Greed & Deadly Deceit: Rosewood Place Mysteries, #3

Ruby Blaylock

Greed & Deadly Deceit

A Rosewood Place Mystery

Copyright © 2018 by Ruby Blaylock

All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording, scanning, or otherwise without written permission from the publisher. It is illegal to copy this book, post it to a website, or distribute it by any other means without permission.

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Contents

The Things We Find When We Are Not Looking

Pies, Blue Skies, and the Dead Guy

The Current Guests

Dishbreakers and Heartbreakers

A Tiny House and a Tiny Mystery

A Disturbing Discovery

Blood and Feathers

A Fox Among the Hens

Bessie Gets An Idea

Learning More About Mr. Michaels

An Unexpected Visitor

Melody Has a Visitor

Reunion

What Joshua Saw

Emmett Weighs In On Matters

Preparing For Dinner

Good Food, Friendly Conversation

Trying To Figure Things Out

Family Connections

Homecoming

The Death of Adrian LaRue

Rooting Out the Sly Foxes

Letting the Cat Out of the Bag

Going Back to the Scene of the Crime

Family Is Everything

Good Friends, Happy Endings

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The Things We Find When We Are Not Looking

Keep your fingers out of that pie, Rory Jenkins!" Annie did her best to glare at the man sitting next to her in the front seat of her beat up Chevy truck, but his mischievous grin made it nearly impossible.

Remind me again why we’re taking this delectable, homemade apple pie to a man who threatened to kill your dog and sue you for every cent you’ll ever own? He licked the edge of one thumb. It was an innocent gesture, but one that made Annie’s stomach do a funny little dance. She and Rory were friends. Actually, she was technically his boss, but neither of them really saw it that way.

They definitely weren’t a couple, or at least they hadn’t been for about twenty years, and Annie saw no point in going backward when a perfectly good forward motion was available. Still, there was something so attractive about a man holding fresh baked goods. And of course, just because a woman was widowed and a little thicker around the middle than she’d been in her high school days, it didn’t mean she never felt the occasional craving for something sweet.

Because, she sighed, partly because she was frustrated about even thinking about Rory in any sort of way that implied she might have those kinds of feelings for him, and partly because she was trying to convince herself that her plan was actually going to work.

We just got off on the wrong foot, she said, trying to make herself believe it. Mr. LaRue can’t be as bad as he seems.

No, he’s worse. Rory’s grin evaporated as he shifted the pie to the dashboard.

Frances LaRue owned the property adjacent to Rosewood Place. Neither Annie nor Rory had met the man during the first year that the plantation-turned-inn had been in business, but a week before Annie’s mother, Bessie, baked the delicious apple pie, LaRue had arrived on Annie’s doorstep, shoving a dead and bloodied chicken carcass in Annie’s face and threatening to have her dog shot for murdering one of the man’s chickens.

Annie had protested Karma’s innocence, but Frances LaRue was not a man to be taken lightly, or so he pronounced before traipsing back through the woods from whence he came. Rory had later told Annie that LaRue had threatened to call the police on him and Annie’s son, Devon when he found them fishing in the pond on LaRue’s side of the property.

Annie was pretty certain that Rory and Devon had been well within her property line, but they’d agreed to stick to their side of the pond, at least until they could smooth things over with the crotchety old man.

Now Annie had enlisted Rory as her wingman in trying to win the old man over. She didn’t want to be friends with him, but she’d known his type before--the meddling old fool who was just mean enough to follow through on those threats of his--and she didn’t want to risk starting some terrible feud with him. She just needed to be on agreeable terms with the old miser. It was bad for business if a bed and breakfast came with a crazy old kook who threatened to shoot people and their pets for trespassing every time they stepped too close to his property line.

She supposed she could have walked through the woods to get to LaRue’s place. After all, it would have been much quicker, but she didn’t want to surprise him. For all she knew, he was the type of man to keep a loaded shotgun by the door just so he’d be prepared for such an occasion. The drive wasn’t a long one--just a half a mile down the road and then she’d cut through an old access road that connected her to the narrow, winding country road that snaked past LaRue’s house.

She marveled at how much better kept the road that ran past her house was. She supposed it was because it was technically a highway and one of the main roads that led into town. Despite her complaints that it was full of potholes and a never ending supply of roadkill, she’d take her highway over LaRue’s cracked blacktop ‘street’ any day. It looked as though the county had paved the street, then simply forgotten that they’d put it there. She spotted exactly two houses on the mile or so stretch of road--LaRue’s place and one that looked completely abandoned. Of the two, she thought that she preferred the abandoned one.

Frances LaRue’s house looked as though it had once been a pretty little thing, with white clapboard and a charming covered front porch that stretched along most of the length of the front of the house. It was a two-story home, but to Annie, it looked as though it had gotten tired of standing and now leaned ever so slightly to one side. She thought it might be a trick of the eye, perhaps it was the porch that was crooked?

As her tires turned onto the packed dirt drive, Annie’s stomach twisted. As she put the truck in park, it groaned.

You sure you want to go in there and talk to this old fool? Rory asked gently, but Annie could tell he thought she was crazy for trying to make amends for her dog’s transgression.

Yes, Rory, we need to do this. She held her hands out for the pie, and Rory relented, sighing at her as he shook his head.

You are as stubborn as a mule, Annie Purdy, you know that, right? He flashed her a quick grin before he climbed out of the truck. Although Annie had married and was now a widow, he refused to call her by anything but her maiden name. She didn’t mind it. In fact, it was quite comforting to her.

Despite leaving her home in Coopersville, South Carolina and moving to New York when she married two decades before, Annie often felt like the best and most exciting times of her life only happened when she’d moved back to the small town. It had taken her husband’s sudden death from a massive heart attack--and the just-as-sudden appearance of his mistress at his funeral--to show Annie just what a sham her marriage had really been. However, becoming a widow hadn’t been as tragic as Annie thought it might have been.

After pooling her money with her mother to buy Rosewood Place plantation, she’d reunited with Rory, hiring him on first as her contractor and then as her permanent handyman. Annie had wanted to give her son the sort of relaxed, carefree environment she’d had when she grew up, and she thought that she’d managed to do just that.

Well, almost, if you didn’t count all the murders that had taken place at their new home.

She let that thought drift right out of her head as she approached the crooked little house. It really did look forlorn, like it hadn’t seen a lick of paint in a few decades and maybe hadn’t seen a broom in a few hundred years. Cobwebs crisscrossed the corners of the porch rails, billowing gently in the breeze. It had been hot in the truck since the AC had gone out and Annie hadn’t had the time or money to call a mechanic. Now, Annie felt a slight chill as she stepped onto the steps of the porch.

Mr. LaRue? She called his name before she ever reached the front door. An open window told her that he’d be able to hear them approach and she didn’t want to startle him. She listened for a moment but didn’t hear a reply.

Rory approached the front door first. He cocked his head to listen for a reply to Annie’s calls, but heard nothing, so he reached out and gave the door a tap. It fell open beneath his hand and Annie realized that the door hadn’t been fully closed.

Do you think he’s in there? she asked, peering past Rory into the dark entrance.

I don’t know, Rory admitted. Maybe. He poked his head inside and called out, but there was no response. Something’s not right. Rory said this as a statement, not a hunch. Annie could see the wheels in his head turning. He looked around them carefully, assessing the situation.

Just beyond Annie’s truck, there was a rusty old Ford that looked like it probably hadn’t been driven in a long time, but Rory knew differently. He’d seen the old man in that truck in town a few times, so he was fairly sure the old guy was home.

Mr. LaRue, he called out again, this time saying it louder and just inside the front door.

When there was still no response, Annie decided that she was not going to wait around any longer. She nudged the front door wide open with her toe and darted in before Rory could say anything.

The inside of the house was dark and as uninviting as its exterior, with the added charm of smelling downright awful. She could see two bulging bags of trash sitting just inside the front door. She decided that her neighbor hadn’t gotten around to actually carrying them outside just yet. Layered over the smell of garbage was another scent, sickly sweet. It was smoky and not entirely unpleasant, but combined with the stench of the garbage, the result was overwhelming. She rubbed at her eyes and pressed on into the dark house.

Mr. LaRue, she called out, echoing Rory’s call, but again, there was nothing but the sound of running water. She followed the sound down a short hallway to the kitchen, where she could see a sink with several dirty dishes in it. The tap had been left running, which accounted for the noise. Instinctively, she stepped into the kitchen and turned it off, but as soon as she did, she wished that she hadn’t.

As she turned back around, Annie found the reason why Frances LaRue hadn’t answered their calls.

He was sprawled on the floor in a puddle of water. His eyes were wide open, and so was his mouth, but he wasn’t going to be yelling at anyone to get off his property ever again. Frances LaRue wasn’t going to be doing anything ever again because Frances LaRue was dead.

Pies, Blue Skies, and the Dead Guy

Annie had gotten used to waiting for the police to show up. After all, she’d called them to her own place on numerous occasions after discovering unfortunate things just like the thing she’d found at Frances LaRue’s house. It didn’t make waiting any easier, especially when she had to wait at a stranger’s home with his cold, dead body lying right there nearby.

She and Rory decided to wait outside in the shade of an oak tree that grew beside the house. The truck was too hot and the house wasn’t an option, not even the porch. Rory tried to make her feel better by not telling her what she already knew--that she should have stayed outside in the first place--but she couldn’t help it, she felt really foolish.

Not only had she dragged them into a police investigation, she’d also touch the sink and nearly fell over the body, which could have seriously affected evidence. She knew Emmett Barnes, the Chief of Police and her mother’s beau, would have something to say to her. It would probably be something along the lines of ‘how many times are we going to have to come and see you about a dead body?’

Rory had put the pie back in the truck. No point in wasting your Mama’s hard work, he told her, and she realized that he was probably right, though she certainly couldn’t stomach the idea of eating any right then.

She told herself that the poor man had probably slipped and hit his head, though she wasn’t quite sure how all that water had gotten on the floor in the first place. It had been flowing down into the sink easily enough when she’d switched it off. As the sound of police sirens approached, Annie hoped that Emmett would at least send someone other than Delbert Plemmons, who seemed to have an unnatural fondness for her, despite the fact that he was at least fifteen years her junior and looked like he could have been her son.

Annie was surprised to find that Emmett had taken it upon himself to respond to her call. He’d brought another young officer that she didn’t recognize with him and she watched as the pair of them approached the house with caution.

Y’all been sitting here long? Emmett called out.

Sir, do you think we ought to be making so much noise? the young officer interjected. His name tag read ‘Hughes’.

Aww, I don’t think it matters much how noisy we are, Hughes. Annie says the man is dead, and I reckon she ought to know. Go ahead and go on in there to verify it, if you want, he added impatiently.

Emmett was in no mood to look at Frances LaRue’s dead body. That old fool had been cantankerous to the extreme for as long as Emmett had known him, which is to say, some thirty years. LaRue didn’t have any friends that Emmett could think of, but he did have a brother over in Pickens who might want to know about the man’s death. He made a mental note to give Samuel LaRue a call later that day to break the unfortunate news.

Emmett nodded towards Rory. You two alright, Rory?

Rory nodded. Yeah, but I guess I’ll let Annie explain why we were here.

Annie felt her cheeks flush. Well, Emmett, we were bringing him a pie.

Emmett sucked on his cheek and raised one eyebrow. Oh, really? Would that be one of Bessie’s pies? Annie nodded. And why, pray tell, would you bring this old coot one of your mother’s delightful pies?

Annie took a deep breath. She was certain that her mother had mentioned the ‘issues’ with Frances LaRue, but she had no idea how much Bessie had embellished or left out altogether. Her mother could be a terrible drama queen sometimes.

Well, she began again, trying to frame her response carefully. She liked Emmett and didn’t want him to think that she was being silly, but she also didn’t want to look too guilty or even too naive. Mr. LaRue paid us a visit a little while back, about a week ago.

Emmett nodded. Your mama mentioned it, he replied. Said he wasn’t being too neighborly.

Annie winced. Well, he had a right to be mad. I mean, he had a few dead chickens on his hands, and I can’t be sure that it wasn’t our dog that did it.

"Now, Emmett, you know as well