Bodies & Buried Secrets: A Rosewood Place Mystery (Rosewood Place Mysteries Book 1) (5 page)

Annie woke to the sound of birds chirping and Bessie struggling to get up off the slightly deflated air mattress. “Somebody must have pulled the plug on us in the night,” she wailed, flailing her arms and struggling to sit up.

Annie rolled off the inflatable bed and pushed herself up on her hands and knees, then struggled to help her mother to her feet. Once they were both standing, there was a rush for the bathroom, with Bessie going first because she was older, and Annie waiting not-so-patiently for her turn. After using the bathroom, Annie’s next priority was coffee, but Bessie beat her to it. Annie could hear her mother making her way down the stairs, talking to herself the whole way.

Annie thought that she’d probably done her mother a big favor by moving back in with her. The older woman was obviously a few cats short of her official crazy cat lady status, but she had the talking-to-herself schtick down pat. Annie pulled her jeans on and was looking for a clean shirt when she heard her mother scream.

Bessie’s cries weren’t those of someone in pain, but they were verging on hysterical. Annie rushed down the stairs as fast as she could, nearly tripping herself in the process. She rounded the corner heading into the kitchen and ran straight into her mother.

“Mama, what’s wrong? Are you hurt?” Annie surveyed her mother quickly, trying to determine what she was screaming about.

Bessie took a deep breath and yelled, pointing as she did. “Over there! I think she’s dead!”

Annie followed her mother’s finger to where it pointed. Suzy Anderson lay sprawled on the kitchen floor, her eyes wide open in an empty death stare. Annie gasped, then jumped as the back door, which had been ajar, slammed against the wall. Rory stumbled across the threshold and into the kitchen, stopping just before he reached Suzy’s body. He stared at her for a long minute, then rubbed his eyes. “Well, I was gonna ask if everyone was alright,” he began, “but I guess one of us isn’t.”

Annie wrapped her arms around her mother and tried to lead her out of the kitchen, but Bessie was having none of it. She’d calmed down but still seemed unsure of where to put herself. “I swear, I just wanted a cup of coffee. Is that too much to ask?” Bessie rubbed her forehead. “You’d better call the police, Annie. That woman looks dead to me.”

Rory bent down and gently felt for a pulse. His fingers found nothing but cold flesh. “Yes, ma’am, I believe she is.” He straightened, his face paler than it had been just a few minutes ago. “Annie, you’d better call the police. I’m not sure how Suzy got in here, but I’m guessing she was alive when she came in. Where’s Devon?”

Annie tensed. “Why? I’m sure he’s still in his room. Are you implying that he might have had something to do with this?” She pointed at Suzy’s body, then crossed her arms. How dare he imply that Devon could possibly have anything to do with the wretched woman’s murder! “Rory, I’ll not have you making accusations--”

He cut her off. “That’s not what I’m saying. I’m saying he doesn’t need to be on his own if there’s a chance that there’s a killer running around here, and he sure as heck doesn’t need to stumble down here and see this dead body.” He sighed. “Go and get Devon, then bring him and Bessie out the front door, around to my camper. Y’all can wait in there, have some coffee, and we’ll wait for the police.”

Annie realized that his suggestion made sense. He was right, she did not want Devon stumbling across Suzy’s body, and she knew that the sooner she called the police, the sooner Suzy’s body would be out of sight. She went back up to her bedroom and retrieved her phone from its spot by the window. She’d left it charging when she’d gone to sleep, and it was now fully charged and ready to go. Reluctantly, she headed down the hallway and knocked on Devon’s door. She was answered by a noisy mewling kitten, but she didn’t hear her son, so she tested the doorknob.

It was unlocked, so she poked her head in, blocking the kitten’s escape with her foot. “Devon, are you awake?” He didn’t answer, so she knelt and scooped up the kitten, then opened the door fully. Once inside, she could see her son, still sound asleep, wrapped up in two blankets. His air mattress, or what was left of it, was completely flat, hundreds of tiny holes and tears lining the side. “Naughty kitty,” she scolded TigerLily, then she nudged her son awake.

Dylan slept like the dead, so it was little wonder that he hadn’t heard anything during the night, but it bothered Annie greatly that they’d all simply slept through the murder of a woman in their kitchen. She didn’t explain what had happened to Devon, but instead instructed him to put on some clothes and go with her outside the house. He protested at first, but after seeing his mother’s pale complexion and serious expression, he did as she requested, taking the kitten with him as he followed Bessie out into the yard.

Annie called 911 and explained what she’d found. She surprised herself and actually managed to stay calm enough to give her new address, and not the one for her mother’s house. The dispatcher assured her that a car would be on its way to her within minutes. She headed to Rory’s camper, which had now become a sort of waiting area for her family. Rory handed her a cup of coffee and she accepted it gratefully. It certainly wasn’t every day that she had to deal with finding a dead body in her kitchen before she’d had the benefit of knocking back a cup of coffee.

It took all of ten minutes for a police car to show up, and a young deputy stepped out of the car, blue lights still flashing. “Morning, ma’am. I understand you called about somebody breaking into your home?”

Annie gave her cup of coffee to her mother, who was hanging halfway out of the tiny camper. “No, sir, I called about a murder.”

The young police officer suddenly looked pale. “Oh, well, I must have misunderstood the dispatcher. I’m probably going to need to call in another officer, maybe an ambulance…”

Bessie stepped out of the camper and onto the gravel in the driveway. “Delbert Plemmons, is that you? How’s your mama doing, son?”

Annie glanced at the officer’s name tag. It did read Plemmons. Trust her mother to know the cop that came to investigate Suzy’s death.

“Oh, Mrs. Purdy, what are you doing here?” Delbert looked puzzled, but a little relieved. “Did you, um, did you know the deceased?”

Bessie smiled warmly. “I live here now. My daughter and I bought this old place, and we are turning it into a bed and breakfast. Oh, it’s going to be lovely when it’s done. It dates back to the seventeen hundreds, you know!”

Annie stepped forward. “Don’t you think you ought to go take care of that dead body in my kitchen?”

Delbert’s face flushed red, as did his ears. His white-blonde hair stood up slightly, giving him the appearance of an embarrassed school kid. Annie thought that he didn’t look old enough to be a deputy, but at least he wasn’t some power hungry type. And her mother seemed to know him, so that was something.

She led the officer back around to the rear entrance that led straight into the kitchen. Suzy’s body was exactly where they’d left it.

“Oh, my,” Delbert said under his breath. He reached down and felt gingerly for a pulse, despite the fact that she wasn’t breathing and her eyes were open and glassy. “Yes, ma’am, she’s gone.” He stood quickly and left the kitchen in a rush, ushering Annie out ahead of him. “I need to call in a team to take her away and check out your home for signs that might tell us who did this.” Annie nodded. She watched as he made his way back to his car and talked to someone on his police radio. Then, he returned to her side and pulled out a small notebook from his pocket.

“Who found the body?”

“I did,” Bessie piped up. She’d been waiting for a chance to tell him about her horrible discovery, and Annie worried that her mother might just give a statement that was too dramatic. Bessie had a tendency to overreact and blow things up, and finding a dead body was the perfect material for doing just that. “Oh, it was awful. I came downstairs in my robe, and all I wanted was a cup of coffee. You know, coffee keeps me regular in the mornings. Well, I walked into the kitchen and there she was...that awful woman, just as dead as dead can be.”

Delbert looked at her quizzically. “Did you know the murdered woman, Mrs. Purdy?”

“Well, yes, I did. She went to school with Annie and Rory, you know.”

“Who’s Rory? Is he your son?”

“Oh, heavens, no! He’s Annie’s ex-boyfriend. He’s working on the house for us. This is his camper--isn’t it lovely?” Bessie gestured to Rory’s camper, where Devon peered out of the window, trying to see what was going on.

“What was the dead woman--”

“Her name is Suzy Anderson,” Annie interjected. Although she had hated Suzy in life, it didn’t seem right to keep referring to her as ‘that dead woman’.

“What was Ms. Anderson doing here?” Delbert had jotted down names and notes, but he seemed to be struggling to keep up.

“Well, she was trying to buy this house,” Bessie replied, clucking her tongue. “That woman always did think she could do whatever she wanted.”

“Mother!” Annie tried to shush her mother because Bessie was starting to sound like she was glad that Suzy was dead.

“I’m going to need to speak to everyone that was here last night, Annie. Was it just you and your mother?” Delbert looked at the camper. “What about this Rory person?”

Annie sighed. “Rory Jenkins. He was here, in the camper, while my mother, son, and I slept in the house.” She paused, then added, “I left the back door here unlocked so Rory could come in and use our bathroom. I don’t know if he did or not.”

Delbert looked pensive, then he asked to speak to Rory and Annie’s son. She went to the cabin and called them out reluctantly. Devon carried the kitten and a half-eaten Pop-Tart, Rory wore a somber, guarded expression.

“I, uh, I need to speak to each of you individually,” Delbert explained. “Let me start with Mrs. Purdy here, and then I’ll talk to each of you.”

Bessie put her hands on her hips. “I hope this isn’t going to take long because we have work to do. I have to move all my stuff into the new house today so I can get it ready to hand over the keys to the old place to the new owners.” Her voice rose slightly. “Delbert, you’d better call your supervisors and tell them to come get this dead body, young man!”

Delbert looked like he was ready to crack under Bessie’s slight pressure, and Annie couldn’t help but wonder how he ever became a cop in the first place. If a nearly seventy-year-old could get him flustered with a few words, what would a criminal with a gun do to him?

Luckily for Delbert backup arrived in the form of one other police car and an ambulance. Annie waited with Devon as Bessie spoke to Delbert and Rory was questioned by another officer. She wished that she’d put on better clothes than the tattered shirt and jeans she was wearing, and the thought that she hadn’t brushed her teeth crossed her mind as she answered the police officer’s questions about Suzy and their shared history.

“Did any of you touch the body?” A short, stocky man with glasses poked his head out of Annie’s kitchen. “I just need to know so I can rule out accidental fingerprints.” The forensics team leader waited for a reply, and when none came, Annie responded.

“I think Officer Plemmons checked for a pulse, and Rory did, too.” She realized too late that Rory’s past may have already put him in the spotlight, but she didn’t want to hide anything from the police. She had no reason to believe that Rory killed Suzy, but she hadn’t really spoken to him in so many years, could she really be sure that he wasn’t hiding something? She reasoned that if he was innocent, the police would still need to know why his fingerprints would be on Suzy’s body. She glanced over at Rory, who was still talking with one of the police officers. He looked back at Annie, and she thought that he looked just a little bit angry at her.

“Okay,” the man with glasses replied. “We’ve got Officer Plemmons’ prints already, but what about that guy?”

“You’ve got mine,” Rory replied irritably. “Spent five years down in Trenton. Assault and battery with GBH. I’ve been out for seven years now, but I’m sure y’all keep your fingerprints longer than that.”

Annie realized that Rory probably thought she was throwing him under the bus by pointing out that his prints would be on Suzy’s body, but she had honestly just been trying to help. She was sick with worry about what the police would find out about Suzy’s murder. The thought that they could suspect Rory, Annie, or even her mother was distressing enough, but if they determined that the killer was someone else, she wasn’t sure she’d be able to sleep in the house again. At least not until the killer was found—she was certain that she’d feel too vulnerable.

Annie suddenly became very angry. She was angry at Suzy for coming back to her house and for getting herself killed. She was angry at the murderer for making her feel unsafe in her own home. And she was angry at herself for feeling like a victim. After all, she’d bought the old plantation so she could finally take control of her life, and now someone had easily managed to wrest that control right out of her hands.

The atmosphere around the little camper was tense all morning, and they didn’t take Suzy’s body until almost noon. Bessie was having a fit over this, worried about having enough time to get the rest of her belongings moved and the house cleaned before she handed the keys over to the new owners. Annie just wanted to get the day over with and carry on moving forward with her new life, though admittedly the house felt somehow tainted by Suzy’s death.

“Do you think we’re doing the right thing by moving into this house?” Annie finally asked her mother, interrupting one of Bessie’s complaining spells. “I mean, a woman was just murdered in there. Who on earth is going to want to stay at a bed and breakfast where somebody was murdered?”

“Lots of people,” Devon replied, peering over her shoulder. “I mean, we could use this in our advertising. ‘Come see the murder house!’ It could be a real crowd-drawer.”

“Hmm, not the crowds I’m hoping for, but thanks for your positivity, sweetheart.” Annie rubbed her bare forearms, which felt chilled despite the steadily rising temperature. “I just hope this isn’t some sort of sign that we’re making a huge mistake,” she said finally.