A Ghostly Mortality: A Ghostly Southern Mystery (Ghostly Southern Mysteries)

by Tonya Kappes

  I curled my head back around to see what Jack Henry and John were doing and pretended the roar of the excavator was drowning out the sounds around me, including those of Granny screaming my name. Plus, I didn’t want to get into any sort of argument with Granny, since half the town came out to watch the 7 a.m. exhumation, and the Auxiliary women were the first in line—and would be the first to be at the Higher Grounds Café, eating their scones, drinking their coffee and coming up with all sorts of reasons why we had exhumed the body.

  I could hear them now. Ever since Zula Fae left Emma Lee and Charlotte Rae in charge of Eternal Slumber, it’s gone downhill, or my personal favorite, I’m not going to lay my corpse at Eternal Slumber just to have that crazy Emma Lee dig me back up. Especially since she’s got a case of the Funeral Trauma.

  The “Funeral Trauma.” After the whole Santa incident, I told Doc Clyde I was having some sort of hallucinations and seeing dead people. He said I had been in the funeral business a little too long and seeing corpses all of my life had been traumatic.

  Regardless, the officer was half right—me and my sister were in charge of Eternal Slumber. At twenty-eight, I had been an undertaker for only three years. But, I had been around the funeral home my whole life. It is the family business, one I didn’t want to do until I turned twenty-five years old and decided I better keep the business going. Some business. Currently, Granny still owned Eternal Slumber, but my sister, Charlotte Rae, and I ran the joint.

  My parents completely retired and moved to Florida. Thank God for Skype or I’d never see them. I guess Granny was semi-retired. I say semi-retired because she put her two cents in when she wanted to. Today she wanted to.

  Some family business.

  Granny brought the moped to an abrupt stop. She hopped right off and flicked the snap of the strap and pulled the helmet off along with her sunglasses. She hung the helmet on the handlebars and the glasses dangled from the V in her sweater exactly where she wanted it to hang—between her boobs. Doc Clyde was there and Granny had him on the hook exactly where she wanted to keep him.

  Her short flaming-red hair looked like it was on fire, with the morning sun beaming down as she used her fingers to spike it up a little more than usual. After all, she knew she had to look good because she was the center of attention—next to Chicken Teater’s exhumed body.

  The officer ran up and grabbed the scooter’s handle. He knew better than to touch Granny.

  “I am sure your momma and pa did bring you up right, but if you don’t let me go . . .” Granny jerked the scooter toward her. She was a true Southern belle and put things in a way that no other woman could. I looked back at them and waved her over. The police officer stepped aside. Granny took her hanky out of her bra and wiped off the officer’s shoulder like she was cleaning lint or something. “It was lovely to meet you.” Granny’s voice dripped like sweet honey. She put the hanky back where she had gotten it.

  I snickered. Lovely wasn’t always a compliment from a Southern gal. Like the gentleman he claimed to be, he took his hat off to Granny and smiled.

  She didn’t pay him any attention as she bee-lined it toward me.

  “Hi,” she said in her sweet Southern drawl, waving at everyone around us. She gave a little extra wink toward Doc Clyde. His cheeks rose to a scarlet red. Nervously, he ran his fingers through his thinning hair and pushed it to the side, defining the side part.

  Everyone in town knew he had been keeping late hours just for Granny, even though she wasn’t a bit sick. God knew what they were doing and I didn’t want to know.

  Granny pointed her hanky toward Pastor Brown who was there to say a little prayer when the casket was exhumed. Waking the dead wasn’t high on anyone’s priority list. Granny put the cloth over her mouth and leaning in, she whispered, “Emma Lee, you better have a good reason to be digging up Chicken Teater.”

  We both looked at the large concrete chicken gravestone. The small gold plate at the base of the stone statue displayed all of Colonel Chicken Teater’s stats with his parting words: Chicken has left the coop.

  “Why don’t you go worry about the Inn.” I suggested for her to leave and glanced over at John Howard. He had to be getting close to reaching the casket vault.

  Granny gave me the stink-eye.

  “It was only a suggestion.” I put my hands up in the air as a truce sign.

  Granny owned, operated and lived at the only bed-and-breakfast in town, the Sleepy Hollow Inn, known as “the Inn” around here. Everyone loved staying at the large mansion, which sat at the foothills of the caverns and caves that made Sleepy Hollow a main attraction in Kentucky . . . besides horses and University of Kentucky basketball.

  Sleepy Hollow was a small tourist town that was low on crime, and that was the way we liked it.

  Sniff, sniff. Whimpers were coming from underneath the large black floppy hat.

  Granny and I looked over at Marla Maria Teater, Chicken’s wife. She had come dressed to the nines with her black V-neck dress hitting her curves in all the right places. The hat covered up the eyes she was dabbing.

  Of course, when the police notified her that they had good reason to believe that Chicken didn’t die of a serious bout of pneumonia but was murdered, Marla took to her bed as any mourning widow would. She insisted on being here for the exhumation. Jack Henry had warned Marla Maria to keep quiet about why the police were opening up the files on Chicken’s death. If there was a murderer on the loose and it got around, it could possibly hurt the economy, and this was Sleepy Hollow’s busiest time of the year.

  Granny put her arm around Marla and winked at me over Marla’s shoulder.

  “Now, now. I know it’s hard, honey, I’ve buried a few myself. Granted, I’ve never had any dug up though.” Granny wasn’t lying. She has been twice widowed and I was hoping she’d stay away from marriage a third time. Poor Doc Clyde, you’d have thought he would stay away from her since her track record was . . . well . . . deadly. “That’s a first in this town.” Granny gave Marla Maria the elbow along with a wink and a click of her tongue.

  Maybe the third time was the charm.

  “Who is buried here?” Granny let go of Marla and stepped over to the smaller tombstone next to Chicken’s.

  “Stop!” Jack Henry screamed, waving his hands in the air. “Zula, move!”

  Granny looked up and ducked just as John Howard came back for another bite of ground with the claw.

  I would hate to have to bury Granny anytime soon.

  “Lady Cluckington,” Marla whispered, tilting her head to the side. Using her finger, she dabbed the driest eyes I had ever seen. “Our prize chicken. Well, she isn’t dead yet.”

  I glanced over at her. Her tone caused a little suspicion to stir in my gut.

  “She’s not a chicken. She’s a Spangled Russian Orloff Hen!” Chicken Teater appeared next to his grave. His stone looked small next to his six-foot-two frame. He ran his hand over the tombstone Granny had asked about. There was a date of birth, but no date of death. “You couldn’t stand having another beauty queen in my life!”

  “Oh no,” I groaned and took another gulp of my Diet Coke. He—his ghost—was the last thing that I needed to see this morning.

  “Is that sweet tea?” Chicken licked his lips. “I’d give anything to have a big ole sip of sweet tea.” He towered over me. His hair was neatly combed to the right; his red plaid shirt was tucked into his carpenter jeans.

  This was the third time I had seen Chicken Teater since his death. It was a shock to the community to hear of a man passing from pneumonia in his early sixties. But that was what the doctors in Lexington said he died of, no questions asked, and his funeral was held at Eternal Slumber.

  The first time I had seen Chicken Teater’s ghost was after my perilous run-in with Santa. I too thought I was a goner, gone to the great beyond . . . but no . . . Chicken Teater and Ruthie Sue Payne—their ghosts anyway—stood right next to my hospital bed, eyeballing me. Giving me the onceover as if he wa
s trying to figure out if I was dead or alive. Lucky for him I was alive and seeing him.

  Ruthie Sue Payne was a client at Eternal Slumber who couldn’t cross over until someone helped her solve her murder. That someone was me. The Betweener.

  Since I could see her, talk to her, feel her and hear her, I was the one. Thanks to me, Ruthie’s murder was solved and she was now resting peacefully on the other side. Chicken was a different story.

  Apparently, Ruthie was as big of a gossip in the afterlife as she was in her earthly life. That was how Chicken Teater knew about me being a Betweener. Evidently, Ruthie was telling everyone about my special gift.

  Chicken Teater wouldn’t leave me alone until I agreed to investigate his death because he knew he didn’t die from pneumonia. He claimed he was poisoned. But who would want to kill a chicken farmer?

  Regardless, it took several months of me trying to convince Jack Henry there might be a possibility Chicken Teater was murdered. After some questionable evidence, provided by Chicken Teater, the case was reopened. I didn’t understand all the red tape and legal yip-yap, but here we stood today.

  Now it was time for me to get Chicken Teater to the other side.

  “It’s not dead yet?” Granny’s eyebrows rose in amazement after Marla Maria confirmed there was an empty grave. Granny couldn’t get past the fact there was a gravestone for something that wasn’t dead.

  I was still stuck on “prize chicken.” What was a prize chicken?

  A loud thud echoed when John Howard sent the claw down. There was an audible gasp from the crowd. The air was thick with anticipation. What did they think they were going to see?

  Suddenly my nerves took a downward dive. What if the coffin opened? Coffin makers guaranteed they lock for eternity after they are sealed, but still, it wouldn’t be a good thing for John Howard to pull the coffin up and have Chicken take a tumble next to Lady Cluckington’s stone.

  “I think we got ’er!” John Howard stood up in the cab of the digger with pride on his face as he looked down in the hole. “Yep! That’s it!” he hollered over the roar of the running motor.

  Jack Henry ran over and hooked some cables on the excavator and gave the thumbs-up.

  Pastor Brown dipped his head and moved his lips in a silent prayer. Granny nudged me with her boney elbow to bow my head, and I did. Marla Maria cried out.

  “Aw shut up!” Chicken Teater told her and smiled as he saw his coffin being raised from the earth. “They are going to figure out who killed me, and so help me, if it was you . . .” He shook his fist in the air in Marla Maria’s direction.

  Curiosity stirred in my bones. Was it going to be easy getting Chicken Teater to the other side? Was Marla Maria Teater behind his death as Chicken believed?

  She was the only one who was not only in his bed at night, but right by his deathbed, so he told me. I took my little notebook out from my back pocket. I had learned from Ruthie’s investigation to never leave home without it. I jotted down what Chicken had said to Marla Maria, with prize chickens next to it, followed up by a lot of exclamation points. Oh . . . I had almost forgotten that Marla Maria was Miss Kentucky in her earlier years—a beauty queen—I quickly wrote that down too.

  “Are you getting all of this?” Chicken questioned me and twirled his finger in a circle as he referred to the little scene Marla Maria was causing with her meltdown. She leaned her butt up against Lady Cluckington’s stone. Chicken rushed over to his prize chicken’s gravestone and tried to shove Marla Maria off. “Get your—”

  Marla Maria jerked like she could feel something touch her. She shivered. Her body shimmied from her head to her toes.

  I cleared my throat, doing my best to get Chicken to stop fusing and cursing. “Are you okay?” I asked. Did she feel him?

  Granny stood there taking it all in.

  Marla crossed her arms in front of her and ran her hands up and down them. “I guess when I buried Chicken, I thought that was the end of it. This is creeping me out a little bit.”

  End of it? End of what? Your little murder plot? My mind unleashed all sorts of ways Marla Maria might have offed her man. That seemed a little too suspicious for me. Marla buttoned her lip when Jack Henry walked over. More suspicious behavior that I duly noted.

  “Can you tell me how he died?” I put a hand on her back to offer some comfort, though I knew she was putting on a good act.

  She shook her head, dabbed her eye and said, “He was so sick. Coughing and hacking. I was so mad because I had bags under my eyes from him keeping me up at night.” Sniff, sniff. “I had to dab some Preparation H underneath my eyes in order to shrink them.” She tapped her face right above her cheekbones.

  “That’s where my butt cream went?” Chicken hooted and hollered. “She knew I had a hemorrhoid the size of a golf ball and she used my cream on her face?” Chicken flailed his arms around in the air.

  I bit my lip and stepped a bit closer to Marla Maria so I couldn’t see Chicken out of my peripheral vision. There were a lot of things I had heard in my time, but hemorrhoids were something that I didn’t care to know about.

  I stared at Marla Maria’s face. There wasn’t a tear, a tear streak, or a single wrinkle on her perfectly made-up face. If hemorrhoids helped shrink her under-eye bags, did it also help shrink her wrinkles?

  “Anyway, enough about me.” She fanned her face with the handkerchief. “Chicken was so uncomfortable with all the phlegm. He could barely breathe. I let him rest, but called the doctor in the meantime.” She nodded and waited for me to agree with her. I nodded back and she continued. “When the doctor came out of the bedroom, he told me Chicken was dead.” A cry burst out of her as she threw her head back and held the hanky over her face.

  I was sure she was hiding a smile from thinking she was pulling one over on me. Little did she know this wasn’t my first rodeo with a murderer. Still, I patted her back while Chicken spat at her feet.

  Jack Henry walked over. He didn’t take his eyes off of Marla Maria.

  “I’m sorry we have to do this, Marla.” Jack took his hat off out of respect for the widow. Black widow, I thought as I watched her fidget side to side, avoiding all eye contact by dabbing the corners of her eyes. “We are all done here, Zula.” He nodded toward Granny.

  Granny smiled.

  Marla Maria nodded before she turned to go face her waiting public behind the police line.

  Granny walked over to say something to Doc Clyde, giving him a little butt pat and making his face even redder than before. I waited until she was out of earshot before I said something to Jack Henry.

  “That was weird. Marla Maria is a good actress.” I made mention to Jack Henry because sometimes he was clueless as to how women react to different situations.

  “Don’t be going and blaming her just because she’s his wife.” Jack Henry was trying to play the good cop he always was, but I wasn’t falling for his act. “It’s all speculation at this point.”

  “Wife? She was no kind of wife to me.” Chicken kicked his foot in the dirt John Howard had dug from his grave. “She only did one thing as my wife.” Chicken looked back and watched Marla Maria play the poor pitiful widow as Beulah Paige Bellefry, president and CEO of Sleepy Hollow’s gossip mill, drew her into a big hug while all the other Auxiliary women gathered to put in their two cents.

  “La-la-la.” I put my fingers in my ears and tried to drown him out. I only wanted to know how he was murdered, not how Marla Maria was a wife to him.

  “She spent all my money,” he cursed under his breath.

  “Shoo.” I let out an audible sigh.

  Over Jack’s right shoulder, in the distance some movement caught my eye near the trailer park. There was a man peering out from behind a tree looking over at all the commotion. His John Deere hat helped shadow his face so I couldn’t get a good look, but I chalked it up to being a curious neighbor like the rest of them. Still, I quickly wrote down the odd behavior. I had learned you never know what people knew. And I had to
start from scratch on how to get Chicken to the great beyond. I wasn’t sure, but I believe Chicken had lived in the trailer park. Maybe the person saw something, maybe not. He was going on the list.

  “Are you okay?” Jack pulled off his sunglasses. His big brown eyes were set with worry. I grinned. A smile ruffled his mouth. “Just checking because of the la-la thing.” He waved his hands in the air. “I saw you taking some notes and I know what that means.”

  “Yep.” My one word confirmed that Chicken was there and spewing all sorts of valuable information. Jack Henry was the only person who knew I was a Betweener, and he knew Chicken was right here with us even though he couldn’t see him. When I told him about Chicken Teater’s little visits to me and how he wouldn’t leave me alone until we figured out who killed him, Jack Henry knew it to be true. “I’ll tell you later.”

  I jotted down a note about Marla Maria spending all of Chicken’s money, or so he said. Which made me question her involvement even more. Was he no use to her with a zero bank account and she offed him? I didn’t know he had money.

  “I can see your little noggin running a mile a minute.” Jack bent down and looked at me square in the eyes.

  “Just taking it all in.” I bit my lip. I had learned from my last ghost that I had to keep some things to myself until I got the full scoop. And right now, Chicken hadn’t given me any solid information.

  “You worry about getting all the information you can from your little friend.” Jack Henry pointed to the air beside me. I pointed to the air beside him where Chicken’s ghost was actually standing. Jack grimaced. “Whatever. I don’t care where he is.” He shivered.

  Even though Jack Henry knew I could see ghosts, he wasn’t completely comfortable.