Caden Jefferson: Oh, man. They’re going to kill me if I have to testify against Payton and they find out where I was that night. Do I really have to get up on a stand and say she murdered Mayor Jackson? I mean, she was really nice when she used to babysit me. I don’t want to be the one to send her to jail.
Deputy Lloyd: Right now, Payton isn’t going to trial because she hasn’t been charged with anything. We’re just trying to piece together what happened that night. So, you were at a party down at the lake. What time was the party over?
Caden Jefferson: Well, it was supposed to go all night, but Brad Miller and Eric Friedman got into a fight over who could tip the most cows at Mr. Mayford’s farm, and Brad said Eric cheated, although I don’t really know how you’d cheat at tipping cows unless Eric’s got some sort of friendship with the cows and they tipped over all on their own to help him out. Anyway, we broke up the fight and then there wasn’t much else to do so we all went home. I’d say it was around 2:30 in the morning and I heard some yelling from the Jackson’s backyard when I was sneaking in my window. You’re not going to tell my parents that, right?
Deputy Lloyd: No, I won’t tell your parents what you said. Do you remember what you heard being yelled from the Jackson’s backyard?
Caden Jefferson: Nah, it was just some loud voices and then they just stopped all of a sudden and I didn’t hear anything else. I saw Sheriff Hudson’s car parked a few houses down, but he wasn’t in his car when I walked by. Do you think he saw Payton killing Mayor Jackson and tried to stop her? His knuckles were all bruised when I saw him a few days later in town, but he said he was changing a flat tire and that’s how he hurt them. Is he going to marry Payton? Is she moving back to Bald Knob? My mom will go even more crazy if that happens. She thinks Payton is a bad influence on me and the worst babysitter ever.
Deputy Lloyd: Caden, it’s really important for you to try and remember what you heard that night. Male voices, female voices, both?
Caden Jefferson: I really don’t remember. I had a lot of beers to drink down by the lake. I MEAN SODAS! I had a lot of sodas to drink and, whew, that caffeine went right to my head! Oh, my God, don’t tell my mom I was drinking beer. She’ll KILL me. I mean, not really kill me. My mom would never kill anyone, especially Mayor Jackson. She loved Mayor Jackson. She’s been crying every day since we got the news. I heard my dad telling her she was just crying because she felt guilty, so I think she was so upset because she hadn’t gone over to say hello to the mayor in a few days or something. Anyway, I think it would be great if Payton moved back to Bald Knob. She’s like, really pretty. My friend Ryan said he wouldn’t mind her being a bad influence on him, but I told him to shut his mouth and not talk about my babysitter like that. Even if she did teach me to call my mom a whore.
CHAPTER 17
I don’t like morning people. Or mornings. Or people.
—Coffee Mug
“I don’t want to say anything over the phone. Someone could be listening,” I speak softly into my cell phone, glancing quickly at my surroundings in the parking lot of The Hungry Bear to make sure no one is close by.
“Oh, for the love of God, just spit it out. You had sex with the sheriff, didn’t you? Tell me all the dirty details,” Bettie demands from the other end of the line.
“No! I didn’t have sex with the sheriff!” I shout, my eyes widening in horror when I look up and see Justine Pickerson pause and look back at me over her shoulder with her hand hovering by the handle of the door to the restaurant. “Hi, Justine, how are you today? Lovely weather we’re having!”
She looks at me in disgust before quickly rushing inside the building and I let out a loud sigh.
“Justine Pickerson…is that the one who owns the bar you stole wine coolers from?” Bettie asks.
“Allegedly!” I argue. “They were sitting out behind the bar in an open box, how was I supposed to know they weren’t expired and getting thrown away? Anyway, can you focus, please? Something bad happened. Something really bad, and I need to know how you’d feel about running Liquid Crack for the rest of your life.”
“What the hell are you talking about? Was the sex with Hot Guy that bad? It’s always the pretty ones who are all talk and no action…” Bettie trails off.
A brief flash of Leo holding me up against the wall and pushing his hips between my thighs takes over my brain and I have to shake away the memory and work extra hard to focus on what I’m supposed to be telling Bettie.
Speaking of extra hard…dammit, focus!
“Bettie, listen to the words coming out of my mouth. Ed-jay as-way, urdered-may,” I explain, cupping my hand over my mouth and the speaker of the phone.
“Are you high? Did someone give you a pot brownie again? I thought you learned your lesson the last time when you hid under the bed for four hours because you thought every time the ice machine on your fridge started clinking that the cops were breaking down your door,” Bettie reminds me.
“I’m not high! I told you, someone might be listening to this phone call,” I remind her in a panicked voice, looking around the parking lot nervously again.
“Right. Pig Latin. Must be serious if you’re speaking in a language that all the brilliant scholars in the world haven’t been able to decipher for millions of years,” she replies sarcastically. “So, Jed is really dead, huh? Kind of crazy that happened right after you got to town.”
“On a scale of one to ten, what do you think my chances are of surviving prison?” I ask her distractedly, waving to Mo Wesley across the street when he comes outside to flip over the Open sign on the door of Gas N Sip. He gives me the finger and walks back inside.
“Is there a number less than one? Like zero, but times infinity?” Bettie asks with a laugh.
“Hey, I’m scrappy. I could totally be a gang leader in Gen Pop. I’ve heard that’s the only way to make it, by being the leader of your own gang.”
“Sure,” Bettie responds with another laugh. “You’d totally be the leader of the Whitest White Girl Wasp gang. You’d win every riot by boring people to death about a skirt you got on sale at Nordstrom’s and the importance of starting every morning with a good cup of coffee.”
Before I can try and convince her I could kick her tatted ass all over the streets of Chicago, you know, after coffee, she gets a call on the other line and puts me on hold. She’s back a few seconds later and if I wasn’t nervous already, this would have pushed me right over the edge.
“Weird. I just got a call from a Kentucky number. You’re the only person I know in Kentucky. Did you meet another Hot Guy and give him my number?” she asks in confusion.
“Oh shit! OH SHIT, what did they say? Who was it?”
“I don’t know. I didn’t recognize the number and I let it go to voicemail, like any rational human being does,” she replies easily.
“Holy shit, it’s the cops. It has to be the cops. They must be calling everyone I know for like a character witness thing or some shit. Fuck. I’m dead. How quickly can you make up some really awesome things to say about me and my character?” I ask, waving to my mother when she pokes her head out of the door of The Hungry Bear and points at her watch angrily before disappearing back inside.
After tossing and turning all night, my thoughts too busy to let me sleep since they were filled with Leo kissing me and then Leo arresting me for murder, I succumbed easily to my mother’s pressure when she called at seven this morning and told me to meet her and my father for breakfast instead of going out to their house. In bad need of coffee, regardless if it was shitty coffee, Emma Jo let me take her car and reassured me she’d be fine home alone until I got back. She wanted to start making funeral arrangements for Jed so they’d be ready to go when the sheriff’s office finished with their investigation. It’s probably a wise decision to make those plans now since I’m not exactly sure how easy it is to plan a funeral from behind bars. And it’s obvious Leo didn’t just think Emma Jo and I were crazy last night, and he legitimately things we ha
d something to do with Jed’s death if he’s already calling people I know.
“A five percent raise, Liquid Crack stock when the company goes public, and I want full custody of Cecil since you’ll be too busy dropping the soap to worry about taking care of him,” Bettie replies immediately without giving what I asked any thought.
“You could have at least pretended that it would be a piece of cake to tell the cops a bunch of glowing things about me,” I complain, pushing away from Emma Jo’s car and slowly making my way to the door of the restaurant.
“But then I’d be lying, and what kind of precedence would that set for me when I have to testify on your behalf on the witness stand?”
Bettie ends the call by promising to give me a full report about the voice mail as soon as the morning rush at Liquid Crack dies down, and I walk into The Hungry Bear for the first time in twelve years, stupidly assuming no one would notice or care that I’m back home.
* * *
This was a bad idea, a really bad idea.
“Everyone is looking at me,” I mumble under my breath, trying to hide behind the sticky plastic menu of The Hungry Bear that hasn’t been cleaned or updated since before I was born.
“They’re all looking at you because you haven’t been home to see your parents in twelve years. They think they’re witnessing a miracle right in front of their eyes,” my mother deadpans with a glare at me over the top of her own sticky, plastic menu.
“Leave the girl alone, Ruby. They’re all staring because they can’t believe how pretty you are.” My father gives me a wink and a smile, pushing his own menu to the side since he always orders the exact same thing for breakfast, no matter what the specials are.
“Ruby, Dwight, you folks having the usual this morning?” Andrea Maynard asks when she comes up to our table and collects the menus, tucking them under one arm as she pulls a pad and pen out of the front pocket of her dress.
Andrea has been a waitress at The Hungry Bear all of her fifty-seven years and looks like she stepped right off the set of a 1950’s movie about a haggard waitress. Her salt-and-pepper hair is pulled back into a low, messy bun with a white paper hat on her head and her pink-and-white-plaid apron-style waitressing uniform is already stained with coffee, bacon grease, and ketchup.
“Sausage and cheese omelets, home fries extra crispy, and orange juice, Andrea, thank you,” my mother tells her with a smile, giving her the order for both her and my father.
“Excuse me! I’d like to order something too, Andrea,” I speak up when she moves to walk away from the table without looking at me.
“We don’t have none of that snobby, fancy coffee here,” she informs me with a huge, inconvenienced sigh, chomping the gum in her mouth with extra enthusiasm.
“I’ll just have what my parents are having, that’s fine,” I say with a wider smile, pretending as if I don’t feel like a bug under the microscope with everyone in this place turned around in their chairs, blatantly staring right at me and ignoring the food in front of them.
“Don’t worry, Andrea, Payton won’t kill anyone if she doesn’t have her coffee, she’s too tired for that this morning,” my mother laughs in a lame attempt at a joke, which of course makes everyone in the room gasp at the same time like a choir of judgmental, gossiping hens.
“Nice work, mom. Way to keep the gossip down,” I mutter out of the corner of my mouth, wishing I could slide right out from under our booth and hide under the table.
The phone lines must have been on fire all through the night in Bald Knob. So much for Leo trying to keep a lid on what happened for a little while longer. At least he sent me a text this morning to warn me and Emma Jo that news traveled fast. And to remind me to stop by the station first thing. Ignoring his text and meeting my parents for breakfast instead is probably karma coming back to punch me in the face.
“Mayor Jackson was a fine man. Some people around these parts think it’s a little strange that he goes off and gets himself killed right after you show up back in town after all these years,” Andrea says, finally looking up from her pad of paper to meet my eyes.
“Andrea, you know better than to listen to gossip around town,” my mother scolds with a tsk of her tongue.
“So, it’s not true that Payton here got into an altercation with Starla’s Bo Jangles the other night?” Andrea asks.
“He pissed on my leg!” I argue, immediately wishing I would have kept my mouth shut when everyone in the room starts whispering even louder and pointing in my direction.
“I heard Mayor Jackson had a black eye when they found his body. Did you have an altercation with him too?” Andrea questions, smacking her hands down on our table and leaning over it like she’s playing bad cop. All she needs is a rickety light hanging down from the ceiling, swinging back and forth over my head and blinding me every time it hits my eyes.
Just then, the bell above the door dings, and when I literally think I’ve been saved by the bell, Leo walks in. The mood in the room suddenly changes from angry mob with pitch forks to family members welcoming their hero home from the war. People shout greetings, two men get up and shake his hand, and Andrea finally leaves our table, rushes over to the pick-up window to grab a Styrofoam box, and hands it to him with a huge smile on her wrinkled, judgy face. I watch as he takes his time greeting everyone in the room before he strolls over to our table.
“Mr. and Mrs. Lambert, Payton,” Leo greets us with a nod, his eyes quickly moving away from mine while I stupidly sit here gawking at him, wondering why he looks hotter in his uniform now than he did the first time I saw him in it.
“Leo, my goodness, what happened to your hand?” my mother asks, pointing to his hand holding the breakfast container.
Leo quickly shifts the container to his other hand, sliding that one into the front pocket of his uniform pants, but not before I noticed a few dried cuts and some bruising on his knuckles.
“Oh, nothing to be concerned about. Just a little stupid accident changing a flat tire,” Leo tells my mother with a self-deprecating laugh. “I need to get back to work, but I just wanted to stop by and remind Payton that we have an appointment to go over a few things at the station.”
He finally looks right at me, his blue eyes boring a hole right in my head like he’s trying to read my mind. If he is, I hope he can hear me screaming, “LIAR, LIAR, PANTS ON FIRE!”, Flat tire my ass! Jed Jackson had a black eye according to Andrea and now I’m kicking myself for being too preoccupied with Leo’s mouth to notice his knuckles last night when he had me pinned up against the wall.
Maybe Emma Jo and I really didn’t kill Jed, and maybe Leo still has no idea about the pie and the fact that it was missing from Emma Jo’s kitchen was all just a coincidence. Even with all the whispers and points in my direction that have resumed, I’m starting to feel a little bit better about my future. I’m not feeling so good about the fact that I might have made out with a murderer last night, but I’ll deal with that part of my conscience later.
“You folks have a good day. Make sure you get a piece of pie before you leave. I hear the blueberry is excellent. Not as good as Emma Jo’s, but delicious all the same,” Leo speaks to my parents, but keeps his eyes on me the entire time he talks. “Don’t forget to stop by the station, Payton.”
My mother giggles and waves at Leo like a lunatic when he winks at her before turning away from our table and walking back out the door.
“EVERYONE, GO BACK TO YOUR BREAKFASTS, NOTHING TO SEE HERE!” my mother shouts to the room after he’s gone. “Let’s just all have a moment of silence and say a prayer for poor Mayor Jackson and Emma Jo.”
The patrons of The Hungry Bear finally stop staring at me to do as my mother says, bowing their heads over their plates of eggs and toast.
“See? Everything will be fine. It’s not like people really think you killed Mayor Jackson, they’re just in shock and upset. I’m sure Sheriff Hudson will find the real killer in no time, everyone will forget all about this, and then you two
can get busy making me a few beautiful grandchildren,” my mother states in an attempt to make me feel better.
Andrea comes back to our table while our heads our still down, my mother praying for beautiful grandchildren while I pray Leo is too busy remembering what happened between us last night to dig any deeper into Jed’s death. She gently sets down my parents’ plates and drops mine in front of me, the bowl of lumpy oatmeal in the middle of the plate that I didn’t order, splashing out onto the table.
“Payton is pregnant with Sheriff Hudson’s baby? Oh, lord, this town is never going to forget something like this,” Andrea complains with a huff before walking to another table to bend down and whisper with them.
Super. I’ve been here all of two days and I’ve murdered someone, gotten married, and now knocked up by the sheriff, according to the town. There’s no way things could get any worse.
CHAPTER 18
Recorded Interview
June 3, 2016
Bald Knob, KY Police Department
Mo Wesley: Am I in here ’cuz you need a witness to swear about Payton Lambert?
Deputy Lloyd: You mean as a character witness or someone who was with her at the time of the murder and can vouch for her whereabouts?
Mo Wesley: I don’t know nothin’ about this character thing or whatever the blazes vouch means. Is that how the Frenchies say couch? Never did understand why people don’t just speak English from the good old U.S. of A.
Deputy Lloyd: You asked if we needed someone to swear about Payton Lambert and it would be nice if we could have someone corroborate the story she’s told us.
Mo Wesley: What? No. I just wanted to swear some about her and have it on official police record and whatnot. Will she get a copy of this report and know I called her a good-for-nothing coffee snob? Why aren’t you writing this down?
Deputy Lloyd: Mr. Wesley, I just need to know where you were on the night of May 31st, sometime after midnight.