Murder, Mayhem and Bliss

by Loulou Harrington

  Her cheerfulness of a moment earlier gone, Bliss took a deep breath, squared her shoulders, and forced a smile. “Yes, of course. Did you want to do it now?”

  “If you’re available now.”

  “I could go with you, if you would like, dear,” Vivian offered. Her attempt to sound eager, or even willing, fell flat.

  The brief light in Bliss’s eyes died out, and she shook her head. “That’s okay. I’ll be all right.”

  Both Bliss and Vivian seemed miserable and clearly reluctant to return to Bliss’s house while it was still a crime scene, or possibly ever. Jesse’s sympathy for them both, and her own curiosity to do exactly what they didn’t want to do, had her stepping forward without any real forethought on her part.

  “Why don’t I follow behind,” she offered to Bliss, “and I can drive you back when you’re done.” Turning to Deputy Murphy, she continued, “That would save you from having to make a return trip back here.”

  “Yes!” Bliss jumped at the offer. “That sounds wonderful. Thank you.”

  Marla frowned, then shrugged, obviously not thrilled, but hesitant to create ill will by vetoing the suggestion.

  Bliss grinned, took Jesse’s hand and squeezed, continuing to hold it all the way through the house. Outside, she finally released her, then leaned closer to Jesse and whispered, “Really. Thank you. The last thing in the world I want to do right now is to step foot in that house.”

  As Deputy Murphy walked past them going toward her car, Jesse said quietly, “I’ll be right behind you. Do you need me to go in with you?”

  Bliss shook her head. “Not unless you want to. It’ll be enough just to have you there, somewhere.”

  Jesse leaned closer again and dropped her voice to a murmur. “I kind of wanted to look around outside.”

  Bliss grinned. “I kind of thought you might,” she whispered in return.

  Joining them, Vivian said, “The nice deputy is waiting.” She nodded toward the police car in the drive.

  “Yes, ma’am.” Bliss bobbed a curtsy and hurried down the steps of the front portico and across the drive, in a much lighter mood than she had been only moments earlier.

  “Bless you, my dear.” Vivian laid one hand on Jesse’s shoulder and waved goodbye to Bliss with the other.

  “I have purely selfish motives,” Jesse assured her.

  “Of course, you do.” Vivian patted her shoulder. “Now run along and do your snooping. I’ll want to hear everything when you and Bliss get back here.”

  Jesse obediently started down the stairs, then stopped and looked back to Vivian. “You know, you may have a roommate for awhile. I don’t think it’s going to be easy for Bliss to go back to living in that house.”

  With a nod, Vivian signaled her agreement. “She’s welcome for as long as she wants. This is a big house. And I’m not one of those who needs a lot of solitude. At least, not when it comes to the people I care about.”

  Jesse smiled. “Good. See you in a bit.”

  On the way to the aged pickup she had inherited from her grandfather, Jesse continued to smile. While Vivian was still a vibrant, healthy and active woman, she was nevertheless growing older. And Jesse had recently begun to worry just the slightest bit that Vivian spent too much of her time alone in such a big house so far away from neighbors. Of course, Dottie still worked half-days during the week, but Dottie was no youngster either. Now with Bliss’s arrival, Vivian had gained a live-in companion for the moment, and Jesse could avoid the difficult subject of precautions for awhile longer.

  So at least there were a few good outcomes to Bliss’s unfortunate situation—not that Jesse would actually say that out loud, and not that any of those outcomes were positives for Bliss herself. Her life, in fact, had been turned upside down, giving her new responsibilities she hadn’t wanted and wasn’t sure what to do with, while, in spite of everything, she seemed to be grieving for a husband she still cared for.

  The home they had shared had become something she didn’t want any part of. Her reputation was in danger of being shredded. And some of the very people she was looking to for help and support were the ones with the strongest motives for committing the murder she was suspected of. All in all, it was not a position anyone would want to find themselves in.

  The rest of the way to the Kerr house, Jesse worked to shake off the nagging unease her thoughts had induced. She felt a little like someone trying to save another person from an impending meteorite. Descending to we’re-all-going-to-die helplessness was no solution, but really, it all seemed so enormous sometimes, and her own limitations so frustrating.

  Pulling into a parking space between two county sheriff’s cars, Jesse exited her elderly but well maintained pickup into the bright, midday sunshine and, like magic, when her feet hit the ground, her optimism returned, along with her compelling curiosity. Another deputy was here somewhere, but at least it wasn’t the sheriff’s shiny new, extended-cab truck she was parked next to, so she would be spared a confrontation with him at least.

  Happy to be alone in her explorations, and hoping to stay that way, Jesse hurried toward the back of the house and its fascinating array of landscaped grounds and multi-level stone terraces. Here, she followed winding mulched pathways through increasingly more densely planted and elaborate garden rooms until all paths converged at the metal entry gate of the pool.

  At the gate, she turned to look back. In the distance, the house was partially visible, but any detail was obscured by the trees. The swimming pool itself seemed a world away from the main body of the property, isolated behind its surrounding brick wall and the vines that enclosed it.

  “What a lonely place to die,” Jesse muttered to herself as she opened the gate and carefully ducked under the yellow crime scene tape. She thought of the note Bliss had found, inviting Harry to a meeting in the middle of the night.

  The author had to have been familiar with the area and its seclusion. Jesse looked up and saw that the bright lights around the perimeter of the pool were still burning. One corner of the enclosure wasn’t bathed in the artificial light. A magnolia grew there, its spreading branches adding to the surrounding shade. A collection of hostas, ferns and azaleas dotted the landscape at the tree’s base.

  Thinking that if she were part of a clandestine meeting, she might wait in the shadows provided in that corner, Jesse walked closer, checking the ground for footprints, cigarette butts, anything the sheriff’s people might have missed. She found a heavy layer of mulch, looking neat and undisturbed. And that was all she found everywhere she looked in the area around the pool’s perimeter, except for one section midway down the wall facing the house. There, the mulch was turned over and redistributed in about a ten-foot length. A few branches were broken on the azaleas in that part of the landscaping.

  If she had to guess, and in this case she did, the sheriff’s department searched that area with special diligence, probably finding what they were looking for since the rest of the pool’s surroundings were not so torn up. It would be interesting to know what they found there. She paused to study the emptied swimming pool, wondering if they were looking for anything in particular when they had drained it, and if they had found what they were seeking.

  Without water to distract, the tile around the inside rim of the pool stood out. Moroccan in design, in multiple shades of blue, it was starkly beautiful. The ledge surrounding the outside edge was a different but similar pattern, and equally stunning. It would be easy to believe that the pool was Harry’s passion, and it was apparent that someone had spent a lot of money and attention to detail when building it.

  The metal furniture was solid and elegant. The cushions were thick, in the same shades of blue as the pool’s tile work. There were lounges, dining tables with chairs, seating groups with settees, rockers and side tables, and a giant grill built into an island with a granite top complete with an overhang and four bar stools.

  So, maybe on second thought, if Harry’d had to pick a place to die, this w
ould have been it. If there had been a bed and a bathroom, he would never have had to leave. On that thought, Jesse looked toward the gate on the backside of the pool area, and realized that there was yet another path through the surrounding trees that led on to whatever lay beyond.

  Her curiosity pulled her forward once again, and she hurried through the second gate, exiting the pool and entering another path through an even more wooded area. Here, the trees were more like a virgin forest, its moss-covered floor dotted with hostas, ferns, rhododendron, and a scattering of rare, woodland specimens suited to a botanical showcase.

  Jesse almost tripped over a tree root while oohing and ahhing over the hardy orchids, variegated solomon’s seal, lady’s slippers and hellebores, to name just a few. Clusters of delicately pink cyclamen were in bloom and in a few months, the nodding flowers of the hellebore would brighten the short winter days.

  She had heard Vivian mention that Bliss did her own landscaping, but if she had done all of this, Jesse was going to have to reevaluate her opinion of Bliss, once again. This wasn’t just a garden, and the person who did it wasn’t just a gardener. A woodland wonderland like this required a lot of work, a lot of knowledge, and a lot of passion.

  Tearing her attention away from the fairy world of the green oasis behind her, Jesse stumbled out into the sunlight and practically tripped over Frank Haney, the one deputy who had almost as little use for her as Sheriff Tyler had.

  “What the hell are you doing here?” he demanded, rising from his squat. “And watch where the hell you’re going. This is a crime scene, dammit. And we’re not through processing the evidence.”

  Jesse’s heart soared while she tried mightily to appear contrite. Evidence! She had stumbled across evidence. Literally, it seemed.

  She looked at her feet and saw.… What was that?

  Chapter Seventeen

  “What is that?” Jesse pointed to the round indentations in the soft dirt at the edge of the footpath. What looked like it could be a part of a footprint was next to it. It was just the side and part of the toe of a shoe, with a smooth sole, no tread. There wasn’t enough of it to tell how big the shoe size was, at least to her untrained eye.

  A little distance away from the footpath, a rake, hoe, and a shovel lay on the ground. Small impressions, the size of a quarter or maybe a silver dollar, were scattered around where the garden tools lay. Those depressions in the dirt were deeper, smoother and more rounded than the two closer to the path.

  “Those look kind of like they’re from a cane, maybe,” she suggested, pointing to the imprints next to the footpath.

  “Thank you very much. I could never have figured that out on my own,” Frank Haney answered.

  He looked like such a big teddy bear of a guy, Jesse was always shocked by how unfriendly he could be, usually when he felt like his toes were being stepped on. Oh, well.

  “You might want to get casts of those,” she said, pointing again, while being very careful not to move from the pathway and create any footprints of her own. “Just in case somebody else comes down through here.”

  The imprints in question were almost perfectly round, not too deep, and had a series of ridges in the form of circles, like maybe something to help with traction.

  “I have,” Deputy Haney snapped. “And there better not be anybody else down through here. This happens to be a taped off crime scene, and I’d like to know how you got here.”

  Jesse tilted her head toward the house, somewhere far behind them. “Bliss is identifying a jacket for Marla. I’m driving her back to Vivian’s when she’s done.” With a smile, Jesse looked around her and began damage control. “Bliss has really done some amazing landscaping here, don’t you think?”

  “This didn’t all just grow like this?” Distracted, he relaxed his anger and sounded almost human.

  “No-o-o.” Jesse pursed her lips and drew the word out, while giving her head a quick shake. “All that stuff in there…” She waved her hand toward the grove behind her. “That’s all natural woodland plants, but you would only find a few of them in any one area. And you wouldn’t normally find things like trilliums mingling naturally with things like hostas. Not in your average, native forest.”

  He shrugged. “I guess you’re the expert.”

  “Well, not really. But I do garden some, and I know which plants are hard to come by.”

  He shifted uncomfortably. “My wife would enjoy talking to you,” Deputy Haney conceded in a tone that suggested he himself didn’t.

  Jesse grinned, pleased to have gotten him off the subject of her trespassing and onto what was, for him, unsteady ground.

  “Why don’t you bring her by the Lily sometime,” she suggested. “Maybe for lunch. In nice weather, we have outdoor dining in the garden. And then whoever wants to is free to look around for as long as they like. You might even enjoy it yourself.”

  “I know the sheriff likes it.” Again, Frank didn’t sound any too happy to be so agreeable. “Joe gets his coffee there about every morning, I believe. Along with Miss Lindsey’s breakfast burrito, which I have heard him say would about be worth marrying for.”

  Jesse’s sudden whoop was quickly strangled into a cough, which she pounded her chest to emphasize, then added several more coughs for cover. After a minute, she croaked, “Swallowed wrong, I guess.”

  Privately, she couldn’t imagine a more mismatched couple than Joe Tyler and Lindsey Hatch. Not to mention that the original recipe for the Gilded Lily’s popular breakfast burrito was Jesse’s. Most of the recipes that the tea room used were either Jesse’s or some variation of old family recipes that Sophia had introduced. Lindsey was, however, an excellent cook and the tea room’s primary barista and manager. The coffee magic belonged to her, with some assistance from SueAnn during the morning rush hours.

  So, if Sheriff Tyler loved the coffee as much as it seemed, maybe his love affair with Lindsey was justified, though probably not welcome. After the end of a really bad marriage just a few years earlier, Lindsey was still smarting and in no mood to invite a man into her life any time soon, or so she said. And Sophia’s few unfortunate attempts to fix that had not worked out well.

  “So, I could be wrong,” Jesse said, deciding it might be okay to poke the bear again, “but I believe that walking sticks have a smaller circumference than that.” She pointed to the round indentations near the pathway again. “And walking sticks usually have a smooth tip, like maybe wood or metal. That tip looks like it could be a molded rubber, maybe, and non-skid. And it’s obviously not from one of those.”

  She indicated the deeper, smoother depressions next to the garden tools. “So my guess would be a cane or a crutch.”

  Suddenly Jesse remembered where she had seen a rubber tip that was ribbed like the imprints next to the path. “A crutch! They definitely have a tip like that. So they don’t slip.”

  Her elation was short-lived when her gaze met the unfriendly stare of Deputy Frank Haney. “Are you through solving my crime for me?” he asked. “Huh? ‘Cause if you are, I believe it’s time for you to be leaving now.”

  She opened her mouth to defend herself, but before she could speak, he took a step closer and stabbed the end of a blunt finger toward the ground.

  “Now!” he barked. “Or I will arrest you where you stand, for no other reason than you are really startin’ to… Piss. Me. Off.”

  Each of the last three words felt like a verbal sharp poke in the sternum, and it was all Jesse could do not to wince. There was nothing friendly about his glare, his face, or his demeanor, and she was fairly certain that he wasn’t bluffing.

  “Okay.” She took a careful step backward. “I’m going.” She had really wanted to explore the small building that looked like a pool house just a little farther along the path. But she had better sense than to try it now.

  Putting several more steps between them, she said cautiously, “You have a good day now,” then turned and walked toward the landscaped woodland that separated this area fro
m the swimming pool.

  At the edge of the small wood, she paused and half-turned to say over her shoulder. “I was serious about meeting your wife. I have a new recipe I’m going to be trying out, and I’d love to have her sample it for me and give me her opinion. And I’d love to have both of you as my guests for lunch sometime.” She waggled her fingers in parting and walked away with as much speed as she could manage without losing her dignity entirely.

  Her mother had long told her that she had a distressing tendency to defy authority and that it was going to get her into trouble someday. She had always considered that to be her mother’s reaction to Jesse’s youthful rebellion, but lately she had begun to wonder if her mother didn’t have a point. Especially considering the number of times she had been threatened with arrest recently, while doing nothing more than speaking her mind.

  As a child, she had done things like that all the time. Perhaps, at fifty she should reconsider her approach. Her other choice was to, in Sheriff Tyler’s words, stop meddling in things that didn’t concern her. But that wasn’t going to happen. Not when it meant standing by and watching someone bully her mother, even when that someone was the sheriff.

  And not when it meant doing nothing while Vivian’s world fell apart one more time. Jesse might be helpless, in the end, to stop the train wreck that was bearing down on them all. But that didn’t mean she wasn’t going to try, regardless of what might happen along the way.

  Maybe she could just poke the bear a little less often and sneak around a little bit more. Tiptoeing lightly through situations wasn’t something she had ever been terribly good at, but with enough practice, she might improve. It was certainly worth a try. A little more sugar, a little less spice.

  By the time Jesse finished her pep talk, she had arrived at the last series of gardens before reaching the back terrace. Looking up, she saw Bliss and Marla Murphy walking down the terrace steps toward her. Bliss was biting her lip. Marla held a plastic bag with what looked like a gray suit folded inside and wore a somewhat thunderous frown on her usually pleasant face.