Murder, Mayhem and Bliss

by Loulou Harrington

  “I need to make a phone call. Do you think you can get everything into the car without me?”

  “Are you calling our friendly, local sheriff?”

  Jesse’s pounding heart revved a little higher. “Yes, and I’m not counting on the friendly part.”

  “I’ll have the car loaded in five minutes and the engine running, just in case he’s on this side of the county,” Sophia said, stacking the wrapped bread into a shopping bag. “The package for Adele Culpepper’s in the back seat already, so that just leaves the cinnamon rolls. You go on, hon, and do what you have to do.”

  “I’ll be just outside.” Jesse left the kitchen and exited through the dining room to where the wraparound porch was screened in at the side of the house. Here, wicker furniture with cushions and glass-topped tables provided outdoor dining in an area that was protected from all but the worst weather.

  She paced to the corner and stood looking out over the side yard to where more tables and chairs sat on ancient brick pavers in the shade of native pears, crabapples and redbud trees. Drinking in the calm, she took a deep, steadying breath and dialed the sheriff’s office. They patched her through to Sheriff Tyler’s mobile phone, which she could only hope was nowhere near Myrtle Grove at the moment.

  “This is the sheriff,” he barked into the phone a half a ring later.

  “Hi, this is Jesse Camden.” Her heart rate escalated to where she could hardly catch her breath, but she pushed on. “I have something to tell you, and I don’t want you to get mad.”

  “Well, crap. Hang on while I pull over.”

  Two minutes passed while she listened to strange noises in the background and practiced breathing from her diaphragm. The pears were almost ready to harvest, she noticed. Every autumn, they made their own pear butter and served it with biscuits in the mornings for the few weeks that the pears lasted.

  “For future reference,” he snapped, startling Jesse out of her happy place. “That is no way to start a conversation. ‘Don’t get mad’ is what someone says when they know they’re about to make you mad.”

  “You have a tendency to overreact,” Jesse said, determined to remain reasonable and adult. “I just happened to learn something…”

  “Just skip the ‘it was an accident’ part,” he interrupted.

  “…that I think I should tell you!” she shouted, overriding his interruption. “If you would shut up long enough for me to get a sentence out.”

  “And that would be what?” the sheriff asked in a voice that seemed somewhere between patience and gritted teeth.

  “Bobby Donald,” Jesse said, “just happens to be a friend of SueAnn’s. You know who he is?”

  “Yes, I do. Is that what you thought I needed to know?”

  One of the benefits of losing her temper was that the fear that had been choking her melted away, leaving Jesse unmoved by his sarcasm. “So,” she said, continuing her story, “SueAnn and I happened to see Bobby yesterday, and I noticed that the boots he was wearing and the crutch he was using looked a lot like the tracks Frank Haney found along the path leading to the crime scene.”

  “Really? Just like that? You just happened to see him? And you just happened to notice the crutch? And did he just happen to confess to murdering Harry Kerr, too? Huh?”

  For just a moment, Jesse really wished she was face to face with him, so she could watch his expression change from superior to stunned and then to furious, because right now, she could care less how mad she made him. If he turned bright purple and smoke started coming out of his ears, that would be just fine with her.

  “Actually, no. He has an alibi for the time Harry died. Bobby left the tracks when he was there earlier in the evening, for a meeting Harry didn’t show up for. They did talk on the phone, however, so you shouldn’t have any trouble confirming that from his phone records.”

  “What?”

  She could hear in his voice that he had snapped to attention, and she smiled. “Bobby left the boot and crutch imprints,” Jesse repeated. “He was there the night Harry died, but he had gone long before Harry returned home. Their meeting was rescheduled for Saturday morning and Bobby spent the rest of Friday night with friends. I told him I would pass the information on to you. I have his phone number and address if you would like them.”

  “I have his damned address,” Joe snarled. “What I want to know is what you were doing questioning him?”

  “Well, I saw the crutch, and one thing just led to another. I was really hoping he was the one, but I guess not.”

  “Where are you now?”

  She didn’t like his tone. It was the one he usually used just before he threatened to arrest her. “Uh, delivering bread.”

  “Where?” he demanded again.

  “Around.” She glanced at her watch and saw that her five minutes were up. “Wow, have you got static on your end? ‘Cause I’m really getting static here.”

  “Wait!”

  “Whoops, gotta go.” Careful not to slam the screen door behind her, Jesse hurried down the steps and wound her way through the patio tables, making her way toward the garage where Sophia had the car waiting. She held the phone a short distance away from her and called, “Time for a bread drop off.”

  “Dammit, Jesse!”

  “I’ll call you later,” she said, still holding the phone far enough away to muffle her voice, “when there’s better reception. Bye.”

  Ending the call, Jesse turned her phone off completely in case he tried to call her back or GPS her location. Sophia’s twenty-year-old, midnight blue Cutlass convertible was in the alley behind the garage, engine rumbling, ready to roll.

  Jesse hopped in and the car took off, a trail of dust rising behind them until they reached the end of the alley and pulled out onto a side street.

  “Was he upset?” Sophia asked once the terrain smoothed out and she could ease her concentration.

  “Well, at first he was just being a jerk, but I think he was working his way around to upset by the time I hung up on him.”

  “Oh, dear. He doesn’t know where we’re going, does he? Because if he was upset with what you did last night, he’s really going to be mad when he finds out what you’re doing this morning.”

  “And you might want to turn your phone off,” Jesse suggested, carefully avoiding a direct answer, “so he can’t track us. Mine’s already off.”

  “Oh, my goodness.” Sophia’s voice held a shiver of anticipation. Then she giggled. “This is such fun. I feel just like a spy.”

  Chapter Twenty-Five

  Downtown Turtle Creek consisted of a main street four blocks long. The business district comprised three of those four blocks and varying degrees of the first block off either side of Main Street. Adele Culpepper’s address was in the last building at the end of the first block on West 3rd Street.

  Sophia pulled into a parallel parking space outside a three story red brick building. “Redbud Apartments,” she said, reading the name etched in the concrete header over the wide front entrance. “This isn’t what I was expecting.”

  “There must be more parking around back somewhere. With another entry.” Jesse was busy imagining Harry Kerr visiting a college-aged girlfriend here. “No one having an affair would park out here. The entire town would know every move you made.”

  “I’m thinking the entire town would know everything you did anyway.” Sophia looked around, then rechecked the piece of paper that had led them there. “Do you suppose Adele Culpepper has moved, and this isn’t the same apartment building where Ginny Spurber lived?”

  Jesse opened her car door. “I guess the only way we’re going to know is to go inside.”

  “Well, I have the tuna melt recipe. You have the bread. Let’s go see if we can’t brighten someone’s day.” With that, Sophia exited the Cutlass on the driver’s side and rejoined her daughter on the sidewalk in front of the building.

  It was almost 9 am, a respectable hour for a morning call. The freshly baked bread was still warm in J
esse’s hands. As an added incentive, they had included a container of tuna salad, made from the Gilded Lily’s recipe, along with a slab of sharp cheddar from the Amish dairy farmers who supplied the majority of the tea room’s cheeses. It was everything needed for a tuna melt just the way they served them every Friday for lunch.

  They stopped just inside the building’s dark foyer and stared up the narrow staircase to the second floor.

  “Tell me this place isn’t creepy,” Jesse whispered. “What’s her apartment number?”

  Sophia pulled the address from her pocket and squinted to see it in the dim light. “Apartment 2C,” she said. “And maybe it’s a little creepy. But, hopefully, the inside of the apartments are nicer than this foyer.”

  She looked again at the steep, narrow stairs and moved aside for Jesse to go first. At the top of the staircase, Jesse’s footsteps echoed on the threadbare runner over an old wood floor as she turned toward the back of the building. Mrs. Culpepper’s was the second door from the landing on the right side. Almost directly opposite her door was one marked “2D,” which probably would have been Ginny’s apartment if this was the same building.

  Chills ran up Jesse’s spine at the thought, and she wished she could turn around and forget all of this. Here, in a hallway lit by a single, bare bulb, the specter of death was very real. What was a college student doing living in this place? What was anyone doing living in this place?

  Sophia stepped forward and knocked on the door of “2C”, then looked at her daughter with a furrowed brow. “You know, maybe we should have called first.”

  “If we were actually making a social call, yes,” Jesse agreed in a hushed undertone. “But if you’re wanting to question someone who may have changed her mind, no.”

  “Ah, I see what you mean.”

  The door opened suddenly and Sophia whipped her head around toward it with a bright smile lighting her face. “Good morning! I’m so sorry if we’ve disturbed you, Mrs. Culpepper. I know we should have called, but I was trying to get over here while the bread was still warm. And I just seem to have completely forgotten my manners.”

  Jesse took the cue and stepped forward. Flashing a smile to rival her mother’s, she extended the loaf of bread. “Fresh from the oven. And we brought the tuna salad and cheese to go on it.”

  “And the recipe,” Sophia chirped. She held out the small gift bag containing the ingredients and a handwritten recipe tied with a ribbon to the bag’s handle. The recipe card itself had a watercolor tea cup and saucer in the lower left corner, handpainted in the Crocus Lily pattern.

  Blank recipe cards were painted in a variety of china patterns by Lindsey and sold as a side item in the tea room as well as the antique shop. Their customers seemed to love them and Adele Culpepper was no exception.

  “For me?” She took the gift bag, holding it in front of her as she turned it one way and then the other. “Oh, my stars, I can’t believe it.” She took the bread from Jesse with her free hand and stepped back to clear the doorway.

  “Well, don’t just stand there,” she invited. “Come on in. I don’t get a lot of company, and this…” She cradled the gifts in her arms. “…this is just too much. I don’t know how to thank you.”

  “And, please, call me Adele,” she called over her shoulder on her way to the small open kitchen just a few steps away. She stored the bag with the tuna and cheese in an apartment-sized refrigerator and set the bread on the counter next to a well-used stove.

  “I remembered that I had promised you that recipe,” Sophia said. “I thought we should get it over here before I forgot about it.”

  “Oh, you’re too kind.” With everything stashed, Adele rejoined them on the other side of the counter and indicated the sofa and two chairs that were her livingroom furniture. “Please, sit down. Can I get you something? I still have some coffee in the pot.”

  “Oh, no, thank you,” Jesse said. “We’re fine. We had breakfast just a little while ago.”

  Which wasn’t exactly true. They had been too busy to eat and in too big a hurry to get started with their day. But Jesse was starting to feel more than a little guilty about the Trojan horse gifts they were hiding behind. Who knew some bread and tuna salad would be gushed over like that.

  They all took a seat. Jesse and Sophia chose the two chairs on one side of the coffee table while Adele took one end of the floral sofa on the other side. Sunlight streamed in through a double window on the outside wall of the room. Jesse assumed that it would overlook a private parking area behind the building, although she still didn’t know where the back entrance would be.

  “So, I suppose you all are here because of what I said yesterday.” Adele settled comfortably into where a little pile of pillows and a cross-stitched lap robe welcomed her. “At least, I was sure hoping Lindsey would pass on what I told her. Did she? Is that why you’re here?”

  Well, so much for Jesse’s Trojan horse theory. And her guilt. And any need for subtlety, which was always a plus in her case.

  “She did,” Jesse confirmed. “Although my mother would have brought that recipe to you, anyway.”

  Adele cast a sly grin in their direction. “Bet I wouldn’t have been getting that bread, though.”

  Jesse returned the smile. “Probably not. But I’m hoping we’ll find out something from you that will help us get to the bottom of not just Harry Kerr’s death, but Ginny’s, as well. The bread’s just a little thank you in advance.”

  “No need to beat around the bush, then.” Adele patted the afghan into place around her lap and snuggled deeper into the pillows at her back. A comfortably plump woman, grayed and lined by age, she seemed eager to talk. “I got lots to tell you.”

  “Why don’t we start with Ginny?” Jesse rested both elbows on the arms of her chair and leaned forward just enough to focus all of her attention on the woman across from her. “Do you think she killed herself, Adele?”

  For the first time since they had entered her apartment, the older woman seemed hesitant. “Well, I did at first. It didn’t seem right, but I accepted it.”

  She shifted her weight uncomfortably. “But the longer I thought about it, the more I thought…” She paused and shook her head in a slow motion version of a dog shaking off water. Then she lifted her gaze, pain obvious in her eyes.

  “No. Hell, no, that girl didn’t kill herself. Somebody did that to her. And they got away with it. And the more I think about that, it just makes me sick.”

  Jesse could feel when anger replaced pain as Adele Culpepper’s primary emotion. That was when she realized that for Adele, the girl had been more than a neighbor. She had been a friend, a dear friend.

  “You were very fond of Ginny, weren’t you?” she asked quietly. “Is it true that you hadn’t seen her for several days just before she died? I think you had said that you didn’t see anybody visiting her. Could somebody have gone in there without your knowing?”

  “Well, I wasn’t exactly honest with the police.” Adele’s head ducked as her fingers plucked at the stitching on her lap robe. “Or that other lady who came around asking questions.”

  “Is that the lady who said she worked with Harry Kerr? Was she young? Hispanic, maybe?”

  “Yeah, that one.” She nodded and lifted her eyes to meet Jesse’s.

  “When did she talk to you?” Jesse remembered Maria saying she had attended Ginny’s funeral but didn’t remember her mentioning a visit to Ginny’s apartment building.

  “The day of the memorial service. She came by to make sure I had a ride, and to see if there was anything she could do to help. But I didn’t feel like I could be honest with anybody right then.”

  “Did she tell you her name? Was it Maria?”

  Adele shook her head. “I don’t know. She may have said, but I wasn’t paying much attention. I had too much else weighing on my mind. She was a pretty girl, though, and real sweet.”

  “Did anybody else come around to see Ginny, either before she died, or after? Besides Harr
y?”

  “Her old boyfriend. Bobby, I think his name was. He was coming around again a lot just before she died. And there were some people who came with Harry sometimes.”

  Jesse felt a jolt of surprise. Maybe Harry hadn’t worried about secrecy as much as she had thought he did. “What did they look like?”

  Adele shrugged. “Just people. Older than her, like Harry was. A man, and sometimes a woman. Nothing special about ‘em. The woman came around a couple of times by herself, but I never got a really good look at either of them.”

  Excitement set Jesse’s heart to racing and she cautioned herself to stay calm. “If I can get pictures of some people, would you look at them for me? Just to see if anyone looks familiar?” Her mind tumbled over ideas, like Bobby’s comment about the woman who had befriended Ginny shortly before her death, and the pictures Connie had from Bill and Cindilee’s wedding.

  “Sure. The police already showed me some this weekend,” Adele said, “but I didn’t recognize any of them, other than Harry. The pretty blond lady I think is his wife, but I never saw her around here.”

  “Well, it’s worth a shot, just in case.” Jesse took a deep breath and forced herself to focus on the moment. This woman was the only person who knew what had happened in the days just before, and just after, Ginny Spurber died. “So, Adele, I guess that means there were people who visited Ginny that you never told the police about. Did you also see Ginny just before she died?”

  Adele shifted uncomfortably again, a sign Jesse was starting to recognize as a signal there was a confession coming.

  “She knocked on my door that night. She seemed upset. But more like she was worried, not like she was going to kill herself. She had an envelope she asked me to hold for her. She said don’t tell anybody about it. Don’t give it to anybody. Just her. She said if anything happened to her, for me to burn it.”

  “Were those her exact words, ‘if anything happened to her’?” Again, excitement beat like a drum inside Jesse’s head and down into her chest.