, don’t you think you should go take a nap? Before you pass out?”

  “That sounds so good, you can’t imagine.” Despite the excitement of the morning, Jesse’s adrenaline was running low and fatigue was overtaking her usual stamina.

  “They say just twenty minutes can work wonders,” Lindsey insisted.

  “I’ll try,” Jesse promised.

  “While you’re at it, you could try sounding just a little more sincere about it.”

  “I’m sorry, Lindsey. I know you’re right. It’s just…”

  Sophia’s nudge interrupted Jesse. Her mother’s subsequent nod toward the doorway had Jesse turning to watch a stern Deputy Marla Murphy cross the dining room straight toward the counter. Lindsey broke away and went back to her coffee crafting.

  “Hi, there,” Jesse said. “Are you coming to pick up the sheriff’s lunch?”

  Marla looked confused. “No. I’m coming to get you. Sheriff Joe requests the pleasure of your company.”

  “Oh, okay. Just let me get these last few orders filled, and I’ll head right down to…”

  “Now,” Marla insisted. “He sent me to pick you up.”

  “I can drive myself,” Jesse protested. “Heck, your office is close enough I can walk.”

  Marla leaned over the counter and whispered, “Don’t make this difficult. We’re not going to the office, and I need you to come with me now.”

  Chapter Twelve

  Sophia and Jesse exchanged a look of shock. Lindsey edged closer and whispered, “Is there something going on that you neglected to mention?”

  “Not that I know of,” Jesse whispered back. But that little worried voice that had been whispering in her ear all morning was practically screaming.

  SueAnn arrived at the counter and dropped off one last round of ticket orders. “Is it okay to lock the front door? I don’t think they’re ever going to stop coming in unless we do.”

  Jesse glanced at the clock. It was still five minutes until the two p.m. closing. “Give it three more minutes and then lock it.” Her gaze moved toward the door where an impatient Deputy Murphy waited with arms crossed, staring daggers at Jesse. Whatever was going on wasn’t a small thing.

  “Listen, SueAnn…” Jesse tore her attention from the deputy and refocused on SueAnn. “…do you have plans for this afternoon?”

  “Nothing important. Do you need something?” Eagerness sparkled in the girl’s eyes. “Like some investigating maybe?”

  “Yes. And I need you to work with Misty.”

  Jesse motioned Misty over with a nod and an eye roll that she hoped wasn’t noticeable to the customers. Being practically walked out by a deputy was bad enough. They certainly didn’t need any more speculation starting up just as they were trying to close.

  Misty arrived at the counter with both pitchers almost empty. Lindsey took them to refill while Misty stood next to SueAnn and looked nervously toward Jesse. “What’s going on? Does that Marla lady want you to go with her? Or is it me? Does she want me?”

  The teen’s eyes widened with what looked like horror at the thought, and Jesse quickly said, “No, it’s me. The sheriff wants to see me about something, and I have no idea what. In the meantime, Misty, do you still have the password to my computer?”

  “Yep.”

  “Well, SueAnn has agreed to stay and help you with some background searches on the internet.”

  Misty’s face became one huge smile of relief, and she gave SueAnn’s arm a happy squeeze.

  Glancing toward an increasingly restless Marla Murphy, Jesse spoke faster. “Okay, what I need is for you to think of anything you’ve heard mentioned or anyone you know of who might have some personal or business relationship with Cynthia.”

  Lindsey set the refilled pitchers on the counter and remained to listen.

  Jesse slipped out of her apron while she talked, her gaze bouncing between SueAnn and Misty. “Also, see if you can think of any business associate or acquaintance who might be a problem for your father, besides Cynthia, and find out what you can about that person.”

  “What’s Dad got to do with this?” Misty protested.

  “Well, for example, why is Cynthia here?” Jesse answered. “It doesn’t make any sense. So is anything going on back in Austin that could have caused her to follow you here? See? Like that.”

  Coming around the end of the counter, Jesse paused beside Misty and whispered, “I talked to your dad late last night. He said to tell you he loved you. And that he’s willing to negotiate on the wedding. Maybe even cancel it.”

  Misty’s face brightened with happiness. “He said that?”

  Jesse nodded. “He said that. And, yeah, it shocked me, too. So, if there’s anything you can think of that could be causing problems for your dad or Cynthia, or causing trouble between the two of them, find out what you can about it. And we’ll go over everything when I get back.”

  With that, Jesse left on the heels of an obviously tense Deputy Murphy, who put Jesse in the front seat of her patrol car and pulled away from the curb with gravel flying. At the end of the block, Marla turned the opposite direction fr
om the town square, switched on her flashing lights and sped away from Myrtle Grove on a two-lane state highway.

  More baffled than ever, Jesse watched miles of countryside speed by until they reached a three-way stop. To the right, Jesse recognized a road that would lead to the interstate and Tulsa. Instead of turning that way, they continued straight through on the small highway that linked ranch land and a series of small towns with lakes and woods and not much else.

  “Great place for a picnic,” Jesse said, trying to break the heavy silence.

  “If you like ticks and chiggers,” Marla answered.

  And mosquitos and snakes and ants, Jesse thought, but who’s counting? There was also fresh air and sunshine and wide-open spaces.

  “You seem to be in a dark place today, Marla,” Jesse said instead. “Just look at all those little calves out there with their mothers. It always makes me smile to see them, especially this time of year when they’re so young.”

  “I’m not really a country girl,” the deputy answered. “Besides, the sheriff told me not to talk to you.”

  “Not to talk to me?” Jesse was shocked. “That sounds so adversarial.”

  “He’s afraid I might slip and say something.” Marla glanced toward Jesse. “He could have sent Frank to fetch you, you know.”

  “Ooh, okay. You don’t have to talk to me. At least I know he’s not mad at me, or he would have sent Frank.”

  Jesse turned back toward the window and watched more scenery go by. They were approaching a second intersection with another turn that would lead toward the interstate and Tulsa, but they were also approaching the outside edge of Waite County. And wherever they were going required the presence of the sheriff and at least two of his deputies. Plus Jesse.

  Could they have found Cynthia? But that wouldn’t explain why they were driving all the way out here rather than to have Jesse walk the block and a half to the sheriff’s office in the downtown square. There had to be something major afoot.

  A chill crawled over Jesse’s shoulders and down her spine, and the urge for conversation faded, replaced by the memory of Cynthia stretched unmoving on the kitchen floor of the tearoom. Jesse might not have any fondness for the woman, but the last thing she wanted to see was another dead body, especially a round two on Cynthia Stanton. Once a person turned out to be alive, they needed to stay that way.

  Marla’s squad car rounded a bend in the road, and the ditches flattened out. The overhanging trees ended abruptly at the edge of fenced pasture land. Jesse roused herself from the bucolic trance she had fallen into when she recognized what looked like an accident scene dead ahead.

  Straddling the narrow gravel shoulder on the opposite side of the road, the sheriff’s truck was pulled in nose first, while a deputy’s car and the medical examiner’s van flanked the rear of a car that was nose down in the ditch. The driver’s side rear bumper extended into the road by a foot or so.

  Lights flashed on the county vehicles in an endless strobe, and Jesse could see what looked like the wrecked car’s taillights glowing weakly in the sunlight. Marla whipped her car to the opposite side of the road and came to a halt behind the sheriff’s truck.

  “You just stay there until the sheriff comes to get you,” she said and exited the car.

  The car door slammed, and Jesse was alone in the silence, torn between her normal curiosity and her mind’s screaming need to escape. She’d seen all the lifeless bodies and mayhem she wanted to see for a while. In that moment, she wanted nothing more than to close her eyes and drift away to a happier place.

  If that was a cop-out, so be it. She was mentally and physically exhausted, and it suddenly seemed like a week since she had slept for more than a few hours. If she could just close her eyes and try for one of those twenty minute naps Lindsey had recommended, she’d let her curiosity go wild when she woke up.

  Jesse’s eyelids drooped and fatigue washed over her. She let her head drop back onto the headrest, took a deep breath, and thought of sunshine, green pastures, and calves frolicking. She was almost there. Then the scene changed to a stormy night and a strange phone call that said nothing but left her feeling haunted. An instant later, her car door opened, and she almost groaned aloud.

  “You weren’t sleeping?” Joe Tyler demanded.

  Jesse tilted her chin and squinted at him through half open eyes. “No. Not yet, I wasn’t.” Strangely she felt no desire to get out of the car and no need to know why he had summoned her.

  “Did you get any rest last night?” he asked.

  She yawned, belatedly remembering to put a hand over her mouth. “Not much,” she said. “Or the night before, for that matter.”

  As she stretched, Joe reached in and unbuckled her seatbelt, leaning close enough for her to smell his cologne. Carried on his body heat, it was a woodsy scent that suited him and, distracted by his nearness, Jesse tried to remember when she had last worn perfume. Definitely not before her flight yesterday. Between the traveling, and the fitful sleeping and rushing around, she couldn’t even remember when she had brushed her hair last.

  “Are you asleep again?” he asked.

  “No. Just resting my eyes.” She forced her scratchy eyes open and saw that he had moved back and was extending his hand to help her out of the car.

  She put her hand in his and allowed him to half pull her out of the car and onto her feet. Once she was standing, Jesse realized she was wobbly all the way to her toes.

  “Seriously,” he said. “Are you okay?”

  “Oh, yeah, sure. I seem to be crashing just a bit, but I made it through the breakfast rush this morning. I’ll be okay. Really.”

  “If you’re sure.” He looked down at her in silence and his gaze turned very serious. “Jesse, I need you to look at something for me.”

  “What?” Her earlier feeling of something close to dread returned. Whatever he wanted her to look at, she was pretty sure she didn’t want to see it.

  “I can’t tell you. I’m sorry.”

  “Give me a hint at least,” she said.

  “I have a body I need you to look at.”

  Jesse groaned. That was the last thing she wanted to hear. Hadn’t she just told herself she was done with dead bodies? Unconscious people on her kitchen floor were bad enough. What she said aloud was, “And you think I can identify this person?”

  “That’s what I need to find out.”

  “Why me? Why here? Shouldn’t I do my identifying down at the morgue?”

  “That would be an hour from now. At a minimum. And I really don’t have the time or patience to wait that long. So you’d be doing me a big favor if you’d just do this for me. Here. Now. I really can’t say anything more right now, Jesse.”

  “Does that mean there’s more you could tell me?”

  “Later.”

  “Not sure if I should take that as a promise or a threat.”

  Keeping his grip on her arm light, Joe led her down the highway where no traffic had passed since Jesse had arrived. The rear end of the car ahead didn’t look familiar to her.

  The taillights were barely visible, as if the battery fueling them was almost exhausted. If they had been burning for hours, it wouldn’t indicate a cautious driver who always drove with the headlights on. More likely the car had run off the road in the night, possibly a casualty of the early morning thunderstorm.

  The closer they got, the more a sense of dread settled over her, and the more Jesse dragged her feet. Joe moved behind her. Placing a hand on each shoulder, he guided her past the rear bumper of the car.

  Jesse twisted to look over her shoulder, staring at the driver’s door where it hung open. She could hear the faint pinging from inside, like the pinging she had heard last night before the phone line went dead. Her stomach tightened into a hard knot of dread, and her feet forgot to move. If not for the hands at her shoulders, she might have fallen.

  “Just a few more feet,” Joe said in her ear.

  Gently but inexorably, he kept her moving aro
und the rear of car and into the gap between it and the front of the medical examiner’s van. Jesse saw the gradual, grassy slope of the broad ditch that climbed again and flattened out into a fenced pasture. In the distance, black cows stood nibbling at the grass. Others lay with their legs tucked under them, lounging in the soft green pasture, still chewing slowly. Calves rested nearby, napping in the sunshine.

  Joe brought her to a halt and turned her toward the front of the car. Its nose tilted down toward the ditch while its front bumper cleared the ground by several inches. Not wrecked then, she thought. Not even scratched. So, was it run off the road? Did it skid in the rain? Or maybe it was just a really lousy job of parking on the shoulder of the road.

  Jesse closed her eyes and breathed in the fresh air, warm and sweet with grass and pasturing cattle, and faintly tainted with the scent of gasoline. Her memory played back what her gaze had skimmed over between the pasture and the car. A sight that had made her jerk away mentally.

  There was a body face down in the swale of the ditch. Wearing a rain-dampened, gray suit. Heavy brown shoes. Short, dark hair. The ground around the body was still soggy from the rain. The grass showed signs of a struggle. The suit was muddied and the area littered with leaves and the tender tips of branches twisted off and carried on the wind.

  Joe released her and started down into the ditch. Jesse didn’t move. She couldn’t take her eyes off the man in the ditch. He didn’t look comfortable. Bent backward at the waist, his midsection rested in the trough of the ditch with his head and feet both pointed uphill.

  “Do you recognize him?”

  “He’s turned away from me. I can’t see his face,” Jesse said. She didn’t want to see his face. If she could make herself move, she’d probably be running in the other direction right now because what she could see was the cell phone still clutched in his hand. And the knot in her stomach was climbing up her throat in a burning ball of bile.

  Chapter Thirteen

  “Is it okay to turn him over, Arnie?” Joe called.

  “Sure.” Arnie Holt, Waite County’s veteran medical examiner, stood to the side looking on without expression. “When you get done here, I’m ready to load him up and take him in to autopsy.”