“Alright, counting Starla, that makes three people who’ve complained about a mysterious smell,” Leo announces, making Bettie and I turn around to look at him. “You ladies stay here while I go out and see what it is.”
“Fuck that, we’re going with you,” Bettie informs him, waving her arm for Emma Jo and I to follow along as Leo leads the way out of the kitchen and down the hall.
“I’ve got a tire iron in the trunk of the rental car. Just say the word…” Bettie whispers in my ear again as we head outside, down the front porch, and make our way around the side of the house.
The four of us traipse through the back yard, the smell getting stronger and more horrible the closer we get to the back of Emma Jo’s property, until we all have to cover our noses as we walk.
“IF YOU FIND ANOTHER DEAD BODY BACK THERE, SHERIFF, I CAN SEND OVER BO JANGLES TO STAND GUARD AND MAKE SURE PAYTON DOESN’T TRY TO FLEE THE SCENE!” Starla shouts from the other side of her fence.
That damn woman must have had her face plastered to the window of her house, just waiting for something to happen, with how quickly she got out to her back yard to see what was going on.
Leo gives her a quick wave over his shoulder, otherwise ignoring her as our little group continues walking until we get to the edge of the woods that run behind all the houses on Emma Jo’s street. We don’t get more than five feet into the tree cropping and thickets before we find the source of the smell. Leo quickly puts up his arm to stop the three of us from coming any closer while he continues walking a few more feet and then stops.
We ignore his outstretched arm and move right up next to him, gasping in one collective breath when we see what Leo is staring down at: a yellow pie plate that’s been licked clean, with two dead raccoons lying on their sides next to it.
“So THAT’S where it went!” Emma Jo exclaims.
Leo looks back at her in confusion and I quickly wrap my hand around her arm and give her a squeeze of warning to shut the hell up, but she doesn’t take my subtle hint and just makes things worse.
“I mean, that’s where THEY went. The raccoons being the they in question. I haven’t seen them in a few days and I got worried. Because RACCOONS in the wrong hands could be dangerous. RACCOONS in the wrong hands could kill people,” she rambles.
Leo looks back and forth silently between us with a raise of his eyebrow while I quickly try to fix her word vomit.
“Dangerous on account of the rabies. You know, raccoons having rabies and all that and rabies being deadly,” I add with a nervous chuckle, not fixing her word vomit AT ALL.
“So, you’ve seen these raccoons before?” Leo questions Emma Jo.
“Our Emma Jo is just like Snow White! Animals from all over the land flock to her and want to be friends with her, even rabid raccoons,” I reply lamely while Leo turns away from us and squats down by the raccoons.
Jesus, STOP TALKING, PAYTON!
“Until they eat one of her pies and realize she poisoned them,” Bettie whispers from the other side of me.
I give her a quick jab to the ribs with my elbow right before Leo stands back up and turns to face us with the pie plate in his hand.
“Emma Jo, isn’t this one of yours? Looks like they ate whatever was in it and then just keeled over,” he states, bringing the plate up closer to his face to inspect it.
“What? No! That’s definitely not one of mine. It’s yellow, and I hate the color yellow,” Emma Jo quickly replies. “All of my pie plates are in my kitchen and accounted for, and I definitely don’t have any yellow ones!”
Leo flips the plate over in his hands and then tips the underside in our direction with another raise of one eyebrow, and we can all see clear as day an engraving stamped on the bottom of the plate that says Property of Emma Jo Jackson. I see Bettie shake her head and bow it out of the corner of my eye, and I wait for her to toss her hands up in the air and call us idiots.
“What Emma Jo meant to say is that she hasn’t always hated the color yellow, isn’t that right?” I ask, turning my head and widening my eyes for her to fix this before it gets more out of hand than it already is.
“Right!” she quickly pipes up. “It was more of a recent decision, actually. I read an article in Good Housekeeping that yellow dishes cause cancer, so I threw out every dish I owned that was yellow.”
“And these raccoon friends of yours just pulled it out of the trash and dragged it into the woods so they could bake their own little raccoon pies?” Leo asks, narrowing his eyes at Emma Jo and then sliding the same questioning glare in my direction.
“Right! Exactly! And look at that, they probably died from cancer. I feel so much better now about throwing out all of those yellow dishes, don’t you, Payton?” Emma Jo asks.