“Bone? What bone? Oh-h-h.” The word turned to a groan as Winnie’s confusion became irritation. “Hell, no, I didn’t say anything about the bone. That’s none of her damned business either.”
“I still think we need to talk to the sheriff about it,” Jesse insisted. ”Maybe not today, but soon.”
“Okay, fine, soon. Maybe tomorrow, but not today.” Winnie stopped scowling long enough to lean closer and whisper, “You think Vivian was serious about that bourbon?”
“Oh, yeah.” Glad to put the subject behind them, Jesse embraced the new conversation, relaxing for the first time since she’d laid eyes on that damned tree. “Vivian’s always serious about bourbon. Or champagne. Or daiquiris.”
“Good. That all sounds wonderful.” Stretching, Winnie took a deep breath and held it, before beginning a long exhale that lasted until she drooped like a deflated balloon. “Then I just want to sleep,” she said in a voice as limp as she looked. “I’m so exhausted my head feels like it’s been stuffed with cotton.”
“You and me both. Come on. We’ll send you to the car while Viv and I take a look at the bullet holes in the boat. And then we’re out of here.” Jesse began to climb the short distance up the hill, careful to avoid loose stones that could send her sliding back down.
“Quick like bunnies,” Winnie agreed, referencing their exit from the area, presumably, and not the way she scooted up the embankment like a short-legged mountain goat. “And I would just as soon not talk to anyone about anything until I’m holding a highball in my hand.”
At the top, Jesse pulled ahead of her companion before pausing to scan the area in front of them. Vivian waited a short distance away while Marla Murphy continued on alone toward the truck that was lifting the medical examiner and Deputy Angeles aloft in a bucket that was a tight fit for the two of them. How in the world they planned to get Roy Lee extricated from the tree, into a body bag and down to the ground without all of them falling into the water they were dangling above was a mystery to Jesse.
“Oh, my God,” Winnie said in a breathless, quivery gush. “I don’t even want to look.”
If a voice ever sounded ready to pass out, hers did. Jesse looked over to see Winnie staring glassy-eyed toward the two men in the cherry picker as they inched their way toward the immobile figure in the tree.
“Then close your eyes.” Taking Winnie by the shoulders, Jesse turned her ninety degrees toward where the cars were parked. “Stand here,” she ordered. “Don’t move. And don’t look!”
Leaving Winnie obediently frozen in place, eyes closed, head down, Jesse hurried to where Vivian stood transfixed by the drama taking place a stone’s throw away. “Is your car locked?” she asked, hoping she sounded less harried than she felt.
“No. The keys are in it.” Vivian glanced toward Jesse. “But I still want to see that boat.”
“You will.” Jesse promised. Twirling on her heel, she started back toward Winnie.
“She looks like she’s getting ready to throw up,” Vivian called after her. “Tell her to do it before she gets in my car.”
Jesse waggled a hand in acknowledgement and continued on, reaching Winnie in two dozen long strides. “The car’s unlocked. She says…”
“I’m not going to throw up,” Winnie interrupted indignantly. “And I’m all through crying. What I want now is something to eat and a good, stiff drink, not necessarily in that order.”
“The car’s yours. Make yourself at home. We’ll be along in a minute.” Jesse felt an uncharacteristic urge to reach out and give her friend a hug. But knowing that Winnie was no more touchy-feely than Jesse herself, she refrained. “Vivian has brisket,” she said instead.
“Ah, bless her. I remember her peanut butter cookies like it was yesterday.” Winnie offered a lopsided smile at the thought, then turned and began her long, slow journey down the side of the levee toward the Mercedes parked one vehicle behind the M.E.’s white van. Her voice trailed back over her shoulder as she went. “The woman sure knows how to make a guest feel at home.”
With reluctance Jesse tore her gaze from Winnie’s retreating figure, then began the short trek back to where Vivian watched, fascinated, while the two men reached out gloved hands toward Roy Lee.
Jesse allowed herself a quick, squeamish peek before leaning in to whisper, “We’ve got to get Winnie out of here before they carry that body down to Arnie’s van.”
Without looking away from the unfolding drama, Vivian leaned closer and said, “I don’t think that’s going to happen in the next few minutes. They’re being very careful. And why are we whispering? They’re all over there.” She pointed toward the activity farther down the levee.
“Voices carry over water,” Jesse answered, not sure that actually applied in this case.
“Really?”
“Maybe.” She shrugged as her peek became a lingering gawk. “Why risk it?” She held her breath while the hydraulic arm edged the bucket forward until it was within inches of where the body straddled a tree limb.
“We can’t just stand here staring,” Jesse said finally, still doing exactly that, but no longer whispering. “We have a boat to examine.”
“It’s like watching a really bad accident, though, isn’t it?” Vivian asked. “It’s hard to look at it, but it’s harder to look away. Oh, well.” She started forward, moving briskly down the path toward the upturned skiff. “We can glance up occasionally to monitor their progress. I wouldn’t want them to drop him while I wasn’t paying attention.”
“Oh, Vivian!” Jesse cringed at the thought while she hurried to keep pace with the woman twenty-odd years her senior. “Don’t say things like that!”
“Well, he’d land in water, so he wouldn’t be terribly damaged, but I suppose it would contaminate the evidence.”
“Actually, if he was in a boat that has a bullet hole in the bottom of it,” Jesse said, shifting to a purely practical viewpoint, “then he’s already been laying in water somewhere around here. And, if he and that boat were sucked up out of that water by a tornado, carried through the air and tossed down here, then whatever trace evidence was on him has already been thoroughly contaminated.”
“Trace evidence,” Vivian repeated affectionately, while pausing to beam at Jesse like a proud parent. “How technical. I’m impressed.”
Wishing she’d just kept her mouth shut, Jesse began moving again toward the fishing boat. “Don’t be. Sheriff Tyler has suggested that I watch too many crime shows on TV, and SueAnn began criminology courses this semester. She’s been sharing her lessons with us while we get ready for the breakfast crowd in the morning.”
“Well, good for her,” Vivian said. “Already our little hobby has begun to make a difference in someone’s life. Other than Bliss, of course, who could be in jail right now if it weren’t for our efforts when Harold was killed.”
“Not to be a party pooper,” Jesse said, “but again, Sheriff Tyler insisted that they were well on their way to solving it all by themselves even without the confession I got.”
Vivian waved the words aside with an elegant sweep of her hand. “Easy for them to say after the fact. All I know is, you’re the one who pieced it together, and you’re the one who managed to worm all kinds of previously withheld information out of everyone you talked to. And every member of the Myrtle Grove Garden Club enjoyed themselves hugely in the process and can’t wait to do it again. Luckily we’re all getting together tomorrow anyway, to start working on our spring project for the town square.”
“Sheriff Tyler has already made me promise,” Jesse began, trying one more time to inject a voice of moderation.
“Oh, poo, he’s a man. And men can be handled.” Balancing carefully on heels whose present location would horrify their designer, Vivian stopped at the edge of the roadway and peered down at the mossy bottom of the upturned boat.
Standing shoulder to shoulder with her, Jesse stared at the holes surrounded by metal that was shiny and new where jagged prongs curled back in
neat circles. They certainly looked like bullet holes to her, but she didn’t think anyone official had even looked at the boat yet.
“Wow,” Vivian said. “Those aren’t from a twenty-two.”
Impressed by her companion’s knowledge on the subject, Jesse turned her gaze to Vivian. “And what does that mean exactly?”
“That means that whoever made those holes was not hunting squirrels. Or rabbits. Or anything small that someone might reasonably be hunting this time of year.” Once again, Vivian kept her expression carefully noncommittal.
Jesse hated it when she did that. “So what would they be hunting, then?” she prodded.
“Well, that’s just it,” Vivian said. “It’s not deer season. And the bullet that made those holes would be used for a larger animal. Or maybe target practice, if you liked loud noises and shredded targets.”
Jesse pondered the new information, not much liking the queasy feeling it gave her. “I don’t suppose you’d use a hunting rifle around a fishing boat, anyway, would you?”
“Not that caliber and not in these waters,” Vivian agreed.
“So if he was shot in his boat, that doesn’t sound like a hunting accident, does it?” Jesse asked, deep in thought. “And if he was shot outside his boat, and then put into his boat, or just left laying beside his boat, that doesn’t sound like an accident, either, does it?”
Vivian shook her head. “A bullet hole between the eyes and another three in the bottom of the boat? With a large game rifle? As much as I hate to say it, that sounds like someone went hunting for a man.”
“Well, it looks like they found him.” Jesse dropped her head back and stared at the heavens. Bright, shining, clear, they gave no hint of the torment they had so recently unleashed. Letting her breath out in a long sigh, Jesse straightened, squared her shoulders and met Vivian’s gaze. “So I guess the real question now is, were they looking for just any man? Or was Roy Lee the man they were hunting?”
Chapter Twelve
“Not a comforting thought, is it?” Vivian asked with much less gloating than Jesse would have expected.
“Dammit, I wanted this to be an accident.”
“I thought he had a bullet hole in the middle of his forehead,” Vivian reminded her.
“He does.” It took some effort, but Jesse refrained from another sigh. The last thing in the world she wanted was for this to have been a murder, or for Roy Lee to have been the intended target.
“Doesn’t that sound awfully precise to have been an accident?” Vivian persisted, while continuing to show uncustomary tact.
“It does,” Jesse agreed.
She knew where this was headed and almost wished Vivian would just go ahead and say it. If it wasn’t an accident, it was murder. Winnie would be the first person they suspected. Then Vivian would need to drag Jesse and the rest of the garden club into the investigation. And when the sheriff found out, he would blame Jesse for everything.
“I have a feeling my life just got a whole lot harder,” she said aloud.
“Oh, come on,” Vivian urged, “doesn’t it feel just a little bit exciting?”
“It’s kind of hard to tell the difference between excitement and dread at the moment.”
Sobered by the reality she had been struggling to avoid, Jesse turned away and found herself facing the slightly stiff body of Roy Lee Rogers being maneuvered off the limb where he had been perched for most of the morning.
Reluctantly spellbound, she watched as Arnie Holt slowly and carefully leveraged the deceased across the top of the bucket’s railing toward the body bag held waiting by Todd Angeles. Working together, the two men guided the bag over the bulky, but not unyielding body, then shifted it into the center of the bucket.
The hydraulic arm supporting the cherry picker eased back and to the side in slow degrees, swinging its heavy load away from the thorns of the tree before lifting it higher and drawing it back in toward the center of the truck. Free of the tree limbs, with its load balanced over the weight of the truck, the basket began to lower.
Faster than Jesse could have imagined, the body was away from the tree and the water, and on its way back to land and the van waiting to transport it to the medical examiner’s office where its secrets would be probed.
“Well, they certainly made that look easier than I thought they would,” Vivian said, sounding mildly disappointed.
“You wanted them to drop him,” Jesse accused. “Don’t even try to deny it.”
Mischief danced in Vivian’s powder blue eyes, accompanied by a laugh that sounded remarkably close to a giggle. “You have to admit, it would have provided a lot of drama to the climax of an already extraordinary day.”
Jesse grinned, grateful for the irreverence Vivian happily supplied when she felt it was needed. “You are a naughty woman, Vivian Windsor.”
“I do my best.” An equally mischievous smile spread across the other woman’s face, and then stopped, frozen midway. “Wait!”
“Wait?” Jesse repeated, confused as Vivian’s hand closed around her forearm and squeezed.
“Look,” Vivian hissed urgently, then immediately contradicted herself. “No! Don’t look.” The hand on Jesse’s arm tightened, holding her still. “Arnie’s climbing down. And he’s pulling out his phone. Do you hear ringing?” Vivian clasped her hands together in quiet excitement. “It is! His phone’s ringing!”
“It could be his wife calling to see if he’ll be home for dinner,” Jesse said, resisting the urge to rub the finger marks on her suddenly freed arm.
Vivian shook her head with a quick jerk. “He’s not married.”
“How would you know that?”
“He’s over sixty and single,” Vivian said emphatically. “I know these things. But he’s a bit of a curmudgeon, unfortunately. Yes!” Her eyes narrowed, and her whole being seemed locked onto a target. “He’s on the ground, on his phone and walking this way. Don’t turn around, act like we’re talking, and listen with everything you’ve got,” Vivian ordered with the hushed precision of someone used to being in charge.
“Maybe he’s checking basketball scores,” Jesse said under her breath, unable to resist one last act of rebellion before doing exactly as she was told. In the more-or-less lifetime she had known Vivian, she had learned that the woman had infallible instincts. Jesse only argued with her because someone needed to, and no one else seemed inclined to take the job.
Vivian’s lips quirked in a beginning smile. “Now who’s being naughty?”
“What’s he doing?” Jesse whispered, her curiosity taking over.
“Talking on his phone and still coming this way.”
“Can you hear what he’s saying?”
“No,” Vivian hissed. “You’re the one with hearing like an owl. Can’t you make out anything?”
Jesse quit talking, closed her eyes and concentrated. “Yes… bullet… forehead.” What she heard was faraway and sporadic, like a radio skipping in and out. She leaned toward the sound, straining to sift the words from the background noise. If only the damned truck would shut its engine off.
“But… on torso… A couple on his leg, too—thigh and ankle. Through and through.” His voice was clear finally, and Jesse willed him to get to the major points quickly, before he walked past them and out of range again or the idling truck backed toward them and drowned out everything. She could only hope he had thought to ask the truck to stay put until he was done talking.
“The thing is,” he went on, his words distinct, “I haven’t looked at the boat, but I’ll bet you the bullet holes in it line up with the bullet holes in his torso and leg. ’Cause—and this is the thing, Joe—there’s no blood on his clothes. The forehead wound had blood front and back. But the body wounds and clothes had practically no blood at all.”
His voice stopped, and Vivian’s hand closed on Jesse’s arm, but before she could react, he was talking again.
“Yeah, yeah, but there would still be blood. He wasn’t in that much water. And he
wasn’t in it for that long. It wouldn’t have all washed away.”
After another pause that had Jesse holding her breath and Vivian’s hand squeezing tight enough to cut off the circulation, he said, “Well, if you’ll quit interrupting, I’ll tell you what that means. And this is just very preliminary, but you always want to know as soon as a thought pops into my head, so…”
There was an almost imperceptible pause and then, “I’m trying to get on with it, if you’d quit interrupting. So, what I’m pretty sure the autopsy will show is that the shot to the head killed him, close range, small caliber. Body shots came after he’d been dead awhile, from a greater distance, and with a larger shell.”
Another pause was followed by, “How the hell do I know why someone would do that? I’m not a forensic psychologist. I just examine dead bodies and try to figure out what killed them. The rest of it’s your job.”
While he waited for a comment on the other end, Jesse noticed she was getting a headache, probably from the waves of dread that came with every new revelation.
“Well, I guess they’re just a bunch of damned fools, then,” he started up again without warning. “The water along the banks isn’t deep enough to sink a boat so it wouldn’t be noticed. And the middle’s plenty deep, but it’s narrow. He’d have bobbed to the surface or washed up on shore within a day or two at the most.”
Arnie’s voice grew more agitated as he talked, and every time he had to stop just seemed to make it worse. “The bullets that shot him are too big a caliber for hunting small game. They’d cut a rabbit smack in two, and this ain’t deer season. So if these yahoos are trying to make this look like a hunting accident, they’re doing a damned poor job of it.”
He took a long breath, and then plowed ahead. “My preliminary finding is that he died of a gunshot wound that was not self-inflicted. Probable homicide.” He punctuated the last word with a head bob and a moment of silence.
“You’re very welcome,” he said then, sounding pleased with himself. “And, yes, I will start the damned autopsy today. I thought it was apparent that I had already started the damned autopsy. We are now waiting for you to get off the phone so the body can be transported. Well, yes, and you’re welcome. Again. Goodbye.”
Murder Most Thorny (Myrtle Grove Garden Club Mystery Book 2) Page 9
