Missed You In Church: A Hunter Jones Mystery

by Charlotte Moore

  “I know,” Miranda said dreamily, as she went to work on her fried catfish fillet with a plastic fork. “I was just so hungry for some good old junk food, but don’t tell Aunt Clarissa. She’s scared to death I’m going to gain an inch in the waist and not be able to get into my wedding dress, especially with all the goodies at the parties and showers and things.”

  “What you need to do,” Hunter said to Miranda with a grin, “is try the dress on every day. Then if it starts feeling tight, you can starve for day.”

  “You’re right,” Miranda said, taking Hunter very seriously. “And you’ll have to try your dress on, too, Mallory.”

  Mallory made a face, and Miranda told Hunter. “Mallory hates her dress because it’s pink – well, really it’s really a pale rose – and she thinks she doesn’t look good in it, but she does.”

  “I’ll get even,” Mallory said. “If I ever get married, you have to be Maid of Honor and wear purple taffeta and carry a basket of vegetables… and you can’t wear your contacts, either.”

  They both laughed.

  “Aunt Clarissa wants Mallory not to wear her glasses when she’s in the wedding,” Miranda told Hunter.

  “And I told her that I might walk straight into the baptismal font if I didn’t wear them,” Mallory said.

  Hunter smiled. She was enjoying seeing the sisters having a good time together.

  “Oh, Mallory,” Miranda said, “I forgot to tell you that Chad talked Aunt Clarissa out of having a horse and carriage to take us to the country club for the reception. He told her it could rain or just be too hot, and that he would arrange for a limousine. She tried to argue, but you know Chad. He is so…so…”

  “In charge,” Mallory filled in.

  “Right. He’s so in charge,” Miranda said with a happy sigh, “and I just love Aunt Clarissa to pieces but it’s hard to argue with her. He didn’t. He just told her no, we’re not going to do that, and she got all huffy and puffy for a minute, but then she said ‘Whatever you young people want.’”

  “I can hear her now,” Mallory said.

  “I’m going to have some banana pudding,” Miranda said, getting up to go back to the buffet line, “and then I’m not going to eat anything else until my wedding day.”

  “Me too,” said Mallory.

  At 2 p.m.,in the Magnolia County Detention Center interview room, Sam Bailey introduced Rocker Barstow to Magnolia County’s Public Defender, Molly Bloomfield.

  “Sugar,” Rocker said with a grin, “If you can get these guys to leave me alone so I can earn a living, I’ll take you out for a steak dinner.”

  “I’m here to represent you,” Molly said, “I’m Ms. Bloomfield and you’re Mr. Barstow, and the first advice I’m going to give you is to stop clowning around and get serious.”

  “Okay if I leave you two alone?” Sam asked her.

  “Yeah, dammit, it’s okay,” Rocker said. “I was just tryin’ to be friendly.”

  Molly nodded at Sam and sat down across the table from Rocker as Sam closed the door.

  “According to the sheriff, you told him you have friends you were with last Saturday afternoon,” she said.

  “That’s right,” Rocker said.

  “And you said that you weren’t going to tell him who they were. My advice, if you have witnesses to your whereabouts that day is that you tell me right now, and then you tell Sheriff Bailey. If you weren’t in Magnolia County on the day your ex-wife was killed, there is no point in wasting everybody’s time. Why be a person of interest in a murder investigation if you don’t have to be?”

  “You’re right,” he said, to her surprise. “I was with Merle Tarver and Sonny Taylor. Both of them are from Sumter County. Merle lives off Highway 49, and Sonny lives over closer to Plains. I’ve talked to them about it already. Merle don’t want to get mixed up in it, but if it’s a matter of whether I go to prison or not, he’ll talk about it, cause he knows I didn’t do it. Sonny’s okay with it.”

  “So you’ve already discussed this with both of them?”

  “Yep. I just told them that I might have to give the cops their names. The thing is, they know I wasn’t over this way that afternoon and I didn’t kill Noreen.”

  “Why doesn’t Mr. Tarver want to talk about it?” she asked.

  He smirked.

  “Cause he’s worried his wife’ll find out we been playin’ poker and watchin’ dirty movies at Sonny’s place. She thinks he’s been workin’ those Saturdays.”

  She asked him about his relationship with Noreen Bremmer, and the reports that he had gotten money from her in recent months and also had come to her office.

  He got more serious.

  “Noreen was a good woman,” he said. “And I wasn’t the best husband when we were married. She helped me out a couple of times in the last few months out of the goodness of her heart, and that’s all there is to it. She’s the last person I woulda ever killed.”

  “I understand you beat her up a time or two when you were married, and she had to get a restraining order after the divorce,” Molly said.

  “Yeah,” he said. “I’m ashamed of that. But I didn’t kill her.”

  “Mr. Barstow,” Molly said, “I’m going to ask Sheriff Bailey and T.J. Jackson to come back in, and my advice to you is that you give them the names of the men you were with on Saturday. If they ask you any questions I think you shouldn’t answer, I’ll tell you that you don’t have to answer. Do you understand me?”

  “Yes, Ma’am,” he said. “When can I get outta here? I need to see about my dogs. Besides, they ran my woman off, and there’s nobody but me to be at the register. I had to close the store and I’m losing money.”

  “I think they’re going to be holding you here until they check out your alibis,” she said, “and they’ll be doing that face-to-face and separately, so if anything you just told me isn’t true, you be sure you tell them the truth about what you and your friends were doing.”

  He nodded.

  Sonny Taylor’s home wasn’t visible from the highway, but Sam and T.J. found it by spotting the mailbox, and took a narrow dirt road through a stand of pines to get to it. The blue and white mobile home was showing signs of rust, and it was clear that Sonny didn’t care about appearances. A dog was barking and ran around the corner of the house on a chain.

  It was after 5 p.m. when Sonny Taylor pulled up. He was scowling when he got out of his truck.

  “Y’all here about Rocker Barstow?” he asked.

  “Just a few questions,” T.J. said in a friendly tone.

  Sonny, who was a good 50 pounds overweight, and sweating from the heat, said, “How about letting me give my dog some water first, and then I’ll come back and sit in your car. It’s gonna take a half hour to get my trailer cool, and it’s a mess. Y’all already talked to Merle?”

  He didn’t get an answer to that.

  “Go see about the dog,” Sam said.

  A few minutes later, Sonny maneuvered his way into the car and shut the door, Sam turned to look back at him and said. “I’m recording this, just so you’ll know.”

  “Okay with me,” Sonny said, “I ain’t done nuthin’ I woulda talked to y’all to start with. It was Merle who was worried about havin’ to go to trial or somethin’ and his wife catchin’ him a whole buncha lies.”

  “Where were you last Saturday afternoon, let’s say from noon until it got dark?”

  “Right there in that trailer,” Sonny said. “Me and Rocker get together just about every Saturday afternoon and play some poker. Merle comes sometimes, when he can fool his wife into thinking he’s at the kaolin plant, and he was there that time. I took a buncha money off both of ‘em last Saturday.”

  “You remember what time Rocker Barstow got here?” T.J. asked.

  “Yeah, same time as always. About lunch time ‘cause he knew I’d have some food. He didn’t leave until way after dark. He was tryin’ to win his money back. I cleaned ‘em both out, but I only got the money from Merle. I gave Rocke
r his money back because he said he had to have something for Marla to buy groceries. He said they were down to eatin’ the candy bars and beef jerky from the store. ”

  “Y’all played cards the whole time?” Sam asked, sounding relaxed.

  “Not the whole time,” Sonny said. “We watched a couple of movies.”

  “What movies?” T.J. asked. “You remember the names?”

  “Naw,” Sonny said.

  “You remember what any of them were about?” Sam asked.

  “About sex is what they’re all about,” Sonny said. “I got a whole collection. I don’t remember which ones if that’s what you mean. I seen ‘em all before anyway. I was just bein’ a good host.”

  “If we charge Rocker Barstow with committing a crime during that time, are you willing to swear on a Bible in court and tell a jury the same thing you just told us?” T.J. asked.

  “I would,” Sonny said, “If you’re talkin’ about his killin’ his ex-wife, I’ll sure swear he didn’t do it, ‘cause I know he didn’t do it. I don’t know how y’all can make a case against a man just for him havin’ been married to her before. Now are y’all done or do you want me to go get the poker chips and the cards to show you?”

  An hour later Merle Tarver was telling the same story standing by Sam’s car at the end of the driveway to his old country home. His wife was watching from the porch, and he was nervous.”

  “Yeah, yeah, yeah!” he said. “I know what you’re after. I was with him and Sonny at Sonny’s place.”

  “The first time we asked Rocker Barstow where he was that afternoon, he wouldn’t tell us,” Sam said. “Why do you think he’d hold off? This is a case about the murder of his ex-wife.”

  “Look,” Merle said, lowering his voice, and watching a truck go by on the highway. “I ain’t known Rocker as long as Sonny has, but I know he thinks he’s smarter than he is. He’s got this attitude toward the law. But he didn’t do it, and he didn’t see any point in gettin’ us involved. Especially me. He knew I been tellin’ my wife I was at work. She don’t like me gamblin’ and she never has liked Sonny sinct we were in high school together. I’ve done told her about it now, and it’s gone be a while before she gets over bein’ mad. I swear I wouldn’t be talkin’ to y’all now if it wasn’t that they ready told y’all I was with them.”

  “Well, if you have to testify in court, are you going to tell the truth?” T.J. asked.

  “I reckon I’ll have to,” Merle said. “I’d sure like to stay out of it, but it wouldn’t be right for a man to go to jail or get the death penalty for somethin’ he didn’t do. That was his son’s Mamma. Maybe his son oughta come over here and help him out.”

  “Help him out how?” Sam asked. “You mean be his lawyer?”

  “Yeah, that, and help him out with some money, too. Rocker’s always got money problems. That store don’t make nuthin’, ‘speshly sinct the old couple that owns it takes his rent out of his pay.”

  “Do you know if he had any new money problems lately?” T.J. asked.

  Merle took a while to answer, squinting his eyes as if he was trying to think.

  “We didn’t ask Sonny that question,” T.J. said.

  Merle processed that with more squinting, and said, “I don’t care what you asked Sonny or didn’t ask Sonny. I was just tryin’ to think about it. Rocker always has money problems, but I guess some of it’s his fault, cause if he gets some he buys lottery tickets, or gambles.”

  “Who won the most at the poker game?” Sam asked.

  “Sonny,” Merle said after looking off in the distance a while. “I lost close to $50, and I think Rocker lost more than that.”

  “What else did you three guys do?” T.J. asked.

  “Watched some movies,” Merle said, frowning.

  “He was lying about something,” T.J. said on the way back to the detention center. “It was like he knew the story he was supposed to tell but he was having to make sure he got it right.”

  “Maybe so,” Sam said, “Might be he’s scared of Sonny and Rocker, but it’s sort of like the Three Stooges all getting the story right, which may just mean it’s true. The truth is that we don’t have anything solid connecting Barstow to the crime. In fact, now we’re going backwards because we’ve got two witnesses ready to testify for him. That’s all we’ve accomplished.”

  By 7 p.m., Skeet Borders was driving Rocker Barstow to the Sumter County line, where another sheriff’s deputy would be taking him the rest of the way home.

  Back at the courthouse, the District Attorney agreed with Sam on a conference call that there wasn’t enough to make a case on. The two witnesses would put enough doubt into any jury’s mind, especially since there was no forensic evidence and nobody had been found who had seen Rocker Barstow near Merchantsville that afternoon.

  “He could have paid them both to cover for him,” T.J. argued with Sam, even though the decision was made. “He’s had time to go over the whole story with them. He’s probably not as dumb as he acts.”

  Taneesha, who had joined them, said, “I can see getting one person to lie under oath, but two?”

  “Maybe we can find somebody who saw one or the other of them somewhere else on Saturday afternoon,” T.J. said. “I want to keep on after it.”

  Sam was silent, thinking.

  “I’m going to get somebody to watch Sonny Taylor’s place this Saturday,” T.J. said. “They said they did this every Saturday, so let’s see if Rocker shows up there. Maybe we could pay a visit and see if there really is a poker game.”

  “Just keep an eye on Rocker,” Sam said. “We might still find somebody who saw him, and I want to know where he is if we do.”

  “No problem,” T.J. said.

  “In the meantime” Taneesha said. “I have new information. I checked with the magistrate’s office, and it turns out that Amber Winslow has a permit for a Smith and Wesson revolver, a 22. And she’s got a license to carry concealed. All the paperwork was done in May of this year.”

  “You think Amber would just go out there and shoot her boyfriend’s wife and then drive on to Atlanta?” T.J. asked.

  Taneesha answered.

  “Maybe she’s been blaming Noreen for all her problems. Noreen was the one who picked her and Janelle to lay off. Then she lost her job in Atlanta and had to come home. Maybe she talked to Jack about getting her job back and he said she’d have to talk to Noreen, so she went to the house on her way to Atlanta. Let’s say she was just planning to talk and it turned into a big scene, because Noreen knew about her and Jack the whole time.”

  “I hate this,” Sam said. “I was hoping maybe we’d pin Barstow down, and we could stay out of Jack’s private life.”

  He sat quietly for a moment, remembering his talk with the insurance investigator.

  “Noreen’s life was insured for $1 million,” he said. “Half to her husband. Half to her son.”

  “Could he have talked Amber Winslow into killing his wife?” T.J. asked. “It was a perfect set-up, with the daughters out of town, too.”

  The three of them fell silent.

  Taneesha shook her head.

  “I just can’t imagine Jack doing that,” Sam said. “He fools around, but he hasn’t got a mean bone in his body. I think he’s more the kind who just tries to pretend there aren’t any problems.”

  “I still think Barstow’s our guy,” T.J. said, getting up to leave. “There’s something funny about those matching alibis. But I can see you two have to rule her out.”

  Sam got a phone call, listened for a minute, and ended it with “I love you, too.”

  “I hope that was Hunter,” T.J. said.

  “Yep,” Sam said. “She was reminding me that we’ve got company coming tomorrow. And you two both remember that we’re having a cook-out on Sunday.”

  “Right,” Taneesha said with a smile. “Nikki’s coming. I’ll be glad to see her again.”

  CHAPTER 16

  ON SATURDAY MORNING, NIKKI DANIELLO DROVE her Corv
ette through the residential streets of Merchantsville admiring the old houses and shade trees. She saw it through a photographer’s eyes, but still wondered how on earth her friend Hunter could be happy living in such a sleepy little town.

  Not that there weren’t some exciting news stories from time to time, she thought. And, of course, there was Sam, who was undeniably a catch, and even read books. But there was no book store. There was no coffee house, no taverns, nowhere to buy good wine and cheese, no art galleries, no college or university, no concerts in the park, no vintage dress shops of the kind Hunter used to haunt, looking for those crazy clothes she wore.

  Nikki’s dark hair was cut short, chiseled to frame her face. She was wearing her usual faded jeans and had dug a Che Guevara t-shirt out of her vast collection, just to see if she could get a raised eyebrow from Sam.

  Having encountered fire ants on her last “old barn and peach orchard” photography session in Magnolia County, she was wearing both socks and boots. Her precious camera bag was secured with a seat belt on the passenger side and the voice on her GPS was telling her to turn right, then turn left. It never failed to surprise her that as small as Merchantsville was, she could still get lost, and wind up headed across the river bridge to that other little town, or driving past the Methodist Church for the third time.

  “Arriving at destination on right,” the voice said.

  “Yeah, right!” Nikki said, looking at a brick bungalow that wasn’t the Bailey-Jones house at all. Then she spotted the house a little further down the block on the left side of the street.

  She pulled up in front of the two-story frame house with its wraparound porch and the Magnolia County Sheriff’s Office vehicle in the driveway. .

  Bethie Bailey exploded out the front door to greet Nikki. Flannery, the German shepherd was right behind her, and then there was Hunter, followed by Sam.

  What was the only thing wrong with this picture? Nikki framed it in her mind’s eye and thought that the house was too ordinary. Hunter should have a really fine Victorian house with a stained glass transom over the front door and wisteria growing up a trellis by the porch.