Murder Most Thorny (Myrtle Grove Garden Club Mystery Book 2)

by Loulou Harrington

  “Ah-h-h.” Jesse let the word out with a groan. “God bless your devious little mind. The divorce was just final! Until then, he still had a chance to make it all go away!”

  “I remember seeing it in the Myrtle Grove Gazette,” Vivian cried excitedly, her focus completely leaving the road as she turned toward Jesse. “About a month ago, I think.”

  “Yes.” Jesse pointed toward the ignored pavement ahead of them. Once Vivian’s attention was back where it should be, Jesse continued, “Okay, if somebody killed Roy Lee because of the body buried at his house, then somebody else knew about it and was probably involved.”

  “And if they decided to get rid of him,” Vivian chimed in, “then either they didn’t need him anymore or he had become a liability.”

  “Because of the divorce, or because Winnie found the body,” Jesse said. “We really need to know if she told Roy Lee. Because if she did, and he told his partner, and they got together this morning to discuss it, then he could have shot Roy Lee on the spot. And what would that mean for Winnie? Because at the time, she was the only other person who knew about it.”

  “Or, these are all just wild guesses on our part, and the bone is a coincidence, and Roy Lee’s new girlfriend’s old boyfriend hunted him down and shot him, and it really was a murder due to jealousy.”

  “Wow, how down-to-earth of you. That’s usually the kind of thing I say.”

  “Yes,” Vivian agreed. “So now you can hear how boring it is when you do it. Now, let’s get back to the fun theories.”

  “Well, in case you didn’t notice, where I was going with that last fun theory is that Winnie’s life could be in danger. Whoever killed Roy Lee might be afraid she’s going to remember something from when the original murder occurred. And if Roy Lee had become expendable, she could be an outright threat and not even know it.”

  Just hearing herself say it aloud sent a shiver of apprehension down Jesse’s spine.

  “We really need to find out some actual facts,” Vivian said. “These theories are getting kind of scary.”

  “Well, one thing’s for sure—we can’t let her stay alone at that house tonight. She’s going to have to pack a bag and leave with us.”

  “If the sheriff doesn’t take care of it for us and arrest her,” Vivian warned with much less optimism than normal.

  Chapter Eighteen

  Lost in the task of recalling everything noteworthy Winnie had ever said about Roy Lee, and not coming up with much, Jesse snapped back to the present when the Mercedes stopped abruptly on yet another quiet, two-lane country road.

  “Where are we? What’s happening?” Looking around, Jesse realized that while she had been lost in thought, Vivian had caught up with the speeding sheriff and apparently followed him to Winnie’s house.

  “I thought you’d fallen asleep.” Vivian took her foot off the brake and inched forward as the tailgate of Joe Tyler’s oversized one-ton swung into a long, gravel drive that ran between two fenced pastures.

  “No, I was trying to remember phone conversations I had with Winnie during the decade or so I was in Austin.”

  “Did you come up with anything important?” Concentrating on her driving, Vivian stayed right on the tail of the truck ahead of her.

  “Just that Winnie called mainly on nights Roy Lee was out drinking with his buddies. She always seemed more bored than annoyed, though, so I doubt that could be considered important.”

  “That sounds very sensible of her,” Vivian said, turning her attention from the vehicle she was following to the lush pastures and handful of horses grazing on either side of them. “My goodness, what a charming little place this is. I’m assuming we’ve reached the Rogers’s homestead. I kept waiting for Myrtle Grove to go by, but I never saw it.”

  “Apparently he,” Jesse answered with a nod to the car ahead, “knows his way around the county’s back roads better than I do. Which would be handy, considering what he does for a living.”

  Glancing around, she noticed things she hadn’t seen earlier that morning in the half light of dawn. The narrow, two-story farmhouse, with four, square columns supporting a front porch that ran its width, appeared to gleam with fresh white paint. The worn gray shutters at the windows were now a crisp Nantucket blue. Clusters of blooming yellow daffodils dotted the front yard, completing the inviting picture.

  The barn at the rear of the house, however, was still a faded, brick red, not unattractive, but definitely not fresh. And unless there was livestock hiding on the far side of the pasture among the trees, there were fewer horses than Jesse remembered from her infrequent visits.

  “You’re frowning,” Vivian said. “What’s the matter?”

  “Nothing. Not really.” Jesse shook her head. She hated being transparent, especially when her emotions got ahead of her thoughts. “It’s just… I don’t know. There have been some changes here.”

  “Spit it out.” Vivian slowed as the sheriff’s truck pulled into a graveled parking area across the drive from the house. The driveway itself continued on to the barn.

  “I was thinking Winnie said that Roy Lee got the horses in the divorce, but didn’t have any place to move them to. So, they were staying here and he was coming by to help her with them every couple of days. But there are fewer horses here than I remember, so some have either been sold, or Roy Lee found a place to move part of the herd.”

  Vivian’s Mercedes pulled in next to the other vehicle. “That still doesn’t explain your frown,” she said, putting her car in park.

  “Well, Winnie’s dad was upset because even with pasture to graze on, the horses were still costing Winnie money, especially through the winter. And now it looks like the house has been painted, which isn’t cheap. Painting a house costs a hell of a lot more than putting out some hay for horses.”

  “Maybe Winnifryd’s getting ready to sell the house,” Vivian suggested. “Sometimes in a divorce you end up losing a lot more than your marriage.”

  “Oh, I hadn’t even thought of that. I know selling this place is about the last thing Winnie would do willingly. But that would certainly give her something else she might want to talk about. And it could explain why she would come to me about the bone instead of her dad.”

  “Did Winnifryd sound like she had financial problems?” Vivian tucked her car keys into her handbag and straightened. “And do you know how her father felt about Roy Lee?”

  “Even when I was still living in Texas, I got the impression that Winnie’s dad was pretty fed up with Roy Lee.”

  “Well, unless he was a man of great patience, I’m sure Winnifryd’s father was the first one to suggest divorce. And if she had any idea he might connect the bone to Roy Lee and blame him, anyone who avoids conflict the way Winnifryd does would never discuss something like that with her father.”

  “Yeah, that’s what I was thinking.” The words were barely spoken when Jesse caught a glimpse of movement from the corner of her eye and turned to see Winnie open the passenger door and hop to the ground. In a flash, Joe Tyler was out of the truck and hurrying to the back to intercept her.

  “I’d better get a move on.” Jesse unbuckled her seatbelt as she pushed open her car door. She had one leg out by the time she said, “I don’t want them looking at that burial site without me.”

  “You go ahead.” Vivian flipped down the visor to check her makeup in the mirror. “I’ll be right behind you.”

  Not waiting, Jesse was out of the car and hurrying after the other two long before she heard the sound of gravel crunching behind her and Vivian’s disgusted cry. “Oh, good grief, these shoes were not made for the wilderness!”

  “Those shoes weren’t made for much of anything but looking good,” Jesse called back over her shoulder. She reached the rear quarter panel of the pickup just as Joe stepped in front of Winnie.

  “Perhaps you should stay close to me, Mrs. Rogers,” he cautioned in a carefully nonthreatening voice. “I’m afraid this will need to be treated as a crime scene for now.
”

  Coming to a halt behind the sheriff, Jesse glanced past him to where the driveway ended at the barn. She did a double take when she found herself staring at an empty spot where her truck should have been.

  “What? Oh, my God,” she whispered. “What?”

  Confusion turned to panic and then dread, and the giant fist that gripped her chest squeezed harder. Hoping it was all a mistake, she whipped her head around to do a vehicle count, but behind her, there were only the two that had just driven in, nothing more.

  “Winnie…” Her heart pounding, she did one last double-check of the emptiness between the house and barn. “Winnie, didn’t we leave my truck parked in front of the barn doors?”

  “Yeah.” Winnie pulled her attention away from the man blocking her path and looked at Jesse. “You pulled in next to my truck. We moved everything over and took mine.” She turned to where both pickups had been. “Hey, where’d your truck go?”

  “I wish I knew.” Irrationally, Jesse wanted to cry. The silver and maroon Silverado that held such sentimental value wasn’t new, or valuable, but it still ran great and looked pretty good for something so, well, old.

  “Why would anyone come all the way out here to steal your truck?” Winnie demanded.

  Jesse shook her head. It didn’t make sense. The pickup wasn’t worth stealing. Even her insurance company had tried to talk her out of full coverage, explaining she wouldn’t get enough to cover a year’s premiums if anything happened to it. She had argued that she wanted it fixed if it were wrecked, and it was worth it to her. So they stopped arguing and took her money. Now someone had taken her truck.

  Just to be sure, she looked around one last time as the hollow feeling inside her turned to nausea. All she found were what looked like a few dribbles of motor grease on the bare dirt where her pickup had once been.

  “Seriously?” Joe asked. “Your granddad’s truck is gone? From here?”

  “It was sitting right over there.” Jesse pointed to the front of the barn.

  “Was it locked?” He began to walk that way.

  “No.” She trailed behind him and everyone else trailed behind her. Jesse wanted to remind him that the likelihood of it being stolen was very slim, but that didn’t seem like such a great argument at the moment.

  “Were your keys in it?” he asked. Reaching the proximity of the former parking place, he planted his cowboy boots a good foot and a half apart, put his fists on his hips and stared at the ground.

  “No.” Jesse was proud she was able to say that. Her grandfather had always left the keys in the ashtray, and she felt slightly traitorous every time she took the keys out and put them in her pocket. “But there was a spare attached to the gas cap,” she felt honor bound to add.

  He nodded. “That’s an old trick, that and the fender well. I’m sure it didn’t take them long to locate it. I see tire marks heading over that way.” He turned on his heel and pointed toward Winnie’s backyard. “Perhaps now would be a good time for you to show me where you found that bone, Mrs. Rogers.”

  Beginning to look dazed, Winnie nodded and left her study of the empty space where Jesse’s truck had been to examine the yard where the femur had resided until her spring gardening uncovered it. “It was right…” She started to point and then stopped, frozen with her arm half extended. “Holy crap!”

  In the middle of the yard, directly in line with Winnie’s body posture, was a mound of dirt several feet taller than the two feet she had said she dug down. In fact, looking at the size of the dirt pile, Jesse was a shade past surprised. Winnie had denied digging for the rest of the bones. But judging from the amount of earth mounded up between them and whatever was on the other side, it looked more like a… grave.

  “Did you do that, Winnie?” Jesse asked, her words sounding hollow to her own ears.

  “No.” Winnie edged close enough for their arms to touch, and Jesse could feel her shaking. “What’s going on? What the hell is going on?”

  “Just making a wild guess, here,” Vivian said. “It would appear that someone has been digging for the rest of those bones.”

  “I want everyone to stay here and don’t move while I go take a closer look,” Joe said. “Everybody got that?”

  Everyone nodded, except for Vivian who had the presence of mind to actually speak. “We have that, Sheriff. And while I find the whole thing fascinating, I think I can refrain from going nearer.”

  He moved away, surveying the ground as he walked. Jesse took a step to the side and squatted on her heels, studying the same earth he was studying until she saw what looked like faint tire treads in the soft dust at the edge of the drive. The tracks were at a right angle to the driveway and heading straight into the grass of the yard in a line with the earth mound. She stood, swiveled and visually tracked the faint tread impressions back to where her truck had been parked.

  She stifled the urge to scream, curse, and kick at the dirt, only to be assailed with the even worse image of a skeleton’s worth of bones being loaded into the bed of her beloved pickup and hauled away. Shuddering, she turned back to find Vivian standing with arms extended, her eyes rounded in surprise, while Winnie walked a half dozen feet behind the sheriff who was now standing next to the pile of rich, dark earth and looking down.

  “I only turned away for a minute to see what you were doing,” Vivian said helplessly, “and when I looked back, she was gone. But I can see why she wanted to put a vegetable bed there. You can tell it would get full sun most of the day and just look at that dirt. It’s so crumbly. That would have been easy to dig.”

  Looking at the dirt mound as directed, Jesse shuddered again.

  “I saw the tread marks.” Vivian moved nearer and dropped her voice to a gentle murmur. “Were they from your truck?”

  Jesse nodded, not wanting to say it aloud.

  “They dug up whatever was buried there, didn’t they? And they put it in your truck.”

  “I think I’m going to gag,” Jesse said.

  Vivian nodded her agreement. “I would have the bed liner replaced when I got it back, if I were you.”

  “If I get it back.” For the first time in a long while, the thought of a new truck was almost appealing. Jesse could still cherish the sentimental memories of her grandfather without having the exact vehicle he’d hauled her belongings home from Texas in.

  “Oh, I doubt they will have hurt it,” Vivian consoled. “They had a specific purpose for taking it, and unless they ran it off into a pond somewhere, you’ll probably get it back without too much damage done.”

  While Jesse contemplated whether or not that would be good news and worried that perhaps she was a shallower person than she had ever realized, Winnie suddenly cried out and dropped to her knees at the feet of a startled sheriff who apparently had not heard her approach. Putting her own moral struggle aside, Jesse hurried to help her friend and answer the unvoiced plea of Sheriff Tyler, who was standing over Winnie with his hands outstretched as if he couldn’t figure out what to do next.

  “I’ve got her,” Jesse told him, peering over the edge of the dirt pile as she stooped to help Winnie to her feet.

  “What the hell is she doing over here?” he demanded.

  “We lost focus for a minute, and when we looked back, there she was right behind you. I have no idea why, other than she’s probably feeling pretty overwhelmed by now.” As she talked, Jesse took Winnie by the shoulders and gently urged her to her feet. The only response she got was a subtle sagging, like the shifting of potatoes in a sack.

  Jesse adjusted her stance to compensate for the sag and strengthened her grip to keep Winnie from toppling completely. This allowed another peek into the gaping hole left by the dirt. “Holy cow! There’s enough room for two bodies in there.”

  “Well, we won’t know that now, will we? Because all the bones appear to be gone,” Joe answered in a voice beginning to sound slightly testy.

  “Did you notice that they appear to have used my truck to accomplish tha
t?” Jesse responded, sounding a tad testy herself.

  “They?” he asked sharply. “Why do you say ‘they’?”

  “Well, unless whoever it was walked in here and then drove my truck away, there would have been one driver when they arrived and a second driver when they left. With my truck! I wonder if they even bothered to bring their own shovel.” Her last remark was meant as sarcasm.

  “Good idea! When you get her up, would the two of you see if there are any garden tools missing? But just look,” he cautioned. “Don’t go touching anything. Forensics people should be here any minute.”

  “Everything I get near today is turning into a crime scene,” Jesse said, not even pretending irony.

  “You said it, not me. But, yeah, it does appear that way.” He took a step toward her and lowered his voice, ignoring the woman still crumpled at their feet. “Just remember what I said earlier. There’s a lot going on here, and we don’t have the first clue what any of it means.”

  Jesse locked eyes with him, connecting in a way she hadn’t allowed herself since he had arrived on the scene. “I don’t know what’s happening, and I don’t know what to do.”

  “Just keep doing what you’re doing,” he said, speaking words she never thought she’d hear. “But be careful, damn it.”

  Chapter Nineteen

  Jesse finally got Winnie up, moving, and out of the way just as the forensics people arrived to swarm the backyard. Accompanying them was Deputy Frank Haney, who still did not view Jesse as one of his favorite people.

  A nice young man named Bob, who seemed to be the resident expert on bones, had said he was pretty sure his mom had gone to high school with Jesse and then handed her and a still dazed Winnie each a pair of light blue latex gloves to use in their search for missing shovels, tarps, or anything else someone might use in digging and transporting a body or two’s worth of bones.

  The conversation made Jesse feel old, but seemed to jumpstart Winnie, who remembered not only Bob’s mother, but his father as well. “You don’t remember them?” she asked Jesse. “His dad was Marcus Franklin. He was a year or two ahead of us, and his mom was Betty Dobson. I know you remember her.”