The Wiles of Watermelon (Scents of Murder Book 2) Read online

  Spyglass Lane Mysteries presents:

  The Scents of Murder Mystery Series

  Book Two

  The Wiles of Watermelon

  By

  Lynette Sowell

  Copyright 2015

  This ebook is licensed for your personal enjoyment only. This ebook may not be re-sold or given away to other people. If you would like to share this book with another person, please purchase an additional copy for each recipient. Thank you for respecting the hard work of this author.

  Scripture taken from the HOLY BIBLE, NEW INTERNATIONAL VERSION®. Copyright 1973, 1978, 1984 Biblica. Used by permission of Zondervan. All rights reserved.

  Acknowledgments

  Many thanks to my Cozymysterywriters critique group—Susan Page Davis, Lisa Harris, and Darlene Franklin. I treasure your input, encouragement, and friendship. And thanks to my Centex ACFW group. It’s so nice to see other writers in person on a regular basis.

  To my family: Thank you for putting up with late dinners, leftovers, and a groggy wife and mom in the morning.

  In memory of the original Spot kitty (1995–2007). My feet are colder at night without you.

  For the love of money is a root of all kinds of evil. Some people, eager for money, have wandered from the faith and pierced themselves with many griefs.

  I Timothy 6:10

  Chapter One

  Rain pounded the window of our first-floor bed- room. Thunder had woken me at who knows what insane hour in the middle of the night, and all I could do was watch the show until the storm passed. Lightning illuminated the field of watermelons across the driveway. The vines lit up with the flash, and the watermelons among the leaves remained steadfast against the rain. A sudden movement among the vines made me rise up on one elbow in bed. The movement stopped.

  Another flash of lightning, and I glimpsed a bulky figure hunched over the vines. So I hadn’t been seeing things. Four miles from town, we didn’t have neighbors, and our property was flanked by woods on both sides and by the now-swollen Tennessee River to the rear of the property.

  “Ben, someone’s in our field!” I jumped up and grabbed my robe from its perch on the exercise bike.

  “Hold on, sweetie.” Ben was on his feet before I could finish sweeping the cobwebs from my mind. “I’ll check it out. Though I can’t say who’d be plunderin’ watermelons this time of night.”

  He moved down the hallway, and I stayed close behind him. My wedding ring still felt new and shiny on my hand. It and the diamond Ben had given me last July slid round and round as my other hand fumbled with my fingers.

  Ben stopped and spun to face me. “Andromeda Hartley, get back in bed.”

  “No way.” I took his hand and squeezed it. “I’m at least goin’ to look over your shoulder.”

  “Those kids better not be out there partyin’. No wonder Mrs. Flanders pulled out her shotgun and chased hooligans off her land. Crazy teenagers.”

  “In a rainstorm. Right. They’ll probably be partying somewhere a lot dryer.” I didn’t like being woken up in the middle of the night, and Ben’s logic escaped me.

  He didn’t reply but tugged me along with him around the corner then released my hand. A flash of lightning in the kitchen windows made me blink. Ben fumbled with the dead bolt on the kitchen door. Once my eyes readjusted to the darkness, I skidded to a stop on the new tile.

  Ben flung open the door and dashed from the back steps, across the covered patio, and into the rain. He paused long enough to grab the baseball bat he’d left on the picnic table after softball practice. I followed. My cheeks stung from the pelting drops, and I fought to see into the grays and blacks of the night. Momma would pitch a fit if she knew I’d run into the rain during a lightning storm. It seems once I got married all my common sense went out the window. Ben and I stumbled through the muddy driveway. He stopped and I slid into him. He pulled me close and I leaned against his warmth, and we waited until the lightning flashed again.

  Not thirty yards or so away from us, a figure splashed down our driveway toward a darkened car that waited at the edge of the drive. Lightning illuminated the yard but did little to help us see the stranger. The car’s rear tires roared against the mud, and the car turned, headlights now on, and sped away on the rain- slicked road.

  Drenched to the skin, I glanced at Ben. “He sure picked a great time to steal watermelons. Makes no sense. Alone, too.”

  Under the yard light, Ben shook his head. “Beats me. C’mon, we oughta get back to sleep. Morning comes early. No harm done, anyway. Not worth calling the police over.”

  “But if it happens again?” I didn’t like the idea of someone trespassing on our property. The idea of a silent lurker made me shiver.

  We entered the house, arm in arm. I left a stream of water and wet footprints behind me as I got towels from the hallway linen closet. As I backtracked and wiped up the watery mess with an extra towel, I tried to make sense of what we’d seen. I just couldn’t dismiss the event quickly, like Ben had. A stranger prowling in the field during a thunderstorm in the middle of the night didn’t make sense. Why would someone go to so much trouble to snag watermelons in a storm? And if it was only watermelons, why keep stealing them after Ben and I had moved onto the property?

  As Ben and I trudged back to bed, my foggy brain struggled to make sense of what I’d seen. The last thing I remembered before dropping off to sleep was the image of the hunched-over stranger. . .carrying nothing.

  *

  “Did you know Honey rides a Harley?” Ben’s voice interrupted my dream about us drifting down the Tennessee River on our mattress.

  “Huh?” Coffee. I needed coffee, but I wasn’t ready to leave the coziness of Ben’s arms. A steady downpour pattered on the windows. Days like this, I wanted to close the shades, lock the doors, and stay home, away from the rest of the world.

  “She rides a Harley.”

  I sat up and scrunched my pillows against the headboard. “You woke me up to tell me this?”

  “Sorry. I thought you were awake.” Ben kissed me on the nose. “Stay right there. I’ll bring us coffee in bed. You did set the timer, didn’t you?”

  “Sure did.” I flashed Ben a grin through the predawn light filtering into our room. Most mornings Ben left at five for the restaurant and I slept in.

  “Twelve inches of rain in five days, and more on the way.” Ben’s alarm clock started bleeping, and he slammed it and rolled back to face me. “Mornings like this make me want to stay in bed.”

  “I know. . .” I gave him a lazy smile and poked one of his dimples.

  “Honey’s Place is going to be dead this morning.” Ben sighed before he gave me a kiss. “The breakfast crowd won’t come out in the rain.”

  “What about the diehards who want their Tuesday senior citizen breakfast discounts? You can’t disappoint them.” Since I ran my own business, I understood the importance of keeping customers happy.

  “This is the heaviest rainfall we’ve had in over twenty years.” Ben sat up and stretched. “We might need a boat to get to town. Should’ve bought that one I was looking at in Selmer.”

  “Well, maybe you can. We could go fishing next summer and take our nephews.” I moved closer to the middle of the bed. Ben’s place was still warm. My kitten, Spot, gave a mew from her place by our feet, stretched, and slithered her lanky self closer to me. I petted her and she head-butted my hand. “Once you get the old dock repaired—”

  “The one that’s underwater now?”

  “It won’t stay that way forever.” Before we got married, I never realized how Ben was given to sulking. Or at least how often. Now he r
ummaged through the bureau for some clothes and frowned at a shirt.

  “I know.” He ruffled the top of his hair, which needed a trim. He’d been too busy to stop by the barber, and when I offered to buy some clippers and give him a buzz cut, he’d balked. “I just don’t want to leave you this morning.”

  The rain rolled down the outside of the window as the dark gray of first dawn lit the sky. “I don’t want you to leave, either. But if it’s any consolation, I have to go to the store around nine. Someone might use their canoe to go shopping.”

  “Andi, my darlin’, that’s a very, very tiny consolation.” Ben pulled on a clean white T-shirt and sniffed the air like a hound. “Are you sure you set the coffeemaker last night?”

  “I’m sure I did. It should have started brewing at four.”

  “I’ll go check.”

  “Hey,” I called after him, “if you happen to talk to Jerry today, tell him someone’s stealing our watermelons again.”

  “Why don’t you give him a call?” Ben’s voice floated into our room. “I probably won’t have a second to spare once we get the grill fired up at the restaurant.”

  I wished he was in throwing distance of one of my slippers. The man ate, drank, and slept his job at Honey’s. After a mere six months, he’d made himself indispensable to Honey Haggerty.

  “Spot-kitty, your daddy’s heading out again.” She gave my hand a sympathetic lick.

  Ben worked as head cook at Honey’s Place, the best down-home eatery in Greenburg, Tennessee. The red-haired fireball who ran the place was a good fifteen years older than us, but rumor had it she had a way with the gentlemen, both young and old. Ben, though, was true as the day is long and I had no reason to worry.

  We’d been married only a few months, but we’d already settled into a routine. What I didn’t like was Ben’s twelve-hour days, six days a week. My sweet, hardworking man seemed to have made himself indispensable to Honey Haggerty and her restaurant.

  I flopped back onto the pillows and listened to Ben’s feet pounding to the kitchen then heard him mutter something about a broken coffeepot. Poor guy. Poor me. We loved our morning coffee. The pot had been a wedding present. Maybe it had a warranty.

  I must have ended up dozing off, because when I woke again, the rainfall pattered in whispers and the gray outside had lightened. Spot made a small warm lump curled against the small of my back, and she must have sensed I was awake. She climbed onto my side and started to massage me with her paws.

  I frowned. Ben had probably kissed me good-bye when he’d left for Honey’s, and I’d missed it. My soaked pajamas and robe lay in a pile on the master bathroom floor. I found a clean pair of shorts and shirt. I’d try to see to the laundry before I left for the store.

  Spot romped by my feet as we headed to the kitchen. Ben had brought her home one day a few weeks before. Since I’d never owned a cat and she had a large white blob on her gray fur, I naturally called her Spot. We Clarks had always owned dogs, but I didn’t feel quite so guilty leaving the self-sufficient cat by herself during the day while I worked at Tennessee River Soaps.

  We entered the kitchen and my favorite view in the world greeted me, damp and gray. The legacy of Doris Flanders’ watermelons lived on across the driveway. I smiled. The newest soap scent at Tennessee River Soaps was watermelon, and I had a field full of inspiration. That is, if the rain didn’t wash everything away. Greenburg tradition had it that watermelons always grew in this field, and even after Doris Flanders had passed away, someone had seen to it that the field was seeded every spring. And after Ben had bought the property, we’d allowed the tradition to continue.

  If Doris Flanders had still been alive, I would have shown her the home we’d built where her century- old farmhouse once stood. But more than likely, remembering the tales about Doris, she’d have come after me with a shotgun, claimed she still owned the place, and tell me in no uncertain terms to keep my mitts off the watermelons.

  The broken coffeemaker now sat piled inside the kitchen trash can. I ended up heating some water on the stove and mixing a mug of instant hazelnut cappuccino, a poor substitute but better than nothing. Before the next deluge descended from the heavens, I figured I ought to go across the field and rescue more water- melons. Momma had been itching to teach me how to make pickled watermelon rind, and I was itching to learn. If I didn’t bring some melons along to Sunday dinner, she’d let me hear about it.

  I slipped on a pair of Ben’s work boots and left through the kitchen door, with my feline shadow zip- ping past me as I went outside. Weren’t cats supposed to hate water? But Spot splattered through the puddles in the driveway. Maybe she thought she was a golden retriever or something.

  “Spot, come back here!” She barely paused to glance at me then chose to be a cat and kept doing what she wanted anyway.

  At the end of the pavement I stopped. Spot didn’t mind the wet ground. She zoomed across the red mud of the driveway and into the watermelon field opposite the house. Swells of green melons dotted the sprawling vines.

  I clomped after Spot, Ben’s boots getting sucked into the muddy driveway. I couldn’t bear the idea of Spot getting an urge to race along to the main road and wander in front of a passing truck. My boot caught in a particularly deep tire tread, and I went sprawling forward onto the nearest watermelon vine. The things parents do for their children. Another muddy set of clothing was a small price to pay to catch her.

  About fifty feet away, Spot made a gray-and-white speck in the center of the green vines. She glanced up at me, and her tiny mouth moved in a silent mew. Then she used her dainty paws to dig amid the greenery. Someone would definitely need a bath once I caught her.

  Crazy cat. She had a perfectly adequate, lovingly scooped, dry litter box next to the washing machine in the mudroom, and she decided to carry out her business in a flooded, muddy field? I shook my head. The ripe watermelons would have to wait a few minutes.

  Feeling like I’d just played some tackle mud football and the mud had won, I finally reached Spot. Now I could hear her mew.

  “C’mon, cutie. Your daddy would flip if he knew his princess was out playing in the mud.” I leaned over and made a clicking noise. She still hadn’t learned to come when I whistled.

  Then I froze when I saw where Spot had been digging.

  Something smooth and slender, about the width of a pencil, protruded from the muddy saturated ground. Not a stick. A bone.

  I squatted and brushed some of the mud away from the bone. Maybe it was part of a bird’s skeleton, a rather larger bird. I kept digging and the mud revealed yet another bone. My body skittered back in reflex, and I tumbled onto a pair of watermelons. The cold mud of the field seeped into the back of my shorts. I scrabbled for a handhold and shifted to my knees.

  That bone didn’t belong to a bird or a dog or any other animal. Its owner had been human. I scooped up Spot, getting more mud on her damp fur, and ran for the house.

  Chapter Two

  “Did you hear? The Hartleys found part of a skeleton in their field.”

  I turned in the booth at Honey’s to see who’d spoken. The cushion squeaked. Lunchtime diners filled the restaurant’s booths and tables, but because of the varied voices and conversations, I couldn’t find the speaker. Word got around fast, and I knew my brother-in-law Jerry would have a cow if he knew people were already talking about my discovery.

  After the forensics team had arrived at the house, they had secured the field (as if a pile of bones would threaten to run away). The screaming yellow tape created a perimeter around where Spot had romped and I’d taken a sprawl at finding the skeletal finger bones. I willingly parted with a few watermelons for the sake of investigation. The team gradually unearthed the bones. The victim had lain prone on the ground with arms stretched out over the head. Spot had discovered the right pointer finger.

  Jerry let me hang around until I couldn’t stand it anymore. I stayed long enough to learn they’d found a set of bones for the right hand, a
skull and part of the vertebrae, and a pelvis bone and large leg bones. Plus shreds of polyester fabric. I left when someone muttered something about animals probably digging up part of the remains at one time. My questions followed me all the way to Honey’s Place. Ben had to work, and just being in the same room with him and swarms of lunch diners helped me forget the bones a little bit.

  I tried not to shudder and took a sip of sweet tea. Where was Di? She said she’d meet me for a late lunch, and I sure needed to talk to her. My sister, my confidante. Ben had given me a sympathetic embrace and a kiss after I arrived at the restaurant, but he moved back to the kitchen where the Tuesday lunch orders cranked out, plate by plate. Honey had fired a cook a few days ago, so Ben had agreed to stay until the supper prep was over.

  Part of me wanted Ben to sweep me into his arms and take me outside to his truck. We would go home, and he would tuck me safely in a blanket and make me some tea. Then we’d spend the afternoon in front of the fire. But I knew that couldn’t happen. Ben didn’t give his word to help someone and then back out. I’d survive.

  Someone opened the front door and damp air burst into the restaurant. I turned to see who it was. Di crossed the buzzing dining room, her forehead wrinkled as she slid onto the blue vinyl seat across from me. The jukebox in the corner blared to life.

  “Are you okay?” She squeezed my hands. “Your hands are freezing.”

  I nodded and pulled my hands back across the laminate table. “I’ve never seen bones from a real skeleton before.”

  “That one in the science lab at Greenburg High didn’t count, did it?”

  “Hardly. We used to have fun dressing Dr. Bones. But this? Nothing like Dr. Bones at all. The bones were dark. Not like I thought they’d be. I didn’t even realize what it was at first.” I watched crime scene investigation shows sometimes on nights Ben worked. Seeing a body on television comes nowhere close to having a front- row view of the real thing dug up in your own field.