A Misty Morning Murder (Myrtle Grove Garden Club Mystery Book 4)

by Loulou Harrington

  “I didn’t understand when Misty first got here,” Sophia said, clearly regretful. “I thought she was being melodramatic. Now I wonder why she didn’t come sooner.”

  “I only hope we can help her,” Jesse said. “I can’t just hand her over to him and send her back into that mess.” Her arm still encircling her mother, Jesse turned them both toward the French doors leading inside. “We’d better get some sleep. Tomorrow will come early.”

  “It should be an interesting day at the least,” Sophia said, leaning into her daughter for a hug.

  “Isn’t that an old Chinese curse? ‘May you live in interesting times’?”

  Sophia laughed and stepped back. “Oh, hush now. I can tell you’ve been hanging out with Vivian. Go get some sleep, and try to look on the bright side of things when you wake up.”

  “Yes, ma’am.”

  Grinning, Jesse slipped inside her quiet, dark apartment thinking that tomorrow would be a better day. Ronnie would show up, probably at the worst possible time, but with a new attitude, having thought things over on the flight, or drive, or whatever. He and Misty would have a good talk and reach an understanding they were both happy with. Maybe he would even postpone his marriage until she was out of high school.

  And then pigs would fly around the house, and a rainbow would dump a pot of gold on the sidewalk, and Cynthia would become a nice person.

  Chapter Six

  The jangle of her phone pulled Jesse from a dream of being chased through the darkness, her heartbeat pounding in her ears as she ran. Still wrapped in the shadows of the nightmare, she fumbled for the phone and pushed the button to answer it.

  “Hello?” she croaked with a voice that didn’t want to work.

  “Are you alone?”

  The caller was a man who sounded familiar and fit well with the murky images that hovered just out of sight.

  “What? What time is it? Who is this?”

  Distant lightning flashed, illuminating the room. She saw the kitchen sink under the window, the pine harvest table that served for dining and work, and the dainty, painted wood coffee table where her phone had been. She knew then she had fallen asleep on her sofa.

  “Ronnie,” he whispered. “Are you alone? I need to talk to you.”

  Ah, yes, Misty. The previous night was coming back to her. Misty was in Jesse’s bed, and Jesse herself was sleeping on the sofa. And Ronnie was on his way to Myrtle Grove.

  “Hold on. Let me move to another room.” Jesse rose from the sofa, pulled a blanket loose from the covers and tiptoed barefoot from the apartment and out to the veranda.

  Wrapping the blanket around her, she dropped into an oversized wicker rocker and drew her feet up onto the seat under the protection of the blanket. Wind whipped through the trees, and the temperature was dropping. She could smell rain in the air, but she was cozy under her blanket.

  “Okay, I’m alone now. What did you need?”

  “Is Misty okay?”

  He sounded as tired as Jesse felt, and she realized he wasn’t nearly as impervious as he liked to pretend. A vulnerable chink in Ronnie Bennett’s armor? Her heart softened a bit at the thought.

  “Yeah, she’s fine. Well, not exactly fine. She’s strung out, and on edge, and worried about what’s going to happen now, but other than that, she’s fine.”

  “Listen, Jesse, I’m on my way there. I really am. But this isn’t as simple as it seems.”

  “You’re sounding a little like a secret agent on the run there, Ronnie. You haven’t gone and joined the CIA on me, have you?”

  He laughed, still sounding more tired than amused. “Glad to see you haven’t lost that oddball sense of humor, Jesse. Have you still got that paperwork giving you custodial rights to Misty in an emergency?”

  Jesse felt a brief jerk of whiplash from the rapid subject change. “Yes,” she said slowly. “But it gives me authority in Texas, and I’m in Oklahoma.”

  “But Misty’s from Texas, and I’m from Texas. And she’ll be eighteen soon and then it won’t matter anymore. I’m glad you kept that, Jesse. I was pretty sure you would. If anything happens to me, my mom’s the one who gets custody of Misty, at least for the next two months.”

  “This is a weird conversation, Ronnie, and it’s making me a little nervous. You’re not sick, are you?”

  He laughed again, still not sounding amused. “Not that I know of, but you never can tell. This is uncharted territory for me, Jesse. It’s been eleven years since Angela died, and I’m two months away from marrying someone I’m not even sure I really know. My daughter’s run away to somebody I have no right to expect friendship from, but I’m asking you, Jesse, to take care of her for me. Okay? Until I get there to take care of her myself, will you take care of Misty for me? Please.”

  Jesse’s heart was pounding again, and those shadows from her dream seemed very real. She pulled the blanket closer. “Is Misty in some kind of danger, Ronnie? You sound like there’s something you’re not telling me.”

  “It’s the witching hour, I guess. I’m tired, and I’ve got miles to go before I sleep. I shouldn’t have called you, but I need to hear you say yes.”

  “Yes, then. Of course. I love Misty like she was my own. Of course, I’ll take care of her. But I need to hear you say that you’re all right, and that you’re going to be here tomorrow to get her. She’s counting on you, Ronnie.”

  “Tell her I love her, Jesse. Tell her I’ll cancel the wedding if she wants. I just want her to be happy. And, uh, don’t tell her I said so, but I think her instincts about Cynthia may have been right. Anyway, sorry to get you up in the middle of the night, but I really appreciate you listening to me.”

  “I’m not used to all this niceness from you, Ronnie. I’m seriously starting to worry.”

  “Well, don’t. I’ve got everything under control. I’ll see you tomorrow.”

  With that, he hung up, leaving Jesse to feel that she had just talked to the Ronnie she used to know so many years ago. His cockiness was gone, and he sounded off balance and vulnerable, like the man he had been just after his wife died.

  Over the years he had healed and become someone Jesse didn’t like nearly as well. But something must have happened recently to shake him up again, something much larger than Misty’s running away. Something that seemed to have him scared. And the thought of that scared Jesse.

  When Jesse jerked awake again, it was to a crack of lightning, a blast of cold wind, and a stabbing ache up the side of her neck. As she reached toward the pain, the jingle of a phone vibrated against her palm. Startled, she stopped with her hand halfway to her neck and squinted down at the object clutched in her hand.

  Blinking against the fog of sleep that clung to her, she looked up and around and realized she still sat in the rocker on the veranda. Her blanket drooped off her shoulders. The other end of it wrapped in a tangle around her legs that were bent at the knees and tucked half under her with her feet flattened against the tightly woven arm of the rocker.

  Thunder rumbled and rolled overhead; jagged rivulets of lightning pierced the night sky; and the phone rang again, lighting up the darkness insistently. Still groggy, Jesse slid her thumb across it to answer. The pain in her stiff neck jabbed at her as she held the phone to her ear.

  “Hello?”

  “Jesse!”

  The voice was echoed and hollow sounding like it was coming from a distance.

  “Hello?” she said again, almost yelling. “Who is this? Are you on speaker?” She hated conversations on speaker. People kept walking away, thinking you could hear them, and all you could really hear was a sound like someone gargling in the background.

  “Jes—“

  The word was slightly clearer but only part of a sound. That piece of a word, though, reminded her a lot of Ronnie’s voice. Then it was cut off by the sound of an impact that was both distant and muffled, sort of a boom and a bang combined. It seemed a lot like the thunder Jesse was hearing roll overhead like barrels across a wood floor,
except for that feeling of impact.

  “Ronnie?” Jesse shouted in the phone. “Is that you?”

  There was a muffled response—more of an oomph than an actual word. Then there was a sliding sound directly in her ear followed by a thunk, some tumbling, bumping and scuffling, and finally a cushioned plop. After that all she could hear were sounds that were even more muffled and far away. Jesse was pretty sure the phone she was listening to had just been thrown down or knocked off of whatever it was sitting on.

  “Ronnie!” she yelled again, not caring that she was outside in the middle of the night and that her voice might carry. Tonight no one would hear anything but the brewing storm.

  Then came the sound of voices on the other end of the phone line. The words were muffled, but the tone seemed angry, frustrated, and maybe a little frightened. Jesse strained to hear what was being said, but the conversation didn’t seem directed toward her. In fact, she felt completely forgotten, like an eavesdropper on a connection that wasn’t completely broken.

  By now, she was up and limping across the porch on legs that were partially asleep and slowly tingling their way back to life as circulation returned. She wanted to run, but there was nowhere to run to, and she’d probably fall on her face if she tried.

  Then another noise, like rain drumming on a roof, caught her attention. She stopped moving and almost held her breath as she waited to hear more. The two different voices, muffled and unclear, came in short bursts, like an argument, then suddenly stopped.

  “Ronnie, is that you?” Jesse called into the phone that seemed welded to her ear. “Answer me!”

  Instead, the voices remained silent as the drumming in the background grew louder and a pinging started. It reminded Jesse of the irritating pinging of a car as it reminded you that you’d left your keys in the ignition or forgotten to turn off your headlights or to buckle your seatbelt.

  The sound of the drumming rain eased, and the pinging, after it started, was all Jesse could hear. Straining to make out the slightest sound, she waited. She waited for Ronnie or whoever it was to come back. She waited until the phone disconnected itself and went silent.

  Overwhelmed by a sense of helplessness, Jesse listened to the turmoil of the rising storm until she suddenly remembered the teenager who was asleep inside, running away from her wicked stepmother to be and a father who was too self-involved to realize how desperately unhappy his daughter was.

  And the rest of the night came rushing back while thunder rumbled and ended with a boom strong enough to rattle the glasses in the cupboard. A fork of lightning slashed across the sky chased by a sharp crack of thunder, while wind whipped the trees into ghostly gray-on-gray shadows dancing against a pitch-black sky.

  It had all been waiting for her when her plane from Seattle had touched down. So much for the peace and quiet of home. Instead, she had an unpredictable family crisis combined with the tumult and upheaval of an Oklahoma spring rain. And Joe. Jesse’s fingertips touched her lips as she remembered meeting Joe Tyler at the airport. Waiting to bring her home, but not before he kissed her. Wow, how had she forgotten that?

  More lightning flashes cut through the darkness, and a rising wind hurled raindrops like pebbles against the side of the house. Thankful there were no tornado sirens at least, Jesse reminded herself to check the weather channel before going back to bed.

  Hurrying back inside before she was drenched, she entered her large, one-room apartment and tiptoed toward the bed that was hidden in the shadows on the front side of the house.

  “Misty?” she whispered, not wanting to wake the girl if she was still sleeping through the earlier phone call and the arriving storm. Jesse stopped beside the bed and squinted into the darkness.

  There were vague lumps and bumps where the white cotton comforter overlay the white cotton sheets. Most of the comforter’s bulk was piled in the bottom corner of the mattress while the sheets were dragged onto the floor at the side of the bed nearest the bathroom.

  There was no imprint of a body amid the heaps of bedding. No elongated lump in the white on white of the twisted fabric that overflowed onto the floor. Jesse circled around to the closed door of the bathroom and knocked lightly.

  “Misty?” When there was no sound from inside, she knocked harder. “Misty, hon, are you in there?”

  Finding the door unlocked, Jesse opened it, flipped on the light switch and stared into the empty bathroom. Then she turned around, lifted the sheets back onto the bed, and examined every corner of the room, finding no sign of anyone but herself.

  “Don’t panic,” she whispered. “No one came in here and kidnapped her.”

  Yet, Ronnie had seemed concerned when he had asked Jesse to watch over her. And that last phone call that could have been anything from a call for help to an accidental butt dial, lingered like a bad dream. Jesse really resented being suddenly worried about a man she’d spent years forgetting she’d ever known.

  A long roll of thunder built and broke overhead, rattling the windows before easing away into the distance. Almost immediately, lightning plunged from the sky, illuminating the room and striking the ground in a crack that seemed to split the earth in two. The bathroom light flickered, dimmed, and flared as Jesse noticed a chair across the bedroom with a backpack she didn’t recognize. The pack was in the same pink as the stripe in Misty’s hair, and Jesse let out a breath of relief. The trip-hammer of her heartbeat slowed to a more reasonable speed that was still way too fast.

  Then it sped up again when a sudden fury of wind-whipped rain hurled itself against the side of the house. A loud boom from just outside was followed by a sizzle, a buzz, and a flash, and the house plunged into darkness.

  “There goes a transformer. Maybe.”

  Feeling sorry for anyone caught outside, Jesse took another deep breath and wound her way through the room’s familiar darkness to the galley kitchen along the apartment’s rear wall. From the kitchen drawer nearest the hall doorway, she grabbed a flashlight. Then, in one last act before heading downstairs to find Misty, Jesse punched the redial on her phone and listened to the ringing that went to the voice mail of Ronald Bennett.

  “Ronnie, it’s me, Jesse. Call me back when you get this. I’m hoping you didn’t mean to dial me that last time. And I really hope everything’s all right.” Inside her head, she still heard those last, indecipherable voices, and her stomach clenched with dread. “If you’re seriously reaching out to me for help in the middle of the night, we’re both in trouble.” She tried to laugh, but it sounded hollow. “So call me, okay?”

  She left her apartment and started across the unlit landing, barefoot and wearing only the oversized tee shirt she slept in. Pausing to open the French door to the veranda, Jesse swung her flashlight in an arc from one end to the other. It was still empty, and she was glad to see the rain had eased a bit, and the wind was no longer whipping the tree limbs in circles.

  “Misty’s downstairs in the kitchen getting a glass of water,” Jesse reassured herself as she pulled the door closed again. “Calm down or you’re going to scare her to death.”

  Careful to hold onto the banister, she followed the beam of the flashlight down the staircase. In the foyer, she paused to test the front door, which opened with a twist of the knob. Stepping outside, she inspected the wraparound porch where wicker chairs and porch swings invited visitors to gather.

  The porch was dark, wet and empty, and Jesse was afraid no one had remembered to lock the front door in the confusion of the evening before. But the streetlights were burning, so maybe the electric was back on. Inside again, she swept the foyer with the flashlight and saw that the double doors to both businesses were closed, as was the door at the back of the entry hall which led to the butler’s pantry and then to the kitchen.

  Entering through the butler’s pantry, Jesse was certain that she would find Misty seated at a dining room table, having a snack. A faint light shone into the pantry from the kitchen, lifting her hopes higher. Confident she would find Mi
sty at the other end of the light, Jesse switched off her flashlight and felt the tension in her shoulders relax while her steps quickened.

  Bursting into the kitchen, she came to a sudden halt and knew something was wrong. Silhouetted against the light of the open refrigerator, Misty stood frozen, her eyes wide and her hand pressed to the base of her throat.

  A gallon jug of milk lay on its side at her feet. White puddles of milk were splattered across the floor, mixed with shards from the glass she must have dropped with the gallon of milk. But it was the mewling sound coming from Misty that worried Jesse the most. She reached out and took another step into the room. “Sweetheart, what…”

  It was then that Jesse saw the body on the floor under the open door of the dishwasher. Hidden in the darkest corner of the room, it would have been invisible without the pale light from the refrigerator. As it was, all she could see were bare legs and unflattering dress shoes with chunky heels, something a stewardess might wear on a long flight. Or an attractive attorney might combine with horn-rimmed glasses to make sure no one in the courtroom found her sexy.

  Misty’s whimper ratcheted up a notch to a high-pitched whine, dragging Jesse another step into the room before she remembered she hadn’t bothered with shoes before running downstairs. She looked down and saw that below Misty’s knee-length shirt-style nightgown, her feet were also bare.

  “Don’t move, hon,” Jesse cautioned.

  Misty blinked and pulled her frozen stare away from the body hidden under the dishwasher. In short, jerky motions her head swiveled toward Jesse until their eyes made contact. The girl dragged in a deep, shaky breath and let it out in a sob. Her finger pointed to the body, and her sob became a wail.

  “Misty,” Jesse said, raising her voice above the frightened crying. “Listen to me, hon. Don’t move. There’s glass all over the floor, and you’re barefooted. I…”

  The sound of a siren broke through Jesse’s struggle to stay calm. It was a stormy night, and her first thought was of a fire, or an ambulance, or a car accident. Sirens weren’t common in the little town of Myrtle Grove, and their sound was always frightening because it meant that something bad might have happened to someone you knew. And that reminded Jesse that she should probably call the police.