Murder, Mayhem and Bliss (Myrtle Grove Garden Club Mystery Book 1)

by Loulou Harrington

  Vivian drew back in shock and Jesse looked away in confused embarrassment. They must be much better friends than she had assumed.

  “They’ve known each other since high school,” a quiet, calm voice said from behind her, and for the first time in several minutes, Jesse remembered Mrs. Marshall.

  “Oh.” Striving for normality, Jesse turned to extend her hand in greeting. “I’m Jesse Camden. I don’t believe we’ve met formally.”

  She took the other woman’s frail hand in hers and found more strength in the fingers than she had expected.

  “Cindilee Marshall.” Water blue eyes shone from a thin, delicate face. A smile creased almost translucent skin. “I know you. My husband bought me one of your stained-glass pieces last year. You do beautiful work.”

  “Well, thank you.” Jesse found herself instantly warming to the woman, then chided herself for letting vanity guide her. But still, Cindilee Marshall seemed very nice, and not the least bit upset by the warmly intimate scene between her husband and the very recent, very beautiful widow Kerr. Which could be considered odd by some.

  Like Vivian, for instance, who was looking from Bill Marshall and Bliss to Mrs. Marshall with something very close to revulsion. But then, Vivian was completely maxed out on surprise company. The next person to walk through the door unannounced would probably get a vase chucked at them.

  “Could I get you some tea, or a cup of coffee?” Jesse asked, returning her attention to the thin, quiet lady in the wheelchair.

  “Would I be taking you away from anything?”

  “Oh, goodness, no. I think Vivian would just as soon be alone.”

  “And I think I should let Bill and Bliss have some time together before I offer her my condolences. She does seem to be taking it rather hard,” Cindilee said in a near whisper. “I quite honestly wasn’t sure if she would be sad or relieved.”

  Jesse felt her eyes widen and quickly squinted them back to normal. There was no reason why Vivian should have the market cornered on outrageously blunt comments. But still, hearing someone so openly voice what so many others were covertly thinking was just a little disconcerting.

  “Well, then, is it tea or coffee?” Jesse asked with exaggerated cheer when she finally remembered that she had issued an invitation.

  “Tea, I think.” A pleased smile lit Cindilee’s pale face. “Would you mind if I went with you?”

  Jesse returned the smile, relieved to have something else to focus on in what had been a trying day for one and all. “Not a bit. There’s a little terrace off the kitchen where we could get some fresh air if you’d like.”

  “Oh, I would. There’s nothing I like better than sitting with the sun on my face.”

  “Sounds like a plan to me.” Jesse turned to catch Vivian’s eye, pointed to herself, then Cindilee and pantomimed drinking from a cup, then pointed toward the kitchen. Vivian waved goodbye.

  Turning back to assist Cindilee out of the room, Jesse found the other woman already waiting in the foyer.

  “Which way?” Cindilee asked brightly.

  “You don’t need any help?” Jesse questioned, feeling slightly rude not to be assisting in some way.

  “I’m fine over flat surfaces, and these floors are all marble, if I’m not mistaken, so I’m good to go if you’ll lead the way.”

  Jesse took her at her word and went ahead into the kitchen, where she put the kettle on to boil, found a teapot big enough for two, and pulled down the tin containing a variety of teabags. “Do you have a preference?”

  “What do you have?”

  “Earl Grey, green or black. A white tea with peach tones, a black with orange spice, a rum vanilla—that one’s sort of an acquired taste.” Jesse pulled out new teas as she found them. “Jasmine. Oolong.”

  “Do you like the white?” Cindilee asked before the list got unmanageable.

  “It’s nice. And high in antioxidants.”

  “Can’t go wrong there,” the other woman said, making her choice. “And you, my dear, sound like someone who runs a tea room.”

  Jesse laughed. Waxing poetic over things that a lot of people could care less about was a failing of hers. She wasn’t sure if she’d been born in the wrong time, the wrong country, or just the wrong society. “I used to embarrass myself,” she confessed, “but I’m learning to live with it.”

  “Well.” Cindilee patted the arms of her wheelchair for emphasis. “You’ll never hear me criticize someone for being just a little different.”

  The kettle started whistling. Jesse prepped the teapot and tray, then went over to open the French doors that led onto the terrace. “Can you handle this?”

  In answer, the wheelchair and passenger scooted quickly over the threshold and into the softening sunshine of the late afternoon. Jesse followed behind with the tea service and sliced banana bread from the Gilded Lily.

  Once outside, they sat in companionable silence, feasting on the delicate white tea and banana bread, soaking in the autumn warmth and tranquility until Jesse’s restless curiosity couldn’t take it any longer. “So, how long have you known Bliss?”

  Cindilee tilted her head to the side and smiled, apparently more amused than offended by Jesse’s lack of subtlety. “Since Bill and I got married. Sixteen years.”

  “That’s a long time. Were you all friends, or was it just a business relationship?” The scene between Bill and Bliss was hard to forget, and Jesse had a feeling there were things here she needed to understand.

  Toying with the rim of her tea cup, Cindilee seemed to think about the question, then slowly answered. “Bill and Harry were friends from high school. I never particularly liked Harry myself, but Bliss was another matter. I can’t imagine anyone not liking Bliss.”

  Then she lifted her gaze to Jesse and gave her a half smile. “But what you’re really wondering about is the business breakup, aren’t you? And maybe about my comment on Bliss and her grief?”

  Jesse grimaced and felt a blush steal over her. “I’m sorry,” she apologized, without any intention of stopping her inquiry. “That’s really rude of me, I know. I’m afraid that my curiosity is one of my worst traits. Everyone mentions it.” She smiled then, recovering from her embarrassment. “It was very polite of you to bring the subjects up without making me ask.”

  Cindilee laughed. “Well, you have an advantage. I love your food, and I find you entertaining.” She held up the last piece of banana bread and took a bite, then settled back in her wheelchair, looking comfortable and relaxed. “So, what else did you want to know?”

  A little surprised, but eager to press on, Jesse continued, “Was Harry always the complete jerk he seemed like at the end? And, was Bliss really unhappy, because she’s always seemed so…” She hesitated, searching for the right word.

  “Unremittingly cheerful?” Cindilee offered.

  Not bothering to hide her grin, Jesse nodded, and her guest took a deep breath, then plunged ahead. “Well, I know Bliss has always believed their marriage was a fairytale love match that had somehow just gone off the rails. But Bill’s told me some things that sounded like Harry was a conniving s.o.b. from the beginning.”

  “Things like what?” Jesse found herself leaning into the story, her curiosity melding with the empathy she felt for Bliss. “Other women?”

  “Oh, heavens, no.” Cindilee waved the idea away with her hand. “Nothing so simple. Harry was faithful for at least the first eight years. He was a model husband as long as Malcolm Windsor was alive to see it.”

  “Excuse me?”

  Cindilee leaned closer and dropped her voice. “That’s the conniving part. Harry was a sophomore and Bill was a senior on the same high school football team.” She looked back over her shoulder to make sure no one else was around, then continued, barely above a whisper. “So, one day after practice, Harry brags to Bill that he has a plan to marry Bliss Windsor and get her uncle Malcolm to set him up in business.”

  “Why would he tell Bill that?” Jesse asked, incredulous. “A
nd how old was he, anyway? Fifteen? Sixteen?”

  “Sixteen, maybe. No older than that. But he was already dating Bliss.” Cindilee relaxed into her wheelchair again and took another drink of tea before she went on. “And Bill was a part of his plan. Bill had a head for math, and Harry didn’t. So Harry offered him a partnership in this business after Bill graduated from college. All Bill had to do was take care of all the stuff Harry didn’t want to be bothered with. Like getting a degree or doing real work that might require thinking.”

  “You’ve got to be kidding. As a sophomore, he was planning this?” Jesse asked, still having trouble believing any of it.

  “By sixteen, he had it all worked out and in motion.” Cindilee rolled her eyes in disgust. “God knows when he actually started planning it.”

  “So, did it work?”

  “Oh, yeah. Like a charm. You weren’t around here then, were you?”

  “No,” Jesse said with a shake of her head. Those were the years when she had gone off to prove herself an independent, modern woman. And she had done it. She had been successful and sophisticated and happy, right up until she wasn’t anymore. Right up until she realized she didn’t want to grow old running away from who she was. And she had come home.

  Cindilee poured herself another cup of tea, added sugar and stirred slowly until it dissolved. Then she took a long drink and continued her story. “After Bliss and Harry married, Malcolm made Harry pay his dues before he handed him the keys to the kingdom. He put him to work on an oil lease, then selling cars for someone else before he finally gave him a dealership of his own when Harry turned twenty-four. Meanwhile, Bill had spent his summers working in the office of another dealership. After he graduated, he went to work there full time.”

  “And Harry made Bill his partner, like he promised?”

  “Oh, yeah, for what it was worth. They were best buddies, and we were a foursome. Then when Malcolm died, Harry was set free, and his true colors came out. No more Mr. Nice Guy, no more faithful husband. He dissolved the partnership and bought Bill off with a used car dealership on the other side of town. As for Bliss, I honestly don’t know how she survived it.”

  “Just overnight like that?” Jesse asked, incredulous. It sounded like a movie set in the fifties, where some men had no limits, and most women had no rights.

  Cindilee shrugged. “Pretty much. At thirty, Bill was starting over again after losing his business and his best friend without any warning or explanation. Maybe for Bliss it was slower. Maybe she didn’t notice everything that was going on at first. I honestly don’t know. By the time it got really bad, we were only seeing her at church on Sunday.”

  “Dear heavens.” Jesse felt stunned by all she had heard. “Okay, I can certainly see where you might think he was always a conniving manipulator and just hid it while he needed to.”

  “Sorry.” Cindilee seemed subdued. “It’s not a pretty story. Maybe I shouldn’t have said anything. After all, he’s dead now, and none of it seems so important after so many years have gone by.”

  “Oh, no,” Jesse insisted. “It needed to be said. I just don’t know how Bliss managed to stay so nice married to someone like that. Living with that every day.”

  “Well, maybe it’s a credit to her upbringing,” a disembodied voice said from inside the kitchen seconds before Vivian stepped into the doorway. “I hope we can agree to keep that little story between just us girls.”

  She glanced behind her and lowered her voice as she continued toward them. “And we might want to change the subject now, because Bill and Bliss are right behind me.”

  Chapter Eight

  Joe Tyler walked into the medical examiner’s autopsy room to the sound of a college marching band.

  “Good timing, Joe,” Arnie sang out cheerfully. “It’s halftime.”

  “Who’s winning?”

  “Tight game. We’re down by seven, but we’ll come back out swinging in the second half. I think I’ve got news here.” He swept his hands, palms up, scalpel aloft, over the body on the table.

  Joe glanced at the deceased, then looked away again. The examination had proceeded to internal organs, and as much as he liked to consider himself a tough guy, there was a reason he hadn’t become a doctor. Filleted human was not something he was ever going to get used to.

  “There’s a little mark over here.” The doctor pointed to the side of Harold Kerr’s neck. “Looks like a puncture wound, most likely an injection site. No bruising, very neat. Could be a bee sting…” He shrugged and continued, “could be a small needle. I’ll know more in a little bit. Meantime, there’s water in the lungs. Composition matches the Kerr’s pool, so he was still alive when he went in. At the moment, the actual cause of death appears to be drowning.”

  “Natural?” Joe asked, not really believing it. Everything he had heard up until now made that unlikely.

  “Well, now…” Arnie drew out his words as the marching band left the field. “If it wasn’t for that little puncture on his neck, I would say it might be leaning that way. But his blood tox shows a couple of things that haven’t been identified yet, none of which belong to a bee sting.”

  “So you think somebody could have drugged him, shoved him in the pool, and let him drown.” Even without saying the word murder, Joe felt a chill crawl up his back. What he had just described could easily have been done by a woman, well maybe not easily, not if Kerr had struggled. But it was possible. “How about alcohol?”

  “Some. Not a lot. And it was from earlier in the night.”

  “So no alcohol involved in the death?”

  “Probably not.” Arnie’s gaze was fixed on the nearby flat screen while the red-and-white uniformed Sooners came running back out onto the field, pumped for the second half.

  Joe snapped his fingers. “Hey, over here.”

  Arnie pulled himself away from his weekend passion and grinned. “So far he appears to have been in pretty good health. Haven’t gotten to the brain yet, so we could still have a stroke or aneurism, maybe even something congenital. But don’t hold your breath.”

  “Anything else?”

  The other man shrugged again, glanced at the screen, then pulled his attention back. “No bumps or bruises I can find. No scrapes or scratches. Whatever happened, it appears to have been peaceful.”

  Joe took a deep breath and let it out in a sigh, while he looked everywhere but at the body on the table or the TV screen he was trying hard to pretend wasn’t there. “Probably didn’t just get high and go for a swim. You don’t usually inject yourself in the neck, do you?”

  Arnie shook his head. “Naw. That’d be like shooting yourself in the back of the head. Way too much trouble, bordering on damned near impossible.”

  “I guess I’d better get serious about investigating this as a murder then,” Joe said grudgingly. “Just in case.”

  “Looks that way,” Arnie agreed. “I’ll let you know as soon as I get something definitive, one way or the other.”

  “Don’t suppose you could rule out Bliss Kerr for me?”

  Arnie rolled his eyes. “Thank goodness that’s not part of my job.”

  “Maybe the nude lady in the picture did it.”

  “Oh, yeah.” Arnie whirled and started toward a desk across the room, then stopped and held up his gloved, blood-smeared hands. “It’s there.” He pointed toward the desk. “Have you seen it yet?”

  “Haven’t gone by the office. I stopped here first.” Joe was already moving toward what looked like a picture on the top of the desk. “This it?”

  “That’s a copy of the original. Marla dropped it off earlier this afternoon. Asked me to give it a look when I had the chance, ‘cause the woman looked familiar and nobody could place her.”

  Joe picked up at the picture. It took only a moment’s study to feel the connection the others seemed to be experiencing. He tried to imagine the face a little less blurred and a lot more clothed. It didn’t help. The nudity was part of what seemed familiar.

&nbs
p; “You recognize her?” he asked Arnie, still frowning at the picture.

  “Yep.”

  Joe raised an eyebrow and glanced toward the other man. “She dead now?”

  “Yep.”

  Looking back to the photo, Joe closed his eyes and held the girl’s face in his mind. She floated closer, growing clearer. A suicide. He remembered it slowly, like a scene playing out in his mind. Nude. On the floor of her apartment. A neighbor called it in after the girl hadn’t been seen for several days.

  She had been young and pretty, with no job and no family nearby. And no one to miss her, apparently, but a curious neighbor.

  “I can’t remember her name,” Joe said.

  “Ginny.”

  “Spurber,” Joe supplied, remembering it now. She had been ruled a probable suicide, because the drug in her system was something she could have easily taken herself. And there didn’t seem to be any reason for anyone else to want her dead.

  Now here she was again—a nude dead girl in bed with a nude dead guy. “There any needle marks on her?”

  Arnie shook his head. “She was pills and alcohol.”

  “And no money for the rent that was due.” Bits and pieces were still coming back to Joe. He remembered the sadness, mostly, that somebody so young could disappear from life with so little left behind to remember her by. It was her apparent loneliness that had made her stand out during the investigation. She was a one-time party girl who had dropped out of college and drawn in on herself until she had become almost invisible. And no one who knew her could tell them why.

  “Kind of a big coincidence, huh?” Arnie said from halfway across the room.

  “You believe in coincidence, Arnie?” Joe still studied the photo. He remembered enough about the scene to be pretty certain that the bedroom in the picture was the one in Ginny Spurber’s apartment.

  “Oh, they happen. But not a lot,” the other man answered slowly. “And hardly ever between two dead people. When death’s involved, I always tend to think it’s something more than coincidence.”

  Joe thumped the picture with his finger. “This is her apartment.”