Fixin' To Die (A Kenni Lowry Mystery Book 1) (4 page)

Finn busted out laughing, shaking his head. His eyes danced with a little twinkle and his teeth sparkled.

“You don’t have a fancy GPS on your phone?” I asked, taking a step closer to the order window.

“I do, but the cell service is spotty around here.” He let out a deep sigh.

“Ohio?” I asked, trying to figure out where his accent came from.

“What?” Finn’s brows furrowed.

“You’re from Ohio?” I asked, patting my leg for Duke to come back to me.

It only made sense that Finn was from Ohio. It wasn’t too far from Cottonwood and he definitely wasn’t from anywhere in Kentucky.

He shook his head. “Chicago. But I’ve been with the Kentucky State Police Reserve Unit for a few years now. What kind of café is this?”

“Something Jolee Fischer came up with to piss Ben Harrison off.” I smiled fondly, remembering the fight the two of them had at the town council meeting. After that night, Jolee was on a mission to make Ben miserable and she was doing a pretty good job of it. “Jolee graduated from culinary school and thought she’d land a cooking job at Ben’s. He handed her an apron and an ordering pad.” I pointed to the yellow clapboard home behind us and then to the silver streamlined trailer. “That’s when Jolee bought this camper and turned it into a food truck. Genius idea, really.” I ran my hand over Duke, giving him a good scratch behind his ears, his soft spot. “She travels to local businesses and sets up shop. Like Lulu’s Boutique.” I pointed back to the house. “Lulu hosts a crochet class, knitting class, beading class…come to think of it, she teaches a lot of classes.” I waved my hand in the air, trying to forget I had my monthly Euchre group coming up.

They would definitely bombard me with questions about the murder, plus my mama would be there. Maybe not, since Missy Jennings was ill.

“Jolee shows up with little goodies for them to buy and take into class. She just kinda shows up everywhere. With the right permits, of course.” I made sure he knew I was doing everything right so he couldn’t go back to the state police and say I wasn’t doing my job. Not that I would care, it just wasn’t a hassle I needed.

“How does this work here?” Finn looked at his fancy gold watch I was sure didn’t come from the local Walmart.

“You order from Jolee’s food truck and take it into Lulu’s craft room to eat at one of the tables. The two of them have some sort of commission percentage worked out. This way Jolee doesn’t have the overhead a restaurant would.” It all made perfect sense to me.

Finn took a couple steps up to the pop-out counter. He was so confused he didn’t know whether to scratch his fancy watch or wind his ass.

I stepped up to the window.

“What’llyahave?” Jolee’s words strung together, leaving Finn with a dazed look. Her smile grew with each chomp of her gum. Her blond hair was just long enough to be parted into pigtails that dangled right past her cheek. The freckles that dotted the bridge of her nose made it look like she had a nice bronze tan all year round.

His mouth hung slightly open, his brows furrowed.

“Well?” I shrugged.

“Excuse me.” Finn leaned a little closer. “What did you say?”

“To eat?” Jolee jerked her head back. “Where you from?”

“Chicago,” I said before he had time to answer.

“Oh. A Yank.” She took a couple good chomps of her gum, moving it from one side to the other. “I suggest the Kentucky hot brown sandwich. A little oozy, but a whole lot of goodness.” She shifted to the side and planted her hand on her bony hip, waiting for Finn to agree with her.

“I’ll just have a plain turkey on white, thank you.”

“Yankee,” Jolee scoffed and turned her back on us.

“Aren’t you ordering?” he asked.

“She knows what I want.” I waited patiently but my taste buds were already oozing.

“Sunny Goose Sammy for you.” Jolee put my usual in a paper carton on top of the counter, a cup of coffee next to it. “And a Yankee sandwich for you.” She sat Finn’s plain turkey sandwich next to mine.

“Pepsi?” Finn asked.

“You didn’t order a Coke.” Jolee was getting a little feisty.

“Right, I’m ordering a Pepsi…” he said, trying to figure her out.

“Well.” She straightened her shoulders and twirled one of her pigtails with her finger. “When you ask nicely.” She grinned back. “One problem, we only serve Coke.”

“That’s fine,” Finn stuttered, not knowing how to handle Jolee.

“Every little thing…” The sounds of an acoustic guitar and a low almost-whisper of a voice sang the late great Bob Marley’s song. Very fitting for the community at this time.

Finn pulled a dollar out of his pocket when we walked by the guitarist and glanced around. “Where’s his tip jar?” he asked. His eyes held a sheen of purpose.

“Oh, he doesn’t take tips.” I nodded over to the steps leading up to Lulu’s Boutique craft room. “He just plays around town to get in practice for his band.”

“Huh.” Finn’s brows crossed.

I ordered Duke not to move away from the door. Who was I kidding? The dog did what he wanted. Everyone in town knew him, so if he did meander off, he’d be fine.

We walked inside the craft room where there were only two small tables that weren’t taken.

“You weren’t kidding when you said Jolee came up with a great idea.” Finn looked around the room. The aroma of Jolee’s home-cooking swirled into the air.

“We are eating high on the hog now.” My mouth watered because I knew what I was about to eat.

“How about over there?” His head flung in the direction of a table in the back corner of the room next to the shelf of unopened yarns.

We weaved our way in and out of the filled chairs. I tried not to make eye contact with too many people, knowing if I did they would ask me about Doc Walton.

When we sat down, Finn set the files between us and grabbed his sandwich, taking a big bite out of it.

I tapped the files. “We can just divide them in half. You take the first half and I’ll take the second.”

He nodded and kept eating.

I took a bite of my sandwich and sat it back in the carton. I thumbed through the stack. There were names I recognized. Names that weren’t alarming or had any reason to kill Doc Walton. My eyes scanned down the tabs of the files. It was going to take a while to go and see all these people. Surely there was an answer to who the killer was in this stack.

“Calling all units! Calling all units!” Betty’s shrill voice made me jump as it shrieked over the walkie-talkie. Immediately I scrolled the volume button down, making Betty’s voice come through as a whisper.

“What the hell is that?” Finn jerked up, looking at me as if I had two heads. His eyes drew to the walkie-talkie.

“My radio.” I patted it and tilted my ear to my shoulder.

“It’s a walkie-talkie. Is that what you use to communicate with dispatch?” he asked.

I nodded, trying to listen to him and Betty at the same time.

“You need to look into the earpieces that are less bulky and where no one can hear the dispatcher.” Finn looked over both of his shoulders. I looked too. He was right. Everyone in the room had stopped talking and eating, all eyes on me.

“Kenni, robbery in progress at White’s Jewelry. Polly Parker called.” Betty didn’t even wait until I responded to her calling-all-units plea.

“Grab the files.” I jumped up and scooped up my food. A fancy new earpiece would have to wait. “We’ve got to go.”

I waved toward Jolee on my way to my Jeep and pointed at Duke. It was our universal signal for her to take him home for me during her Meals On Wheels run. She gave the thumbs up and called him over.

I jumped in the Jeep, licked the suction cup on the old beacon, stuck it on top of the roof, and flipped on the siren.

Chapter Four

The outside of the jewelry store looked as it did every day. The gray awning above the double doors of the shop flapped in the light breeze. “White’s Jewelry” was written in calligraphy across the front windows of the shop with two solitaire diamond outlines on each side.

“It doesn’t look like a break-in from out here,” Finn noted and walked the perimeter of the building. “I’ll go secure the back,” he said and I agreed, heading inside.

“Thank God you’re here.” Polly Parker threw her hands up in the air. She stood behind the shattered glass counter.

“Did you check the back?” I asked, my hand on the holster. The shop needed to be secured, but I didn’t want to alarm Polly.

“Of course I did.” Polly rolled her eyes and stuck her hand on her hips.

“You stay right there and don’t move.” I walked around the counter. I noticed a crowbar on the floor. I stepped over it and walked to the cracked door behind Polly, using the toe of my boot to push it open. The light was on. The room had jewelry cleaning equipment, some tools for making jewelry, and a door that led out to the alleyway.

“I told you nothing was back there,” Polly huffed. She jumped when someone pounded on the back room door.

“Sheriff,” Finn called from behind the closed door.

I walked over and let him in.

“Everything looks fine from around and behind the building. It’s all secure.” He walked up front with me.

“I’m going to question Polly. You walk around the shop and see if you notice anything out of place.” I unzipped my bag and took out the tape recorder. “There’s a crowbar next to the busted-up counter, which I assume is what was used to shatter the glass.”

“I’ll see if there are any prints and gather it for evidence.” Finn went straight to the crowbar and bent down.

“Who are you?” Polly’s little button nose curled, her body shifting toward Finn.

“He’s with the reserves.” My eyes drifted to the cloth around his neck.

There was no sense in going into the details of who Finn was. Most of the time the reserves would send someone, but it wasn’t unusual for them to get switched in the middle of investigations.

I sat a tape recorder on the glass counter of White’s Jewelry right in front of Polly Parker and pressed the record button.

“Tell me exactly what happened.” I took out my pad of paper and a pen.

Polly was suddenly visibly shaken up when I asked her the question. Much different than a moment ago. She wrung her petite hands together, her diamonds clicking against each other as each finger rolled over the top of them.

“Is this on?” Polly leaned over the tape recorder. The edges of her chopped blond hair dangled in a perfect line.

“Yes. It is.” I tried to give her an encouraging smile. “Can you tell me what happened?”

“Sonofabitch thought he was going to get away with it.” It was like she suddenly had an audience. Her perfectly lined pink pouty mouth contorted, her nose snarled, and she spat between her veneers I was sure were stuck in her small mouth by Dr. Beverly—Bev for short—Houston.

I was no dentist by any stretch of the imagination, but I knew veneers weren’t supposed to make your mouth resemble that of a horse, which Polly’s did. Her teeth were too big for her five-foot-two-inch, one-hundred-pound frame and small face. But she didn’t care. She yammered on and on about how she wasn’t going to let the thief get away and she was sure it was one of the new seedy residents at the new condominium complex overlooking the river.

“Probably robbed Doc Walton thinking he had a lot of money since he was an old doctor and all,” she rambled, making sure she spoke as close to the tape recorder as possible without putting her lips on it. “But when he didn’t have nothing to give, I bet they shanked him and decided to come where there was money for sure.” Her bloodshot eyes slid up, catching mine for a split second. “Toots.” She gasped, putting her hand up over her mouth. “Is Toots okay?” she asked about her best friend. “Did the killer get her?” Her head bobbed up and down like one of those bobble-heads. Her blue eyes didn’t blink once. The pearls around her neck didn’t move, distracting me; I couldn’t figure out for the life of me how they stayed still with each bobble. She waved her hand back and forth, her wrist missing the pearl bracelet with the monogrammed circle charm she always wore.

“Toots is fine,” I assured her. I got back to writing down the main points of her day, and starting with the first one sounded like a pretty good idea. “Tell me exactly what you saw when you first unlocked the door.”

“Oh my stars, Kenni Lowry. I told you everything already. Did you not get it?” She tried to close her lips around those big teeth. “Don’t tell me my daddy is right about you and this job, because I have paid all hell for two years for voting for you. And your mama and daddy are just beside themselves. My daddy said he would take himself to his own grave if I ever took a job as a sheriff. A man’s job.” She crossed her arms.

Keep calm, keep calm.
That voice drifted past me.

“Are you okay?” Polly asked.

I blinked a few times, a fake grin across my face, trying to keep my crazy at bay. “I understand you are upset and you have been violated.” I decided to listen to my conscience and keep calm.

Polly was such a pretty princess daddy’s girl that she was used to being coddled and handled with kid gloves even though she was only one year younger than me.

“But I have to know every single detail. Please take your time and try to remember everything.” I looked down at my pad of paper and tried to put the voice in the back of my head.

“I told you I bet it’s the same man who killed Doc Walton.” Her voice escalated to a high-pitch twang with a little bit of a whine. “But this looks just like something that would come out of that seedy place.” She pointed to the ground behind the counter.

I walked around and looked at the symbol spray-painted on the tight-threaded tan carpet.

“That’s some sort of graffiti shit you see in a big city, and I bet some of those hoodlums in those condos did it. Damn Doolittle Bowman.” Polly spat ugly words out of her pretty mouth when she cursed Cottonwood’s town council president for pushing the vote through to build condominiums.

I took my camera out of my bag and took a couple of pictures of the symbol on the carpet. It reminded me of Chinese writing, which I knew nothing about, but I bet my good buddy Google would.

“Please do not go spreading rumors about the condominium owners. There is no evidence anyone living there has anything to do with this crime.” I took pictures from all angles. “Where is your bracelet?”

There was an uncomfortable silence between us.

“I…” She rubbed her hand on her wrist. “I had taken it off here so I could clean it.” Her head jerked around. Her eyes darted about. “Oh my God! They stole my bracelet. I left it right there.” She pointed to the cleaning cloth on top of the counter. “I was going to finish cleaning it today.”

“Hello?” a voice called from the front door of the jewelry store. I reached over and clicked off the tape recorder.

“Mayor!” Polly jumped up and ran around the counter, throwing her hands around Mayor Chance Ryland’s waist, letting out a big sob. “Kenni has lost her cotton pickin’ mind.”

“Now, now.” Chance rubbed a flat palm down Polly’s back. “Your daddy is on the way to come get you and take you home.”

The mayor and Pete Parker had been long time friends. To my understanding Mayor Ryland was like an uncle to Polly, but my uncle never patted me like that. There was a rumor running around the women’s social circles about an affair between the two. My ick factor shot up just thinking about it. But I’d thought it was just a rumor, like most small-town gossip.

Mayor Ryland was debonair and fit for a man in his sixties. His black hair was slicked back, his strong jaw tensed. When he started running, dying his hair black, and growing the goatee along with a lot of manscaping, the rumor started that he was sleeping with Polly Parker. Seeing them firsthand, clinging together, I wouldn’t doubt it.

“Thank you for your interest, Mayor, but if you don’t mind stepping outside, this is a crime scene.” I spoke in a calm, matter-of-fact tone. “And when Pete gets here, you can tell him we will send Polly out when we are finished questioning her.”

“Kenni, surely you can understand Polly has been through an ordeal here.” Chance’s hand moved slowly up and down Polly’s back.

Finn, who’d been quietly observing while I questioned Polly, looked at me. Our eyes met with amusement. I was used to the small-town politics and how people protected their own at any level.

“I guess you need to listen to Sheriff Lowry.” He let go of Polly, giving her a “be a good girl” nod before slamming the front door of White’s behind him.

“I’m going to go in the back and see if anything jumps out at me.” Finn stepped in the back room.

I waited a few seconds to collect my thoughts and take a few deep breaths before I continued my line of questioning with Polly.

“Why were you here today?” I asked. Polly didn’t own the place, Viola White did, and Viola was rarely one to miss a day at the store.

“I’m filling in for Mrs. White because she has a terrible head cold.” The southern charm dripped out of Polly’s mouth like honey. Polly bit the corner of her mouth. She shook her finger at me. “Mrs. White said she’d gone to see if she could get an appointment with Doc Walton, which was how I found out about Doc Walton, you know.” She ran her skinny finger across her neck.

I was not entertained. “Keep going,” I said flatly.

“There were no visible signs of a break-in, so I entered. I had to even use my key.” She gestured to the counter. “Then I came in to put my purse up and saw this.” She pointed to the broken cases and the floor with the spray-painted mural.

“Just like the movies.” Polly sighed slowly. “Then I immediately called 911.”

“You didn’t see a robber?” I asked. Mr. Parker parked his fancy Cadillac in front of the jewelry store in a handicap spot. I held back on giving him a ticket. The Parkers always thought they were above the law and that always bothered me.

If I recalled from Betty’s distress call, she had said it was a robbery in progress.

“No.” Slowly she shook her head, bob not moving. “Still, it’s not every day a murder and a robbery occur in Cottonwood. Hell,” she cackled, “it’s not every year. Every other year.” She made it sound much worse each time she opened her mouth.

“You can go. Don’t be surprised if I have you come down to the station for some more questions.”

“Well, Kenni Lowry, if I didn’t know better, I’d think you think I did this,” she snarled. Her eyes lowered, glaring at me, but quickly shot up when she looked at Finn, who had come back into the room a few minutes ago. Her nose even uncurled, allowing her lips to part in a big grin, exposing those damn veneers. She walked out the door.

“She’s a wild card.” Finn’s voice held an entertained tone. “She’s something.”

“Polly is something all right. Don’t get me started.” I bit back my true feelings for her. Hillbilly with money. Daddy’s money. Her odd behavior as a victim really set my internal radar off. She wasn’t there when the theft occurred. And she wasn’t held hostage or even saw a gun. I made a mental note to watch her behavior. I wasn’t so sure she didn’t have something to do with this. I didn’t have a connection, but something felt off.

“What in the hell is around your neck?” I asked Finn, keeping my observations about Polly to myself.

“Your mom’s scarf from Lulu. She gave it to me after you jumped in line at the food truck and told me to give it to you.” He rubbed down it. “You don’t think I look good?”

“Take it off,” I ordered, rolling my eyes.

“Lulu wouldn’t let me leave without it.” He uncurled the uneven scarf from around his neck. “I’d keep it, but it’s not my initials,” Finn joked, lessening the tension around us.

“Funny.” I grabbed the scarf from his grip. “It’s not nice to make fun of people. Ms. Lulu probably worked really hard on this scarf.”

I wasn’t about to tell him that she was really trying to work hard on repairing my relationship with my mother. A relationship that wasn’t going to be repaired until I decided not to be sheriff.

“You know…” He paused, holding the scarf out between us in a taunting way. When I went to grab it, he hoisted it up in the air away from my hands. “You should probably go see your mom.”

“Got it!” I grabbed the free dangling end and tugged. I tugged again, realizing he wasn’t going to let go. My eyes slid up his arm, along his shoulder, along his neckline, and found his eyes. His suit jacket was snug around his arm, taut around the seam where the sleeve met the shoulder. I tossed the idea around of what he might look like under the suit, then shook myself back to the conversation. So much for not telling him about the real reason Lulu wanted me to take the scarf to my mom.

“My mama is not part of an investigation or a crime.” I jerked the scarf, forced to take a few steps backward when he released it, and tried not to land on my hinny.

“It’s sort of a crime not to talk to the only mother you have.” He crossed his arms and parted his legs in that stance the TV cops always did.

“You know what…” I wasn’t about to tell this stranger my problems. They had nothing to do with the death of Doc Walton or the break-in at White’s Jewelry. “Let’s stick with catching the bad guys.”

“Guys?” he questioned me.

“Yeah. Guys.”

“What makes you think it’s guys and not girls?”

“What?” A scowl crossed my face and I tried to erase it, but I couldn’t. It was one of those moments when your mama tells you that if you make that face it will freeze that way. Well, mine just might have frozen.

“What makes you so sure guys did this?” he asked. “If you think about it, Doc Walton has several stab wounds that really didn’t make any sense. They were all over. Plus, I’m not so sure it was an actual knife that was used as the weapon. And I’ve been around enough crime scenes to know he probably laid there and bled out from his wounds. The stab wounds weren’t deep. Just very many. Which makes me believe…” Finn did a lot of stabbing motions in the air. “The killer was provoked by something they were talking about and she grabbed something sharp and began stabbing him, maybe not strong enough to penetrate deep.”

“Good point.” I threw the scarf back on his shoulder.

I wasn’t going to discount what Finn was saying, nor was I going to agree with it all. As far as I knew, Doc Walton didn’t have any enemies and had no reason for someone to kill him. And this wasn’t some big city where strange and unusual ways of killing someone occurred.