A Ghostly Grave

by Tonya Kappes

  “Ouch.” I got up and rubbed out the sting on my hind end. “Word spreads fast around here.” I took a seat in the waiting lounge near the front door until it was my turn.

  “I never figured you for the beauty-­queen type.” Mary Anna planted her hand on her hip, the scissors still attached to her finger and thumb as she leaned to one side. She went back to cutting the woman’s hair who was in the chair. “Ever since I cut and colored your hair a few months ago, you haven’t looked back.”

  I laughed. I wanted to tell them the truth, but it would come out soon enough. Truth be known, I was more confused now than I was when they dug up Chicken’s casket. The golden feather had me thrown off, even though there was sufficient evidence against Marla Maria in my opinion. But opinions didn’t matter in real-­life investigations according to Jack Henry.

  “Well come on.” Mary Anna pushed her boobs back into her too-­tight scoop-­neck top and stuck the tip from her last client deep within her cleavage. “I’ve got to get you in pageant condition according to Marla Maria Teater.”

  “What exactly does that mean?” I asked. A little worry stuck in my gut made me a tad bit nauseous.

  “Don’t you worry. If you want to win, you just let me work my magic.” Mary Anna did a little shimmy shake in her short pencil skirt before she looked in the mirror and grabbed a comb to tease up her bangs. “Higher to God, girl. Higher to God.”

  Patiently, I waited for Mary Anna to come back from wherever she disappeared to, taking in all the women in the salon and trying to figure out how I was going to bring up Chicken and start some gossip about Marla Maria. I didn’t have to wait too long.

  “Honey, aren’t you a little old to be in a beauty pageant?” A little old lady leaned over from the drying chair and asked.

  “Excuse me?” Feeling a little offended, I wanted some clarification.

  “You have to be in your twenties.” The woman’s beady little eyes stared me down.

  “There are many types of pageants nowadays.” Another woman chimed in. “They have Mrs. America too.” She nodded her head. They started talking amongst themselves. I was too busy watching Mary Anna mix up some sort of concoction in front of me at the station where all her styling tools were displayed.

  “I’m really excited about this.” Exuberance dripped from her face. The more she stirred the stuff in the bowl, the bigger her smile grew. “I never dared to dream you would go for it. When Marla Maria told me what to do to you, I started salivating!”

  Salivating? I swallowed the lump in my throat. I didn’t dare protest or even ask what she had in store for me.

  “Can I ask one favor?” I used my tiptoes to turn the salon chair around. “Can you please not show me the results until the end?”

  Mary Anna was all too accommodating. She tugged, pulled, clipped, painted, and put stuff on my hair that I couldn’t imagine what it was for. She grabbed a big roll brush and hair dryer, nearly scorching my scalp because it was so hot. The tugging to the sky made me think about the Miss America pageants I used to watch on TV. To clarify—­I didn’t turn them on—­Charlotte did.

  “Okay.” Mary Anna turned the hair dryer off. She pushed a button with her foot, sending me straight back in the chair. She took a small brush and combed through my eyebrows. “I’ve been dying to get my hands on these.” Fear knotted in my stomach. I truly thought I was going to barf as Mary Anna took a small wooden stick out of the melted wax and rolled it around before telling me to close my eyes.

  “Ouch!” My eyebrows felt like they were being burned off my face. “That hurts!”

  “Honey, that’s nothin’.”

  Rip!

  “Holy . . .” I screamed a few expletives that would have made my Granny blush as Mary Anna ripped the wax off my face. I felt like a plucked chicken. I threw my hands up to my face. “Did you rip off all of my brows?” I jumped up and looked in the mirror. “What in the . . .” A few more expletives came out, making me feel like I needed to wash my own mouth out with soap.

  “You have very thin skin.” Worry spread across Mary Anna’s face as she stood behind me looking in the mirror at my reflection.

  The only thing I recognized in the mirror were my eyes, and the only real reason I knew they were mine was because they were staring back at me. Long gone was my brown hair, which was now bleached blond, and my brows had disappeared into the swollen red patches above my eyes.

  “What have you done to me?” I asked through gritted teeth before I burst out crying. I fell back into the chair with my head planted in my hands.

  “I . . .” Mary Anna Hardy didn’t know what to say. Her mouth dropped open and clamped shut a few times before something finally came out. “I’m doing what your pageant coach told me to do. You are the one who didn’t protest. Please don’t be mad, Emma Lee.”

  “What’s wrong with you? Don’t you be going and gettin’ too big for your britches,” Chicken said. With my head still planted in my hands, I could see Chicken’s bare feet through the crack of my fingers. “You have a job to do. It’s hair. It can be dyed back after the pageant. Now, where are your manners? You are a Southern girl who is going to win that pageant and figure out who killed me.”

  Sniff, sniff. Chicken was right. It was only hair, and I needed to play the part in order to figure out who killed him so he could have everlasting peace.

  “Marla Maria did say that making Emma Lee look like a beauty queen would be a long shot,” one of the other stylists whispered loud enough for me to hear. “She even said she was going to bring out the Cadillac so the pageant judges would see Emma Lee arrive in style and think she was from old money or something.”

  The more I heard, the madder I got. Not only was I going to show Marla Maria that I was going to be an awesome Orloff Queen, I was going to show her how well this queen was going to solve the murder that she committed.

  Slowly, I lifted my head. Mary Anna held her hands up to her face as if she thought I was going to come up swinging. I straightened my shoulders and shook my new bleached blond hair behind my shoulders.

  “I’m going to be the next Orloff Beauty Queen in Kentucky.” I stood up and gave a princess wave. All eyes were on me. “Then I’m going to go over to the square and represent Sleepy Hollow in the Kentucky Cave Festival.”

  “That’s my girl.” Chicken rubbed his hands together before wiping the sweat that was dripping down the side of his face. “It’s hotter than a Billy goat’s ass in a pepper patch with all this gossip going on. Let’s get out of here.”

  “Thank you, Mary Anna.” I smiled and raised my hands up to my nonexistent brows. “Ouch.” I grimaced.

  Of course she didn’t want me to be mad. I was her employer in the after-­death world of hairdressing. God knew why Mary Anna Hardy loved to do hair for the dead, but she did.

  Chapter 16

  She plucked you like a chicken for that beauty pageant.” Chicken stood behind me and stared into the mirror at my wet hair. “And I wouldn’t put it past Marla Maria to have planned for you to turn out that way.”

  As soon as I left Girl’s Best Friend, I rushed home and took a shower using extra, extra shampoo and conditioner in hopes the blond dye would wash out. But that was wishful hoping. In fact, it looked a lot lighter than before.

  “I’ll show her.” I glared at him, and then picked up the brush. I racked it through my hair and used the curling brush like I had seen Charlotte do when we were growing up.

  The loose curls hung nicely around my face. The soft blond color gave my olive complexion a nice glow. It was strange seeing what the change of hair color could do. It made me look like a completely different person.

  The knock at the door caused me to jump. I tucked the loose strands of hair behind my ears and walked to the door. Through the peephole, I could see Jack Henry standing with a small bouquet of flowers in his hands.

  “I’ve b
een trying to call you all day.” He held the flowers up, covering his face. “I’m sorry about missing our dates.” He dropped the flowers to his side. His big smile froze, then his lips turned down and dropped open. “Emma Lee?”

  “Oh!” I had forgotten my phone was in the hearse. Dead. I smacked my palm on my forehead, catching a little bit of the swollen brow. Jack Henry had yet to see the new hair color. “Ouch!” I winced in pain.

  “What happened to your eyebrows?” he asked.

  “And my hair?” I questioned him before I burst into tears for the fourth time since Mary Anna had turned me into a stripper.

  “I’ve never dated a blonde before.” He swept me into his arms. “It’s only hair.” He held me close to his chest as I heaved in and out.

  It took me years to finally get Jack Henry to notice me and become my boyfriend. I didn’t want my amateur investigating to hinder any of it, but he seemed to be understanding of the hair color. I had yet to tell him why I had changed it.

  I molded myself against him wanting a little more attention. It had been a few long days without cuddling with him. I looked up into his deep brown eyes. I lifted my hand and rubbed the edge of his hairline. He bent down. His lips found mine. The sweet throbbing of his lips made me shift even closer to him.

  “Not that your hair looks bad . . .” Jack Henry’s lips found my forehead. They deepened into a smile. He was cautious with his words. His momma taught him well. “ . . . but why did you decide to go blond?”

  His lips seared down my neck, planting tantalizing kisses in the hollows of my collarbone.

  Did my blond hair have this effect on him? My brown hair certainly didn’t. Was this the moment I had been waiting for? My mind wouldn’t shut up long enough for me to enjoy his roaming hands and hot lips.

  “Emma Lee.” His breath was hot against my ear. “You are driving me crazy. Tell me why you decided to be blond? Were you trying to spice things up?”

  I slightly pulled away, still feeling his heartbeat.

  “You aren’t going to like my answer.” It was time to come clean. I was regretting changing my appearance to help solve a case based on circumstantial evidence.

  His mouth clenched. “I guess you better tell me,” his voice hardened. He stepped inside and followed me to the little sitting area in my efficiency.

  He sat down next to me on the love seat. I took his hands in mine. He was not going to be happy.

  “Please let me finish before you go off on me.” I swallowed hard. “You know I can’t just let clues that Chicken Teater tells me sit around while you do the cop thing, which I know is the right thing, but . . .” I put my hands in the air in a sort of truce way. “ . . . I have sufficient clues to make me certain Marla Maria killed Chicken Teater.”

  Jack Henry let go of my hands. He shifted, finally resting his hands between his knees.

  “Marla Maria had filed for divorce one week”—­I held my finger up for dramatics—­“before Chicken died. Chicken begged her to stay and offered her an agreement.”

  “An agreement?” Jack Henry rolled his eyes, sort of pissing me off.

  “Why is that hard to believe?” I stood up to face him, but didn’t look at him directly. “Hear me out. The agreement says Marla Maria can have all of Chicken’s money, including the property he owns that is worth over half a million dollars.”

  “Chicken Teater lived in a double-­wide. Don’t you think he would have moved up into something else if he had half a million?”

  “What’s wrong with a double-­wide?” I asked. He didn’t know my parents lived in Sleepy Hollow Park when I was a little girl before we moved into the funeral home. I shook my head, refusing to get off the subject. “Anyway, he does. You can check the courthouse records. The agreement says she has to stay married to him and if anything happens to him she has to take care of Lady Cluckington.”

  “The chicken?” Jack Henry bellowed out a loud laugh.

  “Prize chicken. Hence my hair.” I pointed to my head. “This is where it gets crazy. Marla Maria has always wanted to open a pageant studio where she prepares girls for pageants from their hair to their walk. She could never do it when Chicken was alive, because Chicken used their money to enter Lady Cluckington into all sorts of chicken pageants.”

  “Don’t forget to tell him that Marla Maria wasn’t the only one with dreams.” Chicken stood in the middle of the floor with his thumb pointing to him. “I wanted to be on the cover of Cock and Feathers magazine. If Marla Maria didn’t kill me, we’d probably be the owner of some dumb pageant studio.”

  “What? Is he here?” Jack Henry stood up. There was frustration in his voice. He ran his hands through his hair and then dropped them to his side. “I believe he was killed, but I just can’t find solid evidence on who killed him, yet.”

  “Vernon is almost done with the autopsy. He will prove somehow that Marla Maria killed Chicken so she could get her hands on the money faster.”

  “Then the chicken should be dead too.” He paced back and forth. “Did you see the agreement?”

  “No, I haven’t gotten that close. But I did get these tapes that Chicken told me to get.” I pointed to the stack of VHS tapes I had left on the coffee table from earlier. “I’m getting closer to her because I agreed to be in the Orloff Beauty Pageant tomorrow in Lexington.”

  “You thought becoming blond and brow-­bald was going to get you the title?” Jack Henry inched closer. His eyes narrowed as he took a better view of my nonexistent brows. His face grimaced. “When will the red puffiness go away?” He frowned in a sympathetic sort of way.

  “I went to Girl’s Best Friend to see if I could get in on some gossip, but all I got was Mary Anna doing to my hair what Marla Maria had told her to do.” I sat back down.

  “I don’t want you to go. I want you to stop being a detective and leave the work to the forensics.” His words were sudden, raw and angry. “I’m not saying Marla Maria is going to hurt you, but I’m saying you are aligning yourself with her. If she isn’t the killer, someone who is happens to be watching her, putting you in danger. There is more to this murder than you know.” He pointed directly at me. “When I agreed to listen to you because of your Betweener thingy, I didn’t agree to put you in the middle. Besides, you have Zula to worry about.”

  “Oh! Now this is about Granny and you believing she attacked O’Dell Burns. Which, by the way, she did not!” I jabbed back at him. Suddenly I had confidence that I had never had. I brushed my hands through my hair. Was it the new blond hair giving me the strength? “I’m telling you, Marla Maria has motive and reason to have offed Chicken.”

  “Don’t go to that pageant with her tomorrow,” he warned. His dark eyes deepened to almost black. “I’m ordering you as the sheriff not to go.”

  Heat rose in my throat. “Fine. I’m going to bed.” I agreed to his face, but my mind exploded with ideas on how I was going to solve Chicken’s murder once and for all.

  I stomped to the door and opened it.

  “Good night.” Jack Henry bent down to kiss me. I turned my head just in time for his lips to catch my cheek. “Fine. I’ll call you tomorrow.” He walked down the steps and turned back around. “Charge your phone.”

  Chapter 17

  Ugh.” I rubbed my tired eyes when I looked in the mirror. Those tired eyes looked ghostly with blond hair. I used my fingertips to tap my cheeks, hoping to put a little color in them. Marla Maria would die if she saw me.

  “You need coffee.” Chicken stood behind me. “I’ve seen what Marla Maria does when her eyes look like that. And it ain’t pretty.”

  Inwardly I groaned. I didn’t want to find out what she did, nor did I want her to do it to me. After Jack Henry left last night, I had decided that I was going to pretend it was a “play dress-­up” day, like I did when I was a little girl; get it over with and come home. There was no way I wanted to jeopardize
my relationship with Jack Henry over a ghost and his might-­be murder.

  “Chicken.” I walked into the kitchenette to make my first cup of much needed coffee. “I’m going to go to the pageant, but that is as far as I can go. This investigation is way over my head and Jack Henry said it’s dangerous.”

  “Huh?” Chicken’s face contorted in all directions. “You are doing great.”

  “Jack Henry said there is more to your murder than I know.” I grabbed the creamer and poured some in my mug before I hit the BREW button on the Keurig.

  Bang, bang, bang. “Emma Lee, open this door!” Charlotte beat on the interior door of my efficiency. The door that leads to the funeral home. “What in the hell happened to my office?”

  Oh crap. I had totally forgotten about that little tidbit in the investigation. I had meant to tell Jack Henry about it and the missing keys, along with the golden feather I had found—­Chicken had found—­in Granny’s kitchen, along with the dirt footprint.

  I held my finger up to Chicken so he knew not to disappear on me because we still had to talk about the investigation and my role in the matter. He growled. Not happy.

  “What the hell happened to you?” Charlotte’s face scrunched up. Her nose curled. “Your freakin’ hair is blond.”

  I ran my fingers through my hair. I kept forgetting about it, but everyone was so kind and happy to point it out.

  “I’m going to be in a beauty pageant today,” I said matter-­of-­factly.

  “Geez.” Charlotte had her cell phone in her hand. She started punching numbers on it. “I came here to find out what happened to my office. But now I’ve got to get you an appointment with Doc Clyde. I could kill Mom and Dad for leaving you in my care.” She shook her head and turned back around. “Granny, you need to hop on that little moped of yours and tell your boyfriend that Emma Lee has a bad case of the Funeral Trauma.” She paused and turned to face me again. “Are you seeing ghosts?”

  “Hang up the phone.” I glared at her.