Free If Fried Chicken Could Fly by Paige Shelton Page A

running on a little sleep and a lot of caffeine, so that’s the best I can do for now, but I will find a way to make it up to you.”
    He smiled as he held the coin in the air. “Thank you. I forgive you. And yes, I stopped by yesterday at lunch to talk to you. Miz and Everett were out here looking at Jerome’s tombstone. Their tête-à-tête seemed serious and I had to yell at Miz twice before she turned and saw me. She said you’d gone out for lunch, but she wasn’t sure where.”
    “So, Everett was here yesterday at noon? Gram was with him?” I said. “Are you sure that was yesterday?”
    “Positive.”
    “That’s…”
    “What? What is it?” Jake asked.
    “I don’t know. I’ll have to talk to Gram,” I said. Did she forget that Everett had been here earlier yesterday? Did she lie? If so, why?
    “What should I do with this?” Jake inspected the coin in between his fingers.
    It took me a second to notice that he was still talking. “Put it back where you found it, I suppose,” I finally said.
    Jake placed the coin back on top of the tombstone. “Yeah, someone might have put it here to honor good ol’ Jerome.”
    “Good ol’ Jerome? He was a bank robber.”
    “My dear, for someone whose best friend is the town historian, you don’t know nearly enough about Broken Rope.”
    “He wasn’t a bank robber?” I said. “Are you going to tell me he was misunderstood?”
    “Maybe. He was a bank robber, but he was much more.” Jake brushed his fingers next to the coin, flicking some dirt off the tombstone. “You need a history lesson.”
    “How about you tell me all about it while you help me with some cupcakes for the library read-a-thon?”
    “Cupcakes? Let me see.” He pointed to the grocery bag that I was still holding.
    I opened it and he peered inside. “Very good. You didn’t forget Miz’s secret ingredient.”
    “She could be handcuffed behind bars and she’d still hurt me if I forgot the secret ingredient,” I said. I’d meant to make light of the moment, perhaps a forced levity because I was now even more worried about Gram’s possible connection to Everett’s death. But the comment wasn’t met with a smile or a laugh from Jake. Instead, we were interrupted by a sudden gust of wind that seemed to come at us from alldirections. Jake’s short brown hair was pushed both forward and backward at the same time and my long ponytail got in my eyes from both sides. We looked around for something that might explain the disruptive anomaly. But after the wind gusted once, it was over. The day returned to sunny, calm, and was warming up quickly.
    Jake looked at me and said, “What was that?”
    “I have no idea.”
    We both looked around again.
    “All righty then. How about we get to making those cupcakes?” Jake said.
    “I think that’s a good idea.” I was more than ready to be out of the cemetery.
    “Did you really say ‘doubloon’?” Jake asked as we stepped around graves and over the rope.
    “Yes. My mind is tired and that’s the first thing that surfaced.”
    “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