by Tonya Kappes
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 a 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 widower 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 right 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 ol’ 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 almost four years ago to the day. 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. Chicken gave me the once-over as if he was 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 refused to cross over until someone helped her solve her murder. That someone was me. The In-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 an In-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 murdered. 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 fussing and cursing. “Are you okay?” I asked. Did she feel him?
Granny stood there taking it all in.
She 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 bec
ause 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 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 Chicken 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 near the trailer park caught my eye. 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 medium, and he knew Chicken was right there 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 everything a lab would want 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.
“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 have been 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, 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, I helped the guys guide 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 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.
About the Author
TONYA KAPPES has written more than fifteen novels and four novellas, all of which have graced numerous bestseller lists, including USA Today. Best known for stories charged with emotion and humor and filled with flawed characters, her novels have garnered reader praise and glowing critical reviews. She lives with her husband, two very spoiled schnauzers, and one ex-stray cat in northern Kentucky. Now that her boys are teenagers, Tonya writes full-time but can be found at all of her guys’ high-school games with a pencil and paper in hand. Come on over and FAN Tonya on Goodreads.
www.tonyakappes.com
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By Tonya Kappes
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A Ghostly Southern Mystery Series
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