Missed You In Church: A Hunter Jones Mystery

by Charlotte Moore

  Sam didn’t blink an eye at the revolutionary on the t-shirt, but gave Nikki a big hug, and got her suitcase out of the car. Nikki decided she’d talk to him about the house later.

  “Hey, Bethie,” she said, “I brought you a little camera I’m not using anymore.”

  “Sam and Bethie are going in his truck,” Hunter explained after she had pushed all three cats off the bed in the guest room. “Miss Rose Tyndale is going with us, and we’re buying peaches for just about everybody.”

  “Great,” Nikki said. “I’d really love to get a portrait of her with her teapot and that fussy looking Persian cat of hers. Do you think she’d pose for me?”

  “I’m sure she’d love to,” Hunter said.

  “And when can I meet the Wonder Girl?”

  “You mean Mallory?” Hunter replied. “She’s coming for our cookout tomorrow, and so are Taneesha and her boyfriend, and Skeet and his little girl, and…well, just about everybody in Sam’s office and mine.”

  At the Bremmer home, Mallory was loading dishes from breakfast and the night before into the dishwasher. She was missing Noreen.

  “We all took you for granted,” she whispered, looking upward.

  And then she thought to herself, “And now they’re taking it for granted that I’m the one who’s going to keep the house clean and make sure Merlin gets fed and walked, and does the grocery shopping, and..”

  “Hey, sweetie,” her father said. “Is there any coffee left?”

  She took a just-washed mug and filled it with coffee for him.

  “Come sit down a minute,” he said. “There’s something I want to talk to you about.”

  Mallory said, “Okay, and there’s something I want to talk to you about, too.”

  Maybe, she thought, she’d find a tactful way to suggest that they all share the work around the house or hire somebody to come in and clean.

  Jack Bremmer took a sip of his coffee and frowned. It had that bottom-of-the-pot taste from sitting there too long.

  Noreen would have already made a fresh pot on Saturday morning, he thought. He put the mug aside and focused on Mallory.

  “How much are they paying you at The Messenger?” he asked.

  Mallory looked surprised, and then told him.

  He considered the sum, and said, “I can pay you twice that much at the agency.”

  “Dad,” she said, “I like working at the newspaper, and if you can pay me twice that much you ought to hire Janelle back and maybe get her a part-time assistant.”

  “Janelle’s not family,” he said. “I want you to do the job your mother did, the job Noreen did. You know, become a kind of partner. It’s a family business. It will be your business someday.”

  “Dad, please listen to me,” she said. “I like my job at the paper, and even if I leave there, it will be to do something that involves writing and computers. I don’t want to supervise anybody or do bookkeeping. You can find somebody else to be your office manager. That’s what people do. They hire somebody. If you don’t like Janelle, hire somebody else who’s good at bookkeeping.”

  “I didn’t say I didn’t like Janelle,” he said. “She’s just not who I want representing the company. But if you like, I’ll hire Janelle part time to help you get your feet on the ground with the bookkeeping.”

  Mallory got up and said, “I’m going to make some fresh coffee.”

  “Good,” Jack said. “Now to get back to the subject, Mallory, I’m thinking that you’d need a whole new wardrobe, and I can put a thousand into that. Maybe you can go up to Macon and go on a shopping spree next weekend, get your hair fixed…”

  “DAD!” Mallory said. “Did you hear a word I said? Do you even know me? I don’t want a new wardrobe and I am not going to get my hair fixed and come to work for you. I don’t want to run the agency. I want to do what I’m doing.”

  He looked wounded, almost as if he might cry.

  She felt like crying herself.

  They were both silent while she got the coffee going.

  “How about just thinking about it?” he asked. “I’ve got so much on my mind, trying to deal with losing Noreen, and with everything coming up for Miranda’s wedding, I just can’t see interviewing people and training somebody new.”

  She got him a fresh cup of coffee, got herself one and sat down, trying to think how to proceed. Would this be a good time to bring up the whole business of running the house, buying groceries and taking care of Merlin?

  She didn’t have a chance to begin that discussion.

  “I’ll tell you what,” he said, “How about just pitching in until we get the wedding over. I’m sure Hunter would understand if you took a couple of weeks off. Then you can decide. I know you probably think it’s boring at the office, but we always just gave you the routine work before.”

  “Dad,” she said, striving for patience. “I can’t just take two or three weeks off. Hunter can’t put out the whole paper by herself. Can we maybe just drop that subject and talk about dividing up some of the work around here, so it’s not such a mess.”

  He looked around at the kitchen she had just finished cleaning.

  “It looks fine to me,” he said. “Tell you what. I’m going into work for a while. After I get off, I’ll buy some steaks to grill tonight.”

  Mallory stared at the table.

  He got up and patted her on the head.

  “You just think about it,” he said. “Maybe you could do some sales, too. And remember what those women’s libbers say about the glass ceiling. You’ve got no room for promotion at the newspaper, but you’re going to own Bremmer Insurance Agency when I retire.”

  Miranda wandered in, still in her pajamas, running her fingers through her hair.

  “What’s for breakfast?” she asked.

  Mallory got up without a word and went upstairs to her room.

  CHAPTER 17

  ROSE TYNDALE, HUNTER’S 80-YEAR-OLD FORMER LANDLADY, sat in the front seat while Hunter drove and Nikki took up the backseat with her photography gear. They were on the backroads, following Sam’s blue truck through the farmlands and pastures.

  “There!” Nikki said suddenly. “See that old building with the vines growing on it and that tree by it. “

  “Hunter blinked her lights as a signal to Sam, and pulled over. Nikki got out with her camera.

  “This will take a while,” Hunter said to Miss Rose.

  “Well, I hope I get to see all her pictures,” Miss Rose said, “I couldn’t believe she wanted one of me and Ozymandias, and how much trouble she went to. Now, tell me, Hunter, do you know if anything’s gone wrong between Taneesha and Jeremy?”

  “No,” Hunter said. “Why do you ask?”

  She knew from having lived in the same upstairs apartment that Taneesha lived in now, that Miss Rose tended to keep an eye on her renters’ developing romances.

  “Well, she just seems a little sad,” Miss Rose said. “I’m just doing a little observing, mind you. They didn’t go out last night. You know, they nearly always go somewhere on Friday night and she nearly always cooks dinner for him on Saturday night.”

  “Oh, I think she might have been worn out last night,” Hunter said. “This investigation is taking a lot of time, and I know it’s been frustrating to Sam. Maybe she’s just working too hard.”

  Miss Rose didn’t seem satisfied with that answer.

  “They’re coming to our house tomorrow,” Hunter said. “I’ll do some observing.”

  There were two more photography stops before they came out on the state highway, and turned toward the farmers’ market, where two flatbed trucks held boxes of peaches, and people from miles around were picking out tomatoes, okra, corn and squash before paying for their peaches.

  Nikki was taking pictures of the peaches from every imaginable angle, and then close up shots of everything from jars of fig preserves to children eating homemade ice cream. Hunter noticed her aiming her camera at Sam as he lifted a box of peaches, and another of Bethie w
ith an arm load of fresh corn. Once they were done, she turned her attention to helping Bethie use her camera.

  Miss Rose saw an old friend and settled down on a bench to eat ice cream and catch up with the news. Nikki nudged Bethie, and Bethie raised her camera.

  There was even a breeze doing its best to chase away the summer heat.

  Nikki and Sam were the last to get into the ice cream line, and they sat together as Hunter got Miss Rose into the car and started up the air conditioning for her.

  “You know, Sam,” Nikki said. “I’ve always imagined Hunter in a Victorian house. One of those with all the little towers and turrets and gingerbread trim, and maybe with a porch swing. You could paint it slate blue with a cream trim.”

  “Or yellow with white trim,” he said, taking a bite of his ice cream. “I’m looking for it, Nikki. It’s just that they don’t build them anymore, so you have to wait for somebody to sell.

  She was surprised, but didn’t show it.

  “If you buy it, I’ll come down and help you renovate it,” she said. “I watch HGTV all the time. I’d just love to break down some walls with a sledgehammer.”

  “That’s good to know,” Sam said with a grin.

  Back home, when they were alone for a moment, Hunter asked Sam about Taneesha and Jeremy.

  “They’re fine as far as I know,” he said. “She hasn’t been talking about anything much except the Bremmer murder investigation. I take it Miss Rose has been spying again.”

  “I wouldn’t call it that,” Hunter said, and then she laughed. “Well, I guess I would. I know she peeks out the window at times, but I think this is more a matter of her thinking Taneesha is a little blue.”

  Taneesha was at work, thinking about the supper she was going to make when she got home, and wondering if she should ask Jeremy straight out about his job hunting. She had heard about it from T.J., not from Jeremy.

  “How’s Jeremy’s job hunt going?” he had asked her, and her heart had skipped a beat.

  Still she had managed a casual answer.

  “My lips are sealed,” she had said, as if she knew something but wasn’t telling.

  The truth was, she didn’t know anything. Jeremy hadn’t said anything to her about job hunting, and she even wondered later if T.J. knew anything.

  In any case, she had suddenly felt too tired to go out, and called Jeremy to tell him that it had been a rough week and she needed to catch up with her sleep. That much was absolutely true, and there was no sleeping late since she had an interview first thing in the morning.

  He had sounded so sweet and concerned that she assured him that she still planned to cook their Saturday dinner.

  “Why don’t we go out instead?” he had asked. “You sound like you need a break.”

  “Not from cooking,” she had said. “I’m planning shrimp creole.”

  Surely, if he were hunting for a job, he’d have told about it, she thought. She didn’t want to ask. Or maybe she should just tell him what T.J. had asked her. After all, if he was job hunting, what business was it of T.J.’s? And if he wasn’t job hunting, then he needed to find out why one of his co-workers would think he was.

  But what if he was job hunting, and didn’t want her to know?

  She had put it out of her mind by going downstairs and knocking on Miss Rose’s door. Her excuse had been finally returning her landlady’s copy of Joy of Cooking, but her goal had really been the comfort of tea and homemade cookies.

  On Sunday morning, Sam cooked pancakes and sausage for everyone to have with sliced fresh peaches.

  Nikki and Hunter sent Sam and Bethie off to church, and stayed home since the only other clothes Nikki had brought were her second and third best faded jeans and t-shirts featuring a choice between Mahatma Gandhi and the University of Georgia Bulldogs.

  Clouds were beginning to gather by early afternoon, and the sky that had started off clear blue and sunny began to look ominously gray.

  “I don’t believe this,” Sam said as he lugged the two charcoal grills from the back yard patio to the front porch, where they would have shelter from a downpour.

  “Well, at least we’ll be cool.” Hunter said.

  An hour later the house was packed with friends, mostly bearing food or beverages as they ran in through the pouring rain. Skeet Borders joined Sam on the porch, turning over hotdogs and hamburgers as the storm built and then subsided.

  The dining room table was crowded with food – mostly high calorie—Hunter’s potato salad and corn on the cob, Nikki’s spaghetti carbonara, Taneesha’s baked beans with bacon, and Mallory’s Seven Layer Mexican Dip. Novena and her husband Bobby arrived with lemon pound cake and Shellie Carstairs brought a Key Lime pie.

  Bethie kept Skeet’s four year old, Madison, happy with help from Flannery and the cats.

  Bub Williston showed up with two watermelons.

  Hunter kept her eye on Taneesha and Jeremy, and as far as she could see, Taneesha was the one who seemed a little detached, while Jeremy seemed to be as smitten as ever.

  Still it was Mallory who worried Hunter most. She seemed quiet and a little overwhelmed by the crowd. Hunter remembered Mallory’s not wanting to go to her aunt’s house the night of the tragedy, and wondered if it was just too soon after Noreen’s death for her to enjoy a party.

  She made her way over to Mallory and said, “If you want to hide out upstairs for a while, it’s fine.”

  Mallory managed a smile and said, “I’m fine, really. I just didn’t get enough sleep last night.”

  Nikki, who had sauntered up with a wine cooler in one hand and a chicken salad sandwich in the other, said, “Hey, I could use a little quiet time, too. Come on up to the guest room with me and I’ll show you the pictures I took of Hunter and Sam yesterday.”

  The rain had finally stopped, and the food was nearly gone when Sam frowned and pulled his buzzing cell phone out of his jeans pocket. He walked back out onto the porch, and Hunter followed.

  Sam listened and closed his eyes as if he were in pain. Then he said, “I thought your guys were keeping an eye on him.”

  Then he listened for a while and said, “Well, it sounds like you’ve done everything that can be done for now. Call me if you hear anything.”

  “What is it?” Hunter asked when he hung up.

  “Rocker Barstow has disappeared,” he said. “He took his dogs, his clothes, his guns, his television set, and the money that was in the store. Nobody’s seen him at all since yesterday morning.”

  CHAPTER 18

  SAM WAS GONE WHEN HUNTER WOKE up Monday morning, and by the time Sam’s mother had come to pick Bethie up for the day, Nikki had packed to leave.

  “Come back real soon,” Bethie said, hugging Nikki before she ran out the door.

  Over a breakfast of coffee and lemon pound cake, Nikki told Hunter what was wrong with Mallory.

  “She loves her job, but her family’s driving her crazy,” Nikki said, “They’re all making her feel angry and guilty at the same time. Her father wants her to come to work at his insurance agency, and she doesn’t want to.”

  “I should hope not!” Hunter said.

  “Not a chance,” Nikki said. “She feels kind of guilty about not helping her dad, but she said that even if she didn’t have that job with you, she never has wanted to work at the agency. He wants her to be office manager and she isn’t a bit interested. She’s told him so, but he’s not listening. And then she’s got this spoiled baby sister she really loves and feels protective of, but the sister is so helpless it drives her crazy. And she’s got this bossy high-strung aunt who thinks the world ought to stop for the wedding. All of them lean on her one way or the other, and them – and besides all that she’s really grieving for her stepmother, and maybe it’s all reminded her of losing her mother too. She thinks both of them took care of her Dad and pretty much ran his business and the house and smoothed over any problems, and now he’s assuming she’ll do the same thing. I get the impression that her dad’s idea
of helping around the house is grilling some steaks now and then. Anyway, I think she’s wonderful not to have had a screaming tantrum by now.”

  “Should I see if she needs counseling?” Hunter asked.

  “I already counseled her,” Nikki said. “You know I’ve had so much counseling myself that I know how to do it. I told her that this is the 21st century and she does not have to be the spinster sister who stays in the vicarage to care for her father. She can just tell him no and not do it. And I told her it’s almost over with Bridezilla, and after that they can have nice visits a few times a year, so she should just stick it out.”

  “What about Aunt Clarissa?” Hunter said with a grin.

  “We agreed that the aunt will probably find something else to obsess about after the wedding is over,” Nikki says. “That part’s just the usual annoying relative. Oh, and I told her she needed to get her own place to live. I hope you’re paying her enough for that.”

  “We are,” Hunter said, thinking hard. “The problem is finding an apartment in Merchantsville.”

  Sam Bailey held a media briefing at 11 a.m. mainly to get the photo and truck description out to more people. He referred to Roger aka “Rocker” Barstow as “a person of interest in the case.”

  Flint Russell from Channel 7 had done some checking around before the briefing and asked it Sam would confirm that Roger Barstow was Noreen Bremmer’s first husband and was he the same man that Noreen Bremmer’s son had allegedly hit at her funeral.

  Sam frowned and confirmed.

  Once the briefing was over, went off to his office with Taneesha and T.J. and slammed the door.

  “I could really have done without making Jack Bremmer mad,” he said, “But as long as we’re making him mad anyway, let’s wrap it up, and go and bring Amber in. We need to wrap that up. This business of her having a gun changes things.”

  “Rocker’s running away looks bad for him,” T.J. said. “I talked with Sonny Taylor last night and he’s sticking to his story about the poker game, but he sure did seem nervous. He said Rocker had been worried that he might be charged in Noreen’s death, and he couldn’t pay his bills.”