Murder, Mayhem and Bliss

by Loulou Harrington

  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. “And 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 iden
tified 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?”

  “Marla dropped it off earlier this afternoon. Asked me to look at it when I had the chance, ‘cause she 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.

  “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.”

  “I hadn’t looked at it that close. Not sure I’d have recognized it anyway.”

  “So either she set the camera up to film them…” Joe’s mind raced ahead, building a bridge between the two deaths. “Or somebody else took the picture.”

  “See?” Arnie turned back to the waiting body on the autopsy table. “It’s sounding less and less like a coincidence all the time.”

  “Especially since our dead man apparently had this picture with him when he died,” Joe agreed.

  “Or someone else did.”

  “You’re reading my mind, my friend.” The sheriff returned the photo to the desk and started toward the door. “We’re still dealing with smoke and mirrors here. If that body doesn’t give you some hard evidence, we’re looking at the thinnest of circumstantial right now, and that’s just not going to get it.”

  Arnie stopped working, his lined face set in a somber expression. “We may have already missed one murder with that girl. If there’s anything here, I’ll find it. We’re not going to let another one slip by.”

  “No. We’re not,” Joe agreed.

  He left with his mind churning at a stew of facts, suspicions, and things that were just downright hard to believe. This whole thing was taking on tones of something deeper, more slippery and farther reaching than one not-so-simple death.

  Damn it all!

  ∙∙∙•••●●●•••∙∙∙

  “Was that as weird for you as it was for me?” Vivian asked.

  “Yes,” Jesse agreed, relieved that Vivian had spoken first. “Unfortunately.”

  After Bliss and Bill Marshall found them on the terrace, Cindilee Marshall had greeted her old friend with warmth, consoling Bliss for her loss with a sincerity that belied Cindilee’s earlier words. There was no hint of unease or distance for the gulf that had separated them in recent years. The past fell away, ignored, and the calf eyes Bill Marshall continued to cast in Bliss’s direction were ignored as if they, too, didn’t exist.

  Jesse found herself with the beginnings of a serious headache brought on by the effort of ignoring quite so much. She was relieved when the Marshalls excused themselves for an imminent departure. But before they could leave, Deputy Marla Murphy presented herself where they all still gathered on the side terrace between the kitchen and the herb garden.

  Surprise and speculation flitted briefly across the deputy’s face at the accumulated group before she caught herself and donned a strictly professional mask. After a few minutes of overly polite conversation and leave taking, the Marshalls left, and Bliss and Deputy Murphy withdrew on their heels to visit the Kerr home, now a possible crime scene that Bliss wasn’t allowed into without a guard.

  Alone finally, Jesse and Vivian sat across from each other on the terrace, soaking up the silence and the first absence of intruders, save for Jesse herself, since the earliest hours of the day.

  “It’s not my imagination, is it?” Vivian asked, continuing her opening thought. “He is in love with her, isn�
�t he?”

  “Oh, yeah,” Jesse agreed. “He’s in love with her. The question is, do any of them realize it?”

  Vivian huffed and rolled her eyes, a familiar gesture when facing something she didn’t like. Then she sighed. “I think his wife does.”

  “If I had to guess, I would say that, too,” Jesse agreed. “I would also say that she realizes that the other two aren’t really aware of their feelings.”

  “The other two?” Vivian echoed, looking stricken. “Oh, good grief, are you saying that Bliss is in love with him, too? We have enough on our plate as it is, Jesselyn.” Stricken had quickly been replaced with irate. “We do not need the two most likely suspects in love with each other.”

  “Suspects?” It was Jesse’s turn to be stricken, and a little panicked. “What do you mean suspects?”

  “The man is dead, Jesselyn.” Vivian leaned in and tapped the glass top of the table with a red-laquered fingertip. “What are the chances that that despicable bastard died of natural causes? Huh? What are the chances?”

  Jesse stared at her, open-mouthed, while the headache she had almost escaped slammed into the back of her neck and clamped down. “What?” she finally managed. The word sounded as breathless as she felt. Surely, Vivian couldn’t be saying what it sounded like she was saying.

  Evil men could die of natural causes. Accidents happened to anyone. It had to be one or the other. It had to be.

  “We have a situation on our hands,” Vivian said, tapping the tabletop again. “And we can’t wait until it lands in our laps before we start doing something about it.”

  “We?” Jesse echoed in a voice that sounded more like a wheeze. If she weren’t a grown woman looking fifty in the eye, she would be squeezing her eyes closed, sticking her fingers in her ears and singing la-la-la-la-la. She did not want to hear this. But she couldn’t stop herself. “What do you mean?”

  “We might as well face it.” Vivian relaxed in her chair and crossed her arms in front of her. “The first person they are coming after is Bliss. Why else have they been circling around here the entire day? The spouse is always the first suspect.”