When I am Dead, My Dearest: A Hunter Jones Mystery Read online

  WHEN I AM DEAD, MY DEAREST

  A Hunter Jones Mystery

  Charlotte Moore

  Copyright © 2014 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.

  WHEN I AM DEAD,

  MY DEAREST

  A Hunter Jones Mystery

  CHARLOTTE MOORE

  CHAPTER 1

  “We’re home.”

  Hunter Jones glanced up from her notebook just in time to see the Magnolia County sign flash by.

  She smiled, shading her eyes as she looked up from her notebook. The October sun was just above a pecan grove at the next curve in the country road.

  “Just 16 miles,” Sam said, “and then I can carry you over the threshold.”

  Hunter laughed.

  “And get tripped up by Bethie and all three cats?”

  They were returning from their honeymoon on a Friday, a day earlier than they originally planned, because they decided just that morning that they were homesick. Suddenly, unpacking boxes and rearranging furniture from the combining of two households seemed more appealing than another day and night in Savannah.

  That morning they had each asked the other “Are you sure?” at least twice before jumping out of bed to pack their suitcases. Over breakfast, Sam had called his mother in Merchantsville to tell her they’d be home by late afternoon, and he and Hunter had both talked to his ten-year-old daughter Bethie.

  Over their second cup of coffee, Hunter had extracted a promise from Sam that he wouldn’t go into his office until Monday morning.

  Sam Bailey was the Sheriff of Magnolia County, and seldom forgot it. He had called his office on his cell phone every day they had been gone.

  Hunter had worried a little every time she saw him get out his phone, but nothing had happened that required his attention. It was a blessedly quiet week, with just the usual speeding tickets, one arrest for possession of marijuana with intent to sell, another jack-knifed log truck at Mimosa Corners and one domestic row between Aaron and Nancy Twitchell.

  Now, she was looking forward spending the weekend getting the house in order, which meant rearranging his things, finding places for her things and getting rid of a few things as well. Sam had already said he wasn’t concerned about anything except having his recliner and the TV, but Hunter had been looking forward for months to getting some things out of her line of vision.

  One was the scruffy stuffed bobcat that Sam kept on top of the old wardrobe in the master bedroom. She knew he was sentimental about it because his father had shot it, but it had apparently been turned over to the world’s worst taxidermist, and had a twisted, demented look. One of its glass eyes was missing, and one of the countless Bailey dogs had apparently spent some time gnawing on its bobbed tail.

  She was happy about the new king-sized bed they had picked out together, but not about being watched all night by a one-eyed bobcat.

  The thing she wanted to get rid of first, however, was in the living room. It was the dusty rose French provincial living room suite chosen a decade earlier by Sam’s ex-wife, Rhonda. It could go to the county landfill as far as she was concerned. And the satin drapes could go with it.

  She had been sketching out possible furniture arrangements and making shopping lists as Sam drove, but now she dug into her purse for her sunglasses and looked around.

  As they drove down the two-lane road that ran through the middle Georgia farmland, she knew that Sam could probably tell her who owned each acre, whose peach orchards were on one sign, whose cotton fields on the other, whose little blue house that was, and even who was driving the pickup truck that had just flown past them.

  Sam was already on his cell phone.

  “Hey, Skeet,” he said. “Ray Watson is going about 85 on 227, heading into town. He’ll probably go toward Wilson Street if you want to be waiting for him.”

  “How do I know?” He said in answer to the obvious question from the deputy on patrol. “I know because he just passed me. Yeah, we came back a little early. Tell him I would have stopped him myself except I’m still on my honeymoon. Anything going on that I need to know about?”

  There apparently wasn’t.

  “And another thing,” Sam said, “When you get a chance, give Aaron Twitchell a call and ask him to drop by my office Monday morning. Tell him I don’t care if Nancy did drop the charges. I still want to talk to him.”

  He drove on, and they talked about the week ahead. Hunter had a County Commission work session and a Board of Education meeting to cover. Hunter was Associate Editor of the Magnolia County Messenger, a job she enjoyed and took seriously.

  Sam had several meetings in preparation for an upcoming murder trial, but nothing at night.

  “You want to go with me to Hill Roland’s book signing?” Hunter asked. “It’s on Thursday night at the Hilliard House,”

  “Oh, please, no,” he said, and she laughed.

  “I thought you liked his books.”

  “I do, and he was my best friend in first grade. I just don’t want to stand around drinking punch and eating tea cakes with the ladies from the Literary Guild. As much money as Hill is making on those vampire books, I’m surprised that he’s even willing to do that. It’s not like he needs the book sales.”

  “Well, I think it’s nice that he’s doing it,” Hunter said, “The money’s going to the library. And why move back here if he doesn’t want to be part of things? I just wonder how his wife is going to like it here.”

  “What I’m wondering,” Sam said with a grin, “is if you’re going to tell him you haven’t read his books.”

  “I did read the first half of the first one,” Hunter said. “I think he’s a really good writer. I just couldn’t get into that creepy stuff about vampires in the old south.”

  They passed the Merchantsville city limits sign.

  “Now I’m home,” Hunter said with a satisfied smile.

  Merchantsville, Georgia, population 9,217, according to the last census, was incorporated in 1838. A river town, it had held its own even as the railroad and the interstate highway system changed the rules for which towns would grow. It even drew some tourists off Interstate 75 with its picture-perfect downtown courthouse square, the towers and turrets of its unused but still cherished Victorian “conservatory,” a few white-columned antebellum mansions and a downtown café that nobody forgot after eating there once.

  Sam had been born in Merchantsville. Hunter was, by Merchantsville terms, still a newcomer despite three years of being right in the middle of everything, reporting for the local paper. She had won local respect and some journalism awards for her coverage of three murders and a calamitous flood, but to most people in the county, her biggest accomplishment would always be that she got Sam Bailey to stand barefoot on the beach at Jekyll Island and say “I do.”

  This wasn’t just because the marriage defied the local legend that Sam would never get over being left by Rhonda, his high school sweetheart and first wife, who wanted to chase her dream of being a country singer.

  And it was only partly because so many other single women had gone after the tall, good-looking sheriff and gotten nowhere.

  It was those two things and Hunter herself. Her nonconformity, her unruly blonde curls, her vintage flower child wardrobe, a
nd the fact that she was ten years younger than he was.

  That was all settled now, though, and the flurry of talk about their decision to be married on the beach 175 miles away instead of at Merchantsville United Methodist Church was over.

  New questions had been devised by those who liked keeping up a running commentary on other people’s lives.

  Now they were wondering out loud if Hunter knew what she was getting into taking a stepdaughter to raise, and how she really felt about moving into that old house Sam had lived in with Rhonda.

  As to the first issue, Hunter had bonded with bright, bespectacled Bethie Bailey before she ever went out with Sam the first time, and Bethie was already telling her friends. “My mom says I can have sleepovers now that she’s marrying Daddy and moving in with us,” and “My mom can’t cook anything but spaghetti, so we’re going to learn how to cook together.”

  As for the house, Hunter just wanted to put some of her own signature touches on it. Sam was the one who was thinking they needed a bigger place.

  What would give them something to talk about in the coming week was that she wasn’t changing her last name.

  When they pulled into the driveway, Bethie came out the back door and ran to bombard them with welcoming hugs and chatter.

  Sam’s mother, Mary Bailey, waved from the kitchen window.

  “Katie and Marmalade aren’t being friendly to Tuxedo,” Bethie said as Sam opened the trunk to get their luggage out.

  “They’ll get used to each other,” Hunter said.

  “Tuxedo is afraid of Katie,” Bethie said, “and Marmalade is afraid of Tuxedo. They don’t remember each other at all.”

  “Well it has been two years since you picked out Tuxedo,” Hunter said “And he’s a full grown cat now. They’ll work it out.”

  “I’m going to leave you three alone now,” Sam’s mother said, coming out the back door. She hugged all three of them.

  “There’s a chicken pot pie in the refrigerator. It just needs to be heated up in the oven. Oh, and before I forget, Elizabeth Ransom would love to have that living room suite. Bethie told her that you were going to move your furniture into the living room, and she said she had always just loved that furniture if you didn’t want it.”

  Elizabeth Ransom was Bethie’s other grandmother.

  “That’s great,” Sam said, glad to know there was a place for it to go. “I’ll get it over there tomorrow. Hunter’s got big plans for that room.”

  They thanked Mary Bailey for all her help, and were about to go into the house when Sam said, “Wait a minute. You’re forgetting something.”

  Bethie was so delighted with Sam’s carrying Hunter over the threshold that she said, “Me next!”

  And then the three of them were home, together.

  On Saturday morning, at just about the same time that Hunter was sharing her honest feelings about the stuffed bobcat staring down at their new king sized bed, Hill Roland was staring at a tangle of cords.

  He was lying face down on the dusty floor of the room that had once been his great-grandfather’s study.

  His head was under the kneehole of the huge mahogany desk, and he cursed more than once as he tried to get everything hooked up and plugged in so he could use his computer.

  “Mr. Roland,” one of the women from the cleaning service said from the door, “Your cell phone’s ringing.”

  She had brought it to him, and he thanked her even though the last thing he wanted to bother with was a phone call.

  It was Megan, his wife, editor, agent and manager, calling from New York City.

  “Hi, sweetie,” she began, and he knew it was going to be something she thought he wouldn’t like.

  “Hi,” he said.

  “You sound out of breath.”

  “I’ve been crawling around trying to get my computer hooked up.”

  “Can’t you pay for somebody to do that?”

  “I could, but I’d have to wait until tomorrow. They have the internet and the cable connected, but the computer wasn’t here when they came. I can do it.”

  She sighed.

  “I’m afraid things aren’t going to work out for me to be there tomorrow. I’ve just got too much to wrap up here and if I don’t get it taken care of, I’ll have to fly back up here and…”

  Hill tuned her out and reached for another cord.

  “I’ll be there early Friday afternoon,” she was saying when he started listening again. ”I’m afraid I’ll have to miss the book signing. Did the movers break anything?”

  “Not that I’ve noticed. I’ve got that cleaning service here and they’re doing a good job. Don’t worry about the book signing. It’s just going to be hometown folks.”

  “I don’t even know why you felt like you had to do it,” she said,

  “What about the media? Will there be any there? Do you want me to overnight a press packet? “

  “Maybe just somebody from the local weekly,” Hill said, “You remember, I worked there when I was in high school, and, look, Megan, this is my hometown. I can’t be coming across like a hotshot with people who knew me in first grade.”

  “I know, sweetie,” but at least take some of my cards in case somebody wants to set up an interview, and don’t go talking about what you’re working on now, and…”

  Hill put the cell phone on the floor as she continued talking, explaining, planning. He heard the front door bell ring and ignored it.

  Megan’s voice rose, and he picked up the phone again. He could usually tell by the pitch of her voice when he needed to tune in.

  “Hill, I asked you a question. Will they be serving alcohol there?”

  “Good Lord, no,” he said, and laughed, “This is Merchantsville. It’s the Ladies’ Literary Guild. They’ll have two kinds of fruit punch and a platter of pimento cheese sandwiches. Don’t worry about my drinking, Megan. I’ve got it under control.”

  “Well, I do worry. I’m not down there to look after you. And besides, you need to stay on track with your writing.”

  “That,” he said, giving her his full attention, “is why I’m crawling around on the floor right now: so I can write. Am I going to need to meet you at the airport Friday?”

  “No, I’ll just rent a car.”

  Hill realized that he had plugged everything in that could be plugged in. He backed out and stood up, putting the phone back to his ear as his wife told him she loved him and she missed him.

  “Are you still there?” she asked.

  “Yeah,” he said, distractedly, reaching out to turn the computer on. “I love you, too, and I’ve got the computer working.”

  She laughed.

  “Great, then get to work. I’ll call you Friday morning when I know what time I’ll be getting there.”

  The other woman from the cleaning service came into the study with a stack of mail and a package.

  “The mailman said he couldn’t get anything else into the box,” she said.

  Hill thanked her and looked through the letters and flyers which were all addressed to “occupant.” The package was addressed in curly handwriting by somebody named Janice Smith in Atlanta. It had “Welcome Home!” written on it with a felt tip pen.

  He had no idea who Janice Smith was, or how she knew his Merchantsville address, but he assumed she must be a fan of his books. He opened the package to find what looked like an old-fashioned fruitcake tin tucked into a bed of crumpled newspaper. A note was taped on the top of the tin.

  “I love your books, and after I read in Venom and Vanity about the little boy eating the rum balls and getting tipsy, I just knew that must have been something you did yourself. Here are some rum balls to welcome you back to Georgia. Your devoted fan. Janice Smith.”

  He pried the tin open, releasing a puff of confectioners’ sugar and the strong smell of rum. He shuddered. Closing it, he asked the woman from the cleaning service, whose curiosity had kept her standing there, “Do you like rum balls?”

  “I’ve never had th
em,” she said. “What are they?”

  “Cookies with rum in them,” he said.

  “Rum flavoring?”

  “No. Real rum, and they’re not cooked, so it’s like eating alcohol.”

  “I don’t indulge in alcohol,” she said primly.

  He considered tossing the whole container into the trash, and then thought that Megan might like them. She might even be impressed that he hadn’t eaten them. As much as they had talked about his drinking, he wasn’t sure they had ever discussed his aversion to rum.

  Janice Smith, whoever she was, was correct that the rum ball episode in his first book was autobiographical. However, in the real life version his own mother overreacted and dosed him with syrup of ipecac.

  In the novel he had written that the little vampire boy got joyfully, wildly drunk, jumped from the banister of the circular staircase and swung from the dusty velvet curtains of the ballroom, with bats flying around him.

  He wondered idly if that scene would be in the movie.

  In any case, he didn’t like the smell or the taste of rum. There had been times when he would have drunk it anyway, but only if there were no other option.

  He shut the tin, pushed it toward the back of his desk, and sat down. He was ready to write again, even if there were unpacked boxes of books and file folders all over the room.

  He had unpacked the essentials, and hung the old portrait of Lorena and Sophie back in the place where it had always hung in his childhood. It was a tinted photograph in a gilded oval frame, the brown-haired mother, Lorena, in blue, her hair parted and pulled back, with one curl escaping; the fair-haired child, Sophie, all in pink.

  To celebrate being done with the vampires and back home, he opened the bottom drawer of the desk, took out a coffee mug and a bottle of single malt scotch and poured himself a small drink – just enough for a toast to his great-grandmother and his great-great-grandmother, looking out so solemnly from the past.

  “I’m going to make both of you famous,” he said. “Cheers!”