A Garland of Bones

by Carolyn Haines

  He’d put it together pretty quickly. “The death of a grandmother is a pretty good motive for revenge,” I said.

  “Nope, not involved in this. I’m a lawman and I settle my disputes in the courtroom, not in a parking lot.”

  “What have you discovered about Tulla Tarbutton’s shock at the karaoke event?” Tinkie asked.

  “There’s no proof that it was deliberate,” he said. “That musician fellow, Jaytee, talked with me. He’s pretty certain it wasn’t an accident, but we both went over the equipment and the events, and we couldn’t find a way to prove it was deliberate.”

  “And what about Bart Crenshaw’s tumble down the stairs?” I asked.

  “He insists that he stumbled and fell. We have to take him at his word.”

  “And what about the convertible?” Tinkie pressed. “Someone ordered that done, and it was someone who meant to inflict damage.”

  “That’s still under investigation.” He didn’t flinch. “I had nothing to do with it, but we’ll find out who ordered it.”

  I gave him a business card. “Would you call us when you figure it out?”

  He took the card and put it in the pocket of his shirt. “Sure.”

  “By the way, I think there’s something hinky about the way Bart Crenshaw ‘lost his balance.’”

  The faintest grin touched his lips. “I tend to agree with you, but there’s little we can do if he doesn’t say who pushed him.” He shrugged. “Some men love the danger. They’re as bad as the local drama queens who stir up trouble because they have to be center stage. But I’m aware of this, and I’m investigating. Now I have work to do.”

  It was clear we’d been dismissed, and I, for one, was eager to move on down the list of things we needed to check.

  * * *

  Lunchtime arrived, and the motto of Delaney Detective Agency was “never miss a meal.” To that end, we called Cece and Millie to see if they’d finished their newspaper work and could join us at the Green Parrot. The karaoke machine was back up and the locals were belting out the words to every Christmas song ever written. I wasn’t there to sing, but to ask questions.

  Cece and Millie joined us, and we found a table in the corner where we could watch the room. I didn’t recognize any of the patrons, but we kept our voices low anyway. As we hashed over the case, I realized we had too many suspects and too many weak motives.

  But the one fact Tinkie and I had discovered made a big hit. Cece and Millie were all over the news about an impostor posing as Bricey Presley.

  “That’s … genius,” Cece said. “I mean if you really hated Bricey, that would be a masterful play.”

  “She’s not exactly beloved,” Millie threw in. “From the gossip at Rook’s Nest, it seemed pretty clear that Bricey has dipped her toe in way too many people’s monkey business.”

  “True. Destroying the car is one thing. But nearly electrocuting a woman and pushing a man down a flight of stairs? Both of those could have ended in a fatality.”

  “Which makes me think there’s more to all of this than just jealousy or revenge for cheating.” I had nothing more than a gut feeling—no evidence.

  “What are you thinking?” Millie asked.

  “We have a man whose grandmother died because Bricey didn’t uphold a contract for professional care. We have a cheating man with a lot of business entanglements who almost died falling downstairs. And we have a known homewrecker who could have gotten a fatal shock. Add this to what we discovered about Clarissa in Oxford.”

  “Do you think she really killed that Bresland man?” Tinkie asked.

  “I think she’s capable. Don’t you?”

  All around the table my friends nodded.

  “She’s a shark,” Millie said.

  “I think I need to go to this Hell Creek Wildlife Management Area and check out the location where Johnny Bresland died.” Somewhere we had to find some physical evidence that would support my theory or crash it. I honestly didn’t care which. But if we were to make headway with this case, we needed more than hunches.

  “I’m game,” Tinkie said. “We can get Rex to drive us.”

  “Let’s just rent a car,” Cece suggested. “We’ll have more flexibility and Rex can keep an eye on the guys for us.”

  I wondered if Tinkie had finally co-opted Rex as a spy, but I didn’t ask. Some things were better left alone—at least until I had time to poke into them.

  The rental agency delivered the car to the restaurant by the time we were finished paying our bill, and we were off for a pretty drive through the Mississippi woods. I didn’t know what I hoped to find, but at least we weren’t shopping. That in itself was a miracle. I’d googled Johnny Bresland’s death notice and discovered that Tippah County had been in charge of the investigation. On the way, I telephoned the Tippah County sheriff’s department and asked to speak with the officer who’d worked the Johnny Bresland accidental shooting.

  Deputy Len Ford sounded to be an experienced lawman who put the facts on the line. He freely gave us the details of the shooting. Bresland was found in a cluster of trees and he wasn’t wearing hunter’s orange. There were deer tracks near his body. The deputy pointed out that hunting fatalities weren’t uncommon, especially when buck fever was running high.

  “It was a simple accident,” Ford said. “We investigated. The shot came from an area where several other hunters had set up. As you probably know, we can’t trace buckshot to a particular gun, and those guys aren’t going to talk if they even know who’s responsible, so there’s no real way to identify the shooter. It’s had a tragic impact. The guys Bresland was hunting with, this has pretty much ruined their lives. They all feel guilty.”

  “You knew Bresland’s wife died only a month before he was shot?” I asked.

  “That was up in Lafayette County. I heard the talk, read the official report. Suicide. That’s why his buddies took him hunting. He was drinking too much and spending too much time alone. His friends said he seemed overwhelmed with guilt and remorse at his wife’s death. They thought getting out in the woods, some time with his friends, would put him on a better path.”

  I wasn’t a fan of hunting as grief therapy, but I didn’t say it. “Are you sure Aurora Bresland’s death was a suicide?”

  “She died at her home just outside Oxford. Lafayette County investigated that one. We weren’t involved, but I did check into the basic details. Seemed a little odd that she’d die and then her husband would get shot to death. But I couldn’t find anything to hang my suspicions on. From what I was told, it was pretty open-and-shut. Mrs. Bresland was depressed—she’d been seeing a therapist—and she took a bottle of sleeping pills. She left a note that said if suicide was good enough for Marilyn, it was good enough for her.”

  Chill bumps raced over my body. That didn’t sound like any suicide note I’d ever read. It was flippant. And depressed people seldom achieved flippancy no matter how hard they tried.

  “In our investigation did you hear any rumors that Johnny Bresland was cheating on his wife?”

  “His wife was dead before Bresland was shot. It occurred to me that something was wrong in the marriage for the wife to kill herself, but she wasn’t a suspect in the shooting. Dead people make poor murder suspects. Juries don’t tend to believe in revenge from a spirit.” There was a hint of humor in his voice. “Men cheat all the time, but few women kill themselves because of a cheater.”

  “Cheating may have been the cause of Mrs. Breland’s suicide, but I’m really interested in how the Bresland estate was handled. The man was wealthy—extremely so. No children. His wife should have been his sole heir, except she was dead. That left the door open for a stranger to benefit from his death.” I let that sink in. “I’m headed to the Hell Creek area. Care to meet me?”

  “I’m about ten minutes from there anyway. I’ll wait for you on the North Trace road.”

  This was better than I’d hoped. “Thanks, Deputy Ford.” I hung up and nodded at my friends. “The deputy tha
t worked the case is going to meet us there.”

  13

  Deputy Ford was a big, strapping man with keen gray eyes that didn’t miss a lot. He was middle-aged but without the excess padding that a lot of men in their late forties or early fifties tended to pack on. He eyed the four of us with no emotion, waiting to see what we’d reveal. He was alert but nonconfrontational, and I realized he’d agreed to meet us out of curiosity to see what we might be up to.

  He was standing, leaned against the back of his patrol vehicle, when we stopped behind him and got out of the car. The woods around us were dense, a lovely mixture of hardwoods on land that rolled and sloped, sometimes sharply. I looked on the north side of the road, where the terrain slanted down to the gurgle of a fast-running creek.

  “Thanks for meeting us,” I said.

  “I wasn’t expecting a posse,” he said at last.

  I gave him a business card. “We’re on vacation,” I explained. “It just so happens that we were asked to look into some strange events in Columbus, and the trail has led us here.”

  “To the middle of a wildlife preserve where a man was shot to death.” He watched me closely. It was clear that now he’d caught sight of us in the flesh, he thought we had some ulterior motive.

  “It’s a long shot,” I said, “but the woman who hired us, something doesn’t click with her. As private detectives, we like to know if we’re being sandbagged by a client.”

  Millie approached the deputy and handed him her business card. “Ms. Falcon and I are newspaper reporters. We work for the Zinnia Dispatch and we’re consultants with the Delaney Detective Agency.”

  I turned away to hide my grin. Millie liked what she saw in Deputy Ford. My hardworking friend had had one fling with a man she met at a Cupid’s party, but distance had stymied that romance. It was good to see her strut her stuff at a man.

  “Millie runs the best café in the Southeast,” I said. “If you ever happen through Zinnia, you should stop for some coffee and apple cobbler.”

  He looked at me, then glanced at Millie and grinned. “Apple pie is my favorite.”

  “With the way sparks are flying, y’all could set the woods on fire,” Cece said drolly. “Now where was the body found?”

  “Prepare for a hike,” Ford said. He led the way and Millie joined him, chatting as we entered the woods.

  Cece and Tinkie were as proud as if they’d negotiated a Middle East peace treaty. “They’re hitting it off,” Tinkie said.

  “This will do Millie a world of good,” Cece answered. “And right at Christmas, the perfect time for a romance.”

  I spoke up. “What if he’s married?”

  “Simple,” Tinkie said. “We kill him.”

  I glanced down at her and I couldn’t tell for certain if she was kidding or not.

  We came to a clearing surrounded on all sides by trees and dense undergrowth. “There’s a tree stand over there.” The deputy pointed north. “And the other hunters were on either side of the stand. Bresland’s body was right over here in that clump of elderberries and Johnson grass. It seems obvious he was staring down that slope to that thicket. He must have been watching a deer himself, calculating a shot. But then someone up the slope saw him moving about in that tall grass and just thought it was a deer.”

  His assessment made perfect sense. Except for one thing. “Wouldn’t a hunter have come down to check and see if he had a kill?”

  “My guess is that there actually was a deer here and the hunter missed. When the deer took off into the woods, the hunter just assumed his shot was bad.”

  “How many men were in the hunting party with Mr. Bresland?” Tinkie asked.

  “Four, counting Bresland. They’d hunted together for years. Bresland wasn’t known to be an early riser, so they were a little surprised when he got up earlier than they did and headed out on his own.”

  I nodded, looking around the scene. The story fit the terrain. Hunting accidents happened. Sometimes people walking in the wrong place got blasted. “Thanks for showing us.”

  “It did seem pretty open-and-shut to me,” Ford said, completely at ease. “I just couldn’t tie any two things together solid enough to come up with a motive and a suspect.”

  “Thanks again,” I said. “We really appreciate your time.”

  “As it turned out, my time was well spent.” He smiled at Millie and started back the way we’d come.

  “Deputy Ford,” Tinkie called out, “are you married?”

  He stopped and turned back. “No, why?”

  “Because if you were, I was telling Sarah Booth that we’d have to kill you.” Tinkie smiled really big. “No one messes with our friends.”

  He laughed. “You got a set of them.” He offered Millie his arm and they strolled ahead of us.

  * * *

  We returned the car to the rental agency and then went back to the B and B. Darla let us use her computer. The men were still conspicuously absent, but they’d return soon. We were due to set off for the flotilla at six o’clock. Darla would prepare a light dinner for us at five so we didn’t end up on the water drinking on an empty stomach in the cold. She was really good at taking care of us.

  Millie was holed up in her room talking to Deputy Len on the phone, and Cece was doing her best to eavesdrop. I tried to shame her into stopping, but she was having way too much fun. Tinkie and I left them to their own devices while we dug deeper into the death of Aurora Bresland. Coleman would have been a big help here, but he wasn’t around, so we had to persuade the Lafayette County authorities to give us as many details as they would.

  We found out what we could online and then we called the Lafayette County sheriff’s office.

  The deputy we spoke with wasn’t exactly forthcoming, but he did pull the file and read the case notes to us. It was exactly as Deputy Len had said. Aurora was found in her bed, empty pill bottle and the suicide note on the end table, typed but signed. Her husband had verified that it was her signature and had broken down in the sheriff’s office proclaiming that his cheating had killed his wife.

  “The guy was truly broken up,” the law officer I was talking with said. “I took his statement and I felt sorry for him.”

  “He was cheating on his wife,” Tinkie said with some heat. “How about feeling sorry for her?”

  “Well, you know what I mean,” he blustered. “We interviewed some of her friends and they said she was distraught by what she viewed as the end of her marriage. Her husband had found a younger, more attractive model, and she felt her world was ending.”

  “Any indication Bresland intended to divorce her?” I asked.

  “None. And he denied a divorce was in the works. In fact, he said he’d decided to end his affair.”

  “Why?”

  “He said something about the woman he was involved with being a little … unbalanced.”

  “Unbalanced enough to kill his wife and make it look like a suicide?” Tinkie asked.

  The question didn’t catch the deputy off guard. “We thought of that,” he said, “but there was no evidence that anyone else was in the house with Mrs. Bresland when she died. And there was the note.”

  Tinkie rolled her eyes, but I put a finger to my lips to shush her. “Did you interview Clarissa Olson?” I asked.

  “Why would I interview her? She wasn’t romantically involved with Bresland. She was a business partner and nothing more.”

  “She’s the other woman,” Tinkie explained rather tartly.

  “No, she was Mr. Bresland’s real estate partner. He was involved with someone else.”

  “Who?” I asked.

  “He refused to say. He denied any involvement with the Olson woman except financial. She was making money hand over fist with Bresland’s contacts and managing his real estate. There was one complaint about her business ethics filed in our office, but we investigated and her actions were perfectly legal. If not ethical, they were legal.”

  “Are you positive Bresland was no longer
involved with Olson?” I pressed.

  “That’s what the man said, and he was pretty torn up about his wife’s suicide, so I think he was telling the truth. The coroner believed him, too.”

  Coleman would never have left a loose end like that, but I wasn’t going to say it. We’d pursue this at a later date. We just had time to get ready for the flotilla.

  14

  My thick jacket, layers of sweaters, double socks, boots, scarves, and gloves made me feel like a Goodyear blimp as I waddled down the dock toward the waiting boat. Luckily, Coleman gripped my hand so I didn’t float away on the brisk wind. And I couldn’t help but express sincere pleasure at seeing the boat—decorated with garlands of lights and tinsel and bows. The Tenn-Tom Queen looked like Santa’s sleigh packed with sparkly lights, toys, people, and gaiety.

  “Rockin’ Around the Christmas Tree” came over the speaker system, and I looked up to find Coleman watching me with amusement. “You’re afraid I’m going to sing, aren’t you?”

  “Only a little,” he said, then brushed a kiss across my lips. “Sing if it makes you happy, Sarah Booth. I only want you to be happy.”

  Because he had such a generous heart, I decided to restain myself. “Let’s get a drink,” I said as he handed me onto the bow of the big party boat, which was ready for the holiday cruise.

  “All aboard!” Darla called out. Her faithful friend Kathleen was at her side, handing out cosmopolitans, the perfect color for the season, as we boarded. Kathleen was even more layered up than I was, if that was possible. And she had the cutest stocking cap with a snowman on the top. Darla took us around and introduced us to people we didn’t know. The boat was really a floating party. Just before we were ready to cast off, Clarissa jumped aboard. I had to admire her catlike grace and her sleek fitted skiwear.

  Darla cast the boat off from the dock and jumped aboard and we were slowly drifting downriver to join up with twenty other vessels that were floating decorations. When the boats drifted close to the docks where people cheered us on, we threw Christmas necklaces, candies, garlands, and novelties that Darla had generously provided for all of us. It was one of the best parades I’d ever been in.