Missed You In Church: A Hunter Jones Mystery Read online

  MISSED YOU IN CHURCH

  Charlotte Moore

  Copyright © 2015 by Charlotte Moore. All rights reserved.

  This book is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places and incidents are either products of the author’s imagination or used fictitiously. Any resemblance to actual events, locales, or persons, living or dead, is entirely coincidental. All rights reserved. No part of this publication can be reproduced or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic or mechanical, without permission from the author.

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  MISSED YOU

  IN CHURCH

  CHARLOTTE MOORE

  CHAPTER 1

  IT WAS SUNDAY MORNING IN JULY. Hunter Jones was standing between her 11-year-old stepdaughter, Bethie Bailey, and her husband, Sheriff Sam Bailey. Along with the rest of the congregation at Merchantsville United Methodist Church, they were singing “Come Thou Fount of Every Blessing.”

  Hunter, who tried her best to dress conservatively for church, was wearing a peach-colored cotton gauze sundress with a short-sleeved white eyelet jacket to cover her bare shoulders. She had tried pinning her wild blonde curls back neatly in a French twist, but it was already coming unpinned.

  She was sharing her hymnal with Bethie, who was 11 and sang like an angel. Sam, at 6’4” generally held his hymnal at the level of her nose and had his own versions of any tune.

  Sam stopped singing in the middle of the second verse and reached into his pants pocket for his vibrating cell phone. After a quick glance, he closed his hymnal, put it down and quietly left the sanctuary. They always sat near the back, at the end of a pew, for just that reason.

  By the time the hymn was completed, Hunter could hear the sound of sirens in the distance, and she knew that he wouldn’t be back for the rest of the service.

  She wished she could jump up and follow him, camera and notebook in hand. As the managing editor of The Magnolia County Weekly Messenger, she had a strong hunch that front page news was happening somewhere in the county. The dispatcher wouldn’t have called Sam out of church for anything minor.

  As the hymn came to a close, and everyone sat down, she had already started reviewing her options. It flickered through her mind that Mallory might be home. Maybe she could text Mallory to go and get photos if there was something big going on.

  No, she thought. What kind of example to Bethie would she be if she texted in church? And besides, she remembered, Mallory Bremmer, the new reporter and computer whiz at The Messenger, had gone to Atlanta with her sister Miranda for a lingerie shower on Saturday afternoon. They were planning to go out partying after the shower and to spend the night with one of Miranda’s bridesmaids.

  The girls probably were just waking up, Hunter thought, suddenly feeling downright middle-aged compared to Mallory, even though she was just six years older.

  Bethie nudged Hunter, and whispered, “Mom!”

  The offering plate was coming their way. Hunter, who was used to Sam’s taking care of that, dug quickly into her purse and found a crumpled five dollar bill just in time.

  Just before the Doxology began, she heard another siren. She sighed, and reminded herself that no matter how big the story was, the paper still wouldn’t go to press until early Tuesday afternoon. There’d be time. She just hated missing the chance to be on the scene.

  Deputy Skeet Borders was on the scene. He was on patrol that Sunday morning, had taken the dispatcher’s call, and was the first to arrive at the Bremmer family home. He was relieved to hear the sound of the emergency medical van’s siren.

  He already knew nothing could be done for Noreen Bremmer, who was lying face down on the kitchen floor, unquestionably dead, with bullet wounds in her head and neck.

  It was Jack Bremmer he was worried about. Jack, who had found the body and managed to make the emergency call, was sobbing but still making sense when Skeet arrived. He had dragged his wildly barking cocker spaniel into the fenced in area around the swimming pool while Skeet went to the kitchen door and looked in. But then, after just a few questions, Jack began to breathe rapidly and stammer his answers.

  Skeet ran to meet the paramedics.

  “Look after Jack first,” he told Sonny Rayburn, the EMS Director. “He’s breathing funny. His wife’s dead on the kitchen floor. Shot.”

  “Did he shoot her?” Sonny asked bluntly.

  “No way,” Skeet said, and then he hesitated. “Well, not unless he’s the world’s best actor. He says he just got back from a conference in Atlanta, and it looks to me like she’s been dead a while.”

  By the time Sheriff Sam Bailey and Sgt. Taneesha Martin arrived, the paramedics had Jack Bremmer on a gurney breathing oxygen and were moving him toward the ambulance. Sonny Rayburn, who had also taken a quick look into the kitchen, stepped aside to talk to Sam.

  “His wife is dead,” he said “Shot at least twice, I think. Looks like it’s been a while. It’s bad in there.”

  “What’s going on with Jack?” Sam asked. “He isn’t injured, is he?”

  “No, he’s just having breathing problems,” Sonny said, “Could be just the shock of it with the heat on top of that. I’ll let the ER doctor decide.”

  Skeet gave his report to Sam and Taneesha while the dog renewed his barking.

  “Jack said he just got back from Atlanta, stopped the car down by the road because he saw the dog running loose,” he said, glancing at his notebook. “Then he saw the blood on the dog’s paws. He ran in and found her body. He said the kitchen door was standing open when he got there and he noticed her diamond ring is gone. He didn’t go any further into the house than the kitchen. Noreen was home alone and his daughters are out of town. That’s all I got out of him before he started breathing funny.”

  Skeet’s shirt was stuck to his back. He took a crumpled handkerchief out of this pocket and wiped the sweat from his face. Red-haired and fair-skinned, he could feel the sunburn already starting.

  “What’s your impression, Skeet? Taneesha asked. As always, even in the simmering summer heat, she looked cool and perfectly put together, her uniform tailored to fit, meticulously pressed, her hair in an intricate pattern of braids and beads.

  “Some kind of home invasion, maybe,” Skeet said. “Looked to me like she was trying to get out of the house when she was shot. You’ll see where she is.”

  “Are those Jack’s keys?” Sam asked, pointing at an open leather key holder on the flagstones by the lounge chair. Skeet nodded, reaching down to pick them up.

  “Good thing, because his car’s in everybody’s way,” Sam said to Skeet. “How about moving it onto the grass? Then put up the crime tape up while we go through the house. People are going to be out of church and driving by here pretty soon.”

  He turned to Taneesha. “I’m going to call the coroner before we check the house. See if Bub’s home from church and ask him to bring some food for the dog when he comes – and some bowls, too.”

  It was a small enough community for people to know each other by first name – and between them, Sheriff Sam Bailey, his second-in-command, Taneesha Martin, Deputy Skeet Borders and Deputy Bub Williston knew just about everybody in Magnolia County.

  Sam had known Jack Bremmer, who was ten years older than he was, for as long as he could remember. His house was insured with Bremmer Insurance Agency. He also knew the woman whose body was in the kitchen, though not nearly as well. She was Jack’s second wife and worked at his insurance agency. Sam thought she probably ran the business while Jack handled the sales.

  She was someone he would speak to by name if he met her at a gathering or passed her on the downtown sidewalk, an a
ttractive dark-haired woman in her mid-forties.

  She had moved to Merchantsville when she married Jack Bremmer a year after Jack’s first wife, Grace, died of cancer. There had been a flurry of gossip about that, but it had settled down, as far as Sam knew. Noreen Bremmer was friendly, but a little reserved, not the kind of woman who got talked about for long. She had fit herself in.

  Taneesha finished her call and Skeet, who was hurrying back from moving the car, called out, “Hey, wait a minute. I need to ask you something.”

  “Jack had a dress shirt stuffed under the driver’s seat,” he told them, wiping the sweat from his face with an already wilted handkerchief. “It has lipstick smeared on the sleeve and it smells like perfume. Is that evidence?”

  “I guess it’s evidence of something,” Sam said with a scowl, wanting to swat this particular problem away like a mosquito. “Tell the crime techs to take a look inside his car.”

  Taneesha was studying the blurry patches of blood stains on the stairs that led down from the small built-on deck to the patio.

  “Looks like the dog went in and out over and over,” she said. “Remember there was that storm late yesterday. It would have washed the deck off, but I guess the dog kept on going in and out.”

  “Right,” Sam said, “If anybody saw him running loose, it might help us pin the time down. There are shoe prints, too.”

  “Those must be Jack’s,” Skeet said. “I climbed up on other side of the deck to get in and Sonny did, too.”

  “Come on,” Sam said to Taneesha. “We don’t need the steps. Let’s see who’s the best climber.”

  Skeet grinned as Taneesha, who was a former tennis champion, made it to the deck with ease, stood up and offered Sam her hand. Then he went to get the yellow crime tape.

  Inside the house, Sam and Taneesha edged along the wall, looking at Noreen Bremmer’s body, which was on the tiled floor. It was a bloody and disturbing scene in the middle of a very tidy kitchen. The air conditioning was going full blast, but with the open door, the kitchen was little warm.

  She had fallen forward, her face toward the kitchen door, part of her profile showing through her thick dark hair. There was a head wound and another in her neck that seemed to be the main source of the blood.

  Sam noted the gold wedding band on her stiffened left hand. The engagement ring would have been above it.

  She was wearing white shorts and a striped sleeveless pullover, white socks, and running shoes.

  “Saturday clothes,” Taneesha murmured. “Her legs look like she was a runner. Maybe somebody saw her out running and followed her home.”

  “It must have happened yesterday while it was still light,” Sam said, looking around. “No lights on at all. I wonder if Skeet’s got the right idea about her trying to get to the door.”

  Taneesha studied the scene. “Could be, but from where she’s lying, it could be she was just going to get something out of the fridge and didn’t know what was coming.”

  Sam looked toward the arched doorway at the other end of the kitchen. He thought it probably led to an old-fashioned breakfast room, which would be separated from the kitchen in a house of this vintage. He could see the side of a maple hutch, and part of a hooked rug.

  “Whichever way it happened, the shot would have come from that direction,” he said. “That dog’s pretty noisy. I don’t think any stranger could have come into the house without his making a racket about it.”

  He looked down the long hallway that led from the kitchen past the stairway and ended at the front door.

  “Let’s go upstairs first,” he said.

  Upstairs, it was roomy, sunny and quite cool. The furnishings reminded Sam of his childhood home, and his mother’s pride in their Early American maple furniture, which was trendy then. This house had been Jack’s parents’ home before they sold some of the original farmland and built one of the first houses on New River Road.

  It struck Sam that Noreen must have been content with her new husband’s house as it was when they moved in, or maybe respectful of his late wife’s memory and the Bremmer daughters’ feelings.

  A hint of a smile came across his face as he remembered the speed with which Hunter had gotten his ex-wife’s French provincial living room suite out of the house, but, then, Rhonda hadn’t died. She had just left, and between his job and being a single parent, Sam hadn’t given home décor a second thought.

  Two guns – a shotgun and an old rifle – were on a gun rack just outside the master bedroom. They were dusty, in contrast to the bedroom, which was a study in blues and greens, and meticulously neat.

  The daughters’ bedrooms were in normal disarray, one with books overflowing two bookcases, and a laptop computer on the vanity; the other cluttered with clothes, shoes, and bridal magazines.

  A fourth bedroom had the furnishings of a guest room, but it mainly seemed to be a repository for gifts. There were boxes everywhere, a few still wrapped with bows on top, others open and containing varieties of silver and crystal items. Some were small appliances still in the original boxes.

  “Looks like wedding gifts for Mallory’s sister,” Taneesha said. “I heard they invited over 350 people. Mama Rene’s about to have a fit to know who’s making the cake for that many.”

  “Well, whoever is doing it,” Sam said. “It won’t be as good as Mama Rene’s.”

  Mama Rene was Irene Martin, Taneesha’s grandmother, who was locally famous for her catering. The Martin family, which included Ramona and James, Taneesha’s aunt and uncle who ran R&J’s Café in downtown Merchantsville, were all outstanding cooks, and Taneesha was following in their footsteps.

  She looked into the room full of gifts, noting the boxes of high end cookware and felt a little envy.

  Back downstairs, they checked the front door and found it was unlocked. There was an expensive security system, but it wasn’t activated.

  “The shooter could have come in this way,” Taneesha said. “If Mrs. Bremmer was in and out a lot, she probably wouldn’t have had the system on during the day.”

  “Right,” Sam agreed, as they walked through the tidy living room and formal dining room into the breakfast room Sam had expected – the room where the family probably ate most of their meals. They had come full circle. It opened into the kitchen.

  They stopped at the same moment.

  A quilted shoulder bag in a green and blue floral pattern had been emptied onto the round maple table.

  Sam took a mental inventory as Taneesha took notes. There was a cellphone and a checkbook. There were two lipsticks, one of which had rolled onto the floor. A brass ring held a half dozen keys.

  There was a well-worn Bible on the table, too. It lay open, side-by-side with a study guide of the kind used for adult Sunday School lessons, a yellow highlighter and a half-full glass of something that looked like tea. The chair to that place at the table was pushed back.

  “No wallet,” Sam said, after studying the table for a while. “She would have had something to hold her money and credit cards.”

  He glanced at the body through the arched doorway and said, “Let’s go out the front way.”

  Taneesha said, “I wish that dog would stop barking.”

  “I just wish he could talk,” Sam said.

  CHAPTER 2

  OUTSIDE, THE GAWKING HAD BEGUN. THREE cars had come to a stop on the highway. Skeet had finished putting up the yellow crime tape and was drinking water from the garden hose, not answering as one driver yelled, “What’s going on?”

  Sam knew the word was spreading quickly around Merchantsville that somebody had been taken from the Bremmer place in an ambulance, and something big was going on. The house was five miles out of town, but that wouldn’t keep people from taking a Sunday afternoon drive to take a look. He made a call to the head of the county’s emergency management agency, asking for some volunteers to keep the traffic moving.

  Deputy Bub Williston pulled up in his truck and parked on the yard. A big man whose unifo
rm shirt was still untucked, he got out with a bag of dog chow and a couple of plastic mixing bowls and stepped over the crime tape.

  A few minutes later, the cocker spaniel stopped barking.

  “He was hungry,” Skeet said. “Thirsty, too. I gave him some water from the hose.”

  “You’re in charge of this for now,” Sam said to Taneesha. “The coroner should be here in a few minutes. Call the crime tech team and T.J. Jackson. I need to go see if Jack’s well enough to tell us more. I should be back in less than an hour. Call me if you need me back here.”

  “Are you ruling Jack out?” Taneesha asked, lowering her voice.

  “Once I can verify that he was in Atlanta all day yesterday, I will,” Sam said. “This didn’t happen today.

  At home, Hunter had changed to her favorite faded denim cut-off shorts and a tie-dyed tee shirt before taking the family’s German shepherd, Flannery, for a quick run in the smoldering heat. Now two of their three cats were winding their way around her tanned legs, meowing in the hope of getting some of the bacon she was cooking. She had a Sunday dinner planned, but now it would wait until evening. Lunch was going to be bacon, lettuce and tomato sandwiches for herself and Bethie.

  She had resisted being an ambulance chaser with Bethie along but was hoping to hear from Sam soon.

  When the call came, she could tell from his tone of voice that he was in what she thought of as “full sheriff mode.”

  “There’s bad news,” he said.

  “What’s happened?” Hunter asked. Bethie, who was emptying a bag of potato chips into a bowl on the kitchen table, stopped and looked interested.

  “Noreen Bremmer has been killed. She was shot,” Sam said. “Jack came home from Atlanta and found her. He had breathing problems so he’s in the hospital. I’m on my way to see him now. Do you know where Mallory is and how I can reach her?

  “Yes,” Hunter said. “She and Miranda went to a bridal shower in Atlanta. They should be coming home this afternoon. Do you need her number?”