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

by Loulou Harrington

  “I didn’t kill my mother, and I didn’t kill my brother, and Averell’s fine.”

  “But you did bury your mother in Roy Lee’s backyard. You and Averell, and I’m guessing, Roy Lee. So, did one of them kill her?”

  “No! Dammit! Nobody killed her!” His body broke from its stiff posture, and, for just a moment, he allowed himself the sort of body wriggle that a frustrated five-year-old might indulge in when dealing with someone who was too stupid to understand him.

  Jesse refused to be annoyed. She was forcing him to discuss things he didn’t want to face, much less talk about, and he resented it.

  “So, she must have died of natural causes, then. Is that it, Hansen? She was older, growing frail, and she just died of old age. Nobody killed her. Everybody loved her. So why did she end up in an unmarked grave under a wood pile in Roy Lee’s backyard?”

  “Because I was on the verge of losing my farm, Averell was in the middle of a divorce, and Roy Lee was the only one who owned land free and clear.” He said it impatiently, as if the answer should be obvious. He omitted the body language to accompany his contempt.

  Jesse felt less like she might be shot at any moment. Hansen seemed more desperate than violent, and he seemed to be telling the truth, at least what passed for the truth inside his head.

  “Okay, so why? You buried her in plain sight, covered the grave up with a full rack of wood, and told everyone she went into a nursing home. If no one did anything wrong, why did you hide her death?”

  “Because,” he said slowly, as if speaking to a child, “I was about to lose my farm. We’d had two really bad years of drought. Water holes were drying up, grass was dying in the field. I had nothing to feed my cattle and no money to buy hay with.”

  As he talked, the desperation returned to his voice, and Jesse saw clearly that violence was much less threatening than a man with nowhere to turn. “Roy Lee didn’t have a job, and work was hard to come by. The economy sucked, and money was scarce. We all had something going on, and we depended on her help.” His voice cracked, and he sounded close to tears for an instant. Then he cleared his throat, gathered himself, and went on. “Every month. Every damned month, she was all that was keeping us afloat. She had social security and a pension, and that little bit was all that was standing between us and disaster.”

  Jesse had nothing flippant to say and no questions to ask. She only had thanks to give that she had a home and a mother and friends and enough money coming in each month to live on. Her life was nothing fancy, but she had the things that mattered. And sometimes she forgot that not everyone did.

  Chapter Thirty-One

  “I’m so sorry,” Jesse said in her best whispering-in-church voice.

  “I’m not asking for anybody’s damned pity,” he snarled back at her.

  “You might as well put that gun away. It won’t do you any good to shoot me, and the rest of the world is in the process of figuring all this out without any help from us. Now, do you have any idea who killed Roy Lee and why?”

  He stared at her as if she dumbfounded him. His arm slowly lowered to his side. “You really did come here to ask me about Roy Lee?”

  “Yeah, I’m trying to figure out who killed him.”

  “My bet’s still on that damned Moss Harkness.”

  “Why?” Jesse demanded. The man certainly seemed to have a bee in his bonnet about Winnie’s dad.

  “Meanness.” Hansen’s voice rang with conviction. “Meanness and greed. He doesn’t want to share his daughter and he doesn’t want to share his money. And he just plain hated Roy Lee.”

  “You really think so?”

  “Winnie’s scared of him. Always has been. She didn’t want to put that ranch up for sale. He badgered her into it.”

  “Who did you hear that from?” Jesse was pretty sure she already knew the answer. Winnie had suggested there was tension between her father and her husband, and it was beginning to look like “tension” was too polite a word.

  “Roy Lee.” Hansen’s chin jutted stubbornly and his eyes were back to squinting.

  “Don’t you think his opinion might have been biased just a tiny bit?”

  “Well, yeah, but considering he’s dead now, that doesn’t make him wrong, now does it?”

  This was going nowhere, and Jesse couldn’t put too much stock in the word of a man who buried his deceased mother in an unmarked grave so he could collect her social security and split it with his other two hard-luck brothers. Deciding she didn’t care who Hansen Rogers blamed for Roy Lee’s murder, she moved on. “So, have you got my truck?”

  “Oh, was that your truck?”

  “Yes,” Jesse snapped. “It belonged to my grandfather, and I want it back. So where is it?”

  “It’s in my barn. I got a tractor parked in front of it.”

  She wanted to drive her beloved pickup away immediately, but was sure the police would want to examine it before she was allowed to even touch it. Patience wasn’t one of her virtues and having to practice it just made her irritable. “Did you hurt it?” she demanded.

  “It’s a truck, lady, get over it. But, no, other than hotwiring it, we didn’t hurt a hair on its head. Okay?”

  The gun at his side twitched, as if he were itching to do something with it if only he could figure out what. Then, from out of nowhere, Sophia rushed through the doorway, tire tool raised. Without slowing down, she flew across the distance to Hansen and, with a grunt of effort, slammed the metal rod down onto his wrist.

  His fingers flew open and the gun hit the floor with a clatter, spinning under the table and out of reach. Letting out a yowl like a startled cat, Hansen grabbed his wrist, and whirled. “What the hell!?” Face to face with his attacker, his fury morphed to puzzled injury. “Whadya do that for?” he demanded.

  “You should have put it down when she asked you,” Sophia said. With the back of the hand that still held the tire iron, she swept a blond curl away from her brow. “And from mothers everywhere, I have to say, you suck as a son.”

  “I was gonna lose everything!” he shouted, caught somewhere between injured and indignant. “She wouldn’t have wanted that. And I took care of her for years. I was owed something.”

  “I imagine the federal government’s going to have an opinion about that,” Sophia answered with a sniff.

  She turned at Jesse and held up a roll of duct tape in her free hand. “You want to tie him up until the sheriff gets here? Winnie’s dad called demanding that she come home so he can look after her. Winnie agreed, but Vivian wants to talk to you before anyone takes her over there. So we need to get out of here and go meet Vivian.”

  “You broke my damned wrist,” Hansen protested. “You’re not going to tie me up and just leave me here.”

  Sophia’s glance flickered to him and then back to Jesse. “What do you think?”

  Jesse shrugged. “I think he’s wrong about that.”

  ∙∙∙•••●●●•••∙∙∙

  The little man’s curses followed them down the long hallway and out the front door.

  “He’s got a set of lungs on him,” Sophia said. “I’ll give him that.”

  “Where did you find the duct tape?” Jesse asked as they reached the car.

  “My trunk. I brought it along, just in case.”

  Inside and buckled up, Jesse shook her head. “You’re showing an alarming talent for this sort of thing.” She swung the car in a wide circle, and they headed back down the long dirt drive they had come in on. “Did Vivian say anything else?”

  “Well, apparently they found those guys who were talking to you and Winnie at the levee. And they were the ones who shot up the boat and put the larger caliber holes into Roy Lee. But he was dead before they shot him, and apparently they swore they were shooting from across the lake and thought it was a duffle bag in the bottom of the boat. So most of the charges against them are going to be misdemeanors.”

  “It’s a shame it’s not a felony to be a stupid, insensitive je
rk,” Jesse said as she pulled out onto the two-lane blacktop that would guide them back to civilization.

  “Oh, no, honey,” Sophia answered in alarm, “the jails couldn’t hold them all.”

  They had left Hansen Rogers bound at the wrists with duct tape and then taped to the back of the chair. Each ankle was attached to the nearest chair leg and duct taped securely. If he struggled too hard, he would turn the chair over and be twice as uncomfortable as he already was. Jesse had found a tablet and pen and forced him to write and sign a brief confession of his actions before rendering him immobile. The confession she had left taped to the refrigerator.

  But far from feeling satisfied, Jesse was restless and frustrated. So far, they had turned over a few rocks and uncovered some ugly, squirming bugs, but Roy Lee’s killer might as well be on the far side of the moon, out of reach and hidden from view.

  “At least it’s safe for Winnie to move back home again,” she said. “Hansen is the same as in custody and Averell will be soon. Unfortunately, none of that seems to have anything to do with Roy Lee’s murder.”

  “So we still haven’t got a clue who did it or why?” Sophia asked.

  Jesse gave her head a disgusted shake. “Not unless you’ve figured out something I haven’t.”

  Sophia expelled a huge sigh and leaned back against the headrest, staring up at where the sky would be if the convertible’s top were down. “I wouldn’t say it was easy with Harry Kerr, but at least we had lots of people with reasons to kill him. We almost had too much to choose from with him. So what do we know about Roy Lee?”

  “Well, he didn’t have any money. All he and his brothers were clearing from his mother’s income amounted to some extra spending money. And nobody had a clue about that until Roy Lee was already dead. Winnie had already gotten the house and land, so that wasn’t a point of contention. No jealous ex-boyfriend in LaDonna’s life. Most murders are committed for love, for greed, or to cover something up. None of those seem to apply here.”

  “Maybe it was an accident.” Sophia straightened with sudden interest. “Maybe we can’t figure out a motive, because it was an accident!”

  “Well, the guys who shot him after he was dead, and the tornado that scrambled the crime scene were either unconnected or accidental, so I guess stranger things have happened. Come to think of it, this whole thing has been pretty strange. Maybe we should quit thinking about it for now, go meet Vivian, and work on this some more when the whole group is together.”

  Jesse’s mind was beginning to feel like mush, and she was pretty certain no brilliant flashes of insight were about to occur to her. So, she was completely unprepared when one did.

  “Oh, my God.” As her mind began to whirl, she slowed the car and pulled over onto the narrow sliver of shoulder that dropped off into a steep ditch.

  “What?” Sophia demanded.

  “If it walks like a duck, and it quacks like a duck…” She remembered the simple analogy made by SueAnn Bailey when their garden club was trying to solve the murder of Harry Kerr.

  “What duck? I haven’t seen any ducks on this case,” Sophia said.

  “I dismissed what he said because he’s such an angry, excuse-making little SOB, I thought it was just more petulant whining.”

  “Who? What?”

  “Just a minute.” Jesse picked up her phone and punched in SueAnn’s number on speed dial.

  “Jesse, hi!” SueAnn answered on the second ring. “I’ve been hoping you’d call.”

  “Are you near your computer?”

  “Yes! What can I do?!”

  “Find out everything you can on Winnie’s father, Moss Harkness. He and Roy Lee didn’t get along. I want to know why. Or at least how serious it was. I’m headed for Vivian’s. Let me know when you have something.”

  “On it, boss.” SueAnn’s cheerful promise ended the connection.

  “Moss Harkness is the duck?” Sophia asked.

  “He’s someone we haven’t taken seriously. And we don’t have many people left,” was all Jesse said.

  “So he’s a desperation suspect.”

  “I wouldn’t… Okay, yes. But, either way, maybe it will lead us back to something else we’ve overlooked.”

  “Have you ever thought it could lead us back to Winnie?” Sophia asked softly.

  Jesse frowned, and repeated the argument she’d already had with herself, more than once. “She would have to have driven all the way out there, shot him, and then driven all the back to her house before I got up this morning. Because I called her almost as soon as I was awake.”

  “Or she spent the night with him, and all she had to do was argue with him, shoot him with his own gun, and then drive back to her house before dawn. And we are running out of suspects.”

  “Gosh, Mom, I would sure rather find out it was her dad.”

  “Or a total stranger,” Sophia suggested, instantly cheerful. “They’re harder to find, but they’re much easier to live with as a killer. Maybe SueAnn can come up with a suspect we’ve never even heard of.”

  “Maybe we’ll just forget about the ducks and start looking for a pigeon.” With that, Jesse pulled back onto the road and continued toward Vivian’s. And this time, she really did stop thinking about it.

  ∙∙∙•••●●●•••∙∙∙

  “Winnifryd’s gone,” Vivian called from her front portico. Obviously waiting for their arrival, she came down the steps to greet them before they were even out of their car. “Her father showed up as we were leaving the sheriff’s office. I explained she had clothes here, and that you were on your way back to talk to her, but he didn’t seem to care. Winnifryd went with him, but she really didn’t seem to want to.”

  “Was he taking her back to her house?” Sophia asked, frowning as she intercepted Vivian at the base of the stairs.

  “I got the impression they were going to his house. But her clothes and her overnight bag are still here.”

  “Luckily, that’s not going to bother Winnie nearly as much as it does you. Let’s go inside and sit down.” Jesse turned the two women back toward the house and ushered them up the steps. “I’ve got SueAnn getting some information for me. And we might as well do some catching up before we head off to bring Winnie’s things to her.”

  “Oh, I’m so relieved.” Vivian rested her slender hand at the base of her throat. “He just seemed so agitated. He was so focused on what he wanted, it’s like he didn’t hear anything I said to him.”

  “He was always a little like that,” Sophia said. “I always felt so sorry for his poor wife. She never seemed to have a say in anything.”

  “I don’t remember her at all.” Jesse stopped just inside the front door. “Where do we want to talk?”

  “I’ve already made a pot of coffee,” Vivian suggested. “We can sit on the terrace off the kitchen.”

  “Sounds fantastic. I know Jesse could use some.” Sophia headed immediately across the foyer, into the dining room, and around the table set with an impressive floral arrangement, her heels making a tap-tap-tapping on the marble floor that reached from the entry hall through to the kitchen.

  By the time Jesse and Vivian arrived at the kitchen, Sophia already had a tray set with English china cups, a filled, matching creamer beside them, along with dessert plates in the same pattern. Jesse took the tray and carried it out to the round, glass-topped table situated in the afternoon shade. Sophia followed with an insulated carafe of coffee, while Vivian brought a platter with lemon pound cake already sliced.

  It was a ritual repeated many times, and within a minute they were all seated, with coffee poured and cake arranged in front of them. “Now, what do you have SueAnn doing?” Vivian asked.

  “A background check on…” Just then Jesse’s phone began to chime with the bouncy ringtone that SueAnn had designated for herself. Without saying anything else, Jesse answered, “I didn’t expect you to have anything so soon.”

  “Well, I’m not done, but I found this interesting and t
hought I would share. Last year Moss Harkness was stopped and ticketed for erratic driving. His license was suspended and he was ordered to undergo a psychiatric examination.”

  “But he must have been cleared because he got his license back,” Jesse said, wondering where this was going, and why a psychiatric exam would have been ordered.

  “No, he didn’t,” SueAnn corrected. “His license was revoked.”

  “But he was driving just today!”

  “And he was stopped again two months ago and given a ticket for driving without a license. Now, I’m going out on a limb here, but my guess is that he tested negative for drugs or alcohol, and that’s why he got the psych exam in the first place. Things like strokes can cause the same symptoms, but if he got revoked, I’m guessing he failed the psych. Which could mean Alzheimer’s, dementia, or he’s just a weird old dude. Either way, pretty interesting, huh?”

  “Very. Have you found anything else?”

  “Let’s see—wife died when his daughter was like, seven, I think. Never remarried. Owns a nice chunk of land, and was never rich, but was comfortable. Though lately he’s been selling things off and showing signs of someone in financial distress.”

  “Does it look real, or like something he imagined?”

  “That will take a lot more digging, but people suffering from an impairment of their mental faculties frequently make poor financial decisions, so it could be real. Unless he’s just a weird old dude with really good financial skills, in which case, I take back everything I said.”

  Jesse laughed, glad for the spot of sunshine SueAnn always managed to impart. “You find anything else, college girl?”

  “He owns the title on his daughter’s property.”

  Jesse’s laughter stopped. “Winnie’s property? Her house? Her land?”

  “He originally financed the house, apparently, and has had a lien on the property ever since. Two months ago, he seized the property and put it up for sale.”