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

by Loulou Harrington

  “They were always quarrelling.”

  After one last glance toward the doorway, Jesse forced herself to focus on the moment. “And why would you help her with that?”

  “I wouldn’t. Not normally, but this time seemed different somehow. Between her business partner Oscar Champion and Ronald Bennett, Cyndi only controlled twenty-five percent of her gallery. Bennett was threatening to sell his thirty percent to the highest bidder, and that had Cyndi half out of her mind with worry.”

  “But why were you racing here to help her? What could you do?”

  “That’s kind of complicated.”

  “I’ve got time.”

  “I’m an artist.”

  Jesse nodded impatiently. “And she was selling your paintings under her name. I heard about that.”

  “She was my agent. Her name got the paintings noticed. Her gallery brought a higher price for them.”

  “But you didn’t agree to it. You didn’t even know about it until recently. When exactly did you find out? Was it before or after you discovered she was engaged to Ronald Bennett while she was still married to you?”

  Expecting surprise, anger or maybe just a simmering resentment on his part, Jesse was taken aback when he hung his head and shook it slowly from side to side.

  “Cyndi was always like that,” he said with what sounded like sadness. “Even in high school. That didn’t stop me from loving her. I wouldn’t hurt her. I was just trying to get here before she got herself into trouble doing something stupid.”

  “Did you?”

  “Apparently not. Why were the police taking her away?”

  “They were taking her to the hospital to get her checked out. Did you come through Tulsa to get here?”

  “Yeah. I wasn’t about to try those backroads in that storm. So where’s Cyndi now?”

  “We’ll get to that in a minute. There are three exits for Myrtle Grove off the highway from Tulsa. Which one did you take? The first, second, or third?”

  “I only saw one.”

  “So that would be the first. Did you see a car pulled over on the side of the road?”

  “No.”

  “Really?”

  “Why are you asking me about that? And where’s Cyndi?”

  “Why did you come back here, Mr. Stanton? What do you think I can do for you?”

  “I just need to know if Cyndi’s okay. I haven’t been able to get near her since I got into town. Are the police holding her? Is that where she is?”

  “At the moment,” Jesse said.

  “Why?” he demanded.

  “For her own protection? For eluding the police? Attempted kidnapping, maybe. Or all three. Take your pick.”

  He stared at her in sullen silence, and Jesse continued, “After all, somebody hit her over the head while she was here last night. Maybe they were trying to kill her, or maybe they were just giving her an alibi. Maybe she even did it to herself.” Jesse spread her hands. “No one knows. And until the police get some answers, I think they’re going to keep holding her.”

  “I need to get back to Little Rock,” he said, still sullen. “I came here to get her and take her back with me.”

  “Maybe you could talk to the police and they’d let you take her. I’m pretty sure they’d like to hear what you have to say.”

  Tommy Stanton shook his head. “I don’t think so. I think I should have just stayed in Little Rock. In fact, I should probably go now.”

  He stood, and his chair scooted back, scraping loudly across the floor. At the same time Sheriff Joe Tyler stepped through the tearoom’s entrance, effectively blocking the doorway to the hall.

  “I think you should listen to Jesse,” Joe said quietly. “She’s frequently right about these things. And the police would definitely like to talk to you.”

  Stanton twisted to face the door and froze as Deputy Frank Haney stepped forward to fill what little bit of the space wasn’t already occupied by the sheriff. Frank’s hand rested on his belt just above his holstered gun.

  Tom Stanton sagged and extended his hands, wrists together. “I would appreciate it if I could talk to my wife.”

  “Just as soon as you talk to us, we might be able to arrange that.” Joe stepped into the room. “And if you’d move those hands behind you and turn around, my deputy here will be happy to cuff you and take you on to the station. I’ll be along in a minute, after I grab some coffee. I’ll bring some along for you, if you’d like. This place here makes the best in town.”

  Looking disgusted as his hands were cuffed, Stanton shrugged. “Sure. Why not.” He slanted a glance toward Sophia who reappeared in the doorway, and then toward Jesse, nodding to each of them. “Ladies. Thank you for your hospitality. It was a pleasure.”

  The room fell silent while Frank led the other man out. When the front door closed behind them, Joe said, “I hope I didn’t make an offer I can’t fulfill. I just noticed Lindsey’s not here.”

  “Well, I think any one of us is capable of making coffee,” Jesse answered. “Maybe not to Lindsey’s standards, but he won’t know the difference.” She started to rise but Sophia reentered the room and stopped Jesse with a hand on her shoulder.

  “I’ll get it, dear. You stay here and ask the nice sheriff how he managed to appear out of nowhere like that. I’m dying to know.”

  “Yeah,” Jesse agreed. “How’d you do that?”

  From behind her, she heard a soft laugh.

  “Well, I couldn’t help noticing how quickly you scooted out of the office after I said something that should have had you hopping mad. So I texted Misty to ask if there were any developments here.”

  Jesse turned to stare at SueAnn, who grinned back at her. “And then Misty texted back that the guy from the prom picture was drinking lemonade in our dining room. So then Sheriff Joe texted back for us to play dumb and he’d be along in a minute. I was reading over her shoulder, so we played dumb together.”

  From the pleased look on SueAnn’s face, Jesse knew that Misty had made a new friend. She also knew that the danger wasn’t over and nobody could predict what new threat could appear next. But for the moment she couldn’t begrudge anything that took Misty’s mind off of her father’s death, and even a few minutes of distraction would be precious in the midst of such awful reality.

  Jesse turned back to Joe. “So how long were you outside the door listening?”

  “We slipped in the back door of the antiques store and waited in the butler’s pantry until you showed up.”

  “You beat me here?”

  His head dipped in a half-nod. “We drove a vehicle. They’re marvels of efficiency.”

  There was more soft laughter, and Jesse looked up to see that Misty was back and had rejoined SueAnn at the counter. Trying not to look as worried as she felt, Jesse forced her attention back to the exasperating sheriff, saying, “So you heard everything Stanton said. Did you believe him?”

  “I don’t know. But I think it will be very interesting to see how his answers match up when I pose the same questions. Ah, thank you, kind lady,” he said as Sophia arrived with two to-go cups of coffee.

  “Hope he likes it with cream,” Sophia said. “I fixed them both alike.”

  “I’m sure he’ll be very happy with whatever he gets.” Joe lifted his gaze to the two girls hovered over the laptop on the serving counter. “You two come up with any background info on our guest?”

  “Thomas Terrell Stanton owns a roofing company in North Little Rock,” SueAnn answered. “He’s been in business there for ten years. He’s also known as a local artist. There’s some pictures of his paintings here, and he had a DUI last year. One arrest for what looks like a bar fight, but no charges were filed. Doesn’t say why. He’s been sued a couple of times and had his house repossessed two years ago.”

  “Did you do all of that while he was drinking lemonade?” Joe asked.

  She grinned. “We did.”

  “He also had a DUI and a couple of arrests for fighting while he w
as still in Tennessee,” Misty added. “We’d found that out earlier, but we didn’t know about Little Rock until he was talking to Jesse.”

  “I’m impressed. Looks like you two may have found a calling.”

  The two exchanged a grin and nudged each other. “We think so,” SueAnn agreed.

  Joe turned back to Jesse. “Would you like to walk with me out to my truck? I have one or two other questions for you.”

  Jesse was up in a flash. “Sure.” Then she stopped and turned back. “Misty, hon, why don’t you see if you can take a nap before you go to pick up your grandmother at the airport? I’m exhausted, and I know you must be, too.”

  “Are you kidding me?” Misty cried. “I can’t sleep now.”

  “I need to head home,” SueAnn offered. “I’ve got schoolwork to do before class tomorrow.”

  Exiting through the dining porch to the brick patio outside, Jesse was almost surprised to see that the sun had barely begun its dip toward the western horizon.

  “It looks like she’s doing okay,” Joe said once they were alone. “Misty, I mean.”

  Jesse glance back toward the house. “She’ll probably cry herself to sleep once she’s alone, but that’s natural. A lot of tears, a little laughter, and slowly you begin to heal.”

  “I won’t expect to talk to her grandmother right away, but I’d appreciate it if I could have a few minutes of her time tomorrow.”

  “Could you talk to her here? In the house, I mean, rather than the station.” Jesse glanced around, aware that the garden terrace was in full view of passersby on the street. But there was no one in sight, and their voices wouldn’t carry.

  “Sure. I don’t want to rush her, but the more we know, the greater the chance of figuring out what’s going on.”

  “You’re positive it’s murder?”

  “His neck was broken. There’s no way to get a footprint cast in all that mud and grass, but from the scuffs around the car, it’s pretty obvious there was a struggle. No matter what, it’s at least manslaughter.”

  “How long does it take to drive from Little Rock to here?” Jesse asked. “Four or five hours, even allowing for getting lost and backtracking?”

  Joe nodded in agreement, seeming in no hurry to leave the shaded patio. “That’s what I was thinking. But the spot where we found Bennett was too remote to have been planned. It had to have been random.”

  “Unless Stanton got here earlier than he admitted and followed Ronnie there.”

  “I’ve got Leo checking the cell phone records on Bennett’s calls. Once we see which cell towers he was pinging off of earlier in the evening, we’ll have a better idea of his movements.”

  Jesse growled under her breath. She kept forgetting that Ronnie had lied to her and had been in the area the whole time she’d believed he was still in Austin. For all she knew, he could have been sitting outside her house watching the lights go out while they were talking on the phone.

  “Take a deep breath and let it go,” Joe said quietly.

  “It’s just so frustrating,” she ground out through clinched teeth. “You can’t even yell at a man once he’s dead.” Her hands curled into fists. “And I have so many things I want to say to him.”

  “Let’s assume that your experience with him wasn’t unique. There must be plenty of other people who felt the same way. We just need to figure out which ones stood to gain from his death.”

  “And which of them were in Oklahoma last night,” Jesse added. She’d never say it out loud, but she was secretly thankful that she knew exactly where Misty was for all of the previous evening. And that the two of them were hardly out of each other’s sight after dark. “At the moment, we only know of two, maybe three, which makes this Stanton guy look pretty suspicious.”

  “It’s all circumstantial, though. We have nothing but circumstance on anyone, and that’s not enough. Without some solid evidence soon, everyone’s going home, and this will be one more mystery that doesn’t get solved.”

  “That can’t happen!”

  “It happens all the time, Jesse. Suspicion isn’t enough. Knowing isn’t enough. You have to be able to prove it, and then you have to convince twelve people that you’re right.”

  “No, you have to convince twelve people,” Jesse said, forgetting to keep her voice down and forgetting that anyone passing by could see her. “I only have to prove it to myself. That’s the good part of being me. I can be a nuisance. I can accuse innocent people. I can make a complete jackass of myself, and it doesn’t matter. Besides that, people will admit things to me because they know it’s my word against theirs, and I don’t matter. So I am going to figure out who did this if it kills me!”

  “That’s about the stupidest thing I’ve ever heard in my life,” Joe fired back. “Whoever we’re looking for has already killed one person and possibly tried to kill a second. And we haven’t the first clue as to who it is. Do you want to be number three?”

  “Let me ask you this,” Jesse said. “Since we have no idea who did it or why, can you guarantee me that Misty isn’t in any danger in all this?”

  Joe’s brow furrowed into a deep frown and he stared back at her saying nothing. Then his expression changed, and he raised one finger in the air. “Hold it…did you hear that?”

  “What?” All Jesse heard was the sound of her own words in her ears, and the birds chirping in the trees. She was suddenly worried about how far her voice might have carried.

  Just yards away the screened door to the dining porch slammed, and they both turned toward the sound in time to see Misty running down the steps with a clear plastic baggy in her hand.

  “How loud was I?” Jesse whispered.

  “Not quiet,” he answered.

  His words were barely out when Misty called, “Hey! I thought you might want this.” She hurried toward them, the bag held in front of her like an offering.

  Jesse watched closely for any sign that her last words had been overheard, but Misty’s face held an ear-to-ear grin as she grasped the plastic bag by its zippered top edge. Inside was an iced tea glass like the one Tommy Stanton had his lemonade in.

  “I was real careful not to touch it. I wiped it down really good when I got it out of the cabinet, and I wrapped a napkin around it when I carried it to the table. Glad I caught you before you left.”

  “Is that what I think it is?” Joe asked.

  “Fingerprints,” Misty said proudly as she extended the baggy toward him. “I almost forgot to give this to you in all the excitement.”

  He took it from her, being careful not to smudge whatever prints were on the glass inside. “And nobody else touched it?” he asked.

  “Nope. I watched. The, uh, what did SueAnn call it? The, uh, chain…” Her voice trailed off.

  “Chain of evidence,” Joe said.

  “Yeah, that’s it! The chain of evidence is, well, whatever it needs to be. It was in plain sight and nobody touched the glass after I cleaned it off but him…that Tommy guy. So, that’s good, right? Now you can compare these to any prints you found in the kitchen this morning. To see if he was lying about being in the house last night. We did good, right?”

  Misty’s eyes sparkled with excitement, and Jesse knew that yet another person had fallen victim to detective fever.

  “You did good,” Joe said.

  “You did great,” Jesse added. She pulled Misty close, smoothed the pink-and-white hair back from the girl’s flushed face and looked into her tired eyes. “You’re never going to sleep, are you, sweetie?”

  Looking suddenly forlorn, Misty said, “Sophia’s threatening to tie me to the bed if I don’t go voluntarily. I swore I’d go lay down as soon as I got this out to Sheriff Joe.”

  “We don’t want you getting sick,” Jesse explained. “And you didn’t get much sleep last night.”

  Misty snorted and rolled her eyes. “Sophia’s threatening to tie you up next to me. According to her, you’re worse than I am.”

  “Tell her I’ll be along in a fe
w minutes, and I promise to get some sleep, too.”

  “Okay.” The girl turned toward the house, then stopped and looked back over her shoulder. “And SueAnn needs to see you before she leaves.” With a quick glance toward the sheriff, Misty fixed Jesse with a pointed gaze. “We did that stuff you asked us to, and she’s got something to show you.”

  “Oh, good, thanks. And you can tell SueAnn I’ll be right in.” Jesse glanced toward Joe, hoping she didn’t sound as interested as she was. “I know she needs to get home and study.”

  SueAnn wouldn’t be hanging around if it wasn’t something promising, and Misty wouldn’t be so careful of what she said in front of Joe if it wasn’t something that he might be interested in. But whatever it was, Jesse intended to pursue it on her own before sharing.

  Once Misty was back inside and out of earshot, Joe said quietly, “Secrets, Jesse?”

  “They were just going to look up some business interests of Ronnie’s,” Jesse explained. Then almost as an afterthought, she added, “And maybe gather some background on Cynthia. And her art gallery and…just stuff. I’ll let you know if anything seems promising.”

  “I would appreciate that.”

  “Besides, you have secrets of your own.”

  “I’m the sheriff,” he reminded her. “You own a tearoom. The two don’t equate.”

  She sniffed and bit back her resentment. He was right, of course, but being suddenly shut out after listening in on Cynthia’s interview still stung. And Jesse refused to feel guilty if SueAnn and Misty had uncovered something that Mr. “I’m the Sheriff” would want to know about right away. She was going to do her own investigating first, and he’d find out when she was ready.

  “However,” he said, breaking into her thoughts, “I do have something I’d like for you to do for me.”

  In spite of herself, her heartrate quickened and she tilted her head to look up at him. “Really? And what would that be?”

  “We found a set of fingerprints on Ronald Bennett’s car that match some of the prints found in your kitchen this morning.”

  Jesse felt her pulse jump into overdrive as anticipation swept through her. Whoever was here with Cynthia was also at the scene of Ronnie’s accident…or not an accident…maybe…whatever.