Murder Most Thorny (Myrtle Grove Garden Club Mystery Book 2)

by Loulou Harrington

  “It’s a human leg bone,” Joe said again, more emphatically.

  “My ex-husband was sitting in a tree with a bullet hole between his eyes,” Winnie answered. “I didn’t know the bone was human, and I doubt I know the person it belonged to.” Then she wrinkled her nose. “That doesn’t sound very nice, does it? Look, I’m sorry someone else is dead. And I’m sorry they’re buried in my backyard, but…”

  “Whoa! Wait!” Joe threw up his arms to block the flow of words. “What? Buried where?” He stepped in, towering over Winnie, and said very softly, “Tell me exactly how you came to be in possession of that bone.”

  “Well, I wanted to put in some lettuce before the weather got too warm, and I wanted it where I could just walk out the back door and pick it, so I dug up this spot in the backyard where the dirt looked kind of loose. And I dug it down a couple of feet because I thought it would be a good place for tomatoes later in the summer since they’re a crop that should be rotated.”

  Joe lifted his head and looked at Jesse across the fender of the car. “This is what you’d be like if I just let you talk as much as you wanted, isn’t it?

  “Probably.”

  Winnie frowned. “You asked me how I came to find it.”

  “Yes, ma’am, I did,” he acknowledged. “Please continue.”

  “Well, when I’d gone down a good two feet, my shovel hit something. And thinking it was a rock, I started prying it out. And when I got it about halfway out, I could tell it wasn’t a rock. So I got down and scooped the dirt away with my hands, and there it was, sticking up vertically out of the dirt.”

  “Did you see any other bones?”

  “No, sir. Just that one. But I didn’t dig anymore, either. I thought whatever that poor, dead animal was, I should just leave it there. I mean it could have been a horse, or a cow, or Jesse said later, maybe a deer. And it could have been there since before we owned the land.”

  “How long have you owned the land?”

  “Twenty, twenty-five years. Something like that. Roy Lee bought it a couple of years before we got married, but I got it in the divorce ’cause we built the house with money we got from my daddy.”

  “That bone’s not very old,” Joe said with a shake of his head.

  “Well, how old is it?” Winnie demanded, seeming upset for the first time.

  “A year. Maybe two.”

  “How can you tell?” Winnie’s voice ratcheted up a notch. “We’ve been separated a year and a half! How did that bone get there?” She sagged against the trunk lid, her hand going to the base of her throat. “Oh, dear God, what does this mean?”

  Joe pointed a finger at each of them and took a step back. “You two don’t move.” He swung around and went back to his truck. Leaning in the open driver’s window, he retrieved the radio mike laying on the dash. “Marla, Todd, you still down on that levee crime scene?”

  “Yes, sir,” Marla’s voice came back. “We’re checking out that boat. Arnie left a little while ago with the body, and we’re waiting on a truck to come pick up this boat so we can get out of here.”

  “Well, when you’re free, I found Roy Rogers’s pickup and boat trailer on the next road over, just to the north of you. You’ll come over a rise, and the road dips down to a low area with a boat ramp. His truck’s an older model, brown, sitting over to the side. You’re going to have my tire tracks and the tracks of Vivian Windsor’s Mercedes down here on the trail leading to the water. Probably somewhere around here is where he was shot. Maybe some signs of a struggle. The bullets are probably buried in lake mud, so we’ll never find them, but there could be something around here the killer left behind.”

  “First road to the north?” Marla repeated.

  “Yep. More like two strips of bare dirt, actually, going out through the weeds immediately to the north.”

  “Got it. We’ll be down there shortly.”

  “Okay. By then we’ll be gone. I have Winnifryd Rogers with me, and we’re headed out to her house to check on something that may or may not be related. I’ll get somebody out there to secure her house until we arrive, maybe start processing it. Frank, you wouldn’t happen to be listening, would you?”

  “Guilty,” came the gruff voice of Deputy Frank Haney.

  “Frank, would you grab one of those guys processing Mrs. Rogers’s truck and take him out to her place? There’s a hole in the backyard we’re going to need to check out.”

  “Would that be related to that femur, Joe?”

  “Yep. Just get there and secure the place until I arrive with Mrs. Rogers. She’s going to need to show us exactly where she found that bone.”

  “Yes, sir. On my way.”

  Sheriff Tyler returned the radio to the dash and walked back to the front of his truck. “If you wouldn’t mind, Mrs. Rogers, I would appreciate it if you rode with me.”

  Looking like a trapped rabbit again, though not quite so pink and white, Winnie stared wide-eyed at the oversized pickup behind them, its lights still flashing in quiet menace.

  “My truck’s at her house,” Jesse said, laying claim to her stake in the trip.

  Joe grinned. Not a happy grin—more of an “I’ve got a secret, and you’re not going to like it” grin.

  “Oh, don’t worry,” he answered, practically purring. “I’m not done with you. In case you haven’t noticed, you’re in this up to your eyeballs. I’m just not ready to start sticking either one of you behind the cage in my truck. Yet. So, I’ll trust you and Mrs. Windsor to stay right behind me.”

  “Okay.” Jesse frowned after him, feeling that something had just gone very wrong. In what up to her eyeballs? What did he mean by that?

  “Be careful turning,” he called to Jesse as he helped Winnie into the truck seat perched high above the ground. “I wouldn’t want to have to tow the two of you out of here.”

  Ignoring his latest taunt, Jesse waited for him until he came back around to the front of the pickup on his way to the driver’s side. “What did you mean by that?” she demanded, stepping forward until they were nearly touching and dropping her voice to almost a whisper. “That remark about eyeballs? In what?”

  “You’re a part of this, Jesse,” he said, talking almost as quietly as she was. “You’re not standing back watching. You’re not poking your nose into something that’s happening to someone else. You’re in this. It’s happening to you. And we have no idea what’s going on, or who’s going to get hurt next. Now, hop in that car, and stay close.”

  Chapter Sixteen

  “What in the world was all that about?” Vivian asked as she backed in a tight curve toward the rear of Roy Lee’s boat trailer, then pulled forward and headed up the hill in a more graceful climb than the descent had been. “Once I got my window down, I could hear most of it, but I missed what started it all. And I couldn’t hear a thing you two were whispering about at the end.”

  “The best I can tell,” Jesse said, “he thinks Winnie might be a mass murderer, or multiple anyway.”

  “Didn’t I tell you that’s what they were going to do?” Vivian crowed in triumph. “Except for the mass or multiple part, which I don’t understand at all. But is it too awful that I find this exciting?”

  She frowned and slowed the car, inching across a particularly deep pothole, while beginning what sounded like an internal monologue. “It is, isn’t it? I should be ashamed of myself. How sad has my life become that this is the most exciting thing to happen in months?”

  Making a sharp turn onto smooth pavement, Vivian accelerated in pursuit of the sheriff’s pickup which had reached the county road well ahead of them. “Do we follow him? And where are we going?”

  “We follow him,” Jesse acknowledged, hoping they didn’t die trying. “And we’re going to Winnie’s house, which I can get us to once we’re in Myrtle Grove. But I have no idea where we are right now.”

  “Not to worry, I have a GPS. Besides, I can catch him.” Vivian waved a dismissive hand in the air. “Now, what did you mean
by multiple?”

  “Well, in the eyes of law enforcement, Winnie has a murdered ex-husband, plus a human bone found in the cab of her truck, all on the same day. I guess some suspicion on their part wouldn’t be unreasonable.”

  “Human bone?” Vivian demanded, without taking her eyes off the truck now flying down the narrow country road ahead of them. “Why am I just now hearing about this?”

  Tired enough to drop, Jesse rested her head on the back of her seat. “It’s been a busy day, Viv.”

  “Okay, well, I’m just going to say it.” Vivian smacked the steering wheel with the palm of her hand. “This is exciting! Not good, mind you. There’s nothing good about it. But, more like a horror movie, kind of scary and awful and exciting, all at the same time.” Grinning, she gave her shoulders a twitch like a shiver had just passed through her and reached over to pat Jesse’s hand. “Now while I concentrate on keeping up with that lead-footed hunk of man up there, why don’t you fill me in on what I don’t know.”

  The first thought that jumped into Jesse’s mind was the warning issued by that hunk of man just before they had parted ways, but the instant it popped into her head, her stomach clenched up, and her mind bounced off in another direction. She couldn’t even think about it very hard, much less bring herself to mention it to Vivian.

  Jesse was used to helping others, to being a sympathetic ear and offering a hand in times of need. What she wasn’t used to was having trouble of her own. She didn’t like the feeling of it one bit, and she damned sure didn’t want to talk about it. So, she took a deep breath and shoved away the guilt of withholding something vital from Vivian, who would be upset half a dozen different ways if she ever found out.

  “Okay,” Jesse began, “the bone was a femur Winnie dug up while prepping for a vegetable bed in her backyard. She didn’t know what kind of bone it was, but that’s what she wanted to talk with me about today.”

  “Let me get this straight.” Vivian stared unblinkingly ahead, following the tail of the truck that kept disappearing over a hill or around a curve only to come back into sight when the road flattened out again. “She asked you all the way out here to go fishing, knowing you don’t fish, in order to talk to you about a bone she dug up and didn’t know what it was?”

  “That’s about it,” Jesse agreed.

  “I don’t get it. What did she want to know?”

  “What she should do about it. She didn’t much like my suggestion that she should call the police.”

  “Didn’t like it how? What else would you do?” Vivian tore her gaze from the narrow, winding road to give Jesse a look of bafflement, then quickly returned her focus to the landscape whizzing by.

  When Jesse was able to catch her breath again, she answered, “I think Winnie wanted me to tell her it was an animal, so she could quit worrying about it.”

  “That’s kind of odd behavior, don’t you think?” Vivian asked, this time not taking her eyes from the two-lane with ditches for shoulders.

  “Winnie’s not your average person,” Jesse said. “She’s too blunt, socially awkward with strangers and totally hates conflict. I was amazed that she ever got married and even more impressed that she could bring herself to file for divorce.”

  “Well, there is that. Sophia and I both worried about her when she was young. She was one of those kids that you’re not sure is ever going to blossom. But she seems to have turned out all right.”

  “Except for now,” Jesse reminded her. “A dead ex-husband, human bones in her backyard, and the police breathing down her neck for explanations I’m not sure she has.”

  “Oh, now, don’t be a buzz kill, Jesselyn. We’ve got a long drive back into town, and a mystery to get to work on. So let’s just focus on what we do know.”

  “I wasn’t aware we knew anything.” Jesse decided to ignore the “buzz kill” comment in deference to Vivian’s renewed enthusiasm.

  “Of course, we do. We’ve already decided that Roy Lee was killed because of greed or to hide something.”

  “Or target practice,” Jesse added, unable to resist. She could only hope that it didn’t really turn out to be something that stupid, but people had died for less reason than that.

  “Oh, good heavens. And the sad part is that’s actually a possibility.” Vivian lifted a hand from the steering wheel to press a palm against her cheek. Then she shook her head and returned her hand to the wheel just as the car swooped around a curve, down a hill, back up a second hill and around another curve all through a tunnel of trees that shut out everything else including sunlight.

  Jesse closed her eyes and consoled herself that at least Vivian had both hands on the steering wheel again. Maybe they should forget about keeping up with the sheriff and rely on the GPS instead. Just as she was about to voice her thought, she felt sunlight on her face.

  “So,” Vivian said as Jesse opened her eyes to flat fields and a straight road ahead of them. “What we have to figure out now is, how old are the bones in Winnie’s backyard and could they be connected to Roy Lee’s death?”

  “Surely not.” Jesse drew back, shocked not only by the idea, but that she hadn’t been the one to think of it.

  “That hadn’t occurred to you yet, had it?” Vivian flicked a glance in Jesse’s direction. “Does anyone know how old the bone could be? And is there more than just the femur?”

  “That’s all Winnie dug up. She was assuming it was old, but Joe said it wasn’t more than a year or two.”

  “Um.” Vivian straightened her arms and leaned back in her seat as the long, clear stretch of pavement continued ahead of them. “So, that would mean that whoever it is probably died and was buried in the Rogers’s yard around the same time Winnie and Roy Lee separated and he moved out.”

  “Gee whiz, when you put it like that…” Jesse quickly did the mental math and realized Vivian had once again hit upon something Jesse hadn’t even thought of. “It does sound like quite a coincidence, doesn’t it?”

  “It struck me that way,” Vivian agreed. “So, I guess that can be point one on our list. Dead body burial, marriage ending, Roy Lee moving out, all at the same time. Now, what we need to know is exactly what caused their split, and if Roy Lee had tried to reconcile and move back in.”

  “Dammit!”

  Chapter Seventeen

  Of all the things in the whole world Jesse despised, being wrong was just about at the top of the list. And hearing Vivian say all the things Jesse hadn’t taken the time to consider, made her realize that she was letting her friendship with Winnie get in the way.

  The first time Jesse stumbled into a murder investigation, she had practically tripped over the leads and information that came her way. But with the help of friends, she had learned to listen to her instincts and allow her intuition to guide her even when the maze of secrets began to lead places she hadn’t wanted to go.

  This morning she had forgotten everything she had learned earlier and had let her emotions cloud her thinking. She hadn’t wanted to listen to or really see the things going on around her. And she had been wrong. She wasn’t doing Winnie any favors pretending any of this was an accident or that it wasn’t threatening to turn into a giant, hairy mess if somebody didn’t get busy trying to figure out what was really going on.

  “You’re awfully quiet over there,” Vivian said gently. “After that initial outburst anyway.”

  “I really hate being stupid. And I really hate when it takes me so long to figure out I have been.”

  “But that’s why you have me, sweetheart. They don’t call me Obi Wan for nothing.”

  Jesse rolled her eyes at Vivian and laughed. “And I hate it most of all when you’re the one who’s right when I’m wrong.”

  “I would apologize, but I can’t. It wouldn’t be sincere,” Vivian said with a grin. “So, what am I right about this time?”

  “Roy Lee had been trying persistently to reconcile with Winnie. Even though he’d been living with a new girlfriend for the last year, he’d been
begging Winnie for another chance.”

  Vivian gasped and slid a quick glance toward Jesse. “Oh, my goodness, I do have a talent for this, don’t I? I would hug you if I weren’t driving.”

  “In my own defense,” Jesse said, “I only found out about the age and species of the bone a few minutes before we started driving. I haven’t really had a chance to give it any serious thought.”

  “And it has been a trying morning for you,” Vivian added sympathetically. “You were up early, and you went through a tornado, and you found a body. It’s understandable that you might not be as sharp as usual.”

  “But we both know it’s because I just didn’t want to get involved in another murder, especially one where a friend could be a suspect.”

  Resigned, Jesse felt a momentary gloom settle over her. Death, suspicion, murder. They were huge and heavy responsibilities, and ones she didn’t take lightly. If Winnie were endangered, there was no guarantee Jesse could help her. It wasn’t something she had wanted, but avoiding it wouldn’t make Roy Lee’s death go away, and it wouldn’t make Winnie’s life any easier.

  “Okay,” Jesse said, embracing what couldn’t be wished away, “so, the first thing we have to accept is that Roy Lee may have known the person buried at their house. Or, he might have been the one who did the actual burying. Or, hell, he could even have been the killer.”

  “Or, he might have known who the killer was,” Vivian supplied, taking a slightly less drastic tack. “And his death could have been related to the bone Winnie discovered. Is it possible she talked to him about it?”

  “Who knows.” Jesse felt like throwing up her hands in exasperation at one more thing she hadn’t thought to ask while everything else was happening. “I’m not even sure exactly when she found the bone. It could have been a week ago or more.”

  “Do they have any kids? Anybody else living there with her?”

  “No kids, and her dad worked on her truck not too long ago, but I think he’s still got his own place.”

  “So, there was probably no one else to stumble across the grave but her. And the only way for Roy Lee to control the situation was to be living in the house.”