The rental agency delivered the car to the restaurant by the time we were finished paying our bill, and we were off for a pretty drive through the Mississippi woods. I didn’t know what I hoped to find, but at least we weren’t shopping. That in itself was a miracle. I’d googled Johnny Bresland’s death notice and discovered that Tippah County had been in charge of the investigation. On the way, I telephoned the Tippah County sheriff’s department and asked to speak with the officer who’d worked the Johnny Bresland accidental shooting.
Deputy Len Ford sounded to be an experienced lawman who put the facts on the line. He freely gave us the details of the shooting. Bresland was found in a cluster of trees and he wasn’t wearing hunter’s orange. There were deer tracks near his body. The deputy pointed out that hunting fatalities weren’t uncommon, especially when buck fever was running high.
“It was a simple accident,” Ford said. “We investigated. The shot came from an area where several other hunters had set up. As you probably know, we can’t trace buckshot to a particular gun, and those guys aren’t going to talk if they even know who’s responsible, so there’s no real way to identify the shooter. It’s had a tragic impact. The guys Bresland was hunting with, this has pretty much ruined their lives. They all feel guilty.”
“You knew Bresland’s wife died only a month before he was shot?” I asked.
“That was up in Lafayette County. I heard the talk, read the official report. Suicide. That’s why his buddies took him hunting. He was drinking too much and spending too much time alone. His friends said he seemed overwhelmed with guilt and remorse at his wife’s death. They thought getting out in the woods, some time with his friends, would put him on a better path.”
I wasn’t a fan of hunting as grief therapy, but I didn’t say it. “Are you sure Aurora Bresland’s death was a suicide?”
“She died at her home just outside Oxford. Lafayette County investigated that one. We weren’t involved, but I did check into the basic details. Seemed a little odd that she’d die and then her husband would get shot to death. But I couldn’t find anything to hang my suspicions on. From what I was told, it was pretty open-and-shut. Mrs. Bresland was depressed—she’d been seeing a therapist—and she took a bottle of sleeping pills. She left a note that said if suicide was good enough for Marilyn, it was good enough for her.”
Chill bumps raced over my body. That didn’t sound like any suicide note I’d ever read. It was flippant. And depressed people seldom achieved flippancy no matter how hard they tried.
“In our investigation did you hear any rumors that Johnny Bresland was cheating on his wife?”
“His wife was dead before Bresland was shot. It occurred to me that something was wrong in the marriage for the wife to kill herself, but she wasn’t a suspect in the shooting. Dead people make poor murder suspects. Juries don’t tend to believe in revenge from a spirit.” There was a hint of humor in his voice. “Men cheat all the time, but few women kill themselves because of a cheater.”
“Cheating may have been the cause of Mrs. Breland’s suicide, but I’m really interested in how the Bresland estate was handled. The man was wealthy—extremely so. No children. His wife should have been his sole heir, except she was dead. That left the door open for a stranger to benefit from his death.” I let that sink in. “I’m headed to the Hell Creek area. Care to meet me?”
“I’m about ten minutes from there anyway. I’ll wait for you on the North Trace road.”
This was better than I’d hoped. “Thanks, Deputy Ford.” I hung up and nodded at my friends. “The deputy that worked the case is going to meet us there.”
13
Deputy Ford was a big, strapping man with keen gray eyes that didn’t miss a lot. He was middle-aged but without the excess padding that a lot of men in their late forties or early fifties tended to pack on. He eyed the four of us with no emotion, waiting to see what we’d reveal. He was alert but nonconfrontational, and I realized he’d agreed to meet us out of curiosity to see what we might be up to.
He was standing, leaned against the back of his patrol vehicle, when we stopped behind him and got out of the car. The woods around us were dense, a lovely mixture of hardwoods on land that rolled and sloped, sometimes sharply. I looked on the north side of the road, where the terrain slanted down to the gurgle of a fast-running creek.
“Thanks for meeting us,” I said.
“I wasn’t expecting a posse,” he said at last.
I gave him a business card. “We’re on vacation,” I explained. “It just so happens that we were asked to look into some strange events in Columbus, and the trail has led us here.”
“To the middle of a wildlife preserve where a man was shot to death.” He watched me closely. It was clear that now he’d caught sight of us in the flesh, he thought we had some ulterior motive.
“It’s a long shot,” I said, “but the woman who hired us, something doesn’t click with her. As private detectives, we like to know if we’re being sandbagged by a client.”
Millie approached the deputy and handed him her business card. “Ms. Falcon and I are newspaper reporters. We work for the Zinnia Dispatch and we’re consultants with the Delaney Detective Agency.”
I turned away to hide my grin. Millie liked what she saw in Deputy Ford. My hardworking friend had had one fling with a man she met at a Cupid’s party, but distance had stymied that romance. It was good to see her strut her stuff at
