A Ghostly Mortality: A Ghostly Southern Mystery (Ghostly Southern Mysteries)

by Tonya Kappes

  “You leave the investigation to me.” Jack Henry put his sunglasses back on. Sexy dripped from him, making my heart jump a few beats.

  “Uh-huh.” I looked away. Looking away from Jack Henry when he was warning me was a common occurrence. I knew I had to do my own investigating and couldn’t get lost in his eyes while lying to him.

  Besides, I didn’t have a whole lot of information. Chicken knew he was murdered but had no clue how. He was only able to give me clues about his life and it was up to me to put them together.

  “I’m not kidding.” Jack Henry took his finger and put it on my chin, pulling it toward him. He gave me a quick kiss. “We are almost finished up here. I’ll sign all the paperwork and send the body on over to Eternal Slumber for Vernon to get going on some new toxicology reports we have ordered.” He took his officer hat off and used his forearm to wipe the sweat off his brow.

  “He’s there waiting,” I said. Vernon Baxter was a retired doctor who performed any and all autopsies the Sleepy Hollow police needed and I let him use Eternal Slumber for free. I had all the newest technology and equipment used in autopsies in the basement of the funeral home.

  “Go on up!” Jack Henry gave John the thumbs-up and walked closer. Slowly John Howard lifted the coffin completely out of the grave and sat it right on top of the church truck, which looked like a gurney.

  “Do you think she did it?” I glanced over at Marla Maria, as she talked a good talk.

  “Did what?” Granny walked up and asked. She turned to see what I was looking at. “Did you dig him up because his death is being investigated for murder?” Granny gasped.

  “Now Granny, don’t go spreading rumors.” I couldn’t deny or admit to what she said. If I admitted the truth to her question, I would be betraying Jack Henry. If I denied her question, I would be lying to Granny. And no one lies to Granny.

  In a lickety-split, Granny was next to her scooter.

  “I’ll be over. Put the coffee on,” Granny hollered before she put her helmet back on her head, snapped the strap in place, and revved up the scooter and buzzed off in the direction of town, giving a little toot-toot and wave to the Auxiliary women as she passed.

  Once the chains were unhooked from the coffin and the excavator was out of the way, Jack Henry and I guided the coffin on the church truck into the back of my hearse. Before I shut the door, I had a sick feeling that someone was watching me. Of course the crowd was still there, but I mean someone was watching my every move.

  I looked back over my shoulder toward the trailer park. The man in the John Deere hat popped out of sight behind the tree when he saw me look at him.

  I shut the hearse door and got into the driver’s side. Before I left the cemetery, I looked in my rearview mirror at the tree. The man was standing there. This time the shadow of the hat didn’t hide his eyes.

  We locked eyes.

  “Look away,” Chicken Teater warned me when he appeared in the passenger seat.

  An Excerpt from A Ghostly Demise

  A GHOSTLY DEMISE

  The prodigal father returns—but this ghost is no holy spirit

  When she runs into her friend’s deadbeat dad at the local deli, undertaker Emma Lee Raines can’t wait to tell Mary Anna Hardy that he’s back in Sleepy Hollow, Kentucky, after five long years. Cephus Hardy may have been the town drunk, but he didn’t disappear on an epic bender like everyone thought: He was murdered. And he’s heard that Emma Lee’s been helping lost souls move on to that great big party in the sky.

  Why do ghosts always bother Emma Lee at the worst times? Her granny’s mayoral campaign is in high gear, a carnival is taking over the Town Square, and her hunky boyfriend, Sheriff Jack Henry Ross, is stuck wrestling runaway goats. Besides, Cephus has no clue whodunit . . . unless it was one of Mrs. Hardy’s not-so-secret admirers. All roads lead Emma Lee to that carnival—and a killer who isn’t clowning around.

  Chapter 1

  Cephus Hardy?”

  Stunned. My jaw dropped when I saw Cephus Hardy walk up to me in the magazine aisle of Artie’s Meat and Deli. I was admiring the cover of Cock and Feathers, where my last client at Eternal Slumber Funeral Home, Chicken Teater, graced the cover with his prize Orloff Hen, Lady Cluckington.

  “I declare.” A Mack truck could’ve hit me and I wouldn’t have felt it. I grinned from ear to ear.

  Cephus Hardy looked the exact same as he did five years ago. Well, from what I could remember from his social visits with my momma and daddy and the few times I had seen him around our small town of Sleepy Hollow, Kentucky.

  His tight, light brown curls resembled a baseball helmet. When I was younger, it amazed me how thick and dense his hair was. He always wore polyester taupe pants with the perfectly straight crease down the front, along with a brown belt. The hem of his pants ended right above the shoelaces in his white, patent-leather shoes. He tucked in his short-sleeved, plaid shirt, making it so taut you could see his belly button.

  “Momma and Daddy live in Florida now, but they are going to be so happy when I tell them you are back in town. Everyone has been so worried about you.” I smiled and took in his sharp, pointy nose and rosy red cheeks. I didn’t take my eyes off him as I put the copy of Cock and Feathers back in the rack. I leaned on my full cart of groceries and noticed he hadn’t even aged a bit. No wrinkles. Nothing. “Where the hell have you been?”

  He shrugged. He rubbed the back of his neck.

  “Who cares?” I really couldn’t believe it. Mary Anna was going to be so happy since he had just up and left five years ago, telling no one—nor had he contacted anyone since. “You won’t believe what Granny is doing.”

  I pointed over his shoulder at the election poster taped up on Artie’s Meat and Deli’s storefront window.

  “Granny is running against O’Dell Burns for mayor.” I cackled, looking in the distance at the poster of Zula Fae Raines Payne all laid-back in the rocking chair on the front porch of the Sleepy Hollow Inn with a glass of her famous iced tea in her hand.

  It took us ten times to get a picture she said was good enough to use on all her promotional items for the campaign. Since she was all of five-foot-four, her feet dangled. She didn’t want people to vote on her size; therefore, the photo was from the lap up. I told Granny that I didn’t know who she thought she was fooling. Everyone who was eligible to vote knew her and how tall she was. She insisted. I didn’t argue anymore. No one, and I mean no one, wins an argument against Zula Fae Raines Payne. Including me.

  “She looks good.” Cephus raised his brows, lips turned down.

  “She sure does,” I noted.

  For a twice-widowed seventy-seven-year-old, Granny acted like she was in her fifties. I wasn’t sure if her red hair was still hers or if Mary Anna kept it up on the down-low, but Granny would never be seen going to Girl’s Best Friend unless there was some sort of gossip that needed to be heard. Otherwise, she wanted everyone to see her as the good Southern belle she was.

  “Against O’Dell Burns?” Cephus asked. Slowly, he nodded in approval.

  It was no secret that Granny and O’Dell had butted heads a time or two. The outcome of the election was going to be interesting, to say the least.

  “Yep. She retired three years ago, leaving me and Charlotte Rae in charge of Eternal Slumber.”

  It was true. I was the undertaker of Eternal Slumber Funeral Home. It might make some folks’ skin crawl to think about being around dead people all the time, but it was job security at its finest. O’Dell Burns owned Burns Funeral, the other funeral home in Sleepy Hollow, which made him and Granny enemies from the get-go.

  O’Dell didn’t bother me though. Granny didn’t see it that way. We needed a new mayor, and O’Dell stepped up to the plate at the council meeting, but Granny wouldn’t hear of it. So the competition didn’t stop with dead people; now Granny wants all the living people too. As mayor.

  “Long story short,” I rambled on and on, “Granny married Earl Way Payne. He died and left Granny th
e Sleepy Hollow Inn. I don’t know what she is thinking running for mayor because she’s so busy taking care of all of the tourists at the Inn. Which reminds me”—I planted my hands on my hips—“you never answered my question. Have you seen Mary Anna yet?”

  “Not yet.” His lips curved in a smile.

  “She’s done real good for herself. She opened Girl’s Best Friend Spa and has all the business since she’s the only one in town. And”—I wiggled my brows—“she is working for me at Eternal Slumber.”

  A shiver crawled up my spine and I did a little shimmy shake, thinking about her fixing the corpses’ hair and makeup. Somebody had to do it and Mary Anna didn’t seem to mind a bit.

  I ran my hand down my brown hair that Mary Anna had recently dyed since my short stint as a blond. I couldn’t do my own hair, much less someone else’s. Same for the makeup department.

  I never spent much time in front of the mirror. I worked with the dead and they weren’t judging me.

  “Emma Lee?” Doc Clyde stood at the end of the magazine aisle with a small shopping basket in the crook of his arm. His lips set in a tight line. “Are you feeling all right?”

  “Better than ever.” My voice rose when I pointed to Cephus. “Especially now that Cephus is back in town.”

  “Have you been taking your meds for the Funeral Trauma?” He ran his free hand in his thin hair, placing the few remaining strands to the side. His chin was pointy and jutted out even more as he shuffled his thick-soled doctor shoes down the old, tiled floor. “You know, it’s only been nine months since your accident. And it could take years before the symptoms go away.”

  “Funeral Trauma,” I muttered, and rolled my eyes.

  Cephus just grinned.

  The Funeral Trauma.

  A few months back I had a perilous incident with a plastic Santa Claus right here at Artie’s Meat and Deli. I had walked down from the funeral home to grab some lunch. Artie had thought it was a good idea to put a life-sized plastic Santa on the roof. It was a good idea until the snow started melting and the damn thing slid right off the roof just as I was walking by, knocking me square out. Flat.

  I woke up in the hospital seeing ghosts of the corpse I had buried six feet deep. I thought I had gone to the Great Beyond. But I could see my family and all the living.

  I told Doc Clyde I was having some sort of hallucinations and seeing dead people. He said I had been in the funeral business a little too long and seeing corpses all of my life had been traumatizing. Granny had been in the business for over forty years. I had only been in the business for three. Something didn’t add up.

  Turned out, a psychic confirmed I am what was called a Betweener.

  I could see ghosts of the dead who were stuck between the here and the after. Of course, no one but me and Jack Henry, my boyfriend and Sleepy Hollow’s sheriff, knew. And he was still a little apprehensive about the whole thing.

  “I’m fine,” I assured Doc Clyde, and looked at Cephus. “Wait.” I stopped and tried to swallow what felt like a mound of sand in my mouth. My mind hit rewind and took me back to the beginning of my conversation with Cephus.

  An Excerpt from A Ghostly Murder

  A GHOSTLY MURDER

  Emma Lee Raines knows there’s only one cure for a bad case of murder

  I told you I was sick, reads the headstone above Mamie Sue Preston’s grave. She was the richest woman in Sleepy Hollow, Kentucky, and also the biggest hypochondriac. Ironic, considering someone killed her—and covered it up perfectly. And how does Emma Lee, proprietor of the Eternal Slumber Funeral Home, know all this? Because Mamie Sue’s host told her, that’s how. And she’s offering big bucks to find the perp.

  The catch is, Mamie Sue was buried by the Raines family’s archrival, Burns Funeral Home. Would the Burnses stoop to framing Emma Lee’s granny? With an enterprising maid, a penny-pinching pastor and a slimy Lexington lawyer all making a killing off Mamie Sue’s estate, Emma Lee needs a teammate—like her dreamboat boyfriend, Sheriff Jack Henry Ross. Because with millions at stake, snooping around is definitely bad for Emma Lee’s health.

  Chapter 1

  Ding, ding, ding.

  The ornamental bell on an old cemetery headstone rang out. No one touching it. No wind or breeze.

  The string attached to the top of the bell hung down the stone and disappeared into the ground. To the naked eye it would seem as though the bell dinged from natural causes, like the wind, but my eye zeroed in on the string as it slowly moved up and down. Deliberately.

  I stepped back and looked at the stone. The chiseled words I told you I was sick. Mamie Sue Preston were scrolled in fancy lettering. Her date of death was a few years before I took over as undertaker at Eternal Slumber Funeral Home.

  Granted, it was a family business I had taken over from my parents and my granny. Some family business.

  Ding, ding, ding.

  I looked at the bell. A petite older woman, with a short gray bob neatly combed under a small pillbox hat, was doing her best to sit ladylike on the stone, with one leg crossed over the other. She wore a pale green skirt suit. Her fingernail tapped the bell, causing it to ding.

  I couldn’t help but notice the large diamond on her finger, the strand of pearls around her neck and some more wrapped on her wrist. And with a gravestone like that . . . I knew she came from money.

  “Honey child, you can see me, can’t you?” she asked. Her lips smacked together. She grinned, not a tooth in her head. There was a cane in her hand. She tapped the stone with it. “Can you believe they buried me without my teeth?”

  I closed my eyes. Squeezed them tight. Opened them back up.

  “Ta-da. Still here.” She put the cane on the ground and tap-danced around it on her own grave.

  “Don’t do that. It’s bad luck.” I repeated another Southern phrase I had heard all my life.

  She did another little giddy-up.

  “I’m serious,” I said in a flat, inflectionless voice. “Never dance or walk over someone’s grave. It’s bad luck.”

  “Honey, my luck couldn’t get any worse than it already is.” Her face was drawn. Her onyx eyes set. Her jaw tensed. “Thank Gawd you are here. There is no way I can cross over without my teeth.” She smacked her lips. “Oh, by the way, Digger Spears just sent me, and I passed Cephus Hardy on the way. He told me exactly where I could find you.”

  She leaned up against the stone.

  “Let me introduce myself.” She stuck the cane in the crook of her elbow and adjusted the pillbox hat on her head. “I’m the wealthiest woman in Sleepy Hollow, Mamie Sue Preston, and I can pay you whatever you’d like to get me to the other side. But first, can you find my teeth?”

  I tried to swallow the lump in my throat. This couldn’t be happening. Couldn’t I have just a few days off between my Betweener clients?

  I knew exactly what she meant when she said she needed my help for her cross over, and it wasn’t because she was missing her dentures.

  “Whatdaya say?” Mamie Sue pulled some cash out of her suit pocket.

  She licked her finger and peeled each bill back one at a time.

  “Emma Lee,” I heard someone call. I turned to see Granny waving a handkerchief in the air and bolting across the cemetery toward me.

  Her flaming-red hair darted about like a cardinal as she weaved in and out of the gravestones.

  “See,” I muttered under my breath and made sure my lips didn’t move. “Granny knows not to step on a grave.”

  “That’s about the only thing Zula Fae Raines Payne knows,” Mamie said.

  My head whipped around. Mamie’s words got my attention. Amusement lurked in her dark eyes.

  “Everyone is wondering what you are doing clear over here when you are overseeing Cephus Hardy’s funeral way over there.” Granny took a swig of the can of Stroh’s she was holding.

  Though our small town of Sleepy Hollow, Kentucky, was a dry county—which meant liquor sales were against the law—I had gotten special permission
to have a beer toast at Cephus Hardy’s funeral.

  I glanced back at the final resting place where everyone from Cephus’s funeral was still sitting under the burial awning, sipping on the beer.

  “I was just looking at this old stone,” I lied.

  Mamie’s lips pursed suspiciously when she looked at Granny. Next thing I knew, Mamie was sitting on her stone, legs crossed, tapping the bell.

  Ding, ding, ding. “We have a goner who needs help!” Mamie continued to ding the bell. “A goner who is as dead as yesterday.” She twirled her cane around her finger.

  I did my best to ignore her. If Granny knew I was able to see the ghosts of dead people—not just any dead people, murdered dead people—she’d have me committed for what Doc Clyde called the Funeral Trauma.

  A few months ago and a couple ghosts ago, I was knocked out cold from a big plastic Santa that Artie, from Artie’s Meat and Deli, had stuck on the roof of his shop during the winter months. It just so happened I was walking on the sidewalk when the sun melted the snow away, sending the big fella off the roof right on top of me. I woke up in the hospital and saw that my visitor was one of my clients—one of my dead clients. I thought I was a goner just like him, because my Eternal Slumber clients weren’t alive, they were dead, and here was one standing next to me.

  When the harsh realization came to me that I wasn’t dead and I was able to see dead people, I told Doc Clyde about it. He gave me some little pills and diagnosed me with the Funeral Trauma, a.k.a. a case of the crazies.

  He was nice enough to say he thought I had been around dead bodies too long since I had grown up in the funeral home with Granny and my parents.

  My parents took early retirement and moved to Florida, while my granny also retired, leaving me and my sister, Charlotte Rae, in charge.

  “Well?” Granny tapped her toe and crossed her arms. “Are you coming back to finish the funeral or not?” She gave me the stink-eye, along with a once-over, before she slung back the can and finished off the beer. “Are you feeling all right?”