Chapter Five

There was no sign of the RV on Free Row when I got home. Finn’s Dodge Charger wasn’t even in his driveway. I’d spent all night tossing and turning in the bed, listening for any sounds of cars coming down the street, while trying to tame the catfish supper Bartleby Fry had sent home that hadn’t set well in my belly. Who knew what time I’d finally fallen asleep.

It was a call on my phone that woke me up. Figuring it was Mama, since she’d had all night to think about her ridiculous behavior, I took my time to reach across my bed and get the phone off the bedside table.

“Hi, Toots,” I answered knowing it was weird that Toot’s Buford would call me so early and on my cell. “Are you okay?”

“I’m fine, but I found something strange when I pulled into work.” She worked as a cashier at the local Piggly Wiggly grocery store.

“What’s that?” I asked and patted Duke, who was still snoring next to me in the bed. I sat up at the edge of my bed and patted him awake.

He crawled his front legs to the edge of the bed and slid them off until they hit the floor where he pulled himself into a big long stretch before dragging his back legs off the bed.

“I pulled in and there’s an RV with tags from Illinois in the parking lot. I think someone is living in it and parked it at the Piggly Wiggly,” she started to describe it as I walked down the hallway. “Now, Kenni. They can’t be goin’ and parkin’ in the Piggly.”

I let her ramble on knowing it was Finn’s parents, though I wasn’t going to mention it to her.

“It’s not unusual for RV’s to pull off when the drivers are tired at night. I know that Walmart lets them do it in their parking lot, but I’ll be sure to check it out,” I told her and opened the back door to let Duke rush out into the backyard to do his business.

There was a bouquet of daisies, a cup of coffee from Ben’s and a note on the porch table.

“Do you think they’re here to rob me? I mean, I’m the only one opening up this mornin’.” Her voice cracked.

“No. I’m sure you’re fine. In fact,” I probably shouldn’t have told her because it’d be all over town that Finn’s parents had moved their RV to the grocery store parking lot.

But after seeing the little love note Finn had left me this morning, I knew I needed to make things right with his parents.

“Don’t worry. It’s only Finn’s parents. I told them to park it there for the night. Do you mind taking them a few delicious donuts from your bakery and some hot coffee after you get settled in?”

Piggly Wiggly might be a grocery store, but they did have a great in-house bakery, and it made me wonder if the Sweet Shop had hurt their business.

“Why, I love that,” Toot’s tone picked up and she sounded more at ease. “I’d love to. I’ll be sure to keep an eye out and when I notice them shades go up, I’ll hurry out there.”

“Thanks, Toots. I owe ya.” I hung up the phone knowing I’d regret saying that to her one day. Though it was just an expression on my part, but knowing Toots, she’d cash on in the favor owed.

While Duke ran around and sniffed out all the new smells since last night, I sat down in the chair and took a sip of coffee while I read the note. Finn had written that we weren’t our parents and we were the ones to make the decision about what religion we’d be when the time came. There were a few I love yous and even some x’s and o’s to end that gave me a big smile.

It was his day to do the early shift of driving around town and making sure all was right with Cottonwood before the day got started. Since Scott had joined us, we made it a point to meet at the department every morning around eight a.m. for a quick briefing of the day.

The bouquet of daisies, my favorite flower, looked beautiful in the middle of my kitchen table. I stood there with a hip leaned up against my counter staring at them while Duke ate his morning kibble.

I didn’t waste too much time basking in the joy the flowers gave me before I got ready for work in the usual brown sheriff’s outfit and filled a bag with a sweatshirt and jeans for my weekly girl’s night out Euchre game. It was my night to close the department down, which left me no room to come home and change. If I had any sense, I’d not go tonight since I knew that everyone in town had probably heard about Finn’s parents being Catholic before the stroke of midnight.

I could just see it now: Mama stomping around the house fussing at Daddy, who was ignoring her and not responding, which made her have to pick up the phone and call everyone on her speed dial.

“You ready?” I walked down the hall and into the kitchen with my bag of clothes in my grip. I took my phone off the charger and slipped it into my back pocket.

Duke jumped to his feet and rushed to the back door, thumping his wagging tail against the bottom kitchen cabinets in anticipation of getting a car ride. One of his favorite activities.

I’d just stopped at the stop sign at the end of the street and rolled down my window and Duke’s window when my phone rang.

“Finn,” I said his name with a big smile. “Good morning,” I answered. “I was just on my way to our eight a.m. morning meeting. Don’t want to be late.”

“Sheriff,” He only called me that when there was an emergency.

“What’s wrong?” My heart fell to my feet. Had something happened with his parents?

“There’s been a body found in Rock Fence Park.” His words stopped my heart. “I’m not sure who she is, but I have to tell you that your Mama and her walking group found her.”

He meant the Henny Hens.

“I’m on my way.” I threw the phone down, grabbed the siren, licked the suction cup and threw the beacon up on top of the roof, jerking the wheel left onto Main Street.

“Goin’ to be diggin’ up dirt on this one,” the soft whisper came from the back of the Wagoneer.

My eyes slide to the rearview mirror, but my brain already told me who I was going to see before I looked.

“Poppa,” I gasped knowing the only time the ghost of my Poppa, Elmer Sims, showed up, it meant one thing.

There was a murder in Cottonwood and a killer was on the loose.

“Are you here because...” I gulped, gripping the wheel to keep the tires on the road. “The dead body isn’t just dead...it’s...” I gulped. “Murdered,” I muttered.

Duke jumped into the back seat and took his happy place next to Poppa.

“I’ve missed you, boy.” Poppa patted Duke.

Duke’s tail wagged with excitement. I’d always heard children and dogs could see ghosts, but never truly believed it until Poppa appeared and proved Duke could see him.

Duke and I were the only ones who knew about Poppa. There’d been a few times that I’d been caught talking to him but was good at acting as if I were talking to myself. The fact that Finn and I were getting closer than just dating, I’d toyed with the idea of letting him know about Poppa’s ghost–that Poppa only showed up when there was a murder in Cottonwood, which made him my Deputy ghost.

Up until a few years ago, there’d never been crime on my watch as sheriff. It wasn’t until there were two crimes in our small town that Poppa had shown up. All the ideas that there wasn’t crime in Cottonwood due to my amazing job as sheriff had been flattened after Poppa informed me that he’d been running around town in ghost form scaring off any would-be criminals.

Apparently, a ghost couldn’t be in two places at once, even if he did ghost from one crime to another.

“I have a sneaky feeling it’s going to be covered and you’re gonna be diggin’ for days to solve this one.” His eyes were sharp and assessing.

Poppa took his wrinkly hand off Duke and rubbed over his comb-over. He adjusted the collar of his brown sheriff’s uniform and neatly tucked in the edges of his shirt into his brown pants. He lifted the flap of the pocket on the front of his shirt.

“You lookin’ for this?” I held the wheel with one hand and picked up his sheriff’s pin out of the beanbag coffee holder that was draped over the hump on the floorboard between the driver’s side and passenger’s side.

“I forgot.” He winked.

“I don’t think you forgot. I think you wanted to remind me to put it on.” I palmed it and moved my hand back to the steering wheel as I took a left at the light off of Main Street to turn onto Oak Street, where Rock Fence Park was located.

“Oh, Kenni bug,” he referred to me by my nickname he’d given me as a young child, “I’m so proud of you.”

The siren echoed in the air that filled the park, causing all the citizens who’d already gathered there to turn around.

“Here comes trouble.” Poppa laughed, referring to Mama, before he ghosted out of the car.

“Come on, Duke.” I got out of the car after I put Poppa’s pin on my shirt and opened the back door to let him out and get my bag. “Not now, Mama,” I warned her before her opened mouth could vocalize.

Her pink silky track suit swooshed with each step she took as she got closer to me. She pushed the matching headband a little further up on her forehead. Leave it to Mama to be dressed for the occasion as she did every event in her life.

“But, Kendrick, we have to talk about this religion issue,” she said through gritted teeth. It was like I was staring into a mirror, all the way down to our green eyes. Only Mama had a few more wrinkles around her eyes. I would never dare to point them out in fear she’d be down at the plastic surgeon in two shakes of a lamb’s tail.

“Excuse me, Darlin’.” She drew back and sucked in a breath to keep going. “This is going to make a mockery of your relationship and your position here in Cottonwood.”

“Woooweee.” Poppa stood grinning. “Glad to see some things never change.”

He was referring to the volatile relationship between his granddaughter and daughter.

“You’ve gone done put a giddy up in her hitch this mornin’.” Poppa was entertained easily. “She looks like she’d ‘bout give you nine kinds of hell.”

“I said not now, Mama. Apparently, you found a body and I need to do my job now. I’ll talk to you in a minute.” I shoved past her, ignoring Poppa, and glanced around to see where Duke had gone.

Duke had darted off to where Finn was standing near a tree at the front of the small hiking trail located past the playground. Not even a child could get lost on this hiking trail. It was there just like the swings. For fun.

Finn had already strung police tape across the play swings, through the jungle gym, around the large slide, and knotted it off at the teeter-totter.

“Do you have any idea who the victim is?” Edna Easterly yelled at me when I walked past the crowd with her hand stuck way out holding her tape recorder.

All the Henny Hens, like little puppets, slightly turned their heads, leaning an ear closer to get the scoop.

Edna was the editor for the Cottonwood Chronicle, our local newspaper. This would be a big scoop for her since most of the stories in the Chronicle were about births and other non-news issues.

Edna’s outfit told me she was going to be out of her office today to investigate this story. Her fisherman vest was equipped as a traveling office where she kept her much needed supplies in the many pockets it had to offer.

The feather she’d hot glued on the brown fedora waved in the early morning wind, making it hard to read the notecard, also glued on the hat, where she’d scribbled the word “Reporter” on it.

For a second, I wondered how all of these people knew, not that I didn’t put it past Mama and the Henny Hens to have called everyone, but when I noticed Max Bogus had pulled up behind the Wagoneer, I knew Finn had called Betty Murphy at the department where she dispatched the county coroner, Max Bogus.

Everyone in Cottonwood had invested in a police scanner. After all, no one wanted to be left behind on what was going on in our small town.

“What do we have?” I asked Finn, putting the personal issue we’d had last night on the back burner.

Our job and our commitment to Cottonwood had to take precedent over the personal life issues we were having at the moment.

“You okay?” Finn’s eyes had a sheen of purpose.

“I’m fine. I guess we have another killer to find.” I shook my head and walked over to the tree line where Finn had placed a couple crime scene numbers.

“Killer?” He questioned. “I’ve not even taken a good look at the body. I simply felt for a pulse and checked for a heartbeat.”

“Definitely a murder. Definitely a killer,” Poppa stood over the body. Duke wiggled at his side. “Go on, tell that Northerner it’s a murder.”

“Duke,” I called. “Get over here.” He trotted over giving me some time to think real fast on how to answer Finn’s question. It was these types of subtle things about Poppa’s ghost that I let slip, making Finn stop and question my every thought. “Then what? Hiking and had a heart attack?”

I knew my tone was a little snottier than normal.

“I’m sorry. Not enough coffee in the morning for a call like this.” I offered one of those “sorry” smiles before I bent down over the body.

Finn walked away and greeted Max a few feet back from me.

The body was lying face down, wearing a black hooded sweatshirt, and what looked to be a blue pair of scrub pants that a doctor would wear. I had no clue if the victim was a male or female, until I turned the body over.

The small puddle of blood in the middle of the back didn’t go unnoticed and from an initial look, it appeared to be a bullet wound.

After I carefully turned the body over, I instantly recognized the fair skinned young woman underneath the hoodie. Avon Meyers. The young woman I’d seen talking to Rich Moss at the funeral home.

More like the woman Rich Moss was threatening.

“Bullet wound right through the ticker,” Poppa pointed out. He danced a little jig and clapped his hands. “Whoooweeee, Kenni bug. It looks like we are back on the case again. Me and you.” He rubbed his hands together. “We can play our little game.”

I stayed with Poppa a lot more than I stayed at home with my parents. Mama actually blamed Poppa for ruining me by brain washing me into becoming a police officer and not fulfilling my destiny in becoming the president of the Junior League and chairwoman of many clubs. When I went to college to get my four-year degree in law enforcement, it nearly put Mama in the bed with a nervous breakdown.

She thought it was cute when I told her I was going to run for Cottonwood sheriff, an elected four-year term. She had made all sort of bedazzled signs and used pink paint, puff paint mind you, as if it were a joke.

When I won, she took to the bed once again.

Eventually, she got over it and during the last election, where I had to be reelected, she took it personally if someone didn’t put a “Vote For Kenni Lowry” sign in their yard.

“Poppa, I’m going to have to limit my conversations with you,” I said under my breath. “Finn and I are getting a lot more serious. Mama practically has my wedding dress picked out.”

I unzipped my bag and took out my camera to get some up-close photos of Ava’s body, trying to make it appear as if I was doing my job instead of trying to sort out all the jumble in my head. The thought of Finn’s parents and the messed-up supper party last night shouldn’t be taking up my thoughts. Poor Ava should be and the fact that I knew she was killed didn’t help matters since I couldn’t just say to everyone that I knew she was murdered because Poppa was here.

We Southerners might wear our crazy like a banner and parade it down Main Street, but we aren’t the “seeing the dead” kinda crazy. That was the stuff that got a person put in a room in the looney bin.

“What do you mean?” Poppa stomped a foot. “We are the best duo with our little back and forth game of ‘what if this happened’. We’ve solved many crimes that way. Why not now?”

He was right. As a child, Poppa would give me scenarios of the crimes he was working on and we would sit at his kitchen table for hours asking each other “what if this happened” to formulate how the crime had happened and who had done it. Granted, most of them didn’t involve murder, but it was still like putting together a puzzle and we were good at it.

“I’m in love with Finn and I’m not sure how he’s going to take it if he found out that I’m relying on my Poppa’s ghost as my deputy more than I am relying on him,” I muttered and snapped the camera at the same time.

“Well if this don’t beat the band.” Poppa did a little more stomping. “You tellin’ me that this Yankee had more influence over you than the actual man who gave you the spirit and drive in your soul to be a sheriff?”

“What do we have here, Sheriff?” Max Bogus walked up with his clipboard in his hand. His pen at the ready.

“We have Avon Meyers, a physical therapist at the Cottonwood Acres Rehab.” I waited for him to finish filling out the top of his paperwork before I continued.

Finn and I were already like a well-oiled machine. He took the camera from me and continued to take pictures of the victim while I filled in Max on what I found.

“It appears the victim has a gunshot wound to the chest here.” I took my pen from my shirt pocket and used the tip to point to the wound. “Before I flipped her over, there was an exit wound that appeared to be a straight line from here. There doesn’t appear to be any other types of wounds or bruising externally.”

“Or vice versa,” Max corrected me. He’d know best. This was his area of expertise.

Out of the corner of my eye, I could see Poppa assessing Finn as if he’d not already formed an opinion of him. Poppa stuck to Finn like Edna Easterly’s feather was glued to her fedora.

“What was Mama’s account?” I asked Finn while Max did his initial assessment and took his photos of Ava before he’d go retrieve the church cart to wheel her off into the hearse.

I turned my back towards Poppa, shifting every time he tried to get into my line of vision before he disappeared. Duke yelped and barked. Finn put his hand out to pat him, satisfying him for the moment.

“I was out doing the rounds when Betty called saying Viv had called in a body on the hiking trail. When I got here and asked her what happened, she told me that she wanted to talk directly to the sheriff.” The lines in his forehead creased as his brows rose.

“She said that?” I asked.

“Yep. She’s not talking to me. She’s still sore from last night.” What he said should’ve alarmed me, but knowing it was coming from Mama, it didn’t surprise me one bit.

“The supper?” Max looked over his clipboard at us.

“You already heard?” I shouldn’t’ve been surprised.

“Heard?” Max laughed. “When Vivian Lowry gets hotter than donut grease, everyone hears.”

“She’ll get over this like she has every other time I’ve disappointed her.” I looked at Finn to give him so reassurance.

Mama’s arms flew up in the air and flailed them about her head when she caught me looking.

“I guess I better question her before she opens her big mouth to her friends.” I brushed my hand down Finn’s arm and gave him a little squeeze before I walked back towards the crowd.

There was a murmur coming from them when I started walking that way that died down to a blanket of silence as they anticipated what I was going to do. I was keenly aware all eyes were on me and knew they assumed I was going to make a statement.

“Vivian Lowry,” I stated Mama’s name. “Can I please see you over by my car?”

“I’m your mama. Why so formal?” She questioned me.

“We can either go by the car or go down to the station.” It was a statement that caught her off guard.

“This must be official business,” she told Lulu McClain who was standing next to her. “Save my spot.”

Lulu’s head nodded in agreement.

“Who is it?” asked Mama on our way over to the Wagoneer as if she wanted to gossip.

I took out my small notebook from the pocket of my shirt and clicked the pen.

“Over here please.” I used my polite words to maneuver her to the back of the Jeep that shielded us from the crowd. “Why on Earth didn’t you answer Finn’s questions when he got here?”

She stood ramrod straight, lips pressed together, her beady little eyes staring at me.

“Don’t you know that you could be arrested for that? You could be in the jail cell right now, forced to smell fried catfish.” I knew she gagged at the smell. Mama was all about Southern home cooking, but fried catfish wasn’t her specialty.

“I’m mad, that’s why.” She folded her arms in front of her.

“You can be mad at us, but you can’t hold back on an investigation, Mama. They are two separate issues.” I couldn’t tell if she understood me and how important to the case it was that she’d answered Finn’s questions.

“It didn’t bother a thing,” she protested.

“Did you see anyone leaving the trail? Did you see anyone leaving the park? Who was at the park when you discovered the body?” I continued to ask questions that I could see were making her head swim. “Who was walking with you? Did you hear a gunshot?”

“Gunshot? Was this a murder?” Mama gasped.

“What if it was? What if the poor girl,” I started to say but she interrupted me yet again.

“It’s a girl?” Mama gasped again.

“Mama, focus. I’m trying to tell you why you should’ve answered Finn’s questions instead of playing this role of getting back at him for being Catholic. There is a dead body over there and if it is a homicide, and you seen someone walking away, then you could’ve just let the killer free.”

Mama’s lips formed a dramatic “O” as her eyes bulged out of her head.

“My.” She drew her hands up to her chest, laying them flat on her track suit. “I never thought about that.”

“Mama, you never think about your consequences when the agenda doesn’t suit you.” It was harsh to say, but I was speaking as the sheriff, not as her daughter. “This is the type of thing that citizens will remember and not reelect me for some time.”

“Don’t you dare say that,” she scoffed. “You are the best sheriff there ever was.”

“Including Poppa?” I joked. “Seriously, can you answer some questions for me?”

“Yes. I will.” She drew her shoulders back, her chin lifted. “I’m ready.”

“How did your friends know about this?” I glanced over at all the Henny Hens, staring at me and Mama.

“I need emotional support, Kendrick.” She sighed along with her dramatic hand wave.

“What time did you get to the park this morning?” I asked, letting the emotional support comment go.

“It was around seven thirty. I know it was because Lulu was late. I looked at my watch.” She uncovered her watch with the sleeve of her light jacket and showed me the watch.

“Did you and Lulu hike the trail or just walked around the park?” I asked.

“We did both. We walked around the perimeter of the park first because Lulu has this thingy she wears around her wrist that tells her how many steps she’s taken. She insists she needs at least ten thousand steps a day.” Mama rolled her eyes while she unzipped her fanny pack. “It just made me tired thinking of it.”

“Focus, Mama.” I looked down at my notebook and wrote down her words about doing the perimeter first. “Do you have any idea what time it was that you went on the trail?”

“Heavens no. We were too busy looking at that thingy around her wrist,” she said. “Here, put some of this on.” She’d pulled some lipstick out of her fanny pack and rolled it up.

“When did you notice the body?” I asked, pushing her hand out of my face.

“Edna is taking photos and you need to look a little presentable.” She tried to smear the lipstick on my lips before I jerked away and gave her the death look. “Fine,” she snarled, rolling it down and putting it back.

“Please, Mama, answer my questions.” Then it occurred to me to use the guilt on her that she used on me. “What if that was me? Wouldn’t you want the sheriff to interview the person who found me?”

“We found her when we was walking out.” Her head tilted to the right as though she were contemplating it. “Yes. It was when we were walking out because we’d not paid much attention to where we’d kept walking to since we were looking at her steps. We ended up catching the other side of the trail to bring us back here after we looked up and saw we were walking on the town branch.”

Like Free Row was an affectionate name for Broadway Street, Town Branch was what we called North Second Street. There was a small creek, in the south we call it a branch, that runs right alongside of North Second Street. All the houses have little concrete bridges from the street to their driveway in order to go over the branch.

“You mean to tell me you walked over there to North Second Street and didn’t even notice?” I thought it was weird they didn’t notice they’d left the park, though in her favor, North Second was the street that Rock Fence Park butted up to closest to the trail.

“I guess we didn’t.” She shook her head. “But Lulu wasn’t with me.”

“Where did she go?” I asked.

“When we made it shy of the park, she said that she didn’t get enough steps and was going to track back to North Second and take the sidewalk around to her car. That’s when I saw that body. I let out a big ole scream and took off running. It was Lulu who heard me and ran towards me.” Mama was talking so fast, I was having a hard time writing it all down. “She said I looked like a ghost. I told her that I found that body, but the reason I looked so bad was because them people had the silly notion that my daughter,” she emphasized my, “was going to become Catholic. That’s why I was so pale from no sleep.” Mama shook her head. “Lulu said they had some nerve and I agree.” Mama patted me on the arm. “I’m so sorry you and Finn won’t be working out, but I’ve heard that Nick Lyman is newly single.”

“Nick Lyman?” I groaned. “Mama, me and Finn are just fine. Nick Lyman and I are no match.”

“Just because he’s a plumber...”

I put my hand up.

“It has nothing to do with him being a plumber,” I assured her. “I’m in love with Finn and we will figure this out. Alone,” I stated just as she opened her mouth to protest.

She snapped her mouth shut.

“Back to my questions.” I tried to keep Mama’s attention as Max Bogus had walked by to retrieve the church cart from the back of the hearse. The sound of him clicking the wheels in place made her flinch. “Did you see anyone at the park?”

“Kenni, there are tons of people at the park in the morning.” Mama turned to look at Max as the wheels of the gurney squeaked while he pushed it.

“Anyone you recognized?” I asked.

Mama bit the edge of her lip and closed one eye like she was thinking real hard.

“Can’t say so.” She didn’t seem so sure. “Can I think on it and get back to you?”

“That’d be great. In fact, I’ll need you to come down to the station and sign off on your account of what happened after Betty writes it up.” I flipped the notebook shut.

Mama had lost all interest in anything I had to say while Max made his way over to the body. She was too busy making sure that she didn’t miss anything. I was all too happy to have her come to the department. It wasn’t unusual for a witness to not remember everything until a few hours or even days after the incident. They were in shock whether they realized it or not and sometimes their memory blocks things out.

It was hard for me to think there were people at the park and Mama didn’t know a single one when she knew everyone.

“Mama, this is an ongoing investigation. Do I need to remind you that you can’t talk to anyone about the case?” I asked, though she really didn’t have any information.

“Oh yes.” Her chin moved up and down in dramatic fashion. A sure sign she was lying.

“Because if you do and the body was murdered, you could give pertinent information that would let the killer off if they knew you were blabbing.” I put the notebook back in my pocket.

“Blabbing? You think I blab?” She snarled.

“Mama, I’ll see you either at the station or at Tibbie’s.” I looked towards North Second Street where Tibbie lived off the town branch.

If there were a gunshot, wouldn’t someone have heard it and reported it?