Mystery on the Bayou

                                                                                        Chapter 2

                                                                                  Essie Helps Out                                                                                         

     Jessie put her hand back to keep Essie from coming any closer.  Then she peered at the body through the reeds while the sheriff looked on.  The man was young, perhaps in his late twenties.  He had dark hair and was slender in build.  Jessie estimated his height around six foot tall.  He was dressed in a lime green polo shirt and what looked like a new pair of blue jeans.  A putter used in the game of golf lie in the water against his body.

     "Do you see the large goose egg on his temple," Jessie asked the sheriff.  Sheriff  Frank Matthews was a big man, both in height and weight.  He had a round face and sandy hair under the tan stetson hat he wore. "Yeah. But only the coroner will be able to tell us whether the person that wielded the putter caused the man's death.  Just then the coroner pulled into Jessie's dirt driveway just as the suspected murder scene begin to fill up with her curious neighbors.

    Before the coroner took the body away, the sheriff donned a pair of latex gloves and emptied the man's pockets.  "I'll let you know what I find out Frank," the coroner told him as he got into his car.  The sheriff gave him a nod as two men in the ambulance prepared to take the body away.  Before they did, Sheriff Matthews spoke to the crowd.

     "Any one here want to come up and tell me if you know who this guy is?"  Several of the on lookers came forward, (all men) and took turns looking at the body.  They all said they had never seen him before.  "Thanks," the sheriff said.  "Okay men, you can take him away," he called to the two men waiting with the stretcher.

     Jessie, the sheriff and everyone else moved back so that the ambulance personnel could put the body on the gurney.  After the corpse was out of sight the sheriff picked up the putter with one of his gloved hands and handed it to one of his two deputies.  Then he handed over the contents of the man's pockets.  "Bag these and take them and the putter over to Baton Rouge, to the lab over there at....well, you've been there before you known the name of that place we always use."  Deputy Clark Cruise shook his head in amusement, but answered, "Okay Boss."

     "You can all go home now," the sheriff told the crowd, "the shows over."  When the people dispersed, the sheriff turned to Jessie and said, "I need your statement as to what you saw and what time you saw it."  "Sure Frank," Jessie answered, "Come on in and have a cup of coffee.  I have chocolate cookies just baked last night.  "Yum.  I would never turn down a couple of your nearly fresh baked cookies he said, following her into the house.

     Esther was already there.  She evidently knew her Grandma Jessie well, because she had started a fresh pot of coffee brewing and had set a platter of cookies on the kitchen table along with coffee cups and packets of sugar and cream.  "Thank you Essie," Jessie said, seeing the nicely set table.  A vase full of wild flowers were already setting in the middle of it.  Jessie picked a bunch of them everyday.

     "Yes, thank you Essie.  You're just a ray of sunshine aren't you girl?"  The sheriff told her.  Esther rolled her eyes at him and then sat down in her place at the table.  When the sheriff and Jessie had hot coffee before them and Essie had her milk and two cookies. (she knew she'd better get her share before the sheriff devoured them all) the Frank begin his questioning.