DEAD AS a DOORNAIL Read online

  That did it for me.

  “Fine. I love the color.” I grabbed the dress out from Polly’s dainty fingers and held it up to my body. “I love the dress.” I couldn’t stress it enough. “Perfectly Posh,” I wiggled my fingers like spirit fingers, “here I come.”

  Chapter Three

  The moment I agreed to be Polly’s maid of honor, I regretted it. Not only was the dress awful, it didn’t fit me. I was a solid size eight, sometimes a ten, and it was a four. There was no way I was going to stop going to Ben’s Diner for my morning dose of coffee, gravy biscuits, and bacon to fit into the dress, as Polly had suggested with a look of horror on her face when she saw me stuffed into the dress like a summer sausage.

  After the wedding brigade left, I wasn’t much company. Finn had come back with all of my favorite dishes from Kim’s Buffet, but I was in no mood to eat. All the pushing and tugging Mama did to my body to even get me in the dress left me exhausted and mentally drained. Finn went home and I decided to go to bed. Maybe sleeping it off was what I needed.

  “Sheriff! Sheriff,” the urgent caller’s voice jolted me wide awake when I answered the phone at four o’clock the next morning.

  “Get over here right away. My wife is dead!” The desperate sound of the man woke me up, but the words “my wife is dead popped me straight out of bed.”

  Duke leapt off the bed. It wasn’t unusual for a small-town sheriff like me to give out their phone number or be listed in the phone book. Small town, small ways.

  “Who is this?” I asked, the phone stuck in between my ear and shoulder.

  I hopped around on one foot while trying to shove one leg and then the other in my sheriff’s pants.

  “Oh my God,” the man’s voice cried. “Lucy!” The sobs from the man dragged out. “Lucy Ellen baby, Lucy Ellen baby. Lucy Ellen baby, wake up.”

  “Lucy? Sir, I’m gonna need you to calm down. Tell me where you live.” The only Lucy Ellen I knew was Lucy Ellen Lowell and she looked perfectly healthy to me at Tiny Tina’s yesterday.

  “It’s Darnell Lowell. I just got home from huntin’ and she’s...she’s...not waking up.”

  “Darnell, don’t move her. I’ll be right there.” I clicked off my phone and immediately dialed EMT services to get an ambulance over there, which was what Lowell should’ve done before he called me. But sometimes things were done ass-backward around these parts.

  “Let’s go, Duke!” I yelled down the hall.

  It was too early in the morning to call Mrs. Brown, my next-door neighbor, to take care of him. I shoved some of his kibble in my pants pocket, grabbed a to-go coffee mug, ignoring the fact I was pouring what was left from yesterday morning’s coffee pot, and heated it in the microwave. While the coffee warmed, I strapped on my holster around my waist and attached the walkie-talkie on my shoulder.

  The last thing I grabbed as I ran out of my house was my bag with all the tools I needed for a crime scene and my Jeep Wagoneer keys. I opened the door to let Duke jump in and tugged the kibble out of my pocket, throwing it on the seat for him to gobble up since I didn’t know how long I was going to be at the Lowell house. I stuck my mug in the bean-bag coffee holder that laid across the hump in the floorboard and jabbed my keys in the ignition.

  In a fluid motion, I grabbed the old police siren from underneath my seat and licked the suction cup. With my free hand, I manually cranked down the driver’s window and stuck the siren up on the roof, skimming the side of it with the pad of my finger to turn on the flashing red light and siren.

  With the pedal to the floor and Duke hanging out the passenger window, the Wagoneer rattled down Broadway. Without stopping, I took a right at the end onto Main Street. The Lowells lived out in a subdivision off the bypass and the quickest way to get there was to drive south on Main Street until the flashing light to turn right on the bypass going toward Harrodsburg, another city near Cottonwood. It was a big deal with the input of the bypass around Cottonwood a few years back. The road was built around the outskirts of Cottonwood for unnecessary traffic through Cottonwood.

  The houses were ranch style and had been built back in the seventies. Each house had a fairly good amount of property. Just enough to have neighbors, but far away enough to feel like you were in the country with a horse or two or even a nice big garden.

  Darnell was pacing back and forth when I pulled up. There were a set of headlights barreling down the drive practically as soon as I got the Jeep in park. It was Finn in his Dodge Charger.

  “Kenni.” Darnell’s face was as white as the inside of a freshly cut turnip. His thick black curly hair sat on top his head. “What am I gonna do?” His eyes searched mine as he wrung his hands. “I swear she’s dead. I know how to feel for a pulse. I’m a hunter.”

  “Hold on. The ambulance will be here shortly.” I wanted to offer him some hope. The chill in the night air put a stiffness in my bones as if it knew and was telling me something. “Where is she?”

  “Right on in there.” His chin fell to his chest as he shook his head. He still had on his camouflage hunting overalls with a lime-green Henley shirt. The members of the Hunt Club had a rule that they had to wear something neon so they wouldn’t mistake one another for a deer or whatever it happened to be they were hunting.

  Finn walked up with his uniform shirt partially buttoned and his white tee underneath.

  “I heard your siren going off, so I jumped up and followed you.” Finn was a great deputy. A grateful smile floated across my lips. “What’s going on?”

  “Darnell, why don’t you wait right here while Deputy Vincent and I go in and see what’s going on.” I nodded and put my hand on his forearm to give him some sort of comfort.

  Finn and I walked through the front door. There was a small foyer with what looked like an office to the right. The foyer led into a hallway that if you looked clear down it, you could see the refrigerator. Before you reached the kitchen, there was a step-down family room. And that’s where I saw her.

  “Lucy Ellen Lowell.” I pointed at her feet sticking out from around the corner of the couch.

  “Is she dead?” Finn asked as we hurried to her side.

  I bent down. Her eyes were glazed over and her skin had already turned blue. I felt for a pulse that clearly wasn’t there on her neck and then on her wrist.

  “Dead as a doornail.” My poppa’s ghost stood in the dark corner of the room with his eyes focused on the lifeless body of Lucy Ellen Lowell.

  Chapter Four

  My heart pounded and my stomach churned. There was only one reason Poppa would be visiting me from the Great Beyond. That reason was murder, and the only dead person was Lucy Ellen Lowell, which, if you put two and two together, meant she was murdered.

  I knew her heart wasn’t going to start beating. I knew there wasn’t going to be a pulse no matter how many times I checked or where I felt for it. But I couldn’t say it out loud. Seeing Poppa’s ghost and interacting with him was the only secret I’d kept from Finn. You see, a year or so ago, there’d been little to no crime in Cottonwood, and of course I took pride in thinking that it was because I was such a badass sheriff. Truth be told, my Poppa’s ghost had been running off any would-be crime, not only keeping the crime rate low but also keeping me safe. That was good and dandy until two crimes happened at the same time in Cottonwood. Apparently even a ghost can’t be in two places at once, and that’s when I first saw the ghost of my poppa.

  Once those crimes were solved, he’d disappeared. It wasn’t until there was yet another murder in Cottonwood and then another that Poppa showed up again. Then I realized that Poppa’s ghost only showed up when there’d been a murder in Cottonwood and he was there as my deputy ghost. This was how I knew that Lucy Ellen Lowell was, in fact...murdered.

  Again, I reached down with my index finger and middle finger together, acting like I was checking for a pulse. My fingers moved onto her wris
t, but the pigment on her face told me she’d been there for a few hours. I tried to calculate the time of death, which I guessed was probably three hours ago, but I’d leave that bit of information for Max Bogus, the coroner, to determine.

  “I told you she’s a goner.” Poppa ghosted himself over to me. “And you’ve still got this one here?” His head thrust sideways, nodding at Finn.

  I bit my lip and kept a poker face, ignoring Poppa. He liked Finn as a deputy, just not as my boyfriend.

  “Do you think it was a heart attack?” Finn asked. “Looks like a heart attack. I don’t see any wounds or blood. It looks like she fell while doing a crossword puzzle.”

  I needed to stay calm and not blurt out that Lucy Ellen had been murdered because Finn couldn’t see my Poppa. Only Duke and I could see Poppa. Only I could talk to him.

  “We still need to process the scene just in case.” I knew this was going to make Finn question me and I had to sound calm even with the exploding feeling going off inside me that we had a homicide case on our hands.

  I took the toe of my shoe and slid a crossword-puzzle book out from underneath her.

  “Pfft. Doing a crossword puzzle.” Poppa brushed Finn off. “Someone was crossing her off of this earth. That’s what went on here.” Poppa stomped around, his eyes darting around the shag carpet that I was sure hadn’t been replaced since it was laid.

  “Will you go get my bag out of the Wagoneer and make sure Duke’s okay?” I asked Finn, who readily agreed.

  It’d give me a minute to talk to Sheriff Elmer Sims.

  “Hi, Poppa.” I smiled so big when we locked eyes. He was the reason I’d gotten into law enforcement and without him, the last few murders in Cottonwood would’ve taken a lot longer to solve. “I hate that something awful has happened to Lucy, but I do love seeing you.”

  “Kenni-bug.” Hearing my nickname from his lips brought a sense of peace that made me feel like I was going to be able to get down to the nitty gritty of this crime and fast.

  “Let’s get to work.” He vigorously rubbed his hands together.

  His broad shoulders dropped from underneath his brown sheriff’s uniform that we’d buried him in.

  “Lucy Ellen never hurt no one. She might be a little pushy and a bit nosy, but who’d do this to her?” he asked like he used to do when I was a child and he’d be working on a case. It was the beginning of the who, why, and why not game we’d play with one another to help solve the crimes. We were a dynamic duo while he was alive, and even after.

  “I don’t know. But she did make a few enemies over the last few weeks.” I looked down at my hands and at the Natural Nail fingernail color. I couldn’t help but recall how she’d acted yesterday when she showed up at Tiny Tina’s. “Tina Bowers was one of them. When Tina said she couldn’t do her nails, Lucy Ellen had a near fit in the shop. Even called Betty at dispatch to make a complaint.”

  “That can’t be.” Poppa squatted down near her torso, where her hands were off to the side. “Her nails look perfect to me.”

  There was a gun cabinet in the corner full of shotguns and a couple of handguns. Those always got my attention.

  “Perfectly Posh,” I gasped. My heart sank right into my feet. “Tiny Tina’s,” I whispered, knowing it was the exact match of Tina Bower’s homemade nail polish Lucy Ellen had tried to purchase the day before.

  I also knew that Tina didn’t sell her nail polish. Which begged the question: how did Lucy’s nails get painted the exact same color as Tina’s Perfectly Posh? My eyes shifted around the room to see if I could spot a bottle of nail polish. The snap of the closure on my utility belt echoed throughout the quiet house when I took my flashlight out and shined it around the room in the dark crevices. Nothing jumped out at me.

  And it didn’t help matters that I knew Tina and Lucy Ellen had gotten into it. I shuddered. The image of Tina dragging her finger across her neck was an image I wished I could forget, but her words were the most haunting part.

  “Maybe I should give her a hair treatment and let the scissors slip.”

  “Did you hear me?” Finn broke me out of my thoughts.

  “No. No. I’m sorry. I was just thinking.” I reached out and took the bag. “What were you saying?”

  I unzipped the bag and took out my camera and notepad. I quickly wrote down “Perfectly Posh” and snapped a couple of photos, especially of Lucy’s fingernails. I couldn’t be 100 percent sure, but I was darn near 95 percent sure that it was the same exact color.

  “I said that the EMTs are here and I told them to come on in.” His words were barely out of his mouth before they came in. “Why are you taking photos like it’s a crime scene?”

  “Hey guys,” I greeted them. None of us looked wide awake. It had to be around five a.m. by now and dawn was barely sneaking up on the horizon. “Do you think you could be careful? I’m not sure if this is a crime scene or not. I just need confirmation that she’s expired.”

  I’d always hated that word. Expired. Such a sad word.

  “We are sure it’s a crime scene.” Poppa’s ghost could get very frustrated with me really fast when he felt like I wasn’t listening to him.

  I gave him a blank stare. He glared and huffed to the side as the EMTs started to work on Lucy.

  “Who were you whispering to when I came back in?” Finn put the palm of his hand on the small of my back. It was nice and comforting.

  “Myself. Like always.” My standard reply when he’d find me talking to the air, even though I was actually talking to Poppa. “Let’s go talk to Darnell,” I suggested and headed back down the hallway. “Something doesn’t seem right here,” I said over my shoulder and walked out of the house.

  The fog had rolled in from the Kentucky River and lay across the yard in front of their house. The burnt-orange fall morning told me the sun was peeking out and would soon lift the fog, making it another beautiful fall day in the Bluegrass state.

  “Darnell, can you tell me how exactly you found Lucy Ellen?” I asked.

  I put down my bag and had my pencil ready to write down what he was telling me.

  “I left a couple of days ago with the boys for our annual trip to get my cabin and deer stand ready. Lucy Ellen was upset because she didn’t want to go to the mayor’s wedding alone. I kissed her goodbye and left. A couple of the guys had gotten some wild hogs, since it’s only wild hog season until we can hunt deer. The refrigerator at our hunting cabin was on the fritz so I told them I’d drive them home and see Lucy Ellen ’cause she left a message on my cell all upset over something.” His voice cracked as he recalled the last time he’d seen his wife. When he drew his hand up and through his hair, it exposed a handgun tucked in the waistband of his pants.

  “Do you have a concealed carry?” I nodded to the gun. I had a rule to keep myself protected before I could protect the rest of Cottonwood.

  “Yes, ma’am.” He nodded and pulled out his wallet where he kept his certificate.

  “What was she upset about? Did she say?” I asked, taking a good look at the paper before I gave it back to him.

  “Something about not being ready for the wedding and some appointments getting mixed up with her nails. She was always getting something lifted, tucked, and redone. I could never keep up.” His eyes clouded with tears. “Whatever made her happy made me happy. Me and that old gal been married for forty-five years. I was gonna retire soon and we were gonna live the life.” His lips pressed together in a duck-bill look.

  I offered a weak smile and wrote down what he’d said.

  The EMTs came out of the house with an empty gurney and their bags zipped up. They shook their heads.

  “We called Max Bogus and let him know. He should be here any minute.” One of them referred to the town’s coroner and owner of the only funeral home in Cottonwood.

  Naturally, it was the next step in the process of removing
the body even if it wasn’t a crime scene. Cottonwood was so small it only took someone ten minutes to drive across town, and that’s if they were driving twenty-five miles an hour and got stopped at all three traffic lights.

  “I told her to get her blood pressure checked out. She’d just gone to see Camille down in town for her diabetes.” Darnell’s eyes were filled with tears. “Do you think she just dropped dead of a heart attack? She always said she wanted to go fast. Did she go fast?”

  In the blink of an eye, there was a hearse rolling up the driveway.

  It was always hard to see people grieve. In my line of duty, I saw that more than I saw happy tears.

  “I’m sorry, Darnell. I can’t answer those questions for you right now.” I stepped out of the way as Max Bogus rolled the church cart past us and into the house.

  Chapter Five

  “Why did you take all that time to process the Lowell house when there wasn’t anything to point to a homicide?” Finn plucked the menu from between the salt and pepper shakers after we sat down in our regular table at Ben’s Diner.

  “Things aren’t always as they seem.” Poppa sighed and licked his lips when Ben showed up with three coffees. One for Finn and two for me. Ben was good at keeping my caffeine addiction fueled. “He should know that coming from a big-city police department.” Poppa scoffed.

  Ben pulled a dog treat from his front pocket and gave it to Duke. Duke wagged his tail and happily took a few scratches behind the ears from Ben.

  “Here you go.” Ben dropped a handful of creamer cups and the Cottonwood Chronicle on the table. He lifted the backward hat off his shaggy head of brown hair just enough to grab the pencil he’d stuck behind his ear. “What’ll ya have?”

  “The usual?” He looked at me, knowing I wanted some biscuits and gravy.