DIGGIN' UP THE DIRT

by Tonya Kappes

  He was referring to the volatile relationship between his granddaughter and daughter.

  “You’ve gone done put a giddy up in her hitch this mornin’.” Poppa was entertained easily. “She looks like she’d ‘bout give you nine kinds of hell.”

  “I said not now, Mama. Apparently, you found a body and I need to do my job now. I’ll talk to you in a minute.” I shoved past her, ignoring Poppa, and glanced around to see where Duke had gone.

  Duke had darted off to where Finn was standing near a tree at the front of the small hiking trail located past the playground. Not even a child could get lost on this hiking trail. It was there just like the swings. For fun.

  Finn had already strung police tape across the play swings, through the jungle gym, around the large slide, and knotted it off at the teeter-totter.

  “Do you have any idea who the victim is?” Edna Easterly yelled at me when I walked past the crowd with her hand stuck way out holding her tape recorder.

  All the Henny Hens, like little puppets, slightly turned their heads, leaning an ear closer to get the scoop.

  Edna was the editor for the Cottonwood Chronicle, our local newspaper. This would be a big scoop for her since most of the stories in the Chronicle were about births and other non-news issues.

  Edna’s outfit told me she was going to be out of her office today to investigate this story. Her fisherman vest was equipped as a traveling office where she kept her much needed supplies in the many pockets it had to offer.

  The feather she’d hot glued on the brown fedora waved in the early morning wind, making it hard to read the notecard, also glued on the hat, where she’d scribbled the word “Reporter” on it.

  For a second, I wondered how all of these people knew, not that I didn’t put it past Mama and the Henny Hens to have called everyone, but when I noticed Max Bogus had pulled up behind the Wagoneer, I knew Finn had called Betty Murphy at the department where she dispatched the county coroner, Max Bogus.

  Everyone in Cottonwood had invested in a police scanner. After all, no one wanted to be left behind on what was going on in our small town.

  “What do we have?” I asked Finn, putting the personal issue we’d had last night on the back burner.

  Our job and our commitment to Cottonwood had to take precedent over the personal life issues we were having at the moment.

  “You okay?” Finn’s eyes had a sheen of purpose.

  “I’m fine. I guess we have another killer to find.” I shook my head and walked over to the tree line where Finn had placed a couple crime scene numbers.

  “Killer?” He questioned. “I’ve not even taken a good look at the body. I simply felt for a pulse and checked for a heartbeat.”

  “Definitely a murder. Definitely a killer,” Poppa stood over the body. Duke wiggled at his side. “Go on, tell that Northerner it’s a murder.”

  “Duke,” I called. “Get over here.” He trotted over giving me some time to think real fast on how to answer Finn’s question. It was these types of subtle things about Poppa’s ghost that I let slip, making Finn stop and question my every thought. “Then what? Hiking and had a heart attack?”

  I knew my tone was a little snottier than normal.

  “I’m sorry. Not enough coffee in the morning for a call like this.” I offered one of those “sorry” smiles before I bent down over the body.

  Finn walked away and greeted Max a few feet back from me.

  The body was lying face down, wearing a black hooded sweatshirt, and what looked to be a blue pair of scrub pants that a doctor would wear. I had no clue if the victim was a male or female, until I turned the body over.

  The small puddle of blood in the middle of the back didn’t go unnoticed and from an initial look, it appeared to be a bullet wound.

  After I carefully turned the body over, I instantly recognized the fair skinned young woman underneath the hoodie. Avon Meyers. The young woman I’d seen talking to Rich Moss at the funeral home.

  More like the woman Rich Moss was threatening.

  “Bullet wound right through the ticker,” Poppa pointed out. He danced a little jig and clapped his hands. “Whoooweeee, Kenni bug. It looks like we are back on the case again. Me and you.” He rubbed his hands together. “We can play our little game.”

  I stayed with Poppa a lot more than I stayed at home with my parents. Mama actually blamed Poppa for ruining me by brain washing me into becoming a police officer and not fulfilling my destiny in becoming the president of the Junior League and chairwoman of many clubs. When I went to college to get my four-year degree in law enforcement, it nearly put Mama in the bed with a nervous breakdown.

  She thought it was cute when I told her I was going to run for Cottonwood sheriff, an elected four-year term. She had made all sort of bedazzled signs and used pink paint, puff paint mind you, as if it were a joke.

  When I won, she took to the bed once again.

  Eventually, she got over it and during the last election, where I had to be reelected, she took it personally if someone didn’t put a “Vote For Kenni Lowry” sign in their yard.

  “Poppa, I’m going to have to limit my conversations with you,” I said under my breath. “Finn and I are getting a lot more serious. Mama practically has my wedding dress picked out.”

  I unzipped my bag and took out my camera to get some up-close photos of Ava’s body, trying to make it appear as if I was doing my job instead of trying to sort out all the jumble in my head. The thought of Finn’s parents and the messed-up supper party last night shouldn’t be taking up my thoughts. Poor Ava should be and the fact that I knew she was killed didn’t help matters since I couldn’t just say to everyone that I knew she was murdered because Poppa was here.

  We Southerners might wear our crazy like a banner and parade it down Main Street, but we aren’t the “seeing the dead” kinda crazy. That was the stuff that got a person put in a room in the looney bin.

  “What do you mean?” Poppa stomped a foot. “We are the best duo with our little back and forth game of ‘what if this happened’. We’ve solved many crimes that way. Why not now?”

  He was right. As a child, Poppa would give me scenarios of the crimes he was working on and we would sit at his kitchen table for hours asking each other “what if this happened” to formulate how the crime had happened and who had done it. Granted, most of them didn’t involve murder, but it was still like putting together a puzzle and we were good at it.

  “I’m in love with Finn and I’m not sure how he’s going to take it if he found out that I’m relying on my Poppa’s ghost as my deputy more than I am relying on him,” I muttered and snapped the camera at the same time.

  “Well if this don’t beat the band.” Poppa did a little more stomping. “You tellin’ me that this Yankee had more influence over you than the actual man who gave you the spirit and drive in your soul to be a sheriff?”

  “What do we have here, Sheriff?” Max Bogus walked up with his clipboard in his hand. His pen at the ready.

  “We have Avon Meyers, a physical therapist at the Cottonwood Acres Rehab.” I waited for him to finish filling out the top of his paperwork before I continued.

  Finn and I were already like a well-oiled machine. He took the camera from me and continued to take pictures of the victim while I filled in Max on what I found.

  “It appears the victim has a gunshot wound to the chest here.” I took my pen from my shirt pocket and used the tip to point to the wound. “Before I flipped her over, there was an exit wound that appeared to be a straight line from here. There doesn’t appear to be any other types of wounds or bruising externally.”

  “Or vice versa,” Max corrected me. He’d know best. This was his area of expertise.

  Out of the corner of my eye, I could see Poppa assessing Finn as if he’d not already formed an opinion of him. Poppa stuck to Finn like Edna East
erly’s feather was glued to her fedora.

  “What was Mama’s account?” I asked Finn while Max did his initial assessment and took his photos of Ava before he’d go retrieve the church cart to wheel her off into the hearse.

  I turned my back towards Poppa, shifting every time he tried to get into my line of vision before he disappeared. Duke yelped and barked. Finn put his hand out to pat him, satisfying him for the moment.

  “I was out doing the rounds when Betty called saying Viv had called in a body on the hiking trail. When I got here and asked her what happened, she told me that she wanted to talk directly to the sheriff.” The lines in his forehead creased as his brows rose.

  “She said that?” I asked.

  “Yep. She’s not talking to me. She’s still sore from last night.” What he said should’ve alarmed me, but knowing it was coming from Mama, it didn’t surprise me one bit.

  “The supper?” Max looked over his clipboard at us.

  “You already heard?” I shouldn’t’ve been surprised.

  “Heard?” Max laughed. “When Vivian Lowry gets hotter than donut grease, everyone hears.”

  “She’ll get over this like she has every other time I’ve disappointed her.” I looked at Finn to give him so reassurance.

  Mama’s arms flew up in the air and flailed them about her head when she caught me looking.

  “I guess I better question her before she opens her big mouth to her friends.” I brushed my hand down Finn’s arm and gave him a little squeeze before I walked back towards the crowd.

  There was a murmur coming from them when I started walking that way that died down to a blanket of silence as they anticipated what I was going to do. I was keenly aware all eyes were on me and knew they assumed I was going to make a statement.

  “Vivian Lowry,” I stated Mama’s name. “Can I please see you over by my car?”

  “I’m your mama. Why so formal?” She questioned me.

  “We can either go by the car or go down to the station.” It was a statement that caught her off guard.

  “This must be official business,” she told Lulu McClain who was standing next to her. “Save my spot.”

  Lulu’s head nodded in agreement.

  “Who is it?” asked Mama on our way over to the Wagoneer as if she wanted to gossip.

  I took out my small notebook from the pocket of my shirt and clicked the pen.

  “Over here please.” I used my polite words to maneuver her to the back of the Jeep that shielded us from the crowd. “Why on Earth didn’t you answer Finn’s questions when he got here?”

  She stood ramrod straight, lips pressed together, her beady little eyes staring at me.

  “Don’t you know that you could be arrested for that? You could be in the jail cell right now, forced to smell fried catfish.” I knew she gagged at the smell. Mama was all about Southern home cooking, but fried catfish wasn’t her specialty.

  “I’m mad, that’s why.” She folded her arms in front of her.

  “You can be mad at us, but you can’t hold back on an investigation, Mama. They are two separate issues.” I couldn’t tell if she understood me and how important to the case it was that she’d answered Finn’s questions.

  “It didn’t bother a thing,” she protested.

  “Did you see anyone leaving the trail? Did you see anyone leaving the park? Who was at the park when you discovered the body?” I continued to ask questions that I could see were making her head swim. “Who was walking with you? Did you hear a gunshot?”

  “Gunshot? Was this a murder?” Mama gasped.

  “What if it was? What if the poor girl,” I started to say but she interrupted me yet again.

  “It’s a girl?” Mama gasped again.

  “Mama, focus. I’m trying to tell you why you should’ve answered Finn’s questions instead of playing this role of getting back at him for being Catholic. There is a dead body over there and if it is a homicide, and you seen someone walking away, then you could’ve just let the killer free.”

  Mama’s lips formed a dramatic “O” as her eyes bulged out of her head.

  “My.” She drew her hands up to her chest, laying them flat on her track suit. “I never thought about that.”

  “Mama, you never think about your consequences when the agenda doesn’t suit you.” It was harsh to say, but I was speaking as the sheriff, not as her daughter. “This is the type of thing that citizens will remember and not reelect me for some time.”

  “Don’t you dare say that,” she scoffed. “You are the best sheriff there ever was.”

  “Including Poppa?” I joked. “Seriously, can you answer some questions for me?”

  “Yes. I will.” She drew her shoulders back, her chin lifted. “I’m ready.”

  “How did your friends know about this?” I glanced over at all the Henny Hens, staring at me and Mama.

  “I need emotional support, Kendrick.” She sighed along with her dramatic hand wave.

  “What time did you get to the park this morning?” I asked, letting the emotional support comment go.

  “It was around seven thirty. I know it was because Lulu was late. I looked at my watch.” She uncovered her watch with the sleeve of her light jacket and showed me the watch.

  “Did you and Lulu hike the trail or just walked around the park?” I asked.

  “We did both. We walked around the perimeter of the park first because Lulu has this thingy she wears around her wrist that tells her how many steps she’s taken. She insists she needs at least ten thousand steps a day.” Mama rolled her eyes while she unzipped her fanny pack. “It just made me tired thinking of it.”

  “Focus, Mama.” I looked down at my notebook and wrote down her words about doing the perimeter first. “Do you have any idea what time it was that you went on the trail?”

  “Heavens no. We were too busy looking at that thingy around her wrist,” she said. “Here, put some of this on.” She’d pulled some lipstick out of her fanny pack and rolled it up.

  “When did you notice the body?” I asked, pushing her hand out of my face.

  “Edna is taking photos and you need to look a little presentable.” She tried to smear the lipstick on my lips before I jerked away and gave her the death look. “Fine,” she snarled, rolling it down and putting it back.

  “Please, Mama, answer my questions.” Then it occurred to me to use the guilt on her that she used on me. “What if that was me? Wouldn’t you want the sheriff to interview the person who found me?”

  “We found her when we was walking out.” Her head tilted to the right as though she were contemplating it. “Yes. It was when we were walking out because we’d not paid much attention to where we’d kept walking to since we were looking at her steps. We ended up catching the other side of the trail to bring us back here after we looked up and saw we were walking on the town branch.”

  Like Free Row was an affectionate name for Broadway Street, Town Branch was what we called North Second Street. There was a small creek, in the south we call it a branch, that runs right alongside of North Second Street. All the houses have little concrete bridges from the street to their driveway in order to go over the branch.

  “You mean to tell me you walked over there to North Second Street and didn’t even notice?” I thought it was weird they didn’t notice they’d left the park, though in her favor, North Second was the street that Rock Fence Park butted up to closest to the trail.

  “I guess we didn’t.” She shook her head. “But Lulu wasn’t with me.”

  “Where did she go?” I asked.

  “When we made it shy of the park, she said that she didn’t get enough steps and was going to track back to North Second and take the sidewalk around to her car. That’s when I saw that body. I let out a big ole scream and took off running. It was Lulu who heard me and ran towards me.” Mam
a was talking so fast, I was having a hard time writing it all down. “She said I looked like a ghost. I told her that I found that body, but the reason I looked so bad was because them people had the silly notion that my daughter,” she emphasized my, “was going to become Catholic. That’s why I was so pale from no sleep.” Mama shook her head. “Lulu said they had some nerve and I agree.” Mama patted me on the arm. “I’m so sorry you and Finn won’t be working out, but I’ve heard that Nick Lyman is newly single.”

  “Nick Lyman?” I groaned. “Mama, me and Finn are just fine. Nick Lyman and I are no match.”

  “Just because he’s a plumber...”

  I put my hand up.

  “It has nothing to do with him being a plumber,” I assured her. “I’m in love with Finn and we will figure this out. Alone,” I stated just as she opened her mouth to protest.

  She snapped her mouth shut.

  “Back to my questions.” I tried to keep Mama’s attention as Max Bogus had walked by to retrieve the church cart from the back of the hearse. The sound of him clicking the wheels in place made her flinch. “Did you see anyone at the park?”

  “Kenni, there are tons of people at the park in the morning.” Mama turned to look at Max as the wheels of the gurney squeaked while he pushed it.

  “Anyone you recognized?” I asked.

  Mama bit the edge of her lip and closed one eye like she was thinking real hard.

  “Can’t say so.” She didn’t seem so sure. “Can I think on it and get back to you?”

  “That’d be great. In fact, I’ll need you to come down to the station and sign off on your account of what happened after Betty writes it up.” I flipped the notebook shut.

  Mama had lost all interest in anything I had to say while Max made his way over to the body. She was too busy making sure that she didn’t miss anything. I was all too happy to have her come to the department. It wasn’t unusual for a witness to not remember everything until a few hours or even days after the incident. They were in shock whether they realized it or not and sometimes their memory blocks things out.

  It was hard for me to think there were people at the park and Mama didn’t know a single one when she knew everyone.