A Bullet to the Heart
A
Bullet
to the
Heart
A Weatherford Sisters Mystery
Josephine – book 1
Kathy L Wheeler
A Bullet to the Heart
A Weatherford Sisters Mystery
Book I
Copyright © 2021 by Kathy L Wheeler
All Rights Reserved
https://klwheeler.com
https://kathylwheeler.com
This story is work of fiction. Names, characters, places, and incidents are either products of the author’s imagination and/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 may be reproduced or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic or mechanical, without express written permission from Kathy L Wheeler.
Cover Art © 2020 by Novak Illustrations
Edited by CJ Obray
Formatted by Kathy L Wheeler
Table of Contents
Copyright
Other Weatherford Mysteries
To the Reader
1
2
3
4
5
6
7
8
9
10
11
12
13
14
15
16
17
18
19
20
21
22
Epilogue
Acknowledgements
Books By
About Kathy
Dear Reader:
I hope you enjoy this book one of the Weatherford Sisters Mysteries. My real sisters and I got together and came up with one crazy scheme after another before finally settling on each doing a book in our mystery series. The fourth book belongs to their cousin, Jackson. For a complete list of all the stories see the Other Weatherford Mystery Books page.
An interesting fun fact: we consulted a “Birth Order” book for traits regarding the order of our own births and applied some of the known traits for sisters born in that order. Josephine, as am I, the oldest of the sisters. As a result, she is a bit bossy and sure of her standing within the leadership of the family… however, what happens when her middle sister, Lydia, steps up and makes a stand? Thank you for reading.
If you are so inclined, please leave a review!
Love….
Kathy L Wheeler
Other Weatherford Mystery Books
A Bullet to the Heart
Kathy L Wheeler
Hanging by a Threat
Terry Andrews
A Fatal Drip of Wisdom
Sanxie Bea Cooper
A Dagger Cuts Deep
Kathy L Wheeler
1
September 15, 1937
Metropolitan Museum of Art
J
osephine Ophelia Weatherford clutched her sack lunch within tensed fingers and stepped outside The Metropolitan Museum of Art, widely known as The MET, and trotted down the stairs, scanning the occupants of the outdoor tables. She spotted him at the one farthest to the north, only he wasn’t alone. Her heart skipped a beat.
The urge to turn and run the other way seized her, but that wasn’t Jo’s way. She straightened her spine and chanted her mantra: I am a modern woman. A woman who faces adversity. A woman who is not afraid. Her walk toward them slowed. Disappointment sliced through her. She hadn’t expected a third person. A warm fall breeze stirred her hair.
She reached the table, and both men stood.
“There you are, baby.” Bobby Kingsley, her newly found father, leaned in and dropped a light kiss on her cheek. “This here’s Julius.”
Surprising herself, she didn’t scrub away his kiss. Jo did not like people touching her. She just wasn’t made that way. But Bobby Kingsley was different. He was her father. The one her mother kept from her. Had lied to her about.
Julius threw out his hand. “Julius Styles, Miss Weatherford. It’s a pleasure.” His smile revealed a deep dimple in his left cheek. His eyes twinkled with humor that reluctantly drew Jo in. “Your father didn’t think you would mind if I joined you for lunch.” He held out a chair, and she cautiously lowered onto it.
Father. It was unsettling to hear someone say the word out loud, reminding her of the monumental task that lay ahead in how she was supposed to tell her sisters she had a different father.
“Julius comes from sturdy stock, honey.”
Jo tapped into her finishing school etiquette before her thoughts could overrun with panic. “Styles. Why does that sound familiar?”
“Styles Shipping.” Bobby’s own smile was engaging.
Sadly, Jo realized her personality came straight from her melancholic mother who tended toward the depressive outlook on life. Her lips tipped in a closed-mouth smile. “Of course, now I remember.” She studied the man from behind her lowered lashes. He was tall. Even in heels, she would stand at least half a foot shorter than him. He seemed to have a cheerful disposition. His wheat-colored hair and the twinkle in his green eyes lent credence to the picture. “What brings you to the city, Mr. Styles?”
“I have business interests to take care of, Miss Weatherford. Please call me Julius.”
“Her name’s Josephine, isn’t it, honey?”
Jo stole a look at her father. He was glancing between her and Mr. Styles, grinning like a Cheshire cat. He appeared…thrilled…with himself. Acting the proud papa. Something inside her softened. It wasn’t often a girl learned that she wasn’t orphaned after all, that her father was not only alive and well but was thrilled to have found her.
Another strike against Eleanor, her mentally incapacitated mother who’d kept the truth of Jo’s parentage to herself for twenty-five years.
That new knowledge brought to mind another little question and churned up a familiar bitterness. Her Uncle Victor—what was his role in all of this? Jo knew one thing for certain about Uncle Victor: if there was truth to any rumor, the man was privy to it. And certainty didn’t mean he was inclined to share what he knew.
Victor had to have known Jo’s father was not Charles Weatherford. Of that, she hadn’t a single doubt.
Wyndel Smith, Jr. strolled into the Cobblestone Café and ordered his customary black coffee, adding an order of pancakes for a change from his standard regime of eggs over easy, bacon, and hash browns.
Melinda plopped his plate down, filled his cup, and was off again. The diner was crowded this morning, and no wonder with the unseasonably warm days of late September. More often than not, this time of the season the island had nights already dipping below freezing. Facing the Long Island Sound left the island vulnerable to the sudden changes in the North Atlantic’s weather patterns from the icy sprays of the ocean to the spells of summer hurricanes and suffocating heat that could steal one’s breath as well as one’s livelihood.
The diner’s glass door crashed open, startling diners at the half full tables. The usually timid Theodore Vance stood in the arch, his face flushed with fury. “That damned Montgomery. Someone should just put a bullet in him and have done with it.” Theo was a small, bald man, who couldn’t see a yard in front of him without his trusty spectacles.
“Uh, Theo, the sheriff’s sittin’ right there. Can hear ever’ word you’re sayin’.” Sigmund, who owned the only service station on the island, stretched his arms across the back of the vinyl bench of his booth and tilted his head in Wyn’s direction.
“That’s true,” Wyn said. He forked a pile of syr
up-soaked pancakes. “What did Victor do now?”
“Accused me of poisoning his wife.”
Wyn picked up his coffee and drank the bitter brew. Wincing, he set it back down. “Now, why would you want to poison his wife?”
“I wouldn’t. What good would that do me? The woman was a hypochondriac. Why, I’d a been losing me a good paying customer by killing off Mary Montgomery.” Theo plopped down in the nearest chair and stirred up a cloud of gloom over the air. “I did lose a good paying customer. I swear this island is haunted.”
Uneasy chuckles erupted around the diner. Wyn stood up and tossed some bills on the table and headed to the door. He clapped Theo on the back, nearly knocking him off his feet. “Don’t worry about it, Theo. It’s not likely Victor will end up meeting his maker for years.” Although people on the island did seem to have a way of inexplicably ending up dead. He hurried out of the diner, hurried away from impending thoughts of a girl he hadn’t thought of in fifteen years. Penelope Knox. There wasn’t anything anyone could do for her now.
Outside the diner, Wyn breathed in the damp mild air. Wouldn’t be long before things turned cold. The town was quiet. One of the primary reasons he’d returned. He hiked up the hill and a block over to the Dry Goods Emporium. He pushed the door open and stepped over the threshold then suddenly wished he hadn’t.
“Grow up, Belle. I’ve had just about enough of the Montgomerys. I don’t give a rat’s ass if Victor’s wife is dead or not. It’s never happening again with you and that man. He ain’t never cared one whit for you.”
Wyn grabbed the handle of the door, ready to duck out, but his mother walked in from the backroom to the storefront, her cheeks tinged a dark red. She caught sight of him and jerked straight up. “Wyn, what are you doing here?”
“I, uh, came to—”
His father followed in behind his mother and stopped, his expression annoyed. He was a beefy, able-bodied man. His was a threatening presence that took up half the space in any room. “Don’t you have work to do, Wyn, ’stead of hanging around listening to shit that ain’t your business?”
“Not my business?” His father had always treated him as a third-rate citizen as if he didn’t belong in the same house.
And Wyn may just have stumbled upon the reason.
“Wyn, please. You should leave. Come to dinner on Sunday. I-I’ll fix your favorite.” Her words, a soft beg, killed him inside.
His mother was a petite woman of forty-seven. Her dark hair showed streaks of gray, and deep grooves bracketed her mouth. She’d worked hard her whole life having had him at seventeen, way too young to be a mother. He was thirty and couldn’t imagine being a father. Life was flashing by him in a rush. Not to mention the one woman on earth he desired he hadn’t seen in six months.
His father’s clenched fists hung at his sides, his stance set for a round in the boxing ring. In a sharp twist, his father brushed first by Belle, then past Wyn and out the door towards Wyn’s childhood home behind the store.
Wyn leaned against a table that held bolts of fabric stacked nine high. “Is there something I should know about, Mother?”
She picked at her blunt-cut fingernails. “Your father believes Victor Montgomery is your father.”
The air whooshed from his lungs. It was common speculation, but hearing the words aloud blindsided him. And no one ever said as much to his face. Wyn plunked down in the nearest chair. “Is that a…a possibility?” Wyn studied her, but she refused to meet his glance.
“No. The fact of the matter is, Victor and I did have a short-term romance, if you could call it that, long before your father and I married. But, no,” she said bitterly. “Mary Montgomery accused me of the same thing.”
Victor Montgomery’s accusation to Theo regarding his wife’s death stirred the hair at Wyn’s neck with a whispered chill. He had to ask. “When was this?”
She strolled over to Wyn and rubbed his arm. “Not long before she died. She wanted me to come talk to her, but I made every excuse I could think of. Stupid woman wouldn’t take no for an answer, then claimed she needed a new rug for her bedroom. Said the old one ‘just would not do.’ That it was an emergency.” She released her touch on Wyn’s arm and looked down at her work-worn hands. “I decided to hell with it. I’d bring her my most expensive one.”
“And did you?”
“Certainly.” Her gaze snapped to his, flashing fire. “I deserved something out of her idiotic demand.”
Dread coiled his gut. “Did anyone see you, Ma?”
“Esther. You know you can’t avoid anyone on this godforsaken island for any length of time.” Her shoulders slumped. “What’s with all the questions anyway?”
He didn’t even hesitate. “Victor Montgomery accused Theo Vance of poisoning Mary.”
His mother let out a snort. “That man couldn’t kill a mouse if his house was overrun with them.”
Wyn rubbed his hand over his forehead, smiling slightly. “I had the same thought.”
She let out a sigh and sank down beside him. “I’m sorry you had to hear your father and me.”
“I can’t believe I had no idea of his animosity. Has it always been this way…between you and Pa?”
“Nah. We get on most of the time. Usually it comes about when something comes up and I’m unprepared.”
“Unprepared?” Another flare of unease raised.
She waved out a hand. “You know. If I’m prepared, then I can dismantle the situation before things get way out of hand.”
Wyn narrowed his eyes on her. His instincts were a primal urge to protect his mother that guaranteed he’d be confronting his father out back with a two-by-four. “Out of hand?”
“Subvert. Keep things on a calm level by smoothing them over before they mushroom out of control.”
He sat back, grunting. “I don’t like the sound of that.”
She sighed. “This is what women do. We only just got the right to vote a few short years ago.” She stood and patted his upper arm. “Don’t worry yourself about it, sweetie. I’m an expert on Wyndel Smith, Sr. This isn’t the first time he’s gotten himself all riled up, and I doubt it’ll be the last. Now, about that dinner on Sunday. How does meatloaf and mashed potatoes sound?”
2
October 17, 1937
W
yn let himself into his office and was greeted by his secretary’s cheerful chatter. After the morning he’d had the sound grated on him. Thankfully, the phone rang and, like a light switch, Dorothea’s tone flipped to no-nonsense seriousness. “Could you repeat that?”
Wyn slowed, his eyes meeting hers.
“I’ll let him know.” Dorothea replaced the receiver. “It’s Victor Montgomery. He’s fallen over the bluff. Halfway between the manor house and Serpent’s Point.”
Jo let herself into the penthouse after an awkward dinner with Mr. Styles. The whole month had been a whirlwind of museum outings, morning brunches, late-night dancing and walks through Central Park. Only she couldn’t seem to dredge up an ounce of genuine affection for the man, no matter how hard she tried, or how much her father wanted this. Yes, he was a decent distraction, easy on the eyes, the ears, but every time he leaned to attempt a kiss, she thwarted him. What was wrong with her? He was perfect.
The problem was that she had too many issues for someone… normal…like him.
Jo leaned against the back of the door, her mind going to the complexity that was Wyndel Smith, Jr., of Montgomery Island. Another relationship that would never work. Unfortunately, snatches of images of him kissing her tended to sneak through her determination to keep them at bay.
She shoved thoughts of Wyn away and dropped her keys on the entryway table, surprised Stevens hadn’t beaten her to the door. The man had an uncanny knack for knowing when she or Lydia happened to be right outside the door.
Stevens entered the foyer from Victor’s study.
“Stevens? I can’t believe it, but—”
“Oh, dear. I’m sorry, miss. There’s a letter for you. Your uncle requests you meet him on the island.”
Big surprise. Victor snapped his fingers, and everyone was supposed to jump. She was still smarting over the fact that no one had told her Bobby Kingsley was her real father.
Jo kicked off her shoes, with an inward cheer at having finally outsmarted the butler, though she couldn’t seem to muster up a smile. “Thank you, Stevens.” She took the letter, picked up her shoes, and went to her room. After curling up on the settee, she slit open the envelope and read.
Josephine, dear,
I’m afraid I’ve some disturbing news. Please take the train to the island. I’ll expect you by the 20th. That should allow you enough time to arrange things with your employers at the museum. See you soon.
V. Montgomery.
How typical. No “Love, Uncle” or “Can’t wait to see you.” Jo let out an irritated breath. Was it any wonder she didn’t feel good enough for any man to fall in love with her? Her own relative couldn’t bring himself to acknowledge the least amount of sentiment, why should anyone else?
She huffed out a breath. At least he hadn’t taken it upon himself to call her boss as he’d been known to do in the past. She wondered if Lydia and Tevi had received similar edicts. Ah, well. Shaking her head, Jo rose from her perch and pulled her suitcase from the closet. Some things would never change.
The telephone rang, and Jo snatched it up.
“Oh, JoJo. He’s dead. Uncle Victor is dead.” It was her youngest sister, Victoria Tevis, cheekily referred to as Tevi.
Jo dropped back down on the settee. “What on earth are you going on about?”
“This is horrible. What are we going to do?” Her voice, trembling with shock, was threaded with panic.