beyond the grave 03 - a ghostly demise (11 page)

“Good morning,” I greeted an Inn guest on my way in through the screen door.

The room on the right was filled with more guests, who were either waiting for a table for breakfast or enjoying the continental breakfast goodies from Higher Grounds.

“Granny?” I pushed the door to the kitchen open.

Granny’s normal flaming red hair was doused in flour. She held a bowl in the crock of her elbow and was viciously stirring with her other.

“I’m busy. Can’t you see that?” Granny was in no mood for me to question her.

“Tell me.” I saw the same bowl on the counter that had that strange berry mix. There was a piece of tin foil covering it. “Did you put the mixture in Dottie’s garden first for Sanford’s goats to find after you opened their gate? Or did you open the gate and tempt them over to Dottie’s garden?”

“Now.” Granny put her hand with the spoon covered with batter mix on her hip. It dripped on the floor. “I know how this politicking stuff works. I didn’t just fall off the turnip truck. A vote is a vote.”

“And Sanford is voting for you.” I reminded her of his loyalty. “You are causing him to get fined and make an enemy out of his own neighbor.”

“Dottie Kramer thinks she’s all highfalutin out there with her little vegetable garden and going around telling everybody she’s voting for O’Dell Burns.” Granny started stirring again. This time a little faster. Her words flew, “I’ve got to beat O’Dell Burns. And every vote counts.”

“But why are you having the goats eat her garden? That makes no sense.” I took the foil off the bowl and looked in. “Yuck.” My face contorted.

“Put that back on.” Granny shook the spoon at me and went back to mixing. “The less you and that nosy sheriff boyfriend of yours know, the better off I am.”

She set the bowl and spoon on the counter and walked over to me. She leaned in, her nose almost touching mine, her eyes squinting.

“Do you hear me, Emma Lee?” She growled, “Stay out of it. You never saw a thing. You don’t know a thing. You ain’t too old for me to jerk a knot in you.”

“Okay. But don’t come calling me when they figure out it was you and put you in jail right next to Vernon Baxter.” I slammed my mouth shut when Vernon’s name spewed out of my mouth.

“Vernon Baxter is in jail?” Granny jumped back. “He has the personality of a dishrag. What did he do? Use too much embalming fluid?”

“Nothing. He did nothing.” I could kick my own butt for letting that slip out.

Granny was my granny, but Granny was still a gossip, just like every other breathing, breasted woman in Sleepy Hollow.

“We’ll see about that. I bet Beulah knows about that.” Granny flung her hands up in the air, sucked in a big breath, and bent down to the floor, doing her best to touch her toes. “I’m a bit stressed. I think I need to make that early yoga class over at Hettie’s new place.”

“I don’t think you do, Granny.” I shook my head. I knew what was going to come out of her mouth next.

“You don’t mind.” She untied her apron and handed it to me. “You don’t have any funerals to tend to. It’ll only be an hour or so.”

She milled about, grabbing her purse, then the moped keys off the hook by the door.

“I don’t think so, Granny.” I put the apron on the kitchen table and tried to stop her.

“You are such a good granddaughter.” She squeezed my cheeks together. “I have always been a little more partial toward you.”

“Granny, you can’t do this. You can’t make those sorts of statements and make me feel better.” I stomped my foot on the floor and watched the kitchen door swing back and forth when Granny darted out and didn’t look back.

Chapter 13

T
he rush crowd was almost over when Granny up and left me in charge to go find out the gossip around town at Pose and Relax while taking the morning yoga class. Most of the Auxiliary women were in the early class so they could get on with their day and spread the gossip love.

After the last guest table was cleared and cleaned, I stuck a sign on the door that said breakfast hours in the dining room were over and they could go into the snack room off the hallway for the free muffins and coffee.

Even though Granny owned and operated the Inn, she didn’t have to be there twenty-four/seven. She just needed to be there for the mealtimes since she was the chef. I had tried to get her to hire someone. She claimed no one made a better Southern, home-cooked meal than her. I wasn’t going to argue with that.

This time I walked around the square and headed into Higher Grounds. It was still early and the only coffee I’d had was from Vernon Baxter. Poor Vernon. He was not far from my mind. I was having a hard time forgiving myself for accusing him of killing Cephus Hardy, though it was strange that I had found Cephus’s ring in the garden where he claimed he was killed.

“She sure is purty.” Cephus appeared next to me in line.

Ahem.
I cleared my throat and looked ahead of me, where Mary Anna was talking with her hands, explaining some big beauty tip to Cheryl Lynne.

“Good morning, ladies.” I smiled and butted my way into the conversation. “I hope to see both of you at Granny’s meet-the-candidate cookout tonight.”

“Of course I’m going to be there,” Mary Anna confirmed. “Zula Fae is even letting me fix her hair. I swear that cap she wears when she’s riding her fancy little bicycle is ruining the roots of her gorgeous hair. I told her she needed to put extra conditioning on, but you know Zula.” Mary Anna shook her hair. It was styled in the classic Marilyn bob. I had no idea how she could breathe in the tight white dress. Her boobs toppled over the scalloped edges.

Looking at her feet in the sky-high heels made me cringe.

“And I’m doing the desserts. Well,” Cheryl Lynne leaned in. Her long blond hair spilled over her shoulders. She would look good in a paper sack. Her perfect size six wore a little sundress and her apron was tied neatly around her waist, making it look even smaller.

She said, “Zula herself bought the carrots from Dottie Kramer for me to make the carrot cake.”

“What?” I was taken aback. Granny never mentioned once about the carrots and her deal with Dottie Kramer. Had I been wrong about Granny and the goats? She never admitted it, but she never denied it either.

“She sure did. Dottie Kramer told me herself.” Cheryl’s brows lifted and my mouth and Mary Anna’s mouth dropped.

“Honey, I’ve got to get going. Can you get me a cup to go?” Mary Anna asked Cheryl Lynne.

“Me too,” I spoke up.

Eternal Slumber was right next door to Girl’s Best Friend Spa. The walk would do me good. And I could pick Mary Anna’s brain.

“See y’all tonight,” Cheryl called after us on our way out.

“I wouldn’t put anything past Zula Fae.” Mary Anna cackled. She glanced over at me. “You need a touch-up.”

“I do.” I ran my hand along my ponytail. “Just make me an appointment and let me know.”

That’s the way we did things around here. She’d call me with a time and I’d make sure I was there. Life was slow in Sleepy Hollow, except when I was worried about getting someone to cross over. Which reminded me of Cephus.

“I saw your momma and Teddy,” I said to start the conversation. “I can’t believe the success Teddy has had.”

“He’s doing good for himself, especially since Daddy left.” She kept her head forward. Her heels clicked like a horse’s.

“You still haven’t heard from him?” I asked.

“Not a word.” She sighed deeply. “It’s been five years ago almost to the day. Teddy and I were thinking about hiring a private investigator to follow up on some leads.”

“What kinds of leads?” I asked.

“There have been a few sightings reported in Lexington at a few beer joints. And then there’s the whole . . .” She paused. Her eyes filled with water. “You know.” She hesitated. “Woman thing.”

“Woman thing?” Of course I had heard, but I wasn’t going to tell her.

“I never saw it, but I had heard that Daddy was a little bit of a womanizer.” Her words were broken. “And what if an angry husband or boyfriend hurt Daddy. And”—her voice cracked—“he didn’t make it out alive.”

“Womanizer?” Cephus scratched his head. “I might be a lot of things, but I never cheated on Leotta. Mind you, I had plenty of opportunities. But I didn’t do no such thing.” He put his hand out like he had stuck it on a Bible in a court of law.

“I’ve never heard such a thing.” I wanted to reiterate Cephus’s claim of fidelity. “Did you hear that from them old banty hens?” I asked, and peered in the window of Pose and Relax.

They were in some sort of back-bend pose. How on earth that was relaxing was beyond me.

“Oh my.” Mary Anna laughed and we stopped. “I’ve done walked clear past the shop.”

“It’s good catching up on girl talk.” I put my hands on each side of her arms. “Your daddy loved your momma. Don’t let anyone ever tell you different.”

Those were the only encouraging words I could give her. I wished I could say, oh, he’s fine, he’ll turn up. He had turned up. As a ghost.

“Thank you, Emma Lee.” Cephus stood on the sidewalk, watching Mary Anna walk back down the block and across the street to Girl’s Best Friend Spa. “Thank you for making my baby feel better.”

“You’re welcome,” I muttered under my breath, as my phone rang.

I pressed the
TALK
button and covered the phone with my hand as I answered.

“Jack Henry, I’m so sorry about the mislead. Cephus was sure of it,” I whispered.

“Don’t worry about it. When I ran Vernon’s name, it came up he had a warrant so he thinks I’ve taken him in for that. When I took a look around his yard, I just happened upon the ring, thanks to you.” Jack Henry was good using his instincts. “When I asked him about the ring, his face dropped. He told me it was Cephus Hardy’s and he told me about the scuffle, only he said that when he came back out after taking a phone call, Cephus was gone.”

“Did he say exactly what happened between them?” I asked, keeping my words vague.

People were everywhere. They were already getting things going at the carnival and people from the neighboring towns were pouring in, along with the tourists.

“That’s when he lawyered up on me. Some guy from Lexington,” Jack Henry said. “I do have some news about the gambling thing I told you I would look into.”

“Oh, yeah?” I made my way around Granny’s blinking sign in Eternal Slumber’s yard and up the steps of the funeral home.

I opened the door. It was eerily quiet, kind of like it was the calm before the storm. There was something in the air letting me know to hold on. Things were about to go down.

“Evidently, there was a newspaper in town. Due to poor sales and the growth in the Internet, the town council did away with the paper,” he said.

I tried to recall the paper, but nothing was coming to me. It wasn’t like I was clambering to read any sort of news in Sleepy Hollow a few years ago when I could just sit at Higher Grounds and overhear everything that was going on.

“Okay, what does that have to do with Cephus?”

I ducked into my office and shut the door behind me. When I had passed Charlotte’s office, I heard her talking and her door was shut, which meant she was with a client. Maybe they wanted to do pre-need arrangements. We had a lot of those appointments.

“I found a report from years ago where Dottie Kramer had made a complaint that someone was running a gambling ring. The editor of the newspaper got ahold of it right before the city shut the paper down.” He took a breath. I could hear paper shuffling in the background. “The story died along with the paper. It wasn’t so long ago the paper was in town. Do you remember a paper in Sleepy Hollow?”

“Like we cared about the news.” I reminded him that we were off at college having a good time, not worried about what was going on in Sleepy Hollow. “You said Dottie Kramer made the complaint?” I wondered what Dottie knew about a gambling ring. “Do you know the editor’s name?”

“No. Like I said, it was years ago that the report was filed, which means it was before I got here.” He paused. “I’m only telling you this because nothing is going on around here. I believe Cephus is dead and his ring is a strange thing, but you don’t need to stick your head where there might be danger. Please leave it to me.”

“Okay.” My mind reeled about this editor and the story that had been about to break.

“I’m serious,” Jack Henry warned me.

He knew as well as I that I wasn’t going to just let that die.

“It’s easy for you to say.” I yawned. “You aren’t the one who is getting woken up in the middle of the night getting sniffed.”

“W-what?” Jack Henry asked.

“Nothing.” I didn’t have time to explain anything to him. I had to get to the courthouse so I could look at the past records of a newspaper and gather a name of a certain editor. “I’ll see you at Granny’s meet-the-candidate cookout?”

“I’ll be there.”

We hung up the phone. I left my office and walked down the hall to Charlotte’s office. She was still going over the packages with the client and I continued out the door.

Chapter 14

V
ote O’Dell for Mayor.” Bea Allen’s voice projected through the megaphone, spilling out into the street right in front of the courthouse and the carnival. “O’Dell Burns for Mayor.”

“Where’s the candidate?” I asked, walking up to her, Leotta and Teddy.

“He’s busy. There is a funeral service taking place in a couple hours.” There was a smug look on her face. “What about Eternal Slumber? You busy?”

“We are. In fact, Charlotte is talking with clients right now while I do some research.” I gestured to the courthouse.

“Teddy, how long you in town?” I wanted to change the subject.

“I’m cutting the ribbon for the ceremony tonight at the gazebo.” He smiled. “Who would’ve thought that I would be back here cutting any ribbon.”

“I think it’s great.” I wasn’t sure whether now was the time or place to ask about his dad’s gambling. I tugged his shirt and pulled him to the side. “I hate to be nosy, but with you back and Mary Anna working for me, we talk about your dad all the time,” I lied, “and she’s still so upset about how he just upped and left.”