If Fried Chicken Could Fly (9 page)

“Ha! The more I say the word, the more I like it.”

I hadn’t been prepared for the mess inside. It seemed worse in the daylight and smelled so sour and charred, I wondered if Jim should have shut us down. Would the students be able to prepare the cook-off meals in a couple days? As I opened windows for ventilation, I thought about taking the cupcake ingredients home and preparing them there. But there wasn’t enough time to divert off course, so I hoped for another strong wind or two.

“Boy, Betts, this looks like it could have gotten bad quickly.”

“I know. The fire marshal said we got lucky.”

“I’m glad no one got hurt. I guess, except for Everett, that is.”

“Yeah, except for Everett. I’ve got to get someone in here to clean this up, but for now we’ll just work on the other side.”

Fortunately, the bad odor seemed to clear away and was quickly replaced by good baking smells, and the kitchen area was so large that as we worked at the opposite end we could almost forget there was a mess in the near vicinity.

Cooking or baking with Jake was an unforgettable experience. He loved scents associated with foods and spices. He’d sniff the air around him as he stirred or blended or mixed and make comments like “Divine” or “Sublime” or “Weak” or “So not right.” We pulled out many spoons when he was helping because he believed religiously in taste testing. Gram wouldn’t let him double dip, and when she once caught him putting his finger into some cookie batter, I thought her head might pop off her neck. She scolded him and then told him that he was required to use spoons, one per dip, and then he’d have to clean them up. Since that moment, he had done as he was instructed.

He was quieter than normal today as I replayed the events of the previous evening. He listened intently, and we both forgot the history lesson about Jerome Cowbender he’d promised to share.

As I spoke, I became increasingly worried. Everett was dead, and if Gram had lied about seeing him earlier in the day, she might have known he was married. I thought back to Everett’s wife and her certain accusation. The zip of optimism I’d felt earlier was unzipping and diminishing quickly.

Jake saw my concern, and as we put a batch of cupcakes into the oven he changed the subject with the same hope I’d had in the cemetery—to add some relief or levity to the situation.

“You want to hear about my date last night?” he said as he leaned against a butcher block table and wiped his hands on a towel.

“You had a date? Of course I want the details.”

“My date was the new kindergarten teacher, Sarah O’Neill.”

“I think I know who she is and she’s very pretty.”

“Very. She’s also very quiet and perhaps a bit reserved for my boisterousness.”

“Perhaps you could use some ‘reserved.’ ”

Jake waved away the thinly veiled insult. “We’ll see. We did have fun, but it most definitely wasn’t lurve at first sight.”

“Love at first sight is a bunch of hooey, Gram would say.”

“This from the person who hasn’t given another man a fair chance since the second she laid eyes on Cliff Sebastian.” Jake put his fingers over his mouth. “I’m sorry. That was not fair and probably mean considering he’s back in town.” His apology was sincere.

“That’s okay. You’re probably right.” I adjusted my ponytail.

“No. No, I’m not. I have no idea what made me say that. Forgive?” He fake-punched me in the arm.

“Yeah,” I said. “I suppose.”

“Good. I really am sorry. I don’t know anything, by the way, if you wanted to ask. I haven’t met his family. I just heard he was back yesterday. That’s the real reason I stopped by—today and yesterday, to make sure you’re okay. Miz didn’t tell you?”

“I’m fine. Thanks. No, she didn’t say a word.”

Something made some sort of musical bell sound. “Oop, that’s me.” He pulled his cell phone out of his pocket. “Hello.
Uh-huh. Sure. Okay, on my way.” He disconnected. “Gotta go, love. The tourist office is being slammed with large-group tour calls. They need some help answering the phones. You okay without me?”

“Got it covered,” I said.

Jake stood on his tiptoes and kissed my cheek. “Sorry for all the drama. Call me—I’ll check in with you later today.”

I nodded and watched him hurry out of the kitchen. He loved Broken Rope, and he thrived in the summer when he could don his uniform and pretend to be someone else. His association with the Historical Society had been one of the best things to happen to the town. And he had turned his volunteer role into something much larger. Not only was he the poetry-reciting fake sheriff, but he’d also tackled the enormous task of organizing the town’s messy piles of historical archives. His hard work and loyalty didn’t stop there, though. If the commission needed help with the phones, or anything for that matter, Jake was there to lend a hand.

Despite my distracted mind and the messy kitchen, the cupcakes turned out to be perfect: the right color red, light, chocolaty, and topped with a cream cheese frosting that Jake would have loved to sample. Gram’s recipes were almost fail-proof, and I’d made them all so many times that even distractions didn’t throw me off my game.

Gram had never minded sharing her recipes, but writing them down had been one of her biggest challenges when she opened the school. She’d learned to cook by watching her mother and her grandmother. They cooked using their intuition, adding just the right ingredients at just the right time, and all without the use of measuring equipment.
“People pay better attention when they have to use their noggins, Betts,” she’d say. “If you don’t have to think about the proportions of ingredients to each other, you get a lazy brain. I don’t abide lazy brains.”

So before her students baked one cookie or fried one piece of chicken or mashed one potato, Gram spent some time talking to them about the chemistry of food, of ingredients. She wanted her students to be able to think, to know what to do if something didn’t work as it should. When should you add flour, an egg, more sugar? When should you add less? Why is the secret red velvet cupcake ingredient vinegar?

And she was right. When you had to think about what you were doing, you paid better attention to how things blended together, and when your experience mixed with your intuition, somehow food transformed and became better.

When the cupcakes were done I went back out to my car for a silver serving platter I thought I’d left in the trunk. It was there, but it was also dirty, hidden under the jumper cables and probably shouldn’t be used for the library event. Nonetheless, I took it inside to see if I could clean it up enough.

As I walked back into the school, a scuffing sound caught my attention. All at once I turned, saw a person sitting in the chair in the corner, threw the platter into the air, and screamed. The platter dropped to the floor, its crash punctuating the scream.

“Who are you?” I demanded.

I’d scared him as much as he’d scared me. His dark eyes
widened, and before he stood he’d jumped in his seat. Once he was fully upright, he held his hands in a halt position.

“Apologies, ma’am. I didn’t mean to scare you.” His southern drawl was thicker than Gram’s bread pudding.

It wasn’t totally unusual that someone I didn’t know was in the school. But my car had been parked pretty close to the front door. I would have seen someone go through the doors, unless whoever it was snuck in while I was digging out the platter and the trunk door was up, hiding the school from my view. It had only taken a second or two for me to wrangle the platter, but that might have been enough. The fact that there’d been a murder the day before also probably contributed to the surprise-induced adrenaline running through my system and goosing my heart rate.

“Who are you and what do you want?” I said.

“I’m looking for Missouri Anna,” the cowboy said. He put his weight on one hip and casually stuck his thumbs in his belt, but I could tell he was still shaken up, too.

There was something about him that made me think of the glimpse of the vision I’d seen outside the Jasper the night before. He was made up of all the same colors, and my initial thought last night had been that I was seeing a human figure.

He wore a beige shirt and brown leather chaps over tan pants. His black boots were worn and dusty and his hat had seen better days. His face was striking because his features were so sharp and he’d grown and groomed a mustache like the cowboys of old; it rode the top of his lips and then made a wide curve on each side of his mouth down to his jawline. Still, though, there was something about him that left a wonky sense of unreal in my gut. He stood in front of me and he
was most definitely real, but it was as though he were somewhat faded. He must have been a new summer character/actor.

“She’s not here. Can I help you?” I reached down for the platter.

“No. I need to talk to Missouri.” He crouched down, too, but didn’t reach to help me with the platter.

I sniffed. Wood smoke.

“Do I smell smoke?” I said aloud, as we both stood again.

“It’s possible,” he said. “Apologies for that, too.”

“No, no, it’s okay. Sorry, if that was rude. Anyway, my grandmother isn’t here at the moment. I’d be happy to give her a message.”

He looked at me a long time, his dark eyes disturbingly intense. “You’re Missouri’s granddaughter?”

“Yes.” Very few people called her by her full first name. “How do you know my gram?”

He looked at me again. It was as though he had to think hard about what to say before he said it. “Long story.”

“I’d be happy to give her a message.”

His getup was so authentic. I’d often thought many of the actors made their old-fashioned clothes look too crisp and clean. This guy wore wrinkles in all the right places and it looked as though the clothes were worn a little thin. The other cowboys could take a lesson or two from him.

“No. I’ll come back by later,” he answered more quickly this time.

“Can I give her your name?”

He inspected my face again but then smiled and then tipped his hat like he’d practiced the maneuver and said, “No, thank you. Sorry to have startled you. Ma’am.” Then
he turned heel and walked out the door, the smell of wood smoke going with him.

I was stunned still for a moment, not sure what to make of the visitor. He hadn’t told me who he was, and the more seconds that ticked by the more I felt like it was my right to know. I followed his path out the door. At least I wanted to see which direction he’d gone. But I didn’t see him anywhere. There were no other vehicles in sight. The parking lot was empty except for my car. The road didn’t have any traffic.

I concluded that he must have gone into the woods on the other side of the cemetery. That would explain the smoky smell and why I hadn’t seen another car, maybe.

But it didn’t explain what I’d seen outside the theater last night.

None of it sat right with me, but there was nothing I could do about it. I had cupcakes to deliver. I went back inside, closed and locked the door, searched the entire school for any other surprise visitors, and hurried back to the kitchen.

As I finished organizing the cupcakes onto clean serving platters, something rattled the walls and made the pots and pans clank together violently, but it wasn’t the return of the intriguing cowboy. At first I wondered if we were having an earthquake, but it turned out to be a much angrier force of nature.

Gram had walked to the cemetery side of the school and was pounding on and peering in one of the open windows.

“For crying out loud, Betts, open the blasted door and let me in!”

“Your father took my keys. I had a spare set to the car but not to the school. Do you have any idea how angry I am at him?” Gram’s mood was foul at best. She’d tried to reach me on my cell phone to make sure I was taking care of the cupcakes, but for some reason my phone hadn’t rung.

“You were up late, Gram. You needed a day off. Dad was just doing what he thought was best.”

“I wish everyone would quit treating me like I’m fragile. When in all of your days, Betts, have I been fragile?” Gram flung her hands to her hips. Today she supported the Nebraska Cornhuskers, her red T-shirt a bright topping to her jeans.

“Never,” I said, “but these are unusual circumstances.”

“I didn’t kill Everett. I didn’t kill anyone. I’m sad that someone was killed in the supply room of my school, but
I’ve lived long enough to see plenty of dead people. You’d be surprised.”

“Speaking of Everett, Jake was here earlier. He said he saw you and Everett together yesterday at lunch. You were out in the cemetery looking at a tombstone.”

“Was that yesterday?” Gram said quickly. “I don’t think it was. Maybe Jake was mistaken about the day.”

She’d responded so quickly and easily that I knew she’d rehearsed the lines. I didn’t know if I was more upset about the fact that she was avoiding the truth or that she was avoiding me. I was concerned, of course, that she was making things up to cover for her possible involvement in a crime, but my feelings were also hurt. Gram and I had a pretty great relationship. If she thought so little of it that she didn’t know she could be one hundred percent honest with me, then I couldn’t help but feel like maybe we weren’t as close as I thought. She sensed my concern and stepped around the butcher block and put her hand on my arm.