A Ghostly Grave

by Tonya Kappes

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.

  “You leave the investigation to me.” Jack Henry put his sunglasses back on. Sexy dripped from him, making my heart jump a few beats.

  “Uh-­huh.” I looked away. Looking away from Jack Henry when he was warning me was a common occurrence. I knew I had to do my own investigating and couldn’t get lost in his eyes while lying to him.

  Besides, I didn’t have a whole lot of information. Chicken knew he was murdered but had no clue how. He was only able to give me clues about his life and it was up to me to put them together.

  “I’m not kidding.” Jack Henry took his finger and put it on my chin, pulling it toward him. He gave me a quick kiss. “We are almost finished up here. I’ll sign all the paperwork and send the body on over to Eternal Slumber for Vernon to get going on some new toxicology reports we have ordered.” He took his officer hat off and used his forearm to wipe the sweat off his brow.

  “He’s there waiting,” I said. Vernon Baxter was a retired doctor who performed any and all autopsies the Sleepy Hollow police needed and I let him use Eternal Slumber for free. I had all the newest technology and equipment used in autopsies in the basement of the funeral home.

  “Go on up!” Jack Henry gave John the thumbs-­up and walked closer. Slowly John Howard lifted the coffin completely out of the grave and sat it right on top of the church truck, which looked like a gurney.

  “Do you think she did it?” I glanced over at Marla Maria, as she talked a good talk.

  “Did what?” Granny walked up and asked. She turned to see what I was looking at. “Did you dig him up because his death is being investigated for murder?” Granny gasped.

  “Now Granny, don’t go spreading rumors.” I couldn’t deny or admit to what she said. If I admitted the truth to her question, I would be betraying Jack Henry. If I denied her question, I would be lying to Granny. And no one lies to Granny.

  In a lickety-­split, Granny was next to her scooter.

  “I’ll be over. Put the coffee on,” Granny hollered before she put her helmet back on her head, snapped the strap in place, and revved up the scooter and buzzed off in the direction of town, giving a little toot-­toot and wave to the Auxiliary women as she passed.

  Once the chains were unhooked from the coffin and the excavator was out of the way, Jack Henry and I guided the coffin on the church truck into the back of my hearse. Before I shut the door, I had a sick feeling that someone was watching me. Of course the crowd was still there, but I mean someone was watching my every move.

  I looked back over my shoulder toward the trailer park. The man in the John Deere hat popped out of sight behind the tree when he saw me look at him.

  I shut the hearse door and got into the driver’s side. Before I left the cemetery, I looked in my rearview mirror at the tree. The man was standing there. This time the shadow of the hat didn’t hide his eyes.

  We locked eyes.

  “Look away,” Chicken Teater warned me when he appeared in the passenger seat.

  Chapter 2

  Chicken Teater messed with the but
tons on his red plaid shirt. His black hair had always been nice and parted to the right every time I had seen him, which was often. He came around when I was younger because he was friends with my father, even though he was about ten years younger than Dad. His deep-­set blue eyes showed worry.

  “I guess it’s time for me to get to work on trying to figure out who killed you.” I gripped the steering wheel. This entire sleuthing thing was still so new I wasn’t sure where to begin. But questions were what the TV mystery shows always started with. “Tell me about Lady Cluckington.”

  “Oh, Lady.” There was pride in his voice. With his chin in the air, he poked out his chest. “She’s a feisty one. I knew she was special the first time I laid eyes on her.”

  “And she’s a chicken?” I asked. He acted as though she was a person.

  “No. That is what everyone thinks when I first talk about Lady Cluckington. She’s a hen. More than a chicken. She’s a beauty queen.” He didn’t take a breath. “She is a prize-­winning hen. I only wish I was here to take care of her because I know Marla isn’t. She was so jealous of Lady Cluckington.”

  “Do you think Marla killed you?” I knew it was a painful question, but he was the one who planted the idea in my head.

  “I’d hope not, but you never know.” He shook his head. “I’m just mad at her right now. After seeing her, she doesn’t look like she’s grieved a day for me.”

  “It has been almost four years,” I reminded him and tried to recall how Marla Maria acted the days, weeks, even months after he was laid to rest. She still went to Girl’s Best Friend Spa to get her nails and hair done on a regular basis. I had even seen her a few times at Artie’s picking up some fresh cold cuts, but I never saw her truly grieving, nor did she ever thank my Granny for the beautiful ser­vice Eternal Slumber had given Chicken.

  “Why was she jealous of a chicken?” It seemed odd for a beautiful woman such as Marla to be jealous of a seed-­eating, beady-­eyed, feathery creature.

  “She’s a hen. A prize hen.” He took offense to calling Lady Cluckington a chicken.

  “My bad.” I veered the hearse around the town square, making sure I went slow. The annual Kentucky Cave Festival committee was setting up for the dance in the square to kick off a weekend of festival activities. Four years ago at the festival was the last time I had seen Chicken Teater alive. He and Marla were there. I remember because I was envious of Marla’s skinny jeans and cute plaid shirt tied at the waist.

  I had never been a fashion queen, and it wasn’t until a few months ago that I went to Girl’s Best Friend Spa and let the owner, Mary Anna Hardy, create a new style for my brown hair. Not that caramel highlights and a little layering were going to make me a beauty queen like Marla, but it did give my dull hair a little more oomph.

  “What makes Lady Cluckington a prized possession?” I kept one hand on the wheel and the other twirled a strand of my hair. There was a lot of talking in the beauty chair and Marla Maria was known to flap her lips a little too much; I made a mental note to make an appointment at Girl’s Best Friend Spa. Mary Anna would be more than happy to fill me in on any gossip. With the exhumation of Chicken, I was sure this was going to be headlines in the gossip circles. Everyone knew that if you wanted the latest gossip, you went to Girl’s Best Friend Spa.

  Marla was officially my first suspect. I read about it all the time on the Internet how the spouse was the first person questioned by the police when there was a murder investigation. If she was jealous of a hen—­what would she have to gain by killing her husband? So he didn’t have money. Why not divorce him? Why kill him?

  “Lady is the apple of my eye.” He looked over. I’d never seen a man get emotional about a chicken . . . he . . . unless he was eating it. There was a thin line of tears across his lower eyelid. “I went to the state fair when I was a boy and saw all the prize hens. I knew I had to have one, only I didn’t realize how expensive the sport was.”

  Sport? Prize chickens were a sport? Whatever happened to the good old sports like baseball and basketball? I eyed him, but listened closely for any clues as to why Marla would have wanted him dead.

  “The desire to raise a prize chicken never left my soul.” He fisted his chest like Tarzan. “When I made a lot of money on a real-­estate deal, I took some of my commission and bought Lady Cluckington.”

  Real-­estate deal? As far as I knew, there hadn’t been any big deals around Sleepy Hollow since all the land was locked between the caves. That was why the Inn was the only place to stay, unless you brought a tent, which many visitors did.

  Plus, if he made such a big deal, why did he and Marla live in the trailer park next to the cemetery in a double wide? Surely, the beauty queen wanted something fancier.

  “Oh, and I bought my Cadillac.” He nodded.

  “I didn’t even know you had a Cadillac,” I said.

  Chicken Teater always drove a pickup truck so beat up that there was no way of telling what make or model it was. All I really remembered was seeing him driving around the town square in the old clunker with chicken cages stacked up in the back.

  “That old beater? Nah!” He waved his hand. “I used that for me and Marla to get around in and to deliver eggs to Artie’s every Saturday morning. Lady Cluckington and I took the Cadillac to the state fair every year. You know . . .” He fanned his hands in front of him. “ . . . in style.”

  “How did Marla feel about that?” I’d put money on it that she was pissed.

  “Not happy. But I was always up front with Marla before I married her about my dreams.”

  “What exactly was your dream?” Now Marla had motive to kill him. She took second place to a chicken. I’d imagine that wasn’t a beauty queen’s big accomplishment.

  “To own the number-­one prize hen in all of Kentucky.” There was a gleam in his eye. Kind of like the one I see when a local tells me that their child was accepted into the University of Kentucky for college . . . a big feat around these parts. “Then go international and get mentioned in the Cock and Feathers magazine.”

  “Cock and Feathers?” Good golly, was there really a magazine dedicated to the fowls?

  “It’s an international magazine for prize hens,” his voice trailed off as though he realized his dream had never come true.

  “I’m sorry.” There wasn’t much more I could say to make him feel better. Not only had his dreams not come true, he was also murdered. Poor guy couldn’t get a break.

  We pulled into Eternal Slumber. There was a news crew there from Lexington.

  “Un-­holy hell.” Chicken craned his neck to see all the commotion. “The festival is really getting some good coverage.”

  In my rearview mirror, I saw the anchorman for the five o’clock news rushing up behind the hearse.

  “I have a sneaky suspicion they aren’t here for the festival.” I took a deep breath and opened the door.

  “Ms. Raines,” the man stuck the microphone in my face. “Can you tell us why the Sleepy Hollow police exhumed the body of Colonel C. Teater?”

  “No comment.” I darted to the back of the hearse. I felt like a celebrity. A local one at least.

  “Is it true they have reopened his death case and changed it to homicide?” The man threw questions at me left and right.

  Whoop, whoop. Sirens blared behind me, causing me to look. Jack Henry jumped out of his police car and put his hands out.

  “Okay, give Ms. Raines some room.” He backed up the reporter away from me. Luckily, the reporter started to drill Jack with all sorts of questions, but Jack was truly tight-­lipped about the whole thing.

  “If only they could see me.” Chicken stood next to the camera and put his face in the lens. “Hello!” He waved, hoping to get his five minutes of fame. Unfortunately, his five minutes looked like it was going to be more like national coverage. . . . If only it wasn’t because he was murdered.
r />   Chapter 3

  That was crazy,” I said to Jack Henry. My heart was pounding a mile a minute. I glanced out the front door of the funeral home.

  News about Chicken Teater’s exhumation was spreading like wildfire. Two more news crews showed up before we could get the church truck safely into the funeral home. Jack had a heck of a time fending off the camera crews. They were positioned on the sidewalk in front of Eternal Slumber and across the street in the square.

  “I wonder how they found out about the exhumation.” Jack peeled back the curtain on the front door and looked out.

  “Oh I don’t know.” Sarcasm dripped from my lips. “Duh. The entire town came out to see what was going on. I’m sure one of them tipped off the news.” I signed off on the papers and handed them to Vernon, who was waiting near the elevator to take Chicken to the basement, where he could begin his work on the remains.

  Jack just looked at me. I crinkled my nose and smiled. He smiled back, causing my heart to flutter. If he didn’t stop making cute faces at me, they were going to have to make a spot on the church truck next to Chicken, because I swore my heart stopped every time Jack looked at me.

  “This should be fun.” Vernon took the papers and slapped them on top of the dirty casket before wheeling the church truck into the open elevator.

  “Remember, this is a closed investigation,” Jack Henry warned Vernon. “No talking to the media or friends or family about this.”

  “Scout’s honor.” Vernon put up two fingers before the elevator door shut.

  “Dinner tonight?” Jack Henry asked.

  “Dinner? How about breakfast, so I can tell you what I know about Chicken and who I think might have done it?” There was still an assumption on my part that I would play some sort of roll in the investigation of the death, even though he had already told me to stay out of it.

  “Emma Lee, you know I believe you see Chicken, just like you saw Ruthie.” He rubbed his hand over my cheek, leaving me momentarily paralyzed. “But you said Chicken didn’t know how he was murdered, which means you need to leave it up to the professionals. I’ve already warned you. I can’t have you getting involved in something that could possibly put you in danger. I couldn’t live with myself if that happened.”