Southern Fried

by Tonya Kappes

  Tibbie Bell had called to say Euchre had been postponed until tomorrow night out of respect for Katy Lee. That was fine by me. I wasn’t in the mood to take in all the gossip that was already swirling around about Rowdy’s suicide and Owen’s murder.

  After a nice long run with Duke, we had a quick supper and laid in bed with the television on for white noise. My mind was all jumbled and I needed to relax.

  Duke snored next to me while I stared at the ceiling with some cable love story movie playing in the background. I wanted to say I couldn’t sleep because I had Finn on my mind, but he wasn’t. Though he wasn’t far from my thoughts, it was Owen and Rowdy who haunted me more than Poppa’s ghost.

  There was no sense in trying to sleep when I couldn’t even shut my eyes without seeing the evidence in my head.

  I just wasn’t satisfied with the outcome. The fact that Rowdy Hart would kill himself was so out of character that I really wanted to make sure all the pieces of the puzzle fit before I put the murder of Owen Godbey to rest.

  Owen might’ve wanted those samples so he could try to replicate the crop. Since he seemed to be broke and he needed his medicine so badly, then it would make sense that he’d want to grow his own crop so he could make good on the deal Rae Lynn had started with the organic store. If Stanley and Inez weren’t going to help him, then he was going to do it on his own, but it would be a full year until the okra crop was even ready to harvest.

  And the fact that he was stealing the flowers off the gravestones to have the stems analyzed seemed a bit extreme and out of character for even Owen. When it came to extremes and desperation, I knew anything was possible. Still, I had to be sure.

  I peeled back the covers and put on my uniform. I grabbed my bag, keys, and phone.

  “Come on,” I called for Duke when he stood at the door giving me those big doggie eyes. “I’m just going to the office. You can come along.”

  “Where we headed?” Poppa appeared in the backseat of the Wagoneer when I pulled out of Free Row and headed down Main Street toward the office.

  “I need to go look at the board Finn put together at the office.” I stared straight ahead.

  My thoughts drifted to Finn. Images of him at some fancy big-city restaurant on a date that I’d created in my head, sipping wine and looking into the woman’s eyes. A smile of satisfaction from seeing him crossed her lips. I pictured her in a very skimpy dress, hair long and down her back in loose curls, sky-high heels at the end of her mile-long tan legs. Laughter popped out of her red lips before he leaned over and kissed her on the nape of the neck.

  “Whoa.” Poppa held onto the door when I took the quick turn to the alley behind Cowboy’s. “Where did your mind just go?”

  “Nowhere,” I lied and put the image of the perfect date Finn was having behind me. “I want to call the lab.”

  After I parked the Jeep, I took out my phone and called, not even sure if anyone was going to answer.

  “Tom.” I was happy to hear Tom Geary answer the phone so late. He’d worked with Poppa many times and I trusted him. “It’s Sheriff Lowry over in Cottonwood.”

  “What can I do for you, Sheriff?” Tom asked.

  “I was wondering how long it would take for you to run a soil sample,” I said.

  “It’ll take up to forty-eight hours on the fast track. Do you know what you’re looking for?” he asked.

  “Unfortunately I don’t.” I paused. It was a good question.

  “Go on.” Poppa encouraged me. “You can trust him. He can tell you exactly what to expect.”

  “I’m just not convinced that Rowdy Hart killed Owen Godbey,” I said. “According to everyone I’ve talked to, Owen was so obsessed with the soil from his brother’s okra crop that he was desperate to get the breakdown of the soil. He was stealing soil and flowers to have analyzed, apparently to try to duplicate it.”

  “I thought that you found a suicide note, which was good on my end because the first batch of evidence you sent over was inconclusive. Until you sent me the evidence from Mr. Hart,” he said. “In fact, the main evidence was the fencing. It came back with Mr. Hart’s prints on it. The antifreeze in his barn was a match as well.” I could hear the shuffling of papers in the background. “I see also that the same soil sample from the hog pens matched the hog feces found on Owen. You can’t get much more hard evidence than that, Sheriff.”

  “Right, but I don’t think that Rowdy would kill Owen over flowers. And Rowdy didn’t even contact me about the flowers until after Owen’s death.” I knew that anyone could say that Rowdy was feeling guilty for killing Owen and was trying to cover his tracks to call in a robbery, but the pieces of the puzzle weren’t fitting as nicely as I liked. “I know Owen had taken some soil samples from his brother’s farm. Finn contacted the lab Owen used and the results aren’t back yet.”

  I couldn’t even believe I was about to admit that I was going to get my own samples with or without Stanley’s permission.

  “If I bring my own samples from the same location, do you think you could get those back to me ASAP?” If there was no way he’d be able to, then there was no way I’d risk my job by trespassing. If Stanley Godbey caught me, he would definitely press charges against me and then Lonnie would get my job, election or not.

  “I’m sure I could. I can’t promise forty-eight hours, but pretty darn close.” Tom gave me the best he could and it was good enough for me.

  “Great.” Now I had to make the plans to get the sample. “I’ll get the sample to you soon. Do you have an after-hours drop box?” The sooner the better.

  “We aren’t a bank, Sheriff.” Tom sounded a little offended. “But since you sound like you’re in a hurry, if you have to bring it after hours and I’m not here, leave it in the empty flower pot at the back door.”

  “Perfect. Thank you, Tom.” Poppa was right. Tom was a good man. We hung up. “It just doesn’t make sense.” I glanced at Poppa. “Owen was broke. He wanted the soil to grow the same okra from Rae Lynn’s cookbook.” I spoke slow and clear to get it clearer in my head. “If he did get the soil sample, it would take him a year to grow a new crop even if he did get the ingredients perfect. Was he going to work at the cemetery for pennies until the crop was ready to harvest? What about his arthritis? How could he work a crop?”

  “Maybe he wasn’t thinking that far ahead.” Poppa made a good point. “What did the recipe say again?” he asked. We got out of the Jeep.

  I put my key in the door of the office to let us in.

  “I’ll pull it out when we get inside.”

  I pushed the door open and flipped on the light. I held my bag tightly in my grip.

  We headed over to my desk and I grabbed the composition book out of my bag. I turned to the okra recipe. I read the instructions out loud.

  “It seemed like a normal recipe to me when I made them. They were good, but not kill-someone-for-the-recipe good.” I stared at the words written in Rae Lynn’s handwriting, hoping something, any little inkling of a thing, would jump out at me or spur any sort of spark.

  Nothing. Zip. Nada.

  “Then we are going to have to find out for ourselves what is in the soil.” Poppa paced back and forth. “Think.” Poppa walked and tapped his head. “If I were Owen and I had this book...”

  “Then I would read these words very carefully.” I put my finger on the page and dragged it across the words as I read out loud. “‘Continue using the seeds and soil from the very first plant in the first row for each new harvest before you till the old.’ And you have to till every year.”

  “I’m guessing it was the first plant Rae Lynn ever planted that made a good crop and she’s using the seeds from that one crop to produce in all the years after.” Poppa was so good about talking through things with me, which made me think more and more outside of the box.

  “I need to watch the video footage,” I s
aid and turned on my laptop, where I stuck in the SIM card from Stanley Godbey. Poppa stood behind me and watched the screen over my shoulder.

  It was a typical video feed. A little grainy since it was nighttime, but the moonbeams were like a flashlight. According to Stanley, he said it was from the last few weeks.

  I fast forwarded through the video to the second day since that was when Stanley told me he had seen Owen. As soon as the sun started to go down over the overgrown crop, which looked more like weeds than a real crop to me, I saw Owen tiptoeing into the view of the security camera.

  “What a mess.” There was a critical tone in Poppa’s voice. “Rae Lynn is turning over in her grave over all the hard work she’s put into the okra. That entire field but the first row is dead.”

  “Are you saying that because you can see her?” I snorted and kept my eyes on the screen.

  “Kenni-bug, that’s not funny. We work so hard on this earth to make sure the generations after us can make a good life. Rae Lynn spent years working in that field to give her family a good life, then she hands them a golden ticket by leaving them not only the recipe but a deal with a big store that wants to have her crop. They repay her by having a family feud.” He touched the laptop screen with his finger. “The least they could’ve done was weed the darn thing.”

  “It looks like the crop is dead but for that one plant Rae Lynn has in the recipe.” My voice faded and I sat up a little straighter when I saw the shadow enter into the picture.

  Owen walked alongside the crop and bent down. The video wasn’t as crisp as I would’ve liked it to be, but he definitely bent down and put something in a bag. This was more than likely when he’d taken the soil sample. He disappeared in between the first and second row.

  “Where did he go?” My eyes darted around the screen. Poppa bent over my shoulder. A few seconds of us watching the crop went by. A bunch of the tall weeds shuffled at the end of the row. Owen emerged with a big okra stalk in his grips. He looked around and faced the camera.

  “Stanley was right.” I shook my head and stared straight into Owen’s eyes. “He took a stalk.”

  “He sure did.”

  Poppa straightened up.

  “I bet you money he took that stalk home and replanted it in hopes he’d be able to grow his own crop.” The idea percolated in my mind. “And he took it from the middle of the first row since the cookbook said to use the first row.”

  “Why the middle?” Poppa questioned.

  “I have a sneaking suspicion Stanley watches that crop more than he leads on and he claimed he put a camera in since my break-in. My gut says something is wrong. Plus Stanley is watching the video. Why would he watch it if he didn’t think he needed to? Owen probably thought if he took a stalk from the middle when it was so overgrown that Stanley wouldn’t be able to eyeball it and see that there was one missing.” My body stiffened. “Only Owen didn’t know there was a security camera.”

  “Are you thinking what I’m thinking?” Poppa eased down into the chair across from me.

  “That Stanley confronted Owen and killed him over the family rift? I can’t help but think that Stanley did try his hand at the okra and by the looks of the video, the crop is dead. Stanley needs the recipe, which clearly tells them to use the first stalk. Also from the video, the first stalk is the only thing that looks to be healthy. And if Stanley wants to grow more crop and he too wants that organic box-store deal, then he needs that recipe just as badly as Owen needs that soil.” The idea sent my pulse scurrying through my body. “You know...” I hesitated to make sure my thoughts and words came out the same. “Rowdy talked to me openly at the cemetery in front of Stanley. Stanley could’ve killed Rowdy and planted the evidence.”

  “Why on earth would Stanley want to kill his brother over something as silly as okra?” Poppa’s voice was high with anxiety.

  “I don’t know.” I looked up at the dry-erase board Finn had written all over. There was a big gap when it came to the Godbey family line he’d drawn.

  In big bold print at the top he’d written the suspect list: Sandy, Myrna, Stanley, and then he’d added Rowdy.

  Under “Rowdy” he wrote everything we’d learned over the past twenty-four hours about the fencing, hog feces, antifreeze, no shoes, and Owen’s shoes at the scene. He’d copied the suicide note and taped it next to Rowdy’s name.

  Under Sandy he had written the obvious. “Ex-wife,” “wanted cookbook,” “best friends with Myrna,” “moved,” and “still friends with Owen.” I picked up the marker and wrote underneath that Toots had seen Owen and Sandy at Dixon’s going over the recipe the day he’d died, which was also the day they’d gone for the final divorce hearing.

  Was it all too coincidental that Owen died that night? Did something go wrong when they were trying to make the recipe?

  “The recipe.” I froze. Sandy did have all the makings of the okra recipe on her counter when Finn and I went to her house. “Finn and I went to Sandy’s and I noticed all the ingredients on her counter.”

  “How would she get his body back to Myrna’s?” Poppa asked.

  “Myrna might’ve helped.” I’d dismissed this idea before, but now it continued to creep up on me. “Why wouldn’t Stanley have killed Sandy? She knows the recipe and she was married to Owen.”

  “Kenni-bug,” Poppa’s lips tightened, “I’m stumped on this one.”

  I stepped back and looked at the board. Underneath Stanley’s name I wrote in some information about the video.

  “Do you think Sandy would’ve known how to use electric fencing?” Poppa asked.

  “I don’t know.” I shrugged. “I wouldn’t think so because Owen never kept hogs or even used the fencing, but you never know. I think to rule out Stanley completely, I need to get that soil sample.”

  We went back to the video and watched on a little faster speed. A couple of days had gone by and Owen was back at the field.

  “Why would he go back?” I slowed down the video and watched Owen go straight to the first stalk of okra. The sun started to pop up over the horizon. “And at this time of day?”

  Poppa and I watched. There was a bright pink twinkle that blinded the camera when the sun hit Owen just right. Right after that, we watched as he disappeared from the view.

  After we watched the footage one more time, the clock on the wall read three a.m. It was pitch dark outside.

  “Now would be the time to sneak out there.” I already knew that Stanley would never let me get a sample unless there was a warrant, and at this hour I was sure the judge wouldn’t be happy with me. “We need to see for ourselves.”

  “Well, standing here looking at that board is about as useful as a steering wheel on a mule.” Poppa was never one for standing around when there was a crime to be solved. “Who ever heard of putting stuff up on a board and hankering over it as if a lightning bolt was going to strike some affirmation into you?” he snarled. “Let’s go, girl.”

  Chapter Twenty-One

  “There isn’t anything good about this.” I pulled the Wagoneer to the side of Catnip Road and shut off the lights. “I can’t believe you talked me into this.”

  It wasn’t too late to turn around, I told myself, but I knew I wasn’t going to. If I was going to really get to the bottom of what my gut told me, I had to get my own soil sample and get it analyzed for myself. I had to make sure Stanley Godbey didn’t kill his brother. Owen had to be desperate to use his medicine money to get a sample. The only thing I could think of that made sense was that maybe he thought if he could reproduce his mama’s okra, then he’d follow through with his mama’s deal with that big box organic store. Were they just being greedy? I wasn’t patient enough to wait for the results. What on earth was in the soil?

  “I didn’t talk you into anything.” Poppa poked his chest. “It’s in you. Like it’s in me.” His eyes narrowed. “You can smell it. So can D
uke.”

  Duke popped up between the seat when he heard his name called and tried to lick Poppa’s ghost. He was right. As much as I wanted to let it go and be satisfied with Rowdy Hart’s confession, I just couldn’t.

  The moonlight was better than any flashlight and less noticeable. I’d parked between the brothers’ properties.

  “This way.” Poppa pointed. “Poor old Rae Lynn. I found her working in her crop when I had to tell her that Shelton had died. She collapsed right in front of my eyes.”

  I’d heard about that, but it was something Poppa never discussed. How the families reacted when he told them about the demise of a loved one. For a second, I wondered if Stanley was still watching the video camera, but quickly dismissed the thought since Owen was dead and Stanley didn’t have any more reason to watch it so closely. Plus I had the SIM card, unless Stanley had stuck in another one.

  “When you tell a family about a loved one, I think it changes you a little.” Poppa was able to go through the woods with ease, but not me. I had to climb over dead logs, slog through overgrown weeds, and push back tree limbs in order to follow him to the crop. At times in the pitch dark because the woods were so thick the moon wasn’t even visible.

  “It’s a personal thing and something I never wanted to diminish by talking about it.” Everything Poppa was saying was exactly how I felt.

  “Their eyes.” I gulped, recalling the look on Katy Lee’s face when I told her about finding Rowdy. I still needed to go to her house and check on her. As a friend, not a sheriff. “I’m not sure if I can forget the pain in their eyes.”

  “‘The eyes are the window to the soul’ is a true statement.” Poppa looked back at me. When I caught up to him, I realized we were standing in the crop field.