Southern Fried

by Tonya Kappes

“Here it is.” Edna flipped through her notepad. “Take a picture of it with your phone.”

  “I’ll do better than that.” I took my phone out. “I’ll put the address in my maps right now because I’m going to see Sandy first thing.”

  “Not without me.” Finn pulled his forearms off the edge of the table, allowing room for Ben to put the food down in front of him. Finn looked at the plate.

  “You have a problem with your food?” Ben asked.

  “Pancakes with eggs on top with syrup and powdered sugar.” Finn shook his head. “I shouldn’t be surprised, but I am.”

  “It’s her favorite.” Ben glanced at me and smiled. “I know that look.”

  “What look?” Finn asked.

  “She’s ready to go. I’ll get you a coffee to go and a to-go box.” Ben turned around.

  “Is he right?” Finn cut into the short stack with his fork and stuck it in his mouth.

  “He is.” I looked over the table at Finn. Boy, was I wrong. He was no more interested in me than he was in Ruby Smith at the counter stirring her little heart out. Ben Harrison could read me like a book, but my partner had no idea who I was outside of this uniform.

  Yet again, Poppa was right.

  “Let me know what else I can do.” Edna got up from the table and excused herself just as Ben came back with the to-go cups and containers. “Don’t forget,” she reminded me. “Exclusive.”

  “I’ll ride along with you and tell you about last night at Cole’s.” Finn took a few more quick bites of his breakfast while I scooped mine into a box. “That was an eye-opener.” There was a sharp edge to his laugh. “I spent a lot of time undercover with the mob in Chicago before the reserves and they were nothing like these good ole boys with their gambling and booze.”

  “Yes, they do take their booze seriously.” A melancholic frown flitted across my face. “My Poppa always said that if that was the worst thing that went on around here, Cottonwood was going to be A-OK.”

  “Your Poppa was a smart man. I’m sorry I didn’t get to meet him.” Finn reached over and patted my hand.

  “I bet you are.” Poppa shook a fist at Finn. “I’d run you right out of town.” Poppa bounced on the tips of his toes like he was going to do some boxing.

  “Who was there?” I had to start talking and ignore Poppa to keep from busting out laughing. I dragged my hand out from underneath Finn’s.

  “All the major players.” Finn grabbed my bag off the floor for me. “Mayor Ryland, Luke Jones, Stanley Godbey, Rowdy Hart.”

  “Are you going to eat your eggs?” I asked.

  “No.” He shook his head and I scraped them off the top of his pancakes and into a container.

  We threw down a few bucks to cover the bill and headed out the door to the Wagoneer. Duke’s paws were draped over the passenger window, his head rested on the window ledge and his eyes closed. His nose shifted side to side, his eyes popped open, and he darted to sitting when he saw the box in my hand. Poppa was nowhere around.

  “Here, buddy.” I opened the back door of the Jeep and he hopped from the front seat to the back. I opened the container with Finn’s eggs, letting Duke eat them.

  “There was a lot of talk about Owen and why someone wanted to kill him.” Finn stared straight ahead on our way out of town.

  “How did Stanley act?” I asked.

  “He was quiet. He had a few beers and then went home after they started talking about Owen’s finances.” Finn tapped his finger on the window. “It got me thinking.”

  “About?” I asked.

  “What if he owed someone money? They said he was low on funds since Sandy had taken him back to court and he didn’t have money to pay for an attorney. They also said he stopped taking his medicine for his arthritis because of the cost. Then there was Rowdy Hart.” His voice trailed off.

  “What about him?” I asked. “Because I did find out that he doesn’t use electric fence, but he and Owen were at his house smoking pot the day Owen was murdered.”

  “Max hadn’t gotten back to you about anything in Owen’s system?” Finn’s voice was resigned.

  “No, only that he suspects antifreeze was the poison. You know those reports can take days, even weeks.” I sighed and pulled onto what was Sandy’s street, according to my maps. “I want to stop by and question Rowdy. He might know someone who does use that fencing, plus he might’ve been the last person to see Owen alive.”

  “He might be able to tell us where Owen went after he left Rowdy’s,” Finn noted. “After I left Cole’s, I went back to the office and put together a few timelines on that dry-erase board you never use. I’m a visual person, so I need to write down all the facts we have. Sometimes it helps me put together the pieces and see where there are holes. It’s like a spider grid. Everyone is connected somehow and it will help us make connections easier.”

  “Great idea.” I didn’t want to tell him that was what I did with Poppa when he was alive and now that he was in ghost form we did it verbally. “It will definitely help. I look forward to seeing it.”

  I kept the conversation very professional; I needed to since I’d heard the woman on his voicemail.

  “According to my maps app, Sandy lives in Clay’s Ferry. Which makes it perfect for me to stop by S&S Auto Salvage to get a look at the video footage from when someone had knifed my seat,” I said to Finn.

  “Then this should be very interesting.” Finn let out a deep sigh.

  We pulled up to a newer two-story home. It was half siding and half brick. There were a couple dormer windows. Neat wildflower beds ran across the front of the house in front of the porch with the white fence attached.

  “This is it. 510.” I pointed to the house number on the plastic mailbox on the left side of the driveway.

  As I pulled into the driveway, the garage door was going up. Finn and I got out. The car was pulling out but stopped when the driver noticed us. The engine died. The door opened and a pair of toned and tanned legs swung out of the car followed by a very young-looking Sandy Godbey.

  Her hair looked to be freshly dyed, blond with brown highlights, and cut to her shoulders. It wasn’t the frizzy style that I had recalled her having. Her skin was smoother than I remembered, and the lines on the creases of her eyes were gone.

  “I wondered how long it would take you to find me.” Sandy had on a pair of white shorts, a blue denim shirt, and a pair of neon pink Converse high-tops. A clutch was tucked up under her arm. “Myrna told me you’d been snooping around.”

  Now I knew Myrna was the one who took the piece of paper from my bag. According to Myrna, she didn’t know where Sandy lived. That was stealing and I’d let her know.

  “In fact, I was just on my way to come find you.” She handed me her cell phone. My dispatch number was on the screen. “I was about to hit dial. Then here you are.”

  “Why were you coming to see me?” I asked.

  “The same reason you’re here. About Owen.” A couple of her neighbors had gathered on the sidewalk in front of a house. Their heads were together. “Why don’t we go inside, Kenni?”

  “This is Deputy Finn Vincent.” We followed her into the garage. She hit the automatic garage door button to put the door back down. “He’s the new deputy we hired since Lonnie retired.”

  We followed her into the house. The kitchen was the first room. There were white cabinets, gray granite countertops, and gray wood floors.

  “Good ole Lonnie. You know…” She placed her purse on the counter, next to an open box of cornmeal. The sunlight flooded through the window. There were two tiny white cat statues sitting on the windowsill. “…Owen really did like him. But I’m sure he would’ve liked you too, Finn. I mean, Deputy. Move, Cozmo.” She shooed the dark gray-haired cat with light gray stripes that came running from the other room and darted under her feet.

  “Thank you. I hate
to hear about your loss,” Finn started the conversation and snapped his fingers to get the feline’s attention.

  Cozmo’s green eyes stared at Finn’s fingers before the cat thought it was a safe finger to get a good scratch from.

  “I’m sure you don’t, since you’re here to see if I killed him.” Sandy opened the refrigerator and took out a pitcher of tea. I noticed a carton of buttermilk in the refrigerator before she closed the door. “I just made sun tea and was chilling it in the fridge.” She took three glasses out of the cabinet.

  I eyed the tea, wondering if she had put antifreeze in it, but when she took a swig of it after she poured herself a glass, I figured I was safe.

  “Let’s have a seat.” She put the pitcher of tea and glasses on a tray and walked over to the white table. “Obviously I didn’t kill Owen.”

  We all took a seat around the table. I put my bag on the floor and took out a pad of paper and pen.

  “We didn’t say you did. You don’t mind if I take a few notes, do you?” I asked.

  “I’m fine with that.” She crossed her legs.

  I wrapped my hand around the glass. The tea was chilled and the perfect orange color like my mama made. “We would like to know the terms of your divorce, as well as the funeral arrangements.”

  “Oh gosh.” She drew her hand to her mouth. Her nails were perfectly manicured and painted pink. “I forgot all about those arrangements.” She put on a smile more American than fast food. “What did his brother and Inez say about them?”

  “Actually, we didn’t tell them anything since his remains do not concern them.” I picked up the glass and wet my whistle. “But I’d like to know what you’d like to do about him.”

  “Follow what we wanted.” She shrugged. She was awfully relaxed for the situation. “He wanted to be cremated with that stupid truck. I’ll take him to the farm and sprinkle his ashes right in the okra patch.”

  “To my understanding, he was having a hard time growing okra.” I watched her face.

  “Myrna said she caught him red-handed in her cigar box.” She shook her new hair. “You know Myrna did me a favor by giving him a job when I left him. I knew he was going to need to keep busy.”

  “What about the okra patch?” Finn moved his head slightly as he looked at her.

  “His mama’s.” Her face went to stone.

  “That would be on Stanley and Inez’s property.” Finn eased back in the chair, crossed his leg, and rested his ankle on the opposite knee. Slowly he tapped the pad of his middle finger on the white table.

  Her face remained stern.

  “Why did you leave him?” I asked.

  “The truth?” she shot back.

  “Nothing better,” Finn chimed in.

  “I was tired of all the bickering between him and Stanley. Inez didn’t make it any better. Rae Lynn had really wanted to make a go of the crop. She’d gotten offers from some of those fancy organic stores, but the problem was that Rae Lynn gave Stanley the land with the crop and gave Owen her recipe. She knew they had their differences and that they would have to put them aside in order to work together to get the right soil-to-plant-food ratio that she’d figured out.”

  “But instead of bringing them together after her death, it divided them even more.”

  I wrote down everything she’d told me in my notebook.

  “Yes. Owen was obsessed with the soil on our property. He wanted Stanley’s soil after the will was read.” She frowned at the memory. “He spent every single dollar we had buying products to make the soil like Stanley’s. He even snuck over to Stanley’s and took a sample of the soil. God knows how much he spent. That was the last bit of money we had saved for his medicine and the last straw. So I left. When Myrna told me about him trying to steal from her, I knew it was all she wrote.”

  “All she wrote?” An odd mingling of wariness and amusement was in Finn’s eyes. Sandy was wearing him down.

  “He was all done. Gone bonkers.” She circled her finger around her ear. “Crazy.”

  “What was the medicine for?” I asked.

  “Arthritis. He was on Enbrel. It’s expensive and he was willing to spend all the money we had saved up to do the soil sample.” Her voice cracked. Tears floated on the edges of her lids.

  “He was obsessed with growing okra?” Finn’s brows furrowed.

  “Yes.” She turned her chin away from him.

  “I also understand that you requested no money from the divorce, but you did ask for the cookbook.” I had to look away. If she started crying, it might have an effect on my line of questioning, because I did have a heart. I glanced down at my bag, knowing the very thing she wanted was at my feet.

  “Because I was going to destroy it. I loved Owen with everything in my body. But that damn cookbook haunted him. Took his family from him. If it was out of his possession, I figured he’d have no option but to make peace.” She looked down at her hands cupped in her lap. “So I served him divorce papers, got a job, and am trying to fix myself up. It makes me feel good. If I didn’t, I’d probably had gone back to him.”

  Finn took over the questioning. “The day he died, you went to court. You lost. Did that make you mad?”

  “No. It made me sad.” She glared at Finn. “I knew the judge had just killed what was left of him, and I was right.”

  “What do you mean?” I asked. “Because he was murdered.”

  She dragged her chin down to her chest. Her head bobbled up and down. Her shoulders slumped. We gave her a minute to compose herself.

  “Sandy? Can you answer the question?” I asked again.

  “He spent every last dime he had figuring out what was in the soil sample so he could grow his own okra crop. It’s expensive, you know.” She shook her head. “He couldn’t afford to get his meds refilled to keep him from being in crippling pain. It killed him.”

  “No, he was murdered.” Finn uncrossed his legs and scooted his chair back. “And how do we know that you didn’t have an argument with him afterward and kill him, knowing Myrna would pretty much cover for you? The two of you could have put him in her greenhouse.”

  “Why would we do that? Why on earth would I kill him? He had nothing,” she said through gritted teeth. “Plus, I certainly wouldn’t have put him in my friend’s greenhouse.”

  “You might’ve wanted the recipe for yourself and the money that came with having some okra in the big organic store.” It seemed pretty reasonable coming out of my mouth. “Plus, Myrna is in the cook-off in Cottonwood, which gives her royalties for life. Easy money if she wins.”

  “I think it’s time for you to go.” Sandy stood up and pointed toward the front of the house. “I’m not going to let you accuse me of killing Owen without a lawyer present.”

  “Fine.” I pulled a card out of the shirt pocket of my sheriff’s uniform. “Tell your lawyer to give me a call.”

  I walked over to the door we had come in through. I opened it and pushed the garage-door button. Finn and I left her standing in her kitchen.

  “I never leave a house out of a different door from which I entered,” I said. “We are going to need all the luck we can get on this case, because there are way more secrets to uncover. Rowdy might have some of those answers.”

  Chapter Fourteen

  On the way back into town, I pulled into the Dixon’s Foodtown because I’d been hankering to make the okra recipe from Rae Lynn’s cookbook.

  “Why don’t you come by tonight and we can try our hand at Rae Lynn’s okra.” I wiggled my brows Finn’s way. “I guess we need to see what all the fuss is about.”

  “I think that’s a great idea,” Finn agreed.

  I left the windows down in the Jeep so Duke could hang out the window and took the composition notebook out of my bag. We walked inside.

  “You go grab the cornmeal,” I pointed to the recipe and showed
him the exact brand Rae Lynn had written down, “while I go grab the okra. Then I’ll meet you back in the organic seasoning aisle.”

  Buying all organic was going to be more expensive, but according to her recipe, we had to use the freshest crop, which in our case was the organic stuff.

  The recipe called for the okra to be a half inch in diameter, so I got bigger than that to cut it myself. I grabbed enough to make tonight and, if I really thought I had it down pat, to make for tomorrow’s Euchre night with the girls. Finn had also gotten the buttermilk on his way to meet me. I looked at the recipe and grabbed the salt, pepper, and garlic powder.

  “You don’t have any of these?” Finn asked. I shook my head. “Not even salt?”

  “Not even salt.” I reached up and grabbed the cayenne pepper and put it in the basket. “I’m telling you, I don’t cook.”

  “You know,” he took the basket from me and carried it up to the front, “the way to a man’s heart is his stomach.”

  “I guess I won’t be getting any man.” My eyes gazed over the checkout lanes, and I went to the farthest one on the right, where there were only two people ahead of us.

  “Well, well, well. Look who it is.” Toots Buford stuck her hands in her bright red hair, fluffing it up a little more. “How do you do, Officer Finn?” She winked.

  “Good today, Ms. Buford. How are you?” he asked. That smile of his could knock any woman off her game.

  “I’m doing good now that I’ve gotten a hello from you.” She shimmied her upper body over the conveyor belt.

  “What am I? An old dog bone?” I asked, squeezing my way in between Finn and Toots’s tits.

  “Oh, don’t give me that, Kenni Lowry.” She pulled back and ran the salt over the scanner. Her eyes drew down to the composition book. “I know what you are up to. I heard all about Owen’s death. I know that’s his book. The one he and Sandy were fighting over the other day.”

  “Excuse me?”

  My ears perked up.

  “That book.” She pointed her long red fingernail back over the conveyor, using the other hand to scan the rest of the stuff. “You gonna try your hand at the okra?” She shook the okra in the air before she scanned it. “They could never get it straight.”