“Want to give me a hand here, Frank?” Joe motioned toward his senior deputy, who joined him next to the body, blocking Jesse’s view. Together the two of them rolled the deceased man over gently and then stepped back out of the way.
Fighting the nausea that was making her weak in the knees, Jesse started at his feet and forced herself to look at the things she most wanted to turn and run from. The toes of the expensive Italian leather shoes were caked with mud. The knees of the wet, wrinkled trousers were stained with grass and streaked with dirt. The suit coat was crumpled and twisted, gapping open to reveal a pinstripe shirt with a button missing. The skin visible underneath was livid and bruised.
The tie clip, the cufflinks, the gold nugget ring on his left hand were all pieces she recognized. Her knees trembled, and her stomach churned with the nausea that wouldn’t go away. She reached out to steady herself on the car beside her.
Joe was up the slope and next to her in a flash. He caught her hand and pulled her back against his chest, steadying her. “Don’t touch the car.”
“I think I’m going to puke,” she said in a voice to match her words.
“I just need you to identify him.”
Her eyes were closed, but the memory burned clearly. “I don’t want to look at his face,” she whispered.
“But you know who it is,” Joe insisted. “If it’s not his face, what did you recognize?”
“The jewelry.” Her voice broke. “I gave him that tie clasp. And the cufflinks.”
“Just to be sure, Jesse, I need you to look at his face.”
“Why? He’s got the cell phone in his hand,” she almost whispered. “Can’t you just look at his driver’s license or something?”
“That’s not how it’s done. Come on, Jesse. If you don’t identify him, someone else will have to.”
Knowing a threat when she heard one, Jesse opened her eyes and moved her gaze slowly past the body’s shoulders to the face she didn’t want to see. Tears turned the image blurry, but not before she saw that where he had been face down, his cheek was the purple of a bad bruise. Had he been beaten, she wondered. Or was that the blood pooling of a body left undisturbed?
She blinked away her tears and looked at him full on for the first time in years. He had grown older. Frown lines gathered on his brow and formed parentheses at the corners of his mouth. He was heavier than he had been, obviously no longer the jogger who had pushed himself as if someone were chasing him. Instead, he looked like a middle-aged businessman out of his element and dealing with car trouble on the side of the road.
“Is there any evidence that this wasn’t an accident?” Jesse asked. Having faced the worst of her fears, she felt better. The short-tempered bully she remembered looked like he could have had a heart attack while kicking the front of his car in frustration.
And she could almost believe that was true if it weren’t for that last, haunting phone call.
“Nothing obvious,” Joe said. “We’ll know a lot more after the autopsy. So, you do recognize him?”
She nodded. “It’s Ronnie. Ronald Bennett. Misty’s dad. What the hell was he doing out here in the middle of the night?”
“That’s what I was going to ask you. Does he…” Joe stopped and started again. “Did he know this area?”
“No.” Jesse shook her head as much to clear it as to answer his question. “No, Ronnie never came here when we were dating. Not once. But if he flew in last night, why wouldn’t he have spent the night in Tulsa? Country isn’t exactly his speed.”
“Maybe he was meeting someone here.”
“Like Cynthia? Neither one of them would even know where this place was.”
Joe shrugged. “Speculation is just that until we have something more to go on.”
“Well, I doubt it was Cynthia,” Jesse said, grateful that her crushing, sentimental sadness was easing along with the nausea. “She was busy breaking into my house last night. And it certainly wasn’t me. Ronnie told me that he’d be arriving today sometime, and he sounded pretty snippy doing it.”
“Your resentment’s showing, Jesse.” As if remembering that they weren’t alone, Joe moved to the side and tugged her with him. “If you start feeling faint again, lean against Arnie’s van.”
“Tow truck’s on its way, boss,” Frank called from a short distance away. “You ready for us to move this body?”
Jesse took one last look at where Ronnie lay forlorn and neglected in death, alone in a ditch in rural Oklahoma, a place he would never have been willingly. Except for business trips, he never left the city limits of Austin if he could avoid it. And with a house on the lake, there was really no need to.
“Why don’t you go wait in my truck? I’ll drive you back into town,” Joe said. “You don’t want to be here when they start cleaning this scene up.”
She remained where she was, still staring at the body where Ronnie Bennett no longer lived.
“Why is he here, Joe?” Jesse waved her hand at the countryside around them. “I mean here. The rain didn’t start until after midnight, and he was obviously here in the middle of that thunderstorm. The ground was already wet because he’s got mud all over him. And it must have kept raining because the back of his suit is still damp and the heels of his leather shoes are soaked. The man I know would have called for help on his cell phone and stayed in his car until a tow truck got here. He would never have taken his tailored suit outside in that rain.”
“I will convey your doubts to my deputies. They’ll be scouring the area for evidence once the vehicle and body are removed. Now, into my truck? Please?”
As Jesse turned to walk back to his pickup, a wrecker went past her and stopped alongside the medical examiner’s van, facing oncoming traffic. The driver hopped out and began reeling out a chain. He squatted on the pavement and leaned down to hook the heavy cable under the back bumper of the rental Ronnie had been driving.
Jesse opened the front passenger door of the sheriff’s pickup, stepped onto the runner and slid into the seat as a third deputy’s car pulled in behind Marla’s. Joe waved him over, and Jesse recognized the youngest deputy on staff, Leo Collier, as he passed by Marla.
While the new arrival maneuvered his way past the tow truck driver, who was now hooked on and waiting for instructions, Marla entered her squad car, started it and made a tight U-turn back toward town. Within a hundred yards she had her lights going and was pulling away with impressive speed.
Jesse’s attention ping-ponged between the side-mirror image of Marla’s receding squad car and Joe’s huddle with Frank and Leo. Arnie stood on the edge of the group, listening but uninvolved. His real job would begin when the body reached the morgue.
Just thinking those thoughts reminded Jesse that she knew far too much about the reality of death and dying under questionable circumstances and the processing of the possible crime scene. What she didn’t know was where Marla was headed in such a hurry.
Before Jesse could wander too far inside her own head, the driver’s door opened and Joe climbed inside. “Okay, that’s taken care of. Let’s get out of here.”
As he spoke, he put action to words and swung the heavy pickup in a wide arc, heading back toward town. After a few miles of silence, he asked, “Are you okay?”
“I don’t know.” Jesse was starting to feel queasy again as memories blocked out the passing scenery. Ronnie hadn’t been her favorite person for a long time, but seeing him lifeless on the ground was harder than she would have believed.
There was a time when she had truly loved him, when the thought of spending her life as his wife and Misty’s mother had seemed all she could hope for. She felt a tear of old heartache trickle down her cheek and knew she was about to lose control.
How would she ever tell Misty? Reality sank in, and Jesse’s trickle of tears turned into a torrent. And his mother. Someone would have to tell Peg that her son was gone.
Joe pulled a pristine white handkerchief from his shirt pocket and handed it to her.
>
Jesse buried her face in the crisp cotton and wept—for Ronnie, for Misty, for all that would never be and all that was yet to come. When the storm of tears slowed, Jesse sniffed, mopped at her face and said, “I don’t know why I did that. I didn’t even like him anymore.” She stared at the soggy handkerchief wadded in her hand, feeling slightly embarrassed. “Thank you. I’ll clean this and get it back to you.”
“No hurry.”
His response didn’t help her embarrassment much. Raw emotions weren’t something she did well, especially with someone she was already very confused about. But then, this wasn’t about her. Not right now.
“How did this happen, Joe? None of this makes any sense.”
“The best we can tell he flew into Tulsa yesterday afternoon and rented a car at the airport. He got a room at a nearby motel, apparently planning to spend the night. Then for some reason he left the motel without checking out and started driving toward Myrtle Grove. He must have turned off the interstate at the first marked exit for Myrtle Grove, even though there were two more exits that would take him a lot closer to town.”
Jesse realized that when she called Ronnie after Cynthia’s surprise visit, he was already in Tulsa and had lied to her. When he woke her up after midnight, he was already driving toward Myrtle Grove and had lied to her again.
“What about Misty?” Jesse asked softly, trying not to think about what a deceitful sack of humanity Ronnie had been. He was dead, and it was seriously bad Karma for her to be feeling that way, but it was hard not to. “He asked me to take care of her for him. And his mother. What do I do about her? Should I call her, or is there some sort of official thing you need to do?”
“As for Misty, I’ll need to talk to her again,” Joe said. “I’m really sorry about this, Jesse. I’ll try to leave her in your custody for now, but if Child Services steps in, it may be out of my hands.”
“I have paperwork,” Jesse argued. “Ronnie asked me specifically if I still had the paperwork for Misty.”
“But he was still alive then, Jesse,” Joe explained patiently. “He’s deceased now, and that means we’re talking about permanent custodial arrangements.”
“He told me that his mother gets permanent custody of Misty if anything happened to him. He didn’t say in so many words, but I got the impression that Cynthia was out of the picture when it came to Misty.”
“He specifically told you that his mother had permanent custody if anything happened to him?” Joe asked. “Did he sound like he was expecting something to happen to him?”
“I don’t know. The way he said it made me uncomfortable. It wasn’t like him.”
“It’s odd that he made sure you were aware. And a short while later he was dead.”
“You don’t really think that he knew he was in danger?”
“I can’t say, but it’s our job to find out. And as far as his mother goes, I’ll have to notify Austin authorities of his death and our ongoing investigation. Normally they would notify any local family and his workplace.”
“No. Misty needs her grandmother. That’s the only family she has left now.”
“Misty’s mother doesn’t have any family?”
“Oh, well…” The question took her by surprise. She hadn’t thought about Misty’s other grandparents in a long time.
“From that frown on your face, I take it that she does. Would you care to elaborate?”
Jesse shook her head. “That’s a long story.”
“Just hit the highlights,” Joe suggested.
“Okay, but remember I wasn’t there when most of this was happening.”
“Duly noted. Are you through stalling now?”
“Well, Angela died of cancer, so I don’t understand why her parents would blame Ronnie for their daughter’s death, but apparently they did. And after he and I were engaged, they sued for custody of Misty. When that didn’t work, they threatened to take her and disappear. Eventually Ronnie got a restraining order against them and cut all ties. To my knowledge, Misty never saw them again.”
“Do you have any idea what they had against him?”
“Ronnie’s mom, Peg, confided once that Angela’s parents had always thought he neglected her when she was at her sickest. He’s always been a workaholic.”
“His mother said that? Not to speak ill of the dead, Jesse, but… Well, never mind. All I can say is that if his in-laws were upset about you, they must have been bouncing off the walls about the charmer he was engaged to now.”
“Maybe things got better over time. Misty would know, I guess.”
“There’s a spot up here where I’d like to pull over and talk a bit. Is that okay?”
Almost as soon as he spoke, Joe turned down an unmarked side road made of asphalt that had long ago begun to crumble. The road got rougher and bumpier and more overgrown the farther they went, but the pickup handled it with the ease of something built for backroads.
“Mind if I ask where we’re going?
“Afraid you’re being kidnapped?”
“No, I was just hoping this wasn’t some sort of surprise picnic. I don’t think my stomach could handle it.”
“Oh, trust me, this won’t be any picnic.”
Chapter Fourteen
As Jesse pondered the warning in his response, the worn asphalt road suddenly curved sharply to the left while the pickup plunged straight ahead onto a rutted dirt path with enough room for one vehicle if you didn’t count the muddy tire tracks veering into the grass on either side.
Ahead of them, the dirt lane ended at a concrete boat ramp that slanted into the waters of the lake. To the right was a wide, graveled area for turning around before backing a boat into the lake and for parking the truck and trailer for the day. Joe pulled past the parking area and stopped close to a picnic bench and grill overlooking the lake.
“No food, I promise.” He turned off his ignition and twisted toward her. “Just conversation.”
“Just talk? Am I allowed to get out and commune with nature for a minute?”
“Does that actually mean commune with nature, or is that code for I need to look the other way while you go behind some bushes?”
“Oh, good grief, Joe Tyler.” Jesse smacked him on the shoulder with the flat of her hand. “That means I want some fresh air to clear my head.”
Belatedly she wondered if she had just assaulted an officer of the law, but he didn’t seem to have noticed it. In fact, he seemed relaxed and in a pretty good mood—two things she wasn’t used to seeing in him.
“So long as you don’t wander off,” he cautioned with an expression close to a grin. “I’ve got a few things I want to talk about, and I figure you might have some questions of your own.”
“As a matter of fact, I do.” That said, Jesse opened her door and used the hand bar on the side of the pickup to swing herself down. Closing the door behind her, she headed to the concrete picnic table that was pitted with age but still solid after decades of use.
Taking a seat on the tabletop with her feet on the bench, she braced her elbows on her knees and stared out at the lake. Joe came around from the other side and sat next to her on the tabletop.
“You seem pretty at home here,” he said.
“My grandpa was a fisherman, and I was his little helper. Sometimes Mom came along, and we’d cook the fish on the grill and have a picnic by the lake. Usually on tables just like this.”
“Did you clean the fish?”
“Oh, yeah. Gramps gave me a tablespoon to scrap off the scales.” Jesse laughed. “They went everywhere. I was so covered with fish scales it wasn’t funny. They’d be all in my hair and stuck to my clothes. I’ve ridden home in the back of the pickup more times than I can count because Mom said I was too disgusting to ride inside.”
Her hand rested on the tabletop. The rough surface felt comfortable against her palm, warm with memories of summer days and laughter.
“Your father had died by then?”
“Yes.” Jesse pressed her p
alm flat against the remembered warmth of days long gone. “I don’t remember him very well. He was in the military when I was born, and Mom and I stayed with her family some then.”
“Was your grandmother in Myrtle Grove?”
Jesse shook her head. “She had a ranch out in the Panhandle. Grandma Sadie was an amazing cook. We still use her recipes in our tearoom.”
“So how did you end up in Myrtle Grove?”
“Dad was home on leave, and I was getting ready to start school. He planned to finish his tour of duty and move back home. He wanted us to stay here with his father so I could start the school year here. I wasn’t too happy about it, but then Gramps bought me a new pink bike with streamers on the end of the handlebars. After that, it was game over.”
“So you can be bought,” Joe said with a sideways grin.
“Well, persuaded perhaps,” Jesse conceded. “Gramps was quite a charmer.”
Joe’s hand rested next to hers on the table, not quite touching. Somehow the image stirred memories of the kiss they had shared the evening before. Jesse felt her heartrate ratchet upward. And while her brain churned, another memory bobbed to the surface.
Her hand covered his and squeezed as she twisted toward him. “Joe, you said Ronnie flew in yesterday evening?”
“Yeah.”
“And then rented his car at the airport? So he was there for a while.”
“Yeah.”
She squeezed his hand tighter. “We were at the airport yesterday evening.”
“Uh-huh.”
“Well, don’t you think that’s a coincidence?”
“Yes, I do. But do you know what I don’t think is a coincidence? You talked to him a few hours after you got back, right? And he led you to believe he was still in Austin. Then he refused to tell you when he would be able to pick up Misty, when the whole time he was already in Tulsa. Possibly on his way to Myrtle Grove. Why?”
“I was attributing that to his being a son-of-a-bitch in general.”
A Misty Morning Murder (Myrtle Grove Garden Club Mystery Book 4) Page 10