by J. J. Cook
“I never knew she felt like that about me,” Eric whispered.
Stella almost choked as she told Flo she had to leave—important fire brigade business. She went quickly to the Cherokee and got inside, locking the doors after her.
“This is really nice.” Eric rubbed his opaque hands appreciatively on the door and seat. “They spent a lot of money on it.”
Stella turned to him. “How did you get here? I thought you couldn’t leave the cabin.”
“I don’t know. All of a sudden, there I was—at my own memorial service. Nice statue, huh? It even sort of looks like me.”
“How can the rules change? All this time, it was either the firehouse or the cabin. I don’t understand.”
His eyes were serious as he said, “Did you want me to stay at the cabin?”
“No. Of course not. I’m happy for you. I can’t imagine what it’s been like being trapped somewhere for forty years.”
She was happy for him. Except this might make her life more complicated.
“Good! I want to see everything. The cemetery, not so much. Your speech was nice. Thanks. Now let’s drive around Sweet Pepper. I want to go in the café and up to the pepper plant. Then I want to go past all the old houses. Maybe we should stop in at Flo’s too.”
“Slow down. I have other things I have to do today besides playing tour guide.”
“Good.” He rubbed his large hands together. “I’ll go with you.”
There was a knock at the window. Stella opened it. It was Agent Whitman from the Tennessee Bureau of Investigation. She’d met him during the investigation into Eric’s death.
“Sorry to bother you, Chief Griffin. I wondered if I could have a word with you in private.”
Stella glanced at Eric. Could Agent Whitman see him too?
No. Of course not.
She unlocked the doors and got out.
“I was wondering why you locked the doors.” Eric was instantly at her side. “I know you didn’t think that would keep me in. Were you trying to keep me out?”
“I can’t talk to you right now,” she muttered.
“Sorry.” Agent Whitman straightened his blue tie. He was an average-looking man who seemed to like wearing plain gray suits. He reminded Stella of a schoolteacher she’d had in Chicago. “Is there a better time?”
“No.” She smiled as she started walking beside him. She liked Agent Whitman, but she was very conscious of Eric walking on the other side of her. Having a ghost follow her everywhere would take some getting used to. “This is fine. What can I do for you?”
“Great. I’m glad to see you decided to stay on as fire chief. I’ve heard glowing reports about your work.”
“Thanks. It’s a great job.”
“I’d like to take you into my confidence on the fire that killed Representative Barney Falk.”
“You’re here investigating that matter too?”
“No. I’m actually only here to see you, Chief Griffin.”
“Look out.” Eric shook his head. “Another fan of Stella Griffin. You’d better ask if he’s married before you start dating him.”
Stella glared at him and had to bite her tongue to keep from answering. She’d have to get used to that too.
“There are plenty of TBI agents working this case, but we need someone on the inside track. That would be you, Chief Griffin. Our concern is that someone within the group may be part of a cover-up.”
“A cover-up? What kind of cover-up?” she asked.
He stopped walking under a huge cedar tree that had been blown toward the east for so long that it permanently pointed in that direction. “We’re not sure yet. We know Mr. Falk was murdered. What we need to know is why and who was involved.”
“Who is we?” Eric asked.
A valid question, Stella thought. “Who are you working with on this, Agent Whitman?”
“The governor, Chief Griffin. I can’t tell you any more than that. I want to ask you to keep your eyes and ears open for anything that sounds wrong.” He handed her his business card. “Give me a call or email me if that happens. Please don’t say anything to anyone else. We’re not sure who we can trust on this.”
“Okay.” Stella looked at his card. She already had one of his cards from the last time they’d met. She kept the new one anyway.
Agent Whitman held out his hand to her. “Great. I appreciate your help. Would you like to get some coffee? It’s cold out here.”
“Sure. That sounds good.”
Agent Whitman drove his modest gray Buick to Main Street and parked in front of the Daily Grind Coffee and Tea Shop. Stella drove the bright red Cherokee and parked behind him.
“Can we go to the café instead?” Eric asked.
“You haven’t been in the coffeehouse ever,” she reminded him.
“All right. I seem to be tethered to you, Stella. I tried to leave the cemetery and look around town by myself. I couldn’t do it.”
“That doesn’t make any sense. I’ve been here all this time and you haven’t been able to leave the cabin with me.”
“I guess something changed. It’s not like there’s a handbook for ghosts, like that cute ghost couple had in that movie with the snakes, Beetlejuice.”
Stella didn’t have time to ponder what movie he was talking about. Eric was a TV junkie, probably because there wasn’t much else he could do.
Agent Whitman was looking at her through the window with a questioning expression on his face. She had to ignore Eric and get out.
This is going to be complicated.
“Do you mind if we have coffee in the café?” She got out of the Cherokee and locked the doors with the fob.
“Wow!” Eric looked at the keys she held. “That was cool. They didn’t have those forty years ago. Do all vehicles have them now?”
Stella ignored him. They were going to have to come up with a protocol if Eric was going to be out of the cabin with other people around. He couldn’t talk to her and expect her to answer for one thing. She knew he had to be excited about getting out for the first time in so long. But she couldn’t walk around as though she were talking to herself either.
Agent Whitman smiled. “No. That’s fine. I could use a little breakfast anyway.”
“Me too. I had to run out of the cabin this morning without eating. Not that I’m much of a breakfast person anyway.”
“You can say that again,” Eric agreed. “But thanks for coming here. I ate breakfast here every morning when I was fire chief. Sometimes Ricky Senior would join me with Tagger and Bobby Trump.”
Stella and Agent Whitman sat across the table from each other. The café was crowded with people who’d been at the memorial service.
Eric was able to walk around the entire café, exclaiming at people he knew and talking about how the place looked exactly the same. “I wish I could eat chili cheese fries.”
“Bradford.” Agent Whitman held out his hand to Stella again. “My name is Bradford.”
Stella had been watching Eric. “Sorry. Half asleep from the call last night.” She shook his hand. “And please call me Stella.”
“Okay.” He smiled. “Stella. It was a good rescue.”
“So people call you Brad?”
Eric was walking around like a big ghostly kid in a candy store. She had to ignore him.
“Yes. I’m sorry. I realize that we’ve never used first names. I thought we should. If that’s okay with you?”
“That’s fine, Brad.” She looked at her menu. As always her eyes went right to the biscuits. Well, she was committed to the idea of getting that workout equipment for the firehouse. It would be okay if she ate another biscuit. “I think I’m going to have the egg-and-cheese biscuit with a large Coke.”
“Not a coffee drinker.” He said it like he was writing it in the notebook she knew he carried in his inside jacket pocket. “How are the biscuits?”
“I love them.” She laughed. “A little too much.” She pulled at her snug-fitting dress uniform.
“People feed you a lot around here. Someone always wants me to eat something.”
“It’s the home of the sweetest, hottest peppers in the world. And the pepper festival. Are you involved in that yet?”
“Have I been here for more than five minutes? Everyone here lives and breathes the pepper festival. In fact, I’m on the planning board this year. I’m in charge of bringing in new recipe contest entries. Do you have something you’d like to contribute, Brad?”
“I’d be glad to.” He took his notebook out and began to jot down a recipe. A waitress came and took their order—Brad had an egg-and-cheese biscuit too, with coffee.
“Chief Griffin.” Police chief Don Rogers came to their table. “Agent Whitman. Is there a meeting I didn’t know about?”
Agent Whitman got nimbly to his feet and shook Chief Rogers’s hand. “We’re not meeting officially, Chief. We met at the cemetery after the memorial service and we decided to get out of the cold and have some coffee.”
Chief Rogers’s eyes narrowed. “You mean this is personal?”
Agent Whitman smiled. “I guess you could say that, yes. It’s good to see you. Have a nice day.”
Chief Rogers stood there for another moment looking like he was digesting a lump of coal before he raised his eyebrows and walked away.
The waitress brought a Coke and a cup of coffee. She promised the biscuits were coming out fresh and would be there soon.
“Are you married, Brad?” Stella asked when they were alone again.
“No. But I’m engaged. Why do you ask?”
Stella took a sip from her Coke. “You’re about to have a new girlfriend.”
He carefully scanned the restaurant. “Excuse me?”
“Me.” She sighed. “Don’t look now, but people in Sweet Pepper are probably already planning our wedding.”
“Oh.” He still sounded confused. “I see.”
Stella didn’t try to explain. She hadn’t understood for a long time either. Life in a small town was different from life in a big city. People liked to speculate on anything a single woman did in public or private.
Their biscuits arrived hot from the oven and they enjoyed their breakfast in companionable silence. Stella waited for him to mention the investigation again but he never did. She wasn’t clear on what she was supposed to be looking for or expecting to find during the course of the arson investigation. She assumed he’d let her know as they moved forward.
When they were done eating, Brad paid for the two meals and said he had to get back to Nashville. “I enjoyed our talk. You have my phone number. Call me if anything seems strange.”
Stella mused over the idea of what he’d think of as “strange.” Would it be a haunted cabin? At one time, she would’ve thought that was strange. She studied the neatly printed recipe he’d given her for smoked chili peppers in garlic sauce, and hoped she didn’t have to make it for the taste-testing part of the contest.
Obviously a man of many talents.
She walked out of the café, not thinking about Eric until he was at her side.
“Don’t do that again.” He swore softly, his chest rapidly rising and falling. “It was like a punch in the gut.”
“What was?”
“I think it was you leaving the café. There seems to be a certain amount of space we can have between us, but not much. I don’t understand it either. As soon as we get back to the cabin, maybe we can run a Google search on it.” He laughed. “Does anyone think that name is funny? Google? Is it someone’s name?”
She laughed at his Google reference. He was a bigger Internet junkie than she was. “I have an hour before I’m supposed to meet the arson investigator from Nashville. We can do whatever you want until then.”
Eric was beyond ecstatic. “You know that liquor store wasn’t here before.” He pointed out dozens of changes on Main Street. “And the town hall used to be in the old furniture store.”
They both got in the Cherokee so that he could see as much as possible. Stella drove slowly through Sweet Pepper.
Eric exclaimed over the pepper-shaped water tower and the traffic light. “I heard you and Agent Whitman are dating now,” he teased Stella. “That’s what happens to fast women who eat breakfast with gentlemen from Nashville.”
“Wow. Maybe no one can hear you, but you can certainly hear everything,” she muttered as they drove through the historic district. “I have a feeling that as long as I’m single, the people of Sweet Pepper will be matching me up with boyfriends everywhere I go.”
“That’s what happened to me. They always had me dating someone I’d never met or introducing me to daughters, nieces, cousins, and sisters. The trick is to keep them guessing. If you get married, and have breakfast with someone like Agent Whitman, they’ll think you’re cheating.”
“Life in a small town.”
“Exactly. Hey! Can we go up to the pepper factory?”
“Sure. I’m due a report on the progress they’ve made getting that duct system set up anyway. We’ll do that at the same time.”
Last year, Stella had made headlines in the Sweet Pepper Gazette for shutting down the Sweet Pepper packing plant for fire hazards. It had only been for one day. Everyone had been sure she’d lose her job, even though her grandfather owned the plant.
Ben Carson had thrown a fit, but they’d found a compromise that had kept the plant open. He’d repaired the faulty duct system that had periodically caught on fire.
“Greg Lambert’s up there now as manager, right?” Eric stared out the side window.
“Yep. He’s not too bad.”
“I always thought he was a little oily.”
“Oily?” She put her foot down hard on the gas pedal to get up the steep road that led to the packing plant.
“You shouldn’t gun it like that,” he warned. “There’s probably still ice on the road.”
“Don’t tell me how to drive in ice and snow. Chicago gets more ice than Sweet Pepper will ever see.”
The back end of the Cherokee fishtailed as it hit a patch of ice.
“I told you,” Eric said.
“Never mind. You were about to describe oily.”
He shrugged his broad shoulders that were barely see-through at all. “You know—underhanded. Slippery. Someone who offers you ten dollars as he takes twenty.”
“Okay. I get it. And I agree.”
“At least we agree on something.” He was melodramatic, showing her how far up and back he rocked as she pulled the Cherokee to a quick stop in front of the main office of the pepper factory.
The original brick structure of the first pepper bottling plant was still intact from the 1800s. It was used as the office/administration building. The whole facility and distribution center covered more than ten acres and employed hundreds of workers from Sweet Pepper and the surrounding areas.
“This place has grown.” Eric nodded. “The pepper business must be booming for the old man. You too, I guess.”
“I don’t think about it much.” Stella got out of the Cherokee. “It’s not like I get a paycheck or shareholder’s benefit.”
Greg Lambert was in his office when they were shown into the building by his assistant. Greg was in his sixties but still maintained some of his youthful good looks. His chiseled face was smoothly handsome, but his brown eyes were cold. “Chief Griffin.” He got to his feet and shook her hand.
It was the oddest feeling knowing that Eric was standing next to her when Greg didn’t acknowledge him. “Mr. Lambert. I believe the last report was due on the ductwork overhaul. I thought I’d drop by and pick it up.”
He smiled in a stiff manner. “Save me a postage stamp, eh Chief?” He handed her the paperwork. “I’m sure you’ll find that everything is in order. Would you like to tour the plant and take a look?”
Stella took the paperwork. “Not today. You’ve done a good job. Thank you for your cooperation.”
“I hear there was an unfortunate accident last night on Dead Bear Trail. I hope no
one was seriously injured. It would be too bad if something happened to Barney Falk’s grandson the same day the old man died.”
Chapter 11
“Barney Falk’s grandson was there?” Stella asked.
Eric shrugged, not saying anything.
“Barney Falk III.” Greg leaned against his desk. “I think they call him Chip—as in chip off the old block. Only he’s always been a disappointment to his father and grandfather.”
“I don’t know the names of the boys. He might’ve been there. How do you know, Mr. Lambert?” Was this the link Brad was looking for?
“You know. It’s the grapevine.” Greg sat back down. “If that’s all, Chief Griffin, I have to get back to work.”
That was it, as far as Stella was concerned. She and Eric went back to the Cherokee.
“Same old Greg,” Eric remarked. “He’s older, but his personality hasn’t changed. I don’t know what Tory ever saw in him.”
Tory Lambert was the first person in Sweet Pepper to make friends with Stella. She’d been instrumental in getting the fire brigade going. She was Greg Lambert’s wife and had died in a house fire soon after Stella had arrived in town.
“I wonder why he brought up that little tidbit about Barney Falk’s grandson. I’m sure he wanted us to know about it for some reason.”
“You,” Eric corrected. “He wanted you to know about it. He doesn’t know I’m here. If you start talking like that people will start gossiping about you.”
She rolled her eyes and started the Cherokee back down the steep road. “Thanks for the advice. I’ll have to get used to you being around all the time.”
“I suppose. Can we go out to the lake?”
Stella glanced at her watch. “Sure. Then we have to head back to town hall.”
Eric raised a questioning brow.
“Okay. Then I have to head back to town. Stop talking to me. I have to forget you’re here.”
“That seems a little rude.”
“You’re a ghost. Rudeness doesn’t figure in.”
They drove out to Sweet Pepper Lake. It was roughly a three-mile circle of water surrounded by mountains and ringed with expensive houses like Barney Falk’s. The scenery was spectacular, with the clear lake reflecting the mountains and the sky.
