When Jesse’s grandfather had died, it had been Peg who had come with Misty for the funeral, not Ronnie. And now it was Peg that Jesse was hoping could help make sense of Ronnie’s confusing relationships, both business and personal.
“I…” Jesse said and then stopped in mid protest. Patience was one of the many virtues she was short on, but as much as she wanted to talk to Peg, it might have to wait. Misty was too tired to disturb right now, and SueAnn needed to leave if she was going to finish her homework for class on Monday.
“Go,” SueAnn said. “I know you’re dying to, and with my laptop I’ve got everything I need right here.”
“But you need to go home to study,” Jesse argued.
“No,” SueAnn said with a shake of her head. “I need peace and quiet. But with you two gone and Misty asleep, I can study here as well as anywhere.” After a pause, she added, “Just don’t take too long. I don’t want to be alone here if somebody else shows up.”
“Somebody like who?”
“Somebody like that Oscar dude. Or that Tommy person. Or maybe the horrible-sounding Cynthia that I’ve never actually met. To name a few.” SueAnn tapped her chin and looked thoughtful. “Who else now? Oh, yeah, Maurice Singleton, maybe? Or his lovely wife Buffy, or who knows? Maybe somebody we haven’t even heard of yet.”
“I get your point.” Jesse held up a hand to stop the litany. “I have the sheriff on speed dial. You want his number?” She had never meant to confess that, but this seemed like an appropriate time to come clean, and SueAnn might actually need the number.
“No, I’ll settle for 911. Let’s just make sure all the doors are locked when you leave. And don’t you have an upstairs veranda where I can hang out?”
“Yes, we do,” Sophia said. “Very quiet, very private, and you’ll be able hear anyone moving around in Jesse’s apartment in case Misty wakes up.”
“Really?” Jesse didn’t like the sound of being overheard inside her cozy sanctuary.
Sophia smiled. “It’s an old house, dear. The floors creak, and the French doors onto the veranda don’t block a lot of sound. But nobody’s going to sneak up on you out there, and I think that’s what SueAnn’s looking for.”
“You betcha,” SueAnn agreed. “Privacy and creaking floors. Sounds perfect to me.”
After double-checking all the doors downstairs and making sure SueAnn was comfortable on the veranda, Jesse and Sophia headed toward the Tulsa airport with Sophia behind the wheel of her twenty-year-old Cutlass convertible.
They had barely gone a block when Jesse asked, “Mom, would it be okay if we took the roundabout way into Tulsa?”
“You mean the old highway where Ronnie was found? It’ll add a few minutes to the drive, but we should have plenty of time.” Sophia made the turn without waiting for an answer. “Is there something there you want to check out?”
“I just can’t stop thinking, what if he didn’t take a wrong turn? What if he was there for a reason? Maybe there’s a filling station or diner along that route where he made a stop or met up with somebody.”
“There’s a bait shop and food mart that sells gas,” Sophia said. “And further down there’s Minnie’s Diner across from that little roadside inn. What’s its name?”
“I don’t know. I’m usually looking at the cows when I drive out that way. But I thought this might be a good time to take a closer look around.”
“Why not?” Sophia agreed as she steered them down the two-lane road that led into open countryside and past a series of forgotten towns before it eventually arrived at the outskirts of Tulsa. “Who knows, we might even learn something useful.”
“I sure hope so,” Jesse said. “I just can’t believe that what happened to Ronnie out here was a random accident. Either somebody followed him, or he made arrangements to meet someone. And we may not have another chance to check this out after Peg gets here.”
For the next twenty minutes trees, pastures, and livestock whizzed by, broken only by an occasional house or barn, until Sophia pulled into Ron’s Quiki-Mart and Bait Shop. Parking, she turned to Jesse. “Do we have pictures?”
Jesse pulled her phone from the canvas tote she carried on forays into the countryside. After a couple of finger taps, she held up a recent photo of Ronald Bennett that SueAnn had downloaded to Jesse’s photo gallery. A finger swipe later, the image was replaced by that of Thomas Stanton, followed by Cynthia Stanton with her black bob photo shopped by SueAnn to short, scarlet spikes, and ending with Oscar Champion cropped from the one newspaper photo that was full face.
Sophia smiled fondly. “SueAnn. Bless her heart. That girl is amazing.”
“I’d give her a raise if we were actually getting money for any of this,” Jesse said. Slipping the phone into her shirt pocket, she exited the car and walked into the store with her mother by her side.
“When we leave here, why don’t you text me a copy of those,” Sophia whispered.
“Will do.” Jesse looked around. The place was small, its walls lined with refrigerated compartments filled with pop, water, and beer in endless varieties. Chips, cookies, and candy bars lined rows of shelves, accompanied by oil, auto parts, and toilet paper. No bait in sight. Maybe it was kept outside along with the bags of ice.
She walked up the counter and smiled at the girl behind the cash register. “Hi. Nice day, huh?”
The girl, who looked to be in her early twenties, glanced up and toward the wall of glass at the front of the store. “Uh, yeah. It’s not raining anyway. Can I help you?”
“Were you working here yesterday?”
“Yeah.” The word was slow and hesitant, and the girl’s expression was wary. “I work the weekends. Is there a problem?”
“No, dear. No problem.” Sophia stepped forward. “We were looking for a friend who might have come through here. We were hoping you might have seen him in here yesterday.”
“A lot of people come through here on the weekends. Unless it’s somebody I know, I’m probably not going to remember him.”
“Could I show you a picture and see if it rings a bell?” Jesse asked. “He’s a big fan of ginger ale and pork rinds.”
“You’d be amazed how popular pork rinds are around here,” the girl answered. “But I’d be happy to take a look just in case.”
Jesse showed her the picture of Ronnie. The girl stared at it, then squinted and leaned closer before she slowly shook her head.
“No. Sorry. He doesn’t look familiar.”
Jesse flipped to the next photo. “How about this man? They might have been traveling together.”
“So what does this guy like to eat?” Smiling at her joke, the girl moved her gaze from Jesse to the phone’s screen. Again, she leaned in and examined it closely before she shook her head. “Nope. Sorry.” She straightened and shrugged. “Doesn’t mean he wasn’t here. Just that I didn’t pay any attention to him.”
Jesse moved on from Tommy to the picture of Cynthia, who would be more memorable but also might never have been anywhere near this place. “Her?” she asked.
The girl’s face immediately registered recognition.
“You remember her?” Sophia asked, clearly pleased.
“Yeah, hard to forget that hair. And she was having an argument with the guy she was with.”
“But he wasn’t one of the men I just showed you?” Jesse asked.
“Not even.”
Swiping on to the next picture, Jesse held up the photo of Oscar. “How about…”
“Yep, that’s him! Boy, was I glad when they left. He was definitely steamed, and the other customers were giving those two a pretty wide berth.”
“Could you tell what they were arguing about?” Jesse asked.
“Some dude and his daughter. This guy was yelling at the woman to stay away from the girl and her father ‘cause he had a deal going, and she was about to screw it up. He wasn’t too nice about it either. Pretty threatening, if you ask me.”
“Were they in the same car?”
<
br /> “No. She drove off toward Myrtle Grove. He headed in the other direction.”
“That way?” Jesse pointed in the direction she and Sophia were driving. The one that would take them to Tulsa eventually.
“Yeah. He seemed in a hurry, too. Dug out of here with tires squealing, like a kid showing off. Except on him it just looked like a temper tantrum.”
“Did they say anything else you overheard?”
The girl shook her head. “She tried to walk off, and he grabbed her arm at the door. Said something real low and angry like. I couldn’t hear it, but she looked scared. She practically ran out of here when he let her go.”
“Thank you.” Jesse leaned over the counter toward the girl, holding out a card between her fingers. “You’ve been super helpful. If you think of anything else, please call me at this number.”
“Okay.” The girl took the card and slipped it under the front edge of the cash register. “Ya’ll have a blessed day now.”
Outside, Jesse said, “Does he sound to you like someone who could have followed Cynthia to our house and waylaid her in the tearoom? He does to me.”
“Sure does,” Sophia agreed as she got into her car and turned the ignition. “Maybe he wanted to make sure she took him seriously.”
“Or maybe he was really trying to kill her, and Misty scared him off before he could finish the job.”
Chapter Twenty-One
Fifteen minutes further down the road, Sophia pulled over onto a wide gravel strip where the parking lot of Minnie’s Diner began. Across the road was the Traveler’s Stop Inn, a two-story white house. A porch ran the width of the building on the second floor, and hanging baskets of flowers dangled above the railing that skirted the porch.
“Where do you want to start?” Sophia asked.
“Let’s park in the diner’s lot. Then we can walk across to the hotel first.”
Sophia parked at the edge of the lot and got out. As they crossed the deserted two-lane blacktop, she looked toward the simple farm house turned hotel. “Do you really think Ronnie would have stayed there?”
“Well, he was a bit of a princess,” Jesse conceded. “But it looks like a nice enough place. Not fancy, but kind of homey. And we know he didn’t stay in Tulsa.”
“He could have gotten a room in Myrtle Grove and then come back out here to meet someone,” Sophia suggested.
“Which is why I’m showing the desk clerk all of the pictures. If not him, then maybe one of the others stayed here.”
“Really,” Sophia said, “the way SueAnn digs this stuff up is beyond me.”
“Me, too. If it was up to me, I’d be showing people drawings of stick figures with a paunch on one and some red hair on the other.”
Sophia laughed as the two of them approached the lobby entrance of the residence turned country inn. Inside, a checkin desk was tucked behind the staircase leading to the rooms above. An oriental rug covered the lobby’s wood floor. A settee and a grouping of chairs sat along the rug’s edge, but there was no one else in sight.
Looking around, Jesse called, “Hello?” She waited, listening for any sign of life and heard nothing. “Hello?” she called again with more volume.
There was a sound from upstairs, like the closing of a door, and she was about to try shouting when a man entered from a double doorway at the side of the lobby.
“Hi, there,” he said, wiping his hands on a dish towel. “I was just putting out a fresh pot of coffee in the sitting room. What can I do for you?”
“I was looking for a friend of mine,” Jesse said. “We were expecting him today, and I thought he might have stopped here last night.” She held out her phone with the picture of Ronnie on the screen. “His name’s Ronald…”
“Oh, yeah,” the clerk interrupted. “That’s, uh, what’s his name? Benson? Burnett? Bennett? Yeah, that’s it. Bennett. Room six, end of the hall. That’s him, all right. The police were here earlier. Their picture wasn’t as good. ‘Course he was dead in theirs, so that’s natural, I guess.” He glanced toward Jesse’s face, looking chastened. “Oh, I’m sorry. He was a friend of yours, huh? I sure hope you’d heard that already. I didn’t mean to just blurt it out like that.”
“Yes,” Sophia said quietly. “We had heard.”
He let out a heavy sigh and shifted his weight uncomfortably. “So, was that all? You just wanted to know if he’d been here?”
Hoping the man’s guilt would make him talkative, Jesse persisted. “Do you remember when he was here? And if was he alone?”
“I can check my records.” The clerk started around behind the front desk. “They’ll show when he checked in. And it’s funny that you asked.” He began typing on the keyboard. “’Cause he did have somebody else here looking for him. They met up outside and went for a walk.”
“Man or a woman?” Jesse asked.
“Man. I just saw him through the front window. Kind of a short fella. Balding. Looked like he’d had a nodding acquaintance with a beer or two, if you know what I mean.” The man made a rounded motion in front of his stomach that looked more like a nine-month pregnancy than a beer belly.
Jesse moved closer to the desk and held out her phone with the picture of Oscar Champion displayed. “Him?”
“Didn’t see him up close, but that looks like it could be him. Appeared to be going across to the diner, so someone over there might have gotten a better look.”
“Did you notice anything else?”
He twisted his mouth and squinted one eye in thought, then looked back to Jesse with a nod. “Yeah. The little fella was carrying what looked like a briefcase. Oh, and they were both wearing suits.” He grinned and shook his head. “You don’t see that much around here. For two guys who didn’t seem to want attention, they sure didn’t blend in much.”
He returned his attention to his computer screen, studying it in silence. “Okay, here it is. He checked in at seven ten p.m.” The clerk looked up and his eyes found Jesse. “I remember that he asked directions to Myrtle Grove when he first walked in. And he wanted to know if there were any other places to stay around there. Said he wasn’t finding much on the internet. I told him there wasn’t much to find. That was when he asked about getting a room here.”
“When did the other guy arrive?”
“He was here when Bennett got here. They met up outside, went walking off toward the diner together, and when they came back, the other guy drove off and Bennett came inside.”
“And that was about seven o’clock?”
“Yep.”
“After he went to his room, did he go out again?”
“Bout nine o’clock he asked about someplace to eat in Myrtle Grove. I told him they’d all be closed before he got there. He didn’t seem too happy about that, but he drove off that direction anyway.”
“Did you see him again?”
“I close up at ten. Anybody wanting a room after that has to wake me up. Nobody did.”
“So you didn’t hear anything else?”
“Didn’t say that. A little earlier there was some woman yelling at a man out in the parking lot. I was about to ask them to shut the hell up when she got in her car and went tearing out of here.”
“Could you see who they were?”
“It wasn’t the Bennett fella. I know that. This guy was dressed normal. Plaid shirt and jeans. The woman looked like somebody he’d picked up in a bar. Skintight dress and hair that looked like she’d stuck her finger in a light socket right after somebody dumped a bucket of red paint on her head.”
Jesse quickly whipped out her phone again, flipped to the picture of Cynthia and held it out to the clerk. “Couldn’t have been her, could it?”
“Dress wasn’t nearly that fancy, but it was that tight. And the hair looks right.” He nodded. “Coulda been.”
She swiped to the photo of Tommy Stanton and turned it toward the desk clerk. “Did the man look anything like this?”
He peered at the picture, then shrugged. “Coulda been. He
never stepped into the parking lot light. But that looks a lot like a guy who checked in earlier in the day. His stuff’s still in his room. But then, so is Bennett’s.”
Jesse was too shocked by his last statement to even react to the news about Stanton, who was apparently staying here and had been visited by Cynthia. What caught her attention was that Ronnie’s things were still in his room.
“The police didn’t take his belongings?” she asked as her heart began to accelerate.
“Nope. They looked around, but they didn’t take anything. Said they’d send next of kin out to pick it all up.”
“That would be us,” Jesse said. She extended her hand as if they were just meeting.
He took it and gave it a tiny shake. “Pleased.”
“I’m his fiancée,” Jesse continued. “His daughter’s staying with me, and he was on his way to join us.” She turned to indicate Sophia, who obligingly stepped forward. “This is my mother.”
The clerk bobbed his head. “How do.”
“A pleasure,” Sophia said on cue.
“And we’ll be happy to pack up Ronnie’s things for you. We’d have been here sooner, but…” Jesse let her words trail away.
The man squinted, appearing to think. Then he slowly shook his head. “Don’t think so. Still got that yellow tape on the door. Better wait until they take it down.”
“But they said they would send someone out to get his things,” Jesse reminded him.
“Did they send you?” he asked.
“Well, not exactly. But…”
“Okay then.” He crossed his arms in front of him. “Better wait till they do.”
“How about his mother?” Jesse suggested. “We’re on our way to pick her up at the airport. Surely you could let her have his things.”
The desk clerk looked uncertain. “Well,” he said slowly, “I suppose that might be okay. You bring her back here, and we’ll see. I can’t go lettin’ just anybody in there. ‘Cause of that tape and all.”
A Misty Morning Murder (Myrtle Grove Garden Club Mystery Book 4) Page 16