by Tonya Kappes
“What?” the mayor asked when it was apparent that I’d totally lost my train of thought as I saw Sue Ann Jaffarian and her crew grabbing some of the food.
“I’m not sure what went on out there. Like I told the police, we were hiking, and all of a sudden Mason fell from the sky. After that, we got him out of there, and the next thing we knew, Dirk, his partner, was also dead.” I shrugged. “I’m thinking they ate some poisonous berries because they aren’t from here.”
“Really?” She eyed me. “As experienced as they were?” she asked but continued yammering on. “This isn’t going to look good and keep people from coming to find the treasure. I’ve spent a lot of time and effort getting those gravel roads paved with asphalt. It wasn’t easy. There were many things I had to do besides go to Frankfort and lobby for the grants. I had to go to the gaming commission, the National Parks commission, and the agriculture commission.”
“I’m sure you went through a lot, but I can’t help that this happened.” I wasn’t really sure what she wanted me to do.
“You can help keep this on the down low with all the campers who have decided to stay here. If they hear these people could’ve possibly been murdered, they will hightail it out of here, thinking the locals are killing off people for the silver just like they did over at the Red River Gorge some years back.”
I had no idea what she was talking about. But I nodded my head anyways.
The Red River Gorge I did know. It was a very popular hiking area some bit away from Normal. But the locals? That was nothing I knew about.
“And her.” She jerked a look at Abby. “Tell her to stop posting stuff. Making us look bad. I’ll be in touch with you later.”
I wanted to ask her why she would need to be in touch with me, but she jumped back in her car and sped off.
“What was that about?” Dottie asked with the girls all waiting for my answer after I walked back over to them.
“I have no idea.” I shook my head. “Something about she’s gone to great lengths to get the asphalt and promote the Swift mine and for you to stop your attacks against it on social media.”
“She called my tweets attacks?” Abby snarled and threw her stare at the entrance of Happy Trails Campground.
“She said something about the Gorge.” I laughed. “We can revisit all this tomorrow. Why don’t we grab some food so we can all get a good night’s sleep?”
“And meet up at the Laundry Club in the morning?” Mary Elizabeth asked.
We all looked at each other and grinned. It was the unsaid agreement we all understood. If there were murders to be solved, and one of us was a suspect, the only place we wanted to be was the laundromat.
Mary Elizabeth, Abby, and Queenie walked up to where my campervan was supposed to be parked, jumped into their parked cars, and headed out of the campground.
I grabbed my phone and quickly texted Dawn Gentry, honorary Laundry Club lady and the co-owner of the Milkery with Mary Elizabeth, to give her a quick update about what had transpired with Mary Elizabeth. I also told her to keep an eye on Mary Elizabeth since they lived together and to call me no matter what time it was if she needed me.
Her reply: You’ve got to be kidding me. I’ll call you in the morning.
I replied to her text: Meet us at the Laundry Club at eight a.m. if you can make it.
“What on earth happened out there?” Dottie asked on our way over to Hank’s camper to get the dogs. “The girls told me, but you know how they all see things so differently.”
Dottie Swaggert wasn’t fooling me at all. She loved to gossip just as much as the rest of the Laundry Club ladies.
“Do you really think Mary Elizabeth did it? I mean, according to Queenie, she’s not sure who killed him, but she did say she couldn’t get Mary Elizabeth’s actions out of her head.” Was Dottie telling me that Queenie thought Mary Elizabeth could possibly have killed Mason?
“No.” I shook my head. “Mason really flirted with her, and she really was buying it until he offered to give her money for the pearls. Then she told him they were passed down from her great-grandmother. He was practically salivating from the mouth.”
Why was I finding myself completely defending Mary Elizabeth when I shouldn’t even respond to such ridiculous accusations?
“Mae, according to Abby, Mary Elizabeth had decided to go to the woods to use the bathroom. That’s completely out of her nature. Then Mason falls to his death? She walks back around to y’all and immediately goes to grab her pearls out of Mason’s hand? That was her first reaction?” Dottie’s words made my insides curl with fright.
“Did they really tell you all that? Because it sure does sound like they all believe Mary Elizabeth killed him.” It was not sitting right with me to think our friends would truly believe she’d kill him. “What about Sue Ann Jaffarian?”
“I’m just saying, according to…” she started again.
“According to who? According to what?” I rolled my eyes. “I don’t want to hear any more.” Then I had a disturbing thought. “Did they tell the police all this?”
Dottie shrugged and stood on the outside of Hank’s camper while I reached up and opened the door. Fifi and Chester bolted out, focusing on Dottie.
“Fifi,” I called my little white furball and bent down. When she heard my voice, she darted over to me. “My sweet girl. Mama missed you.”
Fifi danced with delight in circles and tried to give me kisses on each twirl. Chester nearly bowled her over, getting to me and almost knocking me down. He was a lot stouter than my little poodle.
“They missed you so much.” Dottie patted me on the shoulder. “I even missed you.”
“Awww. Dottie Swaggert, you do love me.” I stood up and gave her a hug. “But I’m going to tell you Mary Elizabeth didn’t kill anyone.”
“According to…” she started again. I glared at her. “Mary Elizabeth is the number-one suspect.”
FOURTEEN
It didn’t take a genius to know Mary Elizabeth would likely be considered a suspect, but being the number-one suspect was far from ideal.
Dottie and the dogs took a walk around the campground to make sure everyone was settled. I took the moment to call Hank. There were some questions I wanted to ask him. When the call went straight to voicemail, I figured he’d gone back to the campsite to help out and didn’t have cell service.
“Are you doing okay?” I’d decided to stop at the communal campfire, where Dottie and Hank had prepared the skillet hamburger casserole, which was a very inexpensive campfire supper when you needed to feed the masses.
“We are fine.” Sue Ann Jaffarian had a big plate of food and a bottle of beer. She didn’t look a bit upset or even fazed about being a suspect. “I just wish Mason and Dirk were here too.” She put down her plate and picked up the bottle.
I sat down in the chair next to her. This was my time to ask her any questions that could help out Mary Elizabeth.
“Mason and I had some ups and downs. Currently on a down, but we would’ve gotten over it.” She took a swig of her beer and leaned back in the chair. “Mason was so focused on finding the treasure, he got sloppy. I told him that one day he was going to be so unfocused that he was going to slip up.” Her eyes teared.
“I’m sorry. I know you must’ve truly loved him.” I tried to be as empathetic as I could, since I was trying to get something on her for the police to focus on and take some heat off of Mary Elizabeth. “What map was Mason talking about?”
“Map? What map?” she asked.
“When we questioned Mason why he made you leave the campsite, he said it was because you’d stolen his maps, and it was obvious because you were at the same treasure site as the map.” I might’ve stretched the truth. That was what we politely called a lie. Mason didn’t say all of that, but he did imply it. At least, in my opinion he implied she was there because of that specific map.
“The map I took was a map of all the campsites in the area. It didn’t have anything to do wit
h the John Swift treasure.” She jerked her backpack up from the ground and unzipped it, tumbling some of the contents out of it.
Mainly it was Ziploc baggies of food like the kind Mason had given us. I bent down and picked some of them up. I understood the granola and nuts for energy, but the salad was beyond my comprehension.
“Salad?” I asked when she stuffed them back in her bag and dug around for something else.
“Yeah.” She snickered. “I have to keep my bowels moving.” She rolled her eyes and continued to dig in the backpack.
“Most of the primitive campsites aren’t listed on the National Park’s registry.” She took out a piece of paper, and in exchange for the Ziplocs, she handed me the map. “I’m the one who made the map as we stayed at these places. He didn’t want me to have what was rightly mine. I didn’t need his help in trying to find different spots to look within the forest. Those places are documented all over the John Swift journal entries and other treasure hunters who’ve come before us.”
I looked at the paper. It was an outline of the Daniel Boone National Forest with several Xs dotted around with the names of the campsites. A few I’d recognized from just hearing around town or the hikers who would come through the trails that lead into Happy Trails, but most of them I didn’t even know existed.
“Can I get a copy of this?” I asked.
“You can have that one. I made several copies just in case Mason tried to sneak into my camper and steal it. He was very sneaky.” Her voice choked. There were tears in her eyes. “We had some really good times until he got so greedy and wanted to cut me out. I wish I could take back the last time I saw him.”
“You mean the fight?” I asked.
“Yeah…” she trailed off. “I only wished I was able to confront Dirk like I wanted to.”
“Dirk?” I questioned.
“He and Mason were in the final stages of their collaboration. After I left, Mason told Dirk he’d give him half of the treasures found. Dirk had been waiting a long time to replace me, and he’d spent the better part of the last year doing all the research for this trip.” She wiped away a tear that’d fallen down her cheek.
“I heard them arguing in the tent,” I told her. “He was saying how Mason had gone back on the percentage.” I didn’t tell her all of the conversation I’d overheard, since it was something I needed to tell Hank now that I remembered that little piece of their argument.
“They were fighting?” Her chin dropped to her chest. “I told Mason not to mess around with lies. But he thought he could just throw his weight around like he was the only one who could find any treasure, no matter where we went on hunts. I just couldn’t take his greediness anymore.”
“So you broke up with him?” I asked.
“Yeah.” Her head jerked up, her brows furrowing. “Did you think differently?”
“I wasn’t sure when he talked about you. It was never clear.” I sucked in a deep breath and pushed myself up to stand. “It’s been a long couple of days, and I’m going to head on to bed. Let me know if you or any of your crew need anything.”
“Thanks, Mae. I’m sorry your mom is wrapped up in all this, but I truly think Dirk did it. He had motive, and I’m not so sure he didn’t end his own life.” Her words made my stomach clench tight.
Dirk and Mason did have a fight. It was about money. Like Sue Ann said, Mason was greedy, and ultimately, was that what got him killed? How did Dirk die?
All of these were questions that would need time, and maybe a good night’s sleep would bring me some clarity, plus give the police enough time to get some preliminary answers.
FIFTEEN
It was too bad I let Hank live in one of the nicer campervans I had to offer for guests. There were different levels of camping in Happy Trails and different ways to camp. I was so happy to have been able to offer some campervans where campers could actually rent them and drive them in and around the Daniel Boone National Park.
When Hank had moved in, renting actual campervans was a new concept Abby Fawn had started to market for me on behalf of Happy Trails. I never figured it’d be one of the hotter commodities with guests. Now, we had a long line of reservations, and Hank taking one of them up wasn’t helping out my bottom dollar, but it did make me happy he was here.
The inside of the van was perfect for a couple of people. The two captain’s chairs in the front did turn around. There was a small table with two built-in bench chairs on either side. Across was the kitchenette with a two-burner stove, a small oven, and a microwave built into the storage cabinets above. In the back of the van was a full-sized queen mattress and not more than a closet-sized bathroom with a handheld shower.
When Joel Grassel had found it and sold it to me, my foster brother Bobby Ray and I had gone to great lengths to clean it up and get it all ready. Since Bobby Ray was the best mechanic in all of Kentucky, he had the thing purring like it was brand new. We’d laid in a new wood floor, and I’d gotten new white cabinets and butcher block counter tops. The table was also made of butcher block, with blue accents. The light colors made the campervan feel larger than it really was, and there was plenty of storage.
Hank didn’t drive it as it was meant to be, and since the dogs and I had slept there last night, I found it to be a lot more comfortable than I’d expected.
Instead of making coffee or even walking over to the guests next door to grab a cup of joe from their early-morning campfire, I’d decided to head on into Normal and get a cup of coffee from The Trails Coffee Shop. I was going to meet the gals at the Laundry Club anyways, and Dottie was already working for me, since I was still supposed to be on the treasure hunt. I wasn’t going to waste my morning.
Besides, I was a little antsy to see if Hank had heard anything about how Dirk had died. If it was a case of death by his own hand, Mason’s murder could be solved and shut, which meant Mary Elizabeth was completely off the hook.
“You two stay here.” I put some kibble in Fifi’s and Chester’s bowls after I let them back in from doing their business. “I hope we get our home back today.” I gave Fifi a good scratch on the ear, grabbed my bag, and headed out the door to get into my car.
It wasn’t any sort of lavish car. Again, Joel Grassel had it on the lot when I’d first rolled into town, and when it became very apparent I wasn’t leaving Normal anytime soon, it was much easier to buy a cheap car, because that was all I could afford, and keep the campervan parked at the campground.
My mind was so occupied with what Sue Ann had told me. It was a shame I wasn’t taking in the gorgeous scenery. About this time every year, and under the right conditions, dogwoods and sumacs turned red and purple, sugar maples turned orange and red, oaks, sourwoods and sweet gums took on red hues, and poplars and hickories turned yellow and gold. It was truly a spectacular real-life painting.
One-way roads ran down Main Street, with a grassy median between them. It wasn’t just any median. It was one where people gathered at the picnic tables that stood among the large oak trees on each side of an amphitheater and covered seating area. Thick white pillars you’d see on the front porch of a plantation home held up the structure. Each post had a real gas lantern hanging off it. Large ferns toppled over several ceramic planters. There were twinkling lights around each pole, giving it such a romantic feel.
There were little shops that ran along each side of Main Street. They ranged from the Smelly Dog, which was a pet groomer, to the Normal Diner, the Tough Nickel Thrift Shop, and Deter’s Feed-N-Seed, along with more boutique-type shops that I couldn’t wait to check out. The display windows of each shop even had visions of family camping and summers in Normal—as well as the much-needed Trails Coffee Shop, which was where I had my eyes set on.
All the shops were free-standing cottage-style homes with a small courtyard between them. Today, there were some open tables at the Trails Coffee Shop, perfect for me to sit and enjoy my first cup of the day.
“It’s a little early for you.” Gert Hobson was the o
wner of the coffee shop. “Did you not get your order? That new delivery guy is about to get delivered some firing.” She shook her head.
“No.” I waved my hands in front of me to stop her blood pressure from rising. “I’m sure your coffee is there. I’m not working today so I decided to come into town early and enjoy a nice cup of coffee right here.”
I had an agreement with many of the local businesses in Normal. I only used their products in my campground. I served complimentary coffee from Gert alongside the Cookie Crumbles’ donuts, or scones or muffins in the recreational center at the campground. The guests were also offered many different baskets to purchase with various local goodies in them. For instance, if they wanted more coffee, for a small fee they could purchase a coffee basket that featured Gert’s specialty coffees and treats. If they wanted a spa kit, which were very popular with the girls’ weekends, they could purchase a basket put together from Cute-icles. It was my way of giving back to Normal after what my ex-and-now-dead-husband, Paul, had done to the town. In turn and just because the people in Normal are good, the area businesses put Happy Trails Campground flyers in their shops and even in customers’ bags.
It truly was an amazing community, and I was proud to now call it home.
“Well.” She smacked her hands together. “You’re in for a real treat being this early.” A huge smile curled up on the edges of her lips. “I’m in there right now trying a new hot brew that I’m going to feature for Christmas.”
“Christmas?” I jerked back, giving her an are-you-crazy look.
“Now, don’t be looking at me all googly eyed. When you own a coffee shop, you have to think a few months ahead so you can create the perfect holiday blend.” Swiftly she turned around and stopped at the door. “What are you waiting for? Christmas?” she laughed. “Get on in here.”
Gert had really taken the name to a whole ‘nother level inside. There were café tables inside as well as long farm tables. In the middle of the tables, she’d repurposed old bourbon barrel lids and made really cool lazy Susans out of them. Each one had little containers of different condiments you’d need for any type of coffee. It was like each table had its own little coffee bar that could just be twirled around to make the perfect cup of coffee.