Jed Had to Die Read online

  With my pounding headache, the phone call from my mother, and taking a trip down drunk memory lane with Emma Jo, I didn’t notice the barking coming from outside. Now that I do, it’s all I can hear and it’s worse than knives to the brain. Much worse. It’s high-pitched and yappy, and even from outside in the next yard, it’s loud and annoying.

  Pulling the phone away from my mouth when Emma Jo asks me in a whisper what’s going on, I quickly explain to her in a hushed voice about the psychotic dog and Mrs. Godfrey’s claim that he’s barking at something in her backyard. Emma Jo shakes her head and leaves the room, heading down the hall to one of the rooms that face the backyard.

  “I already called Sheriff Hudson about it because Bo Jangles is so upset, and I need to get him to calm down and come inside to take a nap. It looks like a deer or some other kind of large animal back there. I saw Mayor Jackson’s car in the driveway last night so I know he’s home early from that meeting of his. Tell him to go outside and see what it is. He’s always so nice and helpful, and Bo Jangles loves him. Bo Jangles would never lift his leg on him,” Starla retorts in a snotty voice.

  “Mayor Jackson actually isn’t home right now, but don’t worry Mrs. Godfrey, I’ll go outside and see what it is that Bo Jangles is barking at. You can call Sheriff Hudson back and tell him we don’t need him,” I snap angrily, counting to ten in my head before I let a whole string of curse words loose. “Thanks for calling and have a wonderful day!”

  I quickly hang up the phone, cutting Starla off mid-sentence, knowing that it will only be a matter of minutes before my mother hears about how rude I was to her.

  “That woman is just as annoying as she was when we were in high school. I don’t know how you can handle living next door to her,” I complain to Emma Jo when I hear her walk back into the room.

  “Payton, it’s…” Emma Jo whispers, her voice cracking with emotion as she trails off.

  I turn around to see her eyes wide and unblinking and her mouth dropped open in shock. As I start to walk toward her, there’s a knock at the door.

  “Don’t move, I’ll get it. I’m sure it’s Mrs. Godfrey, coming over here to sick her dog on me for hanging up on her,” I try to joke as I move toward the door, getting a little bit worried about how pale Emma Jo’s face is right now.

  Turning the deadbolt, I open the door to find Leo standing on the front porch. I want to slam the door in his face, but my eyes zero in on the coffee cup in his hand and my mouth starts to water.

  “I left to go get some coffee for you since I know Emma Jo doesn’t drink it, when I got a call from the station that Mrs. Godfrey phoned in with a complaint. I can’t leave you alone for ten hours without you causing problems,” he sighs, handing me the cup of coffee.

  I take a sip to get my brain in working order before I reply, but sadly, it tastes like the bottom of someone’s shoe and does nothing for my brain activity.

  “Sorry, I know it’s not Liquid Crack, but it’s the best I could do without driving into Louisville,” Leo adds with a smile.

  He’s trying to make a peace offering and butter me up after what went down last night, but I’m not falling for that shit. I don’t care if he DID come back here after he had a laughing good time with Jed, probably yucking it up about silly little women, parking his car across the street to keep an eye on the house. I don’t care if he called Emma Jo when he came back to tell her he planned on staying there all night, just to make sure Jed didn’t come back to the house and that he’d explain everything in the morning. He’s a lying liar-face, and I am not about to let how good he looks in a uniform mess with my head. Or his dimples. Or his bright blue eyes. Or how nice it was that he went out and got me coffee even though it tastes like what Bo Jangles pee smelled like.

  “Um, Sheriff, you’re gonna want to come to the backyard….”

  I lean to the side to look around Leo and find another man in uniform standing at the bottom of the steps with a worried look on his face. He’s about the same height as Leo and looks around the same age, with a cute face, short brown hair and a lean build, unlike Leo’s in-your-face-I-can-squash-you-like-a-bug-muscular one.

  “Payton Lambert, this is one of my deputies, Buddy Lloyd. He just moved to Bald Knob a few months ago. I thought it would be a good idea to bring him out here with me this morning since he’ll probably be coming here quite a bit when more neighbors start complaining about you,” Leo says with a soft chuckle.

  “It’s nice to meet you, Deputy Lloyd. Pay no attention to Sheriff Hudson, he was dropped on his head a lot as a baby,” I inform the man, still standing at the bottom of the steps, wringing his hands together nervously.

  “It’s nice to meet you too, ma’am,” he says, his eyes darting behind me and his hands quickly coming up to smooth down his hair. “G-good morning, Mrs. Jackson. H-how have you been?”

  I look back and forth between Emma Jo, who came up behind me, and Deputy Lloyd, who is suddenly nervous for a whole new reason and I can’t hide my smile when he trips over his words and keeps trying to make sure his hair looks good as she moves up next to me in the doorway.

  “Payton…” Emma Jo whispers, completely ignoring poor lovesick Buddy Lloyd and saying my name in the same, worried voice as before when she came back into the living room.

  “What’s going on?” Leo asks, suddenly noticing the look on Emma Jo’s face and remembering what Buddy said when he first walked up to the porch, turning away from Emma Jo to look back at him. “What’s in the backyard?”

  Buddy looks at me and Emma Jo, then motions for Leo to come down off the porch with his hand. As soon as Leo walks down the steps and he and Buddy start speaking in hushed voices, Emma Jo’s hand wraps around my arm and she squeezes so tightly that I let out a little yelp of pain.

  “We killed him!” Emma Jo whispers frantically, her eyes wider than they were before in the living room.

  “What the hell are you talking about? Killed who?” I ask in a soft voice, glancing down at the two men to see that they’re still deep in conversation and not paying any attention to us.

  “I went to the laundry room at the back of the house and looked out the window to see what Bo Jangles was barking at, and…oh, my God, we killed him,” Emma Jo whimpers.

  I can still hear the damn dog barking up a storm at the back of Starla’s house, and I take another sip of the shitty coffee Leo brought me. I need the caffeine right now more than something that tastes good if I want to be able to make sense of anything that is coming out of Emma Jo’s mouth right now.

  “Sheriff, did you get a look at what’s in the backyard? Is it a deer?”

  Emma Jo whimpers again when Starla comes waltzing over from her house, walking much faster with her cane than I thought humanly possible.

  “Hey, Mrs. Godfrey! Hello Sheriff, Deputy Lloyd,” a teenage boy shouts in greeting, walking across the street and into Emma Jo’s yard to join the party. “My mom sent me over to see if everything is okay with Bo Jangles. We’ve been hearing him barking all morning.”

  I squint to get a good look at the kid and smile when I recognize who it is.

  “Caden Jefferson? I used to babysit you! Holy shit, you’re all grown up now. It’s me, Payton Lambert. Do you remember me?” I yell to him with a smile and a wave of my coffee cup, even though Emma Jo is now clutching onto my other arm with both of her hands now.

  Caden’s happy-go-lucky smile dies when he sees me, and he stops in the middle of the yard before quickly starting to take a few steps back toward the street.

  “Sorry, Miss Lambert!” he shouts. “My mom heard you were back in town, and she said I’m not allowed to talk to you because you’re a bad influence.”

  “Oh, for the love of God,” I mutter as I watch him turn and flee, running across the street and into his house like the devil is on his heels.

  I realize Leo and Buddy have stopped talking and are both staring at me.

  “Honestly, it’s not my fault that kid was a parrot and wouldn’t st
op calling his mother a whore after I watched a movie with him one night. It was years ago. Don’t people ever forget anything around here?” I complain.

  “Plenty of people around here forget things. Like the guy who helped you pass Geometry and gave you the name for your coffee shop,” Leo informs me with a cocky smile.

  Son of a bitch. SON OF A BITCH! Leo used to always call coffee Liquid Crack and teased me about how I couldn’t survive without it back when he was tutoring me. I can’t believe I forgot about that. When it came time for me to pick a name for the shop, it was the first thing that popped into my head. I can’t believe I forgot that it came from Leo. No wonder he’s taking such great pleasure in torturing me since I got back here. Great, now I owe the guy TWO apologies. This is officially the worst week ever.

  “Seriously, I need you to come into the backyard, Sheriff. Right now,” Buddy reminds him, his eyes darting up to me and Emma Jo.

  “Just spit it out, Buddy. You’ve been standing here stammering and stuttering for two minutes, and I don’t have time for this right now. I need to make sure the town doesn’t start protesting in the square, demanding I lock up Miss Lambert for pissing everyone off,” Leo tells him, aiming another smirk in my direction.

  “Ha, ha, you’re hilarious. Go do something useful and shut that damn dog up,” I complain as Bo Jangles’ barks get louder and more yappy.

  “What the hell is he barking at?” Leo mutters.

  “He’s barking at him!” Emma Jo whispers in my ear, yanking me out of the doorway and back into the foyer. “Oh, my God, we’re gonna go to prison!”

  She’s back to freaking out again, and I suddenly regret my decision of introducing her to copious amounts of wine last night. It clearly ate away all her brain cells and her hangover has made her crazy.

  “Did you find another stash of wine I don’t know about? What is wrong with you?” I ask as she paces back and forth in front of me, stopping suddenly to look out into the yard at Leo and Buddy as they walk to the side yard to get to the back.

  “The pie. It’s not on the windowsill. I checked when you answered the door, and OH MY GOD, THE PIE IS GONE!” she screeches, her voice louder now that the two men aren’t within hearing distance.

  I step around Emma Jo and look into the kitchen to the window above the sink and sure enough, the pie we left there to cool last night is gone. Under normal circumstances, we probably shouldn’t have left a window to the house wide open all night when there was a lunatic out there somewhere probably waiting for the right opportunity to come back and make good on his threats, but we knew Leo was parked outside all night and he’d make sure nothing would happen. And also, wine…wine had a lot to do with us leaving the window open all night.

  Turning back around to face Emma Jo, I shrug. “So, the pie isn’t there. It’s not like everything we did last night is exactly clear. Maybe we only thought we put it there. I’m sure it’s in the fridge.

  Emma Jo shakes her head frantically. “No. It’s not in the fridge, it’s not in the oven, and it didn’t fall out of the window. I checked. WE KILLED HIM!”

  “For the love of all that is holy, will you stop talking crazy? Take a deep breath, slow down, and tell me what the hell you’re talking about.”

  Emma Jo grabs my hand and pulls me down the hallway instead of replying. I let her drag me to the back of the house and into the laundry room, glancing out the window when she pulls the curtain aside and points to the backyard.

  All I see is Leo and Buddy standing next to each other, staring down at something, until Buddy suddenly races away toward the side of the yard, bends over, and throws up all over a pink rose bush.

  My eyes go back to Leo and I finally get a good look at what they were looking at, and the source of Bo Jangles’ incessant barking all morning.

  “WE KILLED HIM!” Emma Jo screams again.

  I clamp my hand over my mouth as I stare out of Emma Jo’s laundry room window, at Jed Jackson lying face-up in the grass, still wearing the same three-piece suit he had on when I saw him last night, unmoving with his eyes wide open in death.

  “Never mind. Now, it’s officially the worst week ever,” I mumble, before turning around and racing back down the hall to the guest bathroom, making it to the toilet just in time to throw up all of last night’s wine and bad decisions.

  CHAPTER 10

  Recorded Interview

  June 2, 2016

  Bald Knob, KY Police Department

  Deputy Lloyd: You spoke to your daughter on the phone right before the body was discovered, is that correct?

  Ruby Lambert: Yes. I called to tell her what a horrible child she was for not letting me know she was home. Can you believe I had to hear it from Starla Godfrey that my own daughter was in town? Thirty-seven hours of labor and she doesn’t even care about her own mama. Not to mention the apologies I had to make around town all the time when she was growing up and causing trouble. I still have to make Pastor John twenty pumpkin rolls every year for the church bake sale so he won’t kick Payton’s father and I out for what she did Christmas of 2001.

  Deputy Lloyd: What happened during Christmas of 2001?

  Ruby Lambert: She rearranged the Three Wise men in front of Bald Knob Presbyterian into vulgar poses. It probably wasn’t the best idea for the church to use old department store mannequins with bendable joints, but that’s neither here nor there.

  Deputy Lloyd: So your daughter regularly did things to rile people up and often times broke the law?

  Ruby Lambert: Well, only when people did something that put a bee in her bonnet and she wanted to get back at them. Pastor John’s sermon that previous weekend was about making amends to people we’ve wronged, and he singled Payton out, asking her if she’d like the opportunity to apologize to Mo Wesley for hanging a sign on his Gas n Sip coffee machine that said “Don’t drink this coffee. It tastes like farts smell.”

  Deputy Lloyd: Does she still exhibit this type of behavior as an adult? If someone were to do something to upset her or make her angry now, do you think she’s capable of doing them harm to, as you said, get back at them?

  Ruby Lambert: Well, I guess it depends how bad it upset her or made her angry. And then you have to think about whether or not she’s got any coffee in her system. That child is hell on wheels without her coffee, let me tell you. During our phone call the other morning, you know, when I called to tell her what a horrible child she was for not calling her mama first, she told me she would go on a murderous rampage if she didn’t get her coffee.

  *Light chuckling*

  Deputy Lloyd: Ma’am, you do know your daughter is a suspect for the murder of Jed Jackson, correct?

  Rudy Lambert: Lord Almighty…How many pumpkin rolls do you think it takes to fix something like that?

  Deputy Lloyd: Mrs. Lambert, we’re talking about the murder of one of our most prominent citizens and the mayor of Bald Knob. I don’t think pumpkin rolls are going to fix anything.

  Rudy Lambert: Have you tasted one of my pumpkin rolls, young man? I don’t need an exact number, just a ballpark figure. What do you think, forty? Forty-five? You know what, I’ll just make fifty to be on the safe side and drop one off to you tomorrow morning. How does nine o’clock sound?

  Deputy Lloyd: Ma’am, I think right now you should be more concerned with getting your daughter a lawyer.

  Rudy Lambert: Don’t worry, I already called Billy Ray Lewis.

  Deputy Lloyd: Ma’am, I think Payton will need someone with a little more experience in criminal law. Billy Ray Lewis has never even stepped foot in a courtroom and only handles divorces and the occasional traffic violation.

  Rudy Lambert: And he did a wonderful job for Andrea Maynard when that good-for-nothing husband of hers left town a few years back and got himself a new family over in Lexington. Plus, Billy Ray loves my pumpkin rolls.

  CHAPTER 11

  I haven’t had my coffee yet. Don’t make me kill you.

  —Coffee Mug

  “I’m ju
st saying, is it too much to ask for a little compassion? It’s not like I need him to fawn all over me, but how about asking if I’m okay or checking to see if I need anything?” I complain to Emma Jo as we sit huddled next to each other on the hanging swing on her front porch.

  After I threw up the contents of my stomach and finally got Emma Jo to stop screaming about how we killed her husband, we’d spent the last hour sitting on the front porch with our arms linked, watching Leo, Buddy, and Billy Ray Lewis go back and forth between their cars parked in the street and the backyard. The only reason I was able to get Emma Jo to stop freaking out and announcing to the entire town that we were murderers, was the appearance of Billy Ray. Sure, he’s the coroner for Bald Knob and that would make some people nervous who may or may not have baked a pie filled with toilet bowl cleaner for the man who is currently lying dead in the yard, but it didn’t make us nervous. Billy Ray is also the town lawyer, a bagger at Knob Grocery, runs the feed store at the edge of town, and dumber than a box of rocks. How on earth he ever got a law degree and was appointed as Bald Knob’s coroner is beyond me. Billy Ray was the guy in high school who ate his own boogers and drew penises on everything he could get his hands on – textbook spines, lockers, desks, chalkboards, and every piece of homework or test he turned in. Billy Ray Lewis being the one in charge of determining how Jed Jackson died makes me feel a lot better about my chances of wearing prison jump suit orange for the rest of my life.

  “You doing okay, Emma Jo?”

  I try not to huff when Leo pauses at the base of the porch steps and directs his question at Emma Jo, just like he’s done every time he’s passed by us. Emma Jo gives him a tight smile and a nod, and he returns both before going on his way to the side of the house.