by Tonya Kappes
“I can get Hank to drive me here to get the car anytime.” I followed behind Agnes to the back door, where the employees and police cars were parked.
“What did you think about Colonel Holz’s preliminary autopsy?” Agnes asked on our way back to town, where the groomer was located.
“I’m glad there isn’t a murderer out there. But there were still so many people who wanted Mason dead that it’s hard to believe he slipped.” But who was I to go against what Mason’s body had told Colonel Holz’s autopsy report?
Colonel Holz was the doctor and the coroner, so he’d know like he always did.
“I told Hank I just couldn’t believe how Mason had fallen. If I’d not seen it with my own eyes, maybe, but the way he fell”—she shook her head—“didn’t sit well with my soul.”
She found a parking spot right up in front of the Smelly Dog Groomer and turned the car off.
“You comin’?” she asked.
“I was going to stay in the car.” I didn’t see a reason for me to go in with her.
“Hodge-podge. Come on in and say hi to Ethel.” She got out and shut the door, waiting on the sidewalk for me to get out.
“I guess I’m going,” I muttered to myself and unbuckled the seat belt.
“It’s good manners to say hello. And just too dang hot to stay in a car.” She shuffled to the door, and I reached around her to open it.
We were greeted with the sounds of buzzing hair dryers, dogs barking, dogs whining, and a whiff of dog shampoo.
“Hey there.” Orlene Roth, the young girl behind the counter, had a big grin on her burnt face. Her hair was pulled up into a high ponytail, and it swung as she talked. “Oh, Mae, we don’t have Fifi.”
“I’m here with Agnes.” Agnes had already walked over to the door with the Employees Only sign and walked through. “She’s just made herself at home.”
“You know Agnes.” Orlene winked. She worked here during the summer when she was on school break. I’d gotten to know her when I was doing a little substituting at the high school. “She just does whatever it is she wants to do.”
Boy, was I glad that gig was over.
“You been to the beach?” I asked Orlene and walked over to the corkboard to see if Ethel had any good specials I could pass along to my camper guests. A lot of hikers and campers had animals. Some of the full-time RVers would make appointments when they did long stops to get their animals groomed.
“Nah. It’s fake.” She shrugged. “My mama tells me not to lie in them tanning beds, but when I go to Sally Ann Dean over at the Cute-icles, I just can’t help but hop right on into the bed for a quick glow.”
The employee door opened, and out ran Precious with no leash.
“Precious.” I bent down and called for the little squirt. After she heard me, she ran over and jumped into my lap, ready for some good kisses. “You are so cute,” I gushed over Fifi’s little baby girl.
Even though Roscoe and Fifi were an unlikely pair, they sure did make some cute pups.
“I reckon you’re ready.” Agnes came out with the purse swinging by her side. “Anything new on the board?” Agnes asked and looked at the advertisements.
“Did you see this?” I asked her about the same notice the National Forestry had put out about the ginseng.
“That’s big business around here.” Agnes did a quick search of the board before she turned around to leave. “See you, Orlene. Tell your mama and them I asked about them.”
I held on to Precious since it seemed Agnes didn’t bring her a leash and walked out with her. Once we got into the car, I put Precious in the back, but she jumped right back up in front after I’d put my seatbelt back on.
“That ginseng thing.” I adjusted in my seat so Precious could have a little more room. She looked like Fifi but was the size of Roscoe the bulldog. “I think I might just see if I can be a harvester.”
Agnes shifted in her seat and gripped the wheel. She was eerily silent.
“What’s wrong?” I asked and held on as she sped out of downtown onto the windy road that led to Ritchie Stinnett’s campsite.
“Nothin’,” she said, but I knew something was bugging her.
“I know you better than that.” I eyed her suspiciously and held on to Precious for dear life. “Plus, you’re a little heavy footed.” I referred to her driving.
“You need to talk to Hank about the harvesting. He knows a lot more about that than I do. So before you do anything, you talk to him.” She slowed the car down when the big orange triangle signs signaling road construction started popping up every few feet. “Do you hear me?”
“Yeah. Yeah.” I was a bit taken aback by her adamant attitude where she just didn’t want to talk about it. “I was just going to ask you about it.”
“Don’t.” The tops of her wrinkly hands were white from how hard she was holding on to the wheel. “I’ll quickly drop you off so I can get Precious home.”
“Did I do something to offend you?” I questioned. “Because if I did, I’d like to know. You know me. I own up to my misgivings, and I’m not about to let another second go by without knowing what’s crawled up in you and died.”
So there might’ve been a smidgen of a lack of respect for Agnes Swift at this moment, but I wouldn’t keep going and thinking I’d done something when I clearly had not. If Hank’s family had said something to her to make her change her mind about our relationship, then I wanted to know. It was no secret they weren’t very happy he’d moved off their property and come to live in my campground. In fact, his own mama said it was like he moved in with me, which was a big no-no around these parts before you were married. When I denied that false statement she made, she said living in the same campground was pert near the same thing.
“I’ve got a lot on my mind. There ain’t nothing crawled up in me.” She looked around. “Woooweee, this new asphalt sure is nice. I do hope the mayor gets exactly what she thinks she’s gonna get because she did have a lot of the ginseng fields taken out.”
“Now you want to talk about ginseng?” I was so confused. Was Agnes starting to lose it? She was eighty years old, and sometimes the mind went.
“Nope. I’m just saying these asphalt roads sure have people up in arms since it’s taken a lot more land than originally anticipated with the grant.” Agnes wanted to tell me something, and she was doing a terrible job covering it up.
“Spill it,” I told her and waved when the road crew let us pass where the gravel road picked up.
“What?” she asked all innocent, as much as an eighty-year-old woman who loved to speak her mind could. She took two fingers and twisted them in front of her lips like she was locking something. “Tick a lock.”
“Mmm-hhmmm. I’ll get it out of you.” I had to smile at her. She was so cute, and I adored her as much as Hank did.
For the next few minutes, I sat back and closed my eyes to let the sunshine peeping through the trees and the window warm my face until Agnes took a sharp right down the gravel road toward the campsite.
“Looks like we got company.” Agnes noticed another camper had pulled into the campsite near Ritchie Stinnett’s cabin. “I’ll drop you off at your camper, and then you get on out of here with Precious. Hank will bring her to me tonight.”
“I thought you said you wanted to drop her off at home,” I said. Agnes was making me wonder if she wasn’t all there right now. She was talking in circles, being vague, and acting a wee bit nuts. “Fine. I’ll do it.”
I opened her car door and noticed Sue Ann Jaffarian was taking down the big tent Mason had made as headquarters for his hunt.
“Look, Sue Ann must be gathering all Mason’s things. I bet she’s super sad.” A twinge of pain hit my stomach at the thought of losing a loved one to something like a strange and unexpected accident like a fall.
“Where you going?” Agnes had jerked open her door and yelled after me.
“I’m going to go say hello to her.” I didn’t want to, but I had no choice. I
had to tell Hank about Agnes’s odd behavior.
“Don’t go near her!” Agnes called after me, but it was too late. Sue Ann was walking toward me. “She’s illegally harvesting ginseng!”
“Illegally what?” I turned to look back at Agnes, who was walking as fast as she could toward me. Then I turned around when I heard a click.
Sue Ann Jaffarian pointed a handgun right at my head.
“Ritchie! Get out here now!” she screamed over to Ritchie’s little cabin. “We got trouble!”
“Trouble” was all Ritchie needed to hear. I stood with my arms up, looking back and forth at Agnes and Sue Ann Jaffarian. Apparently, I’d totally missed what Agnes did to make Sue Ann mad.
Ritchie jerked open the door of his little cabin. He looked over at the three of us and reached inside the cabin, pulling out a shotgun.
EIGHTEEN
“What is going on here?” I tried to steady my voice as I looked at Sue Ann Jaffarian and Agnes Swift. The generation between them showed on their faces. “There’s clearly something I’m missing. There’s no need for a gun.”
For some weird reason, I thought Sue Ann would listen to me and put the gun down, but that was positive thinking for sure.
“Lord have mercy on our souls,” I whispered when I noticed Ritchie was taking all of Sue Ann’s orders.
“Ritchie, has your butter slid off your biscuit?” Agnes asked.
I wished she’d not insulted him in this particular situation, but she kept going.
“When I see your mama and daddy at church on Sunday, I’m gonna tell them exactly what you did here. Holding me at gunpoint. I’d be ashamed.” Agnes scolded him, not caring a bit about his shotgun pointed straight at her.
“Shut up. I’m so tired of listening to you talk and talk and talk.” Sue Ann’s attitude took a big turn. With one hand she bent down and picked up the rope from the information tent of Mason’s that she had taken down, and kept the gun still pointed at us. “Tie them up.” She threw the rope to Ritchie.
“She’s right.” Ritchie sounded a little beat up from Agnes yelling at him. He walked over to me with the rope and jerked my hands behind my back. “My mama and daddy will be disappointed if we get caught.”
Sue Ann’s face contorted in all sorts of ways that said she was annoyed. The huffing and puffing coming out of her was worse than a choo-choo train trying to travel up a steep hill.
Agnes and I stood before her with our hands tied behind our backs.
“We aren’t getting caught. We will kill them and dispose of the bodies in the campfire. Go get it good and hot.”
“Mae, you were asking about ginseng harvesting. Well, it seems Sue Ann can answer anything you need to know because she and Ritchie Stinnett have been illegally harvesting for the better part of five years, and that’s why she killed Mason Cavanaugh.” Agnes was about to get us shot right there. But she kept talking. “Hank has been busy working on this case for a few months, and he’s so close to catching you. If you kill me, he’ll kill himself hunting you down.”
“If I’d known you were his beloved granny, I’d have killed you before I killed Dirk.” Sue Ann’s mouth twitched as she spat the nasty words from her mouth.
The campfire roared to life. Ritchie was throwing lighter fluid on it.
“You killed Dirk?” I gulped. “Mason?” I cried.
“Go on and tell her if you think you know so much.” Sue Ann encouraged Agnes with a slight smile of defiance.
“Nah. I’ll let you have that glory.” Agnes wasn’t backing down, and I normally admired that in her, but at the moment, I so wished she’d just apologize and beg for forgiveness.
So I did it.
“Listen, Agnes is eighty years old and a little senile, if you know what I mean.” I jerked my head toward Agnes.
“Why, I am not,” Agnes protested.
I spoke over her.
“Just let me get my campervan and drive me and her out of here. We won’t look back. I don’t know what you’re doing, and I just learned about the ginseng so I have no knowledge of what’s happening. I can even make Hank believe Agnes has lost her mind.” I nodded, hoping Sue Ann would buy it, but she didn’t.
“It’s a little too late for negotiations. I mean, you’re all tied up, and the fire is about ready to go.” Sue Ann sighed and gave a resigned shrug.
“Why kill them?” Agnes kept poking Sue Ann, for sure going to get us killed before I could think of a way to get us out of here.
“Mason wasn’t going to let it go. He was determined to turn me in when he saw me here.” She laughed. “Only I had other plans for him.”
“So the map of the campsite locations wasn’t the map you were talking about?” I asked.
“It was the map. All those little Xs on it, those are where some ginseng fields are located and about to get taken out due to that stupid mayor of yours.” Sue Ann had a steady gaze on me as she continued her awful actions. “He stole it from me because he was going to turn it in to the cops. He told me not to show up to this year’s John Swift hunt because he knew it was perfect harvesting season, and the treasure hunters always take the spotlight, making it perfect for me to get my ginseng out and overseas before anyone misses it.”
I gulped.
“Are you telling me that you come here every year as a treasure hunter but harvest the ginseng without a permit and sell it?” I knew from what little research I’d done over the past twenty-four hours about ginseng and Kentucky law that it was very illegal to harvest and sell across state lines without the appropriate permit.
“And here I thought you were a smart businesswoman.” She laughed. The chill between us grew. I didn’t like anyone, especially another woman, putting me to the test. “Yes. That’s exactly it. With Ritchie Stinnett here to look in on the crops all year long, it was a perfect business until Mason realized how little I was looking for the treasure. That’s when he caught on to my little side hustle with Ritchie.” She threw her head back and laughed. “He thought I was sleeping with Ritchie. What a joke.” She rolled her eyes like Ritchie wasn’t anywhere near her dating league.
“You killed Mason because he was going to tell the police about your illegal business.” I stressed illegal. “Dirk? Why? How?”
My head was having a hard time wrapping around the fact someone would kill two people over ginseng.
“Psst.” Agnes kept trying to get my attention. When I looked at her, she gave me the shut-the-heck-up look, wrinkled her nose a few times, and looked down at herself with a few quick nods.
“That was perfect!” Sue Ann’s voice echoed around the campsite. “You see, I came to the campsite the first night you were here so I could get a handle on what Mason knew and had up his sleeve. I knew he was going to go to the cops after the weekend hunt was over. When he thought I’d gone to the new campsite with my crew, I stayed in Ritchie’s cabin so I could watch everything going on. I knew I was going to kill him, so when you were gone, I crept into your campervan and took the pearls after Ritchie told me how Mason begged her for them. It was a little insurance just in case we needed a killer.” She beamed with pride in how smart she thought she was.
“That was perty good,” Ritchie chimed in. I had to listen really hard to how his hillbilly accent changed words. “I reckoned it was fine for me to tell Sue Ann how Dirk and Mason had fought so in case Merry Lizbeth didn’t work out as a suspect, Dirk did.”
“You disgust me.” I spit on the ground near Ritchie’s feet.
“Don’t.” Sue Ann put her hand out when he stalked toward me to do God knows what for me nearly spitting on him. “I’ll let you shoot her with that big shotgun.” She twisted her head from side to side. “Do you know what happens when you’re shot by a shotgun?” She burst her free hand open. “Boom.” Her eyes expanded, and she smiled.
“I like how you followed Mason to the Furnace and used the exact moment to push him off.” Ritchie made it sound like some sort of fun game. It made my stomach curl.
; Agnes continued to stand there with her chest all popped out. I would glance over at her, but she had no expression.
“It was perfect for you to lace Dirk’s coffee with ginseng. I had no idea the caffeine from the coffee and the ginseng interact like that with the end result of a heart attack.” Sue Ann’s words hit me.
“The caffeine interacts with the ginseng to speed up the heart.” My jaw dropped. “So Dirk did die of a heart attack, no thanks to you.”
“We got rid of them. Investigation cleared that Mason had an unfortunate fall while Dirk had a massive heart attack, making everyone believe it was the curse of John Swift.” She pretended to cry and gave a few sniffs to make it seem more real. “How sad. But now we have you two. I was hoping to get all this down and get the ginseng in my camper before anyone came to get your heap of junk.”
Then all the conversations I’d had with Sue Ann over the past couple of days hit me like a ton of bricks. Sue Ann had told me about her relationship with Mason and how she couldn’t’ve killed him. Then she referred to so many more secrets in the Daniel Boone National Forest than just the John Swift silver. She had to be talking about her little ginseng gig.
“The salad,” I gasped, remembering when she gave me the map and the contents of her backpack fell out.
“Salad?” It was the first thing Agnes said since Sue Ann started confessing.
“Yea. When Sue Ann gave me the map to throw me off that she didn’t kill Mason for some silly real treasure map that he claimed she stole from him.” I snapped my eyes at her. “You knew I’d tell Hank how you broke up with Mason and how he stole the map from you.”
“Girl’s gotta cover her tracks.” She winked, sending rage right through me. “Yes, it was a bag of ginseng that fell out along with some granola. How could you live here and not know about the ginseng?” She mocked me. “I honestly thought you were such a smart businesswoman.”
“Far’s ready.” Ritchie Stinnett’s accent made “fire” sound like “far.”
