If Fried Chicken Could Fly (4 page)

“No problem.”

“How much longer do you think they’ll need us here?” Stuart asked as I walked by the brooding and clearly agi-tated group of nighters. We’d tested their patience this evening.

Stuart, despite his vision problems, owned a small shoe repair shop on Main Street. He’d also started making and selling leather hand-tooled belts decorated with Broken Rope themes, things like hanging platforms and nooses. We’d considered it a huge victory when he signed up for cooking classes because it got him out of his shop. Mostly, he was there, hovered over something he was working on, a magnifying jeweler’s visor over his head. I’d pass by his place sometimes at night and see him working and want to tell him he could use more light.

“Hopefully not much longer. Has Jim talked to you yet?” I said.

They all shook their heads and mumbled, “No” or “Not yet.”

“After he fingerprints me, I’m sure he’ll want to talk to you. I’ll try to rush it along.”

“Will we have to get fingerprinted?” Amy, the fourteen-year-old asked, her eyes wide with excitement. Amy had only recently come to live with Mabel. She was Mabel’s daughter’s daughter and had been through something horrible, but none of us knew the details. No one was allowed to mention Mabel’s daughter who’d left Broken Rope for New York City and a questionable lifestyle some years earlier. Mabel was doing her best, but Amy’s recovery was slow and difficult.

Mabel owned the town’s cookie shop called Broken Crumbs. Her successful business had been the thing that
helped Amy the most. Suddenly, the young girl had a job, things were required of her. Mabel said that things sometimes didn’t get done correctly but that Amy was getting better. The night cooking classes were another distraction so Amy didn’t spend too much time thinking about her past. I liked the girl but could see she was troubled.

“I don’t know, Amy, but hopefully you’ll get home soon,” I said.

Amy’s eyes widened more. She suddenly looked concerned instead of excited. She looked at Mabel who seemed to ignore whatever she was trying to communicate.

“What do they think happened?” Miles asked.

“I don’t know,” I said.

When Gram had called the students back to the school, Jim told her to give as little information as possible. She hadn’t mentioned the murder or the victim, but once they’d come back, they’d been quick to figure out there was a big problem that involved a dead body. It only took a few more moments for them to learn that the body belonged to Everett.

“This is truly horrible,” Jenna said. “Everett was a good man.” She wrung her hands and her eyes were glossy with unshed tears.

“Yes, he was,” I said.

Amy looked at Mabel again. This time, Mabel didn’t ignore her granddaughter but shook her head and gave Amy a stern look. I wondered what was going on.

“Betts, now,” Jim said from the doors.

I took a deep breath and excused myself from the students. Too much had happened in the span of about one hour. I wanted the evening to be over, and Everett not to be
dead in our supply room, and Cliff not to be a police officer in Broken Rope, and the fire not to have ever started. So many things were out of control and I didn’t like the feeling one bit.

Neither did Gram. She sat on the corner of the desk, next to what must have been Jim’s fingerprinting supplies. She seldom looked her age, but at the moment she looked old, tired, and ornery. I thought she had been doing okay, but now I wondered if she’d just put herself on autopilot to make sure what needed to be done got done.

“How’re you doing, Gram?” I asked.

“I’ve been better.”

“I know. Sorry about all this.” I put my hand on her shoulder.

“I feel terrible for Everett, of course, but I’m concerned about everyone else, too. Who came into my school and killed someone? Why Everett? And could it just as easily have been someone else? What happened, Betts?”

“Don’t know, but Jim and…Jim and his crew will figure it out.”

“I think we should shut down the school until this is solved. For safety’s sake.”

I thought about that a long minute. I supposed we could close and everyone would either understand or put up with it. But that was a decision that would affect the whole town, not just the cooking school.

We were three short days from Broken Rope’s summer season, which would be kick-started by our annual cook-off. We had fifteen daytimers who’d spent their money and time to receive one of Gram’s Country Cooking School certificates. Four of those students were participating in the
cook-off. If we closed the school, there would be no viable way for the students to prepare their meals under our supervision. The cook-off would probably have to be canceled, which would upset not only students but tourists, too, many of whom were already on their way to the Southern Missouri Showdown, as the day was traditionally called.

Additionally, we always saved Gram’s champagne cookie recipe for right before the cook-off. It was a fun, delicious recipe that gave the students something to focus on that wasn’t as serious as the cook-off but was a form of celebration instead. We could just give the students the recipe outside of school, but that defeated the purpose.

Though Gram’s Country Cooking School wasn’t accredited by the American Culinary Federation, a certificate noting that a student had completed his or her full nine-month daytime course work was becoming a valuable tool for obtaining some of the best cooking jobs. In the world of food preparation, there was always a revolution occurring. Restaurateurs wanted as many options as they could get. We would still give the students their certificates, but they’d be cheated out of two of the big highlights—the cook-off and the cookies—that we’d promised them when they came to the school nine months earlier. Gram and I didn’t like breaking promises.

Gram knew how to cook food that she and her parents and her parents’ parents fixed and ate. Gram made food with butter and cheese and flour coatings. Her food wasn’t light on calories or light on flavor. It was full and hearty and made taste buds stand up and pay attention and then swoon with delight. And when her students presented a certificate from her program, restaurant owners knew that they were hiring
someone who’d learned the ins and outs of amazing fried chicken, creamy sauces and soups, potato dishes of all kinds, breads, and desserts that kept customers coming back for more.

In the real world, Gram’s skills and methods were almost becoming things of the past, of a time when people didn’t write down recipes but just added some of this and some of that, a time when cooking secrets were passed down through generations—passed down verbally and in the kitchens of country homes, kitchens that didn’t have electricity or natural gas. So in the restaurant world, Gram’s skills were fast becoming a lost art.

She was the first one to say that eating food cooked in lard wasn’t smart to do every day, but every once in a while eating should be all about flavor and comfort. That’s what we did: flavor and comfort, with a little lard added for good measure. Even for only a few days, it didn’t seem fair to close the door to our students.

As for the nighters, we could postpone or cancel further classes and refund their tuition, but there was more to it than that. The current nighttime class was made up of the five judges for the cook-off. They were just as excited to judge as the other students were to cook. They could still judge even if we canceled their class, but that didn’t seem fair either.

The cooking school also had a catering order to fill. Gram called the catering business a nice accident, because she’d never made catering a goal. But when she saw that students could get more experience by filling the orders, she thought it was a good addition. The library’s read-a-thon was tomorrow and Gram had committed the students to red velvet
cupcakes. I could handle making the cupcakes by myself, but some of the upcoming orders might be more of a challenge.

After playing all these things through my mind, and realizing that, even with the horrible murder of Everett Morningside, I needed to step it up and be more to Gram and the school than I’d ever had to be, I said, “Gram, the fire marshal said that if Jim clears us and we can get the worst of the mess cleaned up, it will be all right to continue operating. If Jim says it’s okay, let’s just cancel tomorrow and take it from there. I can make the library cupcakes. The daytimers won’t mind missing one day. It might be good for them to relax anyway. I’ll call Mom and let her know what’s going on and have her call the students. We’ll decide what to do after that. We have a lot coming up. No disrespect to Mr. Morningside, but we can’t let our visitors or the rest of the town down.”

She looked at me, her eyes thoughtful and wide. The old woman I’d seen a moment before was disappearing, and Gram would be back soon.

“You’re right, of course, Betts. Thanks.” She stood and patted my arm. “Now get your fingerprints taken and we’ll get everyone out of here as quickly as possible.”

“Right here, Betts,” Jim said as he joined us at the desk and reached for what looked like an ink pad. “Sorry about getting your fingers messy. We have the high-tech computer fingerprinting stuff at the jail, but our portable kit is still old-fashioned.”

“No problem.” I let Jim take my hand. Finger by finger he rolled them each over the black ink and then a piece of cardboard that had squares designating which finger went where.

“Tell me about today, Betts,” he said as he rolled.

“What do you mean?”

“Start with the morning and tell me what you did all day. When did you get here?”

“Am I a suspect?” I said. “Should I get an attorney?”

“Spoken just like someone who went to law school,” Jim said as he peered at me through his thick glasses.

“I dropped out.”

“Smart girl. No, Betts, you’re no more a suspect than anyone else. I’ve got nothing except for a dead body. I’d like to get a snapshot of what happened at the school today. Who was here—in and out? Did you see or hear anything strange? Was the school empty for a period of time?”

In my head I rewound the day, back to when I woke up and had my normal first cup of coffee.

“I got here about nine a.m. I usually get here a little earlier—the daytime students get here at ten o’clock and I like a couple hours to do paperwork or prepare for the day. This morning I was a little late but not for any particular reason. Gram always gets here at nine thirty and she was on time.”

“Did you go to the supply room in the morning?”

I shook my head. “Not that I remember. I wouldn’t unless I thought the night cleaning staff had missed something. They seldom do.”

“What time do they get here?”

“About midnight.” I looked at my watch. “A couple hours from now.”

“I’ll talk to them when they get here, but I’m not going to let them clean up tonight. Maybe tomorrow. Okay, so you were a little late. Did you notice anything odd or out of place?” Jim started rolling the fingers on my other hand.

I thought backward again. “No, Jim, I don’t think I did.” But I thought harder. I had a faint inkling that something unusual had happened that morning, but I wasn’t sure. I suddenly remembered that I thought I’d heard Gram talking to herself in her office—adamantly. I’d peeked in, but she acted like I’d been hearing things. It was odd, but I doubted it had anything to do with Everett’s death. “No, nothing.”

“How about classes? How did they go?”

“The daytime classes went off without a hitch. We worked on some pie crusts in the morning and then red velvet cupcakes this afternoon. We have a catering order tomorrow for the cupcakes. We wanted the class to practice today. I don’t remember any issues.”

“Sounds good.” Jim smiled. “Did you or Miz leave the school at any point during the day?”

“Yes, I went out for lunch and then a couple hours later to the store for red food coloring for the cupcakes. I thought we had plenty, but we didn’t. I had to make the emergency run to the store.”

“What about Miz?”

“I don’t really know. She might have left at noon, but I’m not sure. You’ll have to ask her.”

“All right.”

“Jim, you know Gram didn’t kill anyone,” I said.

He handed me a wet wipe for my inky fingers and said, “Betts, I don’t know who killed Mr. Morningside, but someone did. Your gram didn’t give me any reason to believe that she was the killer. In fact, I’d put money on the fact that we’re going to be looking for someone none of us knows, a stranger. At least I hope so.”

“We’ll have another Broken Rope mysterious and bizarre
death. It will be good for the tourist season.” My stomach dropped. I’d told myself I had to be strong, but had I really said that? “That sounded awful. I think I’m just tired.”

“I understand,” Jim said cautiously.

I’d known Jim Morrison forever and never once had there been a moment of question in his eyes or his voice about me or whatever I had done. Even when I was a teenager and accidently forgot to pay for my gas at the Rusty Chicken corner convenience store Jim hadn’t suspected I’d done it on purpose. He called my parents who greeted me as I arrived home.

“You forget something, Isabelle?” Dad had asked, reading glasses on the tip of his nose and the newspaper in his hands.

“No.”

“Did you gas up the car?”

“Yes.”

“Did you pay for it?”

“Of course.”

“Think about it. Did you go into the store and pay for it?”

“Oh. Oops, I don’t think I did.”

“Yeah, Jim called. You’re not a very good thief. Oren’s working the store and he saw you. Plus, Jim was in the store. You might not want to steal gas when your cousin’s working and the local police chief is grabbing a Snickers bar. Run on back there now.”

I hurried back to the Rusty Chicken, paid for the gas, and decided then and there that crime in a small town just didn’t pay.

But it seemed it might have today. Someone put that plastic bag over Everett Morningside’s head. Someone killed
him, right where lots of people came and went. I’d gone through my day with Jim, but I wasn’t sure I’d remembered everything.

“It’s all right, Betts. These kinds of things take everyone off their game in one way or another.” With his left-hand slant, Jim wrote my name on the top of the cards he’d used for my fingerprints. He filed them in the back of the big black case that held the rest of his low-tech stuff. “I think we’ll be able to get all the evidence gathered tonight. I’ve called in a couple crime scene techs. They’re on their way. I should have everything I need by morning, but I’ll let you know if I don’t.”