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

by Loulou Harrington

  Ten minutes later, Sophia double parked in a second lane of cars waiting outside the terminal for arriving flights. Jesse jumped out and ran inside to where a milling group of weary travelers watched bags appear at the top of a conveyer and slide down a short ramp onto a circling metal band. She scanned the group and quickly found the sagging shoulders and bowed gray head of Margaret Bennett, Misty’s Nana Peg.

  The posture was so unlike the woman Jesse knew that she felt a physical pain at the sight, recognizing that this was how Misty must feel as well. One death, one senseless, mystifying death had brought so many to their knees with grief.

  Had Ronnie ever known how much he was loved by the women he left behind? Or was he so focused on acquiring money, power, and success that he never stopped to think about the truly important things in his life?

  Weaving her way through the crowd, Jesse hurried toward Peg, wanting to rescue her. After her own mother and Vivian Windsor, this kind and gracious woman had been the next closest thing to a mother figure than Jesse had known. In that moment, Peg looked up and her face lit with relief as the weight seemed to lift from her shoulders. Jesse swept the older woman into her arms and gave her a long hug.

  “Oh, Jesse. Oh, dear, it’s so good to see you,” Peg murmured into the crook of Jesse’s neck. Shorter by several inches, the older woman seemed to melt into the embrace. “This has been such a terrible day.”

  “If you’ll tell me what your bags look like, I’ll take you to the car and come back for them.”

  “Bag,” Peg corrected. “Just one. I’m hoping I’m not here that long. And it’s down already. I just missed it the first time around. It’s a tartan plaid.”

  Jesse saw a medium-sized bag in a mainly red-and-black plaid rounding the end of the belt. Gently releasing her embrace, she moved next to the luggage and scooped up the bag. Peg followed her, and the two of them worked their way out of the crowd that still hovered around the circling bags.

  Once they were in the car and headed back to the inn, Jesse left her mother and Peg to talk while she used the drive and her time alone in the backseat to see what she could learn from Ronnie’s tablet. Luckily, the first thing she learned was that he should have been more creative with his passwords.

  When the two of them were engaged, he had used a combination of his name and Jesse’s. Her second try at a combination of his name and Cynthia’s had unlocked the tablet. Blessing his lack of creativity, Jesse started her search with his browsing history and there, to her great joy, she found a string of queries regarding the Stanton Gallery, art trends in America, Oscar Champion, Cynthia Stanton, the artwork of Cynthia Stanton, and lastly the art of Thomas Stanton.

  The art of Thomas Stanton? She remembered that SueAnn had found a reference to him as an underground artist in Little Rock, so apparently not all of his art had been usurped by his ex-wife. Or current wife, since their divorce seemed to have been in a long-term holding pattern.

  The browser links to Stanton didn’t led to Little Rock or to Austin, however. They were to boutique art galleries in Chicago, Taos, and Los Angeles where the emerging and innovative work of Thomas Stanton was presented in a series of invitation-only showings by none other than Oscar Champion of the pop-up Champion Gallery of Fine Art. The Stanton art work was not currently for sale, but those interested should contact Oscar Champion at a website that was also not the Stanton Gallery.

  Oscar Champion and Thomas Stanton? And suddenly Oscar wanted to buy back the percentage of the Stanton Gallery he had sold to Ronnie? What the heck?

  Was anything Tommy Stanton had confessed even remotely true? He was obviously delivering more art work to Oscar Champion during their meeting at a remote roadside diner. And if Shirley was right, he had given Cynthia her freedom and gotten his own at the same time.

  Had Cynthia suddenly found herself irrelevant to the men in her life? Could yesterday have been the day she realized they had all three cut her loose and moved on without her? And what did any of that have to do with Ronnie’s death?

  “Jesse?” Sophia whispered. “Jesse! Does that truck look familiar to you?”

  Jesse closed the tablet and looked up to see that they had pulled into the far end of the inn’s parking lot, three slots beyond the front door in the building. “What truck?”

  “That one.” Still whispering, Sophia pointed to a green Ford pickup with dual tires on the back. It was parked at the far end of the parking lot facing the highway.

  “Yeah. It was parked across the street from the tearoom this afternoon. It was still there after the police gave Tommy Stanton a lift down to the station.”

  “And he’s supposed to be staying here, right?” Sophia asked. “I’m thinking that Mr. Stanton might be through answering the sheriff’s questions.”

  Jesse leaned forward and put her hand on Margaret Bennett’s shoulder. “Peg, would you be offended at the idea of sitting here in the car with Mom while I go inside and talk to a man I barely know?”

  “Excuse me,” Sophia said firmly, “but Mom is not staying in the car like a good little girl.”

  “You two run along.” Peg dismissed them with a wave of her hand. “If I get bored, I’ll just take a nap. Grief is very draining, and I’d like to be a little more chipper when I see Misty.”

  “Thanks, Peg. I’ll just be a minute, I promise. And, Mom, I’d really feel a lot better if you stayed here.” Jesse tried not to sound as concerned as she felt. She had no idea how Tommy Stanton would react if he felt cornered, and dragging her mother into a dangerous standoff was the last thing she wanted to do.

  “You’re stuck in the back seat until I get out,” Sophia reminded her out in the sweet voice she used to deliver victory blows.

  With her point made, Sophia exited the car and graciously held open the heavy door while Jesse climbed out of the backseat, never a graceful act in the best conditions, and downright awkward with the convertible’s top up.

  “He may not like being surprised,” Jesse warned once she was upright again. “I’d be happier if…”

  “I don’t think I’ll need my tire iron,” Sophia interrupted. She reached into the floorboard of the back seat and brought out a full-sized, sturdy umbrella with a three-inch metal point on the end. The umbrella itself was bright blue with a ruffle around the bottom edge. Brandishing her elegant weapon, she closed the car door and started toward the lobby. “Let’s go see what we can find out.”

  When they entered the lobby, it was empty. Jesse pressed a finger to her lips and pointed toward the landing at the top of the staircase. Sophia nodded and readjusted her grip on her umbrella. She stayed behind Jesse as they crossed the lobby on tiptoe and crept up the stairs.

  At the top of the landing, Jesse paused to study the closed doors to the left of her while Sophia squeezed past her, walked to the closed door straight ahead and turned the handle. When the door swung open, she peeked inside, then pulled it closed again, turned to Jesse and whispered, “Empty.”

  Deciding that her mother’s approach was as good as any, Jesse did the same with the door she had been studying. It, too, opened to reveal a pristine, cozy room with windows all around, a king-sized bed and a small sitting area. The dresser top and tables were bare, the bed was made, the coffee maker untouched, no luggage in sight, and it was entirely too tidy to be occupied by anyone other than Martha Stewart, who would surely have flowers adorning at least one surface by now.

  “Oh, how nice,” Sophia whispered over Jesse’s shoulder. “This one’s bigger. Maybe it’s the honeymoon suite.”

  “Or the presidential suite for when a convention’s in town.” Jesse backed out of the room and closed the door behind them.

  “But there’s no town here, dear.”

  “Sarcasm, Mom.”

  “Of course,” Sophia murmured. “What was I thinking?”

  Almost immediately, the abbreviated landing became a hallway with two more doors on either side along its length and another at the far end. The door at the end of the
hall appeared to be ajar and a faint glow of light shone around its edge.

  Jesse made eye contact with her mother, touched a finger to her lips and pointed to the door. Sophia looked toward the end of the hallway and nodded. At the nearest set of doors, Jesse stopped, pointed to her eyes, then to the doorway next to Sophia. Then Jesse turned and looked into the bedroom closest to her.

  It contained a queen-sized bed, neatly made in a blue-and-white gingham check, nicely furnished and clearly unoccupied. When she closed her door and turned back, Sophia was coming out of the room across the hall, wide-eyed. She pushed the door further open and nodded her head toward the inside.

  Jesse peeked around her and saw a rumpled bed, luggage open on a chair and toiletries spread across the dresser’s top. Sophia leaned closer and whispered, “Nobody’s inside. But there’s a wallet and keys by the bed.”

  Jesse raised her eyebrows in a silent question, certain her mother had peeked inside the wallet.

  Sophia sighed, leaned closer and whispered, “Stanton.”

  Pursing her lips in a kiss aimed at her mother, Jesse pulled the door closed as carefully as if the room were booby-trapped, and they tiptoed on. The next two rooms were clearly unrented, which left the room at the end of the hall as the one the clerk had said Ronnie occupied.

  Police tape or no police tape, Jesse very much doubted a maid would be in there cleaning it. Which left the desk clerk or Tommy Stanton as the person inside. If there were a person inside.

  “Do you think there’s somebody in there?” Sophia whispered from just behind Jesse’s ear.

  Jesse turned and pointed to herself and then the door. Then she pointed to Sophia and firmly stabbed her finger toward the floor. Sophia lifted her umbrella and shook it. Jesse scowled, clinched her jaw, and extended a stiff arm ending in a pointed finger toward the floor.

  Sophia rolled her eyes skyward, looking disgusted but resigned. Jesse turned back toward the door and prepared herself to enter. The little voice inside her head was already laying odds on how long it would be before her mother followed her inside. The little voice didn’t seem to think it would be very long.

  Nudging the door open wider, Jesse confirmed that the overhead light inside the room was indeed turned on. She could hear a muted scuffling sound similar to what a large rat might have made. Easing into the opening, she peered around the edge of the door. No one was in sight, but a suitcase lay open on the luggage rack. It was part of an expensive set Jesse had bought Ronnie as a present for the wedding that never happened.

  The ache in her chest was swift and surprisingly intense considering how easily she had ended their engagement. Then she remembered his body, alone and abandoned face down in a ditch, and his daughter entering adulthood without a father to walk her down the aisle or to celebrate the birth of her first child, or even to see her graduate from high school.

  Death was a swift, brutal, and irrevocable beast. But for those left behind, the aftermath seemed to go on forever.

  It was in that moment that Tommy Stanton emerged from the bathroom—that moment when Jesse’s grief became anger and then blossomed into fury—that moment when she really, really wanted someone to punish for the sadness that would creep into Misty’s heart every day for the rest of her life whenever she thought of her father.

  Chapter Twenty-Three

  A gasp signaled when Stanton first saw Jesse standing half in and half out of the room.

  “What the hell are you doing here?” he demanded.

  Jesse stepped the rest of the way into the room. “I could ask you the same thing.” Having made sure that his hands were empty, she looked around the room. No police tape anywhere. Maybe they had come back. Maybe the desk clerk had been lying.

  Stanton threw his shoulders back and puffed out his chest. The attempt to look bigger somehow made him seem smaller. “How do you know this isn’t my room?”

  “How about if we don’t play games, Tommy? We both know your room is down the hall. And we both know whose room this is. Did you take down the police tape? And when did the sheriff release you?”

  “One lousy piece of yellow tape across the door. Like that means anything. And he had to charge me or let me go. Nothing to charge me with, so he let me go.”

  “What about Cynthia? Did he let her go, too?”

  “Yeah. She’s packing and then…”

  “Why don’t we just drop that piece of fiction?” Jesse interrupted before he could finish. “I know all about your agreement with Oscar Champion. And it looks like everybody, including you, was stabbing Cynthia in the back at the same time. No wonder she was so frantic to get back into Ronnie’s good graces.”

  “She was done with him. Once he sold his percentage back to Champion, she had no more use for Bennett.”

  “How’d you know about that?” Jesse asked. She felt like she’d questioned half the town to discover that tidbit and resented the ease with which others seemed to already know it.

  “Bennett told her. To her face. Told her he didn’t own any part of the gallery anymore and told her he didn’t have any use for her either. Told her he was taking his daughter back home and wasn’t even thinking about marriage again any time soon.”

  “But how did you know about that?” Jesse repeated.

  “She told me.”

  “Was that while you were breaking up with her in the diner across the street? Or while you were arguing with her in the parking lot out front?”

  “Hot damn, lady, do you ever do anything but poke your nose into other people’s business?” Arms akimbo, he planted his fist on his hips and glared at her. “That woman is my wife. Fifteen years and counting. Now that that silliness with Ronnie Bennett’s over with, Cyndi’ll settle down and realize that I’m the one she really wants.”

  “Now that you’re on your way to being a rich and famous artist in your own right? Explain that to me, would you? How did you become the hot new thing, anyway?”

  For the first time Jesse could see that she had truly touched a nerve in the man she had been poking and prodding. His eyes narrowed and his anger slid from hot to a creepy cold.

  “Long years and a lot of hard work is how it happened,” he answered in a voice as quiet as it was hard. “Cyndi thought she was so smart, pretending to represent me while she sold my work under her own name, giving me a part of what she earned and telling me to be patient. She had no idea I’d been sending my best stuff off to a gallery in California for years.”

  “That was where Oscar Champion saw your work,” Jesse guessed in an intuitive leap. “He tracked you from there. And the two of you saw your chance to leave Cynthia in the dust.”

  “No,” Stanton denied. “Champion did. Not me. I just wanted to show her I wasn’t the fool she thought I was. That I could be somebody on my own. That I could give her everything she ever wanted. If she’d just trust me and stop chasing after someone else like some stupid little Tennessee Cinderella.”

  “And somewhere in all that Ronnie Bennett had to die?” Jesse demanded. “Why? You were getting Cynthia back. Ronnie was out of the picture. Plus you had a real career with Oscar Champion behind you. Meanwhile, he got the majority interest in the gallery and all the fame and fortune the discovery of a major talent would bring. Even Cynthia had you to fall back on. Once she got over her hurt feelings from being dumped by her fiancé, double crossed by her business partner and tricked by the man she thought she was double crossing. That sounds like a win for everybody. So why did Ronnie have to die? And why are you in here pawing through his things?”

  Stanton scowled. “You’re like a damn bloodhound. Anybody ever tell you that?”

  “It’s been mentioned,” Jesse said. “So what are you after?”

  “That’s nobody’s business but mine.”

  She shook her head. “That’s not how it works. Once somebody dies, it becomes everybody’s business.”

  “Make that part bloodhound, part bulldog.”

  “You’re gonna make me blush. So what
are you looking for?” she asked for the third time.

  He ran his fingers through his hair, groaned and gave up. “I finally got mad enough to sign the damned divorce papers Cyndi’s been pushing at me. Just before I signed that agreement with Champion. Then she goes and gives a copy of our divorce papers to Bennett to prove she’s done with me for good.”

  He cursed under his breath and scrubbed his palm across the top of his head in aggravation. “After we made up last night, we tore up the original, but I need that copy she gave him.”

  “You know it’s really none of my business, Tommy,” Jesse offered, “but Cynthia’s not the only woman in the world. And you really might be better off to just let her go. ‘Cause somebody’s already died in all this mess, and I still can’t find one good excuse for anything that’s happened. Not one! The best I can tell, you’re all a bunch of idiots with the shallowest of motivations, and nothing appears to truly make any of you satisfied! If being stupid were a crime, you’ll all be in jail right now!”

  “That’s your opinion.”

  “And it’s a damned good one, too. Did you find what you were looking for?”

  He reached into his back pocket and pulled out a folded handful of papers. They looked like they’d been crumpled and then smoothed out again.

  Jesse took the paperwork out of his hand and shuffled through them. They were badly wrinkled, slightly damp and what looked a coffee stain marred one corner. “What happened?”

  “I found them in the trash. Wadded up.”

  “Under a coffee cup?” Jesse tossed the papers onto a tabletop near the door.

  He nodded and reached to retrieve them again.

  “Don’t touch those. I’m sure the police have already seen them, but everything needs to stay here until the scene is released.”

  “You done with me now?”

  “Have you had a chance to talk to Cynthia today?”

  “No,” he said, confirming that he had been lying earlier. “The police haven’t let anyone near her since they took her into custody.”