by Tonya Kappes
“When did you see them?” I asked.
“The day he died. They were just getting out of court.” The scanner beeped. Her fingers ticked away on the register. “I was just coming on shift when I heard them in the vegetable aisle. He told her he wasn’t giving her that book you have, but he’d be happy to share the recipe with her.”
“Anything else? Think,” I spat out.
“Kenni, I swear. I try to be nice to you and you never just say, ‘thank you, Toots.’” She shook her head. “It will be $25.20.”
“You want me to pay you for information?” I snarled.
“Your total is twenty-five dollars and twenty cents.” She chomped and folded her arms tightly across her chest.
“Have you had your hair done recently?” Finn leaned on the checkout. Toots smiled and shimmied straight up, popping her chest out.
“I did. Down at Tiny Tina’s.” She smiled. “You like it?”
“I do.” I swear there was a twinkle on his canine tooth. Toots was so busy gushing over him that I had to bag my own groceries.
“Do you mind coming down to the office and giving me a formal statement when you get off work?” He was sweet talking her and she didn’t even notice.
She jerked a dangling chain from the front pocket of her jeans and pulled out a heart-shaped Pepé Le Pew pocket watch. “I get off directly.” She swiveled her lashes upward.
“I like that pocket watch.” Finn toyed with her. She cooed all over herself.
“My mama gave it to me one year for my birthday. She’s dead and gone now, but I love it.” She leaned across the conveyor, her boobs nearly falling out of her Dixon’s shirt and onto the scanner. She gave Finn a good look at them and the watch.
I didn’t bother sticking around to listen to the rest.
“She’s coming right on down.” Finn slammed the door when he got in. “What is it you say around here about vinegar and honey?”
“Forget it,” I grumbled and threw the Jeep in gear.
“You could use a little of that honey.” He chuckled and stuck his elbow on the window ledge and let it hang out.
“Any woman around here is going to fall for your cute smile and dark eyes.” I turned onto Main Street.
“Any woman?” he asked. Duke stuck his head out my window from the backseat.
“If that wasn’t proof enough,” I said.
“Even you, Sheriff?” he asked. There was no hint of joking in his voice.
I jerked my head and looked at him. There was a smirk on his lips.
“You know what I mean.” I rolled my eyes and pulled the Wagoneer down the alley behind Cowboy’s.
“You coming in?” Finn asked through the passenger window after he got out and noticed I hadn’t.
“No, Casanova, I’ll let you handle Toots while I go follow up on Rowdy’s call about the stolen flowers, among other questions I have for him.” Duke had hopped up to the front seat when Finn got out. I had to push his head to the side to look at Finn.
“Alrighty.” He tapped the door with his hand. “I’ll see you at the council meeting and then at your place for okra.”
I planted the palm of my hand on my forehead. “Dang. I forgot all about the meeting.”
“I’m glad you’ve got me.” His head jerked back and a big laugh escaped his belly. “Are you sure I can’t charm you too?”
“I’m sure.” I pushed the pedal and zoomed off before my smile gave him any ideas.
“There you go again.” Poppa appeared in the backseat.
“I’m not dead like you. I can still look even though I know that he’s got someone else back in Chicago.” I waved to the shop owners on Main Street who were outside of their shops talking to people walking by.
“I told ya. He’s just like one of those big-city boys, but he sure does make a damn fine deputy.” Poppa was right. Finn was a good deputy, and just because he wasn’t interested in me as I thought he might be didn’t mean that we couldn’t work together.
“Did he tell you about the gal?” Poppa asked.
“Not really.” Poppa wasn’t going to approve of me snooping. He was always a straight shooter. When he had a question about an investigation, he came right out and asked. I liked to look at all the facts and get those straight before I went around asking any sort of questions.
“Then how do you know?” Poppa’s head craned toward his headstone when we pulled in the cemetery.
“I sort of overheard her leave a voicemail for him and then I erased it. Accidentally.” The Wagoneer hugged the right of the cemetery road as other cars were parked along the left side. There was a gravesite funeral underneath a big blue tent. In the crowd I saw Rowdy Hart talking with Stanley Godbey.
Stanley looked to be dressed in a suit, which was normal funeral attire around these parts. Rowdy was in his blue work outfit, ready to put the casket in the ground as soon as the preacher gave the last amen. Both men looked my way when they saw me pull over. Rowdy patted Stanley on the back and started to walk toward me.
“Kenni-bug, you have lost your ever-loving mind, and during an election.” Poppa stomped around the Wagoneer. “You can’t let them see you fold.”
“Poppa.” I dipped my head to the ground and quickly said to him, “No one knows but you that I erased that message. It’s not a big deal. I’m sure Finn has already called her back and their plans are made.”
Rowdy waved. “Sheriff, I guess you got my message from Betty.” A curse fell from his mouth. “I’m sorry to be disrespectful, but what kind of jerk goes around stealing flowers off a dead man’s grave?”
“I have no idea. But I agree that it’s very tacky.” I pulled my notebook out of my Jeep and headed over to him. “What can you tell me about Owen Godbey?”
I had decided to take Poppa’s approach to questioning.
“Kenni?” His nostrils flared. “Did you hear what I said about them flowers?”
His anger caught me off guard. There was a shift in his personality that I’d never seen before.
“I sure did.” I nodded and tried not to look at Stanley when he walked up. “I have to make sure that the flowers that are missing have nothing to do with Owen since he was found in a greenhouse tied to most of the flowers here.”
“Are you saying you do suspect Myrna Savage in the murder of my brother?” Stanley jerked with a quick snap of his thick shoulders. He put his hands in the pockets of his suit pants.
“I’m not saying who is and isn’t a suspect.” I eyed him and took the cop stance with my legs apart and arms clasped behind me. The academy taught us that particular stance exuded authority. “But I do know that Rowdy gave Owen a job around the cemetery and now the flowers are missing.” I turned back to Rowdy. “Do you know if Owen had anything to do with the flowers that were missing? Did they come from Myrna? If so, was Owen so mad at Myrna that he went around and destroyed or took off all the Petal Pusher arrangements and you are just now noticing?”
“That’s a good question. I never thought of it that way.” Rowdy dragged the old blue baseball cap off his head and gave his noggin a good scratch. “But he was so arthritic that he...” Rowdy paused. His eyes gazed over the tops of the gravestones before he brought his attention back to me. “Sheriff, can I take a rain check?”
“I’m sorry?” I asked.
“I need to tend to some business and I want to check something out before I go accusing the dead of stealing. It ain’t right by me or Owen,” he said. He put his cap back on his head and hooked his thumbs in the front pockets of his blue jumpsuit. “Besides, I have a casket to get in the ground and another grave to start digging.”
We stepped aside to let the mourners who were there for the funeral drive past us.
“Why don’t you come by the office tomorrow morning before work and we can talk about it.” There was no sense in asking him questions h
ere while I could take his statement at the office without Stanley Godbey listening in.
“I’m assuming you are going to keep me up to date on what’s going on with the investigation.” Stanley cleared his throat, lifted his head, and looked down his nose at me.
I glared at him and ignored his request. “I wanted to let you know that Sandy will be picking up Owen’s remains and she will be in charge of the arrangements for him since she and Owen had prearranged plans at Cottonwood Funeral Home.”
“She can’t do that.” There was bridled anger in his voice. “They are divorced and she only wanted him because of the...” He pinched his lips together.
“Only wanted him because of this?” I jerked open the door of the Wagoneer and pulled the composition book out of my bag, holding it up in front of me.
“Where did you get that?” Stanley took a step forward. His large hand swiped the air just as I pulled it back.
“I wouldn’t do that if I were you.” I had a much stronger guard up now. “This is being processed as evidence.”
“My mother’s cookbook?” he questioned.
“You wouldn’t believe how the smallest of things help solve crimes.” I held the book tight to my chest with one hand and rested my other hand on my gun holster, trying to read his body language. “I haven’t let this baby get out of my sight since I found it. Just in case you know who ransacked my house and stuck a knife in the front seat of my Jeep, let them know that I’m on to them and they will not get this.”
“Sounds to me like you need to make your own police report.” Stanley glared.
“Is there something you’d like to tell me? Something you need to get off your chest?” I asked.
“Are you accusing me of breaking into your house, Sheriff?” he asked with a smug look on his face. His mouth opened. His eyes bore deep in my soul. He ran his tongue along the tops of his teeth before he shut his lips.
He lifted his hand in the air as if he was going to backhand me. It took everything in me not to flinch. I gripped the butt of my gun that was snapped in my holster.
His eyes shifted.
At that moment, I had to wonder if he abused Inez. I’d seen the way he treated her when I went to his house to tell them about Owen and her reaction when I took her home from craft night. It sure did resemble that of a scared woman.
He stuck his pointer finger at me. “I hope you come to the council meeting tonight.”
We stood there a minute too long before he blinked first and started to walk past me, nearly taking my rotator cuff with him.
Duke went wild from inside the Wagoneer when he saw Stanley bump into me. “Mangy mutt,” he muttered.
“Stay.” I ordered Duke, knowing that if he really wanted to, he could jump out the window and take Stanley down in a minute.
“That was good.” Poppa’s voice came from behind me.
I continued to watch Stanley Godbey walk to his truck with a stalking, purposeful intent.
I whispered, “I figured I would take a lesson from your book and lay a few of my cards out on the table. If Stanley did kill his brother, he will be on high alert since he knows I’m watching. He will mess up. They all do in time.”
“Time we have. Owen is already dead and he ain’t going nowhere fast. Neither are we.” Poppa rubbed his hands together briskly. Excitement escalated in his voice. “Neither are we.”
I hated to admit it, but Stanley suggesting I be at the council meeting got my curiosity up. Of course I was going, but I had no idea what was on the docket except my plan to introduce the idea that the sheriff’s department needed our own building, not the rented storage space in the back of Cowboy’s Catfish.
Chapter Fifteen
“S&S Auto Salvage.” I could picture that woman behind her desk that was so kind and sweet until she knew why I’d come to her place of business. “How can I help you?”
“This is Sheriff Lowry from Cottonwood. I was there the other day with my partner picking up a truck that y’all had towed in.” I paused, waiting for her to acknowledge me, but when there was dead air between us, I continued, “I had driven the truck back to the station in Cottonwood and left my Wagoneer in your parking lot. When I picked it up later, someone had broken into it and stuck a knife in my passenger side seat with a somewhat threatening message.” I paused again. Nothing. So I said, “I noticed you have security cameras on the building and I’m going to come by for the feed. Now, do you need me to get a warrant or can I just have it? Because messing with an official police vehicle leads to jail time.”
“You can’t do either,” she said matter-of-factly.
“Did you not understand the jail part?” I questioned the phone connection. After all, I was on a cell phone traveling through my small town on the way to Hart Insurance and service was spotty.
“I heard you perfectly, Sheriff. Those cameras don’t have a feed. We have them there like people put up the security-company signs in their yard. Just to deter,” she said firmly. “So if there isn’t anything else I can do for you today, then I have got to go.”
“I’ll be in touch,” I said.
“I bet you will.” Her voice, deep with sarcasm, was followed up by a slam of her phone receiver.
“Oh, Duke.” I looked over at my pooch. His head was hung out the window and his tongue was flapping slobber all over the windshield.
I parked the Jeep in the open parking space right in front of Hart Insurance.
“Let’s go.” I patted my leg for Duke to follow.
Katy Lee Hart was on the phone with a customer when we walked in. Duke laid down in front of the air vent, and I thumbed through the racks of Shabby Trends, the clothing line that Katy Lee sold on the side. It was kinda like Tupperware, only with clothes.
“Spill it,” I said when she hung up. I took a look at a dress and then pushed the hanger to the left. “What is on the council meeting docket tonight?”
“How would I know?” She moved to one of the leather couches in the lobby of Hart Insurance, where she ran the family business. She pulled her blond hair over her shoulder, letting it fall down into curly tendrils.
Katy Lee and I had been friends since grade school. She was always a good person to talk to.
“Stanley Godbey said something to me over at the cemetery when I was visiting your brother.” I picked up a hanger with a short-sleeved black blouse that had the shoulders cut out of it but still had sleeves. I’d seen the design in some of the magazines I perused while waiting in line at Dixon’s. “This is cute.”
I held it up to me and looked in the front window of the insurance shop that was located in a strip mall.
“Big seller.” Katy Lee stood up and plucked a pair of white jeans off the rack. “This is really cute together.” She handed it me. “Go try it on in the bathroom.”
I took the clothes and went into the bathroom.
“So you have nothing to add to the docket tonight?” I asked.
“If you’re fishing for new properties that came up, I just might have one on the south side just outside of city limits that used to be the old Day’s car lot.” Her voice was a little louder so I could hear her through the closed bathroom door. “You know the property that has a big chain-link fence around it and the cement building with three rooms plus an office that would make a great office for a sheriff’s department.”
“You’re joking.” I flung the door open, the jeans barely up around my hiney. I jerked up the zipper, not caring a bit about the outfit. “That’s the first thing you should’ve told me when I walked in the door instead of ‘here, look through the latest line of Shabby Trends.’” I caught my reflection in the window and twisted around to see what my butt looked like in the jeans. “Oh, cute.”
“Super cute. He’s going to love it.” Katy Lee bounced on her toes.
“Who?” I asked.
“One hu
nky deputy named Finn Vincent.” She giggled. “Toots Buford told everyone that you were in there today getting all sorts of ingredients and spices to cook. I just knew they were wrong because the Kendrick Lowry I know has never cooked, much less knows how to turn a stove on.” She pursed her lips and gave me the stink eye. “Now, that is what you should’ve told me about when you walked into this office.”
“Touché.” I smiled. “I am going to try to cook, but it’s for an experiment with Owen’s recipe, not a date.”
“Why, I don’t see why not.” Katy Lee walked over and ran her fingers along the cutout of the sleeves and poked and prodded me. “He doesn’t have to know it’s a date. A little cooking here, flirting there, kissing.” She made smoochie noises.
“He’s got a girlfriend.” I shook my head. “Even though he told me he didn’t.”
I didn’t go into details about the Ferris wheel and how he’d told me the photo was his sister.
“Then how do you know he has one?” Katy Lee walked over to her desk and picked up a file.
“Oh God, Katy Lee. I lost my mind last night.” I quickly told her about how I had gone to grab the pie and my fingers took over my body and hit the erase button on his machine.
Katy Lee was laughing so hard she snorted, causing a laugh to ripple through me. I swear we laughed for ten minutes until we were practically crying.
“I thought those games ended when we were in high school.” Katy Lee handed a folder over to me. “But I guess we feel love as if we were still teenagers.”
“I’m not loving anyone. Especially Finn Vincent.” I tried to cover any sort of feelings I had with a low chuckle. The tab on the folder read “Day’s Auto”—the specs for the potential office building. “Thanks.”
“Since you told me you’ve been looking for a bigger place and wanted to get that as part of your platform for re-election, I’ve kept my nose to the ground. I really think this property is perfect. I even asked Doolittle Bowman about the budget that’d been set aside for years for a new sheriff’s office and it is totally in budget. I put the numbers in there so you can present it tonight.”