Murder of the Month

by Tegan Maher

  Hunter finally responded, and swung by and picked me up a few minutes later. He had an address for Mrs. Wembly and wanted to go speak with her, and thought having me there might help. Translation—he'd learned that little old ladies who lived in the woods of Southern Georgia were at least as dangerous as the rest of the wildlife.

  Turns out, she did live in the boondocks, but wasn't the shotgun-wielding type. Rather, she offered us a glass of wine. Since we two women had died from her supply, we took a hard pass but did it gently. When we explained the situation to her, I was afraid she was going to have a stroke or something. She sank onto a faded floral chair and her hand fluttered to her throat.

  “This is awful,” she said, her eyes a little unfocused. “I knew Ida and Merriam both, well. Ida leaned toward huffy, but she was all bluster. She helped me out a little when my Edward died. Sent a girl out to help me clean for a bit and wouldn’t take a cent for doing it.”

  I was flabbergasted. The more I heard about Ida, the more I realized she wasn’t the old hag I’d thought she was. I didn’t understand why she’d wanted people to think she was. Maybe she really was mean, but decency popped up out of the blue from her sometimes. If I’d learned anything in life, it was that people were rarely all good or all bad.

  We asked Mable to give us a tour of her facility, and that dragged her out of her stupor a little. Motioning for us to follow her, she shuffled to the back of her house.

  “I hate to say it with two women dead,” she said over her shoulder, “but when word gets out about this, my goose’ll be cooked. I don’t know what I’ll do if this place goes under. It’s all I can do to make ends meet as it is.”

  My heart went out to her because I was sure she was telling the truth. My bullshit meter was flatlined; there wasn’t a hint of deception in either her tone or expression. Whatever was happening, she had nothing to do with it.

  “I started the business shortly after I became a widow. I had a little less than twenty grand left after I paid for the funeral, and wine’s always been a passion of mine.” She motioned toward the side yard and her bony chest puffed out with pride. A large, well-tended arbor took up the majority of probably five acres. “Those there,” she said, pointing at vines weighted down by thick clumps of grapes, “are my Georgia Merlots. Makes some of the best wine I’ve ever tasted. Been grownin’ ’em for five decades, and it’s taken me almost that long to perfect my growin’ and fermentin’ methods.”

  “Do you make white wine too?” I asked. All the grapes looked the same to me from that distance, but I was a wine drinker, not a wine maker.

  She shook her head. “Nope. Used to, but I just don’t drink enough of it to justify the extra work. Only got so much space here, and the red was far more popular than the white with everybody else, too. So, red it is.”

  Mable stopped in front of a large, garage-like structure and rubbed her hip, her gnarled fingers kneading her flesh. She flashed me a pained smile that didn’t quite reach her rheumy eyes. “Gettin’ old’s for the birds, but I reckon it beats the alternative.”

  I was surprised to see the door had a rubber seal around it sort of like the one on a fridge. When she pulled, it opened with a pop and we stepped into a temperature-controlled building. Cases of wine were stored along the sides and categorized by type. There was a pallet of her company boxes on a worktable, and shipping labels were stacked neatly next to them. Finally, in a box next to that was a small, modern tablet that she said she used to keep track of orders.

  "Customers fill out a survey when they sign up, choosin’ how many bottles they want and what types of wine they prefer. I try to vary my selections, and I don't automatically ship any more. I got tired of getting complaints about the automatic charges. Now if the month-to-months don't choose, I don't ship ’em anything that month. I do have quarterly, six-month, and yearly subscription options though. Ida and Merriam were both annual customers."

  I was impressed. She may have looked like somebody’s great-granny, but she was a survivor. I liked her; her body was stooped with age, but her dark eyes were sharp and bright with intelligence. She was nobody's fool.

  "So you've recently hired a young man to help you?" I asked. “Is he somebody you trust?”

  She shook her head. "I hired him because I’m too old to be totin’ boxes of wine, but all the financials are encrypted. There's no way he can access any of ’em."

  Hearing an eighty-year-old talking about encrypted files took me by surprise for some reason. This woman was full of surprises.

  "What's his name?" Hunter asked. “And what do you know about him?”

  She pulled in a deep breath and released it, rubbing her knobby knuckles and grimacing a little as she did so. "His name’s Macon Jessop, but he don't work for me no more. I fired him when he didn't show up Friday. My orders didn't get out, and if he ain't going to help me make my money, I'm not giving him any of it."

  The name rang a bell. That was the middle name of the guy who owned the property between Ida and me.

  "Do you have an address on him?" I wasn't hopeful.

  She shook her head. "Nah, I was paying him under the table."

  "Well do you have any idea where we might find him?" Hunter asked. "Did he ever mention where he was staying?"

  Mrs. Wembly snorted. "Not for sure, but if I was you, I'd start at the nearest bar. And if you catch him, he owes me for three cases of wine he helped himself to last time he left."

  Yeah, I wasn't holding my breath that she’d ever see that wine again.

  CHAPTER 42

  WE STOPPED AT A COUPLE small bars along the way back to town, but without a picture, we weren't having much luck. Since he wasn't in a cruiser, Hunter didn't have his dash computer and couldn't pull any information up on the guy. Instead, he called Peggy Sue and asked her to see if she could find a driver's license picture or something to send to his phone. As expected, it was there in less than five minutes.

  Turns out, the kid was from Atlanta. Surprise, surprise.

  We didn't have any luck at the next few bars even with the picture. They recognized him but had no idea where he was staying. We asked them to contact us if he came in, but figured that was a waste of breath.

  By the time we got back to town, I was starving. Ribs from Bobbie Sue's sounded like heaven, so we stopped in. Louise, the manager and a good friend, was working. Sarah, who’d been there for years just like I had, was there too. We’d shared almost five years’ worth of exhausting shifts and sore feet, but we’d had our fair share of good times, too. It was good to see them. I'd been so busy I hadn't been able to stop in for a while, and they'd both missed the last couple girls' nights.

  We chatted while we ate until an uproar came from the other side of the restaurant.

  "We didn't come here to watch the wait staff sit with the customers," a woman's high-pitched voice called. "My tea's empty and my pookie needs some more napkins."

  Sarah rolled her eyes. "That woman's one of the biggest pains in my backside I've had in here in a while. I'll be right back."

  She grabbed a fresh glass of tea and a stack of napkins on her way and returned a minute later, dropping off a glass at the waitress station that was still a quarter full. Some people. I craned my neck to see who it was.

  Color me shocked when it turned out to be Millie and Felix. The woman was dressed in yet another garish outfit and had her hair styled in some kind of big, 50s-knockoff hairdo with a neon green scarf. Of course, it was the only green thing she was wearing. She should have had to tip more just because her outfit could potentially cause blindness.

  My phone dinged a few seconds later with a text. It was Kensey, wanting to know what we'd learned. She also had a fresh batch of rhubarb from her mom's garden that she wanted to give me and offered to drop it off at Brew. I invited her to stop by Bobbie Sue's for dessert instead.

  While we were finishing up our ribs, Sarah filled us in on her most recent adventures with her six-year-old son Sean. It amazed me that he was t
hat old already. In just a few minutes, Kensey popped in, smiling.

  "Hey," I said when she slid into the booth. "I hope you like cheesecake."

  She snorted. "Are you kidding? Bobbie Sue has that good cheesecake from Costco. I love that stuff, and the blueberry drizzle she makes? Yeah, I'm in!"

  Sarah brought us our plates right as another round of whining came from Millie's table.

  "Ex-cuse me! Why do they get their desserts first?"

  Since we were sitting with our backs to them, Kensey gave me a what the heck look and twisted to see. “Who’s the wildebeest?” she asked.

  “That’s Millie, the current thorn in Rose’s side. Her new step-mommy. The guy is Felix, Rose’s dad.”

  “Millie, as in Millie Crenshaw?”

  “Yeah,” I said, thinking about it. “According to Belle, she used to be Millie Lantz.”

  "That's my cousin,” she hissed at me. “Or at least I think it is. She and Mama fought because Millie thought she should have gotten half the farm, but grandma and grandpa left it all to Mama."

  She went on to explain her family dynamics. As is the case with most of us, her family tree had a couple bad branches, and Millie’s mom had been one of them. Merriam had been a mid-life surprise to her grandparents. Faye, Merriam’s sister, was twenty years her senior and had started life as a wild child. She’d continued to build a life based on bad decisions, one of which was Millie’s father.

  When Millie’s grandfather caught Faye and her beau trying to steal tools out of his garage, he’d put his foot down and disowned her.

  "And you haven't heard from Millie?" I asked.

  "I’ve never even met her,” Kensey said. "The only reason I recognize her is because she sent a letter to Mom's lawyer a couple weeks ago wanting to dispute the will and claim part of the property, but the wills were iron-clad. That farm's mine, free and clear."

  “Are you gonna go say hello?” Sarah asked.

  Kensey chewed her lip and cast another glance back toward Millie, who was still fussing about the service to Felix. He was doing his best to placate her but was failing miserably. Kensey shook her head. “I don’t see any good coming of it. She’s stayed away this long without trying to build a relationship and was nasty about the farm. I’m gonna let that particular sleepin’ dog lie.”

  Louise rolled her eyes as Millie’s nasally whine became louder and Felix shushed her. “I wish that dog was sleepin’. It’s hard to imagine she’s related to your mom.”

  "Wait a minute," I said, my brain churning. "She married Rose’s dad, which put her in direct line to get the house if Ida died, and she thought she had a claim to your place. Or at least part of it."

  Hunter’s brow was furrowed; it seemed he was drawing the same conclusions I was. "Why did she challenge the will? Did she have reason to believe she may get the farm if your mom died?" he asked Kensey.

  She looked uncomfortable for a minute. “Bein’ the sweetheart she was, Mom felt bad when Grammy left her everything. In her original will, Mom left her house and the small plot it’s sitting on to Millie, and I got my house and the rest of the property.”

  “So what happened?” Sarah asked. “Why did she change it?”

  “Mom wouldn’t talk much about it,” Kensey said, “but from what little she did say, Millie’s bad with money and was more interested in the property because of its cash value, not the fact it’s been in the family for four generations. She changed her will a year or so ago, but I don’t know if Millie knew that or not. For that matter, I don’t know how she would have known about the first one.”

  I turned to Hunter. “Are you going to question her again?”

  He shook his head. “We don’t have anything but speculation right now, and we already know she’s not going anywhere.”

  “Yeah,” Sarah said, her lip curled, “she was bragging about moving into her new house today.”

  I scowled, but then thought of Ida’s words to Rose about that situation. An evil grin crept across my face at the thought of how trying to move into Ida’s house was gonna go for Millie. Oh, to be a fly on that wall.

  Hunter had to have caught the look on my face. “I know it twists your knickers, but it'll give me time to run a check on her and get my ducks in a row,” he said. “I don't have enough right now to arrest her."

  If she was involved in the murders, she knew who ran Gabi off the road. Just thinking about it made me want to choke the truth out of her. Hunter was right, though. We didn’t know for sure she was involved even if I’d have bet my bottom dollar on it. If it looks like a duck, swims like a duck, and quacks like a duck ...

  But her day was coming. I could wait.

  CHAPTER 43

  PEGGY SUE DUG HIGH and low but couldn't come up with so much as a whisper of current information on the people who owned the property next to me. She'd broadened her search, but it wasn't like Keyhole Lake had the resources to do national searches. Instead, Hunter called his friend in Indianapolis again and asked for more help.

  I didn't know who that guy was, but Hunter’s favors list was piling up. He was going to have to invite him down for a free vacation.

  Especially when his buddy hit pay dirt with the corporation.

  But what he found was a head-scratcher. Apparently, the owner of record was one Macon Jessop. This kid had to be related to the folks who owned the property, between the shared name and the corporation. If I had to take a guess, his parents had passed, and the kid had inherited the place. It was the only thing that made sense.

  Still, it didn't sit right. The idea of a drunk kid masterminding two murders to get his hand on property to develop didn't add up. It wasn’t that I didn't think he would have done it; I just didn’t think he had the brainpower to come up with it on his own. According to his license, he was only twenty-five and, at least on paper, he didn’t seem like the sharpest knife in the drawer. With the long list of petty crimes he'd already accumulated, mastermind wasn’t the first adjective I’d have used to describe him. Or the tenth.

  Cheri Lynn popped in the next day when Hunter was getting ready to go troll more bars looking for him. We were beginning to think he'd skipped town. She floated over and looked over his shoulder at the picture. "I know him," she exclaimed. "He works for Jim, barbackin’ and doin’ odd jobs." She shuddered and curled her nose in distaste. “Handsy guy. Thinks the girls are just property.”

  "Jim, as in Jim Simpson of Tassels?" Hunter asked, looking closer at the picture. Jim had been in on a con to get my land when Hank was killed, but I hadn't heard jack from him since.

  Cheri looked like she’d smelled something rotten. Saying Jim hadn't been kind to her while she worked there was the understatement of the century. He'd treated her like a dog and had called her a nobody who didn't count or matter. He’d done much, much worse than that, but that’s another story altogether. “The kid’s dumber than a box of rocks,” she said. “If he can’t drink it, eat it, or hump it, he don’t even notice it.”

  Hunter was rubbing his chin. "That may be so, but he’s involved somehow," he said. “At least now we know where to find him. And I even have a reason to arrest him."

  I grinned. "You do," I said, thinking back to our visit with Mrs. Wembly. "He's a wine thief. But you don’t really think he’s the one behind all this, do you?”

  “I don’t know yet,” he said. “I’m gonna go out on a limb and guess Macon’s holed up out at Tassels. I’m heading out there now and just hope he hasn’t gotten wind we’re looking for him yet. Maybe he’ll spill his guts and fill in the blanks. Something here isn’t adding up.”

  He dropped me off at my shop so I could get my motorcycle, then called for backup. While I was waiting to hear back from him, I decided to call Rae and have her come to the farm. Since it was so late in the afternoon, she’d have closed up already, and I was worried about her.

  Cheri Lynn had left, but popped in right as I pulled my phone from my pocket to call Rae.

  “Hey sugar,” she said. �
��I was gonna go hang out with Rupert, but he’s busy tryin’ to organize a poker league here in town.”

  “I was just about to call Rae,” I said, admiring Cheri’s sunny yellow peasant shirt. She was one of those lucky women who’d look good in a gunnysack, but always knew just what to wear. I was a little jealous because I wasn’t exactly a fashionista. For the most part, anything past jeans and blouses was beyond me, aside from my love of boots.

  “Yeah,” she replied, hovering beside me as I turned the key to unlock to shop. “I stopped in earlier to check on her. She’s pretty upset, bless her little heart. I feel so bad for her.”

  “Feel bad for whom?” Erol asked as we walked through the door.

  “Rae,” I said, then relayed the story.

  He crinkled his brow. “I don’t know much about this sort of thing, but it seems odd to me that all three of you are in this situation. A witch’s powers don’t usually change, do they?”

  I shook my head. “No, not after a certain age.”

  He wrinkled his brow and pinched his lips together, shoving them off to the side as he hovered beside me. “Has it occurred to you that your powers may be responding to something bigger?”

  That gave me pause. “What do you mean, bigger?”

  “I mean, it would be one thing if just one of you was growing superpowers. It’s a whole nother kettle of fish now that it’s all three of you. In nature, there’s a balance. If a storm’s comin’, fish get weird, animals start actin’ different, that sort of thing, due to instinct. Plus, Newton’s law. For every action, there’s an equal, opposite reaction. Is it possible your magic’s respondin' to something?”

  That gave me pause. I hadn’t taken the time to step back out of the box and look at the big picture, but what he was saying made sense. Or at least as much sense as any.

  “There’s something going on in the ghost community, too,” he continued. “I never noticed it ’til lately when I started going out and about more, but there’s a weight in the air, like somethin’s coming.” He lifted a silvery shoulder as I reached onto the shelf to get some crackers for Norm and Sammie. “Maybe they’re not connected, but there sure is somethin’ up on both sides of the daisies.”