Free A Ghostly Murder by Tonya Kappes Page B

rang, and I pulled it out. Caller ID said it was Eternal Slumber. What did Charlotte Rae want now?
    â€œHello?” I answered.
    â€œEmma Lee, it’s John Howard.” He announced himself like I didn’t know his voice. “Are you coming to work today?”
    â€œI’ll be there shortly. I had some business to take care of this morning. Why? Is something wrong?” John Howard never called me. I wasn’t even sure he knew how to use a phone.
    He came to work every day. Never missed. Once, he was so sick, I made him lie down and sip hot tea. He refused not to work. Hardest working man I had ever seen.
    â€œNothing wrong. I was just wondering if I could head down and get the sports equipment this morning, since tomorrow night is our first softball game. I wouldn’t have time after work to do it and deliver it to the other guys.”
    â€œAbsolutely!” I hit my head with my palm. I had totally forgotten to tell Jack Henry about the softball league and how I signed him up. “You go on and do what you need to do. We don’t have any funerals the rest of the week, so your workload is light.”
    â€œThanks, Emma Lee.” John Howard hung up the phone.
    Fluggie Callahan was standing in the doorway of the mill, glaring at me. I held up a “one sec” finger and quickly texted Jack Henry.
    Eternal Slumber has a new softball team. You are on it. First game tomorrow night. I can’t wait to root you on. I put the phone on the seat and got out. Jack Henry wouldn’t bother texting back. He would call and ask me why I would put him on the team without asking. This way, if the phone was in the car, I wouldn’t hear it ring and feel obligated to answer and then beg him to be on the team.
    â€œGimme what ya got.” I followed Fluggie into her new office space.
    Fluggie gestured for me to sit down. She walked around her desk and sat in her chair. She patted her messy up-­do and pulled out a pair of glasses. She stuck them on the ridge of her nose and pushed them up.
    â€œNot a whole lot, but I thought you should know she left over a million dollars to Sleepy Hollow Baptist Church.” She scanned the insides of a folder before her magnified eyes looked up at me.
    â€œOne million dollars?” I asked. “How did you find this out?”
    â€œI’ve got my informants.” She tapped her pencil on the desk. “There is a lawyer from Lexington involved in the entire transaction.” She slid a piece of paper across the desk with a name and number scribbled on it. “I smell a rat on this. First off, who leaves a small country church a million dollars? Secondly, I looked into courthouse records about the church, and there haven’t been any sort of renovations or anything close to being done that would amount to one million dollars.”
    I nodded and kept my eye on the paper. There was a niggling suspicion in my gut telling me Fluggie was right.
    â€œYou tell me.” She sucked in a deep breath. “What has the preacher done with the money?”
    Sleepy Hollow Baptist wasn’t the only church in town, but it was the church that all the ­people I knew attended or at least belonged to. Pastor Brown had to be as old as dirt, and he had been the pastor there for as long as I could remember.
    â€œIt isn’t unusual for members of the church to leave something to the church in their will.” I wanted to debunk any notions swirling around in my head telling me Pastor Brown wasn’t as holy as I had always thought he was. “And if I’m not mistaken, I do believe they post those generous donations in the church bulletins.”
    â€œSounds like you need to do some investigating.” Fluggie’s homely face arranged itself into a grin. “Get your Sunday go to meetin’ clothes cleaned and ironed.”
    â€œIt just so happens I saw Pastor Brown this morning, and he extended a personal invitation to