Jesse Delacroix: Curse of the Bloodstone Arrow (The Whispering Pines Mystery Series Book 3)

by Constance Barker

  Ginny got a hold of Trigger’s reins and gave me a nod.

  “Faster.”

  Anjolie lurched and tried to flail for a moment, until she realized she wasn’t falling. Then she just looked at me. As our eyes connected, I had an undeniable feeling that I was looking into the soul of a driven but good woman, and not a heartless killer. Maybe I’m not a good judge of people, I thought.

  Ginny quickly got Trigger under control and mounted him. We got a few odd stares from people who were getting off the big airboat ferry that had just arrived from the relatively big town of Stony Point across the river. They had been frozen in time for a while too, and it must have looked a little strange to them to see Anjolie move from mid-air to the back of the palomino, roped and tied. I gave them a smile and a nod, and we just cantered slowly back to the Inn in silence.

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  Chapter Fourteen

  Travis and Kyle had just gotten onto a couple of ATV four-wheelers from the Inn to come after us when we got back. The courtyard and porches were filled with gawkers, and we trotted across the back lawn and around to the side of the Tea Room, where the Sheriff and several deputies were waiting for us.

  Ginny dismounted and handed the Sheriff the reins of the palomino carrying Anjolie.

  “Here you go, Sheriff,” she said with a proud smile. “Us Vandersnoops always get our man – or woman.” She snorted twice and tied Trigger and Misty to the rail as Sheriff Muldoon took Anjolie into custody. She followed them around to the front and into the Inn.

  Travis walked up to me, still sitting on the back of Topaz. He put both fists on his hips and gave me a “WTF?” look. I just shrugged. Cammy and Zach had come over to meet us now too.

  “Will I ever be able to come and visit you, Jess, when you’re not riding off after criminals on horseback or getting into sword fights?” Cammy asked. Travis gave her, and then me, an incredulous look.

  “I don’t want to know,” he said as he reached up for my waist to lift me down.

  “Oh, I can…” I was going to push his hands away and get down by myself when I heard Cammy Jo clear her throat and looked to see her steely stare. She was shaking head.

  I remembered the advice she had given me once: “Let a man be a man. If you kill chivalry, you’ll miss it when it’s gone.” Cammy smiled as I let Travis pick me up and put my arms around his neck when he set me on the ground. We shared a short lip smack and looked into each other’s eyes.

  “You don’t have to worry about me, Trav. I can take care of myself.”

  “I’m finding that out, Jess – but don’t fault me if I still worry about you.” He pulled me close and squeezed – a little too hard – but it was still really good to feel loved.

  “Okay, break it up, you two.” Ginny came tromping down the steps on the side of the porch and took my hand. “The Sheriff wants to debrief us about the chase and capture for his report.” We went inside with Zach, Cammy, and Travis following behind us.

  “Okay – I did it! Is that what you want to hear?”

  We could hear Anjolie through the carved oak doors between the solarium and the lobby.

  I walked up to the double doors with Ginny and Zach, and Cammy Jo and Travis stayed in the middle of the lobby. We all looked at each other with tense anticipation as Zach slowly opened the doors. I caught a glimpse of Antoine and Marguerite sitting on the lobby bench near Gus’s pawnshop, and the boy in black was still lingering by the front door. Cammy was getting an incoming text and looked at her phone.

  “Maybe my contacts in Savannah have some news.”

  “We already know who did it,” Zach said.

  Cammy’s eyebrows raised higher and higher as she read the text. “And I know why!”

  We heard the front door open and close, and the Goth young man left.

  “Cammy, if you have some information you should come in with us.” She gave me a silent look and went out the front door. I gave Travis a tense smile and went into the solarium with Ginny and Zach, where the beautiful murder suspect was being interrogated.

  “Zach,” Kyle said from his seat at the table with his laptop open in front of him, “stand watch outside the doors and make sure nobody disturbs us for a while.”

  Zach nodded and left the room, closing the doors behind him.

  Anjolie was distraught with tears of anguish on her cheeks. She was seated, handcuffed with her arms behind the back of the hard wooden chair in the solarium. Kyle and the Sheriff were sitting across the table from her. She looked at me with a plaintive stare, and I felt compelled to comfort her.

  “Anjolie…” I walked behind her chair and lightly massaged her shoulders. “…this must be very difficult for you.”

  “Difficult?” She was angry, which I thought was somewhat odd, given the circumstance, but bold and in control. “You have no idea. Being accused of murdering a sweet girl who was like a daughter to me…and now the only thing I can do is to confess guilt.”

  Like a daughter? I had no idea…but I guess it made sense if she was involved in beauty pageants. There was some kind of paradox I was feeling now too. Why would she say she was “being accused” and then also say she was guilty?

  She relaxed a little, seeming to approve of my massaging fingers, and I stroked her hair back by her temple. I was sensing a great conflict going on within her, and as soon as my fingers touched her temple I was able to see clearly into her muddy thoughts. Her mindscape was littered with jagged fragments of thoughts and feelings, and I tried to piece them all together as the interrogation continued.

  “Look, ma’am,” Sheriff Muldoon said in his typical calm and deadpan style, “the sooner you tell us why you did it and where the murder weapon is, the sooner we can get you out of those handcuffs and into a nice comfortable…” He paused.

  “Cell.” Anjolie finished the thought for him.

  I jolted suddenly as I glimpsed an image from her mind. I saw the flaming arrow hit its target in the basket of the cable lift high above the crowd. But it wasn’t from the point of view of the shooter – it was as if I were watching it on a movie screen, from the side like the other spectators.

  Maybe she thinks and dreams in the “third person,” I thought, like a detached observer instead of from her own eyes.

  Then her mind’s movie camera panned toward the place where the shot had originated, and I saw the shooter jump from the stage and then disappear beneath it. I thought the killer had escaped through the crowd. But now it seems that, while all eyes were diverted to the flaming beauty queen, the cloaked figure slunk beneath the stage. A name came into my mind as I viewed her memory.

  “Nathaniel,” I whispered aloud, but very softly under my breath.

  Anjolie swung her head toward me swiftly. Her eyes were pleading as she looked at me. “No,” she whispered back, shaking her head just enough for me to see.

  It was at that moment that a disturbance began outside the doors to the lobby. A woman was talking to Zach and demanding to get into the room. The voices got louder and louder, but I didn’t recognize her voice.

  Kyle stood up. He was going to help Zach remove the disturbance when she shouted even louder.

  “They’ve got my mother in there, and I’m going in there to be with her. Now, stand aside, or I swear I’ll kick you.”

  Anjolie’s eyes were wide and she grew very tense. Sheriff Muldoon looked at her and then turned his eyes to Kyle, who had his hand on the doorknob and was looking at the Sheriff. Muldoon nodded, and Kyle opened the door.

  “Please, Miss, come inside. You too, Zach.”

  The pair entered. Zach pulled a chair next to Anjolie for the young woman, and I walked around to the other side of the table behind Kyle. Ginny sat in a chair further down the long table.

  She was young and beautiful – another one of those girls like Marguerite whose glamour and fashion style made her look more mature than her years. Her black hair was perf
ectly styled and brushed gently against her shoulders. Her makeup was flawlessly done, and the skirt of her designer dress floated gently as she sat.

  “Mom…” She reached out to hug her mother and had to hold back both tears and anger when she realized her mother was handcuffed and could not hug her back. She looked at the Sheriff. “You…”

  “No, sweetheart.” Anjolie did her best to calm her daughter. “It will be fine.”

  “Zach.” The Sheriff gave Kyle’s big deputy a small nod, and Zach removed the suspect’s handcuffs. The mother and daughter hugged for a moment.

  “My mother didn’t do this,” the girl said to the Sheriff. “Let her go.”

  Muldoon paused for a moment, and then he spoke. “What’s your name, ma’am?”

  “I’m Ana Chantay Chambers, and Anjolie Chambers is my mother.”

  Kyle quickly tapped her name into the search engine on his laptop.

  “She may very well be innocent, young lady…” Muldoon folded his hands on the table in front of him and leaned toward the woman. “…but right now the evidence we have makes her our number one suspect.”

  Kyle opened the first item listed by the search engine for Ana Chantay Chambers, and it was a news article with a picture of her in an evening gown and tiara, holding a bouquet of roses.

  “Sheriff…” Kyle turned his computer screen toward Muldoon. “…she was the first runner-up in the last Miss Georgia Pageant.”

  “Well, congratulations!” Ginny said. “That means that you’ll be taking over as the new Miss Georgia.”

  Good observation, Ginny, I thought. Kyle and Muldoon gave each other a knowing look.

  “Well, in that case, Mrs. Chambers, I think we just found your motive for the murder.”

  The room was silent. It made sense. Anjolie was disqualified at the last minute in the pageant 16 years ago because she had a three-year-old daughter – Ana Chantay – and she probably would have been the winner otherwise. And now, the daughter she groomed to fulfill her dream of being a queen just barely missed out on the crown too. By getting Pamela Tedesco out of the way, her dream would finally be realized.

  “That’s ridiculous,” Ana told the officers. “My mother would never hurt Pamela – she loved her. She trained both of us together. She taught us how to walk, how to smile, how to do our makeup, and how to be poised and think on our feet. She was just as thrilled to see Pamela win as she would have been to see me win – and so was I. We weren’t competitors; we were partners and friends. Mother, tell them you didn’t do it.”

  Anjolie’s eyes filled with tears as she looked at her daughter, and she trembled slightly as she spoke. “I…I can’t.”

  The tears finally streamed down her cheeks, but she continued to hold her head up bravely.

  I leaned over Sheriff Muldoon’s shoulder. “Sheriff, why don’t we go over the horse chase with Anjolie now, and then you can hold her in our guestroom upstairs – the one Audrey inspected on the second floor. She’s all done up there now. Anjolie and her daughter are welcome to stay there as long as necessary, and you can post a guard at the door.”

  Muldoon agreed, and he took our statements, first separately and then with all of us together. As soon as we were done, Granny came swooping into the solarium, anxiously waving for me to go with her.

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  Chapter Fifteen

  “Get Arthur! We’ve got to go!” Granny was waving furiously from the double doors to the lobby. “Hurry, now. Jessie.”

  Ginny was looking around the room. She could always feel Granny’s presence, even though she couldn’t see or hear her. Then she gave me a knowing look. She knew something was up.

  “Well, I’d better check in on the kitchen and the Tea Room to make sure things are going okay,” I told the Sheriff and the others in the room. I gave Anjolie a supportive squeeze on the shoulder and headed for the door, trying my best not to run.

  “We’re about done here anyway.” Muldoon lifted his hat and wiped his brow with his forearm. “Zach, open the doors and escort the ladies upstairs. Sorry, ma’am, but he’ll have to cuff you before you leave the interrogation room. Protocol, you know. He’ll take them off when you get in your room. We’ll all take a break and continue this a little later.”

  I got the room key for Zach from behind the front desk and handed it to him just as Lexi and her three kids walked into the lobby from the Tea Room. Then he and the ladies headed up the stairs.

  “Mommy…” Little KC tugged on Lexi’s sleeve. “How come they have that nice lady in handcuffs?”

  Her 10-year-old son, Kramer, answered. “Because they think she shot that flaming arrow at Miss Georgia last night.”

  “But she didn’t,” Katy Lyn, the oldest, said with a look of concern. “She couldn’t have.”

  “Nope.” KC responded.

  “That’s right,” Kramer agreed. “She bought us each a bag of little fudge bites at Sugar Beaton’s Fudge Shop.”

  “And then, when we went up to the balcony to watch the play, she was standing right below us the whole time. She even waved at us,” Katy Lyn explained.

  “Yup.” KC was nodding her head. “I even dropped a piece of fudge down to her right before the person shot that arrow,”

  “She didn’t do it, Mom,” Kramer told her with certainty.

  “She couldn’t have,” Katy Lyn agreed.

  So did little KC. “She’s a real nice lady, Mommy.”

  Lexi and I looked at each other.

  “I’ll tell Kyle and the Sheriff,” she said.

  I had to get going. Antoine and Marguerite were still in the lobby, asleep on the bench, waiting to see if the Sheriff needed them again. The afternoon was just beginning to fade as I looked to see if Arthur was by his water dish.

  “Arf!”

  He hailed me from near the front door, and it appeared from his demeanor that Granny had already taken up residence in my little pooch.

  The shadows were long now, aiming straight down Carlisle Boulevard in front of the Inn. Audrey, the head of the crime scene investigation team, was taking down the yellow police tape around the stage, and it looked like a city crew with a crane was getting ready to take down the big pillars for the cable lift while others were starting to dismantle the stage.

  “Where are we going, Granny?” I asked her without speaking. Then I heard the rev of a motorcycle on the street. It was Eddy.

  “Your friend, Cammy, needs you – down by Madame Irene’s place.”

  “How would you know that? Were you out walking with Arthur again? I told you not to…”

  “No, Jessie, I…”

  “But you can’t leave the Inn otherwise, so…”

  Eddy weaved for us to come over, and we ran down and got on the bike. I put Arthur in the saddlebag and waved off the helmet for the short ride.

  “Moondance was out for a stroll and came back to tell us.”

  “So…what’s the problem? Cammy is usually pretty good about taking care of herself – and she carries a small handgun.”

  Eddy got us rolling slowly down the street and joined the conversation – since he saw everything that Moondance saw. “Your blonde friend must’ve stuck her nose where she shouldn’t have.”

  “Well, that’s no big surprise, Eddy. But you’re getting me worried now. Is she all right?”

  “So far.”

  We pulled to the curb and I hopped off in front of Madam Irene’s Psychic Readings shop, which was about six blocks down antique row with just one more block to Apalachee Avenue and the regular local businesses. Eddy drove around the corner, and Anika came walking back with Arthur on a leash.

  Cammy Jo was sitting on a chair in front of the shop, and Irene was standing next to her.

  The psychic was wearing a long black dress with a blue Gypsy headscarf. “Nice of you to come, Jessie. I caught your little playmate skulking around inside my shop.”

  “I told you
,” Cammy defended herself, “I was looking for a bathroom.”

  “Yes, you told me that. But it was a lie. I know these kinds of things, dear. That’s my business – and my gift.” She smiled condescendingly at Cammy Jo and ran her fingers through the private eye’s blonde hair.”

  Cammy batted Irene’s hand away. “Get away from me, Morticia.”

  “Okay, ladies…what’s really going on here?” I tried to play the diplomat, as I also knew that Cammy was not sneaking around looking for a bathroom. “Just tell me, Cammy.”

  Anika and Arthur joined us as Cammy Jo gave Irene a suspicious look. Then Cammy looked at me. “I don’t trust this charlatan wack-job.”

  “It’s okay.” I reached out and pulled her to her feet. “Morticia is only here to help. Isn’t that right, Irene?” I ran a finger down my nose to remind her of the furry snout that awaited her if she crossed me.

  “Of course, darling. That’s why I didn’t call Kyle to arrest her. I knew you would come along soon enough.”

  Cammy sighed and looked at Anika and me. “Well…I followed that kid dressed in black out of the Inn – the one that Anjolie had been talking to. I got a text from Robert in Savannah – he had been helping me dig up some information on Anjolie, and it turned out she did have twins. The boy, Nathaniel, was raised by her mother. Anyway, I saw him slip underneath the stage – way back there, near the Inn, but he never came out. And when the work crew pulled the skirt off from around the sides of it to start taking it down, he was nowhere to be seen. But there is a manhole cover under it.”

  “Fascinating, Goldilocks, but that doesn’t explain what you were doing snooping around my shop.”