Southern Fried

by Tonya Kappes

  “Yes.” She bit on the edges of her lips. “About that...” She wagged her finger before she decided to walk away.

  “What was all that about?” Tibbie walked up, shuffling a deck of cards in her hands.

  “Nothing.” I glanced at Camille sitting at a table and then back at Tibbie. Cannabis? Okra crops? Cookbook? The words rolled around in my head. I put my hand on Tibbie’s forearm. “Say, I need to go.” I gestured to the door. “I’m sorry. I’m sure you can play without me tonight.”

  “No, no, we can’t, Kenni,” Tibbie scolded me. She shifted on her cowboy boots, her hip jutted to the side. “I had to practically pull Camille’s teeth to get her here.”

  “Yeah. Sorry,” I called and hurried out of the house. My phone was chirping a message when I got in and my heart sank when I saw Max’s name. Not that I wasn’t happy to hear if he had some news about Rowdy’s autopsy, but I was really praying it was someone who’d seen Duke.

  “Sheriff, it’s Max.” His voice boomed through the speaker. “Owen did have marijuana in his system so that means he’d smoked it pretty close to his death.” Which I already knew from Rowdy’s note. “I’m ruling that the antifreeze is definitely what killed him. Also, the bullet forensics from Rowdy Hart’s autopsy have come back from the lab. I hate to tell you this over voicemail, but I wanted you to know as soon as you could that it is impossible that Rowdy Hart committed suicide. He was shot from a far distance away. The bullet was built to explode in his brain as soon as it hit. The bullet shattered and all the fragments were still embedded. That’s why there wasn’t an exit wound.” He paused. “This means you don’t have the killer yet. And it also means they thought it would look like a suicide, but really aren’t smart enough to realize the difference in what the wounds would look like.”

  I kept my hands on the steering wheel to keep them from shaking.

  Camille said that Sandy and Owen had been to see her about cannabis. She also said that cannabis was cheap and it did help with arthritis. It was the perfect solution for Owen, but why kill him?

  I pulled out the file from my bag and opened it. The notes about the nights Owen had crept into the okra crop jumped out at me.

  “The second night was really the early morning. The pink sunspot blocked Owen’s actions.” I read the words I’d written on the paper. “Pink sunspot,” I repeated. “The pink sunspot. Pink converse high-tops.” My jaw dropped, remembering the shoes Sandy had on when Finn and I went to visit her. Sandy wanted that okra crop just as bad as Owen. “Sandy.” I snapped my fingers. “That is why she was being so nice to Owen up until he was murdered. It makes perfect sense. She only wanted that recipe book out of the divorce and when she didn’t get it...”

  I couldn’t help but believe that money and greed were what got Owen killed.

  The old Wagoneer was traveling so fast, I was afraid the wheels were going to fall right off. There was no time to waste. I had to get to Inez’s house as fast as I could. Especially since Toots said that Sandy was going with a bouquet of flowers to make amends. Stanley wasn’t home.

  “Amends my hiney.” I smacked the steering wheel. My phone chirped. “Hello, Tom.” I wedged the phone between my ear and shoulder.

  “Sheriff, your soil sample is back. And the findings are astonishing.” He started talking gibberish to me in a very excited voice. “Lignite, coco fibre, perlite, pumice, compost, peat moss, bone meal, bat guano, kelp meal, greensand, soybean meal, leonardite, k-mag, glacial rock dust, alfalfa meal, oyster shell flour, earthworm castings, and mycorrhizae.”

  “Huh?” I had no idea what he was talking about. “Can you speak in English?”

  “Your soil sample is one of the best soils for premium buds. I mean, top-notch marijuana growing. Better than any one crop soil I’ve ever seen.” His words made me bring the Jeep to a screeching halt.

  “So are you telling me that the soil sample I brought you is from a marijuana crop, not an okra crop?”

  Drugs? In Cottonwood?

  Use the soil from the first stalk for next season’s crop. Rae Lynn was trying to tell them how to grow marijuana. No wonder the okra crop was practically dead. Rae Lynn left the cookbook to Owen and the crop to Stanley. Without one, the other couldn’t grow the marijuana, nor make the millions off the organic store deal. But what kind of organic store sold marijuana?

  Regardless, she wanted them to get along after she died, but that backfired. Sandy’s words rang in my ear. Stanley couldn’t grow premium weed if he didn’t know the seeds he had to have, which according to the cookbook was first row, plant one. Owen needed Stanley’s permission to use the soil. Rae Lynn sure was a smart one. It wasn’t okra that Rae Lynn had been growing like everyone thought—it was marijuana.

  “Definitely not okra.” Tom Geary guffawed through the phone. “Weed. Grade-A bud. The kind you could sell in one of those shops out west.”

  “Like Colorado?” I questioned.

  “Definitely like Colorado,” he answered back.

  “You mean the grower could make money off selling the crop to one of those organic weed shops?” I had to get all my facts straight.

  “Definitely. There’s big bucks in that industry. I mean, life-changing dollars.” Tom told me everything I needed to know and more.

  “Thanks, Tom.” I threw the phone down on the seat and thumbed through the file again. I swear I had read something about Colorado. I flipped page after page until I came to the part about the organic store.

  “What if the organic store isn’t for the okra?” I asked out loud. Poppa appeared next to me. “You aren’t going to believe this.” I reached for my phone and dialed information. “I need a number for Can-B Organic Shop in Denver, Colorado,” I said to the information operator.

  Can-B. I shook my head. Instantly I knew it meant cannabis.

  “Yes, please connect me,” I told the operator when she asked if I wanted to pay the extra charge to be connected.

  It might be nighttime here, but there was a two-hour time difference between Kentucky and Colorado.

  “Mr. Wooten’s office,” the woman on the other end of the line answered.

  “Good evening.” I tried to sound as sweet as I could. “This is Sandy Godbey and I wanted to talk to Mr. Wooten.”

  “Mr. Wooten has said all he is going to say to you.” The woman’s voice was hard. “He already told you that if you didn’t have the necessary paperwork, then he wasn’t going to do business with you or your husband.”

  “I understand that,” I lied as my mind rolled over the details in Rae Lynn’s will. “But I do have new information about the product and the distribution.”

  “What type of information?” she asked.

  “I’d like to discuss that with Mr. Wooten.” I squeezed my eyes closed, giving good vibes through the phone.

  “Hold please.” Before I could say anything else, there was some elevator music blaring in the phone.

  My phone chirped. I pulled it away from my ear. The battery was only at ten percent.

  “Come on,” I encouraged Mr. Wooten to pick up before the phone died.

  “What can I do for you, Mrs. Godbey?” Mr. Wooten was a nasally fellow.

  “Can you tell me one more time what paperwork it is that you need in order for me to get the okra in your store?” I asked, wanting to make sure I’d said okra just in case my hunches about the weed was wrong.

  “Okra?” he questioned, a confused tone in his voice.

  “Yes.”

  “Are you sure you meant to call me, Mrs. Godbey? Or have you been using your own product?” He snorted.

  “Excuse me?” I asked.

  “Listen, I’m done playing games.” His voice turned serious. “The cannabis industry is a big business. Your product is one of the best I’ve ever tested. In fact, my arthritis has completely gone away. I’m willing to make a deal like your moth
er-in-law had stated, but unless you have the rights to the crop soil, then you and I are done.” A deep sigh crossed the phone line. “You’d be a fool not to come to some agreement with your other family members. If you can get your brother-in-law and his wife on board and sign the papers, each of you would be instant millionaires.” He paused and so did my thought process. “I’m sorry to hear about your husband.”

  Cannabis? Marijuana? Millionaires? Even though Poppa and I were throwing around the idea, it was now no longer just a thought. I had to be on to something. I knew it.

  I jerked the Wagoneer to a stop. Everything that Tom Geary had told me was making sense.

  “I’ll get back with you.” I clicked the off button.

  Stunned, I sat there for a second. Rowdy had said that he’d smoked pot with Owen.

  “What happened?” Poppa appeared next to me.

  Slowly I turned my head toward him. My mouth gaped open. It closed and opened a few times, but nothing came out.

  My mouth was dry. I gulped.

  “It all makes sense now.” I choked out the words.

  “What?” Poppa asked.

  “Cannabis.”

  The word sounded so funny coming out of my mouth. I hit the internet button on my phone and typed in “okra plant.” If my hunches were right, I knew what was going on.

  I pushed down on the walkie-talkie to tell Finn to meet me there, but realized he was still out of town. I was going to have to confront Sandy alone. And without Duke.

  I held the wheel with one hand and grabbed the old siren off the floorboard. With my eyes glued to the road, I rolled down my window, licked the suction cup, and stuck the beacon on top of the roof. The colors twirled and swirled on the road ahead of me, lighting up the night.

  The rush of it all had my adrenaline pumping. This was the chase that hooked us cops like a drug. It was the rush that was instilled in our memories and the times we lived for. These type of events might’ve been few and far between, but they were embedded on our soul.

  At the beginning of Catnip Road, I briefly brought the Jeep to a halt and pulled in the siren. I didn’t want to let them know I was there.

  “Rae Lynn wasn’t growing an okra crop in that first row.” I showed Poppa my phone. “That is a pot plant. Those are pot leaves and they look a lot like okra leaves. That first row in Rae Lynn’s crop is pot, Poppa. Marijuana.”

  “You mean to tell me she was growing wacky tobaccy?” Poppa’s face contorted.

  “And since it’s illegal in Kentucky, the organic company she made a deal with is in Colorado. Rae Lynn had disguised how to grow her illegal activities in the recipe book so if anyone found the book, they wouldn’t know what she was talking about.”

  “Huh?” Poppa asked.

  “Not only that, the recipe clearly states to take the first seeds from the first row for the new crop. Owen and Stanley needed each other’s inheritance to get the Can-B deal, which was going to make them millions,” I continued to ramble.

  It was all making sense to me.

  “Huh?” Poppa asked again.

  “Remember how the okra crop was practically dead the night we snuck over there?” I asked Poppa.

  He nodded.

  “The dead stuff was the real okra crop. But remember how the first stalk in the first row was actually growing and we commented on how the flowers had budded?” I asked and he just looked stunned. “That’s the pot plant and exactly where Owen had taken the soil. Only he followed the recipe because he didn’t know it was actually pot. Rae Lynn gave Owen the recipe and Stanley the land so they could keep growing the marijuana as a family business.”

  “What does that have to do with Sandy?” Poppa asked.

  “I’m not sure, but if I had to guess, I’d say she was onto the pot-growing operation. Somehow I think she knew. She stayed all chummy with Owen up until the day of his death when he wouldn’t turn over the recipe book after she lost in court.” I snapped my finger. “And they’d gone to see Dr. Shively about the medical marijuana together. I can only guess that Owen found out that his soil sample was pot and since he’d been smoking with Rowdy, his arthritis was feeling better, which lead him to seek out the medical marijuana.”

  “Your phone call confirms that Sandy has been in contact with Can-B and Mr. Wooten,” Poppa said. “Which means she knew about the operation. But did Stanley know?”

  “I don’t think so, because Mr. Wooten said that he needed the papers signed by Stanley and Inez.” My heart nearly stopped.

  I remember Inez saying something about Stanley being out of town, and if she was out there on their farm all alone and Sandy was going to take her flowers, I had a feeling Inez might be in trouble.

  “Only Sandy didn’t know the cookbook was actually a composition notebook.” Poppa’s eyes drew down to the space between us, where I had my bag with the cookbook tucked inside.

  “Right,” I agreed. “Owen found out about the operation and for some reason she killed him. Sandy is supposed to be with Inez right now.”

  Poppa grabbed the handle of the door and threw his pointer finger in front of him, pointing to the road. “Hit it. Maybe we can save Inez.”

  Chapter Twenty-Three

  Poppa’s face froze and he held on tight as the Jeep zoomed down Catnip Road.

  “I hope we aren’t too late.” The closer we got to Stanley’s driveway, the faster the Wagoneer went. “I’m scared Inez is going to be the next victim.”

  Poppa looked too scared to say anything. Finally, he quipped, “If you don’t slow down, it will be too late.”

  “At this point, I wouldn’t put it past Sandy to go in Inez’s house, and if Inez didn’t cooperate with Rae Lynn’s wishes on growing the cannabis to sell out west, she’d kill her. Especially with Stanley in Michigan.” I didn’t pay too much attention to him talking about my driving. “I can’t believe we didn’t notice Sandy’s pink high tops in Stanley’s video.”

  It was the subtle and small things that helped put the pieces of Owen’s and Rowdy’s murders together.

  If there was the slightest chance that Sandy heard my siren, I wasn’t convinced she wouldn’t kill Inez to keep her silent and run off. It was best if I used my senses and parked down the street, armed and ready to pounce.

  “I keep wondering if Stanley knew about the crop because he stopped farming the okra right after he moved into Rae Lynn’s house. Stanley wasn’t going to have any part of growing marijuana. When Mr. Wooten told me on the phone to have my brother-in-law and his wife sign them, it would make sense that he didn’t,” I said.

  “I have to say that Owen did know if he’d gone to Dr. Shively and asked about the medical marijuana. In that case, poor Rowdy was just a bystander.”

  “Right. Rowdy was just being a good friend to Owen by giving him a job and a shoulder to lean on. He had a little weed to smoke, which they probably did after work. Owen’s lips started flapping and I bet he told Rowdy everything.”

  “Owen and Sandy both went into the crop. The second time Stanley thought it was only Owen, but it was really Owen and Sandy, and when the sun was coming up, the pink sparkle was where the morning sun perfectly hit her sparkly pink Converse shoes.”

  “Rowdy was just an innocent bystander because he was a liability to Sandy after Owen confessed to Sandy that he told Rowdy.” Everything was again fitting together a little perfectly, like it had with Rowdy as the killer, but now that the ballistics came back, I was more sure than ever that Sandy Godbey had not only killed Owen, but also Rowdy.

  I jerked my bag up from the floorboard and grabbed my handgun out of it.

  “Don’t you need to call backup?” Poppa asked.

  “Who am I going to call?” I glanced over at him. “Finn is in Chicago until tomorrow and Lonnie is already putting together a campaign. I’m going to need your eyes.”

  “You got i
t, Sheriff.” Poppa grinned ear to ear.

  It was the first time he’d called me Sheriff.

  I headed up the side of the property in the low area of the woods because my cowboy boots would be clunky on the gravel drive. I didn’t want to alert Sandy I was there at all. When I got closer to the house, I could see Sandy’s car was pulled up right to the front porch. The light was on.

  There was a shadow that moved in one of the front windows. I unsnapped my revolver and straightened my arms with my gun in my grip and my finger on the trigger. I assessed the ways into the house. She was in the front, which would make the back a better choice to try to slip in and get my bearings about me and calculate a plan.

  If Sandy had Inez in a compromising position, I’d have to go in full force. There was no way of knowing until I got inside. These were the types of situations the academy trained me for.

  The adrenaline pumped in my veins with each tiptoe closer and closer to the side of the house. I put my back up against the brick and brought my hands up in the prayer position with the barrel pointing to the heavens. I was going to need all the help I could get.

  I mouthed a little prayer before I stumbled over a chain and cursed under my breath, nearly knocking myself out from hitting the doghouse.

  That mangy mutt better stay in your Jeep. I remembered Stanley’s displeasure when I’d come to get the surveillance. If he didn’t like dogs, why did he have a doghouse? I ran my hand over the roof of the doghouse and wondered if Rae Lynn kept a dog and if she did, was it to keep her pot-growing scheme protected? Or did Stanley really have a dog and didn’t want Duke to find it?

  Movement in the doghouse made me pause. I closed my eyes and took a deep breath. If I moved and there was a guard dog in there, then it could bark to high heaven, bite me, or worse, expose that I was out here.

  I stopped. The movement stopped. A whimper echoed. I grabbed my phone and tried to turn on the flashlight, but it’d not charged enough and was dead again. Slowly I bent down and used one eye to peer in the side of the doghouse. The animal moved. It was big. It whimpered again.