A Merry Branson Murder

by Abby L. Vandiver

  “Nonsense,” he said. “Two people breaking into the same house on the same day?” He shook his head. “Highly improbable.”

  “But possible,” I said. I was thinking about my theory that I’d had come up with earlier – followed me, and then Ethan followed her.

  He looked at me. “Was anything missing?”

  “I’m not the one to ask,” I said. “You’d have to get an accounting of belongings, missing or otherwise, from the owners.”

  “The Dallasandros,” he said and pursed his lips. “And when are they due back?”

  “I’m not at liberty say,” I said.

  “Wish you were as good at keeping killers out as you are keeping information in,” he said.

  “How come you don’t know when they’re coming back?” I asked. “You’re a close neighbor. Why wouldn’t they share that information with you?”

  He snorted and smacked his mouth. “They’ve just joined our watch group. They’ve only lived in the house a few months.”

  “Oh,” I said. “They just moved in?”

  He looked at me out of the side of his eyes. “I believe that is what I just said.” He started walking back, moving slowly as he followed the path toward the front of the house. “But if you must know more, they purchased the house from the Gilberts through Humphrey Realty. The Gilberts lived there for fifteen years, and like the Dallasandros were not very friendly.”

  Or, just didn’t want to be bothered with you . . .

  “So what did we find out?” I said doing a high-heel trot to catch up with him.

  “Nothing,” he said.

  “So what do we do now?” I asked.

  “We do nothing. I am going in the house and review my notes,” he said.

  “You think the answer to this is in that notebook?”

  “I’ve got everything I’ve seen, and everything I know about this case in my notebook.”

  “What are you two doing back here?” Clover Carling came bounding out of the Dallasandros’ backyard catching up with us on the path. Clover was wearing another one of her muumuus, and I was right about the rollers, she had a head full of different colored sponge curlers. We stopped did an about face. She stood legs apart, her hands planted on her hips and as we turned, she rolled her neck. “You are trespassing.”

  “Trespassing?” I said. I wondered what she thought she was doing.

  “I could ask you the same question,” Andie said.

  “I belong back here,” she said her voice escalating.

  “No you don’t,” he said. I could see that he was into that child-like back and forth, “Yes-I-do-No-You-don’t’ stuff. But it was crazy to me, I interrupted so he wouldn’t continue.

  “Andie, we should go.”

  “You should have been gone,” Clover said, narrowing her eyes at me. “We don’t need you to keep the neighborhood safe. That’s our job. I’m the President of the Neighborhood Watch Club.”

  I swear you would think she was president of the United States the way she kept spouting out her title.

  “What kind of job is house sitting anyway?” Clover was still rattling on. “I don’t know that such a profession is of any good.”

  “The world is filled with things you don’t know.” Andie smacked his lips. “To be honest a middle schooler’s textbook has things in it I’m sure you’ve never heard of.”

  “And what is that supposed mean?” Clover asked.

  “See,” he said. “You’ve just made my point.”

  I didn’t want to get Clover upset, and Andie was definitely headed in that direction. “I guess neither one of us did our job well,” I said trying to calm the situation. “We’ll just have to do better next time.”

  “We do our job,” she said and flung a hand back toward her house. “Me and Coffey do just fine keeping it safe around her. But this little mouse,” now she flung her hand toward Andie, “won’t keep his cheese out of our business.” She stepped toward Andie and he took a step back.

  I wasn’t sure what her meant mouse and cheese analogy had to do with anything.

  “Clover,” I said. “I think you should leave. Whether you like it or not, I am in charge of this house while the Dallasandros are away.”

  “He’s here.” Clover looked over at Andie.

  “I invited him here.”

  I heard the thunder again and I knew what that meant. Coffey Carling was coming. I looked up to see him stomping around from the front, he had cut through the yard and they were blocking us in.

  “OMG,” I said.

  “I’m calling the police,” Andie said. He came and stood close to me and pulled out his phone.

  I turned from the hip and assessed the situation. The Carlings would be easy to take out, but Andie was an unknown variable. In the heat of the moment, I couldn’t be sure what he’d do. More than likely he’d get in my way.

  I held out a hand to stop Andie from making his phone call, although I don’t think he heeded it. I swiveled back around and said to Clover, “You need to leave. Take your husband with you,” I said and pointed to his shirtless body.

  “And if I don’t,” she said.

  I didn’t answer her. I stepped toward her and this time she backed up. I nodded to let her know I was serious. “You need to leave, now.”

  “We’re leaving,” she said, she marched around me and brushed past Andie’s shoulder sending him into a spin. She grabbed her husband’s arm. “C’mon Coffey.” But he didn’t move.

  “You need my help?” Coffey asked his wife.

  “Why would she need your help at someone else’s place?” I asked. “Help to do what?”

  He looked at Clover and she looked at me. “Good-bye,” she said with attitude and her and Coffey left hand-in-hand, back across the front yard.

  “You okay,” I asked Andie as he stepped from behind me.

  “I’m fine,” he said straightening out his glasses. “Why wouldn’t I be?”

  “I don’t know. I thought maybe you were a little afraid.

  “Nope. Not afraid,” he said and I saw a smile cross his face. “Not with you here.”

  ***

  I could forget about Andie sharing anything he had in that notebook with me. Not that I believed that there was anything of value concerning the case in it. And with Clover and Coffey Carling coming over rattling his nerves, I didn’t think he wanted to do anymore snooping.

  It was okay, because I was thinking I knew more about the murder than he did, anyway. And then I thought, I knew exactly who knew more than me and they carried a notebook too.

  The Branson Police.

  Maybe I could get some information from them.

  I couldn’t stand seeing Swan so sad and whether it would happen or not, I didn’t want her place getting bad press. Swan’s reasoning seemed slanted to me, but she was counting on me. And, of course, I needed to make an effort, after Ava’s call, so that I could keep my job.

  That Miss Dewey of the Harrington House and Pet Sitters was tasking me, like Dedek had, to find out what happened, with the added caveat of “And fix it!” I was stuck investigating a murder and I needed to step up and not rely on other amateur sleuths. I could solve it, I mean, I had done it in Collierville, so why not?

  But just to be clear, I held up my head and straightened my shoulders, Blu James was turning out to be more trouble than she was worth, and she didn’t even know it.

  I hurried and took the dogs on their morning walk, passing that same dump bucket blue, VW, then once back, I checked my phone for directions to the Branson Police Department. I locked the dogs in the house with food and water, got into the car, set my GPS and pulled out from the Dallasandro’s driveway.

  I had a feeling that Andie was watching.

  The police station was located on W. Maddux Street, a thirteen minute drive from where I was house sitting. And according to their website, it housed sixty employees.

  I just needed to talk to one.

  Hopefully, I could find the right one.
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  I arrived at the two-story building, and found I had to circle around the parking lot twice before I found a parking spot.

  “I guess they’re busy,” I said aloud. “Probably because of the high crime rate.”

  After I parked the car, I sat there for a moment. I needed to work out what I was going to say, what I was going to ask, and how I was going to do it without implicating Swan or myself.

  I swear. Before I’d embarked on my Big City trek across the U.S., prolonging the time it took me to get back home to Connors Grove, I couldn’t remember even seeing the inside of a police station. Now it seemed to be one of the stops on my travel itinerary.

  I got out of the car and slammed the door. My mind set on what I needed to find out. I saw green Toyota Corolla circling the lot trying to find a place to park. I hurried along to make it in before they did. I didn’t want to have to wait in line.

  Chapter Eleven

  I was sent to the General Investigations Unit. It was where, I was told by the front desk officer, detectives for violent crimes would be.

  I had been asked questions by so many people the day I found Blu that who was in charge wasn’t clear. When I was involved in the Collierville murder, the detective in charge made sure it was known who he was.

  “Hi,” I said. I walked in the door marked detectives and there were a room full of desks. I spoke to the first person I saw. “I wanted to speak to someone about the Blu James murder on Orchid Tree Lane.”

  I wasn’t sure how else to explain what I wanted.

  “Detective Wade,” the woman said and pointed over to a desk. A guy with dark hair and a black leather jacket talking on the phone was sitting where she pointed. He looked up when he heard her say his name.

  He did look familiar. Although all the police officers and the like were a blur that day. No one had taken charge like the detective had in the Collierville murder.

  He nodded to me, and put up a finger to tell me to wait. So I did. Right in the spot where I stood.

  When he finished his phone conversation, Detective Wade turned and looked at me. “Can I help you,” he asked.

  I wasn’t sure if I should walk over to him, or speak to him from where I stood. I looked at the woman who had directed me to him, and she looked at me askingly.

  I decided to go over to him. I got to his desk and sat in a wooden chair next to it, although he hadn’t ask me to.

  “How may I help you,” he asked. Then he took a second look at me. “Nixie Culpepper, right?”

  “Yes.” I said.

  “Did you stop by to press charges on the uh . . .” He looked at me and blinked several times. I could tell he was trying to remember. “The, uh, Carlings. That’s it.” He smiled and grabbed a form out of the folder. “I can send you to speak to a prosecutor.”

  “No,” I said.

  “No? You don’t want to press charges?” He shook his head. “They attacked, didn’t they? Well,” he said and sized me up. “They tried to. But I heard you handled it quite well. I had left by then.”

  “Yes they tried to, and no I don’t want to press charge against them. For what?” I said. “Nothing was hurt but maybe their pride and not even that for long.” I thought about how they didn’t seem to have any trouble approaching me when Andie and I had been checking out the backyard.

  “So then what can I do for you? Everything okay?”

  “Yes,” I said and nodded. “Everything is okay. I just wanted to find out how things are going on the investigation.”

  “It’s moving along,” he said. “Did you have anything else you wanted to tell me?”

  “No, not really,” I said thinking about Swan and Ethan. Definitely didn’t want to tell him that.

  “Well, I can tell you a couple of things.” He picked up a blue folder and flipped it open.

  “Really,” I said.

  “Yes.” He shuffled through papers in the folder. “We know that she’d had been at or around the Roundabout Campgrounds right before she went to the Dallasandros,” he said. “We were contacted by a cabbie that remembered her.”

  “She was picked up at the campgrounds?” I asked. “Had she been staying there?”

  I knew she hadn’t, but I wanted to know how much he knew.

  He shrugged. “Don’t know. That was just a lucky call. The cab driver remembered picking her up near there then dropping her off both the night before and the afternoon she died.”

  “Both times from the Roundabout?” I asked.

  “He said she was near it. Only on the second trip. He remembered because it was a coincidence that he got her on two trips a day apart. He did take her to the same place thought. It wasn’t exactly the Dallasandro’s address. He said he dropped her off the next street over.” Detective Wade traced his finger across some writing on a paper. “Shasta Place Drive. I’m guessing she cut through and went through the backyard of the one of those houses, into the Dallasandro’s backyard and into their back door.”

  That was a theory that Andie had knocked down because he said that Blu would have had to cut across the adjacent neighbor’s backyard. He didn’t think that could happen. But it was an idea that the police was embracing. And it was the only way I could think of how she could have gone in.

  “So she used the back door-”

  “We think,” he interjected.”

  “You think she used the back door,” I corrected. “I just was wondering had anyone figured out how Miss James got into the house. I mean I was right there in the front yard and I didn’t see her,” I said.

  And apparently neither had the nosey neighbors. Although Andy probably was right, she had picked the lock.

  “Not sure,” he said. “We didn’t see any signs of a break-in. And, it looks like you left once or twice, according to the neighbor,” he said.

  “Once, “I said. “To get something to eat. But I wasn’t gone that long.”

  “The neighborhood has had some problems with break-ins,” he said. “In fact, I’m meeting with their neighborhood watch group in a couple of days to discuss the problem.”

  I wondered was that the same meeting that Swan was being forced to attend. I couldn’t ask though, she didn’t want him to know that she knew me.

  “So,” I said trying to digest what he had said. “Blu James had been at the Dallasandro’s house the day before, too?”

  “Looks that way,” he said.

  “But why?” I asked. “The family was there the night before. Did she know them?”

  “The time we got from the cabbie dropping her off, and from the Mr. Dallasandro on what time they left, it would appear that Miss James would have gotten there after they left. And other than remember possibly seeing her at the Merry Stampede as part of the show, Mr. Dallasandro denied knowing her.”

  “I wonder why.” I mumbled to myself.

  Now at least I knew she hadn’t followed me. She already had been there before I’d gotten into town. But it didn’t clear Ethan. He could have followed the cab she got in, then followed her into the house.

  “Why what?” the detective asked.

  “Why she’d go to that house.”

  “That’s the million dollar question,” he said then hesitated. He looked down at the papers in his folder then up at me. “I don’t know if this has anything to do with her, or this case, but we are having a rash of teenagers going into people’s homes and staying overnight.”

  “Staying overnight?” I asked.

  “Uninvited guests. They find out when people are on vacation and they go to their house. Party. Hangout. Sleepover.”

  My eyes got big. “I’ve never heard of that,” I said. “That’s pretty bold.”

  “Yes, it is.”

  “And this is different from the break-ins?”

  “Yes, the kids don’t seem to take anything, although they make a mess and sometimes break things. It’s different from the break-ins where they’re taking valuable from homeowners.”

  “Okay. But Blu James wasn’t
a teenager,” I said. “Do you think she was involved with the break-ins.”

  “No. She wasn’t a teenager,” he agreed. “But it isn’t limited to them. And I don’t think she broke in to steal anything. That was the second day she’d been there.”

  “So what do think?” I asked.

  “We found, when we started investigating the kids, that some homeless people will do the same thing. Blu James had been charged with trespassing in the past. I found the complaint but haven’t pulled up the court documents to see what happened.” He pointed to a paper. “In the end it looked like charges were dropped and I didn’t want to waste time with that because it seems like it amounted to nothing.”

  “So she was just trespassing?” I asked.

  “She was trespassing. Now we need to determine what the person who killed her was doing there.”

  Chapter Twelve

  I left the police station with a little more information in my head, but nothing that was going to settle my gut. It had been churning ever since the rush of people had bombarded me about solving Blu James’ death. Sitting in the parking lot, I realized that with the more information I gathered, I was starting to feel more interested and invested in solving it myself.

  I got in my car, started it and pulled off. I noticed that same green Toyota I’d seen when I went in was leaving at the same time. Their business must have been in another part of the station because I hadn’t seen anyone else inside while I was there. But I was concentrating too hard on my own mystery to worry about what they were doing.

  I turned out of the parking lot and my mind went back to what I had learned from Detective Wade.

  Blu, it seemed, was camping out at the house I was sitting. She had even arrived before I did. But how did she know that the Dallasandro’s house would be empty? That they would be on vacation. She seemed to even know the time they left. Was she like those teenagers Detective Wade told me about even though she wasn’t one? Breaking in to have a sleepover. Or was she more like the the people who’d been orchestrating break-ins?

  And the biggest part of the puzzle was why someone else had been in the house with her. Did she invite someone else in? Someone who had ended up killing her? And if that wasn’t the case, what was the reason they were there?